Does Yahweh Pee Standing Up? or The Gender of God and Why it Matters

A few weeks ago, I was sitting at PC’s Pub enjoying a refreshing Pabst Blue Ribbon with two friends, one male and one female. We were making small talk about college, the music on the jukebox, and considering a game of pool, when all at once the inevitable happened. A serious conversation broke out.

My female friend, a self-described feminist, confided to the two men at the table that she was having trouble relating to God. What was getting in her way was God’s masculinity. As a female, she found the maleness of God preventing her from fully connecting with him, and as a feminist she felt somewhat insulted to have God only be spoken of as "he", "him", "father", etc. The male opposite of me at the table, a self described post-modernist, sympathized with her sentiments and assured her that the references to God as male in scripture were merely symbolic language given to an ancient, patriarchal culture. It was important for ancient people to understand God as male because they would not have understood him any other way. Since we now live in a more egalitarian culture references to God as male are not important, and our feminist friends can begin calling God "mother" and giving God female characteristics that she felt God should have.

To sum it all up the gender of God was important for my female friend because she didn’t like him being male. To my post-modern friend God’s gender wasn’t important, and we can refer to God however we want. They then looked to me for my thoughts, and it went something like this.

The reason why God being identified as male is important for all people to accept is because this is how God has chosen to reveal Godself. Holy Scripture (God’s revelation to humanity) makes it clear who God is. The nature of God as loving, merciful, gracious, etc. is only known to us by what God has left for us in the Old and New Testaments. In the same way we know God’s gender. It is because of God’s decision to reveal himself this way that God’s gender is important and should not be changed.

It was at this point of the conversation that both my friends accused me of sexism and being obsesses with God’s gender. I reminded them that it was the feminist (who are the only people obsessed with gender because they’ve never been comfortable with being female) that began this dialogue not me; nevertheless, I had become the villain for insisting on being faithful to scripture rather than culture or personal whims.

It is not only in the biblical text itself that God reveals himself in the masculine form but also in Jesus Christ. The second person of the Trinity. When the word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1), the word came as a man. It has been, and will continue to be argued, that Jesus came as male because he was in a patriarchal society and he didn’t want to rock the boat too much. But isn’t it true the Jesus was constantly challenging the cultural norms of his time? If God incarnate had come as female would it be justified, for me as a male, to demand God change so I could relate to her?

Picture, if you will , a situation where God had chosen to reveal Godself as female. Would it be correct for men to complain about this and to demand gender inclusive language when talking about God? Can you imagine an entire group of scholars and clergy advocating for a masculine theology? And would these same feminist, who insist on God changing how he has chosen to be identified, support such efforts? Of course not, and it would be nonsense for them to do so. What if I told my wife that I had trouble relating to her because she’s a woman, and from now on I needed to speak to her and treat her as a man? I wonder if my feminist friend would mind me telling her that her gender made it hard to relate to her and that she should change just to make me happy. You can see the extremes to which we must go in order to make everyone happy and comfortable with gender, including the gender of God.

This conversation ultimately comes down, not to gender, but to the interpretation of scripture. Those of us who adhere to an orthodox/traditional understanding of God’s masculine identity are not particularly concerned with it. We (both male and female) simply take God as God is, understood by his revelation in Holy Scripture regardless of culture. On the other hand, it is the feminist, the liberal, and the post-modern who seem obsessed with the gender of God. If they were not then why would they even mention such a thing, or how could it be a barrier between them and God? The obsession with God’s anatomy is all theirs. Furthermore, their method of biblical "interpretation" is driven by what culture says about scripture. For me, however, culture does not interpret scripture, scripture interprets culture and condemns it (Mark Mattes). Therefore, any attempt to alter who God is must be thoroughly rejected. For Christians, the Triune God is masculine, not because we want that to be the case, but because that’s who God is.