A Gendered God

The Father, the Son and the Holy Sprit.

Its the most common way of describing the three entities which compose the trinitarian Christian God. Innocuous enough, right?

Wrong. Women have long pointed out that anthropomoprhizing God as a male is not only denigrating to female members of the Body of Christ, but also places a serious mental damper on our conception of divinity. God is, after all, not very human-like at all when it comes to physical, coporeal characteristics and, if humanity was made in "his" image, then that of course includes women as well.

Leaders in the American Presbyterian Church recently convened to discuss alternatives to the language used to describe the Trinity. Some suggestions fall a bit short (in my opinion) such as "Overflowing Font, Living Water, Flowing River", while others are more than a mouthful: "Fire That Consumes, Sword That Divides and Storm That Melts Mountains". Try saying that five times fast.

Other suggestions, however, re-create God as a feminine entity: "Compassionate Mother, Beloved Child and Life-giving Womb". While I'll admit that my inner feminist smiles a bit inside when I hear this, the fundamental problem is not that God is not "female enough", its our idea that God, like humans, must be either male or female.

Thanks to anthropologists like Margaret Mead and growing understanding of human sexuality, our concept of gender has changed over the years. Gone is the concept of "either/or" when it comes to sex and gender. We recognize and accept that sometimes these things just aren't as simple as black and white, gay or straight, male or female.

Why then, must God be one or the other?

Further, why does God need to be gendered at all?