Sunday, September 9, 2012

God and Gender: Brief Thoughts on a Broad Topic.

First off, i will obviously not do justice to this topic, i simply want to express my half-baked thoughts. Forgive me for the disjointed mess that is to follow.

The inspiration for this post comes from the discussion we had this morning at the house church i attend in Steinbach. We talked about our gender-bias towards God and the Bible. It was a great discussion and very thought-provoking for me.

Over the past few years i've moved from the implicit complementarianism (both genders are equal, but have different roles in the Church, i.e. women cannot/should not lead) that i grew up with to a more egalitarian veiw (both genders are equal and can serve the Church in the same capacity). I recently came to the place where if God the Father is primarily masculine, than God the Holy Spirit is primarily feminine. I don't think that's necessarily where i'm going to stop, however, since i belive God trancends or human notion of gender.

During the discussion today i had the following thought: If God truly is 3-in-1, why not refer to God with the plural pronoun "they"?

I believe this topic is of extreme importance to the Church, and that we have a long, long, way to go in our understanding of it. I also believe that the patriachy that has sculpted Christianity since its inception has caused us to miss out of many truths that are to be found in femininity and womanhood.

For too long we have operated on a misunderstanding of scripture and forced women to be silent in the Church. This needs to end.