Month: September 2013

Why Do I Keep Referring to God as “She”?

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          Recently many of you have noticed that my language around God has changed. A couple of people took the initiative to ask me about it and were brave enough to voice their concern—thank you! I’m glad to hear what’s on your minds so that I can respond to those questions here.

Right there at the beginning of the Biblical narrative in Genesis 1:27, we are told that both male and female were created in God’s image. This leads me to believe that as Creator of both femininity and masculinity, God both includes and transcends the categories of gender entirely and to describe God as either male or female would be inaccurate and incomplete. So, my purpose in referring to God with feminine language is to draw attention to the feminine attributes of God that are often left out of our discussions about God in order to correct a lopsidedly male image of God and encourage a fuller, more accurate picture. I have no problem referring to God as He—males are most certainly made in His image! Likewise I have come to feel equally comfortable referring to God as She—because females are most certainly made in Her image.

The most common metaphor for God throughout scripture is that of a Father, but there are also metaphors which convey God’s tender love through the image of a Mother. When Jesus is weeping over Jerusalem, he says that if they had been willing, he would have gathered the people under his wings like a mother hen does with her chicks. Psalm 17:8, Psalm 57:1, Isaiah 42:14, Isaiah 66:13, and Isaiah 49:15 all invoke feminine descriptions of God as a mother bird, a woman in childbirth, a nursing mother, or a woman comforting her child. Both fatherhood and motherhood, however, are earthly concepts: they’re too small to contain the fullness of God’s being, but they can be useful symbols to teach us about God’s character in the same way that Jesus’ parables use symbols and stories from daily life to convey deeper truths. Other metaphors used to describe God throughout scripture include a jealous lover, a vine with branches, a mother hen, a king, and a sacrificial lamb, just to name a few. All of them are helpful and descriptive in some way, but none of them could stand alone to fully describe who God is.

So, I am not claiming that God is female, but merely suggesting that changing up our language may save us from falling into the habit of thinking that God is male. God is both/and, not either/or.

The gospel dance

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A guest post by my husband:
As I (Andy)  have been sitting this morning thinking about how our world works I looked up and saw tiny little particles of dust swirling under the fan.  We have a little “skylight” in one wall that shines a brilliant beam of sunlight into our room in the morning.  And for maybe the first time I noticed what is only visible while that sun beam is shining through.  It makes all the dust visible as it swirls around our room.  And as I watched it, I noticed it is a bit chaotic but also beautiful, kind of like a strange dance.  Then looking out the window I saw our neem tree with all its little green leaves blowing back and forth in the wind and realized that the tree too is dancing.  And as I think about more and more aspects of life I realize that life itself is like a complex, beautiful, tiresome dance.  The world is engaged in a perpetual dance of life, death, joy, mourning, beauty, corruption, light and darkness.  The dance is easy to catch glimpses of in the natural world but it seems descriptive of our human experience as well.  The way we interact with one another, the way God interacts with us.  We take turns initiating, being lead, being spun into confusion and glory, and taking moments of pause and stillness.  It seems the Gospel call is not just to follow a set of rules or getting as many people to believe the same narrow doctrine that we do (and exclude those who don’t!) but rather to be the dancing feet of Christ inviting others to partake of his love, joy, truth, life, and beauty.  To ignore the dance is to ignore our raison d’être.

Eyes to see

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          A few days away in the mountains was the perfect retreat after a busy month of hosting visitors. The first day when we arrived at the remote ashram in the forest, we were overwhelmed by the natural beauty around us. When the silence wasn’t making our ears ache, the gentle music of birds and insects in the trees was reminding us of life’s original soundtrack—one that we had nearly forgotten amidst the mechanical roar of city life. We sat through a rainstorm marveling at the genius of evaporation and clouds condensing and water falling out of the sky to water acres or square miles of plants at a time. I literally started crying thinking about the goodness of God while we watched the water falling in sheets over the unspoiled wilderness and the emerald lakes in the valleys below. At nighttime, we remembered how many stars are in the sky, because for the first time in months they weren’t obscured by city lights.
          Sometimes it’s easier to feel that God is present in all of Her gentleness and goodness when I’m surrounded by the beauty that She created. God is still present in the city and in the slum, of course, but remarkably it is often more of a challenge to recognize God among the human beings in which She resides than it is to recognize Her in the breathtaking vistas of the mountains, or the beach, or pretty much anywhere else where human civilization hasn’t crowded in. They belong together, of course, nature and human civilization, but they rarely coexist well… the trash-clogged, black, sludgy waterways, the polluted air, the dismal lack of color in many of the big cities I’ve visited around the world comes to mind.  Feeling the peace of the mountains, it occurred to me that our alienation from nature in the city is no small thing.          Back in my room in the slum, listening to the whir of the fan and the distant horns of traffic and the wail of a toddler in the alley downstairs, I realize that living where I do is a kind of fast—from external silence (though we can’t really live without finding a silent space within ourselves), from stars. I almost think, it’s a fast from beauty, too—but I have to stop myself there. Because there is beauty in the slums, and God’s goodness is still there to be seen. It’s more of a challenge to recognize it, though, because it is hidden amongst the ugliness of poverty, and violence; amid broken systems and relationships that leave trash lying everywhere, leave poor patients at the hospital lying in their own blood for hours before any doctor or nurse pays attention, leave children crying alone in the street with no one to comfort them. There’s a reason that Mother Teresa calls poverty Jesus’ most distressing disguise: in that filth, noise, and desperation, it’s possible for us to miss recognizing him altogether.

But God’s goodness is there in the generosity of our landlady, bringing us some of the hot meal she’s just prepared for her family because she wants us to share the experience of a traditional food we’ve never eaten before. I see Joy in the smiles of our youngest neighbors; I see Mercy in the love and concern that young mothers demonstrate in responding to the feeble cries of their helpless newborn babies who rely on them for everything. And I experience Grace when God carries me through days of anger, stress, exhaustion, or sadness through the support of my husband and my friends. Sometimes it takes a different kind of eye to recognize God With Us in the places where human brokenness has taken its toll, but when we find God there, we have found Her in the place She most desires to dwell with us.

          I want eyes to see that beauty. I want the will to create more of it; to bring it to greater fullness. I want to uproot the weeds of injustice and fear that are obscure that greater Reality in the same way that streetlights obscure the stars that are still there in the sky. When I think of God’s beauty in that way, then planting a garden, cleaning up trash, sharing a meal, or working to reconcile people to one another all seem like part of the same thing.