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Mr. or Mrs. God?

Is God male or female?

Initially, it seems an absurd question. God is obviously male, right? I mean, that’s the way He looks in all of His pictures. But let’s look at it for a moment as if we had no preconceived idea of what God was like and treat it as if we’re studying the bible for the first time. What would we see?

God is male:

The evidence seems overwhelming. God is called the Father. The Word of God came in the figure of a male child when he was born to Joseph and Mary as Jesus Christ. And God is referred to in the masculine He, Him and His. For the most part, all of us who were raised in the Christian faith understand God in the male category, so there’s really no need for me to go on here. For brevity’s sake, I’ll treat this as if you already understand the concept of God as a male figure.

God is female:

What evidence is there that God is female? Quite a bit, actually as evidenced by the descriptions of His attributes and in His creation of mankind.

Let’s start with a basic understanding of who God is. The bible says that God is love. This does not mean that God is a loving God. Really I should say that this is not limited to the fact that God is a loving God, because that is certainly true. It goes beyond an emotion or an action. When the bible says that God is love, it means just that. He IS love. It is impossible to experience true love without God being involved. The absence of love is the absence of God.

But don’t stop there. God is so much more. God is existence itself. I like the Steven Curtis Chapman song, “Jesus Is Life.” Nothing would exist without God. He is everything. His Word holds the universe together. He is the only thing that exists independent of any other source. He is “I AM that I AM.” We know that God is all, but sometimes it’s easy to underestimate what “all” means. He is not limited to mere physical manifestations when we speak of all existence. We know that He is love, but is He not also wisdom? Is he not also patience? God is everything. Without Him is nothing. This doesn’t mean that without Him nothing would have been created. This means that without Him today, everything else goes away.

“Ok, I understand that God is all. So what does that tell us about God’s sex?”

Let me ask you what conclusion can you come to when the bible speaks of wisdom as a woman? How should we treat it when the bible tells us to let patience complete Her perfect will in our lives? If God is patience and wisdom, and these verses are to be believed, then is He a She?

Or what about the sex of Adam? God made man in His own image, right? But what was that?

The original Adam was God in that he was a complete representation of God and in him was both male and female. When Eve was created, she was not a brand new creation of God’s created with new dirt and infused with a new breath of life. She was taken from the original Adam. In fact, she was originally called Adam as well, because they were essentially the same being split in half. The original Adam with both male and female spiritual, mental and physical characteristics, was what God created in His own image.

“So is God a man, a woman or both?”

The real answer is none of the above. God is not limited to our concepts of sexuality. God is neither male nor female in the sense of the meanings that we would give to those words. It’s important to understand that God is not limited by anything that limits us. Don’t lock God down by a label. What God has done is set up in our sexuality more easily manageable and understandable references to Himself. He’s given us, as He always does, a physical analogy so that we might understand the spiritual aspects of who He is. It’s a mistake to limit God to the physical aspects of the analogy, but it’s also a mistake to ignore them completely in our seeking an understanding of who God is.

What’s important to note is that God refers to Himself in the male context usually, but not exclusively. This is not because God is calling Himself a male. This is because God knows that we daily live with fathers and husbands and brothers and we know how they act. We live with them and we know the traits they have. We can read His Word and understand His direction for their behavior. All of this makes it easier to comprehend how God wants us to relate to Him. He set up the father as the head of the household for a reason, not because the male of the species is a superior product, but because spiritually God plays the part of the father or husband and we play the part of the child or wife.

But when we see the tender, loving patience of a mother teaching her young child that also makes it easier to comprehend how God wants us to relate to him. God is also the nurturer and lover that He created women to be. He is tender, patient and wise. He is supporting us constantly, doing His utmost to raise us up right, even when we are rebellious and won’t listen to His loving instructions. He is not a harsh, seducing mistress, but a gently wooing romancer. Everything female is as much God as what we think of as male.

I have heard people fight over whether the church is a he or a she as well. “The church is a ‘he’. The church is the body of Christ.” “No, the church is a ‘she’. The church is the bride of Christ.” Well, you know what. You’re both right. And on top of that, the church is an ‘it’. We are the temple of Christ. We are His dwelling place. They’re all correct. Don’t limit God to one or the other. Realize that He is all and try to understand how they fit together, not how they exclude one another.

What we really need to see in God’s design of human sexuality is God’s revealing of Himself to us through His creation, not an arrogant limitation of God to the aspects of His creation. When you see how men and women interact with each other, or rather how they’re supposed to interact with each other, try to recognize how God is presenting himself to us in our spiritual relationship with Him. God is a lover who longs to see His bride perfected. (see Sex With God)

All I’m really saying is don’t limit God by labeling Him one way or the other. Use the labels God has placed on us to see Him more clearly.

I am the pen.

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