Don't Fence Me In

I was thinking today about gender and pronouns.

How do you refer to God? Do you call God a him? I have a friend who sometimes calls God a her. He (the friend) usually does it in notes for the class which we team teach, in the part that I'm teaching, so I think he just does it to throw me. He's like that.

But anyway...

For me, God is a him. If you read this blog very often, you'll see that I refer to God with masculine pronouns. Even so, I don't think that God actually has a gender as we know it. I think I'm made as much in the image of God as a man is. I also think that God has both male and female stereotypical characteristics.

I was thinking about this today. God is God, and he is impossible to describe in words. And yet, we try, because we are called to try. I think that even though God is impossible to grasp, he gives us analogies to help us understand him. Jesus refers to God as Abba -- father. Not only that, but it is better translated as Daddy. Jesus is giving us a way to draw closer to God. It's a God-given analogy.

I think where we get into trouble is when our analogies are human-made. If we provide the frame of reference, then we are more likely to box God in, than to draw closer to him. For instance, when we provide the analogy to Father, then we are going to say that God is just like a father -- male, with male characteristics. We box him into our own image, rather than using the image he provides to us. We become legalistic, rather than graceful.

So, as long as my "he" in reference to God is used to bring me closer to God, then I'm doing OK. It's when I insist that my frame of reference for him completely describes him that I'm creating an idol out of my own images of God.