If you think I'm talking about a God other than yours when I talk about 'Her'... well, maybe I am.
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When the administration of my crazy, liberal, hippie Seminary first told me that distinctly male language about God would be considered bigoted on our campus, I personally felt attacked. I'd spent my whole life thinking about God as my Papa, my Abba; I'd spent my whole life dancing on His feet in the traditional Daddy-daughter fashion. Of course I knew this was a grand metaphor-- that God doesn't actually have a penis, or a hairy chest-- but it was a metaphor that I liked.
And a few years and crises of faith later, I still do.
The image of God the Father, God the King, God the Strong Man, is a beautiful one. It should be cherished, celebrated, remembered. But do you really understand that the male-god is a blessed metaphor and not a fact? Here's my litmus test:
She is jealous for me
Loves like a hurricane,
I am a tree
Bending beneath the weight
of Her wind and mercy...
We are Her portion,
and She is our prize,
drawn to redemption
by the grace in Her eyes...
Is your skin crawling yet? If so, why is that?
When I truly released my deep-seated belief that God is, in any meaningful way, a dude, there was such a sweet wave of freedom to explore the multi-faceted parts of God's personality. God was 'assigned male' by many who experienced God throughout history. But God is female to the exact same purely-analogical extent that God is male. But both are such blessed metaphors!
We need to know that God is also our mother. That She protects, and She nurtures. She is strength and beauty. She embodies grace not just in the sense of forgiveness, but in the sense of slipping effortlessly through our world and turning everything magic as She does it.
And Jesus could have just as easily made God manifest to us as a female.
Let that sink in: Jesus' maleness is entirely incidental.
(Or, at best, necessary only because of a limited moment in culture.)
There is nothing particularly holy about Jesus' maleness. And there is nothing particularly unholy about my femaleness. My femaleness does not separate me from God in any way. My femaleness reflects God's identity in the exact same way that Jesus' maleness reflected God's identity.
If this is not true about your God, then unfortunately I can't confidently say we're sitting at the feet of the same One. I used to sit there with you, with the male-God. God honored my limitation and spoke to me anyway, and when I listened, She called me past the metaphors and freed me to use more of them. Do you hear Her calling now?
In Sunday worship, I sing God's femaleness-- quiet and strong, like God is. Every 'her' feels sweetly holy in my mouth. And when 'She' joins 'He' in the echo of our voices, the harmony is gorgeous.
Maybe you'll join me in restoring the balance.
