Here are Triniy we have a campus-wide rule: Thou shalt not call God, "he." At first I was really behind this, but now I am starting to have trouble with it. My problem is not with my sudden inability to call God "he," my problem is that because we cannot use gender specific language we have also lost the ability to refer to a divine parent.
At the heart of the matter is how we understand God. When many people think of God, they imagine a figure much like Jupiter, or Zeus. God is distant, powerful, and detached. At best God is the divine heavenly vending machine, handing out answers to prayers. However, this isn't the image of God that Jesus provides for us. The word that Jesus used was Abba. Abba is not Zeus, in fact, Abba doesn't look like Zeus at all. Abba is the one who provides the necessities for life. Abba looks much more like the Lord in Psalm 23.
We are, on occasion, allowed to use gender specific language for God, but we must balance it out with another phrase which invokes the other gender. We don't seem to much care for the idea of "God our mother," so this means that we don't talk about "God our Father." I miss that understanding of God as the divine parent. It would be great to run into a loving embrace and hear, "I am with you, my child"
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2 comments:
I guess Trinity's too good for Jesus' instructiong to call upon "Our Father?"
It's so refreshing to see the bible, the creed, and faith tradition being thrown out the window because of feminism and political correctness...
...sigh...
pjh
actually, the Jewish Scriptures (can you call it the OT at Trinity?) do occasionally refer to God as a mother. Not very often, but I have read at least one reference to God as such.
And doesn't that rule flout the First Amendment? ;-) I haven't taken constitutional law yet, but last I checked there was no exemption for religions allowing them to legally constrain constitutional freedoms.
So... are you allowed to call Jesus "brother"?
kmin.
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