The Gender of God in the Bible, the Early Church and Today's Churches

Welcome to Wondercafe2!

A community where we discuss, share, and have some fun together. Join today and become a part of it!

Register Log in
M

Mystic

Well-Known Member
Bette to Jai: You are so not getting it. And I have absolutely no interest in making YOU get it. And I don't care. But it's a very good reason why Christianity continues to decline amongst educated humans.
The pissed-off-ness of females to these overwhelmingly 'male' religions grows. You have no idea, really.

My Hymns vs. Chorus thread triggered Bette's comment here on patriarchal imagery for God. It makes a spirited introduction to a thread on the gender of God in the Bible and in both the early and modern church. I'd be interested to see posters duke it out with Bette on this issue, and I'd love to eventually chime in myself.
 
Simple but good point because Bette's rage seems to be based on 2 false assumptions: (1) that conservative Christians actually believe that God is male; (2) that the Bible literally ascribes a male gender to God.
 
no matter how detailed and obsessed the writer is, their characters do not have such things as an endocrine system, nor a reproductive system...so, no gender, no sex...just meaningless symbols that gain their meaning when they are decoded by a certain animal with a certain nervous system configured in a certain way

(tho since it looks like we aren't in control -- or even conscious of -- our feelings & thoughts & beliefs -- one wouldn't want a will that isn't limited or constrained by anything at all -- where merely touching a certain object will cause us to be more racist -- perhaps words DO matter? Erickson, I'm looking at YOU)

Have fun, folks!
 
Do spirits in the fabrication have sex attributes unless the ghosty genre is shot full of holes?

Consider the connection of sense deprivation and congenital analgesia! Is it possible to program r whitewash a person in educational debriefing so that they have no empathy ... a general loss of sympathy?

Consider the doctoring of professionals so they do not have emotional-mental connects (disconnects) with clientele? Does this not amount to sensory deprivation or just an experiment in inhuman behaviour immersion. If one approached the cause too closely could you suffer PTSD or a turtling effect?

In such a condition would one approach the word (eternal form) with a singular attitude that would shut out the multiple aspects of other perspectives?

That's weird enough to make even I hack considerably into what I've been told is an extensive psyche ... an attribute beyond most mortals with the always present exceptions that leak or weep! A whine skin with wetted burlap makes a fine cooler ... especially in an arid environment where humidity accelerates evaporation of whetted thoughts from the Blackpool in the shade (out of the sun)! Such is learned (possibly) from process etudes involving energy, mass and momentum transfers. Now energy in various forms is intangible ... so how does transference occur ... unbeknownst to the mortal? Silently as transmutation of the bread ... nib lung in the dark ? That gnawing feeling as I forget more than I know for sure? There has to be more another side to wit ...
 
If one attributes sex symbols in a myth is that then considered poor no graphics as the female genre icon is not there?

Drives many men in the search for nothing ... sometimes translated as love for association ... and thus disproving mental dissociation ... as presence of something not there as a double negative and thus manifest ... at least in the mind as a negative emotional construct ... allowing for Complex Numbers that are abstract ... this convoluted in space ... like the small case Greek gama ... that's appears in translating as black r's or that constitution what's behind the Shadow ... a place to put anything ... as thus anything goes there and some things are dropped ... some f(unction's) can cause a flush ... like a holy Man receiving a foot massage from a Dark Woman ...

Too much to take as a Levite rising from a dark revelation that she wasn't bad ... it was the labelling by authorities that were just into statutes ... fixations?

Can even gods and demos get lost in an excessive filed of metaphors and thus the mortally inclined wouldn't know it if they fell over one of those coupled sensations? Ka deuces ... in Black and White ...

With that I assume there's more to the sacred conspiracy ... but due to laws and loss ... I don't know ... too much abstract ... and really little absolute due to our congenital analgesia ... a numbing sensation or sensations leaving?

What is it called when gone? De void of thought or just positively stirred ... about what isn't there ...
 
Last edited:
Mystic said:
Simple but good point because Bette's rage seems to be based on 2 false assumptions: (1) that conservative Christians actually believe that God is male; (2) that the Bible literally ascribes a male gender to God.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, (1) is often true and used as part of the argument for keeping women "in their place" and avoiding inclusive language, though I know it is not universally so. It is not just "conservatives". Some fairly mainstream Christians maintain a male image for God, too (or did in my time).

(2) depends on your reading of the Bible.

I rather like @You just never know's view. That said, I don't take my understanding of "God" (quotes because I don't necessarily see "God" as a personality in the way most Christians seem to) from the Bible any more than any other source. I've just written a post on my view of "God" in another thread and I'll just link it below rather than reiterating. Suffice it to say that my understanding of "God" is genderless and all genders all at once as it is a pantheist one that encompasses all that is as part of what is "holy".

http://wondercafe2.ca/index.php?thr...is-it-religious-faith.2298/page-9#post-104005
 
Last edited:
1. What Bette and her feminist friends don't seem to get is that both males and females are created in God's image (Genesis 1;27-28). So God is neither gender.

2. But God, Bette thinks the Bible's male imagery for God makes the claim that He is gender neutral a lie. "God is not a male ("ish"), that He should lie (Numbers 11:29)."

3. But God, Bette thinks that You are inconsistent on this matter and seem to change your minf about your gender. "Hr [God) is not a male (Hebrew: "adam"), that He should change His mind (2 Samuel 15:29)".

4. But God, Bette insists that You think like a man, not like a woman. "My thoughts are not your thoughts, not are my ways your ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are above the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts (Isaiah 55:7-8)"

5. But God, Bette is upset at your use of the male pronoun and the lack of female imagery depicting You. God's reply: Bette will be better informed of such matters in future posts.
 
Minus the Hymn I will repost from that thread - which was an attempt at 'duke-out' with Bette on this issue.

To look into the awe-filling fullness of life and pronounce the name "God" means a commitment of life to reality-based living.

Reality is my God, evidence is my scripture, and integrity (living in right relationship with reality) is my religion.

Evidence suggests that God has no character traits or personality at all, other than what we embody and/or project.

God is not a person; God is a mythic personification of reality. If we miss this we miss everything.

In the words of Frank Lloyd Wright, "I believe in God, only I spell it Nature."

Read More: http://www.thankgodforevolution.com/node/2010
 
God is that force between male and female that neutralizes God so that power dissipates with a shocking consequence.

Some times it doesn't neutralize both side equivocally ... and thus the rapport or need to re Peter ...

Without patience one side can easily get really distraught about frequency of light flybys ... or perhaps it just passes over them as if the other doesn't need ID too? This the re number ation in heaven ... you can count on it if the other isn't in that state of mind too ... they'll be researching where heaven is more available ...

Tis the way a soul works without needs satisfied ... like in daze a'sole ... and ancient call ... then the temple was at rest ... except on Sunday when it works and nothing else does ... re-enforces the story-teller that Webster defines secondarily as a lie ...

Tis something needs to be looked into ... by adepts that are slower in the call ... 've de belle! The experience can be exquisite if in proper synchronicity ... both souls must be inde rye them ... really pared down ... like understanding po'eth-ix ... nothing at all ... nein!

In Semite form that is one after the unknown ... we say IX'dite or they were out of it ... all thoughts were blown ...
 
Mystic said:
1. What Bette and her feminist friends don't seem to get is that both males and females are created in God's image (Genesis 1;27-28). So God is neither gender.

2. But God, Bette thinks the Bible's male imagery for God makes the claim that He is gender neutral a lie. "God is not a male ("ish"), that He should lie (Numbers 11:29)."

3. But God, Bette thinks that You are inconsistent on this matter and seem to change your minf about your gender. "Hr [God) is not a male (Hebrew: "adam"), that He should change His mind (2 Samuel 15:29)".

4. But God, Bette insists that You think like a man, not like a woman. "My thoughts are not your thoughts, not are my ways your ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are above the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts (Isaiah 55:7-8)"

5. But God, Bette is upset at your use of the male pronoun and the lack of female imagery depicting You. God's reply: Bette will be better informed of such matters in future posts.
Click to expand...

Mystic, this could have been a worthwhile thread to which I considered posting until I realized as I read through what's been posted so far that it's nothing more than your attempt to start a personal fight with and/or attack on BettetheRed's viewpoint. You've done that before. "I'm going to start a thread targeting ..." I personally consider a thread that exists for the primary purpose of targeting a specific poster to be inappropriate.
 
@revsdd

But then you'd cast off all the phun and humus ...

If imagination is inappropriate ... do inappropriate things occur in a heavenly state of mind if not thought is restrained by concerns for the other?

Probably not that simple for people hating complex situations ...
 
Mystic said:
5. But God, Bette is upset at your use of the male pronoun and the lack of female imagery depicting You. God's reply: Bette will be better informed of such matters in future posts.
Click to expand...

I think you should have had a #6 there, Bette had mentioned that "It" would be better reference that God , yet God is a Title not a name
 
revsdd said:
....You've done that before. "I'm going to start a thread targeting ..." I personally consider a thread that exists for the primary purpose of targeting a specific poster to be inappropriate.
Click to expand...

@Mystic is hardly the first one to post such a thread revsdd. I've had at least one thread targeted at me before and it wasn't by Mystic. I don't recall anyone speaking out against the poster for having done it either.
 
In the height of the rise of angry feminism, one of their mottos was: A woman's place is in the house....and in the senate.
Bette claims that patriarchal language in worship is driving away educated women. But there's abundant evidence that the opposite is true. For example, I just checked out the religious affiliation of the 18 women in the U. S. senate, one of the most powerful bodies in the world. Only 1 of the 18 is "unaffiliated." Of the 17 "religious" female senators, only 1 (a UCC member) belongs to a progressive denomination obsessed with purging patriarchal language from worship. There are 2 Jewish and 1 Buddhist female senators, but the rest are religiously mainstream (Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, and 2 adherents of Judaism.
 
Pr. Jae said:
@Mystic is hardly the first one to post such a thread revsdd. I've had at least one thread targeted at me before and it wasn't by Mystic. I don't recall anyone speaking out against the poster for having done it either.
Click to expand...
Can't comment on specifics because I have no memory of the thread you're speaking of. As a general principle I believe it's wrong to start a thread for the purpose of targeting a particular individual, no matter who that individual is.
 
Mystic said:
Bette claims that patriarchal language in worship is driving away educated women.
Click to expand...

Hmm... even in my small, conservative evangelical Baptist church we have several nurses, a lawyer, an occupational therapist, and seminary students (ThM and MDiv).
 
Yes, and mega-churches have many, many well educated women, whereas women are jumping out the windows to get away from radical progressive churches on the fringe. To me, it's the greatest irony that Bishop Shelby Spong (popular in such groups) could write a book entitled "Christianity Must Change or Die," and yet, his jurisdiction in New Jersey experienced epic decline from his leadership in the Episcopal church.

btw, Bette detoured my thread on Hymns vs. Praise Choruses. So I make no apology for beginning a thread where her diversionary topic can be treated separately. I might add, that as a professor, I was the one who started a Women and Religion program. The other female professors were quite conventional, indeed very sane on such questions. But I was often teased for my role. One male student even claimed in a public forum that I had transformed their sensibilities in a feminist direction, and word of this got back to me through a philosophy professor who was present.
 
Mystic said:
Yes, and mega-churches have many, many well educated women, whereas women are jumping out the windows to get away from radical progressive churches on the fringe. To me, it's the greatest irony that Bishop Shelby Spong (popular in such groups) could write a book entitled "Christianity Must Change or Die," and yet, his jurisdiction in New Jersey experienced epic decline from his leadership in the Episcopal church.

btw, Bette detoured my thread on Hymns vs. Praise Choruses. So I make no apology for beginning a thread where her diversionary topic can be treated separately. I might add, that as a professor, I was the one who started a Women and Religion program. The other female professors were quite conventional, indeed very sane on such questions. But I was often teased for my role. One male student even claimed in a public forum that I had transformed their sensibilities in a feminist direction, and word of this got back to me through a philosophy professor who was present.
Click to expand...

The topic would have been fine. Even potentially interesting. It's your insistence on targeting Bette in post after post that's distasteful. You don't seem to be looking at exploring a topic, you look like you've started a thread primarily to attack Bette or at least her views, or encourage others to do so.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top