Post 156—God’s Gender

I have occasionally referred to the Memoirs my wife and I wrote under the title Every Square Inch: A Missionary Memoir.  It is the first document on the Boeriana page of my website < SocialTheology.com >.  In the Preface I wrote, 

              “Woven into this story is also how our Heavenly Father/Mother 

              dealt with us….”  

A very close Nigerian family friend reported to us that several Nigerian Christians were offended by the “Father/Mother” reference to God. They are in good company; many Christians the world over are offended at the thought of God as female. A monthly Christian paper I read regularly, Christian Courier (CC), contained a reference to God as a female and immediately a reader voiced her objection. Well, at least, I did not choose the one over the other; I accept the possibility of either or even neither!

Bob Bruinsma, the writer of that offending CC article submitted an explanatory article that I want to share with you in this post. His title is “God’s Gender (Jan. 23, 2017, p. 16). Rather than my duplicating the article, you can access it yourself at: http://www.christiancourier.ca/columns-op-ed/entry/gods-gender. Please do so, for it is the heart of this post.

I do affirm Bruinsma’s article.  There are so many references in the Bible, as he shows, where God is referred to in female terms, that I see no justification for people taking offence. I understand why they do, since most references to the Most High are indeed in masculine terminology, but not exclusively so. I also understand the objection because pretty well every major culture in the world, including Nigerian and Western, think patriarchically, so that thinking of God exclusively as a male comes kind of natural to most of us. 

To me personally, thinking of Him as “Father/Mother” enriches my concept of Him, since I can associate Him with both or either. All the good things of both fathers and mothers are reflected in Him, not just the male side. 

So, I encourage you to re-read Bruinsma’s article several times. Where you object, ask yourself why? Do you object because it is unusual? Indeed it is. But do you think it goes against the Bible?  Challenge yourself on this one and see if you can really insist that Bruinsma is wrong. The important matter here is not whether Bruinsma or I are right, but that you enrich your concept of God without deviating from the Biblical testimony about Him.