Theists: can you explain why you think of God as male (or female)?

Great Debates
21

I’m rabidly agnostic neopagan. I’m unclear, or maybe ambivalent, about the whole existence of God/dess/es. Sometimes I experience Them within my body, speaking with my vocal cords, and I cannot doubt that They are real, and other-than-me. Other times, I am equally certain that this (religion/spirituality, most especially but not exclusively neopaganism) is all a bunch of play acting by adults who have difficulty facing reality, and have created an SCA-style “religion” that no one except the craziest actually believes in. Most of the time, I’m somewhere in between.

That being said: if/when I believe in God/dess/es, I believe in something so far removed from humans as to be unfathomable. “Love,” sure, why not. It’s as good a term as any. (But also Hate and Indifference, which I believe are only forms of Love twisted by fear.) This Divine It has no gender or genitals or body - except that It is within you and me and that guy over there and this shoe and that pile of shit and the furthest star.

But, except when I’m high or in love or really well in trance, I can’t wrap my head around that very well. I can wrap my head around Athena. I can ponder wisdom and war and Maidenhood and begin to grasp that particular slice of the universe. Likewise, I can grok Zeus. Petty, horny, prone to temper tantrums and infidelity? Got it.

I can’t grok It. But I can grok pieces of It, and eventually, maybe, I’ll have grokked all of It bit by bit, and then I’ll remember that I am It. Then I won’t need a body or genitals, either. (But I may miss them and choose to come play with a body again.)

Like kanicbird, I believe that different people have been visited or gifted with knowledge by a certain slice of It. Sometimes those parts are quite contradictory and even antagonistic. But none of them is all of It.

So, tealdeer: It is without gender. But my lazy brain often assigns a gender because it’s exhausting to think of genderless all the time.

22

Good point.

:slight_smile:

23

As I slid off a steep roof I was shingling, connected by a 100 Lb test clothes line, I said “G-d dammit!” and as my descent continued, looked upwards and said “I didn’t mean it.”
My 120 Lbs swayed at the end of the 100 Lb clothes line, and I climbed back up.

I am agnostic. Defined by someone much smarter than I as “Some one who does not believe in G-d and yet fears Him.”

G-d is portrayed as male in monotheistic religions because men ran the show.

Fellow Jews who study the Kabbalha speak of a feminine side of G-d.

I’m just glad that I didn’t fall off the roof.

24

So, the Moon must be male because it is not referred to as “mooness”?

25

Lame joke. :smack:

26

When I imagine a potential god entity thingamajig, it’s usually a sort of swirling yin yang fractal thing, possibly with an abstract vaguely humanoid form made of stars, because I lean towards agnostic Taoism.

I guess it leans more towards “bald male without genitals” because that is sort of the default gender less humanoid model my brain comes up with. There’s a general Dr Manhattan vibe about it. Or maybe that transdimensional guy from Earth Final Conflict.

But I think of the “God” character as male simply as a cultural thing, like he is a bearded white man in robes, and a guest star in Family Guy.

27

The prophets of Israel, the Apostles of Jesus, & Jesus Himself spoke of God as predominantly Masculine & as “The Father”. Tho not exclusively. I believe it can be argued that one can make a Biblical doctrine for the Divine Motherhood of the Holy Spirit.

Also, God as Transcendent, Above & Beyond Creation seems to be more a Father by analogy. However, God Immanent more Maternal.

28

Depends upon which aspect of the godhead I am contemplating at the time, although I do concede that masculinity and femininity descriptions are culturally weighted to a very high degree.

29

Here is my take on it:

I do believe there is a male and female aspect of the soul, and that may or may not align with the physical gender of the body. I am a believer of the concept of soulmates, a soul as one in the beginning divided by God into male and female counterparts and sent on their way, eventually those souls will crave love, the love they had in the beginning and Love (who is God) will lead them back together again. This journey may be over many lives and in multiple bodies of differing genders.

When soulmates reconnect there is no male and female aspects anymore as they are again one, but the bodies they possess may be still be a male and female. They will experience both.

I also consider mother earth as a female angel as well as the universe as a female (much higher) angel, we are the children in the womb, being nurtured by her. I do believe and had a vision, that life on earth was ‘seeded’ by the stars, delivered by comets from ‘male’ partner of Mother Earth in much the same way a male will impregnate a female person and deliver a new life to her. I do believe that this is the source of life in the universe, and the universe is teeming with life.

These male/female aspects are part of the male and female aspect of God and speak to male and female aspects of the soul as I see it.

Peace

30

God is that which is, and the entirety of creation is the body of God. Hence, God is no more sexual than asexual (there being forms of life that reproduce sexually and forms of life that reproduce asexually) and certainly no more male than female, and if there are species on planets elsewhere that involve 3 sexes (or sexes so different from ours that “male” and “female” do not map onto them), God is no more “of” our way of dividing up sexes than “of” some other format or scheme. Quite the opposite, they are “of” God not the other way around.

I don’t believe in male or female aspects as universal whatchamacallits. For social-historical reasons WE, in OUR minds, project notions of “feminine” or “masculine” onto all kinds of stuff. Mostly in annoying ways.

31

In that context, it’s worth noting that Catholics tend to refer to their Church — the earthly representative (for lack of a better word) of the holy spirit — with feminine pronouns. I’m not knowledgable of this aspect of theology, but it does seem to reflect a distinction between creator (father) and nurturer (mother).

I agree with that. The problem I have with analogy, despite broad sympathiesfor the scholasticism that makes it a doctrine, is that it feels like having one’s cake and eating it too. Want God to be a Father? All you have to do is squint right.

32

Not a believer personally, but I have no problem seeing a masculine deity as a concept. Creation (big “C”) isn’t (always / often) seen as being equivalent to giving birth; it’s often seen more as an act of artifice. Saying the deity must be female seems like suggesting that men couldn’t make a watch or build an ant farm.

In my childhood believin’ days, I always though of God as ambiguously male-ish, but only abstractly. I always thought that having a real “gender” to a singular god seemed silly. Awareness of that silliness is a key component of what eventually eroded my faith.

33

The Catholic belief would be that body and soul exist all the time immortally together and together form a single union. So your physical/physiological gender does impact your “self”.

Catechism of the Catholic Church - PART 1 SECTION 2 CHAPTER 1 ARTICLE 1 PARAGRAPH 6 II. “BODY AND SOUL BUT TRULY ONE”

“For this reason man may not despise his bodily life. Rather he is obliged to regard his body as good and to hold it in honor since God has created it and will raise it up on the last day.” This part is difficult for me since I hate my body and wish my soul would fly away free but that’s not how it works.

34

I can give you the Biblical explanation as to why God is accepted (as he should be) as predominately male.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. *Elohiym, as used here, is the name of God in the plural. Not plural as gods, but God in three persons, Father, Holy Spirit, and Son. YHWH, translated “Lord”, is Ye-ho-vah / Jehovah, the Son and offspring of God and physical personification of God who interacts between the spiritual and the physical who, from the perspective in time concerning creation, is eventually to become God manifested in the flesh, Jesus Christ.

There were, or still are, several religions and cultures that accept god as feminine, or also feminine as a counterpart of the masculine, but that is simply an extension of a misinterpretation of what one could consider the feminine of the true God, an extension of the trinity. The Holy Spirit “represents,” and represents only, the feminine of God’s triune nature or God in three persons persona, being the person from which Jehovah was “birthed” spiritually in eternity past before the creation event. (Proverbs chapter eight is a source of record where the Spirit is speaking as being present at creation, beside the creator (Jehovah), and makes reference to having come forth with him from God. Hence, Jehovah’s coming forth from the Spirit, or “birthed.”

The physical could not exist in the presence of God in his fullness. (No man hath seen “GOD” at any time.) And no one has. It was necessary for God to separate himself into the three separate personas before creation for that reason. (Hence Jesus words, “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father.” Not GOD, in his fullness, for we cannot look upon God in his fullness and continue to exist, but the “Father” because they are both God.)

I made comment at the beginning of this post to him being “predominantly” male. The Father is obviously male, the Son is obviously male. The Holy Spirit (by “giving birth” to Jehovah in eternity past, “coming forth from”) holds the position of feminine by example, completing the three as God in three persons.

35

My exact thoughts on the subject are hard to pin down as my beliefs are somewhat plastic, but the basic tenets are as such.

The main overseer of sorts is Gaia: mother earth. I peg her somewhere between a concept and a being. I don’t know that she “made” us, but she watches over us all.

On the other hand is a male figure along the lines of Odin. A resolute type of god, far more concerned with the mental and physical machinations of humankind.

I can’t really say much more beyond that. What I believe I just… Know. It’s more of a feeling, really.

So my answer would be both, I guess. lol

36

For me, the human concept of gender isn’t relevant to God.

This does not compute.

37

God is a noun…person place or thing. One can use the word to fit their own desires.