The scriptures referred to are Isaiah 66:10-14.
“Is God a man or a woman?” the Sunday School teacher asked. The kids in her class, sensing that this was a trick question, said nothing.
Except for one little boy. He said, “God's not a woman; he's three guys.”
The teacher hadn't been thinking of the Trinity but, seeing a teaching moment, replied, “I wouldn't call them guys, but do you know the names of the 3 persons in the Godhead?”
“Yeah,” said the boy. “Harold, Howard and Dad.”
“Uh, where did you get those names?” asked the teacher.
“In the prayer we say,” the boy replied. The teacher looked confused because this didn't sound like any prayer she'd heard or taught them. The kid goes, “You know—the one that starts, 'Our Father, Howard in heaven, Harold be thy name.'”
The question I put in the joke was actually the one I drew from our sermon suggestion box one Sunday. It looked like it was written by a child. And it's a natural question because most living beings they know—people, animals, birds—are either male or female. Children perceive this to be a major category and so it would seem to apply to God as well. And throughout history, most pagan gods were conceived of as having genders. Zeus is male; Venus is female. But just as the God of the Bible transcends the idea that one being is always one person, so too he doesn't fit into our neat (or once neat) categories on gender. So why does the Bible always use the masculine pronoun when talking about God?
The assumption of a lot of people is that this is because Christianity and Judaism are inherently and thoroughly sexist. But to say that you have to ignore a lot of the Biblical data. Like the fact that women figure prominently in both the Old and New Testaments: Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Leah, Zipporah, Miriam, Deborah, Ruth, Bathsheba, Esther, Mary the mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus, Pricilla, Dorcas, Lydia, Junia and more. In fact, one scholar, noticing all of the significant women in the Torah, and all the emphasis on marrying for love, proposed that it was written by a woman. Another scholar has suggested that Paul's colleague Priscilla, who worked with her husband Aquilla as a ministry team, was the author of the book of Hebrews.
Oddly enough, some people hold up fertility religions as an egalitarian contrast to the Judeo-Christian tradition. But to do that you have to ignore the facts about them as well. Fertility cults were the original “Keep 'em barefoot and pregnant” religions. Yes, women were allowed to be priestesses in those religions—so long as they functioned as temple prostitutes. Yes, the female form was venerated—in much the same way that Playboy magazine did. In such societies women were sacred, all right—sacred sex objects. They didn't value women as anything other than baby machines. Contrast that with the Bible's description in Proverbs 31:10-31 of a wife whose “value is far more than rubies.” She sells what she makes and buys land. Unlike an ancient Greek wife, she doesn't have to stay in the women's part of the house. Ironically if you want to see more egalitarian cultures, you should look at the warrior societies. The Mongols, the Celts, and the Vikings let their women do more than just care for the hearth and home. Some even became leaders, like the Celtic queen Boudica who led the Celts against the Romans, and Freydis Eiriksdottir, a fierce warrior who successfully fought Native Americans.
The prophets denounced the fertility goddess Asherah, which some Israelites worshipped. (Deuteronomy 7:5; Jeremiah 17:1-2; 2 Kings 23:4) And it was probably to avoid all connection with such fertility cults that the Jews, who unlike the Greeks lacked a neutral pronoun, referred to God in the masculine. This does not mean that our God is like Mars, the Roman god of war, who is the personification of all that is male. God does have characteristics traditionally seen as feminine. The Hebrew word for God's compassion (racham) is the root of their word for “womb.” (Psalm 86:15) In Proverbs chapter 8, God's wisdom is personified in a poem and referred to as “her.” In today's reading from Isaiah, God says to Jerusalem, “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you.” Jesus said, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, stoning the prophets and killing the ones sent to you! How often I wanted to gather together your children the way a hen gathers her young under her wings but you were not willing” (Luke 13:34)
There is another way in which we know that God has both masculine and feminine characteristics. In the very first chapter in the Bible, it says, “And God made humanity in his image; in the image of God, he made him; male and female, he made them.” (Genesis 1:27) Notice the fact that both male and female are created in God's image. This is important because in the ancient Near East, the monarch was said to be the image of God and so to have his authority. In Genesis 1, both man and woman were created to act as co-regents of the earth under God. In fact, the subordination of the woman to the man is depicted as a consequence of the fall of humanity and was not part of God's original design. (Genesis 3:16) As we will see, all inequality comes from sin.
Since our sins have been dealt with by Christ, we can echo Paul, who says in his letter to the Galatians, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28) It is odd, therefore, that Christians are as susceptible to the twin mistakes about gender as non-Christians are. Those two mistakes are either exaggerating the differences between the sexes or else ignoring them.
The most common mistake is to approach the genders in a dualistic fashion. By this I mean seeing the 2 sexes as if they were almost 2 different species. It is true that there are other differences besides our reproductive organs. The 2 hemispheres in women's brains are more strongly connected, enhancing intuitive thinking and multitasking; men's brains are more strongly connected from front to back, enhancing focus and motor skills. Women tend to do better in verbal abilities and languages whereas men tend to do better in math and spatial relations. Women's relationships tend to be about the people in the relationships; men's relationships tend to be about things they like to do or enjoy together. Men tend to like sports; women tend to like hobbies. But these are generalizations, true only when looking at large groups of people. Any individual woman may be more logical or more of a sports fan than any particular man. Any specific man may be more sensitive in his relationships than any specific woman. There is an amount of variation in the sexes. Mr. Rogers displayed the gentler and more nurturing side of being a man. By all accounts, Florence Nightingale was more intelligent, better organized and much more formidable than most men.
Unfortunately, there are those who act as if gender differences are a vast “No-Man's Land” running through all societies and all activities. Some approve of the division between the two while some see it as regrettable but inevitable. Often those that approve of it see the divide as divinely ordained, but that can only be maintained through a selective emphasis on certain passages and the exclusion of others. Point out 1 Corinthians 14:34 but skip 11:5; emphasize 1 Timothy 2:12 but ignore Romans 16:1; make a big deal of Ephesians 5:22 but divorce it from verse 21 from which the verb “submit” must be borrowed. It is not a matter of being Biblical or not but of being Biblically balanced or not. If you don't look at scripture as a whole but cherry-pick select verses or ignore contexts you will miss the nuances to be found in God's wisdom.
In fact, most of the differences in the treatment of men and women owe more to the pre-existing cultures than to the scriptures. And usually it is men who insist that there are huge differences between the sexes. They also tend to see them not in terms of mere function or approach but in moral terms. They see bodily differences the way racists see skin color: as indicative of underlying moral and intellectual inferiority and biologically determined behavior. Sadly, some feminists mirror them, seeing men as the troublesome sex. But demeaning or demonizing either sex is certainly not the solution to the problem.
Women do suffer disportionately from poverty, domestic violence and lack of education. And one study says the wellbeing of a nation is directly related to the economic freedom of its women. But I doubt that the people of Iran would say that sexual inequality is their biggest problem. Nor would the Israelis or the Palestinians. The real evil is humankind's general tendency to treat inhumanely those who are different in any way and to try to establish dominance over them. We see this when it comes to matters of race, religion, counties of origin, languages, customs, and politics. Inequality in the treatment of the sexes is just one more manifestation of the sin of not loving your neighbor as yourself.
On the other hand, there are those who feel that we should pretend that there are no differences between the sexes. I read a critique which said that while American feminists tried to erase legal differences between men and women, European feminists won maternity leave and special legislation that dealt with problems specific to women. In other words, European feminists focused more on accommodating the differences. And currently 10 European countries have women Heads of State or Heads of Government.
I think the solution is to reject “one size fits all” answers to the twin problems. We need to recognize when the differences in the sexes should come into play and when they shouldn't. It makes no sense to exclude women from jobs or positions that they can do. (The 2 longest reigning British monarchs were women: Elizabeth II and Victoria. Elizabeth I is also in the top ten.) And it makes no sense to pay them less for doing the same work. On the other hand, we need to recognize the different needs of women and men. Doctors have noted that women may manifest different symptoms than men when they have heart attacks. They may react to certain medications differently. It doesn't help that traditionally women have been excluded from drug trials because researchers don't want to deal with the complexity of factoring in things like menstruation and pregnancy. Women's nutritional needs are different. And in many public places, they should have more bathrooms than men. Men rarely have to stand in long lines to use restrooms.
When the Declaration of Independence says that all men are created equal, it is speaking of their worth in the eyes of God. Obviously we are not equal in all aspects or abilities. Both sexes and all individuals have various strengths. So we must strike a balance when we approach each other. Because, as we have seen, the image of God does not reside exclusively in either sex alone but in both working together. We see in others reflections of the God who both nurtures us and demands that we become mature, who both disciplines us and forgives us, who both encourages us to take bold actions and reminds us to think of others when we act, especially those who are less fortunate or powerful, who tells us both to work for justice and to be peacemakers. The sexes were not meant to compete but to complete the picture of the God who is love, to bring out and bring together all the facets of the image of God which we can find in every person if only we look for them.
First preached on July 2, 2006. It has been revised and updated.
