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You are here: Home > Forum > A Place of Safety > General Talk > God's Pronouns Are They/Them
God's Pronouns Are They/Them  [message #78518] Thu, 13 April 2023 20:02 Go to next message
Bensiamin is currently offline  Bensiamin

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Location: USA
Registered: July 2019
Messages: 372



Brandon Flanery, who recently published a survey on why most Evangelicals are leaving Christianity which was the subject of a previous Forum post (link here), had published a new article on God's gender. Here is the first part of the article, and then you can link to Baptist News Global to read the whole article if you choose.

God transcends gender.

Theologically speaking, God is nonbinary.

That means in English, God's pronouns are they/them.

God is trans.

I'd love to say this thought was originally mine, but that would be another cis white man commandeering someone else's thought, my friend's thought: Kevin Garcia.

Kevin is a nonbinary queer theologian who is spunky and smart and ambitious. They put me to shame when it comes to thoughts of the divine and spirituality; maybe it's the master's degree in theology.

The thought of God being trans -- transcending gender -- is provocative, important and ultimately true. We can see it all over Scripture.

God, Creator of the universe, is neither male nor female. And humans -- males, females and all in between -- are created in "their" image. The term "Spirit" is feminine in nature, and Scripture compares God to both a father and a mother.

Creation itself is nonbinary. Scripture speaks of God creating night and day, yet we know by observation that there are in-between times such as dawn and dusk. When it comes to animals, Genesis says God created creatures of land and sea, yet we know there are amphibians. And while Scripture says God created man and woman, we know 1.7% of the population are born intersex. The nonbinary is all throughout creation.

The very nature of God transcends a binary description too, and we are reflections of that nature. Is it any wonder that gender is expressed in various and wonderful ways? We can again look at the biblical text to confirm this.

In Christ, gender is abolished. In ancient Jewish thought, there were eight genders. In Christ's early church, it was a eunuch who was entrusted to carry the gospel to Africa. And even Jesus says many will become eunuchs and are born eunuchs (some scholars view this as intersex).

"Transness" is not only the nature of God; it also is ours. It is written into the very text Christians are somehow invoking today to block transgender individuals from basic human rights. This religious zealotry intends not just to block these children of God but to cause harm.

*****

You can link to the whole article here.

[Updated on: Thu, 13 April 2023 20:03]



Bensiamin
Re: God's Pronouns Are They/Them  [message #78519 is a reply to message #78518] Fri, 14 April 2023 09:31 Go to previous messageGo to next message
NW is currently offline  NW

On fire!
Location: Worcester, England
Registered: January 2005
Messages: 1559



I think I've always though of "god" as agendered and asexual - certainly since the age of 10 or 11. I suspect it's due to Matthew 22:30 "For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven." A New Testament view, which rather looks as though "god" has discovered that making (only) two sexes in the Garden of Eden was kinda a bad move.

I hasten to add that I haven't been any kind of Christian myself for at least four decades, and my views tenuously hover around some kind of emergent deity that we / life / the universe is/are continuously creating. That puts me at the extreme end of the Quaker spectrum, though I'm not a regular Friend.


"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
Re: God's Pronouns Are They/Them  [message #78535 is a reply to message #78519] Sun, 11 June 2023 19:22 Go to previous message
ray2x is currently offline  ray2x

Really getting into it
Location: USA
Registered: April 2009
Messages: 429



I feel God (either gender) is more E=mc2, equally this then that.
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