is buddy jesus i, thou, or it?
as kaufmann discusses the jewishness of i and thou, he makes this daunting (as a believer in Jesus) statement:
"the hebrews did not visualize their god and expressly forbade attempts to make [god] an object - a visual object, a concrete object, any object. their god was not to be seen. [god] was to be heard and listened to. [god] was not an it but an i - or a you."
note: in this and my previous post, i edited the quotes not to refer to god as he. last week in sunday school one of the kids got really mad at me when i said god isn't a man...so i guess it's on my mind - also, when we talk about a god who cannot be contained, this seems an appropriate time to remove god from the container of human understanding of gender.
3 comments:
ummm...good debate...yeah. i'd love that, but on this subject, i'm a bit burnt out on debate.
let's start here, so i can better encounter you on the subject:
what do you mean when you say that God is "he?"
what about the removal of the pronoun "he," for you, leads to the removal of gender from God?
as for me, what i mean in doing these things, i am not attempting to remove gender from God but to allow God room to be fully God, which, in my experience and encounter of God in scripture and in life, to be fully God is to be fully male and fully female. i remove the pronouns out of a desire to unbind a cord that shades over God's beauty as being fully female.
does that make sense? how do you encounter God with regard to gender?
i'm sorry if this is taking a good debate and making it more of a conversation that reveals more about you and me than about God, but, like i said, i am soooo tired of debating that issue - so tired of listening while formulating my next point.
since i first felt called to ministry, in 9th grade, the gender debate began and i guess i'm done with it -- but i do want to meet you and hear you on this subject.
i suppose that, to some degree, i've refused to hear and encounter kaufmann, as i automatically editted him. maybe the maleness of god is an important part of what kaufmann is saying, though i truly get the opposite impression from the context.
thanks for bringing it up.
first, thank you for the invitation to scripture.
second, can i be honest and say that it seems like a lot of where you are coming from is based on the lens that your up-bringing has brought you. in honesty, i have wrestled through this issue. no white american christian starts life with the view that God is anything but male. it was not pre-concieved notions that brought me to my current place, though i admit, as always, there is bias bound up in it.
also, i encourage you complement your understanding of God as father by diving into isaiah and encountering the many femenine references to God and the femeninity of the words used for the Spirit.
i have to be honest and say that it is hard to restrain from offense when male is equated with power. though, i see where you are coming from and am engaging in that fight for restraint.
it is impossible to come to the scriptures without bias and pre-concieved notions, so, i suppose that i can pray for both of us as we seek to know God more fully, that God reveal God's self beyond the limits our notions would create and defend.
my last mentor (a woman) taught a foundations of faith class to the students we woked with. she would challenge everyone to find a penis on God. is it ok i typed penis here?
there are enough ref to God as a "female" architype to justify using the pronoun of "Her" in many places.
there are times in my devotion and strugle that thinking of the "female" aspects of God is more than helpful.
God is refered to in the male predominantly in the scriptures because that is how those cultures approached authority. in the Greek if you refer to a group that is all women and only one woman you still use the masculine. that is culture, the writers of the biblical texts were just writting as they understood it.
we need to get over it. God is not male or female but transcends gender. he stoops to our level and uses those types to help us relate.
just a thought
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