g-d || By Rev. Mary Coday Edwards MA
How many stained-glass windows have you seen depicting God as a mother hen gathering up her chicks under her wings? (Matthew 23:37). Or how about Isaiah 66:7-9, which compares God to a woman giving birth? I don’t think that image will ever be a stained-glass window: “Eww…” the patriarchy would murmur: “All that blood!” and a reminder of how the men came into the world, their origin stories.
Anyone who knows me knows that studying Ian Barbour and his books comparing science and religion rocked my Christian worldview. Not only did it rock it, but it crumbled around me. I felt disappointment with all the male pastors who never preached metaphors, similes, analogies, and paradigms from the pulpit or discussed them during a Sunday school class. And worse—they were passing this travesty onto our children. At the time, I was doing postgraduate studies in Theological Ethics with an emphasis on Environmental Justice through the University of South Africa while living in Islamabad, Pakistan. This was years before online studies took off in the United States.
Barbour wrote about how both science and religion use metaphors, similes, analogies, and paradigms to speak of and describe the ineffable. In physics, quantum mechanics takes on the fuzzy world of our physical universe. In religion, well, who really knows g-d? The patriarchy says it does. But if you create g-d in your own image—a male g-d reinforced and “revealed” by the male gender of our species—you can justify about anything, comparing yourself to this male g-d, your male g-d, how convenient. And they are committing idolatry, creating g-d in their own image.
I’ve had well-meaning folks tell me, “Well, if God wants to use male pronouns in defining himself, who are we to argue?” Well, that means the two scriptures I mentioned in the opening paragraph are wrong—and then what else is “wrong?” All the verses that use male pronouns? Or the entire Christian bible? And
8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
(Isaiah 55:8-9, NIV)
Sometime in the past few weeks, I received an email—I don’t even remember from whom. But a word jumped out at me from the many: g-d. My first thought was, “It encompasses all metaphors without claiming any as the absolute truth!”
The perfect universal metaphor for this entity we name as Divinity, Ultimate Reality, or g-d. It doesn’t matter which religion you adhere to, or which metaphor you prefer. Many of you don’t care. You gave up believing in this oppressive male monarch who lives in the sky a long time ago. I did and left churches in Jakarta, Indonesia; Islamabad, Pakistan (see Note 1); Cuernavaca, Mexico; and Nebraska, USA. And Barbour sealed it for me. Barbour lists other words that are relevant to a large percentage of the world’s population. I’ve included a couple in the beginning of this blog. And here is more: g-d as liberator; as suffering servant; father; vine; light; potter; water; voice; bread of life—it’s not difficult to find more.
I say to the many who have felt excluded, their voices silenced and not celebrated throughout history. “Leave this male g-d and it’s male spokesmen who tell you what to think, when you can speak and if your speech is ‘acceptable,’ how you can dress, what you can and cannot do with your life, how you define your sexuality, and how you can be involved in your church: ‘You have the gift of hospitality and working in the nursery.” And, of course, the giving of your money so you can prop up this male institution.
If any of these denominations saw a decline in finances or a marked decrease in people giving up their time through voluntary contributions, they might contemplate a policy change. I encourage you to think about the role you can play in creating a religion that won’t have seekers running for the nearest door.
If we are created in the image of our creator (and even if we aren’t), we contain the imprint of the cosmos in our DNA. We are made of stardust. We are one with the galaxies. And we limit ourselves to a male g-d, because the patriarchy tells us so.
Sources:
Note 1: In Islamabad, we had a choice. A British vicar led the second church we visited, and as often as he could, changed the words from patriarchal idolatry to inclusive language, honoring other ways when speaking of g-d.
- McFague, Sallie. Metaphorical Theology: Models of God in Religious Language. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982, 1987.
- The atoms/subatomic construct cannot be directly observed, but based on theories we’ve developed amazing technology, such as this computer I’m typing on, my cell phone, and information available at my fingertips due to the Internet.
- Barbour, Ian. Religion and Science: Historical and Contemporary Issues. New York: HarperCollins, 1997. Or any other books on science and religion by Barbour.
- Books on science and religion by John Polkinghorne.
- Terryl Warnock, a blogger for MoonLit Press, penned a book review for my book, To Travel Well, Travel Light. You can read it here: https://blanketfort.blog/wordsbyterryl/to-travel-well-travel-light
https://peoplehouse.org/-by-rev-mary-coday-edwards-ma
About the Author: Award-winning author Rev. Mary Coday Edwards is a Spiritual Growth Facilitator and People House Minister, and author of To Travel Well, Travel Light. An Adventure Memoir of Living Abroad and Letting Go of Life’s Trappings: Material Possessions, Cultural Blinders, and a Patriarchal Christian Worldview. A lifelong student of spirituality, Mary spent almost 20 years living, working, and sojourning abroad in Asia, Southeast Asia, East Africa, and Latin America before finding her spiritual connection at People House and completing its Ministerial Program. Past studies include postgraduate studies from the University of South Africa in Theological Ethics/Ecological Justice, where she focused on the spiritual and physical interconnectedness of all things. With her MA in Environmental Studies from Boston University, abroad she worked and wrote on environmental sustainability issues at both global and local levels. In addition to working in refugee repatriation, she was an editor for international, English print, daily newspapers in Indonesia and Mexico.
