God Does Not Have A Penis

Several years ago I was writing a column for Relevant Magazine called "Subversive" which featured interviews from various voices in the Emerging Church Movement.

One of those voices was Spencer Burke. He not only helped to launch an emerging church here in Orange County, but he also started an online magazine called theOoze.com and also wrote a great book called "Making Sense of Church".

That's why one afternoon about twelve years ago I was sitting across the table from him in Newport Beach, California interviewing him for Relevant.

But that's when he said something that made me second guess the entire interview. He said, "Just imagine, if the Jewish culture had been Matriarchal instead of Patriarchal, God would have been 'Mother' and Jesus could have been a woman."

Honestly, I didn't know what to say to any of that. I was just so far outside my comfort zone at the time. Spencer is seriously one of the few people I have ever met that I would sincerely call a genius. He has an astounding gift to predict where the culture is headed and he has an insight about human nature that is uncanny.

Still, I wasn't sure what to do with that statement. On the one hand, I didn't want to edit out that quote because I knew Spencer would notice that I had left it off the article. But I also didn't want to publish it and have it hurt Spencer's reputation.

So, I never published the interview at all.

That was over a decade ago. Since then my theology has radically shifted. I owe Spencer an apology for not having the courage to publish his statement which, today, seems so obvious and true.

Here's the deal: God is not male.God is not female. God does not have a gender.

We use the pronoun "He" for several reasons. One, because we don't want to call God an "It". God is a person and therefore has a personality. Two, because a patriarchal society tends to fashion their Deity in the male image. In other words, God made us in His image and then we returned the favor by making God into an image that reflects ourselves.

Unfortunately, the common use of the term "He" to refer to God creates the illusion that God is male. But that is not the case.

God is Spirit. God is not male. God is not female. When the Genesis account tells us that mankind was made in the image of God that means that men and women were both made in His image. The man was created first, yes, but hidden within that man was the female. Therefore, both man and woman were the "image of God" that was created. One was hidden inside the other, but both were created to reflect the image of God.

Yes, the male aspect of God gets more screen time than the female one, but there are several images of God as female that - unsurprisingly - have been overlooked throughout Church history.

But they are there.

For example, when Jesus stands up on the last day of the Feast and invites everyone to "come to me and drink" the picture is of a mother nursing her young. [See John 7:37] This image is repeated when Jesus weeps over Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and says that he longs "to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wing." [See Luke 13:34]

There are many other verses in the Old Testament Hebrew scriptures that speak of God as "giving birth" to Israel and uses metaphors where God nurses them and cares for them like a Mother cares for her children. The New Testament scriptures often speak of us as being "born of God" and "children of God" who are nurtured on milk as newborn babes in Christ.

So, while we may be accustomed to calling God "He" it is not blasphemous or inappropriate to call God "She" or to alternate between the two because, as I've said before: God does not have a penis, or a vagina.

God is a Spirit and those who worship God do so in Spirit and in Truth.

-kg

THE ABOMINATION OF A CLOSE SHAVE

In the New Testament scriptures, the Apostle Paul speaks out against a trend that he sees as being “unnatural” and an “abomination” and warns that Christians need to be on their guard against this dangerous practice.

What is it?

[It’s not what you think].

See, in Paul’s day being a man meant keeping your hair short and your beard long. Why? Because women had long hair and smooth faces. So, to Paul – and many others in his day – if a man had long hair and shaved his beard off, he was accused of "going against nature.”

The Greek word Paul uses to describe this trend is “malakoi” and the best translation of the word into English is “effeminate”.

In the first century, “malakoi” was most often used to reference men who shaved daily and had no beards. These men were often ridiculed and accused of wanting to look like women with clean-shaven faces.

This term was used as an epithet against men who are not masculine enough, as in, “You punch like a girl.”

Plato, for example, in his “Republic”, wrote famously that “too much music made a man soft [malakoi], and feeble; unfit for battle.”

Aristotle also warned about the dangers of men becoming too soft [malakoi] by over-indulging in pleasures rather than balancing out their lives with acts of physical and mental discipline.

Even Josephus, the first century Jewish historian [and contemporary of Jesus and Paul] used the term “malakos” to describe men who were weak and soft through lack of courage in battle.

So, the word “malakoi” refers to being “soft”, rather than masculine, and it occurs four times, in three verses in the New Testament. [Jesus uses the word to refer to soft clothing, for example, in Matthew 11:8 and Luke 7:25].

Now, here’s the problem: “Malakoi” is translated in most English Bibles today as “homosexual”.

Seriously.

Do you think that a man who shaves his beard and has long hair and enjoys music is a homosexual?

Hopefully not. 

Paul and others in the first century didn’t either. How do we know that? Because the word is never used to refer to someone who is homosexual. It is always used to describe a heterosexual male whose behavior is more feminine, or “soft.”

This is what Paul had in mind in 1 Cor. 6:9. In fact, if you go to the actual Greek language, this verse does not refer to homosexuals, even though most English Bibles use the phrase “men who have sex men” rather than “effeminate.”

In the Greek the text actually reads:

“Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind..” – 1 Cor. 6:9

But the definition of “effeminate” is not the same today as it was in the first century, is it?

Back then it was “unnatural” for a man to shave his face and grow a mullet. Today, mullets still aren’t so popular, but we wouldn’t say that a person who sported one was “unrighteous” and unwelcome in the Kingdom of God. [Again, I would hope not].

The term “effeminate” is based on a cultural bias, not an absolute rule.

If you want to make it an absolute statement, then we must adopt Paul’s first century ideals about what makes a man “effeminate” and that means that all men are forbidden to shave their beards or wear their hair below their ears to be considered godly. It also means that women can’t wear pants, or cut their hair short [and who wants to be in charge of defining “short” for the rest of the Christian world?], etc.

So, do we all want to adopt Paul’s ideas about cultural norms? Are we willing to live by this rule?

“Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him? But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her: for her hair is given her for a covering.” [1 Cor. 11:14-15]

We have to decide if we honestly believe that a man with a clean-shaven face is an abomination or not. We have to decide if guys with long hair aren’t welcome in the Kingdom of God, or if perhaps in this case, the Apostle Paul might have only been speaking to the Christians in first century Corinth about what it meant in their day to conform to cultural norms.

What do you think?

Please leave a comment below and let me know your thoughts.

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Thanks,

Keith

READ MORE ON THIS SUBJECT?

*Romans Re-Examined
*Blessed Are The Eunuchs
*A Love That's Better Than Sex