Skip to main content

What is God’s gender?

Sunday Musings

God of Christianity
Source: Here
In a recent article in the New York Times, a Jewish rabbi raised the question whether God is transgender.  He points out that in the Hebrew Bible, when read in its original language, gender is not always precisely demarcated.  For example, Eve is referred to as “he” in one place, Adam as “them” and Rebecca as a “young man.”  “These aren’t typos,” the rabbi asserts and explains that “In the ancient world, well-expressed gender fluidity was the mark of a civilized person. Such a person was considered more ‘godlike’.”

Why wouldn’t a god have the maternal tenderness of a woman, for example?  Why should any god be deprived of the good qualities that women possess?  Why should a god necessarily be a man?

Of course, there are many ancient religions including India’s Hinduism which have both gods and goddesses.  But in the world’s dominant monotheistic religions, God is necessarily a man.  Why? 

The answer is fairly simple.  These are patriarchal religions made by men who thought that women were inferior, more fallible, or potentially dangerous to the man’s sexual morality.  There are or could be many other reasons too.  The very first sin (“original sin”? – James Joyce asked the question what was so original about it in his classical novel, Ulysses) was committed by the woman, Eve. 

The simple truth is that all the three dominant monotheistic religions – Christianity, Islam and Judaism – have always circumscribed the role and position of women in the society.  It is only natural that their God is male. 

But why should God have any gender at all?  That’s what the rabbi’s NYT article made me think.  Why should god be male or female or even neutral gender?  Sex is meant for reproduction.  (Let us leave aside the secondary and other uses of sex for the time being.)  The God of all the three dominant monotheistic religions is a chronic bachelor.  Sexuality is seen as something vulgar if not evil by all the three religions.  It is then a logical necessity for their God to be above sex.  What will an asexual being do with gender?



Indian Bloggers

Comments

  1. Pranju chakrapaniAugust 21, 2016 at 9:25 AM

    This and another question on who created god have always intrigued me. The answers to both are evident, the story telling side of human beings.

    But if ever God's existence is proved (but how can you prove the evidence of absence?), it would definitely be a mathematician :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. CifarAugust 21, 2016 at 11:47 AM

    Gender? Even existence of god is questionable but if there is a god he/she must be gender-less

    ReplyDelete
  3. sunaina sharmaAugust 22, 2016 at 6:21 PM

    God has to be in some recognizable form for humans to comprehend....and they can hardly think beyond gender....in fact this homophobic world will scorn at the idea of God being a transgender unless there is some political leverage attached to it....

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalAugust 22, 2016 at 7:45 PM

      God is like a human being because we created him in our own image. God is male because it is men who created him. He would have been a She if it was a matriarchal system. God would be transgender if transgenders created him. And, as Pranju said above, God would be some mathematical abstract if intellectuals created him. Finally, you are right: it's all about who wields power.

      Delete
  4. rifle range boyAugust 25, 2016 at 9:03 PM

    Man personified the concept of "god" for his own understanding and of the masses. Interestingly, the Shaivaites look at Divinity as the union of male and female, having both genders and meaningful as the union of both sexes (powers)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalAugust 25, 2016 at 10:33 PM

      That too is a god created in the image of man and hence has to manmade.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
18 comments
Read more

The Vegetarian

Book Review Title: The Vegetarian Author: Han Kang Translator: Deborah Smith [from Korean] Publisher: Granta, London, 2018 Pages: 183 Insanity can provide infinite opportunities to a novelist. The protagonist of Nobel laureate Han Kang’s Booker-winner novel, The Vegetarian , thinks of herself as a tree. One can argue with ample logic and conviction that trees are far better than humans. “Trees are like brothers and sisters,” Yeong-hye, the protagonist, says. She identifies herself with the trees and turns vegetarian one day. Worse, she gives up all food eventually. Of course, she ends up in a mental hospital. The Vegetarian tells Yeong-hye’s tragic story on the surface. Below that surface, it raises too many questions that leave us pondering deeply. What does it mean to be human? Must humanity always entail violence? Is madness a form of truth, a more profound truth than sanity’s wisdom? In the disturbing world of this novel, trees represent peace, stillness, and nonviol...
7 comments
Read more

The RSS does not exist

An organisation that has 80,000 branches in India does not exist legally in any document. This is the cover story of The Caravan this month. By the way, The Caravan is one of the very few publications that still continues to exist in spite of being overtly critical of Narendra Modi and his Sangh Parivar. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is not registered as an organisation under any of the usual Indian registration laws such as the Societies Registration Act or as a trust or company. It functions as an unregistered voluntary organisation, though it is arguably the largest public organisation in the country. This situation makes the organisation absolutely unaccountable to anyone, argues The Caravan . The RSS is not legally required to file annual returns to the Tax department or disclose its financial details publicly though it deals with thousands of crores of rupees every year especially after Modi became the Prime Minister of the country. The membership of the organisat...
12 comments
Read more

No Problems Only Opportunities

You’ve probably heard this joke. A young man walked into his office one morning and found a beautiful young lady sitting in his chair. He called the MD and said, “Sir, I have a problem.” The MD replied, “Don’t you know our company’s motto, young man? No Problems, Only Opportunities .” When Suchita of The Blogchatter sent me a mail with the topic of this week’s blog hop –  - the first thing that came to my mind was the above joke. I know many people – too many, in fact – who went through terrible problems. My own life was a series of problems in none of which was there the consolation of any beautiful woman. One essential lesson I learnt from life is that life is a series of problems. You solve one and then arises the next one. Now I have reached an age when problems are no more problems: they are life itself. If you ask me what was the biggest problem I ever dealt with, it was my last years in Shillong. I was a lecturer in a college drawing a fat salary stipulated by the U...
13 comments
Read more