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...
19 comments
Read more

Are You Sane?

Illustration by Gemini AI A few months back, a clinical psychiatrist asked me whether anyone in my family ever suffered from insanity. “All of us are insane to some degree,” I wanted to tell her. But I didn’t because there was another family member with me. We had taken a youngster of the family for counselling. I had forgotten the above episode until something happened the other day which led me to write last post . The incident that prompted me to write that post brought down an elder of my family from the pedestal on which I had placed him simply because he is a very devout religious person who prays a lot and moves about in the society like the gentlest soul that ever lived in these not-so-gentle terrains. I also think that the severe flu which descended on me that night was partly a product of my disillusionment. The realisation that one’s religion and devotion that guided one for seven decades hadn’t touched one’s heart even a little bit was a rude shock to me. What does re...
10 comments
Read more

Joys of Onam and a reflection

Suppose that the whole universe were to be saved and made perfect and happy forever on just one condition: one single soul must suffer, alone, eternally. Would this be acceptable? Philosopher William James asked that in his 1891 book, The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life . Please think about it once again and answer the question for yourself. You, as well as others, are going to live a life without a tinge of sorrow. Joyful existence. Life in Paradise. The only condition is that one person will take up all the sorrows of the universe on him-/herself and suffer – alone, eternally. What do you say? James’s answer is a firm no . “Not even a god would be justified in setting up such a scheme,” James asserted, knowing too well how the Bible justified a positive answer to his question. “It is expedient that one man should die for the people, so that the nation can be saved” [John 11:50]. Jesus was that one man in the Biblical vision of redemption. I was reading a Malayalam period...
19 comments
Read more

Loving God and Hating People

Illustration by Gemini AI There are too many people, including in my extended family. who love God so much that other people have no place in their hearts. God fills their hearts. They go to church or other similar places every day and meet their God. I guess they do. But they return home from the place of worship only to pour out the venom in their hearts on those around them. When I’m vexed by such ‘religious’ people I consult Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov in which there are some characters who are acutely vexed by spiritual questions. Let me leave Ivan Karamazov to himself, as he has been discussed too much already. In Book II, Chapter 4 [ A lady of Little Faith ], a troubled woman comes to Father Zosima, the wise monk, and confesses her spiritual struggle. “I long to love God,” she says. She knows that she cannot love God without loving her fellow human beings, or at least doing some service to them. The truth is, she says, “I cannot bear people. The closer they ...
11 comments
Read more