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

Bihar Election

Satish Acharya's Cartoon on how votes were bought in Bihar My wife has been stripped of her voting rights in the revised electoral roll. She has always been a conscientious voter unlike me. I refused to vote in the last Lok Sabha election though I stood outside the polling booth for Maggie to perform what she claimed was her duty as a citizen. The irony now is that she, the dutiful citizen, has been stripped of the right, while I, the ostensible renegade gets the right that I don’t care for. Since the Booth Level Officer [BLO] was my neighbour, he went out of his way to ring up some higher officer, sitting in my house, to enquire about Maggie’s exclusion. As a result, I was given the assurance that he, the BLO, would do whatever was in his power to get my wife her voting right. More than the voting right, what really bothered me was whether the Modi government was going to strip my wife of her Indian citizenship. Anything is possible in Modi’s India: Modi hai to Mumkin hai .   ...
16 comments
Read more

Nehru’s Secularism

Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, and Narendra Modi, the present one, are diametrically opposite to each other. Take any parameter, from boorishness to sophistication or religious views, and these two men would remain poles apart. Is it Nehru’s towering presence in history that intimidates Modi into hurling ceaseless allegations against him? Today, 14 Nov, is Nehru’s birth anniversary and Modi’s tweet was uncharacteristically terse. It said, “Tributes to former Prime Minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru Ji on the occasion of his birth anniversary.” Somebody posted a trenchant cartoon in the comments section.  Nehru had his flaws, no doubt. He was as human as Modi. But what made him a giant while Modi remains a dwarf – as in the cartoon above – is the way they viewed human beings. For Nehru, all human beings mattered, irrespective of their caste, creed, language, etc. His concept of secularism stands a billion notches above Modi’s Hindutva-nationalism. Nehru’s ide...
14 comments
Read more

The Art of Subjugation: A Case Study

Two Pulaya women, 1926 [Courtesy Mathrubhumi ] The Pulaya and Paraya communities were the original landowners in Kerala until the Brahmins arrived from the North with their religion and gods. They did not own the land individually; the lands belonged to the tribes. Then in the 8 th – 10 th centuries CE, the Brahmins known as Namboothiris in Kerala arrived and deceived the Pulayas and Parayas lock, stock, and barrel. With the help of religion. The Namboothiris proclaimed themselves the custodians of all wealth by divine mandate. They possessed the Vedic and Sanskrit mantras and tantras to prove their claims. The aboriginal people of Kerala couldn’t make head or tail of concepts such as Brahmadeya (land donated to Brahmins becoming sacred land) or Manu’s injunctions such as: “Land given to a Brahmin should never be taken back” [8.410] or “A king who confiscates land from Brahmins incurs sin” [8.394]. The Brahmins came, claimed certain powers given by the gods, and started exploi...
15 comments
Read more

Duryodhana Returns

Duryodhana was bored of his centuries-long exile in Mythland and decided to return to his former kingdom. Arnab Gau-Swami had declared Bihar the new Kurukshetra and so Duryodhana chose Bihar for his adventure. And Bihar did entertain him with its modern enactment of the Mahabharata. Alliances broke, cousins pulled down each other, kings switched sides without shame, and advisers looked like modern-day Shakunis with laptops. Duryodhana’s curiosity was more than piqued. There’s more masala here than in the old Hastinapura. He decided to make a deep study of this politics so that he could conclusively prove that he was not a villain but a misunderstood statesman ahead of his time. The first lesson he learns is that everyone should claim that they are the Pandavas, and portray everyone else as the Kauravas. Every party claims they stand for dharma, the people, and justice. And then plot to topple someone, eliminate someone else, distort history, fabricate expedient truths, manipulate...
12 comments
Read more