I'll say it one more time for those in the back, God is Not a Man.
God is God.
I saw someone on Twitter say, I wish they would refer to God in she/her pronouns. This instantly didn't sit right with me. I get that we want to see ourselves in God but we are made in the image of God. Both man and woman. Who are we as the created to place this finite construct of male and female on the God that created the world by speaking?
When we talk of God the Father we say he and him but He is not a man in the sense that we comprehend. God had a very clear role for men that this world has taken and perverted. Men were to be our protection, trustworthy, loving, a mirror of Christ's love for His church.
When we talk of God the Father we say he and him but He is not a man in the sense that we comprehend. God had a very clear role for men that this world has taken and perverted. Men were to be our protection, trustworthy, loving, a mirror of Christ's love for His church.
The problem is that the church has made Ephesian 5 about women submitting to their husbands although God only spends 2 verses on that and spend 9 verses on telling men how they are supposed to love their wives.
Because this World and man's creation of patriachy has so perverted the order that God created to demonstrate His Love for His Children we no longer view men as safe, as protection, as trustworthy, as loving, as people who would never leave us of forsake us. They are not the mirror of Christ's love that they are supposed to be and so we want to see God as that representation in our lives. The fact however remains that...
God is God.
He created us, so how can we wrap Him in skin?
He made man in His image, not the other way around. And image is not just physical. We don't look like God. He has no face. Its character, its action, its spirit.
He made man in His image, not the other way around. And image is not just physical. We don't look like God. He has no face. Its character, its action, its spirit.
The better question should be, how are men of God supposed to act?
I fell in love the Message version of the Bible many years ago now and I think it makes it quite plain what God intended. See it below.
25-28 Husbands, go all out in your love for your wives, exactly as Christ did for the church—a love marked by giving, not getting. Christ’s love makes the church whole. His words evoke her beauty. Everything he does and says is designed to bring the best out of her, dressing her in dazzling white silk, radiant with holiness. And that is how husbands ought to love their wives. They’re really doing themselves a favor—since they’re already “one” in marriage.29-33 No one abuses his own body, does he? No, he feeds and pampers it. That’s how Christ treats us, the church, since we are part of his body. And this is why a man leaves father and mother and cherishes his wife. No longer two, they become “one flesh.” This is a huge mystery, and I don’t pretend to understand it all. What is clearest to me is the way Christ treats the church. And this provides a good picture of how each husband is to treat his wife, loving himself in loving her, and how each wife is to honor her husband.
If men were walking in who God called them to be their love would make us whole.
In our current world we see the destruction of men abusing their wives, being unfaithful, leaving their families, passing laws that restrict instead of free, spewing hate instead of love. The text in Ephesians says, Everything he does and says is designed to bring the best out of her.
The Best! That is what God does for us. Everything He does and says is designed to bring the best out of us. What is evidenced in our world is how broken and fractured, even in the church, God's intended plan for our lives especially men's lives are due to our own sin.
We have found a way to determine that God's way is esmasculating and not manly. We call men who love their wives like this soft or whipped when they are actually being obedient to God. God tells men in Ephesian 5, to GO ALL OUT in your LOVE for your wife. How perverted are we?
God doesn't rule over us, He doesn't make us fall in line with an iron fist, He doesn't take away our choice. He leads with love. Love is patient, it is kind, it does not envy or boast, it is not proud or rude, it does not dishonor other, is not selfish, does not anger easily, don't keep a record of wrongs, rejoices in truth and not evil, always protects, trust, hopes, perseveres and never fails. We have gotten incredibly far from that construct.
As Christians we need to ask ourselves, not why we don't us certain pronouns for God. The only question is why men are not being as God call them to be. It not about what we call God but about what He calls us.
The Unlikely Missionary
Damaris
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