What’s our image of God?

God is Not a Boy’s Name is the title of a book by Lyn Brakeman about becoming a woman priest. Another book title, by Chine McDonald, declares God is Not a White Man. Of course we all know theoretically that God is neither male nor female, black nor white. But in practice, when we pray or speak of God, do we unconsciously or even consciously have a masculine image in the back of our minds, something perhaps like the white-haired, bearded paterfamilias in so many classical paintings?

Female representations of God 

The Bible is actually full of female imagery for God: a bear robbed of her cubs (Hosea 13:8), a womb giving birth to frost and snow (Job 38:29), a mother hen sheltering her chicks under her wings (Matthew 23:37). And the Hebrew word for the presence of God, the Shekinah, is a feminine noun, though of course it’s dangerous to read too much into the gender of nouns in languages where they have gender. In the Gospel of Luke, every single parable where a male figure represents God is paired with one in which a female figure represents God: the man losing a sheep with the woman losing a coin (Luke 15), the man sowing mustard seed with the woman kneading yeast into her dough (Luke 13:18–21). Even when Jesus is asked for a sign, He says He will only give the sign of Jonah, and then adds the sign of the Queen of Sheba visiting Solomon for his wisdom (Matthew 12:38–42). The Bible writers appear to have no embarrassment about using women to point us to God.

I actually long for more female representation of God in our writings and worship. Partly, I want to know that God understands my experience of life as a woman. When I still had periods I was comforted by the fact that Jesus, too, bled out of His capacity to give life. Secondly, I want to be reassured that I am made fully in the image of God, just as much as a man is. As some feminist theologians have said: “If God is male, then male is God, and female is always lesser.”

However, I do have some emotional problems with this. My relationship with my mother was ambivalent at best, and sometimes when I try to think of God as my mother, not just my father, I want to say: “But I’ve had one Jewish mother already, and one is enough!” (This, of course, begs a whole other question: ‘Is God Jewish?’ – but let’s not go there.) Yet, especially since my therapist retired, I do still feel a need of a mother figure in life, and want to explore the idea that God could be that mother figure.

An all-encompassing God 

What about the ‘divine feminine’ that some people, especially New Agers influenced by Hindu polytheism, talk about? I have a problem with this too. Not only does it suggest a panoply of gods in which some are female – and we are monotheists – but it also, for me, has overtones of what German poets have called ‘Das Ewig-Weibliche’ (‘the eternal feminine’). If the divine is feminine, is the feminine divine? I do not wish to be viewed as a goddess, especially when it comes to an idea of the female that has little to do with actual living females. If seeing God in female terms means emphasising the nurturing, caring, relational side of God, then aren’t we reinforcing the stereotype that only women have or can express these qualities?

I want to be reassured that I am made fully in the image of God, just as much as a man is

I want a God who is both assertive and responsive, strong and loving, who has the characteristics we commonly (and probably wrongly) attribute to men, and those we commonly (and also wrongly) attribute to women. And that, I believe, is the God we are given in scripture, and in Jesus’ description of His Father: a God who brings down political strongholds, but who also puts a child in leading reins and helps her learn to walk (Hosea 11). 

Why does it matter? First of all, because we women are 51 per cent of the human race and up to 75 per cent of the church population. If we only hear male voices speaking of a male God, what space is there for our female experience and our female voices in church? Secondly, because excluding the feminine side of God gives us a distorted image of God and not even a scriptural one. CS Lewis said that God is that which is so masculine that we are all feminine to it, but he was working with an old-fashioned view of male activity and female passivity (probably outdated even then) and we no longer think that way.

So we should feel free, indeed obliged, to explore the ‘divine feminine’, so long as this does not lead us into reinforcing still further the stereotypes that have held both sexes back.