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Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity


 


The Image of God, Male and Female:

Why Your Deepest Yearning
is the Voice of the Universe
Proclaiming Its Truest Cosmic Message

Part I

 


 

return to the main-page article on "God"

 

 

 

 

Where is your mother?

 

 

All of your life you've heard "God" referred to as "king," "judge," "father," "lawgiver," or some other masculine-patriarchal descriptor. These word-pictures of severity are taken from the Bible -  but it's a very selective excision.

 

  • The scripture also speaks of God in feminine terms. Why have you not been informed of this? Why have you heard only of God the Father? - but not God the Mother!

 

 

How could God be male and not female?

Your "mama is not a llama" - and we have been denied the wisdom and glory, the dignity and spirituality, the sensitivity and tender love of ... the Divine Female Energy ... the Mother of All ... the Goddess of the Cosmos!

As one of my favorite rabbi-scholars asked: How could God be male and not female? - of course, the rabbi is correct. Is it possible to know cold without the hot? Does north have any meaning without south? Can in exist but for out? Tell me, quickly now, what significance could male have without female? - even more absurd, father without mother? And yet, theologians, in referencing God, cavalierly employ one-sided gender-specific terms as if this could mean something. Yes, please explain to us all, how could God be male and not female?

 

 

Emma Hardinge Britten (1823-1899) began to exhibit mediumistic abilities as a young girl. Later, as a writer and public speaker, she would become an advocate for the Spiritualist movement. In 1864 Abraham Lincoln’s re-election campaign asked her to speak on behalf of the President; she did so; and also provided a eulogy at his death. The following item, from one of her books, is a treatise on the various bases of marriage. After establishing that many marital unions of this world center about the transitory physical attraction and also mere friendship, the discussion turns toward authentic, enduring romance:

"It is soul affinity … the realization that man and woman have no actual existence apart from each other; that they are, in fact, counterparts, without which their separate lives are imperfect and unformed.  Life is dual … and love, true soul-love, is the bond of union which reunites the severed parts.  It exists independent of personal charms or mental acquirements; subsists through sickness or in health, through good or evil report, lives on for the one beloved … and realizes heaven only in the union which death may interrupt but can never sever [or "be sundered" as Jesus used the phrase]. Divine spiritual affinity survives death and the grave, unites the two halves of the one soul, and in eternity perfects the dual nature of man and woman into one angel."

the odd half of a pair of scissors

Benjamin Franklin, in a letter, advising a young man regarding love and marriage:

"It is the Man and Woman united that makes the complete Being. Separate she wants his force of Body and Strength of Reason; he her Softness, Sensibility and acute Discernment. Together they are most likely to succeed in the World. A single Man has not nearly the Value he would have in that State of Union. He is an incomplete Animal. He resembles the odd Half of a Pair of Scissors."

Half of a pair of scissors could be used as a paper-weight, a door-stop, or possibly for stirring paint. But it will never know its primary purpose without its other half.

Emma Hardinge Britten, channeling wisdom of Spirit Guides, said the same for man and woman. While they can find a measure of usefulness for their lives living alone, in another sense, theyhave no actual existence apart from each other.”

Made, designed, as “two halves of the one soul,” they cannot enter a complete sense of destiny and fulfillment until “eternity perfects [their] dual nature ... into one angel,” that is, a new, more evolved creation, the sacred One Person status.

Some time ago (see on this page), I came across a Jewish rabbi who insightfully instructed that the concept of God as Father has no meaning without a corresponding God as Mother. How can you have a father without a mother? Yes, of course, and how unwise of us to create a God as “one half of a pair of scissors.”

Editor’s note: Emma, here, really gets it right. See in the "waves" article how lovers create a dual-energied entity which stands before God as something new in the universe. 

 

 

 

 

Failing to see the absurdity

Why this insistence that God is a Father, just a Father; but, even more absurdly, a Celibate Father! who lives alone! and, oh, yes, this Celebate Father has a Son, but there is no Mother! We have been so conditioned by long centuries of male-inspired mind-programming that we fail to see the mounting absurdities of this propaganda.

Scripture itself makes the claim that the creation, God's handiwork, offers clues, a measure of revelation, about that shadowy and enigmatic Divinity; and these, as I will offer evidence, hint at the Ultimate Female-Male Archetypes. But can we point to even one example from the natural world that might lead us to conclude that God is a stern Celibate Father?

It is difficult to know anything about the utterly transcendent God. We must not be presumptuous regarding any such assertion. According to many afterlife testimonies, those in the next realms, even on the higher levels, are not absolutely certain regarding who or what God is; apparently, confidence in this area shall escape us for a very long time.

 

 

 

What God could never be

But we can be certain of one thing; we can be sure of what God could never be! God could never be anything like those traditional images, the wrathful masculine-patriarchal descriptors, sold to us by the churchmen.

In the words of Father Robert Benson, these fashionable faces of God constitute "dreadful errors," "monstrous ideas," a "stupid and wicked fiction," and "reeking of paganism." Whatever God is, we can claim with full assurance that Orthodoxy's view is absolutely untrue.

It will be my purpose herein to inform you that the mysterious God of the universe, in some runic sense, finds expression as a Male-Female composite entity.

 

 

 

Whatever God is, you will find her within your deepest self

Some of you reading this will immediately say, Yes, of course, it must be that way! Love, even romantic love, is the most powerful force in the universe - the ultimate reality! God must be a feminine energy, too! I feel this to be true within my deepest self!

But others will want me to eat those words! What evidence, they will insist, have I for such outrageous and scandalous proposition?

Maybe I should reply by paraphrasing a response of Jesus: I will answer you if you first show me the evidence for your austere images of God; yes, we are all waiting.

 

"A woman of courage enters a room, and everyone is put at ease. There is something appealing in the way she walks and in the way she holds herself." Maya Angelou

 

 

You will not find your Mother via the scientific method

My evidence? Well, here it is: it is... precious little... hardly none... an argument scantily clad, nearly naked... but, that little which I possess is far more than the nothing, and less-than-nothing, adorning the traditional-argument representations of Divinity: the male-ego inspired notions of God as some kind of angry, narcissistic, patriarchal, and petty chieftain.

  

 

Dr. Marcus Borg

Now-retired Professor of Religion at Oregon State University, Dr. Borg is the author of many works, among them: The God We Never Knew and Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time.

He offers a powerful idea:

How we think about God, how we mentally image Divinity, affects the entire subsequent flow of our theology. We will treat others, and ourselves, as we imagine God treating us... it is creating God in our own image.

READ MORE 

 

  • Thomas Paine: "Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man."

 

 

 

she said she

Many years ago a friend jabbed me by speaking of God as "she." This was a new idea for me at the time and caused me to bristle; well, after reconsidering the matter these intervening years, I now take her side.

Will I have to please my critics and eat my words regarding the Ultimate Two? I will prepare the table, lay out the evidence, and serve it to you... and then we'll see who eats what.

 

 

 

The structure of this article

 

The topic under review:

The Image of God, Male and Female

Why Your Deepest Yearning
is the Voice of the Universe
Proclaiming Its Truest Cosmic Message

 

 

I will support my claim of God as Ultimate Male-Female Oneness in a three-pronged presentation:

 

 

(1) The argument from human experience: The tragic 12th century romance of Heloise and Peter Abelard offers many lessons and insights - READ MORE

(2) The argument from theology: Another look at the mystery and hidden wisdom of the Genesis account, that archetypal story of Twin-Soul love - READ MORE

(3) The argument from natural revelation: The testimony of the natural world, and the human soul itself as guided by afterlife advisors - READ MORE

 

 

 

 

 

Editor's last word: