I was having a discussion with a colleague the other day and he brought up the notion of God being a woman.  We debated the issue back and forth for some time with the chief bottom line being the continued reference in the living word of God of God as “He” and “His” and even Christ himself referring to God as “Heavenly Father.”

Father is not generally thought to be female.

As time progressed, however, our conversation evolved, moving forward much later into the night than either of us anticipated.  I would never have imagined that such a premise, one I had taken for granted as a given for most of my life, would bring up such speculation and consideration.

I respect my friend a great deal and never would discredit what he says without careful consideration, but this was not just about giving him his due.  It was a genuinely interesting and thought-provoking topic once our trained, knee-jerk reactions were set aside and the wheels started turning.

Certainly, The Bible repeatedly refers to God in male form.  In Numbers, however, God speaks to Balaam through a donkey.  In Exodus, God speaks to Moses through a burning bush.  Jesus tells us that God can come to us as a little child or as a beggar on the street.  

Even in the context of a male figure, The Bible gives us many faces of God, from a loving and forgiving father to an angry, jealous and vengeful force.

If we embrace the knowledge that God is an omniscient, all powerful, omnipotent God, do we not have to also accept that God has the ability to take on any form at any time?  We are told even as children that God is everywhere; that God is in the trees and the soil and the sun above.  

As human beings, it is in our nature to want to pack everything away into neat little organized boxes with labels and categories.  We need to understand as much as we can from a scientific, logical standpoint.  As Christians, it is very easy for us to stand firmly in the lifelong conviction that God is a male.  It is what we have been taught and has become a part of our inherent understanding.  It goes without saying or question.

As I considered our conversation while it was going on, I was again haunted by my belief in The Bible as the living word of God versus my academic knowledge of the history of Israel, Jewish law and the predominant paradigms at the time the sacred written scriptures that would later become the books of The Bible were written.  It is true that in the late BC and early AD centuries of Jewish society that women were not valued as citizens or given any social status except through their husbands or fathers.  This was a stalwart patriarchal society and it was rare that a woman would ever be viewed as a leader or even given the right to speak on civic or spiritual matters of any kind.

I once heard a female Bible scholar scoff that such was the disdain of women at the time the Bible scriptures were written that the prophets would have made Satan into a female form except that doing so would have given a woman too much power.

Would it then not stand to reason that if a true prophet heard the word of God spoken to him, the human interpretation would be that God was male?  It would be unthinkable to the authors of our Bible scriptures for God to have the voice or thoughts of a woman.  Was the male gender assigned by default?  Is a gender even necessary to apply to God since it is also a given that we could not possibly know the mind of God?  Isn’t the appliction of a gender onto God a manmade assignment rather than a Divine one?

After considerable discussion, my friend and I did arrive at a few conclusions to which we could ascribe:

1)  It really does not matter one way or another.  God is real.  God is present and at work in our lives.  God is a subscription of Faith and as such, does not seek to be defined in our human terms or submit to our labels and classifications.

2)  God is omnipotent and moves through all things, male and female alike.  God places no boundaries or discrimination onto the vehicles and instruments used to work God’s will.  God has spoken to me not only through direct prayer and sacred scripture, but through a song on the radio, words on a billboard or a chance comment by a friend or stranger.

3)  It is nothing more than an ego trip that we, as insignificant humans, believe that we can assign our gender identification, our human concepts or our labels to that which is God.  I imagine God laughing at us as we struggle to understand and classify what is neither classifiable nor understandable.  For God, it would be as if watching toddlers doing something cute that they themselves consider to be tremendously important.

4)  God wants us to question, to ponder, to reflect and to think about our relationship to God and how we will manifest the power and love of God in our own lives.  That is why we were given free will and speculative thought.  When we consider all things and come back to God, our faith is that much more intense and we are that much closer to God.  

I believe we both came away from the discussion with our minds a little more open and our faith a good bit stronger.  My understanding is that God does not want our thoughts to rest solely with what other humans tell us is so.  Certainly, there are scholars and teachers aplenty who have a valuable voice in our spiritual learning process, but as is the case with any journey worth making, we may have those who join us along the way for conversation, but we ourselves must take the steps to get to where we are going.

Peter Schools wrote a gospel song based on John 13:35 with lyrics that have always stuck in my mind:

We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord, 
We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord,
And we pray that all unity may one day be restored:

And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love
Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our love.

This song, I realize, represents an ideal, but how wonderful would life be if people would live by these simple premises?  My heart breaks when I see people who call themselves Christians treating the folks around them with such disdain, anger and criticism.  It’s rampant in our community, which works so hard to present a united front and give the appearance of  a tight-knit, loving place to be.

You don’t have to stand near too many conversations before you start to hear the most hateful, spiteful words come out of some peoples’ mouths as they talk about our neighbors who live around us.  This one can’t go to the Fire Safe Council BBQ and have fun with their friends because they don’t like the person so and so who is involved with the BBQ.  This one can’t go play bingo because another person they don’t like goes every month.  This one can’t help out with the Grizzly Flats Clean Up or the Food Pantry because it’s held in the parking lot of the church and they hate the church…

So many grudges! So many feelings and behaviors that are an insult to the Lord and an embarrassment to the people who voice them or even keep them to themselves as they think them.  My cheeks redden with shame when I see how the same people who proudly call themselves Christians will speak to and about others with such rancor and downright snottiness.  Mind you, that is not always the case, but often, sadly, it is.

The kids used to wear these little rubber bracelets for a while that said, “WWJD?”  What Would Jesus Do?  What would Jesus do?  As nearly as I can tell after a fairly avid study of the New Testament, Jesus loved everyone; not only loved them, but loved them equally.  

He had a temper, as is well documented, but if the New Testament is to be seen as a fairly complete documentation of Jesus’ adult life, such displays of anger were rare.  Jesus spent time with people of all kinds.  There were no Christians per se in that time as the name was derived from “Christ” and the word was not even thought to have been used until the 4th century.  I see many Christians clustered together in little groups, refusing to associate with those who do not attend their church or believe as they do.  Is that how Jesus behaved?  Not if the living word of God is to be believed.

Jesus embraced everyone with love, forgiveness, compassion and grace.  How many people do you know in your life who behave this way?  How many people in this community open their arms to one another regardless of their race, their beliefs, their spiritual path, the way they look or the demons they fight every day?  

How many times has someone apologized to you for hurting you, only to have you turn away?

How many times have to spread gossip or malicious stories, true or untrue, about another in an attempt to discredit them?

How many times have you refused to go where someone else will be because you do not like them?

Life is so short and filling our minutes and our hearts with hatred and is not what God would have us do, of this I am certain.   We were sent an example of how to be in this world and Jesus did not show us that we should ostracize and talk spitefully about one another and hold grudges.  To do so contaminates our spirit and is an affront to God.

Every time you speak hatefully of someone or bear a grudge in your heart, you have placed an obstacle between you and God.

Read that one more time:

Every time you speak hatefully of someone or bear a grudge in your heart, you have placed an obstacle between you and God.

Imagine if every person were to uphold the actions described in Mr. Schools’ song:

“We will work with each other, we will work side by side
And we’ll guard each man’s dignity and save each man’s pride.”

Have you well guarded the dignity and pride of the people around you?  Have you treated the people you encounter with love?  Have you gotten busy and helped out where you are able to do so and not let personal irritations or perceived affronts get in your way?

There is an old saying that says that you can tell a person’s worth by how you feel when you are walking away from them.  Do people leave you feeling good about themselves and glad that they passed time with you?  

One of the nicest things I ever heard anyone say about anybody was said after the death of one of the mainstays of our community, Jack Fourie.  I heard more than one person say, “He never had a bad thing to say about anyone.”  Can you imagine having someone say that about you upon your passing?  Or while you live?  ”S/He is always so kind and loving.”  ”I always feel so good being with him/her.”  ”I never heard him/her say an unkind word about anyone as long as I knew him/her.”  

I hate to say it, but in my own experience, I have found that non-Christians are often kinder and gentler in their dealings with others than are Christians, mostly because so many Christians subscribe to the idea that people who are not Christians should be treated with suspicion and rejection if not downright hostility.  Again, that is not how Jesus taught us to behave or to treat one another.  We were instructed to “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  There is, to my knowledge, no addition that says, “…provided they are of the same faith as you are” or “…provided they behave as you think they should.”  

Non-Christians are often used to being treated harshly by Christians, so they know how it feels and are usually more cautious about the possibility of treating others that way.  Christians often, which unfortunately parallels the stereotype, embrace the “holier than thou” attitude even as they decry it in others.  

In Matthew 4:18, Jesus tells his potential disciples, “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.”  This has been interpreted far and wide to mean that he wanted his associates to go out and win others over to, presumably, a religion that did not yet exist.  My own interpretation of this powerful message is that as “fishers of men,” they would do what a cast net does in the water.  They would bring people together and in that grouping, they would do what Jesus is reported to have done.  They would talk, share, eat, laugh, love and question and most importantly, learn from one another.  

What do the people around you learn from you and about you after spending time with you?  Do they identify you as a person of love, of forgiveness, of joy, of grace and of tolerance?  Do they see Christ in you?  Do they see the bane of humanity in you with cross words, hatred in your heart and discord in your relationships?  Do you say, “That’s just how I am” to excuse your bad behavior and vicious comments about others?

It takes true courage to look inside ourselves and truly question whether or not we live our lives as Christ demonstrated we should and as God would have us be in this world.  It takes even great courage to have that Ebeneezer Scrooge moment where we realize that we have been given, through the grace of God, another day to be redeemed in God’s eyes and in the eyes of the people around us.

Although the saying, “You’re only as good as your last act” is apt in many situations, in small communities, people have long memories.  What they will most remember, however, goes back to that other old saying I told you about.  How did they last feel when you were walking away?  It only takes a few times of being genuinely good to someone, opening your heart and showing them a loving spirit, to erase years of bad behavior.  Above all, people want to believe that people can change.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you were the one to show them that it’s true?  After all, what would Jesus do?

My philosophy is that we should not call ourselves Christ-ians until we are willing to live on the earth in the way Christ taught.

“Why died I not from the womb? Why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly?” Job 3:11

 It’s difficult to get to middle age and not have experienced at least one, more likely several, times of falling to the ground in complete despair, beating on the earth and crying, “Why me?  Oh God, why is this happening to me?” 

This is a feeling that is as old as the human experience.  Some of the finest hymns are devoted to the questioning of God’s motives and machinations:

Tempted and tried we’re oft made to wonder
Why it should be thus all the day long
While there are others living about us
Never molested, though in the wrong.

Farther along we’ll know all about it.
Father along we’ll understand why.
Cheer up, my brother.  Live in the sunshine.
We’ll understand it all bye and bye.

It is natural, in times of extreme – and especially continued – hardship to question the will of God and what we might have personally done to bring about His wrath.  As humans, we tend to egotize our life experience and imagine that it is always about us and something we might have done.

The most common venue for people to feel persecuted is through money, prosperity, livelihood and sustenance.  When those specific avenues fall under threat or attack for long periods of time, it is very wearying and self-defeating.  The Bible tells us in 1 Timothy 6:10 that ”The love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”  There is a vast difference in entering into a love affair with money and making it your god versus wanting enough necessary money to take care of yourselves and your family.

In today’s society, money is, for most people and families, a necessity not only for comfort, but for our very lives to continue.  Here in Grizzly Flats, if we do not have money, we do not have heat or food or transportation in the bitter winters. 

Current economic conditions make it harder than ever for individuals and families to earn enough money to guarantee their own survival.   As we all know, jobs in Grizzly Flats are almost non-existent and commuting to town is expensive.  People are faced with giving up their homes, not just under the very real threat of foreclosure, but also because they cannot afford to get to work.  Food is expensive.  Housing costs are expensive.  Gasoline is expensive.  School costs are expensive.  This takes many of us into whirlwind cycle of defeat and can lead to that very questioning of, “Why, God?  Why?”

God does not guarantee to us that our road will always be smooth and flat.  We know that in life, there will be mountains to climb and rocky roads to travel.  God only promises that He will be with us always, ‘Even unto the ends of the world.”  God does not always fix our problems for us, but is there to give us the strength to endure and the wisdom to better our situation ourselves.  Angels on earth come to us to help us along in the name of God and on God’s behalf, giving us additional tools and blessings to find our way again.

I have often felt that God sometimes does bring hardship into our lives as a way of calling us home to Him again.  It has been said that in our darkest night of the soul is when we are closest to God because God is all we have.  Too often, we only begin to pray and to engage God when we are in a time of crisis.  When we have exhausted all of our known avenues of relief, then we pray and expect God to come through with a miracle.  When we are happy and in clover, do we come to God?

For some people, crisis is the only way God can open dialog, so even though a person might be demanding to know from God why they have been singled out for persecution, at least they are talking to God whereas in their happier days, that connection would possibly have been lost.

Sometimes, when everything around us seems to be going wrong and there is a continued feeling of depression and crisis, it can be good to calm our minds and mentally go back to the last time when things felt right.  Have we veered away from God’s plan, instead insisting on enacting our own will over what we know to be the will of God?  This does not have to be a malicious or evil choice, whether conscious or subconscious.  Sometimes, we have stopped listening to God without even realizing it and instead made choices that served our own wants or were more practical than what our spirit was telilng us to do.  If God says you should give all of your money to your neighbor who has just lost his job, it is natural to immediately counter with, “But how will I then take care of my own family?  I will have no money for myself!”  A more practical course of action would be to keep some money for your own needs, but in doing so, you have worked against the will of God, not by being a “bad” person, but by trying to do what makes the most sense to our logical minds.

It is sometimes hard for humans to work in tandem with the will of God and to trust what they are being led to do.  If God tells you that you will find good work and a good life if you sell all of your belongings and move to another state, would you do that right away without question or would you spend a good bit of time evaluating the wisdom of such an act?  The logical mind wars often with the will of God.

When we do go back in our minds to the point where things last felt right, we can objectively retrace our steps forward, step by step, and sometimes find the place where we were moved to behave in a particular way or do a certain thing and chose otherwise.  If we are able to correct that misstep, this will often cause the flow of positive results to begin in our lives again.

The old saying of, “The Lord moves in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform” is very apt.  Over and over in my life, I have been shown that God is patient if we question His will, just as long as we do so while we are enacting His will. 

The man who is quoted at the beginning of this writing is lauded as an icon of great faith and patience, but even he broke down and wondered why he hadn’t just died at birth if life would be so terrible.  He said, “May the day perish on which I was born, And the night in which it was said, ‘A male child is conceived.’  May that day be darkness.  May God above not seek it nor the light shine upon it.” 

He goes on like this for verse after verse, even going so far as to beg God to kill him, saying, “And that God would be willing to crush me, that he would let loose his hand and kill me.”  Bildad then speaks to him and asks him how long he is going to go on belaboring his angst and reminds him that we do not understand the will of God, that we “were born yesterday and do not have knowledge, since our days on earth are but a shadow.”

Honestly, chapter after chapter goes on with Job whining and demanding to know why he is being persecuted thusly.  As he is continually schooled by others to accept his own inadequacy in the face of God’s will, he ultimately calls God to task, saying, “Indeed, my eyes have seen all this, my ears have heard and understood it.  What you know, I know also; I am not inferior to you!  But I wish to speak to the Almighty and I desire to argue my case with God.”  So to those who are telling him to snap out of it and recognize the perfection of God, he says, “Look, I’m not stupid.  I know God is greater than I, but I want to argue with Him anyway.”

A good portion of the Book of Job is about Job wrestling with what is happening to him as a result of this contest between God and Satan, a bet of sorts.  In the end, after 40 chapters of lamenting, Job has challenged God and God has answered, resulting in Job telling God that he despises himself for having doubted Him and that he repents “in dust and ashes.”

This is all before things ever got better. 

Once he has reconciled his battle with God, God rewards Job by restoring all that he has lost and doubling all that had belonged to him.  In fact, God elevated Job above those who had given him counsel in his grief and who told him to stop questioning God, telling them to take offerings to Job and allow Job to intercede with Him on their behalf so that He does not punish them. 

The book of Job is not, as many believe, a directive telling us to never question God and to meet our challenges with smiles.  It is practically instructing us to question and doubt ourselves and God because God knows that at the end of that battle is peace and reconciliation.  Also at the end of that engagement comes a greater faith and dedication to God because of the trials and the questioning. 

Faith is very possibly the greatest sacrament that humans can extend to God.  Faith is only of value when it flies in the face of what is before us.  It is cheap and easy to have faith when our lives are going great.  To step out into the sunshine of our days, feeling the warmth on our faces, smelling the fragrant flowers on the soft wind and say, “Why God?  Why me?  What have I done to deserve such joy?” is a far cry from beating the earth with your fists and saying, “Why God?  Why are you doing this to me?”  The sheer energy that comes with fear and desperation is so much stronger than the energy that comes from joy and contentment.  We only question God’s plan when we are inconvenienced in some way, for the most part.  Imagine the relationship we would and could have with God if we were to invest the same degree of energy into our praise and gratitude as we do into our prayers for Him to save us from whatever ill has befallen us!  Again, I submit, that this is possibly the only way God can get us to talk to Him with our spirits open and our hearts laid bare.

To have the grace and strength to uphold Faith when we are at our lowest point defines us in a very sacred way.  To truly trust that God will take care of us when there is no outward evidence to support that idea is the ultimate relationship to have with God.  This belief substantiates the promise that He is always with us and that we completely trust where we are being led.

Still, we are reminded by the Book of Job that God is not only patient, but encouraging of our human anger and will be there at the end of our tantrum to pick us up, dust us off and, when we ask with sincere faith and commitment, to put us back on the path where we are supposed to be.