A Great Debate...

Probably the best question to ask on days like this is simply, "Why on earth to people actually choose to live here?" Disgusting day today. Cold; and not just a simple cold, but a faculty-numbing, bone-chilling, cut-through-all-your-layers type of cold that displays the tenacity of a pit bull in making sure you're as miserable as you could possibly be. The damage due to cold would be mitigated if the sun would actually show its face, but alas, even that is too much of a task. Snow that drives at you, wind that makes your eyes water (and subsequently freeze to your cheeks); yup, life in the prairies at its best. Two-and-a-half months to go.

Other than the stupid weather, a pleasant enough day was had by all. I took care of a bunch of school work that beckoned (it tends to do that), and am feeling the euphoric rush of "Getting Something Accomplished." Sat in the campus coffee shop (not the one open to the community, but the one run by students), which has a nice atmosphere and serves bad coffee. But hey, the service at the other coffee shop is surly and rude pretty much all the time, so it's at least got that going for it. I swear, whenever you walk into the Oasis (the community one, as opposed to the Loft, which is the student-run one) you feel like you're committing some grievous crime simply by patronizing their establishment. There's one older lady in particular who is just no fun at all--as much as you try, you can't even get a grunt out of her, let alone the hint of anything but a scowl. Maybe one day I'll bring a kitten in with me. If she doesn't smile then, well, we know there's something wrong. Heck, even thinking about kittens is making me smile. But not her.

Theo was his usual self--a total ham for most of the day, and a total bear when he got too tired. We're still experimenting with his napping requirements; he tends to have one long nap in the morning (usually two hours), but has that awkward thing in the afternoon where he's tired enough to nap, but if he sleeps, he won't go to bed well at night. If we don't let him nap, we have a bear in the mid-afternoon and he falls asleep halfway through his last bottle; if we do let him nap, we have a bear in the evening when he knows it's bedtime but isn't quite tired enough yet. It never gets easier, I guess.

No easy segue here, so I'll just jump right into it: I'm surprised that nobody left a comment about yesterday's rant. Oh well. I certainly do appreciate those of you who visit (so far today the count is 10 hits--not huge, but I'll take it), whether you leave a comment or not.

Since you're all being so accepting of my rants, however, I want to get back to something I just barely touched on yesterday about my feminist theology course. As a refresher, I posed a question about the "maleness" of God actually being in the Bible. That statement probably sounds a bit on the heretical side, so I need to explain it a bit, but from the standpoint of a feminist theologian. Please note that I make no claim as to the veracity of this information--I am simply stating the case of feminist theologians without making any sort of judgement as to whether or not I agree. In fact, it doesn't matter if I agree--all that matters is that it makes me think (and hopefully you as well).

So, what's the argument? Well, back in Exodus, God calls to Moses from the burning bush, right (Exodus 3, if you're following along at home)? When Moses asks, in verse 13, what name God claims, God's response is "I Am Who I Am" (the Tetragrammaton, for those of you scoring at home). This is nothing more than the repeated verb "to be"; it says nothing of God's gender because it is not a pronoun. In fact, the only reason we see God as male is because (a) the writers of the Torah lived in a patriarchal society and automatically assumed maleness, and (b) Moses is quoted to have said, "What is His name." What if Moses had said, "What is her name?" Later, in verse 15, God tells Moses to say, "The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, has appeared to me...." Still, there is no word from God as to what gender, if any, he or she claims.

With me so far? Good--I knew you were smart. Okay, here's the next piece. The name God claims in verse 13 is known to us as Yahweh--the sacred name that none were allowed to speak for fear of blaspheming and being struck down. Yahweh (YHWH in the text) is ungendered--it is a name, not an object (Hebrew, like most languages other than English, is inflected, which means that it uses gender in its nouns). However, during the writing of the text, some other name had to be used in place of YHWH. The scribes chose the word, "Adonai," which means Lord. There's a problem here, though. Suddenly, you move from a name to a title, which dehumanizes God in the first place, and is a masculine noun in the second. The masculinity inherent in Adonai is not necessarily implied by YHWH, and the use of that word has further cultured us to seeing God as a male figure.

So now we see the problem, but that's where the agreement ends. Various solutions are proposed, including changing the name of God to "She Who Is" in a radical feminist view. I'm not sure, personally, that any change is necessary, except a change in our perception of God.

A few parting thoughts. God is incomprehensible. We will never understand Him in His fullness (yes, I'm using the masculine pronoun again--I have to use something, though), even when we see Him face-to-face. As Creator, God encompasses both genders (He would have to in order to create both, don't you think?). Simply put, He transcends our way of looking at the world and takes it to a whole new level. When we think of God as male, I think we do a disservice to women because we totally neglect His "female" attributes.

The thing is that the image of God as male has been used as an excuse throughout church history to justify the oppression of women. And that's just not good enough. I think we need to think bigger when it comes to our conceptions of who God is, and understand that no matter what creation order implies (nothing at all, to be honest) or who sinned first (again, doesn't matter), both genders are equally culpable for sin, and both are equally capable of full and complete redemption under the blood of Jesus. It's really not more difficult than that. Any theology that uses God's "maleness" to oppress women is no Bible-based theology at all.

Okay, enough already. Thanks for sticking with me through that. Tomorrow, I'll try to keep things at an even keel (I've subjected you to more than enough reading in the last two days). Thanks for stopping by, and I'll see you soon.