THREAD: Recently, there’s been a little stir among some of my friends on Twitter about gendered language for God. It’s funny to me that those reject feminine language for God do so on the basis of how the Bible talks of God. I wonder if these people have actually read it...
Masculine metaphors for God (eg Father, King) are appropriate and helpful but not the only ones we can use to speak of the divine. Feminine metaphors are also helpful. In fact, the Bible uses A LOT of them, which is something I point out in #speakgodbook (amazon.com/Learning-Speak…) 
If you’re a part of a “Bible-believing” church, you’ve probably never heard a single sermon based on one of these Bible passages even though your pastor claims to preach “the whole counsel of God.” Chew on that for a moment...
It’s shocking that the Bible—written during deeply patriarchal times—manages to speak of God’s breasts and womb and to image the divine w/ raw feminine language. It’s also shocking that people who claim to believe the “capital-T truth” of the Bible skip over whole swaths of it.
Those who want their faith to reflect the teachings of the whole counsel of the Bible should take note. As Augustine said, God is Father— but also like a Mother who feeds her earthly children with heavenly food. We declare such a thing BECAUSE of the Bible, not in spite of it.
Btw, if you claim to be “born again” you are already using a feminine metaphor for the divine even if you didn’t realize it. ;)
