Yesterday, we introduced one of the arguments presented by popular feminist theo-ideology, namely that God would be quite happy with us if we "finally" moved "beyond patriarchy" and adopted a system of gender equality or, better yet, completely genderless existence, where we are all simply human in the eyes of God and neither male nor female.
One of the problems with that, of course, is that God has always called Himself our Father. It's hard to believe that a God who has invested so much of His energies into convincing us that He is our Father and we are His children would have a master plan whereby we no longer live in a patriarchy.
It's hard to believe, but it's even harder to conceive...because such an idea creates some very significant theological problems.
The argument, or one of the arguments, is that the language God uses in the Bible has been given to us because it is language that we will understand. In other words, because our societies were patriarchal, God used the language of patriarchy to illustrate for us what our relationship with Him, and His relationship with us, is like. When we actually come to know God, it won't be like that at all; we cannot presently even fathom what God, or our relationship with Him, is like - we don't have human words for it.
On the surface, that may sound like a pretty good argument. God is so much bigger than us, we can't possibly understand, so He always puts things in our words so that we can at least begin to imagine.
But here's one problem with that argument: if God gives us Himself in terms that we will understand by the very nature of the world that we live in, a world that is somehow contrary to what God seeks for us, then our world 1) did not come from God, for He would not give us a system that He didn't approve of and 2) must either pre-date God or arise completely out of His power, which calls into question His eternal nature and/or His power. He didn't order the world, but He used it...He's not Creator; He's...an egotist. He only wants us to recognize Him as an afterthought, without making Himself central to our very world.
It's basic logic. If God is only using what we know because it's the best that we have, then God didn't intend or design it this way, which means that we did, which means that we did something without God. And all of a sudden, who is this God anyway? We have done one thing without Him, which means we can do other things without Him, which means we are simply creating Him in our image as we go along and attributing our creating to our creation.
We're lying to ourselves.
Here's another problem with that argument: if God only gives us Himself in measures that we can understand by our own earthly systems and societies, what can we ever possibly know for sure or for real about God? Nothing at all.
If God is a Father only because we recognize patriarchy as a familiar system, then God may not actually be a Father at all. If He is not a Father, He may not discipline us. If He is not a Father, He may not love us. There is absolutely no reliable way for us to know anything at all about God if His revelation is only ever given on our own terms; there has to be a reference point somewhere. Otherwise, everything we think we know is nothing but a shadow of a figment of our own imaginations. Again, we're making Him up as we go along.
We're lying to ourselves.
The only way for God to be who He says He is and to reveal Himself as such is for Him to make such revelations on His own terms, and this is what Christianity (and Judaism) from the very beginning have always believed (until recently, when all this feminist junk...and others...started to move in). God reveals Himself as Father because He is a Father - He loves us, disciplines us, trains us, cares for us, begets us.
And then He gave us a system of patriarchy so that we would understand what He means when He calls Himself, "Father." He gave us patriarchy so we would understand what having a Father really means. It's another part of the creation that reveals to us our Creator, given to us in words we understand because it is His system, not because it is ours. He came first, not us. It was His idea to weave into creation the threads of patriarchy so that we could begin to know, begin to fathom, begin to imagine His very heart.
We can't do that without an order to the universe that tells us what a Father is.
So when we start to make nonsensical arguments like how thrilled God is that we "finally" break free of this "patriarchy" junk, we are saying that God is not our Father, that we can actually know nothing about Him, that He neither created nor ordered this world, and that what is important to Him is our allegiances, not our love...or His.
In other words, we're lying to ourselves.
One of the problems with that, of course, is that God has always called Himself our Father. It's hard to believe that a God who has invested so much of His energies into convincing us that He is our Father and we are His children would have a master plan whereby we no longer live in a patriarchy.
It's hard to believe, but it's even harder to conceive...because such an idea creates some very significant theological problems.
The argument, or one of the arguments, is that the language God uses in the Bible has been given to us because it is language that we will understand. In other words, because our societies were patriarchal, God used the language of patriarchy to illustrate for us what our relationship with Him, and His relationship with us, is like. When we actually come to know God, it won't be like that at all; we cannot presently even fathom what God, or our relationship with Him, is like - we don't have human words for it.
On the surface, that may sound like a pretty good argument. God is so much bigger than us, we can't possibly understand, so He always puts things in our words so that we can at least begin to imagine.
But here's one problem with that argument: if God gives us Himself in terms that we will understand by the very nature of the world that we live in, a world that is somehow contrary to what God seeks for us, then our world 1) did not come from God, for He would not give us a system that He didn't approve of and 2) must either pre-date God or arise completely out of His power, which calls into question His eternal nature and/or His power. He didn't order the world, but He used it...He's not Creator; He's...an egotist. He only wants us to recognize Him as an afterthought, without making Himself central to our very world.
It's basic logic. If God is only using what we know because it's the best that we have, then God didn't intend or design it this way, which means that we did, which means that we did something without God. And all of a sudden, who is this God anyway? We have done one thing without Him, which means we can do other things without Him, which means we are simply creating Him in our image as we go along and attributing our creating to our creation.
We're lying to ourselves.
Here's another problem with that argument: if God only gives us Himself in measures that we can understand by our own earthly systems and societies, what can we ever possibly know for sure or for real about God? Nothing at all.
If God is a Father only because we recognize patriarchy as a familiar system, then God may not actually be a Father at all. If He is not a Father, He may not discipline us. If He is not a Father, He may not love us. There is absolutely no reliable way for us to know anything at all about God if His revelation is only ever given on our own terms; there has to be a reference point somewhere. Otherwise, everything we think we know is nothing but a shadow of a figment of our own imaginations. Again, we're making Him up as we go along.
We're lying to ourselves.
The only way for God to be who He says He is and to reveal Himself as such is for Him to make such revelations on His own terms, and this is what Christianity (and Judaism) from the very beginning have always believed (until recently, when all this feminist junk...and others...started to move in). God reveals Himself as Father because He is a Father - He loves us, disciplines us, trains us, cares for us, begets us.
And then He gave us a system of patriarchy so that we would understand what He means when He calls Himself, "Father." He gave us patriarchy so we would understand what having a Father really means. It's another part of the creation that reveals to us our Creator, given to us in words we understand because it is His system, not because it is ours. He came first, not us. It was His idea to weave into creation the threads of patriarchy so that we could begin to know, begin to fathom, begin to imagine His very heart.
We can't do that without an order to the universe that tells us what a Father is.
So when we start to make nonsensical arguments like how thrilled God is that we "finally" break free of this "patriarchy" junk, we are saying that God is not our Father, that we can actually know nothing about Him, that He neither created nor ordered this world, and that what is important to Him is our allegiances, not our love...or His.
In other words, we're lying to ourselves.
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