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From: rlr@pyuxn.UUCP (Rich Rosen)
Newsgroups: net.religion,net.women
Subject: Re: the gender of God
Message-ID: <983@pyuxn.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 15-Aug-84 09:43:54 EDT
Article-I.D.: pyuxn.983
Posted: Wed Aug 15 09:43:54 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 16-Aug-84 02:27:00 EDT
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> The problem I have with the current trend toward calling God "he" and/or
> "she", "father and mother" or "parent".  Is that it seems to tear God
> apart as a person.  We are used to thinking of male and female as
> two *separate* persons, but God just isn't that way.  Even words like
> "parent" and "person" tend to depersonalize God.  

I thought god was "depersonalized".  Is it (if it exists) a person?  Then why
make it out to be so?  This may be just the anthropocentric view based on
an individual need to feel closer to a deity, but that doesn't change what the
deity would be.  Just because one wants to think of god as a person doesn't
make god into a person, nor does it give something that's supposed to be
beyond our comprehension a gender, an age, or a hairstyle (e.g., old man with a
beard).

> I think it bends our concept of God more toward pantheism ...

Isn't imposing human characteristics on a deity bending the reality of god?
Is "our concept of god" more important (and unflinching) than what that god
really might be?

> When we remove the necesity of abstract thinking, in
> this case by changing our language, we end up with something in our
> language that is further removed from what it actually is.  Are we sure that
> what what we are trying to do is not to fashion God in our own image?

I would have thought that the reverse would be true, that fashioning a deity
in our own image is what's been going on for thousands of years.
-- 
"Now, Benson, I'm going to have to turn you into a dog for a while."
"Ohhhh, thank you, Master!!"			Rich Rosen    pyuxn!rlr