The TruthSayer Foundation

In a world that is obsessed with 'political correctness', it has become 'fashionable' to refer to God as 'she', or 'it'. But what is the correct view of this?

In the Hebrew Bible (and in translations to languages with a she/he dichotomy) God is referred to as "he". God might be a 'He' in the Bible but non-Hebrew-literate individuals do not always know that in Hebrew language, grammatical gender is not an indicator of actual gender. Hebrew nouns have grammatical gender. Each object is masculine or feminine. There are no gender-neutral pronouns in Hebrew, i.e. there is no equivalent of the English "it". Everything is a "he" or a "she".

The spirit of God Ruach Elohim (Genesis 1:2) is a feminine noun. So is the Shekhinah - the Presence of God. Does that mean the Spirit of God and the Presence of God are female?

Take for example the word "animal" - hayyah in Hebrew. Hayyah is a feminine noun. Therefore, by the rules of Hebrew grammar, whenever people speak of a hayyah, they have to refer to it as "she". This does not indicate that the animal in question is actually female.

Since the titles for God in the Hebrew Bible (Elohim, El, Adonai) are masculine nouns, God is called "he". A book sefer is a masculine noun too. So a book is also called "he". God is no more male than a book is male.

In Chinese, a language with gender-neutral pronouns, a special genderless pronoun is used in reference to Divinity (roughly equivalent to IT). When translating the Bible into Chinese, using "he" to reference God was out of the question because the Chinese character for "he" contained the character "human". (Chinese characters are picture-words which may consist of other Chinese characters.) To bring God to the level of man was blasphemous.

Jesus said to the Samaritan woman, "God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." (John 4:24)

Too often, humans have projected their own image of oppressive manhood onto God. People in power (usually men) assume that God must think, act and feel the way they do, and less powerful minorities often respond by rejecting God when what they really have issue with is not God but the majority-sanctioned ideas of God. Insisting that God's personality and preferences mirrors that of humans (or at least the men of more privileged classes), is at best, making the mistake that Luther believed Erasmus was making at the time he told Erasmus, "Your God is too human", or worse, committing idolatry by casting God in man's image.