Category: Triune God

Categories
poem Triune God

Easy Like Sunday Morning

Apologise to those who also get my Substack posts as I’ve already shared this on there but I like it so thought I’d share it in both places for those who don’t follow me on both.

Also I’m starting a new writing group this Wednesday afternoon where the focus is poetry and so felt sharing a poem all over the place might be a good idea 🙂

About 7.30 am this morning two little egrets and a heron back on the pond in my local regular dog walking park.

I Didn’t Want To Go To Church This Morning

This morning I decided I didn't want to go to church, 
I didn't want to sit in the pew I always sit
talk to those lovely people who sit near me every week. 
I didn't want to listen to the preacher preach their sermon,
even though I know we are blessed with gifted exponents of the Word.
I didn't want to sing the hymns that would fill the church this morning
or smile benevolently when the elderly organist sounded if he was playing in his mittens.
This morning I didn't want to read the remembered liturgy. 

I had a chat to God about it as I walk small dog round the park,
as I thought they needed to know my plan and hear it from my heart.
I paused in our conversation to marvel at the heron and egrets on the pond.
They said it was ok if I didn't want to go today.
They said that it was ok to go with what my heart felt best for me today. 
They said they were glad I was enjoying their creation. 
Then together we wandered round the park some more, 
check in with those I see each morning, 
who also checked I was fine. 

So this morning instead of going to church I've settled down,
a dog on either side of me,
to write some poems and 
enjoy the winter sun shine into my living room
and allow the day to unfurl as the God of the Universe decides for me today.

Interestingly this is today’s Bible verse on Daily Bible Verse. I feel like by bringing them into the conversation I’ve committed what I do to the Lord so …. wonder what today will unfold into?

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Categories
questioning Triune God

Does it really matter?

The grounds of Hawarden Castle. Photographed by myself July 2022

I’ve got an important post to write so I am procrastinating. So this one comes as my not quite so controversial post but still up there.

What does it matter what gender or sexuality God is? Have you ever thought that? Or do you just go along with what you have been conditioned by church and by society?

Jesus calls God Father but was that just to make it easier for people to understand? Would he have made things harder in a male dominated society if he had called God “Parent” rather than Father? Jesus himself compares himself to a mother hen wanting to draw Jerusalem under his wing. Also God made man and woman in their image. It isn’t that man was made in God’s image and woman was anything left over. It says clearly that man and woman were made in God’s image.

I believe “he” is used because of not being able to use “it” as that seems impersonal. Of course now the word for someone not idenitfying solely as male or female is “they”. God is all and so must cover all genders and none so they would be a much better pronoun to use – even if it is confusing after so many hundreds and thousands of years of God being he.

The triune God is not like the gods of Greek, Roman, Norse and other mythologies which have many gods, some male and some female. The triune God covers all genders. It must do otherwise they couldn’t have made man and woman in their image.

But does it really matter? Is it because of something deep within that makes us want to talk to a male god not a female one? Or a transgender one?

Also what about Jesus and his sexuality? In The Last Temptation of Christ there is a controversial scene of Jesus imagining having sex with Mary Magdalene; a temptation he never succumbed to. But what if Jesus was asexual, not interested in sex with either men or women? Or what if he was gay? Perhaps it was because of his asexuality or homosexuality that he was not betrothed at thirty years of age?

But my point here – as well as hopefully making you think – is to wonder why it matters what sex God is, what sexuality Jesus had. Why do people get so upset if one says God might be a woman? or Jesus might be gay?

Surely if God is totally amazing and made the whole universe and made us in their image it shouldn’t matter their sexuality.

Surely if Jesus came to take away our sin and pain and open a doorway back to full relationship with God it should not matter what his sexual leanings were.

Maybe if we could focus on the amazingness of God, of Jesus, of relationship with the triune God and stop worrying what pronoun to call God or who Jesus might or might not have fancied we could get on with loving ourselves and each other fully and stop making judgements.

My challenge to you today it to try to call God “she” or “they” and to try and wonder how Jesus stayed true to himself and resisted the temptation to fit in.