triune – Aspirational Adventures

Conwy Beach, 7.10am 6th Sept 2023. Photographed by myself

[This is the first of some more following on from discussions with a friend who stayed with us over the last weekend. She is exploring her faith and asking those “awkward” questions]

I love a good sunrise. It always fills me with hope for the day ahead. Here on this deserted beach yesterday, even though there was a busy day ahead I was filled with hope.

Hope in what you may ask. Well just hope of a great big God, of a great big world, that all my needs would be provided for the day, that I would not walk alone, just hope

I was reading Creed: reexamined beliefs just now. In this Fiona talks about whether what we believe really does bring wholeness to us and to the world. The part that jumped out at me was the bit about Hope and I will requote her quote

“The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.”
Barbarba Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

As Christians what do we hope for? I mean not what do we say we hope for but what do we really hope for? Does what come out of our mouths echo what is in our hearts?

Things like do we really believe in going to be with God when we die? Do we really believe God is with us in all that we do? Do we really know we can call on the Holy Spirit whenever and they will be there?

It seems to me that there are a lot of people who still would say they are Christians who don’t go to church but are exploring the things they were brought up with. Things just don’t “work” for them. For instance how can God be a God of love if certain denominations tell us to hate people who are not heterosexual, not living the lives from that denominations view point. How can the Holy Spirit be there to guide us if we look so glum, worry about death so much, are anxious, are fearful, greedy, don’t ask for help? Etc etc.

If we aren’t living the basics – God, as in the whole full Triune God, is love, loves us unconditionally, and is there for us always – do we really believe what we then try to tell others?

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.