‘Our Parent in Heaven’: Liberals push for a gender-neutral God
At a time when Church membership has hit an all-time low in the Western world, it might seem odd that Christian leaders appear more determined than ever to alienate what’s left of their dwindling flock through woke nonsense.
In December, for example, the Dean of Trinity College left an assembly of worshippers in tears after he argued that the body of Jesus Christ appeared to be “trans.” Part of the reasoning was due to the wound on his side, made by a Roman spear as the son of God hung dying on the cross, which had a “decidedly vaginal appearance.” I will let the reader make of that what they will.
Now, not to be outdone as far as possible heresies go, the Church of England, under pressure from liberal Christians, is considering declaring God gender-neutral. In other words, no more ‘Our Father’ in the Lord’s prayer, while ‘God the Father’ will be a meaningless ‘they’ or ‘them’. This may require some divine intervention, since the very first words of the Old Testament are ‘B’reshit bara Elohim’ – ‘In the beginning God created’. The verb bara (created) agrees with a masculine singular subject. Could it be the case that the Bible – the very word of God – got it all wrong?
It is important to be clear about one thing: The very foundation of the Christian faith rests on the idea of the Holy Trinity – the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. To ignore that millennia-old teaching is to ignore the very essence of the entire Bible.
Rev Ian Paul, a member of the General Synod and the Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England, cautioned against any retreat from the original scriptures, saying:
“The fact that God is called ‘Father’ can’t be substituted by ‘Mother’ without changing meaning, nor can it be gender-neutralized to ‘Parent’ without loss of meaning. Fathers and mothers are not interchangeable but relate to their offspring in different ways.
“If the Liturgical Commission seeks to change this, then in an important way they will be moving the doctrine of the Church away from being grounded in the Scriptures,” he added.
Indeed, terms like ‘Father’ and ‘Mother’ have long been used as a metaphorical way of relating to things that no mere mortal will be able to completely fathom. Earth, for example, has long been depicted as feminine – ‘Mother Earth’ – to better appreciate the bounty and plentitude of its life-bearing gifts.
In his poem, ‘Mother Earth’, Henry Van Dyke wrote:
Mother of all the high-strung poets and singers departed,
Mother of all the grass that weaves over their graves the glory of the field,
Mother of all the manifold forms of life, deep-bosomed, patient, impassive,
Silent brooder and nurse of lyrical joys and sorrows!
In a sense, that is exactly what the liberals are destroying with their incessant desire to wreak havoc on language – the poetical attachment that human beings give to things that are far beyond their limited abilities to comprehend. Now they have taken their mission straight to the pearly gates of heaven, and I’m guessing St. Peter won’t be answering their calls anytime soon. The same thing could be said, by the way, for many of the people who make up the Church of England. After all, it seems to have escaped everyone’s attention that at the same time the woke crusaders invade the sanctity of the church, turning tradition on its head, worshippers are increasingly absent from the pews. Just a coincidence?
This would be a good time for the Church to push back against the idea that people can readily change what the good Lord created. At the same time that some people want to make God gender-neutral, – incidentally, and perhaps coincidentally, one notable unholy deity that has been depicted as ‘gender neutral’ to date is Baphomet, who has acquired a new following in the West of late – there are young children being taught in the classroom that they might have been born into the wrong body. This places them on the path to undergo medical operations to change what many people believe was God’s work.
The Church should seize this moment when so many people are confused over their identity and stand firm on the identity of the supreme creator. Let the next generation of youth understand that there are some things in this world that should never be changed.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
