Does God have boobies?

Sorry for the provocative title, but this article begs that question. I like these emails I get from "Gifted For Leadership" about women in ministry and leadership. They always provide good food for thought as I try to navigate this unpaved and rocky road. It's really an issue I've been struggling with. In my family, women are strong, educated, speak their minds, but still fulfill traditional roles (staying home with children, providing the cooking and cleaning, etc.) and defer to men in many ways. I'm certainly not saying there's anything wrong with that, I'm just trying to figure out how well that picture fits me and the way I was made.

In my quest to grasp what God intended when he created two genders (right, like I can grasp that. I can try, though) I keep coming back to the fact that both genders equally represent him. In the article I linked to above, the author says this about trying to fit into her self-made definitions of being female:

The prophets saw this. They were the mouthpiece of a God described as a mother, as a lover, as a risk-taker. They embraced the mystery that God couldn’t fit into our pre-designed social categories for gender. This seems so much harder for us. We love our boxes and the chance to say, “See, I fit inside this box. Therefore, I am feminine.” We are created in God’s image, our minds, bodies, our feminine essence. This is the beauty of mystery. And this is the challenge we face as women of God.

This blows my mind. Mother? Lover? Risk-taker? Which gender is that? God IS equally male and female, he is our mother and our father, he is our disciplinarian and our comforter, he is our provider and our nurturer... does God have boobies? What will he look like when we meet him? What will he sound like? Will he have.. I just noticed I keep saying he... is he a HE? Or did we choose to use that word way back when because the original language used the male pronouns as a default? See where my mind goes?!

This reminds me of an early moment in therapy with my counselor, Paula, when I was struggling to figure out what it meant to be me. "I feel like Martha Stewart half the time, baking, cooking, creating, organizing, and Tim the Tool Man Taylor, painting, refinishing, building, constructing, etc. Which one am I? How do I choose one?" Paula replied, "Who said you have to choose only one?" Talk about a freeing moment! It's ok for me to be out of the box, to equally value nail enamel and wall enamel, santuko knives and compound miter saws.

So God made two genders. If we equally represent the image God on earth, why don't we equally represent the image of God in the church? Does anyone else feel slighted? For those of us only hearing from men on Sunday mornings, we could use some balance, some feminine perspective! What would it look like to have women and men pastoring together, some sermons fromw women, some sermons from men? Wouldn't that be more well-rounded? If he felt it necessary to create TWO genders, that one wasn't enough to give a good enough picture of him, why do we strive to carry on the curse of men-ruling-over-women? Why can't we all just get along? See each other as crucial to our understanding of God? And encourage each other to be as manly as men can be, as womanly as women can be, in whatever ways he has made us, to fulfill and display the image of our creator? And for those of you whom this bothers, why is it bothering you? Do you feel threatened? Do you feel grateful to not be in leadership, so why rock the boat, Kath? What triggers does this pull in you, dear reader?