神様

#410 I’ve been thinking about how we address and refer to #God. It was brought to my attention that I have a tendency to use male pronouns for God…it’s what many of us have been #socialised into but, whilst the English language doesn’t make it easy, referring to God as #male denies part of the #personhood of God. Male AND female were made in the image of God, only recognising God as male in my mind seems to deny part of God. On the other hand switching between male and female pronouns seems to add to my confusion. I’ve wondered about using ‘they’ which perhaps misleads the discussion towards something more polytheistic…not the intention! I decided to go back to Japanese, which at times is very helpful. Firstly the #Japaneselanguage tends to avoid pronouns where possible, and rather uses names. Equally titles, other than for young children, are not gender specific: san is used for men and women, as is sama – a more polite version of san. My #japanesecalligraphy skills have produced a clumsy version of a name for God: kami sama…a name which is neither male or female. In an effort to more accurately represent God, I may well take a lead from Japanese and just use God’s name – #Yahweh, #Hashem, #Creator, #Redeemer…it’s hard to change the #habit of a lifetime though!! Any thoughts?