Fear of the Feminine

Apparently, my gender is of great concern to some people.  Let me explain.

There was a moment in class that I found distressing the other day.  In my worship class, we were talking about using inclusive language for God.  In the midst of the conversation, a student raised his hand and expressed feeling at an impasse because, "We can't make everyone happy by calling God 'Father;' but, I mean, we just CAN'T start calling God 'Mother.'  That's just not possible."  Reading that doesn't do that comment justice--I wish you could've heard the sound of this student's voice:  it was a gross mix of terror and disgust, as if calling God 'Mother' would be akin to calling God 'The Cosmic Charles Manson.'

And these feelings of distress coming from a woman who is, frankly, quite comfortable with her Father God.  Despite the best efforts of some of my colleagues, utilizing masculine gendered pronouns for God is important to me.  I know God as Father, and I'm okay with that.  In fact, I like it that way.

But I don't think it would be distasteful to frame God as feminine.  And, frankly, theologically speaking, I think it would be problematic to frame my thoroughly Reformed, and perhaps "wholly other," God as solely one gender or the other.  In the end, the class I was in decided that it wasn't impossible to use feminine pronouns for God.  Nodding solemnly, the class decided that maybe we could talk about Mother God as long it was accompanied by a "tremendous amount of education."

This, friends, is where I'm befuddled.  Why is it so awfully problematic to use the word "mother" and feminine pronouns when it comes to the divine?  Why would the invocation of femininity require education that is so painfully apologetic (where 'apology', in this sense, refers to 'an expression of remorse')?  And if the concept of gendering God is so problematic, why do we not provide a "tremendous amount of education" when we use Father language for God?

I mean, I get the power of tradition.  I don't want to demean the influence of the history of Western Christianity and its conception of a gendered God.  I also get the power of scripture and its unequivocally masculine pronoun-ed God.  I spend hours every week immersed in Hebrew scriptures, and know that both "Elohim" and "Adonai" (the Tetragrammaton) speak, create, and love in the 3rd masculine singular.  But I wish there was a happier medium, where we could reconcile the tradition and scripture of Christianity in a way that honors experiences of God that are, perhaps, differently gendered.  And in the end, I just wish that I didn't have to listen to my peers talk about the union of the words "mother," "She," "Her", & "God" with fear on their faces and disgust in their voices.