Why God Calls Himself a HE?

PART II

 

In The Shack, which the author shares some very interesting insights, he addressed this issue of why God assigns a masculine gender to Himself in the Bible. He said the reason God did it was because He knew fathers would be the ones to fail more in their roles than the mothers and the majority of people would need a father, thus He took on the role.

If you haven’t read The Shack and plan to you may not want to read any further – I would hate to spoil it for you.

In the beginning, the main character, Mack, meets God as three people representing the trinity; God as a woman, Christ as a man, and the Holy Spirit as a woman. The God character said she came to Mack as someone he could accept so he would be open to what she had to say because Mack had negative experiences with his father. In the end, she changed into a man – when Mack could accept God as his father as well. I believe the author made a good point. God is spirit – not a gender. He can come in any form He chooses. However, He chose to be a masculine figure in the Bible for a reason – some of which I mentioned in my previous post.

Bottom line. God wants us to draw near to Him so that He is first in our hearts. He designed a world to teach us spiritual truths. And one of those truths is how to relate and build intimacy with Him. Describing Himself as our husband and father was designed to do just that.