The nature of God in relation to women.

Soooo... on a religious note...

I have been doing a lot of soul searching lately and have pondered a few things that have some effect on my view of religion. What that effect is, has yet to be known. A big part of that is the nature of God (what better place to start?) and the idea of the Devine Feminine.

First off, I do not feel that as a women I am any less or any more than any man in God's eyes simply because I am a woman. If I were it would be inherently unjust and if God is unjust he simply cannot be God etc etc etc. That being said, apples and oranges and all that jazz. I understand that men and women are different and hard to compare...  they are very unique. Though I don't think it's hard to tell when a person or an organization has a preference for one over the other.

I feel that if God is in fact male he needs to have a female counterpart to allow him to understand his female creations. How else would an exclusively male god empathize with childbirth or the emotional struggle that many women have when they cannot carry a child to term? I have to keep in mind that the term "God" is not a gendered term, it is a station that does not indicate gender. Much like "teacher" or "CEO". For this reason when I am asked to pray in public I refer to my god as simply "God" to acknowledge that many in attendance may view God as male, but also to not feel as though I'm being untrue to myself in referring to God in the exclusively male form.

As an LDS person I have been taught predominately to pray and think of God as a male ie "Heavenly Father" ... I don't think it could get much clearer! :) But it is considered part of the LDS faith that we have a female part to our "eternal family" if you will. I think that many downplay this within the Faith. In fact I was saddened by the limited acknowledgment of Her in the new Gospel Principles handbook, especially in regard to the lesson titled "Our Eternal Family". In reading it I felt as though the majority of the lesson was about a single father. Yes, I will acknowledge that it did say "heavenly parents" twice so she wasn't completely excluded. i'm thankful for that. At other times I have noticed that within the limited acknowledgment that is within the Church this divine feminine is not capitalized ei Heavenly Father and heavenly mother. I don't know if this is just a holdover from the past ie polygamy and the acceptance of many wives, or if it is an oversight. (I hope for the later, I admittedly have issues with the concept of Polygamy but that is a whole other post in itself )

Anyhow, I found an article recently that absolutely enthralled me. It is written from an LDS perspective and takes into account Hebrew translations of the bible etc... and it also comes at the idea from a scholarly angle, which I appreciate, but often goes above my head! So if you are interested here is a link to it.