so, newsweek had an article on "the women of the bible" this past week, and i just read it. it was very interesting. i think the article was actually written sort of in response to dan brown's uber-hit, the davinci code. reading through the article really helped me cement some ideas in my head that had kind of been wandering around aimlessly.
i don't like referring to God as a "He", or even a "She" (hehe, i've never seen a "she" be capitalized mid-sentence). i have before, i know, and i probably will in the future, because i don't like referring to God as an "It" either. but i'm at a stage where i don't think God's gender matters.
i remember when dogma (kevin smith) first came out, i totally loved it because of the spin it put forth, that i had never considered before: "what if God was a chick?" i mean, it's played so well in dogma: " 'but God is always referred to as a male in the bible' 'which was written by men,' " as sort of the main explanation.
what if this is true? what if (which i think is most likely), God is really androgynous? i believe that God created man and woman equal... each with strengths and weaknesses, so why would He/She/It (whatever.) choose a gender? it just makes more sense in my head that God isn't male or female. i believe that us being two separate genders is another sign of our imperfection, we are unable to exist without each other, perfect in unison. why would God make one gender inferior to
the other? and if God truly made adam the same gender God was, wouldn't that be making adam higher than eve? but i guess that's a different discussion.
so, if God has been turned into a "He" by our patriarchal society, what else has been "male-ified" in the bible? if you've read the davinci code, or are just kinda intelligent, you'd realize, for example, that mary magdalene wasn't really a 'reformed-prostitute,' as many people think of her. could this perception of mary started because some male in the past wanted to diminish her, a woman's, influence? little misconceptions of the bible like this abound, flying like rumors. it wasn't an apple in the garden of evil. the idea of it being an apple just came from milton's 'paradise lost' and in some crazy painting, i don't remember which came first.
anyway, point being, how many people really know what the bible is? i mean, from someone who's dad reads it about a dozen times a year (cover to cover), i can vouch for it's depth. i know that it holds a path to salvation, because i don't think any human, or even the compilation of humans that physically wrote it, could construct such a masterpeice. yeah, it's bloody boring at times, but it's so chock-full of self-referencing, double-entendres, hidden meanings, and symbolism/themes, it would really amaze you.
maybe we have so many things wrong, little things that we take for granted, deriving from things as simple as putting a bit too much meaning where none was inteded. but, while i completely believe it's the right story, i don't believe it's the whole story. i believe that each time it has been translated, revised, what have you, some personal agenda has leaked in, despite the effort. maybe a gospel was left out. maybe this book undermined the power of the church too much. maybe small changes were made that could later be blamed on "errors in transaltion" if ever caught. this is why i believe it's entirely possible that somewhere along the line, "God" became a "He." i think it's entirely possible that Jesus was married to mary magdalene, that it's entirely possible that they had a child. and, like in dogma, i believe it's entirely possible that Jesus was black.
and, after days and days of mulling it all over in my head, i don't think any of it matters. i think that faith is what matters, no matter what you believe of God's gender, or any of these other squabbling details. maybe this was God's plan all along, to allow each of us to construe what it was that we needed to get by, to have faith in a higher power. i'm not even sure if it matters that you believe Jesus died for your sins into heaven... but i'm not sure. i need to re-read the new testament. but, this is just 'cause i'm not sure if i can cope with the fact that God would send over 50% of the world's population to Hell, when so many people in different countries, may never even hear/know about christianity.
interestingly enough, dogma touches on this as well, when Salma Hayek's character says, "It doesn't matter what you have faith in, just that you have faith." ...which also may be possible. i don't know. i'm not sure yet how i can reconcile that thought with Jesus' statement, "no man commeth to the Father but by me."
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