God Is Not a White Man

This should be obvious, but I'm not sure it is, and it might even be controversial for me to say this, but: God is NOT a white man. It is true that Jesus, as the incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity, is technically a Caucasian human male, but trust me, He would be stopped for extra security clearance at airports. He would not look European, which is what I feel like a lot of people think "God" looks like. They picture Jesus as this very Germanic-looking young man, and God the Father as an old European male with flowing white hair. I suppose it helps some people to picture God as looking like something they are familiar with, but this isn't as innocuous as it sounds, because I really believe it has led to our culture's enshrinement of white males as the ideal, and the rest of us as somehow less close to the divine ideal, and therefore somehow less human. (If you don't believe me, read Paradise Lost by Milton, which for some odd reason is considered a classic piece of literature, and by his fiftieth reference to how men are between angels and women, while women are between men and beasts, you might understand why women HATE this book.)

God is not human: This should be obvious. Humans are part of Creation, and God is the Creator, so He is not human. We can't even conceive of what exactly He is.

God is not white: I mean, really? God is not limited, so He would not be limited to one race.

God is not male: This one seems a little more problematic, with all the language in the Bible about God the Father and God the Son. I know it is one of the things that has always bothered me about Christianity, but in Catholicism we have sort of done an end run around the issue of not having goddesses for women to relate to by having Mary. Come on, my ladies, don't you all feel closer to Mary than some old dude in the sky? But God is not limited, so He cannot be limited to one gender. Someone teaching a Bible study I once was part of had the best explanation, that for some reason in the human mind, "male" can be either male or female, but "female" denotes only female. This does seem to be true in languages, like the non-gender specific use of "man" in English or "hermanos" in Spanish meaning you have siblings, not necessarily brothers. God would be fully aware of this weakness in us and would relate to us accordingly, so He refers to Himself in the masculine not to have us think He is only masculine, but to keep us from thinking He is only feminine. It hasn't quite worked out that way, because now a lot of humans consider all things divine "masculine," and all things feminine absolutely not divine at all. This has to stop, because it is not what God intended, and it has consequences that have been horrible for people who are not considered fully human because they don't happen to be white males. We are all made "in the image and likeness of God," so let's not ever forget that.

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