I wonder, am I fighting the good fight, or is it a hopeless fight....

Some comments from the sermon today....

"Jesus taught us to pray, Abba, Poppa, father...." "This prayer is one of submission, recognizing who has ownership in our lives. so when we pray, Abba, Poppa we are giving ourselves recognizing that we are a possession of our heavenly father." on and on and on.

Not bad in theory, eh? Let's look at what he more than likely was attempting to say. Jesus taught us to pray intimately with God recognizing that the term, "father" in his culture provoked an emotion of intimacy and relationship. It was quite radical from the pharasaic understanding of a vengeful rule crazy deity. We have given ourselves up to that relationship when we become a follower of Christ, we offer ourselves to God and allow God to do as God chooses with our lives becasue we want to be submissive to God's will.

However, the implications of allowing God to take on the personality of an actual "Father," that we are to consider ourselves a possession of perpetuates a male heirarchy in the church. I'm not saying the idea of the sermon was bad, it's not that I am opposing The Lord's Prayer. However, this lack of attention of terminology and implication is just infuriating. If the educated people in the pulpit can't get on board with equality, how will it ever infiltrate into the congregation? Why can't we see God as genderless? why must it be always male, becasue it's easy, it's tradition, it's heresy to claim otherwise? None of those are valid excuses.

I had a professor state the other day that using gender neutral terminology was not always the best course of action for the audience. It makes the flow of the sermon unsteady and most of the time people will be resistant to hearing female pronouns and so it is best to just stick with male.....that's right folks, my seminary professor.

Nevermind the desire to experince God in God's entirety, we'll just stick with what we've always known and continue to re-enforce the hierarchy, it'll make it real easy for women to continue considering working in the church where their male colleages take on the same characteristics as the God they serve......I just can't believe that the same Sunday i heard this sermon, my friend, a woman, is candidating to be a pastor. She has been struggling for a year now for someone to recognize her God given pastoral authority just becasue she has breasts and a vagina. When the truth of the matter is she is more education and intelligent than most of the jackweeds currently occupying a pulpit. And we wonder why? who supports these ideas, especially in the church of God where there is supposed equality. It's becasue of shit like this, careless, thoughtless, narrow planning and lack of attention to the matter. There are a hundred differnt ways he could have prepared this sermon that could have made the same point without encouraging or advocating for a male God figure.....

If this sounds angry and bitter, it is, I am bitter. I've been kidding myself thinking I can serve a church that claims equality on their website but screams hierarchy from the pulpit.