Must God Be a He-Man?

“Christians go crazy if you question that God is a he,” said the first big-deal person in Christian publishing to read the manuscript of my book, I’m OK–You’re Not: The Message We’re Sending Nonbelievers and Why We Should Stop. He was advising me to cut the passage below from that book’s introduction.

“Really?” I said. “But no one thinks God has an a gender, right?”

“Trust me on this,” he said. “The average Christian reader cannot tolerate anything but God being male.”

I acquiesced, and cut the passage from the book. What did I know about the average Christian reader?

Since then, however, I’ve sometimes wondered about the veracity of that person’s assertion.

The text below does not appear in the published version of  I’m OK–You’re Not. It’s hardly a big deal—but every once in a while I find myself wondering to what extent the “average Christian reader” would, in fact, find the following offensive:

Throughout this book I stick with the convention of referring to God as if he were … well, a “he.” I don’t particularly like doing that; I’m not a huge fan of the whole Big Bearded Guy in the Sky model of God. And I know most people aren’t; I know that most all of us are attuned to the idea that God is hardly, shall we say, gonadally defined. But when you’re writing about God (in English, anyway), you’re basically stuck having to Pick A Gender. So I went with the conventional “he” and “him” and “Big Daddy,” and . . . well, I actually never use “Big Daddy.” But you get the idea.

If my herein going with Manly God Talk offends anyone, please do forgive me, and know that (hairy, testosterone-addled guy that, sadly, I am) I’m extremely sensitive to what I believe is that perfectly valid point of concern. Here’s hoping that eventually we evolve some gender-neutral … well, pronouns, basically. If anyone’s into developing or promoting that sort of thing, please give me a call if you think I might be able to help. Because I’d try, for sure.

Anyway, that’s what I was told I had to cut from my book. I wish I hadn’t (though I’m pretty sure I couldn’t have stopped the publisher from cutting it anyway—yet another reason I’m so happy to now be self-publishing).