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John chapter 14: God the Father: 23 times, God the Mother: 0, God the Parent: 0

7/1/2018

2 Comments

 
(The following article was written a few weeks ago by Rev. Tom Brock of pastorsstudy.org. You can follow Pastor Brock on Facebook - here and Twitter - here.)

Today in my morning devotions I read the beautiful chapter John 14, famous for "In my Father's house are many mansions." I noticed God is called "Father" 23 times. Jesus not once here nor anywhere calls God "Mother" or "Parent". Contrast Jesus' words with the liturgist who opened chapel at Luther Seminary, a seminary of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, with the words "We open our service in the name of the Parent..." A transgender pastor at Luther chapel told the congregation to pray the Lord's Prayer "the way you are comfortable with" and then led "Our Mother in heaven." Another Luther Seminary chapel service had a male quartet sing the 23rd Psalm which was changed to read "The Lord is my Shepherd I shall not want, She makes me lie down in green pastures, She leads me beside still waters, She restoreth my soul..." And all the Psalms of the official hymnal of the ELCA have been de-sexed to get rid of masculine pronouns for God.
 
Does it not strike as arrogant that the ELCA thinks it has the right to change the Bible's language for God? Do they know better than Jesus Christ? Can they improve upon His words?
 
It is a beautiful teaching, especially for those who had an unloving, earthly father, that we have a loving, Heavenly Father. Jesus Himself gave us this teaching, and, no, we are not free to change it, nor should we want to.
 
In Christ,
 
Pastor Tom Brock


2 Comments
Didaskalos
7/4/2018 06:28:52 am

Jesus speaking of His Father in John 8:55 --

"But you have not known Him. I know Him. If I were to say that I do not know Him, I would be a liar like you, but I do know Him and I keep His word."

Any denomination that arrogates to itself the "right" to change the Son of God's descriptions of His Father should soberly consider if it has any acquaintance with either Jesus or His Father.

Reply
Steve Hedlund
7/9/2018 10:36:01 am

They all claim to be somehow "de-sexing" God or something like that. They don't seem to realize that more fundamentally they are de-personalizing him. One cannot imagine a personality without first assigning sex to that personality. There is no such thing a personality without sex. Its sex is the most distinguishing characteristic of any personality. The only things that come close are age and race. Just listen to any police report looking for and describing a suspect. It will typically say they are looking, for example, for a white male in his thirties, or something like that. To imagine any personality is first to imagine a man or a woman, a boy or a girl. "Parent," for another example, doesn't describe any personality, but one of two personalities (we human creatures all have two "parents"), and to know which one of the two is at issue, one needs first of all to know the sex.

Many of today's enlightened teachers "know" that referring to God in masculine terms is dated at best, and that he shouldn't be thought of or spoken of in masculine terms (it is also sad that the English language has also been affected first by confusing sex with gender and then opting to combine the two concepts using the word for "gender" for both of them).

They seem to claim that they all have a better grasp on Yahweh than those of earlier, more primitive times. Worse: they seem to claim that we get to imagine God according to our own proclivities, regardless of revelation, and that our imaginations will give us better understandings-- at least for "us."

My response is that on the mountain Moses saw God and spoke with him, and Moses referred to God in masculine terms. On account Moses' encounter with the Holy One, his whole countenance was so bright that they had to put a bag over his head, just to be able to look at him.

Until we have to put bags over the heads of our present day enlightened ones on account of the brilliance of their enlightenment, I'm going with Moses.

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  • Home
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