God is a Genderfluid Being
FINN FUNSTON
When I was a kid up until I started really being exposed to the world, I saw the world as black and white. Right and wrong. Boy and girl. The thing is, that isn’t how our world works. God has created a lot of grays in our world, and if God is willing to make spectrums for colors, then why would we assume that it is any different for other things?
When I was in high school, I started seeing God’s world the way that it really is. I had just come out to myself as gay and transgender, and I was doing away with some of the harmful ideologies that my church and Christian school had instilled in me. I was opening myself up to new ideas about the world and my faith, and I was finding things that I really agreed with. I had grown up learning that God was Abba, Father, He, and any other term that may represent a father figure and a man. God had a gender, and he was a male! Any other gender for God was just flat-out wrong. Besides, I hadn’t learned about non-binary or intersex people yet, and I didn’t understand that sometimes, people aren’t all male or all female. As I got more involved in the LGBT+ community and learned more about the different letters of LGBT+, I began to understand better that there were people out there that were less black and white and more gray.
For those who may not know, people who are genderfluid or non-binary don’t identify with the normal gender norms that society has placed on gender. Sometimes, these people identify as either gender, both genders, no genders, or they change from day to day. For people who are intersex, they are born with characteristics that do not typically fit into the stereotypes of being male and female. One of the biggest arguments that I hear against people who are transgender is the fact that there are only two genders. While people are typically only born male or female, there are people who don’t perfectly fit into either category. I feel that this is one of the many grays that God has created, whether people are okay with it or not.
I began my transition towards a more genderfluid God when some of my gay Chrisitan friends introduced me to “God is a Woman” by Ariana Grande. I know, not exactly the most Christian thing to admit, but it’s true. That song got me thinking about how I perceived God, and I began to realize that God can be whoever I want them to be (in a way). I could see God as a female if I wanted to. The thing is, God is never really described in the Bible. Sure, it talks about the characteristics of God, but their appearance was never really described. Humans were made in God’s image, but each of us are unique in our own ways. God could look like any one of us or all of us. This is why I don’t really believe that God has a gender. I think that God is a they. I believe that God can be perceived however you see fit. What is important is that you don’t let God’s appearance get in the way of your faith. In the long run, it shouldn’t matter what pronouns God uses or what color their (possible) skin is. (Who is to say that God even has skin like you and I?) What is important is your walk in faith with him. I think that what matters most is that God wants us to accept others and appreciate the spectrums that he has created in his world.
Finn Funston is a sophomore elementary education major at Bradley University. He started attending Imago last year and has loved it ever since. He is currently studying from his home in St. Louis with his huge family and can’t wait to get back to Peoria to see his church family again.