The Battle to Make God Gender-Neutral ------ "ROLLING EYES"

 The Battle to Make God Gender-Neutral – Todd Strandberg - https://www.raptureready.com/category/nearing-midnight/ The Church of England is a shell of itself. England was once the most Christian nation on earth. Today 80% of the youth have no connection to any religion. Many churches thatonce were full of worshippers are now museums. The US is a few decades behind England, but we are rapidly catching up to the UK’s sad state. For decades, the gender of God has prompted debate within the church, with many calling for male pronouns He and Him, as well as a reference to Our Father, to be scrappedin favor of either gender-neutral or female alternatives. If labeling God as a male is bad, it doesn’t make sense to give Him a female name. Having no interest in preaching the message of salvation in Jesus Christ, the Church of England thinks some of its problems are the result of the Bible’s lack of inclusivelanguage. It is absolutely absurd to say a God that refers to Himself as our Father and we are his children is lacking in inclusive language. It is clearly an attack on the male reference to our Creator by reducing Him to the “It God.” The move has been criticized by conservatives, who have warned that “male and female imagery is not interchangeable. However, liberal Christians have welcomed it, claimingthat “a theological misreading of God as exclusively male is a driver of much-continuing discrimination and sexism against women. The Rev Joanna Stobart, from the Diocese of Bath and Wells, asked what steps were being taken to offer congregants alternatives to referring to God with male pronouns andif there was any update “to develop more inclusive language in our authorized liturgy.” She also asked bishops “to provide more options for those who wish to use authorized liturgy and speak of God in a non-gendered way, particularly in authorized absolutionswhere many of the prayers offered for use refer to God using male pronouns.” The Bible uses feminine imagery and metaphors of God but primarily identifies God using masculine pronouns, names, and imagery. Male and female imagery is not interchangeable. The fact that God is called ‘Father’ can’t be substituted by ‘Mother’ without changing meaning, nor can it be gender-neutralized to ‘Parent’ without loss of meaning. Fathersand mothers are not interchangeable but relate to their offspring in different ways. Show me a church that refers to God as a woman, and I’ll show you a church that is overrun with homosexuality, that sides with the left’s political agenda, and believes environmentalismis a way to achieve your eternal salvation. It also has no impact on the world around it. The church used to be a beacon of light to the lost. Now they just reflect the religious fads and trends of the day. Changing the gender of God in the Bible is an admission that the Word of God is full of errors. Scripture contains approximately 170 references to God as the “Father.” Bynecessity, one cannot be a father unless one is male. The New Testament Epistles (from Acts to Revelation) also contain nearly 900 verses where the word theos—a masculine noun in the Greek—is used in direct reference to God. It is blasphemy on the highest level for the Church of England’s General Synod and the Archbishops’ Council to think that they can simply vote to change the Holy word of God.The Bible itself warns that you can’t make edits to the word God. If you do, you’re on your way to hell (Rev 22:18-19). I’m sure the writers of the four gospels and Paul the apostle would be very surprised to find that 2,000 years later, a church body decided that God’s gender was wrong allthis time. With the church age rapidly coming to a close, the leaders of the Church of England will soon find themselves face to face with a Being that reflects his image as He originally intended. Genesis 1:26-27 says, “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock,over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”