Another Sunday . . .

Q: How do you make God laugh?

A: Tell Him your plans.

Good one, eh? Funny, clever, thought-provoking. The thing I really don't like is that in order for the joke to flow, it needs the masculine pronoun in the answer. Actually, the feminine one would flow as well, but nothing gender-neutral does. I tried the answer as 'Tell God your plans', but that didn't work either.

The way that language defines the way we think, what we think and how we think it has been a matter of discussion for years and years. In '1984', Orwell posited a government-run project to prune the language of 'unneccessary' words. If there is no word for 'treason', you can't commit it. If there is no word for 'love', you can't fall into it. This pronoun thing is another straitjacket which seems to me to be invisible to everyone interested in matters religious. Except me, of course.

All they (the ones in charge) ever do is brush the issue aside with a reference to ?*. Great - one biblical reference to counterbalance acres of masculine pronouns. And the others (the willing participants) just tell you of course they know God is both, or rather, neither, male and female but it's simply convenient usage.

But I can't discard the notion that anyone who doesn't question this, au fond only ever believes in an old man with a long white beard, which is demeaning to all parties. Every time I hear it I run into a perceptual blank wall and I stop thinking and start fuming. I don't know how to get over this hurdle.

* I have no idea what the verse is, something to do with God being one's father and mother, but I have just spent an hour searching Wikipedia, online concordances and discussion sites, and can't find a thing. (A whole hour! When I could have been playing Scrabble online!) Anyone out there know what I am talking about?