“We will approach God as an equal and not as an idol. For all the idolatry of masculine language that goes on among conservative men, it is worth a radical woman’s making the approach without changing the genders: it is precisely a refutation of male authority.” Catherine Masden

When encountering the spiritual issue of divine-human transference by women, one must counsel delicately, being certain to probe into the sensitive areas of past experience even as far as the developmental years to open counselee for an unimaginable divine resolution. According to Proverbs 20:27, the human spirit is the tool God uses to search out the roots of our own desires. Beginning with an understanding that God has chosen to engage the human spirit in a dialog in order to come to acceptance of the true state of self, the counselor facilitating the conversation between counselee and God must encourage self-processing and realization as much as possible. However, in the female specific gender issue of transferring and intimate male relationship gone awry onto the personhood of Jesus, thus hindering closeness and desire for Jesus (perhaps even obedience), the counselor may find themselves engaging God on behalf of the counselee, speaking words which the woman finds herself unable to utter because of her utter distaste for masculinity.

The issue described as “divine-human” transference is definable through several different perspectives: (1) either a young woman grew up with the absence a nurturing father figure in her life, (2) her present father figure was abusive, or (3) she experience some other sort of trauma involving the male gender to such an extent that any thought of closeness with anything masculine is detestable. When Paul encourages his readers to live at peace with all men as much as they were able (Romans 12:14), this includes the forgiveness of personal wrongs by “enemies,” even if those enemies were intimately connected to us (Matthew 5:44-45), inflicting scars upon our very souls that will never fully disappear. God has a specific purpose in mind by including so much father-son instruction in the book, often speaking directly to fathers about their interactions with their children so that fathers do not neglect their critical role in the psychological development of a child.

In the first and second cases of female divine-human transferences, the young woman develops a misconception of the personhood of God based on the example of her fatherly figure: absent or abusive. Before discussing the individual affects of each of these types of father figure during female developmental years, I would like to discuss the affects of such a male in a female’s spiritual formation. From my perspective, there are three factors which render Christianity a more male-orientated faith: (1) the masculine language and emphasis in which the Bible is written, (2) the masculine identity of God and Jesus as Father and Son, including Jesus’ sexual identity as a man, and (3) Church social tradition of preferring men above women in Christian service and personal value.

Noting the predominantly male overtones of the Bible and the archaic sense in which women are spoken of, more as objects and property than individual and equally valuable souls with me, women may experience difficulty personalizing the male instruction of even such a book as Proverbs which contains the dialog of a father to his son, warning about the temptations of a female seductress. The other feminine obstacle to her spiritual formation is the sexual identity of Jesus Christ: no one can deny that Jesus was of the male gender. Seeing the interaction between God with Jesus as Father to Son, and the transference of the same interaction to believers with God through the Apostle Paul’s distinction that we are “sons of God,”  (John 1:12) a woman feels distanced from the same sort of identification males naturally have with Jesus (whom we are called to imitate) through like gender. I theorize that women are able to have union with God to the same degree of intimacy as men, though of a completely difference nature, for a woman “can never have the experience that is freely available to every man and boy in her culture, of having her full sexual identity affirmed as being in the image and likeness of God.” (Madsen) In her spiritual formation, then, a woman understands her spiritual interaction with a male God from interactions with her male father figure.

Would one not naturally assume that hearing God called “Father,” and not knowing what a father should be, that one would understand God’s immaterial role as a father based on one’s relationship with a present father figure? This may be true of both men and women, but women have an extra dimension of difficulty in relating to God when Jesus also is factored in a lover of our souls; having no concept of the male gender (it’s tendencies, distinctions from femininity, etc.), women comprehend the masculinity of God through human male interactions, a transference as natural as that of understanding His relationship as father through a physical father-figure. Since human men in father roles have such crucial roles in picturing for a young girl the personhood of God, it is easy to understand how both an absent father or an abusive father could pollute an understanding of God’s divine masculinity.

Absent or abusive fathers share the common failure of not training up daughters in the way they should go, affecting a distance and certain aversions to this male-personified God rather than the natural closeness which is healthily transferred from a thriving father-daughter relationship onto God. Yet an absent father does not inflict the same sort of damage as an abusive father. If a young girl experiences life without the presence of a fatherly man to affirm her in her psychological development into a woman, a girl becomes distrusting (or overly trusting) of men, avoids interaction (or craves it more intensely), and naturally begins to believe that God is as distant from her life as the human male she calls her father. An abusive father gives the opposite picture to a young girl: by seeing a human male negative reaction to her development, a young girl either thinks God has an aversion to the female sex in general or disapproves of her specifically. Thus she responds to the pain inflicted by her male father through avoidance, teaching herself to be starved of relationship, which may be transferred upon God as inapproachability. In both cases, despite the difference of the emotional baggage which becomes a spiritual weight, a woman is taught from childhood that she must earn God’s love through right behaviors, because He is either too busy to care otherwise or will discipline harshly.

Thus the first two components affecting a woman’s understanding of God are both linked to her paternal relationship, in which a woman transfers the human character and qualities of a man onto God, assuming Him to share a same character. In her formative years, I suggest that the personhood of the Godhead with whom the woman identifies most is that of God the Father. Jesus is not so significant a figure until the pubescent years when a young woman encounters Him with a difference in relationship: as the lover of her soul. How does a woman associate this Son of God, her spiritual lover, with the Father from which He came? Having formed her opinions on the masculinity of the Father from the human father figure of her developmental phase, I think a young lady tends to transition from a parental relationship with God to a more intimate love relationship with Jesus as she develops through puberty, associating her own developing personhood with the different persons of the Godhead. Since Jesus has called the Church His bride, a woman may tend to think of herself as in a spiritually romantic relationship with Jesus. These romantic characteristics of Jesus’ divine masculinity, like the Father’s paternal masculinity, are typically learned through personal romantic experience, equating Jesus’ spiritual treatment of the woman as His beloved with a human man’s treatment of a woman in romance.

There are two scenarios, which drastically change the approach of a woman to this natural development of a spiritual romance with Jesus, both deriving themselves from the character of God the Father, of whom she learned in her prepubescent developmental years. If a woman were to spend those initial formative years if her life with an absent or abusive biological father, she would have learned an unhealthy fear of God and have ingrained in her mind that Jesus’ love was something for which she needed to work if His claim that “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30) is really true. The second female approach to romantic relationship with Jesus (paralleling her human romantic experiences) is to have a healthy understanding of her worth and personhood from a paternal perspective. From this background, a woman expects to be loved for who she is, nurtured, and guided, and may be overly trusting that her male counterpart in romance shares the same opinion of her as her father. While this background with a human father figure will alter feminine approach to relationship with Jesus, both can be overwhelmingly overthrown by trauma within a romantic relationship.

Needing a different understanding of God than just her father after puberty, a woman begins her spiritual formation of an opinion of the romantic Jesus through her romantic relationship experience. If she experiences verbal or physical abuse (including sexual abuse), I believe a woman will carry a deeper sort of wound towards God, because she thinks that if He loves her, Jesus would preserve her from those harmful experiences. If she has experienced verbal abuse, the woman will feel trapped between her love for and attraction to Jesus and the inconsistency of His belittling: I theorize that whatever a male lover inflicts on a woman she transfers to the fault of Jesus, as if it were Jesus abusing her. Thus if she also experiences physical or sexual abuse, Jesus too is at fault. Such a traumatized woman begins to feel that her spiritual Lover cannot be trusted, because even though she has given herself fully to His trust, he has still failed her.

Such is the plight of many women today, confusing the mistreatment of men in their lives as reflections of the character of God the Father and Jesus Christ. I think the first step for many women who have developed bitterness or distrust towards God because of male trauma inflicted upon her is to help her recognize that these different men who have hurt her in her life are the causes of her spiritual distance from God. Once realizing that God has been understood through human dimensions, a woman needs to be assured that though God created man in His own image, men (and women, but for the sake of the situation men are here emphasized) exchanged the glory of God’s image for corrupt behavior (Romans 1:23), separating themselves from God. Assuring the woman that God is greater than man portrays Him by the sheer fact that no on has ever known God’s mind in order to offer Him counsel (Romans 11:34, 1 Corinthians 2:16), the question of God’s allowance of such traumatizing events in her life must be addressed.

To the questions of evil’s existence, no acceptable answer can be found beyond that God “works for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.” (Romans 8:28) We see Job who believed that even if God destroyed him, God held his best in mind (Job 13:15). The same is true of the traumatized woman: God desires to cultivate the spiritual closeness between Himself and the woman. If God were willing to cause His own son suffering to the point of death so that He might be perfected (Hebrews 2:9-13), of course He allows the same in a woman’s life. Understanding, as the psalmists do by then end of a lament, that the physical circumstances were merely the method by which God drew the psalmist into His arms. Yet this is a difficult belief transition for women to make.

How does one move from realizing that God’s character is not the same as the men who have abused or neglected, into desiring relationship with a God who has allowed such suffering? I think it would be perfectly acceptable in this stage of the counseling, once a woman has realized that she has transferred too many masculine human traits onto God, to begin expressing her hurt and frustration to God. Somehow in the honest expression of her feelings through prayer with the counselor’s reminding her of the Who the God is to whom she prays, a woman I think will travel through the road of her painful experiences to a place where she can feel as if God is approachable, not a malicious threat. Her spiritual problem, if she uses raw honesty in her communication with God after the method of the psalmist’s laments, gives way under the true attractiveness of God. And it is God who much make Himself attractive to the woman, but I believe if a woman implements Matthew 11:25 and honestly calls to God for help, He will fulfill His promise to “answer you and show you great and mighty things which you do not know.”

The whole difficulty in approaching God because of His masculine identity will gradually fade, I believe, if a woman is allowed time and is honestly willing to express all her feelings and frustrations to God about her hurts. Once willing to engage in this sort of gut-spilling dialog with God, however, a woman evidences her desire to try and trust God again. A counselor can help encourage trust in God by conversing with her on instances in her life that she can recognize God’s perseverance or plan for her spiritual betterment in. Learning how to trust as Job, however, in the midst of physical and emotional pain and scars, is key to a woman’s reuniting relationship with Jesus and the Father as male figures in the Godhead. A woman must learn to let the healing spirit of God remove her anger and bitterness and act as a balm to any physical wounds, being willing to learn something about His mercy through her own pain. Once a woman has learned to trust, John 16:33 encourages her to keep hold of that trust in Jesus despite physical challenge: “…in this world you will have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world.”

Work Cited:

Madsen, Catherine. “Notes on the Violence of God,” CrossCurrents.org, Cross Currents, Summer 2001, Vol. 51,  No 2. 13 February 2008. <http://www.crosscurrents.org/madsen0701.htm>.