A Divine Dilemma

God – that word, notion, entity, or being, as people present – has been in my space and has therefore considerably affected me one way or another since I was born. God, therefore, makes its way into my writing. And if there’s one thing I can control on the topic, it’s how I personally refer to it.

Most people apply male or female pronouns to god. Since I write in a time when pronouns for humans are getting a lot of attention, I choose to generally refer to god as “It” – not to disrespect, but rather the opposite.

According to Judaic theology as I know it, god is way beyond gender. It has endless attributes, including male and female (and I suppose trans and fluid too, if we’re keeping with the times). Most religious folks say they use a pronoun for god, to align It with whatever specific attribute they’re describing, which generally ends up being male.

Effectively, from my perspective, humanizing god with a pronoun does It a disservice. To do justice to the theology, I dehumanize god – meaning I strip away the human reference point. And that’s not diminishing god; that’s elevating it, superhumanizing it, if you will.

Religious folks might consider the human the most important being, since the religion is hierarchical, and man was created in the image of god. So, using humans as a reference point for god seems aligned with that framework. But I disagree - even from the religious perspective.

The religion posits that god considers humans highest amongst other beings - but that perspective may belong to god, not us. We don’t get to humanize god. If we use the human as a reference point for something we consider infinitely superior to the human, we’re quietly promoting ourselves to co-divinity.

The religion also posits that god is so not human, that it’s incomparable and indescribable, which it must be, since It’s omniscient, omnipresent and omni everything. It’s quite amusing that the same theology then goes on to describe It in countless ways. An endlessly described indescribable god is hardly indescribable, and kinda denying its indescribability. No?

So, forget about pronouns. God is not only non-genderizable - It’s indescribable. I’ll therefore do what they don’t seem to do: aim for precision, double down, and upgrade my “It” to “IT,” considering it also an acronym for Indescribable Thing, which, according to the theology, is what god is: Indescribable.

So I’ll usually use IT when referring to god.

Of course, don’t confuse this IT with another one - Information Technology – which, while impressively powerful, doesn’t hold a candle to the God of Judaism.

According to IT.