Stumbling Blocks

Two Sundays ago, I preached (admittedly not very well) on Jesus’ teaching about chopping off limbs and hanging a millstone around your neck.  I’m sure you’ve heard it before. I usually try to ignore it as I’m leisurely reading through Mark’s Gospel. 

“If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea." (Mark 9:42)

I can understand Jesus telling us not to purposely put a stumbling block before others.  That seems like a pretty good thing to tell people - don’t purposely cause people to question their faith or turn away from God. 

But what happens when we unintentionally put a stumbling block before someone? What if we had always been taught something that we never knew could be harmful to some people’s faith? What if everyone else does it? Does Jesus think that deserves a millstone around the neck too? 

I don’t know. But if Jesus thinks that any stumbling block we place before others - intentionally or unintentionally - is harmful enough to deserve a millstone around our necks, maybe we should start thinking about the unintentional stumbling blocks as well. 

So that’s what I’ve been doing these past two weeks. What are some of the unintentional stumbling blocks I have put in front of people? Whether I had good intentions at the time, or I simply wanted to hear myself speak, I know I have put stumbling blocks in other people’s “faith way.” 

I think as Christians, we put stumbling blocks in front of people more often than we realize. And we can’t always avoid it because we don’t know people’s situations and we don’t know what might be a stumbling block for one person and might be helpful for another. 

But there is one thing that we do all too often, and it is causing people to stumble more than we realize.   

Gendering God is something we do without even thinking about it.  

We pray to “Father God.” 

We refer to God as “he” in worship, prayers, and hymns. 

We talk about God as a masculine being. 

We reject (openly or unconsciously) the feminine aspects of God. 

It might be that I am more sensitive to this type of stumbling block because I have experienced its effects to many times throughout my life. But I believe that we have the opportunity to actually remove this stumbling block from in front of the entire Body of Christ, just by changing the way we talk about God. 

The way we talk about God influences what we believe about God. And what we believe about God is important because it influences what we believe about God's creatures, God's relationship with us, salvation, evangelism, our relationship with one another (and basically everything else theologically). Gendering God is dangerous because it inherently has the ability to change our vision of and relationship with God. Gendering God can actually cause people to turn away from God and put a stumbling block in front of them. By gendering God, we can inadvertently lead people away from God.

Gendering God is a dangerous stumbling block in front of many Christians and non Christians all over the world, from various backgrounds, and in various contexts. 

But I have found that it is an especially dangerous stumbling block here in Southeast Asia. 

I will start by giving you an example of how gendering God as male is particularly dangerous because this the gender assigned to God most often. But please be assured that in other contexts and cultures, gendering God as female can also be dangerous.

A fellow pastor explained a little bit about child-parent relationships and gender roles in Chinese culture. "Relationships with fathers are very often closed off," he explained, "we cannot call our fathers by name when we are young out of respect, so we call them 'papa.'"  Even when children become adults, there is a very real reverence for older men in the family.  Older men in my congregation are never called by their Chinese name, but called, "uncle" or people who are particularly close use their English names.

Fathers are described as stern disciplinarians who discourage dependence and emotional indulgence in their children.  Of course, fathers still very much care for their children, but there is often no outward manifestation of this care and affection for fathers like there might be between children and mothers. Fathers often remain aloof in the "hands-on" portion of parenting (dressing, changing, bathing, feeding children), unless there is severe discipline needed.

Mothers, on the other hand, are described as "intimate nurturers," who often "baby" their children until they are older.  The relationship children share with their mothers is one of provision, compassion, warmth, and love.

These gender roles regarding parenting often lead to a close, intimate relationship between a mother and her child, while the relationship between a father and a child may be more distant, strained, or cause anxiety and even fear for the child later in life.

When we exclusively call God "father," and describe God as masculine, this affects our relationship with God as well as other people's relationship with God. 

If a person cannot imagine an intimate, warm, caring, personal relationship with his or her earthly father, how will he or she imagine his or her relationship with a heavenly "father?" Chances are, he or she will imagine God as a distant disciplinarian who should be feared, someone who will only step in when we need punishment. This image of God does not foster a close, deep, personal relationship with God. In fact, people may even reject God and be completely uninterested in a relationship with such a distant, impersonal God such as this.  

We must continue to look for ways to describe God and imagine God in comparison and contrast to our earthly relationships - but never prescribing God a gender. Granted, we will never be able to fully grasp all of God, but we can combat harmful images of God, the blocks that cause our brothers and sisters to stumble. Especially when certain images of God are so nonchalantly used and so obviously harmful to people's faith because of the dominant culture. 

By allowing and encouraging people to envision God as something other than their "father" or a "male," we offer a new vision, a more inclusive and relational vision of God's redeeming love and mercy. And we start to pick up those stumbling blocks from amongst our sisters’ and brothers’ feet.