Why do they still let me teach Sunday school?

[melannen]

Things I said to Mom's Sunday school class while last-minute substituting as teacher today:

1. So Jesus got, like, really pissed, and he totally trashed the whole place, dude. It was radical.

2. Why can't God be a girl if He wants to be? He can do anything; who says She's never a girl? (this got a cheer from the girls in the class, p.s.)

3. A fast overview of every Judas-apologia fanfic ever written for the Easter story, from the Acts of Pilate to the Gospel of Pilate, with a long digression about how by Easter the disciples were spending most of their time bickering like siblings who had been trapped in a car for too long.

Things I almost said, but stopped myself at the last minute:

1. Jesus hates teabaggers! (I didn't actually say that but I laid the groundwork. And I want a bumpers sticker now that says "God Hates Teabaggers: Matthew 22:21") I felt unexpectedly justified when Pastor decided to preach his sermon about how the Democrats in Congress are like Christ Triumphant riding into Jerusalem (let us strew roses at their feet) and the Republicans are just like the Pharisees and Sadduccees. :P

2. The reason they didn't listen was because it was women who saw them, because nobody ever listens to women, but remember that Christ spoke to girls first, before he spoke to the men; he believes we're the ones worth talking to first. (I almost said this but we were running out of time and I figured "God's a chick" was enough Christian radical feminism to start them with.)

3. Aslan is a fraud and Narnia sucks. (Didn't actually mention Lewis, but talked about *why* Aslan is a fraud. Also, didn't say "Jesus is more like a Time Lord than a Highlander," or compare "He will knock four times" to "before the cock crows thrice." Be proud of me.)


Let that stand as your warning: as today was Palm Sunday, and it's my very favorite Christian holiday, I plan to talk about Christianity, and specifically Holy Week and Easter, a lot for the next week. It will be in rather the same sort of tone as the above. If you'd rather not be exposed, filter or unsubscribe me; I won't be offended. It will be back to business-as-random-usual come Monday after next.

Comments

[mllesays]

I am all for many more posts like this!

I really like the god as she idea as well. One of the things that has kept me from church for a long time is always relating god solely to the masculine.

[melannen]

For quite a large proportion of my life I have visualized GOD as appearing rather like, ah, Holly from Red Dwarf. :D

There's actually a tradition that dates back to, well, came by way of the Jewish Kabalistic shekinah, but shows up in all sorts of gnostic, mystical, spiritual, heretical, magickal and metaphorical Christian traditions of Sophia, the Wisdom of God, the first emanation of God-the-creator, the Lone Power, the Holy Spirit, the Bride of Christ, the creative Word that started the universe, or any combination of the above and a few other things, but almost always defined in some way as the missing feminine in the Christian Godhood. I really much prefer that to the attempts to find the missing feminine in Marianism, so in my private theology, Christ is the Son of Man, the Holy Spirit is feminine - sort of the Midwife of Creation, and God-the-i-am is both-either-neither-all.

Anyway, at the very least I always point out that God could be a girl in the same spirit that I never color Christ's skin white on the coloring pages.

[mllesays]

I grew up in a Catholic congregation that was so set on enforcing the maleness of God that even when we read scripture about Sophia, the feminine aspects were either disregarded or else explicitly contradicted. It was quite frustrating, to say the least. (But then, so many things about the Catholic Church are!)

For quite a large proportion of my life I have visualized GOD as appearing rather like, ah, Holly from Red Dwarf. :D

Hee! These days I try to visualize God as Whoopi Goldberg (specifically from that one Muppet Christmas movie).