Jesus had two dads.

A friend of mine posted this picture on Facebook a few days ago. It is a sign in front of a church which reads, “Jesus had two dads and he turned out just fine!”

There are two ways of interpreting this message. Either the authors are using God the Father and Joseph as an example of two men who raised Jesus, or they are trying to say that God the Father and the Holy Spirit were two men who fathered Jesus through a surrogate and raised him. Since the sign is intended to stop homophobia within the church and Joseph’s role in raising Jesus was to be his adoptive father (representing an entirely different aspect of theology), I am inferring the message was to insinuate that God the Father and the Holy Spirit are to represent Jesus’ two ‘dads’.

My goal in this post is not to address lifestyle choices. Rather, I want to challenge the way we think about gender and God.

You see, in Genesis, scripture says that God created the earth, the animals, the plants, man and woman. It says that He created mankind in His own image, male and female He created them. So when God created humanity, he created two distinct and separate individuals who both represent aspects of the wholeness of His character. This distinction is important because I believe that through our historical and cultural traditions, as well as the construct of our languages, we have been trained to think of God’s gender in a backwards manner.

That is to say, we look around the world, see what we know, and place the limitations of our experience on God. We see male and female and assume God must fit into one of these two categories. The truth is, God is neither male nor female because He is not constrained by these gender roles. Instead, He is the originator of the characteristics of men and women, encompassing both within the Trinity.

So to say Jesus has two dads is incorrect. Jesus was born out of the fullness of God, from who the characteristics of man and woman are distilled.

Continuing the adventure,

Jess