Gender and Christianity 1

It was common, during our Religious Education classes, to spend the lesson examining a painting with religious themes. I remember in one class, back when I was 17 or 18, we looked at Rembrandt’s The Prodigal Son. What stood out to me in that painting was not the all-embracing grace shown by the father to the returning son, nor was it the importance of the source of light in the painting; instead it was the father’s hands. The right and left hand were completely different from one another. One is calloused, rough and stout. The other is smooth, gentle and elegant. One is a male hand while the other is female.
In this painting, and the parable of Christ from which it is drawn, the father figure is representative of God the Father. Despite the fact that the figure in the painting is quite clearly and obviously a male, Rembrandt’s use of both a fatherly and motherly hand expresses more sides to the father than are immediately apparent. In the same way, God the Father takes on both male and female qualities, that may not always be immediately apparent to us because of our cultural and religious traditions and our own, rather poor, readings of the Bible.

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