Dwain Northey (Gen X)

For centuries, people have insisted with absolute confidence that God is male. Not metaphorically male. Not “described in masculine language because ancient shepherds writing in patriarchal societies lacked nuanced theology.” No. Male male. Beard in the clouds male. Ultimate cosmic dad energy.

Which raises a rather obvious question nobody in Sunday school seemed eager to answer:

If God created Adam in His own image, and God is definitively male, exactly what was the long-term reproductive strategy here?

What was the original business model for humanity? Osmosis? Divine mitosis? Were Adam and his future descendants supposed to reproduce like amoebas? Maybe rub elbows aggressively until another fully grown adult wandered out of the shrubbery?

Because biologically speaking, if you start your species with one man and no women, you do not have a civilization. You have a very disappointing camping trip.

And apparently even God realized this almost immediately because the next chapter essentially becomes, “Well… this isn’t going anywhere.”

So then comes Eve. Not sculpted from clay like Adam, mind you, but allegedly manufactured from Adam’s rib. Which is fascinating because if the goal was simply companionship for loneliness, wouldn’t the obvious solution have been another man?

“Adam seems lonely.”
“Should we make him a buddy?”
“Absolutely. But first let’s invent an entirely new biological sex complete with mammary glands, reproductive systems, and the ability to create life inside their own body.”

That feels like a pretty significant design pivot for what was supposedly just a roommate problem.

And this is where the whole “God is unquestionably male” argument begins wobbling like a folding chair at a barbecue.

Because every species on Earth has some version of complementary reproduction. Male and female. Pollinators and flowers. Eggs and sperm. Nature itself appears obsessed with balance, duality, and cooperative creation. The entire planet screams that existence is built on interdependence rather than one dominant half doing all the work.

Meanwhile, the one group claiming ultimate masculine supremacy is still relying on women to literally manufacture every human being who has ever existed.

Which brings us to the truly awkward theological speed bump:

Women create life.

Men participate enthusiastically for a few minutes and then pace around waiting rooms pretending they understand breathing exercises, but women are the ones growing organs from scratch while another skeleton forms inside them like some horrifyingly beautiful science-fiction miracle.

If you were assigning “closest thing to divine creation powers,” the scoreboard feels a little lopsided.

So perhaps an all-powerful creator wouldn’t be male at all. Or female. Or anything biologically recognizable. Maybe the very idea of assigning human gender to a cosmic entity says more about ancient societies than eternal truths.

Because an omnipotent being existing outside space and time probably is not worried about pronouns nearly as much as humans are.

And honestly, if an infinite intelligence created the universe, black holes, gravity, DNA, quasars, octopuses, and consciousness itself, it would probably find humanity’s obsession with celestial genitalia deeply embarrassing.

The irony, of course, is that many of the same people who insist God is male also insist that humans cannot question divine mysteries.

Yet the minute somebody asks, “So… how exactly was Adam supposed to populate Earth alone?” suddenly everyone develops the conversational reflexes of a politician avoiding tax questions.

Perhaps the simplest answer is the most uncomfortable one:

Ancient religious texts were written by men living in male-dominated cultures, and those men unsurprisingly imagined ultimate authority looking a lot like themselves.

History has a way of doing that.

Kings imagined heavenly kings.
Empires imagined heavenly empires.
Patriarchies imagined heavenly patriarchies.

And somewhere along the line, people stopped recognizing metaphor and started treating poetry like architectural blueprints.

Still, credit where it’s due: creating Eve was at least an admission that masculinity alone was not sufficient to sustain creation.

Which may be the most unintentionally progressive plot twist in the entire Bible.