Does God have gender and colour?

Patrick (primary school student) asks: What gender and colour is God?

That’s a brilliant question —and a really important one too. The short answer is: God doesn’t have a gender or a colour like we do.

Sometimes we call God “Father,” and sometimes the Bible uses words like “He,” but that doesn’t mean God is actually a man. Those are just ways people have tried to talk about God using the language they had. In other places, the Bible describes God like a mother who cares for her children. In other places again the Bible describes God as Creator, Potter, Light, Bread, Shepherd… even a rock! It doesn’t mean God is literally those things, but it does mean that each of those things tells us something about who God is to us.

So really, God is bigger than both “boy” and “girl.” It’s a bit like if you tried to say whether love is a male or a female—it wouldn’t quite make sense, would it? God is like that—bigger than all the categories and words that we have.

And the same goes for colour. God isn’t one colour, like skin or paint or a rainbow. But you could also say that all colours come from God—every person, every culture, every part of creation reflects something of God’s beauty.

I do like the parts of the Bible in which people describe God as shining with light—bright, dazzling - because light is ultimately made up of every colour of the rainbow all at once. Instead of thinking God is one gender or one colour, we could say: God is the source of every person, every colour, every beauty we see.

But the really important part to remember is that the Bible says that every person is made in God’s image. That means you and me, and everyone we meet — each person reflects something that is true about God.

So here’s my question for you — when you think about the people in your life, or the colours you love most, what do they show you about God?