Lesson 252: What is sin?”  “The Son of God is my Identity.”

The Course definitely pushed my buttons initially in the respect that it says that we are all Sons all the time. 

I grew up with a feminist mother and became myself a feminist too because I really care that women get all the help and great parts of life that men do. 

So often women have been left out.  The Course definitely bothers me about that reason. 

I would love to see within the Course: God as a she and the Daughters included in the picture.

But I also can totally see that the Course is probably doing the best it can.  Using the specific gender language particulars are used partly because the book is so long. 

It would add a hundred pages to say he and she both and allow God to be a woman.

It is also complicated enough to understand just because of the content of the books.

It would add another whole additional layer of complication to make the gender changes that would feel great for lots of women and people who would like the Course to use gender neutral language in addition to teaching what it is.  

I know people get really frustrated about how to learn the particulars of the Course and it makes sense to try to simplify it in any way possible.

This makes sense to me and it helps me to forgive the Course much more, because I see the way that the gender issue in the Course is a difficult one to make sure everyone feels happy and included.

That thinking helps me to just give latitude to Jesus here and not try to make my specific feminist questions and concerns a real block to my participating in learning the Course.

The thing we can do is forgive Jesus and forgive Helen and forgive God for the Course’s limited structure. 

We can also forgive ourselves when we have resistance to any part of the Course. 

This is the only way to just let it go and give it right back to God to heal and remove from our thinking. 

The Course tries to speak to us as humanity as a whole and that is a broad crowd to reach.

That means certain parts of it are imperfect. 

We are asked to not suffer over this kind of thing. 

The Course does an amazing job of getting the job done in teaching us so we can just give any struggle over the gender piece a peaceful and kind place in our minds where we allow it to sit with God without judgement.