Yet what of others who’ve had near-death experiences and perceive God as male?

This is where I side with traditional Church teaching, that God is all genders and no gender (CCC 239). When some people see God as woman in near-death experiences and others see God as man, this is where I subscribe to a type of modalism.

No, I don’t mean the theological Modalism that denies the Trinity and teaches the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are all “masks” God wears depending on how He wishes to speak to someone. That’s a matter for Trinitarian theology and well outside the scope of this post.

I mean small-m modalism in the sense that the Divine Feminine and the Divine Masculine are masks that God wears when addressing individual human beings.

Why? I suppose it’s because individual humans can best be reached on a level that resonates with them personally. God knows this because God created humans, and therefore chooses to play by His own rulebook.

So what does this mean in practice?

It means that while we seek out God according to our ability, it means there’s no place to criticize (help, but not criticize!) another who has an equally valid yet different perception.

For example, the “Divine Feminine” shtick doesn’t resonate with me (can you tell from my pronouns?). Never has and never will. It doesn’t mean I have license to put down someone to whom it does resonate.

It also means that one for whom the “Divine Masculine” shtick doesn’t resonate, they’ve no place to put me down for it, either.

Ultimately, the question of God’s gender is adiaphora. That’s a term from Lutheran theology meaning “Don’t sweat the small stuff.”

And no, we shouldn’t sweat the small stuff. We should be sweating the major issues on our journey of spiritual development. We should be more concerned about our biases, our psychological and emotional baggage, and living as children of the Light.

So if somebody says God wants them to eat live babies, you should be worried and stand in their way. If somebody simply refers to God as “She” without prejudice to God’s gender(less)ness, then it’s not that big of a deal.