The God Pronoun

This summer, as I study the Psalms and then, as part of my study, I attempt to write about them, I am routinely faced with the question, "What pronoun does one use for God?"

This is not a simple question.  In current US culture, the question carries a lot of baggage. Some see the use of pronouns as a litmus test for one's beliefs about the role of women, feminism, and one's support for women in general.  Others see, in the use of various pronouns, a statement about "conservative tradition" versus "progressive liberalism."  

If I use a male pronoun ("he", "him") for God, I am presumably supporting a patriarchal religious view that is inherently sexist.  If I use a female pronoun ("she", "her") for God, I am promoting a Mother Earth/Gaia view of creation and abandoning orthodox Christianity altogether.  And if I use a neuter pronoun ("it"), I am suggesting that God is an impersonal force, presumably similar to the divine Force of the Star Wars universe.

Let me seek to ignore all this baggage and address the gender of God.  In the Jewish and Christian scriptures, God is clearly neither male nor female.   Gender is a creation of God's in His/Her creation of human beings.  Genesis 1:27 makes this clear:

So God created mankind in his own image,
    in the image of God he created them;
    male and female he created them.

Note that this translation, from Hebrew into English, translates the Hebrew male pronoun into an English one ("he", "his".)  But the Hebrew writer of this passage is faced with the same problem I have, since this passage clearly state that male and female are both created in God's image and so both men and women reflect attributes of God.

There are other places where one might be tempted to view God as female.  The mother bird metaphor is common in Scripture for God.  It appears in Psalm 17 and other psalms. Boaz uses the metaphor in Ruth 2:12 in his first meeting with Ruth.  Psalm 123 has a different metaphor:

As the eyes of slaves look to the hand of their master,
    as the eyes of a female slave look to the hand of her mistress,
so our eyes look to the Lord our God,
    till she shows us her mercy.
Have mercy on us, Lord, have mercy on us,
    for we have endured no end of contempt.

In the New Testament, Jesus calls himself a mother hen, desiring to gather Israel under his wing, in Luke 13:34.  (A parallel passage occurs in Matthew 23:37.)

Again in the New Testament, as Paul elaborates on the unity of the church, as he invites Gentiles too to follow Jesus, he writes (Galatians 3:28):

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

There is NO good pronoun for God. God is neither male nor female.  But the neuter "it" carries an obvious implication that God is impersonal (since most neuter objects, in English, are indeed impersonal.)  As I read the Psalms, which emphasis the personal aspect of God, I can't see referring to God as "It".

So, I've given up on trying to have a consistent pronoun.  Sometimes I use "He", sometimes "She", sometimes "He/She".  In other cases I try to avoid pronouns all together and just keep saying "God."

Maybe "God" is the best pronoun?