The Mother God
“You neglected the Rock who begot you, and forgot the God who gave you birth.” Deuteronomy 32:18 NASB
Gave you birth – It’s pretty difficult to ignore the obvious female characteristic God employs in this self-description. Only women give birth. Does that mean God is female? Of course not; not any more than the descriptions of God as a man mean that He is male. The Bible is unique in ancient sacred literature in its proclamation that God is neither male nor female (and He is not androgynous either). From the biblical perspective, God is beyond sexuality. Gender is a created reality, not His reality. We are quite familiar with this idea, but, as Oswalt points out, it was shockingly radical in the ancient world. A little reflection tells us why. Life comes through sexual activity. If the gods are like us, they too must have gender and create through a similar process. Therefore, the ancient world is populated with gods and goddesses, not with genderless supreme beings. Oswalt comments, “sexuality has nothing to do with ultimate reality in the biblical understanding.”[1]
But we don’t live in “ultimate reality,” do we? We live in this created world, and in this world, sexuality is a fundamental category of being. In fact, it is quite impossible for us to think of ourselves without sexuality. We exist as gendered beings. We are embodied sexuality. This fact of life has some serious implications. Perhaps one of the most important ones is that the myth of sexual transition from this world to the divine must be rejected as both false and dangerous. Oswalt remarks:
We are not permitted to attempt to conceive of the universe in sexual terms, nor are we allowed to try to affect the universe’s functioning through our sexual behavior. . . . When we attempt to use our sexuality to scale the walls of heaven, it only drops us into hell. Used as God designed it, to be the deepest symbol of surrender, self-disclosure, and trust, all within the confines of unreserved commitment, it is a glorious thing. Used in any other way, sex will consume us. . . . If we use it to try to make ourselves gods, the end is destruction, because it cannot actually take us where it seems to point. God is beyond the limits of our sexuality. So, these prohibitions on sex outside of heterosexual marriage are not the work of prudes. They are a revelation of the boundaries inside of which the Creator intended us to find blessing and not curse.[2]
This is not simply an argument for the “one man-one woman” idea of marriage. It goes far beyond that. The biblical idea of sex is not about experiencing a hint of the divine in a world of indifference. Sexual ecstasy is not a bit of heaven on earth. It may be the most powerful form of human communication but it is just that, limited to this world of human existence. This means that whenever sexuality is used in a way that has overtones of divine power, it is dangerous to our very humanity. What might those ways be? Think of the way sex is used to alter reality, to have the world my way, to take control of others to serve my needs. Think of sexuality connected to fantasy, portraying a world where my desires are never refused. Think of sexuality and power, the means through which I control, abuse, humiliate and castigate others. Rollo May’s book comes to mind. Sex is a human force capable of great good and terrible evil. The Bible puts boundaries around it, not only to prevent us from imagining that God can be manipulated by sexual acts but to prohibit behavior that compromises the boundary between the divine and the rest of creation. Sex might be connected with human creation, but that does not mean that human sexuality is divine. The biblical injunctions about sex are not just moral restrictions. They are fences that protect what it means to be human. They are God’s ways of reminding us that there is a great power in us, built into us, that is capable of destroying our need for vulnerability and connection is we let it. We have the reigns of a terrible wonder, a wonder that used to take men and women to a place where they exchanged their essential dependence for a pseudo-reality of being like gods. But we are not gods. We are male and female, learning how to become one together under God.
According to the Bible, if you play with fire you get burned. It’s just that the temptation to hold the fire is incredibly powerful because it looks so much like an alternate way to heaven.
Topical Index: sex, gender, John Oswalt, Deuteronomy 32:18
[1] John Oswalt, The Bible among the Myths, p. 71.
[2] Ibid., pp. 74-75.
Skip, as usual, this is very good and just the kind of spiritual food that keeps me chewing (meditating) all day!
C.S.Lewis once gave an analogy that we can look up and see where we need to go, much as a person standing at the bottom of a cliff can see that they need to be at the top, and it seems so near; so the first thing we try to do is to go straight up the cliff! But we cannot move so well vertically. The path to the top goes sideways, and as it switchbacks this way and that, a lot of the time it seems to take us farther away from our goal, even; but as he points out, sometimes the “longest way round is the shortest way home”.
Sex without the third Person only leaves us lonelier than before. We cannot reach unity My Way. It is only in Him that our sexuality gains the freedom it needs to satisfy our need to become one flesh with another. He has to be invited into that union, and to bring that unity with Him before we can have it with each other. This has been learned to my sorrow!
I have been thinking since yesterday about the comment Skip made that he thinks the Bible gives us a family to relate to. That really resonated with me. I have been going through some of Dr. Caroline Leaf’s work on the brain and how it is constructed. She was talking about epigenetics and how every thought of the mind changes the genetic expression of the body (nephesh stuff, truly). I was thinking about Paul’s injunction that we take on the Mind of Christ. What does that mean, and does it have something to do with being grafted into Israel’s Vine? I got to thinking about the experience of Israel in the wilderness and how they were taught to follow the Cloud that hung above the Mercy Seat of the Tabernacle. Their action was to conform, and their mind was to be ever reminded of that Cloud by day and Fire by night, as their will was trained to become the Will of YHVH.
What we think about, we become. Literally. That is what the science of epigenetics teaches us. Our environment (including the environment of our mind), no less than our genetic (sexually transmitted) heritage transforms our entire nephesh. To choose to submit my will to His (yetzer hara into yetzer tov) IS to trade my mind for His, which will transform the very molecules of my body into His. This is what being grafted into Israel means! Sex – the short way up the cliff, if you will – seems like it could give us unity, but in reality, I have to join the family by another means. To be ADOPTED is the right action for unity. This joining to the family means that I (my nephesh, or as Paul puts it in 1Thess. 5:23, “whole spirit and soul and body) am now able to be in the right place to receive the blessings that He has bestowed upon that family. At that point, Skip is right. The Bible IS a story about where I come from, which is what I think the Seder (Passover meal) is trying to teach us. Halleluah! It really is the family album for me, literally. Thanks for the good chew, Skip!
For those of you who just want the Cliff Notes, please skip the above comment. What I was trying to say was that we already have to be in the Family, and have the third Person present, before sex can unite us to each other. Sex cannot give us this unity with heaven and each other. Indeed, we have to have that unity first. This is why I think we are told that sex works best if we marry from within the family tribe (equally yoked).
I’ll second that.
Laurita I am 100% with you on taking on the mind of Christ as Christ is as you often say our presence in being bodies in the works of God.
Would this then imply Christ is Torah in action… Or should I say being anointed is Torah in action?
I would say that Torah is Christ in us, as Paul says. You don’t get (do) Torah without Its Author. It is impossible to generate love. The best we can do is choose to get out of the way of it, by agreeing with it. Torah is where my will is subsumed in His.
This! And then add Laurita’s comments! Mind blown STILL! So, Laurita, according to epigenetics, ifthe environment of one’s sexual mind/body as a toddler and child was violated for many years, does that mean that thetransformation from yetzer hara/hatov is just a longer journey?
Dear Lesli,
What a good question! This question has consumed me for a long time now. I work with people who have been badly messed up. If damage were irreversible, we would all be in trouble! We are all damaged (“all have sinned” – or been complicit with the sin of others, because we didn’t know how not to). The damage is just a matter of degree for all of us, but I think we don’t have a good way to measure that damage from a human standpoint. “His strength is made perfect in our weakness” is the promise I have been riding on for a good while. I have been concluding that it is not the damage, per se, that is the problem. It is what we choose to do with it. If the damage is something that I think I can either ignore, limp around, or somehow ‘make up for’ by good deeds (which is how the world attempts to handle damage), I am in the greatest danger of never getting to the point where it is possible to be saved. It is only damage so acute that I am convinced I am not going to survive it that can convince me of the depth that I need a complete overhaul.
I have seen miracles in people that the world has given up on, precisely because these people recognized that there was no other way. Salvation starts now, but there is only one place possible for it to start from and that is the place where we can see that there is no other way. Um, that would be the bottom. If and until we hit that, salvation is a one-sided affair, because we are going to be showing up in the wrong place (that would be all those non-bottom places), which I think all of us start out trying from.
I would say the most heavily damaged people are in the best place to be saved, simply because they have no other way to function (“blessed are the poor in spirit”). All that remains at that point is to keep recognizing all the places we are defective, and keep handing them over. This does not have to take a long time. This phenomenon has the distinction of being able to time a rate of progress to the rate of understanding our helplessness, and giving up on our ability to do anything about it. That is the place we yelp for help. I have seen instantaneous miracles, where people were ready to change (including me). The rate of change is geared to our willingness to have it happen. Our Good Shepherd gears His steps to the steps of the sheep, but for some of us that could be yesterday, once we truly get it. Halleluah!
Skip this explains the claim by Yeshua that nobody comes to the Father than through Him, and that nobody knows Yeshua unless called by the Father…
Immanuel God in Flesh… Or is it God’s will revealed through flesh… Being anointed as and when called, we must just keep bearing spiritual fruit.
Shalom Seeker,
Yes, “being anointed” is also mashiach: anointed : מָשִׁ֫יחַ , same word. When a person is anointed to be king/priest, that person is mashiach/consecrated. So revealing.
Re-Immanuel-
Compare Matthew’s quotation of Isaiah 7:14 which follows:
Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet: “Behold, the virgin* shall be with child and shall bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel,” which translated means, “God with us.” (Matthew 1:22,23)
Isaiah 7:14 (NET)
For this reason the sovereign master himself will give you a confirming sign. Look, this young woman is about to conceive and will give birth to a son. You, young woman, will name him Immanuel.
* translated here as “virgin”-almah(Greek),young woman, which is not ” Betulah (Hebrew)- a more common way to refer to a woman who has never been with a man-a virgin.
So then, v16 ties the prophecy to the two kings; v 18 calls upon Egypt and Assyria to be the instruments of their destruction. What have Egypt and Assyria to do with the conception and birth of Jesus/Yeshua?
Once again, it’s reading the Scriptures with a preconceived, or, pre-taught mind.
Shalom, happy seeking!
Ester, I am confused. Are you saying that Matthew was trying to direct his readers to remember that Egypt and Assyria destroyed the two kings?
Not so, Laurita, Matthew was quoting from Isaiah 7: 14 where he said in-
Matt 1:22
Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying,
v 23 Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.
Isa 7:1 And it came to pass in the days of Ahaz the son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, king of Judah, that Rezin the king of Syria, and Pekah the son of Remaliah, king of Israel, went up toward Jerusalem to war against it, but could not prevail against it.
Isa 7: 14-18 speaks of a sign given to king Ahaz, and of the prophecy of destruction of the two kings, Rezin the king of Syria, and Pekah king of Israel. But YHWH would not be so v 7 as king Ahaz was in the line of king David. This is where grace/chen/ chesed/rachamim was extended to king Ahaz, giving him a SIGN that that the destruction shall not come to pass.
After describing the upcoming Assyrian invasion, the prophet Isaiah takes steps to ensure that a small remnant of believers in God’s salvation will remain. He goes so far as to name his children with names of hope and promise, as signs that the redemption will come. Isaiah points to the fact that God’s Divine Presence continues to reside on Mount Zion. He named one- v 7 שְׁאָר יָשׁוּב sheh-awr’yaw-shoob’ =A remnant will return, and another -עִמָּנוּ אֵל `Immanuw’el-=With us, GOD.
This Isaiah verse quoted in Matthew does not point to Messiah, is not a prophecy of the coming Messiah as he stipulated.
Shalom!
Thank you, Ester. That would have been how Ahaz, etc, would have heard it. No doubt. But my question is, why did Matthew mention it where he did?
Hi Laurita, May I simply say, your guess is as good as mine?
Or, shall I say it was a misquote/”misquote”?
Quite a bit of such in Matthew, e.g.
Matt 27:5-10 Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet, saying, And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him that was valued, whom they of the children of Israel did value.
No such verse in Jeremiah the prophet.
Shalom !
R. T. France, in NICNT Matthew, notes that the reference seems to follow Zechariah 11:13, but “this is not a simple quotation of a single text, but a mosaic of scriptural motifs.” In other words, Matthew is being rabbinic.
Mosaic is fine, but my question was, is the mosaic referring to the two kings? Do we now need a rabbi to deconstruct Matthew for us? Please go get one, then. Until then, I guess we are all in the dark, and aren’t qualified to read words for ourselves. That virgin stuff, its just coincidental, right? I am not trying to be disrespectful, but I don’t think I am the only one here who can’t see the obscure for the obvious, am I?
Of course you need a rabbi – OR – someone who is willing to investigate HOW A RABBI THINKS so that we can understand what Matthew is doing. He is NOT writing the way we write and he doesn’t think like we think, so we can use some help, can’t we? But, then, you could do this all yourself. Start with Brad Young, Meet the Rabbis.
I’m with Skip on this one. Could it be that since Jeremiah was the one upon whom Zechariah alluded/sourced (and that Jeremiah is a ‘major’ prophet while Zechariah is a ‘minor’ prophet) that Matthew referenced Jeremiah over Zechariah? This is how I’m interpreting Grant Osborne’s ZECNT on Matthew in which Osborne references Gundry’s Use of the Old Testament in St. Matthew’s Gospel with Specific Reference to the Messianic Hope:
Ok, that’s all great and fine and I have never had a problem with the fact that there are really rich layers to everything in that Book, and I don’t have to understand it all to be able to understand some. BUT, somebody is going to have to help me get beyond the virgins. Please.
The problem, of course, centers on the Hebrew alma (in the MT of Isaiah 7:14) and the Greek parthenos (in both Matthew and the LXX of Isaiah 7:14). The Hebrew term primarily means a young woman able to bear children, while the Greek is strictly virgin. So, there are those who assert there’s no possibility of messianic fulfillment here, while others are of the opposite opinion. FWIW, here’s Osborne again (pp 78-79):
Thank you, Craig. That helped a lot. I guess, in the end, I will have to go with the fact that the Jew named Matthew put it where he did, as being the primary thing to consider. After all, he provided the context of the virgin. There really is no good way around that context, seeing as how he was the one who plopped it in. Whatever it may have meant to him, it obviously was an important meaning. I will rest with that.
Seeker,
There are some differences in how christos, is used in the Greek OT (the LXX, aka Septuagint) vs. the NT. In the Greek OT, christos is translated from the Hebrew mashiach. It is almost always used as an adjective, e.g. Leviticus 4:5 and 4:16 (“the anointed priest”); an arguable exception is found in Psalm 2:2 (“anointed one”). In stark contrast, Christos in the NT always refers to Jesus, and should be understood as meaning strictly Christ, i.e., Messiah, a noun. To reiterate, each and every occurrence of Christos in the NT means Messiah, though transliterated into English as Christ.
Interestingly, only twice in the entire NT, and both times in John’s Gospel (1:41, 4:25), we find Messias, transliterated “Messiah”, which is from the Aramaic meshicha rather than the Hebrew mashiach. Moreover, each time it is used it is to reiterate Messiahship, as it’s alongside Christos, “Christ”.
Other Greek words are used in the NT for “anointed”, such as chrio, which is used in reference to Jesus (Luke 4:18; Acts 4:27, 10:38; Philippians 2:9; Heb 1:9) all but one time, the exception being 2 Cor 1:21 which is used for Holy Spirit endued Christians. In addition, chrisma, “anointing” is used three times in the entire NT (1 John 2:20, and 2:27 [twice]), and each time the referent is the Holy Spirit. These two words are always used figuratively, in a sacred and symbolic sense. In contrast, the following are used in a physical sense: aleipho (Matt. 6:17; Mark 6:13, 16:1; Luke 7:38,46; John 11:2, 12:3; James 5:14), epichrio (John 9:6,11), enchrio (Rev 3:18), and murizo (Mark 14:8), all translated anoint/ed/ing in the NT.
My point in belaboring this is that one must be careful in how one understands “anointed” in the NT. Unfortunately, many online lexicons state something to the effect Christos = “anointed”, and many people have gone off track thinking that any time Christos is used in the NT that one can just assume it means “anointed” in some generic sense. This has led to many errors, such as found in quite a few occult and New Age / New Spirituality works (and some purporting to be Christian such as Word of Faith), in which the authors try to make the case that just as Jesus was ‘anointed’ so are we ‘anointed’ and we can ‘legitimately’ call ourselves “Christs”. This is most certainly NOT the case! There is only ONE Christos, ONE Christ in the NT!