God is Love, not Zeus
+ from the homily “Scripture, The Church, & Domestic Violence”
John 20:15 ”Woman, why are you weeping?”
There’s a comic strip that always makes me laugh. It’s Jesus standing outside the threshold of a home, knocking on the door. Jesus says “Knock knock.” The person behind the door, “Who’s there?” … Jesus replies, “It’s Jesus, let me in!” The person says, “Why?” Jesus answers, “So I can save you!” The person asks, “From what?” Jesus pauses then replies, “From what I’m going to do to you if you don’t let me in!”
As funny as this is, it’s a sad representation of how millions of Christians see God. Through out church history, most recently during the revivalist movements of the 18th century up to present day, there’s been this bi-polar, split personality, maniacal portrayal of God. I’ve heard it encapsulated in the quip, “We’re bad. God’s mad. Jesus fixed it.” Or as the fiery preacher Jonathan Edwards unfortunately stated during the Great Awakening, we are “sinners in the hands of an angry God.” This view became prevalent in Protestant homes because “conversion by coercion” is highly affective. The Catholic Church had its angry God too during the Rigorism and Jansenism of the 17th century, which was inevitably ruled a heresy.
Is this really how we view God? An angry, violent, retributive God that Jesus has to save us from? A Zeus like God, hurling thunderbolts when we misstep? How sad. How broken and misguided. The Gospel is not that we are saved from God, but that we’re saved from death. That’s what Hebrews 2 is all about.
I believe this to be central to Christian orthodoxy; God is love. God is not just loving, God is sheer love itself. And, I believe this love is revealed in Christ as an incarnate love. The reason why I think it’s important to state this upfront is because there have been so many portraits of God from the Church that do not match up with what’s been revealed in Christ. Plainly, I believe the reason why domestic abuse is (statistically) just as high in the Church as it is outside of it is, in part, because people imitate the God they worship. Or, as Fr. Richard Rohr says, “our image of God makes us.” How we image God in our mind, soul, and body will impact how we engage the world, our neighbors, our family. If our God is retributive and violent, so will we be. If our image of God is vengeful and aggressive, so will we be. If our God accepts and uses punitive, penal substitutionary atonement, so will we. If our God needs a pound of flesh, a body to be beat, torture, and kill to appease his wrath, so will we. If our God needs placated, or else there will be eternal hell to pay, then so will we. Our image of God creates us. Meister Eckhart’s prayer is one of the most faithful prayers I’ve ever heard, “God, rid of us God, as we imagine you to be.”
It would be silly for us at best, destructively hypocritical at worst, as people of faith, to be here today and talk about the evils of domestic violence while simultaneously holding onto the perceived original domestic abuse: A Father who needed a body to beat up (in the Son) in order to have a loving relationship with his son’s bride, the Church. This is the bent and diseased logic of spousal abuse; that violence and wrath are somehow the cost of a relationship. And yet, this remains a belief that many Christians hold onto, needlessly. I say needlessly because there are so many good theologians of integrity, so many writings from the saints, from mothers and fathers of the church past and present, who in the wake of the Spirit have given us gifts; gifts of a better and more faithful theology that reveals the loving, triune God of mutuality, a God that gives selflessly to God and to creation. These are the voices of scholars and teachers, authors and professors, clergy and lay folk who, by the grace of God, can lead us to the God who is sheer and utter, unconditioned love. And they're in every tradition, both Protestant and Catholic! Thanks be to God.
We need a healthy wave of remembrance, a Eucharistic anamnesis, that makes present the gift of the faith once delivered… the very faith that bears witness to Christ! Not the mythological Zeus-like god of violence, revenge, and retribution, but the God that is revealed fully in Christ; this Abba who heals, redeems, reconciles, and lovingly calls us daughter and son. This God is revealed fully in Christ who is “the exact image of God” according to the author of Hebrews. Paul says in Colossians 2, “In Christ the fullness of the Godhead was pleased to dwell.” I like the way Pastor Brian Zahnd says it, “God is like Jesus. God has always been like Jesus. There has never been a time when God was not like Jesus. We haven’t always known this—but now we do.”
While studying the horrific realities of domestic violence I discovered the term, “intimate terrorism.” It’s a phrase used to describe the devastating effects of spousal abuse that often leaves its victim with PTSD and long lasting health issues. May I suggest that there’s an intersection between “intimate terrorism” and what I’ve heard called “scriptural terrorism” or “biblicism.” If intimate terrorism is the weaponizing of relationship for the manipulation and abuse of a body and mind, “scriptural terrorism” is the weaponizing of scripture for the manipulation and abuse of a soul (and body). Biblicism enables an individual to weaponize any verse from the Bible that they choose, by cherry-picking a scripture, in order to dominate and bring about their own desired ends. This is called “proof-texting” and it’s what the devil attempts to do during the temptation of Christ. Historically this practice has been used to endorse nearly anything — from wars of conquest, to genocide, from holding women as property, to the institution of slavery. This abuse of the Bible has a long and well-documented past. It is pure evil and unfortunately it’s still occurring today.
I think our departed sister, Rachel Held Evans, was spot on when she wrote, “If you're looking for verses with which to support slavery, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to abolish slavery, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to oppress women, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to liberate or honor women, you will find them. … This is why there are times when the most instructive question to bring to the text is not, “what does it say?” but “what am I looking for?” If you want to do violence in this world, you will always find the weapons. If you want to heal, you will always find the balm.”
The real question is “what are we looking for?” or, “who are we looking for?” Are we looking for Christ? The more I live, the more I am convinced, the only way to read scripture in ways that heal, is to read from a Christocentric perspective, a Christocentric hermeneutic, in other words let Christ be your interpretive lens. Because, if you want to use the Bible to justify violence and abuse…there is a way…but you can’t do that with Jesus (at least not without lying). And Jesus is who all Scripture testifies to. Jesus said, “You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; but these are they which testify of Me.”
I believe failure to center Christ in our reading, teaching, and preaching, perpetuates a kind of malpractice in the church which has led to what theologian Nancy Nason-Clark calls, “the holy hush” the silent complacency and toleration of abuse towards women. This causes women’s status to be seen in the Bible as a second-rate citizen. Scriptures like, “wives obey your husbands,” “let women learn silence in full submission” are abused and twisted to subordinate and oppress women. Womanist theologian Kendra Arsenault says, "There are a lot of women who are genuinely devoted to Jesus Christ, and when they hear passages that seem to say, "adultery is the only reason to get out of a dangerous situation" they tend to find themselves in a bind. It's a bind where they don't think that being beaten, financially ostracized, emotionally terrorized, being physically hurt...that these aren't motivations enough that will allow them, in a spiritual sense, to leave for safety. […] We need to find spiritual leaders who stand up and say, 'you have a theological basis to move to safety. And, God is not calling you to stay in a place where your life is in danger, because you're responsible for that life that he gave you.” We as the church have to do better theologically so that when our daughters, sisters, and mothers read Gen 3:16 “Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you” they can be free to ask, Is God being prescriptive or descriptive? Is this an expression of God’s inner-most wants? Or in reality is this passage simply describing the effects of sin?
More so, it seems to me that the way forward for people of faith is to restore scripture to a healthier place. The way some Christians hold the Bible is idolatrous, you’d think it was the 4th member of the Trinity. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (Jn.1). Jesus Christ is the Word of God and all scriptures need to bow to the living God, who came in the flesh. This is Christocentrism. For those who claim Christ, the life-giving, liberating love of Christ is the way forward. Jesus believed women, protected women, empowered women, and honored women publicly. It’s time for the church to do the same. May the church no longer be silent in the face of suffering.
It’s Eastertide. I always thought that the first words of the Resurrection were ‘Peace Be With You.’They are not. The first words of the resurrection are these: "Woman, why are you weeping?” Think about this. A body has been abused, a body representative of all abused bodies, and there’s divine attention.
I can't help but to read these words as the inaugural question of God's new reality. The resurrection community is one that takes inventory of pain and abuse. And, God comes along side of us in our concern for what's happening to bodies made in the image of God so that we can proclaim and practice new life; new possibilities.
Lord, grant to us your attention so that we can protect, honor, and empower every body made in your image. In Jesus name, AMEN.