God beyond an image
How do you imagine God's presence with you throughout your day? What's one practice that image (or a new image) of God might call you to do for a more compassionate and just world today?
Hosea 11:3a, 4b
It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by the arms... I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them.
Psalm 131 shares a tender parental image, Hosea gifts us another. Those familiar with Hosea’s main metaphor for God — a husband punishing his wife’s infidelity — may feel whiplash.
How can one book imagine God as a patriarchal punisher, and a tender mother?
For his raging husband allegory, the prophet draws concepts of power from his day, the conquering emperor. Their propaganda portrayed them as all-powerful “husbands” dominating conquered peoples.
Steeped in cultures where power = masculinity = violence, I can follow Hosea’s logic chain: if God is Most Powerful, then God “must” be the Most Masculine, the Most Violent.
I can understand how Hosea got there, — but I’m still disturbed by his flat-out abusive God.
I’m grateful that, like so many biblical texts, Hosea dialogues with itself. For me, chapter 11’s turn to tenderness “talks back” to the rest of the text: “Must power dominate? Or is true power wrath restrained?”
The author goes so far as to declare “I am God and not a man” (Hebrew ish, a gender-specific “man”) — “so I will not come with terror.” After all those chapters characterizing God as a dominating husband, God flatly rejects being identified with toxic masculinity.
How do you imagine God's presence with you throughout your day? What's one practice that image (or a new image) of God might call you to do for a more compassionate and just world today?
—Avery Arden