“The Holy One began to speak through Hosea. And the Holy One said to Hosea, go on, sleep around with a woman, casually and unattached like you’re children. Because, that’s how this whole land’s acting, leaving their Holy One behind” (Hosea 1.2).
God loves us anyway. Even when we are adulterous, betraying our covenant with God. Even when we prostitute ourselves to the gods of this world. Even when we’re out having premarital sex. God loves us.
That’s, at least, how Hosea was taught to me as a teenager. And, every time I come to this book, I have to wrestle through that interpretation.
Even if you weren’t exposed to the purity teachings popular decades ago, it’s difficult not to read the book of Hosea through the lens of sex and immorality. It is, after all, a book about a good, chaste man who goes and marries a…well, less than moral woman. Right?
Gomer, the woman who has been called everything from an adulteress to a “whore”, is none of those things. She is like a lot of people I knew in high school who prefer casual sexual encounters instead of the deeper, emotional commitments that come with a relationship. And, despite the volumes that fill Christian bookstore shelves, she is not someone God condemns.
Go, the Holy One tells Hosea, go on and engage in these casual relationships. That’s what the people have done with me. I’ve become nothing more than a Friday night lover who they leave before dawn, never wanting to get to know me, to let me love them.
These are not words of a condemning Deity but the words of a wounded heart. And, perhaps, it means that everything that follows is less the judgment of an angry God and more the lament of a lover who longs for something more.
Think about that, what if everything in this book is less a declaration of consequence and, instead, the ache of a friend, a loved one who sees what is happening and wants nothing more than for someone, anyone to take their outstretched hand and allow themselves to be drawn into an embrace, one that dares to know and be known.
It may well mean that we aren’t meant to see things as we always have. It may mean that Gomer isn’t the stand-in for sinful people and Hosea the righteous god. It might mean we have to see the words of this prophet as words of caution and warning not from an outside threat but what we are doing to ourselves.
What if what we hear is not the story of a man who takes an unsavory woman into his home as a metaphor for how God deals with us but a tale of the One who longs for us, wants us to draw near and fall deep into their love and embrace? What if it is less a warning than a examination of all the things we do because we fear the trust and vulnerability a relationship demands of us.
What if it is the story not of a God who loves us anyway, but the One who loves and longs for us in every way.
Beloved One, too often I treat you as a casual lover, one I turn to when I am lonely, sad, or afraid. I let other things fill my heart—things I can control—rather than allow you to love me. Help me, this week, to surrender to your love, and draw deep into the relationship you have so long desired to have with me.
Beautiful. This is the way I try to see our Savior despite my “purity teachings” that still continue today.
Thank you.