". . .I cannot reconcile
myself to the Judeo-Christian assumption that man was God's principal creation,
with woman (Eve, fashioned from Adam's rib) a mere derivative
afterthought."
Nothing could be more silly.
When God took a rib out of Adam
to create Eve, He gave Eve some things directly from His image and likeness
that were for her especially. That’s why “men are from Mars and women are from
Venus.”
While the pagan depiction of God
as a woman/mother demeans His person and character, God's character obviously
includes feminine traits.
*****
In Isaiah 66:13, God, making
one of numerous references to the nation Israel as His child, says, "As
one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you."
"There are some things He
put into a woman and into a mother that are like Him and she's that way because
she's like Him," explains Jordan. "You know what a mother's comfort
is like? You want to know what comfort is from God when He says He ‘comforts us
in all our tribulations’?
"When a child runs and
falls down and skins a knee, does the child jump up and say, 'Daddy, Daddy!'
No, the child says, 'I want my momma.' There's just something about
comfort that a mother provides because there's something about a mother that's
like God.
"In Isaiah 49:15, God again, in
reference to His people the nation Israel, emphasizes He's like a good mother
who is all-caring: ‘Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not
have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not
forget thee.’
"A mother’s going to know
something about tears; know something about disappointments. God says, 'You
know what I'm like? I'm like that mother who you could never get out of her
heart her compassion for her kid.' That’s how God is in compassion.
*****
“God identifies with the fury
of a mother when anyone tries to come between her and her child. God warns in
Hosea 13:8, for example, ‘I will meet them as a bear that is bereaved of her
whelps, and will rend the caul of their heart, and there will I devour them
like a lion: the wild beast shall tear them.’
"He's saying, 'You want to
know what I'm like when somebody comes in and tries to take Israel
away? I'm going to be like a bear that's bereaved of her whelps.’
“The mentality is sort of like, ‘Somebody's come and stole my kids?!
I'm coming for you, sucker!’ A situation you never want to get into is where a
mother is coming after you. God says, ‘That's the kind of fury I have over
mine.’
*****
“Insight into Jesus Christ's
maternal instinct, even when His children are in gross disobedience, can be
found in Matthew 23:37. Christ, looking out over the city of Jerusalem, says, ‘O
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which
are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even
as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!’
"Could there be anybody
who would deserve that less? They killed the prophets and stoned those who were
sent unto them and yet with that mother's compassion, that mother's heart, that
heart that only a mother can understand . . .
“Christ says, 'How often I would have gathered you under my wings.
I'd have taken those wings (Deuteronomy 32:11 talks about the eagle's wings;
how she has her young nestled) and put you under them and shielded you from the
wrath you're going to get—the punishment that's coming. I would have done it
for you but you would not.'
"The mother broods over, watches after, takes care
of, gives refuge to her kids because she's like God.
*****
"The great 19th
Century evangelist Dwight L. Moody once gave a striking story about a mother’s
love in a sermon. He told of a woman in England whose son had killed five
people—butchered them, sliced them up like a Jack the Ripper kind of copycat.
"And that boy's mother sat in the box during the trial and
when he was sentenced, she fainted, fell out.
"They got her awake and
she grabbed the boy, hugged him, kissed him and, in order to take him to
prison, they had to literally tear her apart from him.
"She went off and petitioned the court to get him off but it
never happened. And after they hung the boy, she went and petitioned to get his
body, but they wouldn't give it and buried him in the prison graveyard. When
that momma died, the one instruction in her will was, 'Bury me next to my boy.'
"You say, 'What in the world?! Where would that come from?'
He was a murderer; nobody had any use for him on the face of the earth but a
mother. She was able to do that, not because she thought the lives of the
people he killed were valueless; it's because there's something in her that's
like God who never lets you go even when you ought to be let go."
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