The King hates the Queen

It goes against your reason, doesn’t it.  Eliza Snow wrote the words to this hymn:

O My Father, Hymn No. 2921.

O my Father, thou that dwellest In the high and glorious place, When shall I regain thy presence And again behold thy face? In thy holy habitation, Did my spirit once reside? In my first primeval childhood, Was I nurtured near thy side?

2. For a wise and glorious purpose Thou hast placed me here on earth And withheld the recollection Of my former friends and birth; Yet ofttimes a secret something Whispered,”You’re a stranger here,” And I felt that I had wandered From a more exalted sphere.

3. I had learned to call thee Father, Thru thy Spirit from on high, But, until the key of knowledge Was restored, I knew not why. In the heav’ns are parents single? No, the thought makes reason stare! Truth is reason, truth eternal Tells me I’ve a mother there.

4. When I leave this frail existence, When I lay this mortal by, Father, Mother, may I meet you In your royal courts on high? Then, at length, when I’ve completed All you sent me forth to do, With your mutual approbation Let me come and dwell with you.

In July, David publicly praised Heavenly Mother through a historical look at the imagery of the goddess.

But we just can’t roll our eyes in denial or debunk with a higher critical skepticism the last words of Yahweh given via the prophet Jeremiah to the people in Jeremiah 44.

The terror is this.  When the community of God accepts in their hearts the queen, the true reality behind the name of the King is erased.  Right?  Isn’t that the natural consequence stated in the chapter?

It is sad.  All so sad.  I want to sing the mournful dirge of Lamentations right now.

So what about the remnant in exile – those dragged in chains 200 miles up to Riblah and then another 400 miles to Babylon.  In Babylon, they would be greeted and confronted with 180 open shrines to Ishtar.  Hymns and prayers to the goddess sounded everywhere.

But it was there – in the midst of the queen’s populism, her exotic domain – that the sovereign God demonstrated with glory a universal fact (the positive and negative):  Yahweh is the unique Most High; and the Queen is the common sense vanity promoted by creaturely, sinful women.

4 comments

  1. As much as I adore Kevin Barney, I will admit that the notion that Heavenly Mother = Asherah makes me pretty uncomfortable.

    Incidentally, there are really good Mormon feminist reasons to not want to believe in a Heavenly Mother. Lynnette from Zelophehad’s Daughters had a good post on that here.

  2. I remember reading Lynnette’s post two years ago.

    Jeremiah 44 is sad – a theological and sociological crash. It is the epitome of setting up desperate housewives among the people of God.

    G. Campbell Morgan, connected with Moody, said long ago, “How shall I express it other than by saying that not only is it true that God is Father, it is also true that God is Mother? If the great doctrine of the Fatherhood of God is taught in the Bible, quite clearly also, and quite as clearly, the doctrine of the Motherhood of God is taught in the Bible.”

    Only in the person of Jesus Christ, does Yahweh share in the creaturely limitations of a male. But even this Male is unlike any other male – this Male understood both males and females perfectly. Tough, fighting warrior and tender, merciful lover meet together in perfect balance in the God/Man – the Lord Jesus Christ. It is not Mars nor Venus. Jesus is the perfect person for both creaturely sexes.

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