A Hurting Husband...

[Natural Beauty, 2009, DCJohanson]

Hosea 3:1  Then the LORD said to me, "Go again, love a woman who is loved by a lover and is committing adultery, just like the love of the LORD for the children of Israel, who look to other gods and love the raisin cakes of the pagans."

There is a sculpture in Vigeland Sculpture Park, Oslo, Norway which perfectly embodies the thoughts that occurred to me today.  I could not find a photo of it... it is the one which has the lone woman, trapped in the coils of a sleeping serpent, bound fast by its hold on her until the time when it awakens and consumes her.

This image from my friend Dave Johanson is a stylized photo which can be seen in a similar light.  The ferns in which the woman is immersed and her posture and gesture can be taken as despair.  She is being sucked into the binding tentacles which grip her body... she struggles but cannot escape... she knows it is hopeless.  The "things" which God designed for good have been transformed into evil... in their perversion they ensnare and feed on their prey.   Such is the character of compulsive sin.

Hosea's life calling was not an easy one... He was set aside by God to experience just a taste of what God Himself goes through with His people.  How miserable it must have been.  Hosea was given a wife to marry and to love.  His heart was to bind to her.  They had children together.  There was a movement of his spirit toward hers.  Yet, from the beginning he knew that she was ensnared by sin.  There was a fundamental weakness in her... a fatal defect.  She lusted after pleasure... after other men... she was a harlot by inclination if not by profession.  She sinned because she wanted to sin.  It was not external circumstances... the pressures of providing for her children... the absence of a loving and generous husband... that moved her.  It was the clinging tentacles, the sucking, crushing grip of obsession that kept her eyes wandering and her feet chasing after the flesh. 

Hosea knew all this going in, just as God knows the wandering heart of His bride, His Church.  Hosea experienced the gut wrenching jealousy... the shameful rejection... the very, very personal and intimate pain that goes along with this type of rejection.  She longed for something that was not him!  She despised beauty, righteousness, honesty, integrity, constancy, and faithfulness.  She interpreted patient loving kindness as weakness and despised it.  How clearly she embodies and portrays us.

Yet, Hosea also is given the task of loving her back to himself.  The love that God gives him to express to her is a type of the self-sacrificing power with which He draws us, His wandering Bride, back to Himself.  His power withers the power of sin... the radiance of His person shrinks the voluptuous foliage that requires the dark and damp jungle to support its vigor. 

God's love is greater than our sin... it is the scalpel which gently scrapes away the leeches draining our life.  God is the perfect Husband because He loves us even when we don't love Him.

My heart goes out to my brother Hosea.  But what a wonder God accomplished in him... and, in retrospect, what a privilege he was given.  May we be as faithful... and even more, may our lives be used by God to such glorious ends... though I tremble at the idea of what that might entail.

Comments

[Joel Loukus]

Late reply, I know.

The scriptures also tell us at our God is capable of hatred (Psalm 5:5). How can we reconcile God having an emotion that is diametrically opposed to the thing that we say defines him, without dismissing inerrancy?

I'll merely submit that love is an inadequate word as it translates today, or it must be applied in broad, generic mazes as "He loves justice so it's still love if he Hates."

We are quite wrongly frightening the word from it's meaning, it lacks the master touch of truth, and it becomes hard to take seriously for the heathens.

Love simply isn't what we mean, hardly ever, and we ought to mean what we say.

[Gadfly]

Well, I think that C. S. Lewis is not infallible. When the Scriptures offer up an identity relation between God and love (1 John 4:8) we have to be a bit cautious about assigning any other attributes a superior place. God's justice, truth, etc. comply sweetly with God's love but never trump it. It is God's love for the world which results in judgment and even condemnation. God's love for the world is that which moves Him to purify it and us of all that which dishonors or tarnishes it. It is God's love which sent His Son to redeem the world.

So, it is the transforming power of love which works so beautifully to accomplish His ends in all things. It is the communication of Himself such that His image is formed in us that transforms us and His impression of Creation which makes it beautiful. From that ground all else flows.

I think this is to the point you were making but I may have misread you.

[Joel Loukus]

Always an interesting book.

I wonder, though, at the scalpel metaphor, though. The famous scripture does not seem to indicate that love is a mechanism, but rather a wherefore.

For he loved, he enacted the mechanism of mercy- the *fulfillment* of justice, rather than it's erasure (except, not at our expense).

I'm always hesitant about the supremacy of "love" talk, as it is read today, for this reason, because, it seems His love was not enough to override His will- His preference for justice, truth- the way of the universe that He created.

C.S lewis illustrated the point, as usual, beautifully.

>>>

“Oh, Aslan!” whispered Susan in the Lion’s ear, “can’t we – I mean, you won’t, will you? Can’t we do something about the Deep Magic? Isn’t there something you can work against it?”

“Work against the Emperor’s magic?” said Aslan, turning to her with something like a frown on his face. And nobody ever made that suggestion to him again.

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