This basic notion – that God is powerful and loves us unfailingly – was not the standard in the ancient Near East. In Egypt, Sumeria, Canaan, Assyria, Babylonia – down to the Greeks and the Romans – gods were not overly concerned about the well-being of humanity. Humans were said to be created to be slaves of the old gods so that they didn’t have to do the work of feeding and housing themselves.1 They demanded worship from humanity and even the slightest failure of ritual or practice could mean dire consequences. Their benevolence was seen as inconsistent, their feelings were easily offended, and their wrath was devastating.
Let me give you an example. It’s a Greek creation myth from Plato’s Symposium, told by Aristophanes. The story was written around 380 BC.2 Long, long ago, when humans were first created, they looked very different then we look now. Humans had arms and legs, but we were round like barrels. We had two faces on a single head, four hands, and four feet. We could walk like we do now or we could roll very quickly, around and around. Humans were strong and powerful and ambitious. The gods didn’t like that. They argued amongst themselves that all of humanity should be destroyed with thunderbolts. But other gods said: “who will make sacrifices to us and take care of us if we kill them all?” Still, they could not abide the insolence of their creatures.3
Zeus thought long and hard about the problem and said, “I have a plan to humble their pride and put them in their place.” So, Zeus called up all his strength and he split each human being in two. He called on Apollo to reform our bodies. But Apollo gathered up the open wounds and sewed the skin up together at our belly buttons so that we would never forget the consequence of our rebellion.4
Aristophanes says that after this, the wounded people desperately reached out for their other half, the one they missed so dearly. They wanted to embrace to try to put themselves back together. This was where the Greeks said romantic love came from. And Zeus was sure to remind them that if they misbehaved again, he would cut them in half once more – each one a missing piece, lost and alone.5
This is the saddest explanation for why we fall in love that I have ever heard. It’s bizarre; it’s cruel; it’s heartless. Worshipping these gods meant accepting that you have no inherent value; you are ever in danger of their fleeting whims. Worshipping these gods meant that you were not a child, welcomed, loved, accepted, but a slave that could be punished, weakened, or disposed of without so much as an afterthought.
These so-called gods blamed humanity for their own failings, their own jealousies. If they had a problem, they looked to a human to soothe it. If humans didn’t soothe it enough or in just the right way, they were struck down. But at the end of the day, these gods still required worship and sacrifice to serve their egos and their pride. And that, my dear friends, is precisely what abusers and perpetrators of domestic violence and sexual violence do to this day. They treat those closest to them as slaves to be attacked and dismissed. Spouses and partners and children are only there to serve them, to soothe their grievances, to follow their orders without question. No one else’s will or needs are real to them – they don’t matter. Abusers create a world for their victims in which the abuser is god; they alone are to be worshiped. When they attack – verbally, physically, sexually – they never see it as their own fault. Since they see themselves as gods, they don’t really believe they can do any wrong anyway. We can name this for what it is: idolatry…
In Roman religion, in the supposed “love” of an abuser, the watch word is, “I give that you might give.” Basically, if you want anything from me – your god, your abuser – then I am owed adoration, I am owed ceremony, I am owed total devotion, and nothing that you want or need will ever truly matter. Here, in this place, we learn that that is not how love works. That’s not how the one, true God operates. Because God gives to us before we ask; God knows our needs and provides for us. God’s grace overshadows any bit of what we could ever give God in return. And when God gets angry with us, it’s not because we’ve offended divine pride or left off a word in a ritual. The God of justice gets angry when we are unjust. The God of mercy gets angry when we are unmerciful. The God of hope gets angry when we spread despair and distrust.
[1] http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2014/05/29/humans-created-to-serve-the-gods-rjs/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symposium_(Plato)
[3] http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/symposium.html
[4] ibid
[5] ibid