Sin is the Punishment

Just a quick list as to where I get the idea that sin is the punishment in and of itself. A list of Hebrew words and their actual meanings that are translated as "punishment" in the King James Version. The number is the Strongs concordance reference number. So in your Bible it says punishment but in the Hebrew...well take a look...

Words translated as PUNISHMENT in your Bible

H8433 Towcheleth-correct, rebuke

H6486 Pequddah-care, custody, visitation

H6485 Paqad-to attend to, to visit

H5352 Naquah-to be empty, be clear, be free

H4148 Muwcar-instruct

H5771 'Avon- guilt. {seen in the bible as the phrase "punishment of their iniquity" it is really just this one word in the Hebrew. See below}

H7725 Shuwb-turn back {seen in the KJV as the phrase "will not revoke its punishment" or in the NIV as the phrase "will not turn back my wrath". In the Hebrew just the one word.}

H7561 Rasha-wicked

H2403 Chatta'ath-sin

GOD DID NOT CURSE EVE

So over the past couple of months we have been talking a lot about the roll of women in the Bible and in ancient mythology. I find myself always going back to Genesis to look at what exactly happened there.  There are still things I am trying to figure out.  I have talked a bit about the fact that God did NOT curse Eve. {He only cursed the devil}I've talked about the Sumerian goddess Inanna and the myth of her garden tree. Now I want to put everything all together. I'm not totally sure on all my thoughts but really just thinking out loud and working some ideas out. As we approach good Friday I think it is important to see what Jesus accomplished and fulfilled on the cross in regards to women. So here are my latest thoughts on the subject.

In my research yesterday I came across a woman named Katharine Bushnell. She was a bible scholar, doctor and missionary in China in the early 1900s. She helped translate the Bible into Chinese{Mandarin or Cantonese; I'm not sure}. She has come across several interesting findings that co-inside with what we have been discussing. I have just begun to uncover her writings. So far I am in agreement with what she has to say about what happened in Eden and especially the mistranslation of Genesis 3:16. Which we will get to in a moment.

First let's recap some of the things that we have discussed in the other posts on Eden. I think that Eve was the one tempted by the Devil because of her dominion and her ability to bring forth life. I also believe that Eve could see in the spirit differently than Adam. This could of been part of how she was to "help" Adam, just as the Spirit a "helper" of God and those that yield to him. It's curious that Adam never mentions the serpent and I think that is because he couldn't see him. Notice it wasn't until after Adam ate the fruit that "both their eyes were opened" maybe Eve's eyes already were.

DON'T Be An Ass...but DO Let Jesus Use You.

Even the Rocks Cry Out

“Say to the daughter of Zion, ‘Behold, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.’”  Matt 21:5

Tear Down the Wall

{illustrations by William Blake}

Jesus and Gender

As I was reading through the gospels the other day looking for how Jesus related to women I was struck by two sets of verses. They are verses that I had read many times before but this time saw in a different light in regards to gender and how God relates to his people. Moreover the groundwork that Jesus was laying for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Acts. For it is through the Spirit that man and woman become one and equal in Christ.

"Then one said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee. But he answered and said unto him that told him, Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? And he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother." Matt. 12:47-50

"And he answered and said unto them, My mother and my brethren are these which hear the word of God, and do it." Luke 8:21

I find it very interesting that Jesus spoke these words after he had been talking about the Devil and spiritual warfare. It where he says "every house divided can not stand"{Matt.12:25}. I have always read these verses to mean that God should be the most important. God should be number one in your life even above your family. And I think that is true. But this time when I read these verses again I heard Jesus speaking out against inequality in gender. Jesus was saying "Be One!".

In the body of Christ there should be no divisions. In the body of Christ male isn't above the female. In the body of Christ female is not above male. In the body of Christ male and female are equal! Not that we just both get to go to heaven. God's kingdom on earth should be as it is in heaven. We should be equal in our relation to one another so that we can be unified in our reaching out to the lost. We are both heirs{male} and we are both the bride{female}. This was ground breaking for the times. This shouldn't need to be ground breaking 2000 years later.

Yet there is still so much gender division in the body of Christ. And I believe that is part of the reason why we are not standing as a light to the lost; both male and female.  Only having respect for women is not the same as seeing them as equal.  People are finding their equality in places other than the church.  That is sad indeed!  This is part of the huge swell of women being drawn to Wicca and the goddess worship we have discussed in other posts.  The church should be the cornerstone of justice and equality of women, not the goddess. The church should be filling the hunger of these women to be healers, prophets and purveyors of the supernatural; not the goddess.

Feminine Spirit of the Gospels

This is just a list of some verses from the gospels of women who who could perceive the Spirit before the outpouring in Acts. I think it is so cool to see that women were already sensitive to the Spirit and moreover that the authors of the gospels mention them. These women were facilitating and acting in a Spirit of wisdom that should inspire all of us.

An angel appears to Zechariah to tell him he and Elizabeth will have a son. Zechariah questions the Lord, but Elizabeth believes.

"Thus hath the Lord dealt with me in the days wherein he looked on [me], to take away my reproach among men." Luke 1:25

I am sure it is this attitude that had to do with the Lord choosing Mary to be the mother of our Savior.

"And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord,And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour." Luke 1:46-47
Anna, a prophetess at the temple, Recognises Jesus as Savior even though he is only a few days old.

"Coming up to them at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem." Luke 2:38

This woman knew Jesus was not like the other rabbis and would not think her "unclean" for her blood issue.

"And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years...When she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched his garment. For she said, If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole." Mark 5:27,28

The rejected Canaanite women is not too proud to beg even for the crumbs of Jesus. She had a hunger even though she was rejected. Jesus honored her by saving her daughter.

"And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, [thou] Son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil.But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth after us...But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast [it] to dogs. And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table." Matt. 15:22,26-27

Male & Female Function of God

Continuing from the last post{click here} we are discussing the male and female aspects of God. Not that God is part male and part female; God is a spirit. But God can and does function as both male and female. The male function tending to be through God the Father and Jesus His son; the female function being through the the Holy Spirit. We don't need the bible to make God neuter in order to see this. Any thought that the Bible needs to refer to God as an "it" instead of a "he" is silly and at the very least impersonal. God is a personal God and he personally functions as both male and female. I want to draw out these functions to give women especially a sense of who they are and who they can be in God.

On that same note we don't need the Bible to be neuter when referring to mankind either. The Bible is the word of God to his people, not just men and not just women. So if you come across verses that seem to be just talking to "men" don't think that you can glean from it as a woman. Same goes for the opposite. God tells us that male and female are mankind. So read His word as such.

"He created them male and female and blessed them. And when they were created, he called them Adam {mankind}." Genesis 5:2

Women were equally created in the image and likeness of God but have seemed to be but a shadow among their male counterparts through history. {We have discussed much of this in the last several posts}. So for a quick review lets look how it all started.

God is NOT a Man, God is a Spirit

So we have been talking about the goddess trough history and how the enemy has used to the goddess as a power and a comfort for women. We have discussed how through the ages that hasn't been hard to do since women have been faced by a largely misogynistic world or at the very least one that has been in large part run by men. Therefore women who have been hurt in this area have shied away from any association with a patriarchal God. And really who can blame them? But what needs to be clarified is that any hurt or fear that has come in the name of a patriarchal God is Not God, because God is not in the business of fear and hurting people.

So where does a woman find her place within a patriarchal faith? I have touched a bit on what God intended when he created the two sexes and how the enemy screwed that all up. How the enemy used what happened in Eden as a catalyst for his role as goddess and gender confusion through the ages. So now that we know that it is the enemy behind the goddess how can women find what they were searching for from the goddess in God? That is what I am in the process of trying to figure out. So I will share what I have come up with so far. Starting things off with one of the ten commandments from God.

From Goddess to Witch

So we have been discussing the time of the middle ages after the fall of the Roman Empire. Speaking in very general terms covering many years. We find that the church fathers had fallen into a fear of women's sexuality and closeness to the spirit realm. So if you were a woman in the church at that time{speaking in very general terms} you were kept close to home. Sex was only for procreation , if at all, as we know most catholics of the time were celibate. Woman had no role in the church and only learned of God what the men taught them which was most often skewed.

So during this time throughout we have a resurgence of pagan folklore sort of mixing with the old Greco-Roman pantheons. It was mostly woman who were involved in these practices and they became known as witches. We could spend a lot of time discussing all the evil practices, the witch hunts, the trials. But what I want to focus on is the scheme of the enemy and his arsonist firefighter trick. Once again he had created a misogynist oppression{this time within the church} then created a goddess to save them. What I find very interesting is that the principle goddess was Diana{Artemis}.

Remember Artemis/Diana was the goddess with the most disdain for men. She was the one that required virginity as a part of her worship of being subject to no man. We also found that much of the practice of infanticide in that time seemed to be loosely connected to her. Women would either consume or sit in baths of wormwood{artemisia vulgaris} to induce abortion. What changes about the goddess Diana/Artemis in the middle ages is that she is no longer a virgin. Given that the oppressive spirit of celibacy was already being taken care of by the church the devil used Diana to loose the chains of chastity or "procreation only" sex. But being the devil of course he didn't create a freedom of sexuality in a Godly sense but instead hearkened back to the damaging sexuality of blurred gender and lack of intimacy or relationship.

Slay the Woman Loose the Dragon

Out of the wonderment and the power that was the very early church came a very angry dragon. The time of equal right and unity between men and women within the new faith was unfortunately short lived. The dragon had lost his hold over the woman and the huge polytheistic pantheons had begun to crumble. So the devil had to come up with a new way to revive the goddess and the catalyst came from within the church.

Remember how I discussed earlier that the woman seem to have a better perception of the spirit realm? I believe that is a gift that God gave woman that was intended to be coupled with mens strength of sober evaluation. So that together the perception of the woman and the evaluation of the man could produce proper judgement in situations. In Eden Eve could perceive the serpent but Adam was silent in his evaluation of the situation. Therefore proper judgment was not made. Maligned judgement of the situation lead to deception for both Adam and Eve.

Now we saw that the devil chose the woman not only because she was the one that bore the seed of man but also because of her spiritual perception. In this way the devil could use her for his spiritual deception via her sexuality and power of persuasion based in her spiritual sensitivity. This is how the role of the goddess flourished from the time of the Sumerian Inanna all the way through to the Greek goddesses like Artemis/Diana. What added fuel to the flame is that spiritual power was the only power that women were "allowed" to have in a man driven world. Then we saw how Jesus changed all that. The very early church was a spiritual power to be reckoned with because of the unity between men and women.

Greek Myth of Pandora

Before we move on I wanted to be sure to share one last Greek myth with you. You will see as we move into the time of the early church how this attitude towards woman was adopted by many a "church father". It was this attitude that fueled the fire while women were burned at the stake! If only these "fathers" had remembered the words of Paul to the Ephesians instead of seemingly ascribing to the paganist thought they were suppose to be rooting out! Again, you can not slay the dragon by killing the woman.

"For our struggle is NOT against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms." Ephesians 5:12

The Greek Myth of the Mortal Pandora

"The gods keep hidden from men the means of life . . . Zeus in the anger of his heart hid it, because Prometheus the crafty deceived him; therefore he planned sorrow and mischief against men. He hid fire; but that the noble son of Iapetus stole again for men from Zeus the counsellor in a hollow fennel-stalk, so that Zeus who delights in thunder did not see it. But afterwards Zeus who gathers the clouds said to him in anger : `Son of Iapetos, surpassing all in cunning, you are glad that you have outwitted me and stolen fire--a great plague to you yourself and to men that shall be. But I will give men as the price for fire an evil thing in which they may all be glad of heart while they embrace their own destruction.'

Slay the Dragon Not the Woman

"There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus." Galatians 3:28

I was going to try to avoid the verses in the new testament that have caused so much division in the church between men and woman. These verses have been re-hashed so many times you almost don't want to hear of them again! But because of what we have been discussing I find it necessary to visit a few of them. Many women have been deeply hurt by the way these verses have been taught. Which is a big indicator to me that they are not being taught correctly because God is not in the business of hurting people. I am hoping that you maybe see them in a different light putting them in context as to what type of women Paul was speaking to.

The words of Paul to women seem very harsh at times. But we have to remember that many of the people he was writing had never heard the gospel. The most common explanation is that the majority of the female coverts of the new testament church were prostitutes. It is true that prostitution was rampant throughout the Roman empire; both street and temple. They were always scantily clad, loaded with make-up, jewelry and spoke brazenly. Like most sexuality during that time there was an attitude of "anything goes". Sexuality was not an intimate male/female thing it was a ritualistic/hedonistic thing{as we have discussed in the other posts}. Infidelity, adultery, drugs and alcohol fueled the fire!

Power of the Goddess

So we have been discussing the word of the goddess through the old and new testament. I find it so interesting that in the way of "fertility goddesses" we went from Inanna and Ishtar whose temple practices involved copious amounts of sexual activity, a generous blurring of the lines between genders, and the consecration of any virginity or loss there of to the goddess herself.

As we moved into the new testament we have the goddess Cybele who still requires copious amounts of sexual activity for her worship but it is done in such a way that there in no fertility. Meaning that the sexual activity was between same sexes making it impossible to produce a child. Then we found Artemis to really be the antithesis of fertility in that she required anyone who worshipped her to never marry. This wasn't for virtuous reasons, this was because of the refusal to be attached to any man. Not only that but if one did marry and have a child it was quite possible you would suffer her wrath. Remember any woman who died in childbirth was attributed to Artemis. Their tunics would be taken to her as sacrifice. {according to the picture above maybe it was their bodies too!?!}We also discovered the eerie connection between a known abortion causing herb of the ancient world wormwood and the goddess. The herbs Latin name was Artemisia Vulgaris.

Artemis Peter Pan?

OK, so I know this is a little random and a bit of a detour...my brain does that from time to time...LOL. If you have been reading along for the last few posts we have been discussing goddesses of the ancient world. The last goddess we just discussed was Artemis of Ephesus fame.

So my kids {ages 6 and 3} have been watching Disney's "Peter Pan" off and on for the last couple of days. One of my favorites, although I have never read the original book by J.M Barrie. Remember how in the last post I said that Artemis was a female Peter Pan of sorts? Well I got to thinking...{remember my brain is a bit strange} that they do have quite a bit in common...at least with the Disney movie. Let me explain....