Intimacy with someone else - Reflections from Hosea (#5)

If the Bible is accurate about the kind of relationship God desires us to have with Him, and He with us, it can be summed up in the word "intimacy."  The adjective God would also attach to that word is "exclusive." 

In other words, He doesn't want to share us.  He doesn't want us to think that our intimacy is "available" -- available to someone else who bids or to something else that tempts.

When we are not intimately available to someone else or something else, we are the Lord's bride.  When we are...well, in the words of the prophet Hosea, we are the world's whore.

A DIFFICULT BLUNTNESS

"My people inquire of a piece of wood,
their walking staff gives them oracles.
For, a spirit of whoredom has led them astray,
and they have left their God to play the whore."
Hosea 4:12

A 1991 Ken Russell film bears the name "Whore."  It begins with a young woman named Liz who struts along a curb near an underpass on a multi-laned street, exhibiting as much of her body as the law allows.  She wants someone to stop and take her and pay her for a few minutes of intimacy.  I've not watched the film, but the written story line explains that Liz wasn't always a whore.  She slid down prostitution's slippery slope while trolling for a man in a bar.  Such trolling became a lifestyle, at times lucrative, albeit filthy and often dangerous. 

But there she is.  Offering, with each flirt and fling, her devaluing delights.  Proverbs describes it as if one is pouring precious, clean water into filthy sewers and gutters.  A shocking waste.  The potential joys of intimacy--experienced only in the context of exclusivity--are carelessly dumped out in the public square, and squandered.

Sometimes, God looks at his bride and admits she is whoring near the curb.

WHORING - misdirected worship and trust

Should you chase this subject in Scripture, you may be stunned to find how often God's (O.T.) people played the whore.  A lot.  You'll find extensive descriptions in Hosea, Jeremiah, Ezekiel.   Numbers 15:39 (ESV) expresses it as a "following after your own heart and your own eyes."  Notice the repeated phrases your own.  Our Husband knows our heart can be desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9), unsuspectingly errant, and left to its own unbridled passions, can pulsate with desire for other lovers.

Whoring is the result of a decision, and perhaps a string of decisions.  "Israel," (Jeremiah 3), "went up on every high hill and there played the whore...she did not return."   People who belong in an exclusive worship and trust relationship with God now worshiping and trusting something else, something less.  Offering the passion and closeness of one's heart and affections -- promised to God -- now to another.

Perhaps it is more subtle today.  Many of us who belong to Christ would never travel into a hilly region to participate in an ancient, wild religious orgy.   But we can - and some often do - allow their closeness to God to grow stale, cold, and withdrawn.   Small decisions can lead to a disinterested heart...tinder for a whoring match.

"Draw near to God," James urges Christians, "and He will draw near to you...purify your hearts, you double-minded...humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will exalt you" (4:8-10).