You might be a whore if.....

I know, it’s not nice to call people whores. Sorry bout that.

But have you ever read the book of Hosea? If you haven’t, I suggest you do. If you have, you’ve probably noticed what I noticed, that it kinda calls us all whores. Don’t believe me? Check it out

Hosea 1:2-3
When the LORD first spoke through Hosea, the LORD said to Hosea, “Go, take to yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord” So he went and took Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim and she conceived and bore him a son.

Next they have some kids and give them some rather unfortunate names and then,

The LORD said to me, Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, even as the LORD loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins” So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a lethech of barley and I said to her “you must dwell as mine for many days. You shall not play the whore or belong to another man; so will I also be to you”- Hosea 3:1-3

Apparently romance and sweet talking wasn’t Hosea’s strong suit.

But more so than Hosea’s lack of swag, this is a beautiful symbol of the greatest of all unlikely marriages. Jesus and His Bride, the Church. 

Correct me if I'm wrong but if Hosea and Gomer are supposed to be a picture of Jesus and the church. Doesn’t that mean that we are playing the whore in the story?

If your offended by that then I’m guessing you don’t really know the definition of a whore. 

Whore (n): Person who is promiscuous; who pursues fulfillment from multiple sources.

See you might be sitting there like I was when I read this story justifying why that isn’t you. You don’t worship other gods. That’d be ridiculous. You know that Buddha & Allah are not actually God. For goodness’ sake you’re a Christian!

But just because you don’t spend time worshiping a well known god, doesn’t mean you don’t spend time worshiping your own gods. 

I know calling you a whore and an idol worshiper isn’t the best way to make friends. So I included a list of small gods of my own. While I can relate to these personally I think they are idols that tempt all Christians. 

1. Being Christian
That’s right. We’ve made an idol out of religion. We listen to our Christian radio, while wearing our Christian T-Shirts, driving our Christian car that has the Christian bumper sticker on it, going to our Christian pot-luck, to hang out with our Christian friends, thinking our Christian thoughts, drinking our Christian latte, Speaking our Christian-ese into our Christian Smart Phone…you get the picture. We’re more in pursuit of a label than a relationship. 

2. Being Good
Is it just me or does the term “Good Moral Christian” bother anyone else? We have consumed ourselves with being good, doing good, saying good, thinking good, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with that. Except when it’s all about us and our ability and our control. See morality says “Now that you’ve found Jesus, kindly step into this very neat, clean box”. But here’s the problem, nothing about the Christian faith is perfectly neat and clean cut. My Christian walk isn’t going to look like your Christian walk. Because everyone has their own messes to clean up. Morality presents the idea of conformity. Because it focus’s on our man made standard over His divine example.

3. Knowledge
Scripture is great isn’t it? It’s one of the many tools God gave us so that we could be intimate with him. I don’t know about you but I’m really glad we have scripture. I had this teacher in Bible college who I absolutely adored. Her first assignment was for us to describe what our Christian walk would look like if suddenly all the bibles in the entire world disappeared. The point was to help us realize that while head knowledge is great, it can’t compete with Heart knowledge. But so many Christians search the scriptures religiously to simply know more. Not understand more. They want to religiously study all scripture just to say that they have studied all scripture. To sound holier. To look more Christian. To have better “tweets”. Whatever it is, they don’t have the right heart attitude. I definitely believe that we gain heart knowledge by reading what God’s word says. But if we are selfishly reading God’s word to just know more, and not sharing more or doing more or praying more, then we’ve severely missed the point.

4. Ministry.
I’m so stinkin’ guilty of this one. I easily grade how Saved I am by how good whatever ministry I am doing is going. Of course there’s no “Check Points for Ministerial Success” worksheet in the bible so I just have to judge it up against my man made list of what success should look like. You know like, how much recognition I’m getting for it, how many people vocalize how much they appreciate my hard work, and how many times I do little things that get noticed. Does it sound super sinful yet? Cause it is. It easily becomes more about work and less about faith. There are sometimes that I get it right, and then I get super encouraged because I know that it’s not me who did that. Because if people are getting reached and Jesus is being shared then that’s gotta be Him, I’m not that smart. I’m actually dumb enough to try and work out of an empty useless cup rather than take a day off to go to the Source that can refill that cup. Because that’s just our stupid human fleshy logic. And unfortunately it makes us whores. Bummer.


So while calling someone a whore isn’t exactly the best way to promote a blog. It’s the best picture of our dirty, gross, human state that I can think of. 

Here’s the part of Hosea that really gets me. We’re taught by scripture that adultery is a “biblical ground” for divorce. We almost have come to expect it in Christian marriage. If one person commits adultery, then we comfort the other by telling them they have biblical grounds to forsake that vow. It’s totally true, according to Matthew 5:32 they do. But here’s something I think we forget to realize when throwing around that scripture, Jesus is supposed to be our perfect example for everything in this life. We are His bride (Ephesians 5:25) and we have committed adultery against Him, in the sense of idol worship. Yet, never once has Jesus thought about divorce. No, instead He has the complete opposite response to our unfaithfulness…

And I will make for them a covenant on that day with the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the creeping things of the ground. I will abolish the bow, the sword and war from the land and I will make you lie down in safety. I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness and you shall know the Lord. Hosea 2:18-20


So let’s stop whorin' around. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist. I tried, really I did.) But seriously, let’s stop giving our money, and our attention, and our energy, and our praise to things that in the eternal scheme of things really don’t matter. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want it to be said of me that I have “Forgotten my first Love”.