The Pro-Life God

For years I was the unrepentant feminist in a Bible study with a group of fundamentalist women. One night, these women described their god. He was unforgiving, incapable of healing us from our past and had a vendetta against women.

I listened, dumbfounded. In 30 years as a Christian, I’d never known the awful god these women described. I didn’t want to. So I quit the Bible study.

As a former charismatic, one of my gifts is discernment of spirits. I was curious what spirit was oppressing these women. My answer came as a bumper sticker: God is pro-life.

There were many pro-life gods in biblical times. Yahweh wasn’t one of them. To see this, one needs to read no further than the story of Abraham and Isaac. Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son became the foundation for the Judeo-Christian faith, establishing the precedent for Yahweh’s future sacrifice of his son, Jesus Christ.

By contrast, the pro-life gods the Bible mentions were fertility gods like Baal and Ashtoreth. Though not mentioned by name, Isis, Aphrodite and Diana exerted an influence over Egyptian, Greek and Roman cultures.

Fertility cult emphasis on reproduction negatively impacted sexual morality, in particular corrupting religious and political leaders. Old Testament prophets like Elijah and Hosea didn't quibble over whether life began at conception, but whether the offspring of fertility cults were children of spiritual adultery. The Apostle Paul responded to Greco-Roman fertility cults by promoting celibacy as the favored Christian lifestyle.

The medieval Church dealt with European fertility goddesses such as the Norse goddess Friga, from whom we get the word Friday, and the Celtic goddess Eoster, from whom we get the holiday Easter. Celts celebrated Eoster with rabbits, symbolizing fertility, and eggs, symbolizing new life. Catholic popes rescheduled Christ’s resurrection from the Passover to Eoster, hoping to stamp out this fertility cult by superimposing Christian symbolism.

I don’t see the pro-life movement as a Christian political movement, but a revival of pre-Christian spirituality, bringing the faith full circle from opposing fertility cults to embracing them as "God's worldview.” The pro-life god’s, that is. Not Yahweh’s.