God's Jealousy

I had a dream the other night. Something of a nightmare. I dreamt this girl, a girl I'd like to date one day, was with another guy. They were holding hands and smiling and just being happy together. And I didn’t like it. In fact, in my dream, I was quite jealous. Of course, the dream wasn’t real. It was fictional, but I was still jealous. It’s quite silly isn't it? I should be able to get over jealously. After all, it’s quite childish to get jealous. So how do we make sense of God’s jealously then? Is God being childish?

This is a common question, and quite a simple one to answer. If jealousy is a sin (Galatians 5:20), why is God being described as being jealous? It turns out jealousy isn’t such a bad thing. There are times when one can be childishly jealous, like I was in my dream, and then there are times when jealously is justified. When is it justified? When something rightfully belongs to you.

Imagine, for a moment, that you are a parent, if you are not already. Coming from a guys perspective, imagine your daughter calls another man “Daddy”. You raised this child, you fed this child, you protected this child, you took her Disneyland and bought her stupid Hannah Montana merchandise. And you loved her mother. You are truly the one that deserves the “#1 Dad” mug. Now imagine that your daughter runs out of your house, goes up to a hobo, shouts “Daddy!” hugs him and kisses him on the cheek.

Because the title “Daddy” belongs to you, and no one else, you are justified when your daughter calls someone else “Daddy”. It doesn’t belong to them. Now, this isn’t the childish kind of jealously where a girl you’re head over heels for is seen with some other guy. No. She doesn’t belong to you (yet, until marriage, and then your rights increase) and so you are not justified in feeling jealous. But if you saw your wife flirting with another guy, then you can be jealous. That right of her sexuality is reserved for you and herself, and nobody else. This is the jealousy described in Ezekiel 16 and 2nd Corinthians 11:2, which reads, "I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him."

Well then, what does God have rights over? Well, being God, pretty much over all creation! So because God is Lord and Sovereign over all, he can be jealous about everything, and he would be in the right. There is nothing wrong with God being jealous about anything. He owns everything. So God isn't just jealous in a petty way, but in the right way. The Godly way.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Milo

Image
So I decided to go see Milo Yiannopoulos at UCSB yesterday. I was really hesitant to do so, and decided not to go, but a few of my friends wanted to go, and they're all losers who don't drive, so, I had to take everyone. I didn't know much about Milo, and I still don't, but I did learn some things. In some of the more, ahem, colorfully conservative pages of facebook that I follow, Milo has been something of an iconoclast, destroying the feminist narratives left and right. But I also know that he is an active homosexual and he is a rabid Trump supporter (even calling him "Daddy"). So, for those reasons, I was never interested in what he had to say. He was, to take a phrase from Lenin, a useful idiot. That was my impression. But I was wrong. A few days before the event, I had read somewhere on these pages I follow but wont name, that Milo believed himself to be a Christian, and a Catholic at that. I dismissed this immediately, and my opinion of him stoppe
Read more

What Does The Bible Say About Birth Control?

From the early church up to 1930, virtually every church believed contraception was a sin. That fact alone should have us induce that contraception is in fact a sin. Yet, there are many Christians today, even in my own congregation, that will never entertain the possibility of contraception being a sin.
Read more

Is Canon 28 Binding?

In my previous post , I discussed Canon 28 of the Council of Chalcedon (you'll find the full text of the canon there). But I should have put an asterisk on the conversation because Canon 28 isn't properly part of the council. You'll remember from an earlier post , that what makes a council ecumenical is ratification from the Roman Pontiff. Canons are part of councils. And naturally, canons also have to be ratified. However, Canon 28 was not ratified by Pope Leo (Roman Pontiff at the time). So Canon 28 isn't part of the council and thus isn't binding.  If you are Orthodox, this may sound too convenient. I've already suggested why Roman Ratification is the correct theory in the previous link. However, I want to add two things. First, even Saints in the East agree with the Roman position, and second, a case can be made for Canon 28 not being problematic for Catholicism.  First, there are the sayings of Pope St. Gelasius (about 490 AD), and Pope St. Gelasius is
Read more