BREAKFAST BIBLE STUDY

God Had a Girlfriend?

Deuteronomy 16:21-22, Judges 6:32 (NRSVUE)

7/6/25

“Christian nationalists should spend less time seeking power and more time reading the words Jesus preached.” – Christian Pecker

Christian packs breakfast for us so that we can work in the fields this week. Grace had to leave to go protest the Bullshit Billionaire Bill that will shut down all the rural hospitals and fire staff from our nursing homes, but Christian says not to worry.

I keep asking him how he can be so sure nursing homes won’t fire staff and hospitals won’t shut down.

He tells me not to worry.

I ask him how he can be so sure we can sell our crops with the higher tariffs.

He tells me not to worry.

I ask him why he isn’t stressed about all the bad stuff happening, like flood in Texas and stuff.

He tells me that we just need to survive until the midterm elections.

“And pray and remember all the things Jesus said,” I reminded him.

“Matthew 25:41 seems relevant to the situation,” he said. “There should be a special place in Hell for those who would hurt the most vulnerable among us.”

“Is Matthew 25 the breakfast Bible study this week?” I asked.

That’s when Christian told me that we are skipping this week with Grace gone, so I tricked him by asking him about last week and how he was so sure that ancient Israelites believed in more than one god.

Though he claims that biblical prohibitions against other gods prove that Israelites must have been worshiping other gods, like when the Israelites melted their gold in the desert to make a golden calf, I still have my doubts about these other gods.

“The prophets warn people against worshiping other gods,” Christian said. “Notice that I did not say false gods. False would be a modern interpretation. The plagues and famine were evidence for them of God’s displeasure at them turning to other gods. These weren’t just other nations worshiping other gods. These were Israelites.”

“But they only had the one temple,” I said.

“They had multiple places where they worshiped gods throughout history. Take for example Asherah. From the first five books and through Kings, God commands that his heroes, kings, and prophets destroy the Asherah. Sometimes those Asherah were even within the temple.”

“What’s an Asherah?” I asked. “It sounds like a swear with a speech impedament.”

“Idols, sometimes trees, sometimes poles,” Christian said.

“They worshiped trees and poles?”

“They worshiped Asherah, a goddess,” Christian said, “probably having to do with fertility, maybe like Mother Earth.”

“That’s just a figure of speech,” I said.

“It’s a modern-day figure of speech, but archaeology has revealed that people in Israel were worshiping Asherah into the fifth century before Christ,” he said.

“But you said the prophets were destroying those trees and poles,” I said.

“That didn’t stop people from worshiping her,” he said. “Maybe they worshiped in secret, in the privacy of their own homes. Secretly worshiping prohibited gods has been known to happen throughout history.”

“They really had a woman god in Israel?”

“For the Canaanites, she was a consort to Baal,” Christian said. “For the Israelites, she was a consort for Yahweh.”

“What’s a consort?”

“Like a girlfriend,” he said.

“God had a girlfriend?”

“The evidence in the Bible and in archaeological digs seems to prove that,” he said.

“Wait, how could she be a girlfriend to two gods?” I said. “I don’t think that’s true.”

“Baal, which just means Lord,” Christian said, “and Yahweh filled similar roles in the El pantheon. Both were powerful gods of thunder. A female deity would have offered a balance to a violent storm deity.”

“But the Bible never talks about God having a girlfriend,” I said.

“No,” Christian said, “but if you read between the lines—”

“I’m not good at that,” I said. “That sounds like apologetic copyist errors or something that you and Grace are always saying makes the Bible wrong.”

“Asherah worship is referenced in the Pentateuch, Judges, and throughout Kings,” Christian said. “Remember, written accounts are modified throughout time when they are written on media that degrades over time, media like papyrus or paper. It’s not necessarily a malicious act. Scribes interpret text based on their lived experience. A scribe writing hundreds of years after events unfolded might not have the proper context to transcribe accurately, especially considering how fluid the language of largely Illiterate societies can be.”

“Yep, copyist errors,” I said.

“If you want to get rid of a god or goddess,” Christian said, “just remove him or her from the record, destroy her idols, and punish those doing the worship…and say this is what God commands. Since prophets went around destroying the Asherah in the Bible, we know that people were worshiping her.”

“It says that in the Bible?”

“‘You shall not plant any tree as a sacred pole beside the altar that you make for the Lord your God; nor shall you set up a stone pillar—things that the Lord your God hates.’ That’s from Deuteronomy.”

“A sacred tree or pole doesn’t mean a girlfriend of God,” I said.

“That’s what the Asherah idols were,” Christian said. “Gideon from Judges destroyed them. King Ahab made Asherah poles, which angered God. As the Israelites reformed their religion to worship one God alone, the traditional polytheistic ways died.”

“I don’t think God had a girlfriend,” I said. 

“Then the Bible, as we know it today, has done its job.”

In state legislatures across the country, Christian fundamentalists are passing laws meant to force the teaching of the Christian Bible in public schools. From the posting of textually inaccurate iterations of the Ten Commandments on the walls of classrooms to the incorporation of the “Trump Bible” across multiple pedagogical disciplines, these laws and mandates are sweeping the reddest parts of this nation.

The height of hypocrisy is banning books in the name of “protecting children” while mandating one particular book rife with numerous acts of sexual violence and scenes of graphic violence and genocide.

Book bans are dangerous. The Bible is worth reading and exists online and in public school libraries across the country, but proponents of mandating its formal teaching in public schools need to know what it actually says.

Some themes in my books below might not be appropriate for children.