Hosea 11:1 begins with a beautiful statement of God's parental love toward humanity.
And it is directly followed up with a heart-wrenching declaration of humanity's flight from God's love.
"But the more I called Israel,
the further they went from me.
They sacrificed to the Ba'als
and they burned incense to images" (Hebrews 11:2)
For a little perspective- Ba'al is not just the name of another god, it's also an ancient word for "husband" (yes, heavily patriarchal, but run with me on this). If you were to change the names around, this could be the plot of a romantic comedy. "Hopeless romantic Billy loves Ursala, but she loves Randy, the bad boy down the street." Except this is hardly a comedy. This story gets more and more tragic.
The Ba'als do not make good boyfriends. Ba'alist worship encouraged self-mutilation (see 1 Kings 18) and sex trafficking (Ba'alist worship involved heavy prostitution and often that was forced onto slaves). Whereas God is the one who lifts the yoke and leads with kindness (Hosea 11:3-4), Ba'al is a merciless god who leads with coercion and violence. So... what is so tempting about Ba'al? Why keep running back?
According to Thomas Hobbes, life is "nasty, brutish and short." We become conditioned, even traumatized, by the harshness of the world, and eventually we allow it to define us. And Ba'al offers a single narrative to explain it all, "you're not doing enough." You don't visit the temple enough, you don't give enough, you don't inflict enough pain on yourself. If you would only put a heavier yoke of suffering on, you would experience blessing.
God frees from the yoke and leads us with cords of kindness into a great mystery. In this mystery, joy can even break forth in harsh times and can bring us peace. If you find yourself running back into the arms of a cruel master this morning, this word is for you:
"Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom" (2 Corinthians 3:17).
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