Also, consider that Jesus is the Son of God. He is the legitimate Son of God.
Did God stop being the Father of Jesus? No. Since God is the legitimate father and Mary the legitimate mother, the only way for Mary to take ‘another’ husband without commiting adultery would be if God wasn’t really the legitimate Father or that He ‘divorced’ Mary.
OR, if Mary had REALLY been planning to marry and consummate the marriage with Joseph, what does that make God? It makes God the kind of God who like the Greek and Roman gods beds human women, has ‘half-human/half God’ offspring and then casts the woman aside as not ‘good’ enough for Olympus. It makes God into the kind of God who takes Mary to be the mother of HIS child and CUCKOLDING Joseph.
Is it FAIR of God to take a woman who was promised and intended to marry another man, impregnate her, and then say to Joseph, “OK, I’ve used her the way I want, NOW you can have her after me?” Is it fair to the relationship of a man and woman who planned to have ‘regular’ sexual relations to have the woman raising (as the man’s) the child of ANOTHER man and expect their lives to ‘go on as planned?’
Is it fair of God to play around with the love of a man and woman, which is what it would have been if Mary had planned to have a ‘sexual’ marriage with Joseph?
Is it fair to JESUS for God to use His mother as an ‘incubator’ and then leave Jesus as a huge reminder to Joseph, always feeling ‘apart’ from the ‘other kids’ who would be both Mary’s and Joseph’s? To put Joseph in the shoes of having to raise "the son of God’ and have that child (who was not Joseph’s ‘own’) always be considered as the oldest son, the heir, while the younger boys who ‘were’ Joseph’s ‘own’ would not have their true rights as the REAL ‘sons’ of Joseph?? How do you think those children would feel about their brother? Would they even really believe He was the son of God, and not some ‘lie’ foisted by Mary onto their father? How would they view their mother --as somebody who tried to lie and cheat and raise some ‘bastard’ above them and take their legal rights and status, take all the attention?
NOT exactly the kind of family you would think that God would want for any child, let alone that by your thinking God would have PLANNED to cuckold Joseph, rob Joseph’s ‘own’ children of their legal rights, and put them in the position of being party to what would have been lies (Jesus was NOT ‘the son of the carpenter’ or the ‘oldest child’, Mary would have been viewed as a slut, the children’s status even when the truth ‘came out’ would have been even WORSE than before). . .
Whereas by the grace of God and the testimony and the grace accorded by the Holy Spirit who LEADS US TO ALL TRUTH – the understanding of the truth --that God did NOT cuckold Joseph, that there were no ‘other children’ who would be robbed of their rights and would be made miserable–we have a situation where Joseph is shown to be a righteous, chaste, and WORTHY foster father to the ONE child for whom he freely takes on responsibility ‘on earth’. . .we have Mary’s love not divided between ‘God’ and ‘earthly’ but fully given to God and SUPPORTED by Joseph–we have Jesus not overshadowing and robbing his brothers and sisters or being unfairly elevated, but living with a father and mother who could devote themselves to GOD and His Son without anything coming between.
It’s so much more reasonable a picture–and it’s also the picture that has been presented through Christianity over the last 2000 years and endorsed by greater thinkers than any of us here –
in fact, the idea that Joseph and Mary were sexually ‘intimate’ was not even a concept which the first PROTESTANTS believed as is shown by the fact that Martin Luther believed in the perpetual virginity of Mary. It is very much a ‘modern’ idea based on the hypersexualization of our culture along with the often unconscious desire to try to make Mary (and Joseph, and even Jesus) into more ‘human’ people, i.e., people ‘just like us’. . .and to dismiss as ‘absurd’ ideas such as perpetual virginity, continence, and giving ‘all’ to God instead of living a ‘normal’ life and giving Him anything ‘left over’ when and if it suits us too. . .
As I said earlier, the Bible is an excellent TOOL but it is not self-interpreting nor is it our AUTHORITY. There is a lot the Bible never tells us (what did Jesus do between the ages of 12 and 30, for example), and that’s because it doesn’t HAVE to. The Church has the authority to teach (and the Church’s teachings will not CONTRADICT Scripture and in fact the perpetual virginity does NOT contradict Scripture in any way). . .but it doesn’t HAVE to tell us WHY, WHEN, WHERE and HOW as if it were discussing a movie of the week about Mary’s perpetual virginity, complete with touching backstory and ‘guaranteed proof from eyewitness reports’. The Church teaches that Mary was a perpetual Virgin, it’s in the catechism, it’s in the teachings spread back over the centuries because that’s the way the Holy Spirit wanted to have us taught.
I remember that. It was “The Bob Newhart Show.”
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