A Non-Religious Advent (Part Two)

How Christianity Got Mary Wrong

The two figures on center stage during the Advent and Christmas season are Jesus and Mary, and Christianity got both of them wrong.

This is Part Two of my December Substack series, “A Non-Religious Advent.” Last week’s Part One is titled, What Christianity Won't Tell You About Jesus. In today’s installment I want to say a few words about Mary.

Who was Mary?

The above picture is an example of what is wrong about a lot of religious art, making Jesus and Mary lily white. I discuss the problem with much of religious art in my previous article on the subject, Pretty Jesus.

What do we know about Mary? The short answer is not a lot, and most of it from the Bible.

Mary was a first-century Jewish woman of Nazareth, the wife of Joseph and the mother of Jesus. She was born around 18 BC in Herodian Judea. Her parents were Joachim and Anne, according to some apocryphal writings.

The first mention of Mary is the story of the Annunciation, which reports that she was living in Nazareth and was betrothed to Joseph (Luke 1:26-38). In Christianity, the “Annunciation” is the announcement by the angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary that she would conceive a son by the power of the Holy Spirit to be called Jesus (Luke 1:26–38). The last mention of Mary (Acts of the Apostles 1:14) includes her in the company of those who devoted themselves to prayer after the ascension of Jesus into heaven.

In total, Mary is mentioned in the following incidents in the Gospels, though there are differences of opinion about these scenes as literal historical accounts:

• Annunciation (Luke 1:26 ff.)

• Visitation with Elizabeth (Luke 1:39 ff.)

• Birth of Jesus (Luke 2:7 ff.)

• Presentation of Jesus in the Temple (Luke 2:1 ff.)

• the coming of the Magi and the flight to Egypt (Matthew 2:1 ff.)

• Passover visit to Jerusalem when Jesus was 12 years old (Luke 2:41 ff.)

• wedding at Cana in Galilee (John 2:1 ff.)

• attempt to see Jesus while he was teaching (Mark 3:31 ff.)

• Mary at the cross (John 19:26 ff.)

Then tends to be disagreement between Catholics and Protestants about how much attention Mary deserves. Mariology is the Christian theological study of Mary, the mother of Jesus, and her role in the Church and salvation history. Some Protestants believe that the attention given to Mary is excessive and may be a form of idolatry, distracting from the worship of God.

Interesting books related to the figure of Mary:

The Book of Longings: A Novel by Sue Monk Kidd

Mary of Nazareth: A Novel by Marek Halter

The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin

Mother of God: A History of the Virgin Mary by Miri Rubin

Mary of Nazareth: History, Archaeology, Legends by Michael Hesemann

It takes several rolls of theological Duct tape to make the virgin birth work, and in my view it still doesn’t work.

The Christian tradition has it that Jesus came into the world through a “virgin birth.” It was okay to have a human mother but not a human father. The idea is that Joseph would have been responsible for passing along the sinful human condition had he impregnated Mary with his sperm.

But what about Mary? She was human with the sin condition too. This is often solved through the notion of the “immaculate conception” - that God fixed the Mary/human problem by somehow making Mary sinless at the moment of conception. Which begs the question, why couldn’t God have done some sort of divine intervention for Joseph?

That the cult of Mary’s virginity came to play such a large role in the development of Christianity is a testament to the powerful hold that purity has on the religious imagination. Jesus never claimed to have had a virgin birth. Outside the first two chapters of Matthew and Luke, the virgin birth plays no further part in the New Testament. St Paul makes no mention of it. And most scholars agree that the word virgin is probably a mistranslation of the Hebrew word for young woman.

Christian theology has a problem – the original sin doctrine first mentioned by Church fathers such as Irenaeus and Augustine in the 2nd century, created an epic quandary. How could Jesus be God, as Christianity claimed, if Jesus was born a human?

Hence the doctrine of the virgin birth.

This is why Christian theology became so convoluted. It requires all kinds of absurd ideas to keep it hanging by a thread. The underlying falsehood is the idea of “original sin.” This is why Christianity must have a literal Adam and Eve - in order to pollute the entire human race with the sinful condition, which causes separation from God and eternal hell, which requires Jesus to be sinless so he can be the perfect sacrifice as the only means of salvation.

I have in the past refuted the underpinnings of this Jesus story in the following articles:

• The myth of “original sin”

• Christianity’s sin problem

• The lie of repentance theology

Christian theology made a royal mess of the identity of Jesus. How can Jesus really be God AND “human”? Do you know of any other human being who was born of a mother impregnated by God? Is anyone else’s biological father... God? Jesus can not truly be one of us if his was a virgin birth.

The church has gone to great lengths to make Jesus special for the wrong reasons. Jesus does not need a virgin birth to be special. And, it's okay for Jesus to actually be human.

Jesus was special not because of his sinless divinity but because of his gutsy humanity, deep compassion, and extraordinary insight into the nature of reality. He was special not because he provided the only path to God but because he demonstrated that no path was needed. The truth that Jesus taught and demonstrated is that none of us are separated from everything that “God” is or could be. You don't have to go to church, follow a bunch of religious rules or die and go to heaven in order to access ultimate transcendent reality; you only have to look inside yourself.

If you told me that what happened is Mary became scandalously pregnant by another man other than Joseph or that she got pregnant by Joseph or she wasn’t sure and there was no paternity test possible at the time, I would accept any of the three, and in my mind only makes the story of Jesus stronger and would only cause me to think more highly of Mary. Isn’t the love of a mother for her son all the miracle we need?

My Apology to Mary

Men wrote the story of Mary and made her into a docile, lily white, celibate vessel for divine impregnation. The gospel stories conveniently leave out all of Mary’s work in rearing Jesus, and practically makes it sound like she was shocked and even at odds with who her revolutionary son became.

Mary is not the delicate and submissive maiden we often see portrayed on Christmas cards. I unveil the true Mary in my book, Inner Anarchy. The New Testament name for the mother of Jesus is “Mary”, which is traced back to the Hebrew word “Miriam”. There is some debate about the etymology of this word, but the realm of possibility includes “sea of sorrow”, and “incensed rebellion”.

There are two things we know about the legend of Jesus - he carried the suffering of the world deep in his heart of love, and he singlehandedly staged an epic revolt against the toxic religious establishment of his day.

Jesus get's all the credit for this. But where do you think he got this?

Mary!

Jesus was born from that “sea of sorrow” and “incensed rebellion”, which was Mary. No Mary, no Jesus. Any other mother and we might not have ever had a “Jesus”.

This Christmas I feel a need to express remorse for how dismissive Christianity has been to Mary.

Mary, it’s with great sadness in my heart that I say I'm sorry.

My Apology to Mary

I'm sorry you were born and raised in a time and place when your worth and status as a woman was degraded.

I'm sorry you were the object of judgement, harassment, and condemnation for giving birth out of wedlock.

I'm sorry you were left to fend for yourself and raise your children as a single mom in great struggle and hardship.

I'm sorry your son was unjustly brutalized and taken from you, and the heartache, sadness and sorrow you carried in your heart.

I'm sorry your story was never truly told and honored, but twisted into a narrative to serve a religion of men.

I'm sorry that the truth of who you really were - the little girl from days long past, the extraordinary woman you became, your sacrifices as a mother, the life you lived, the wounds and trauma you endured, the love you gave... never made it into the written record.

I'm sorry that religion took your son from you, and made him into something other than who you know him to really be.

I'm sorry for how unjustly you were treated throughout your life and in your death.

I'm so sorry, Mary. Please find it in your loving, caring and forbearing heart to forgive us. We knew not what we did.

Thank you, Mary. Thank you for all that you are, all that you did, all that you mean, and the goodness, beauty, courage, compassion, tenderness, strength and love you gave this world. Religion told me to invite Jesus into my heart, but I now know this was incomplete without you there.

That’s where you will be, Mary. I will hold you in my heart.

In Summary

• The “Mary” of Christianity may have hidden the true Mary of history.

• Jesus is the focus of Advent, until you understand no Mary, no Jesus.

• It takes several rolls of theological Duct tape to make the virgin birth work, and it still doesn’t work.

• I carry Mary in my heart.

“In trial or difficulty I have recourse to Mother Mary, whose glance alone is enough to dissipate every fear.”

- Saint Therese of Lisieux