Christmas stories

Who Was Mary, Mother of God?

Detractors and believers have some strange ideas about her

This time of year, atheists like to post their holiday version of attacks on Christianity. The latest is either accusing God of rape, or child abuse, by impregnating a 12-year-old girl. That is downright blasphemous and completely wrong.

When talking about history, we need to keep in mind the culture and the times.

The ancient Maya sacrificed people to their Gods. We would see that as abhorrent today but to them it was normal. There’s no point in getting all self-righteous about Mayans killing people.

The same can be said about Mary. There’s also no reason to be upset about young girls being married when it was common in that culture.

It was a very different world 2,000 years ago in Israel and the Middle East in general. There was no such thing as a teenager. You were either a child or an adult. Most often at the age of 12, you move from being a child to an adult.

Boys went to work, and girls were sold or given to men as wives. It’s likely that in many cases the girl had little input into who she was married to.

The idea of romantic love for marriage was not “invented” for several hundred years.

Marriages were arranged. A girl 13–14 years old was considered an adult. They were married off and started having babies.

That may seem young, but keep in mind, that not many people reached the ripe old age of 50.

Women were pretty much the property of their husbands. That is pretty foreign and bad to us today, but to them it was normal. Females did receive protection, food, and shelter for being a wife. While that system would seem open for abuse, apparently a lot of women were happy in that situation at that time.

But the truth is, we don’t know how old Mary was.

Maybe she was 12 and maybe she was a spinster of age 19. More likely it was somewhere between the two. Whatever the number was, she was of the age that many women were married and had children.

Rules about sex were very strict. Just about everyone was a virgin when they got married — including the boys. It was taboo for a girl to not be a virgin when presented to her husband for marriage. You can argue the merits of that, but that is how the world worked then.

When the story of Jesus' birth begins, Joseph and Mary were “betrothed,” or engaged. The marriage had been arranged with the family and they were just waiting for the big day to happen. It seems Joseph must have been older than her and pretty well settled.

At some point, he found out she was pregnant. In that situation, a girl would often be executed and her family shamed. Joseph had the legal right to have her killed. He did not want to do that and was just going to send her away quietly.

Joseph was very religious and had compassion for her.

He was told what the deal was in a dream. As a result, he believed God and married her as planned. In that culture, this took a tremendous amount of faith.

Even today not many men would marry a pregnant woman that he did not make pregnant. It must have been scandalous for both of them.

She got pregnant supernaturally. God did not “rape” her, or even have sex with her. This is how Jesus was both God and man at the same time. An angel appeared to Mary and told her what would happen. The Bible says Mary agreed or submitted to God. You can argue she may not have had a real choice, but it does seem she went along with the plan.

The Bible says she remained in that state until Jesus was born. Catholics take this to an extreme, saying that she was always a virgin and that even her mother was a virgin.

More likely, after Jesus was born, Joseph had “relations” with her, and she had some children with him too.

Matthew 13:55 “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas? 56 Aren’t all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?”

Jesus had four earthly brothers and at least two sisters. Jesus was still unique, however, because of the virgin birth. This made him the legitimate Son of God.

There will be more stories coming about the birth of Jesus in the coming days.