So "God is a Woman…Who Wants to Make Love to Us?"

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has an obsession with sex, and increasingly, as in this case, sexualizing God.
 
We Talk. We Listen is a website that is connected, at least informally, with the ELCA’s Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. An LSTC professor is the editor. An LSTC emblem adorns the homepage that also has multiple links to LSTC. And most contributors are connected to the school.
 
Last spring, the website posted a piece called “Re-Naming God and Smashing Idols” by
Francisco Herrera, a Ph. D student at Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. After reading his garbage, and you should read the whole blog, one has to wonder what kind of insanity is permeating this once Christian denomination.  
 
The article begins with the author telling about a class discussion where Song of Songs 2:8-13 was read. The question was asked, “If this excerpt from the Song of Songs is God speaking to us, what does it say about God?”
 
The author, Francisco Herrera replied “God is a woman… who loves us, who desires us, who wants to make love to us, who longs for us in a perfumed garden, eagerly waiting to give herself to us with passion and abandon.”
 
Then he writes, “And as I spoke, seduced by my own imagination, there I was – languishing in some highland orchard, hiding myself among the apple and peach blossoms – oiling my skin, lining my eyes with kohl, waiting for my Lord to come so that that he could delight in me, and I could delight in him.”
 
He continues with these gems,
 
“And yes, I was being provocative, at least for this crowd, but I believed my insolence towards the class honest and just. Despite the shocking nature of what I said, in truth, my comment was actually a classic example of biblical literalism. If this excerpt is God speaking to us, well then, God is a woman who wants to have sex with us – apples and turtledoves and young stags and all. No imagination necessary. What’s more, these soon-to-be-pastors’ well worn theological tropes – though socially acceptable – completely drained this holy Scripture of its unquenchable fire and, well, butchered its song. But what really took my breath away was how quickly students moved to hush me – scandalized by the idea that God could possibly be a sexually active woman.”
 
“And at that point I could truly appreciate how shocking and vital it was to speak of God not only as ‘not male,’ but in brave and shocking ways, indecent ways – because doing so exposes the hidden idols in our theology that so often blind us to the pain and suffering and oppression that we initiate and/or perpetuate.”
 
“Using such powerfully transgressive language for God often does a fine job of exposing destructive limitations in our theology, limitations that we have been taught, even inherited – and hence makes it easier for us to query them and, as with any idol, to smash them.” (read here)
 
What warped thinking and theology! Come on ELCA, you are championing this evil?
 
Rev. Dr. Linda E. Thomas, Professor of Theology and Anthropology, Chair of the LSTC’s Diversity Committee and Editor of “We Talk. We Listen” made this comment about Francisco Herrera’s article, “if we don’t open ourselves to myriad ways of talking about God, then we can very well sacrifice others on the idols of our own theological complacency.”