[\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”16px”][vc_column_text]The real mother is willing to sacrifice herself and her relationship with her child in order to save him. She is able to do this because while she was in the conflict, she was able to keep the object at the center of her attention. She was not distracted from her son by a rivalry with the other woman. Her goal was not to defeat the other woman. Her ultimate goal wasn\u2019t even to keep her relationship with her son. Her ultimate goal was for her son to live.<\/p>\n

Girard says that this prostitute is a Christlike figure. In fact, Girard says that \u201cShe offers the most perfect figura Christi<\/em> that can be imagined. Christ agrees to die so that mankind will live.\u201d<\/p>\n

I wonder if the opposite is also true. I wonder if Christ is the perfect mother prostitute figure. After all, as a good first century Jew, Jesus would have heard this story. Jesus was formed by this type of story. The God of love was so present with the prostitute that she was able to sacrifice her own desires, her own desire to defeat her rival, so that her son could live.[\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”16px”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/2″][vc_empty_space height=”16px”][vc_single_image image=”20804″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/2″][vc_column_text]There are similar anti-sacrificial stories in the Hebrew Scriptures. You might think of Abraham and Isaac. Abraham heard God calling him to sacrifice his son Isaac. But right before Abraham dropped the knife on his son, God stopped him from killing Isaac. The point of that horrific story is that God stopped the sacrifice. God doesn\u2019t want human sacrifice. This is the beginning of the Jewish move away from sacrifice.<\/p>\n

By the time we get to the story of the prostitutes, God is entirely out of the picture. It\u2019s Solomon, in his wisdom, who suggests the human sacrifice. Couldn\u2019t Solomon have found another way? Couldn\u2019t he have asked the women some questions? Why didn\u2019t he go the scene of the crime to investigate?<\/p>\n

No matter. The ultimate point of the story is to show the movement away from human sacrifice that we witness in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures \u2013 God has nothing to do with sacrifice. The violent sacrifice of another is a purely human act that is devoid of the true God.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner][vc_empty_space height=”16px”][vc_column_text]We see the movement in the Gospels. Nowhere do the Gospels say that God demanded his Son to be sacrificed. Rather, similar to Solomon\u2019s suggestion to sacrifice the boy, it was humans who demanded to sacrifice Jesus. The political and religious elite, along with a crowd of folks, demanded that Jesus be crucified.<\/p>\n

And Jesus, formed by the love and faith of a prostitute some 900 years before him, chose a nonviolent solution. He decided to be the perfect figura prostitute\u00a0<\/em>who gives up her life so that another might live.<\/p>\n