Here’s What Happens When You’re the Only Other One in the Room Who Knows What a Phallic Symbol Is
By: Mishael Witty
Tags: Relationships, Bible, This Happened To Me, Christianity, Life Lessons

When you go to Bible study on a Thursday afternoon, you don’t necessarily think you’re going to end up talking about sex.

But sometimes it happens.

We’ve been talking about Gideon in Judges 6 for a couple of weeks now. It’s an interesting story — how he’s hiding low to the ground, threshing wheat in a winepress instead of up on a hill like he’s supposed to, but God calls him “mighty warrior,” anyway.

God knows the person he’s going to become.

And, after some hemming and hawing and testing God, Gideon finally understands that — yes, this IS really God calling him to save the Israelites from the oppression of the Midianites (with God’s help). And, after God reassures him that he is NOT going to die because he’s seen God face to face, Gideon’s ready to do what God wants.

What does God want?

Pretty simple.

God wants to be the only One we’re worshiping (Exodus 2). Because He wants to be the only One who’s worshiped, He told Gideon to:

…Tear down your father’s altar to Baal and cut down the Asherah pole beside it. Then build a proper kind of altar to the Lord your God on the top of this height. Using the wood of the Asherah pole that you cut down, offer the second bull as a burnt offering. (Judges 6:25–26, NIV)

What does this have to do with sex?

We stopped here, and the pastor asked if anyone knew who Asherah was.

Of course, I had to open my big mouth. “She was a fertility goddess.”

“Right,” the pastor said. “A Canaanite fertility goddess. And the Asherah pole was a phallic symbol.”

I laughed.

Everyone else in the room sat silent. Some looked confused.

“I’m glad you laughed,” the pastor said, and then he stood silently looking at me.

That was when I realized what he was really saying was: I’m glad you laughed because now I know you know what this is. You can explain it to everyone else.

There was one other man in the room, me, and a bunch of little old church ladies. I imagine the pastor didn’t want to have to explain what he was talking about to them. For the life of me, though, I still can’t understand why he would bring it up in the first place.

Why not just leave it at what my Bible says in its side note for this verse?

a wooden symbol of the goddess Asherah

Why not spend more time on what was meant by the mention of “the second bull?” Where was the first bull? What’s the deal there?

“What is a phallic symbol?” he prodded when I didn’t say anything right at first.

“A symbol in the shape of a male sex organ,” I said.

One of the ladies in the room immediately asked, “How do you spell that?”

I dutifully spelled the word for her.

She asked again. “What was that? P…?”

One of the OTHER ladies in the room started spelling it for her, and she had a look on her face that indicated, in no uncertain terms, that she was done with the “phallic symbol” conversation.

I had to agree with her. At that point, I was pretty much done too — and so grateful I’d been offered a ride home by one of the other ladies, so the pastor and I would not be alone in his car after this most awkward conversation.

But the other lady was not yet done talking about it. “Well, I’ve heard it called a lot of things before, but not THAT.”

The pastor wrung his hands. “That’s because it’s a symbol, not the actual thing.” Then he turned to me. “I’m so glad you were here today.”

The lady who wouldn’t let the phallic symbol conversation go said, “What would you have done if she hadn’t been here?”

“I would have told you it was a symbol that was in the shape of a male sex organ, just like she did.”

And…you just did, even though you didn’t want to. Why didn’t you just say it to begin with?

The sex conversation ended soon after that

Not much more could have been said about the shape of the Asherah pole than actually was said. The shape wasn’t important.

What was important was that the Asherah pole and Baal’s altar beside it, which were both at Gideon’s daddy’s house, were demolished at the Lord’s instructions. God’s not going to settle for second place. He’s not even going to settle for first place when there’s something in second place.

He wants to be the ONLY Lord of your life.

He was telling Gideon, “If you’re going to follow Me, and we’re going to do this thing together, you have to get rid of everything that distracts you from Me.”

Everything. All of it. Leaving only Me.

And He calls us to do the same.

What’s your Asherah pole?

What things in your life do you put before God?

Money? Family? Social media?

How much time each day do you spend looking at your phone, and how much do you spend reading God’s word? That’s an “ouch!” moment for me. I’m on my phone about six hours a day (Screen Time tells me so). Granted, some of that time is spent reading and studying in the Bible app, and reading and looking up Bible-related things online. But a good portion is not.

On average, God only gets an hour or two of that six hours of screen time. The more I think about it, the more unacceptable it seems to me. But God is gracious and merciful enough to accept any time I spend with Him.

He is a Good Father.

No, He’s not asking me to crush my iPhone into tiny pieces with a hammer and then set the pieces on fire. But He is calling me to be more mindful of what I do with the time I have. He’s calling me to be more mindful of Him and what He wants to do through me.

He is faithful, even when I am faithless.

He will wait patiently while I tear down my idols so that I can build a “proper kind of altar” at which I can worship Him with my whole heart, mind, soul, and strength.

And He will do the same for you too.