Somehow I think that being the God Bearer, who bore and gave birth to God Himself, is kind of a big deal. Sometimes it seems to me that Protestants are so frightened of being though Catholic that they feel it necessary to try and trivialize anything they view as a Catholic belief. "Yeah, God chose the Blessed Virgin (except you can't call her that, too Catholic) to bear God the Son, and sent the archangel Gabriel, His own herald, to tell her about it,and she did in fact bear God the Son in her body, and gave birth to Him, and nourished Him at her breast, and was in every respect His mother up to the moment of His death, but so what? Ain't no big deal, right? Nothing special atall. I find that idea ridiculous. It's how I was taught as a child, but with study and age I've become ever more persuaded that it's simply ridiculous. No other human being has ever been given such an unimaginable blessing. The whole "being the mother of God isn't any big deal " schtick simply betrays a lack of understanding of what happened. God Himself was born as a human being, and the Blessed Virgin was the instrument whom He chose to be His mother.
So "she isn't anything special". Good grief.
I've related this before, but I think it fits here. A church brother of mine began hosting a Tuesday night Bible study. A neighbor of his joined from time to time. One evening after we'd studied we were sitting talking, and the neighbor began relating how he witnessed to Muslims at his workplace. He said one of them he'd talked to said that he (the Muslim) thought it was blasphemous to worship Jesus, as only Allah was worthy of worship. My friend said he told the Muslim that we didn't worship Jesus since He wasn't God but merely the Son of god. It took a few seconds for my church pal and I to regain our composure enough to try and explain to the neighbor that yeah, in actual fact we really did, or were supposed to, believe that Jesus was in fact God Himself in the flesh. Neighbor was shocked, no one had ever told him that in clear and direct terms before.
I think a good many Protestants are in the same shape as the neighbor, which is why they can't fathom the veneration of the Blessed Virgin, and are so horrified at her being referred to as the Mother of God - they don't really believe that our Lord Christ is God Himself. They don't really understand the Incarnation. They know that Christ is our Savior, and The Son, but they tend to see only God the Father as GOD. And so they don't think that Mary having borne and mothered Jesus was any big deal.
There's other stuff that goes along with not understanding the idea of the Incarnatrion. Being dismissive of the Blessed Virgin is just one. The belief that all Scripture, old and new testaments, is of equal importance, is another. If Jesus is "just" the Son of God, then the Gospels aren't necessarily any more important than Genesis or Ecclesiastes. It explains why they'll tell new Christians to read the OT first, because "all scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness". Hence, in their minds, the Gospels may actually be less important that the Law and Prophets, because they come later in The Good Book.
There are other things that hint at a vast misunderstanding of Who our Lord actually is, but it's late and I'm tired and I know I'm gonna get flamed for this and right now I simply don't care. "He that is boneheaded, let him be boneheaded still" -- Jipsah 1:1
