Misogyny in the Good Book

"The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord endures forever."

Isaiah 40:8 and 1 Peter 1:24-25

"...the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change..."

Hebrews 13:7

Do you think the Bible teaches strong marriage and family values?

Psychologist Valerie Tarico, a graduate of Wheaton Bible College--alma mater of both Billy Graham and Bill Gothard, compiled 15 verses illustrating some of the good book's teachings about women, marriage, and parenthood. The following are quoted here from the New International Version:

1. A wife is a man’s property: You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor. Exodus 20:17   
2. Daughters can be bought and sold: If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as male servants do. Exodus 21:7   
3. A raped daughter can be sold to her rapist: ²⁸ If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, ²⁹ he shall pay her father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives. Deuteronomy 22:28-29   
4. Collecting wives and sex slaves is a sign of status: He [Solomon] had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray. 1 Kings 11:3   
5. Used brides deserve death: If, however the charge is true and no proof of the girl's virginity can be found, she shall be brought to the door of her father's house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death. Deuteronomy 22:20-21.   
6. Women, but only virgins, are to be taken as spoils of war: Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, ¹⁸ but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man. Numbers 31:17-18   
7. Menstruating women are spiritually unclean: ¹⁹ “‘When a woman has her regular flow of blood, the impurity of her monthly period will last seven days, and anyone who touches her will be unclean till evening. ²⁰ “‘Anything she lies on during her period will be unclean, and anything she sits on will be unclean. ²¹ Anyone who touches her bed will be unclean; they must wash their clothes and bathe with water, and they will be unclean till evening.²² Anyone who touches anything she sits on will be unclean; they must wash their clothes and bathe with water, . . . ³⁰ The priest is to sacrifice one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering. In this way he will make atonement for her before the LORD for the uncleanness of her discharge. ³¹ “‘You must keep the Israelites separate from things that make them unclean, so they will not die in their uncleanness for defiling my dwelling place,^[a] which is among them.’” Leviticus 15: 19-31   
8. A woman is twice as unclean after giving birth to girl as to a boy: A woman who becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son will be ceremonially unclean for seven days, just as she is unclean during her monthly period. ' 3 On the eighth day the boy is to be circumcised. 4 Then the woman must wait thirty-three days to be purified from her bleeding. She must not touch anything sacred or go to the sanctuary until the days of her purification are over. 5 If she gives birth to a daughter, for two weeks the woman will be unclean, as during her period. Then she must wait sixty-six days to be purified from her bleeding. 6 " 'When the days of her purification for a son or daughter are over, she is to bring to the priest at the entrance to the tent of meeting a year-old lamb for a burnt offering and a young pigeon or a dove for a sin offering. Leviticus 12: 1-8   
9. A woman’s promise is binding only if her father or husband agrees: 2 When a man makes a vow to the LORD or takes an oath to obligate himself by a pledge, he must not break his word but must do everything he said. 3 “When a young woman still living in her father’s household makes a vow to the LORD or obligates herself by a pledge 4 and her father hears about her vow or pledge but says nothing to her, then all her vows and every pledge by which she obligated herself will stand. 5 But if her father forbids her when he hears about it, none of her vows or the pledges by which she obligated herself will stand; the LORD will release her because her father has forbidden her. . . . . A woman’s vow is meaningless unless approved by her husband or father. But if her husband nullifies them when he hears about them, then none of the vows or pledges that came from her lips will stand. Her husband has nullified them, and the LORD will release her. 13 Her husband may confirm or nullify any vow she makes or any sworn pledge to deny herself. Numbers 30:1-16   
10. Women should be seen not heard: Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. 1 Corinthians 14:34   
11. Wives should submit to their husband’s instructions and desires: Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Colossians 3:18   
12. In case you missed that submission thing . . . :  Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. ²³ For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. ²⁴ Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Ephesians 5:22-24.   
13. More submission – and childbearing as a form of atonement: A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. ¹² I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. ¹³ For Adam was formed first, then Eve. ¹⁴ And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. ¹⁵ But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety. 1 Timothy 2: 11-15   
14. Women were created for men: For if a woman does not cover her head, she might as well have her hair cut off; but if it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, then she should cover her head. ⁷ A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. ⁸ For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; ⁹ neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. 1 Corinthians 11:2-10   
15. Sleeping with women is dirty: No one could learn the song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth. ⁴ These are those who did not defile themselves with women, for they remained virgins. They follow the Lamb wherever he goes. They were purchased from among mankind and offered as first-fruits to God and the Lamb. Revelation 14:3-4

Sadly, I absorbed many of these misogynistic values in my Bible-saturated youth. But my perspective on the Bible changed dramatically when I began teaching it to my own daughters. I had become callous to, or even learned to draw comfort from, innumerable stories that my children found outrageous.

Today, it feels good to stand in opposition to ancient tyranny and oppression of women. Especially tyranny and oppression perpetrated under the name of God's will!

The Christmas Story (Explicit)

Come, abide within me;
Let my soul, like Mary,
Be Thine earthly sanctuary.
-Gerhard ter Steegen (1729)

How many December sermons did I sit through thinking (or trying not to think) about sex? Year after year, I would ask myself if I would have been willing to be God's surrogate womb. I would sit at my piano singing the hymn above and imagine Jesus taking shape deep inside me until he was ready for me to reveal him to the world. Because the ultimate proof of God's favor would be motherhood. Children are his reward.

Spirit and flesh get all mixed up in Christianity, especially at Christmas. Christmas is about sex and procreation, an observation Alice Wendleken tries to avoid with pursed lips in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. Considering the brevity of the Biblical nativity story, the number of  lines devoted to the reproductive organs is quite astounding.

Luke starts the story with the tale of an elderly priest, Zach, wordlessly impregnating his wrinkled wife, and not speaking to her for the next nine months (a punishment from God for questioning an angel). I don't know whether to read that as maddening or darkly comedic. Luke specifies that this couple is "very old". I try not to imagine a post-menopausal arthritic granny pushing a healthy boy out of her pelvis because the story says she considered pregnancy an honor, but my acquaintance with birth makes the picture all too vivid. A miracle, perhaps, but what was God thinking?

With one pregnancy accomplished, next God sends Gabriel to find Joseph's fiancee at her home in Nazareth. Mary is creeped out at being called "highly favored", but Gabe assures her that God approves of her so much that she is going to conceive a boy who will be king. Strange because the Jews don't have kings anymore.

Mary has had some sex education, and she already knows Joseph doesn't fit into this narrative. Gabriel's message is confusing to her. "How--?"

"The Holy Spirit's shadow will come over you, and the baby will be called God's son."

The Holy Spirit's shadow. That's some slang she hadn't heard before. She'll look it up in Urban Dictionary later. Right. "Well, I'm God's servant girl. Sounds good." Gabriel's work is done. He disappears.

(I always wondered if Mary had an orgasm when God impregnated her. I knew I shouldn't wonder that, but... And then when I was 21, I watched mesmerized at the Sight & Sound Theater's "Miracle of Christmas" show as they used music, colored lights, and a bit of drama to portray Mary having an ecstatic moment of, um, intimacy, with God? At least I wasn't the only one.)

Mary must have been ovulating when Gabe visited. And as soon as she misses a period, Mary leaves, too. Teenager or not, she takes off on a road trip to Judea to visit her aged but pregnant Cousin Lizzie for a few months. Cousin Zach never says a word.

And then Mary hikes back up to Galilee with God's son. Apparently before Lizzie gives birth to baby John. On the day all the friends and relations gather to celebrate cutting off a piece of John's baby penis, old Zach gets his speech back again. The story goes all over Judea.

We aren't told exactly when conscientious Joseph hears that his fiancee has cheated on him, but Matthew tells us he's pretty shaken up. They should probably break up.

But another angel shows up, this time in Joseph's troubled dreams. "Don't be afraid to marry Mary. The baby's from the Holy Spirit." Joseph takes his dreams seriously, as we find out in the next chapter, so when he wakes up, he brings Mary to live with him. But, and Matthew is explicit, they still don't have sex. Call it married, call it engaged, call it cohabitation, there is no intercourse going on. No orgasms till well after Jesus makes his debut. I can only hope Mary wasn't as horny as I was during my first pregnancy. Maybe Joseph knew he simply couldn't compete.

And then, they're traveling back to Judea--Mary's third cross-country trip this pregnancy and supposedly an 8-10 day walk. And you thought Jesus suffered for our sins... Small wonder the woman's ready to pop when they arrive! The New Testament doesn't mention a donkey, though he eventually became part of the legend. Maybe because worshipers couldn't handle Christmas, picturing a woman in her third trimester trekking across Palestine with a shy carpenter from Galilee who hadn't made it past second base yet.

Pastors always try to make the stable seem romantic. Behold the Savior's humble origins! But it wasn't a baby whose stretched-open vagina and torn perineum was exposed to the dust and dung. It wasn't a baby whose breasts swelled hard and hot, whose nipples cracked when her milk came in. Was squeamish Joseph her only companion? An observant Jewish husband isn't permitted to look at his wife's intimate parts during labor. He's not allowed to so much as hold her hand while she is niddah. Holy fucking mother of God!

(One pastor actually preached that Mary experienced no pain during Jesus' birth. He based this belief on an obscure verse in Isaiah. I adored that pastor, but I just couldn't believe him, even though I wanted it to be true, for Mary's sake as well as my own.)

We leave Mary still bleeding and cramping in a barn with her infant in a feed trough (attachment parenting wasn't in vogue that year!) and move on to shepherds hearing angels, Magi seeing stars, and all the babies and toddlers in Bethlehem being gruesomely murdered thanks to some rabbis who told Herod what their old scrolls said. Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men; Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

The next part of the story is in the "Choose-Your-Own-Adventure" style. According to Matthew, the new family escapes to Egypt to live as refugees until King Herod dies. They come back later to settle in Nazareth. In Luke's version, they cut off a piece of the baby's penis the week after his birth, and name him according to the angel's instructions. Mary is still niddah for several more weeks. When the flow of lochia finally stops, Luke has them go up to the Temple in Jerusalem to sacrifice some birds. He concludes,

When Joseph and Mary had done everything required by the Law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth.

Now do the newlyweds finally get to have sex?? Roman Catholic teaching, of course, holds that Mary remained chaste for the rest of her life, which is good for teaching abstinence but doesn't jibe with other New Testament references to Jesus' siblings.

I can't help thinking that the Church was spinning the story from the first. If Theotokos (an Eastern Orthodox title for Jesus' mother) is portrayed as the ideal woman--perfectly submissive, chaste yet available, uncomplaining and undemanding, Joseph is also the perfectly faithful man: conscientious, magnanimous, trusting and self-disciplined to a fault.

Interestingly, Luke and Matthew are the only New Testament writers to say a word about Mary's sex life. Mark begins his gospel with Jesus as an adult while John speaks in esoteric language about light, flesh, and "the word". The Apostle Paul never mentions Mary, saying merely that Jesus was born of "a woman". As if he could have been born any other way...

Have a Fucking Merry Christmas!

Strange Stories of the Bible: Jehu's Zeal for the Lord

"by Christoph Weigel, c1695"

So Jehu slew all that remained of the house of Ahab in Jezreel, and all his great men, and his kinsfolk, and his priests, until he left him none remaining. And he arose and departed, and came to Samaria. And as he was at the shearing house in the way, Jehu met with the brethren of Ahaziah king of Judah, and said, "Who are ye?" 

And they answered, "We are the brethren of Ahaziah; and we go down to salute the children of the king and the children of the queen."

And he said, "Take them alive." And they took them alive, and slew them at the pit of the shearing house, even two and forty men; neither left he any of them.

And when he was departed thence, he lighted on Jehonadab the son of Rechab coming to meet him: and he saluted him, and said to him, "Is thine heart right, as my heart is with thy heart?" 

And Jehonadab answered, "It is."

"If it be, give me thine hand."

And he gave him his hand; and he took him up to him into the chariot. And he said, "Come with me, and see my zeal for the Lord." So they made him ride in his chariot.

And when he came to Samaria, he slew all that remained unto Ahab in Samaria, till he had destroyed him, according to the saying of the Lord, which he spake to Elijah. 

And Jehu gathered all the people together, and said unto them, "Ahab served Baal a little; but Jehu shall serve him much. Now therefore call unto me all the prophets of Baal, all his servants, and all his priests; let none be wanting: for I have a great sacrifice to do to Baal; whosoever shall be wanting, he shall not live." But Jehu did it in subtilty, to the intent that he might destroy the worshipers of Baal. 

And Jehu said, "Proclaim a solemn assembly for Baal." And they proclaimed it. And Jehu sent through all Israel: and all the worshipers of Baal came, so that there was not a man left that came not. And they came into the house of Baal; and the house of Baal was full from one end to another.

And he said unto him that was over the vestry, "Bring forth vestments for all the worshipers of Baal." And he brought them forth vestments.

And Jehu went, and Jehonadab the son of Rechab, into the house of Baal, and said unto the worshipers of Baal, "Search, and look that there be here with you none of the servants of the Lord, but the worshipers of Baal only."

And when they went in to offer sacrifices and burnt offerings, Jehu appointed fourscore men without, and said, "If any of the men whom I have brought into your hands escape, he that letteth him go, his life shall be for the life of him."

And it came to pass, as soon as he had made an end of offering the burnt offering, that Jehu said to the guard and to the captains, "Go in, and slay them; let none come forth." 

And they smote them with the edge of the sword; and the guard and the captains cast them out, and went to the city of the house of Baal. And they brought forth the images out of the house of Baal, and burned them. And they brake down the image of Baal, and brake down the house of Baal, and made it a draught house unto this day.

Thus Jehu destroyed Baal out of Israel. Howbeit from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin, Jehu departed not from after them, to wit, the golden calves that were in Bethel, and that were in Dan.

And the Lord said unto Jehu, "Because thou hast done well in executing that which is right in mine eyes, and hast done unto the house of Ahab according to all that was in mine heart, thy children of the fourth generation shall sit on the throne of Israel."

2 Kings 10:11-30 (KJV)

Of Beef Stroganoff and Italian Subs

And having food and raiment let us be therewith content.

Scene from the film "Babette's Feast"

Funny how our senses are tuned differently. While my husband is so sensitive to musical detail even his dreams can have soundtracks, my brain assigns high priority to flavor.

So many of my memories revolve around food, transporting me to times and places far away.

Sitting here in my kitchen on a cloudy afternoon, I can recall the tang of Russian black bread, of calamansi juice squeezed over sweet ripe papaya, of the Vitamin C lozenges Mom used let us suck on when we had sore throats. I can compare the tastes of three different bread recipes Mom used during my childhood. I can travel back in time to taste her favorite chocolate cake with coconut sprinkled over the icing, her homemade turkey stuffing, the broccoli casserole she used to make with blue cheese in the sauce and Ritz cracker crumbs on the top.

Mom taught herself to cook after she was married, and then she taught me. From the time we were able to crawl, we were allowed in the kitchen (there was always a drawer or cabinet the babies were allowed to play in) and she got us involved in food preparation quite early. We helped plant and weed the garden, snap the beans, husk the corn, pit cherries, and turn the handle on the food mill when Mom made gallons of applesauce or tomato sauce. Of course, she had us help with the clean-up afterward, too.

Food became part of my childhood identity.

Mom was zealous about serving her family nutritious food, so while my classmates brought sugary snacks and brightly-colored fruit leather to school, I brought a Tupperware bowl of Mom's strawberry-rhubarb sauce. She made sure even our desserts had "redeeming value" most of the time: all-natural ice cream, peanut butter cookies, peach cobbler, pumpkin pie. I eventually learned that some other children's mothers were "health nuts" and that put me at ease. There was still a place for treats: Mom enjoyed Pepsi on occasion, and pizza was a craving we were all happy to indulge. We ordered it from a place in town or made our own, with mushrooms from a can labeled "Pennsylvania Dutchman". Since my parents and I were born Pennsylvanians, I felt a kinship with the brand every time I opened a can.

But when I was seven or eight, our lives--and menu--changed dramatically.

My parents had attended Bill Gothard's Basic Seminar, but about this time they must have attended the Advanced Seminar. Mom quit wearing jeans, and got rid of all my pants. It was jumpers, dresses, and skirts for us females from then on. There were no more bathing suits, and my parents informed my grandmother that she could make the boys pajamas, but the girls needed nightgowns. Dad put a rock through the front of our television so there were no more evenings of "Little House of the Prairie".

And just like that, we developed our own Talmud.

Mom stopped wearing her prettiest cardigan vest--a lacy blue garment I loved but whose scalloped pattern was knit of cotton & ramie yarn. In those days before Google none of us were quite certain what "ramie" was, but it sounded suspicious. God had instructed Moses not to let the Israelites wear clothing of mixed fibers: the American colonists' "linsey-woolsey" was a direct violation of God's Law. Cotton and polyester, we decided, was not a problem since polyester wasn't actually a fiber but a petroleum product.

Leviticus prohibited hybrid animals (mules, for example) and planting two kinds of seed in the same field. So Mom stopped buying tangelos. Oranges, yes; tangerines, yes. But not tangelos. I remember trying to reconcile my confusion over the Burpee catalog, which was bursting with hybrids.

Genesis said God gave us "every seed-bearing plant" for food. Well, what of mushrooms then? They may be sold in the produce aisle, but seed-bearing plants they are not. No more little Pennsylvania Dutchman cans. No more of Mom's favorite omelettes at the best breakfast place in town. No more steaming cream of mushroom soup with a winter lunch. No more of Mom's rich and creamy beef stroganoff. How I missed them all.

The stroganoff was out on two counts--because it also mixed meat with milk, which was banned under one strict interpretation of an obscure rule repeated three times in the Torah. Mom adapted her meatloaf recipe accordingly, omitting the mushrooms and substituting water for the milk. For a while, her caution against fungi extended to blue cheese, resulting in the demise of her flavorful and creamy broccoli casserole. (I rebelliously continued to choose blue cheese dressing at salad bars and to argue that the yeast that made our bread rise was essentially another fungus.)

And then there were the unclean meats. Seafood wasn't a big deal for us--living so far from the coasts, we weren't used to crab cakes, shrimp, or lobster. But our German ancestors loved sausage. It was a sacrifice to lose bacon with pancakes, ham sandwiches, Mom's baked orange pork chops, and pepperoni pizza*--not to mention hot dogs!

Thus began a new era in our family history. Eating out became an exercise in selection by elimination. If six of out of eight entree choices contained pork, shrimp, or mushrooms, and one had something else you hated, you knew what you were ordering. When we were invited to other people's homes, which became a rarer event the larger the family became, Dad was sure to mention to them that we followed certain dietary restrictions. Church folks volunteering to bring us meals after Mom had another baby got the same information (resulting in three variations of chicken and potato salad in one week).

There were exceptions, of course. When our new neighbors invited us across the street for hot dogs the day we moved in, Mom was glad enough not to cook and we were permitted to receive with thanksgiving what was set before us, without inquiries as to the ingredients. When we were visiting family out-of-state and a sweet elderly relation baked a ham, there was a whispered discussion behind the scenes. Dad told us that it would be okay for us to eat it. Seeing that she had prepared it out of generosity and ignorance, it would be gracious of us not to turn it down. I stepped up to that table in her blue dining room with mouth watering, endeavoring to mask my anticipation. It was the last ham I would taste for over a decade.

Our hot dogs were all-beef. (Soy weiners were nasty.) We cheered when turkey pepperoni hit the market, and when we could serve turkey bacon planks as a salty side to a breakfast of waffles. By then our parents had relaxed on combining meat and dairy, so we could enjoy cheeseburgers again, and browned hamburger on our pizza. We found the stores that sold beef sausage links and became adept at rapidly scanning labels for offensive ingredients. Jiffy cornbread mix and some refried beans contained lard, which was "unclean". Mom once came home with frozen Salisbury steaks. When I found them in the freezer, I dutifully read her the ingredients. When she realized they contained pork, she threw the boxes in the garbage in exasperation.

When Dad accompanied me to San Francisco where I sat for a law exam in 1996 (required for students of Gothard's unaccredited correspondence law school), we were served breakfast sandwiches aboard the jet. I remember being annoyed that the diced ham was cooked into the egg, so it was nearly impossible to separate the two. I would have happily eaten the sandwich all together, but dared not appear to do so with my dad watching from the seat next to me. I remember looking sideways at him to see how he would handle the awkward situation, but I think he felt the same way. Sightseeing later on Pier 39 in the Fisherman's Wharf district, we carefully avoided the clam chowder that smelled so delicious in sourdough bread bowls. Shellfish, having neither fins nor scales, are an abomination, no matter how beguilingly disguised.

Ironically, the only times I was served pork during that long period was when I was volunteering for IBLP and they ordered pizza for the staff! (IBLP training center kitchens did not ordinarily serve pork products.)

I knew from my own reading of the New Testament that I had never shared my parents' interpretation of the Old Testament code. When I left home for the first time at age 22, I lost no time shedding the "standard" I had resented for so many years. My first day as an IBLP staff member was spent traveling from Chicago to Oklahoma City. When we stopped for lunch at a Subway, I ordered the Italian sub, chock full of forbidden salami, pepperoni, and ham. Two years later, I savored every morsel of the first real breakfast bacon I'd tasted since childhood. Each first made an impression: crab Rangoon, New Orleans shrimp, Maryland crab cakes, scallops in a pasta dish, calamari, lechon, pulled pork, BBQ ribs.

When I tell my kids about the way I grew up, they are aghast. They know religious kids in their classes who are vegetarian, or don't eat pork, or don't get candy at Halloween. But it always jars them to imagine their mother swimming in a dress, or kept from eating bacon, because of what an ancient scroll said that God told an old man on a mountain in a middle eastern desert.




*The famed Duggar family--equally zealous followers of Gothard--also stay away from pork. One episode of their "Nineteen Kids & Counting" showed them visiting a pizza parlor in Washington, D.C. and enjoying pepperoni pizza. Curious viewers looked up the pizzeria's website and discovered that Jumbo Pizza uses all-beef pepperoni.

Strange Stories of the Bible: Holy Priests & Perfectionism

Rules for Priests

[Priests] must not marry women defiled by prostitution or divorced from their husbands, because priests are holy to their God. Regard them as holy, because they offer up the food of your God. Consider them holy, because I the Lord am holy—I who make you holy.

If a priest’s daughter defiles herself by becoming a prostitute, she disgraces her father; she must be burned in the fire.

The high priest, the one among his brothers who has had the anointing oil poured on his head and who has been ordained to wear the priestly garments, must not let his hair become unkempt or tear his clothes. He must not enter a place where there is a dead body. He must not make himself unclean, even for his father or mother, nor leave the sanctuary of his God or desecrate it, because he has been dedicated by the anointing oil of his God. I am the Lord.

The woman he marries must be a virgin. He must not marry a widow, a divorced woman, or a woman defiled by prostitution, but only a virgin from his own people, so that he will not defile his offspring among his people. I am the Lord, who makes him holy.

The Lord said to Moses, “Say to Aaron: ‘For the generations to come none of your descendants who has a defect may come near to offer the food of his God. No man who has any defect may come near: no man who is blind or lame, disfigured or deformed; no man with a crippled foot or hand, or who is a hunchback or a dwarf, or who has any eye defect, or who has festering or running sores or damaged testicles. No descendant of Aaron the priest who has any defect is to come near to present the food offerings to the Lord. He has a defect; he must not come near to offer the food of his God. He may eat the most holy food of his God, as well as the holy food; yet because of his defect, he must not go near the curtain or approach the altar, and so desecrate my sanctuary. I am the Lord, who makes them holy.’”

Leviticus 21:7-23

Growing up, we were taught that many of the rules for priests applied to us, too. We were now God's chosen people, after all, anointed for his service, a "royal priesthood", a holy tribe. "Be ye perfect," Jesus said, "as your father in heaven is perfect." And, oh, we tried!

No wonder we still struggle with perfectionism!

Strange Stories of the Bible: Elisha

The Double Portion and The Two Bears

When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, “Tell me, what can I do for you before I am taken from you?”

“Let me inherit a double portion of your spirit,” Elisha replied.

“You have asked a difficult thing,” Elijah said, “yet if you see me when I am taken from you, it will be yours—otherwise, it will not.”

As they were walking along and talking together, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind. Elisha saw this and cried out, “My father! My father! The chariots and horsemen of Israel!” And Elisha saw him no more. Then he took hold of his garment and tore it in two.

From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some boys came out of the town and jeered at him. “Get out of here, baldy!” they said. “Get out of here, baldy!” 

He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the Lord. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys. And he went on to Mount Carmel and from there returned to Samaria.

2 Kings 2:9-12,23-25

Elisha Arouses a Dead Boy

When Elisha reached the house, there was the boy lying dead on his couch. He went in, shut the door on the two of them and prayed to the Lord. Then he got on the bed and lay on the boy, mouth to mouth, eyes to eyes, hands to hands. As he stretched himself out on him, the boy’s body grew warm. Elisha turned away and walked back and forth in the room and then got on the bed and stretched out on him once more. The boy sneezed seven times and opened his eyes.

Elisha summoned Gehazi and said, “Call the Shunammite.” And he did. When she came, he said, “Take your son.” She came in, fell at his feet and bowed to the ground. Then she took her son and went out.

2 Kings 4:32-37 

Elisha's Potent Bones

Elisha died and was buried.
Now Moabite raiders used to enter the country every spring. Once while some Israelites were burying a man, suddenly they saw a band of raiders; so they threw the man’s body into Elisha’s tomb. When the body touched Elisha’s bones, the man came to life and stood up on his feet.

2 Kings 13:20 

Making Family Transitions

When we had exited fundamentalism and wrung the last nourishment we could get from the breast of evangelicalism, we switched to a church in a liberal mainline denomination (United Methodist). And the kids kept us there longer than we likely would have stayed ourselves.

Making that leap was hard on our littlest one, because she had friends at the old church and missed it sometimes. But the older two were willing to explore new territory with us. And by that time, they were beginning to be aware of the unpleasant side of fundamentalist Christianity.

We saw the continuity as important for our children. We also realized the value of socialization, especially since we were still homeschooling and few of our local friends had children.

The Methodist ladies who volunteered in the Sunday School were so nice and they adored our children. We liked the positive reinforcement from adults who generally shared our values. The church was intentional about encouraging the kids to serve the community, to think globally, to embrace diversity, and to be sensitive to the needs of others. Our kids loved the crafts (I really hate cleanup!) and the emphasis on the arts was tremendous.

So we stayed while we tried to figure things out. We prayed less and less at home, but we still read Bible stories, still had an Advent calendar. I joined the church's bell choir and C-- joined the pastor's weekly Bible study. At one point we even talked to our oldest about getting baptized.

We tried many different small groups at the church, but every one was worse than the last. We began to wonder if the church was changing, or if we were. We got invited to join a prayer class even though the Sunday recitation of the Lord's Prayer had become the only time that we prayed. We kept dropping the children off at Sunday School and choir practice, but then we would sit in the balcony with library books about agnosticism, evolution, physics.

Public libraries have often been my salvation. During our transitional year or two, I brought home stacks of children’s books: books on mythology, legends, “just-so stories”, creation myths, sages and proverbs, gods & goddesses--from every culture and era I could find. It helped immensely to see how human societies have always tried to imagine, interpret, and illustrate the intangible from what can be observed. I especially enjoyed the Jewish creation tales, which have a long tradition of maintaining relevance through addition, embellishment, daring imagination, and constant re-interpretation.

We saw how societies have always attempted to illustrate and inculcate their values through their religious narratives. And how too frequently those narratives were also used to keep the powerful strong and the downtrodden weak.

Eventually my husband and I just knew *we* were done--done with church, done with prayer, done with the Bible, done with faith and belief and doctrine and God. Done with the whole package. Life means what we say it means so let’s make it good, and better!

We'd tried to keep tabs on the kids' emotional connection to the church throughout our time there. So now we asked again how they were enjoying the programs they were involved in (which had continued to evolve while we were there). Our kids were 9, 8, and 5 at the time. And their answers surprised us. One said, “I think Mrs. _____ says some things because she thinks that what she’s supposed to say in church. I don't think she really believes everything she says.” Another said when they sang, he “tried not to think about the words”. Okaaayyyy. This was not quite the response we expected!

The youngest had the best experience there—she’s an extrovert and it was more like “playing church” for the preschoolers, complete with a miniature chapel with its own stained glass and child-size pews. But when we asked, “How would you like to stop going to Sunday School and go swimming at the Y with Daddy instead?”, she was game, too.

So we set a date about a month out—time to sing the choir songs they’d rehearsed and serve out the acolyte schedule. Being a bigger church we’d only attended for two years, it was easier to slip away from than a more intimate congregation would have been. Also, the senior pastor was transferred to another city right after we made our decision, so it was a natural time for us to move on, too. We even helped staff the kids’ activities for Easter (that was strange!). We already knew two of our kids were going to public school in August, so socialization was less of an issue by then. And though the people were kind, we hadn't developed any close friendships.

For a while I encouraged the kids to keep reading their Bibles, and we would talk about what they read. That lasted several months, until M-- reached some of the more horrible stories in Joshua and Judges and was incredulous that the God her grandparents serve would approve—even insist on—such carnage. The children started wanting to get rid of Bible story books and and Christian music and Veggie Tales movies and fish necklaces they'd received at church. We tried to make those changes at their pace. All three are happy atheists now.

Last Christmas, we pretty much hung up all the tree ornaments, religious or not. We used a secular advent calendar (our first with chocolates!). We listened to fun holiday songs with lyrics about kindness and friendship and taking time to enjoy life (instead of carols about sinners, curses, virgin wombs, and "Satan's tyranny"). We talked about the Winter Solstice and the many traditions surrounding that season. As we took the tree down in January, we considered what the ornaments represented and which ones we wouldn't really miss next year. We have a Peanuts advent calendar for this December's count down to Christmas Day.

We didn't display the wooden cross model for Lent this year, and we didn't watch The Gospel of John. (M-- says she might want to see it again sometime, but the other two have no interest.) We paid attention to the new season unfolding around us: the robins' reappearance, birds nesting, budding branches, baby bunnies in the backyard, bulbs bursting out of the ground and making colorful blooms, the fragrance of flowering trees. For Easter weekend, we participated in fun community events. We colored eggs and celebrated spring.

Sunday mornings are so much more relaxed now. We can sleep in if we need to. Nobody has to dress up. Sometimes I make a fancy breakfast or brunch. During the school year, the kids often go swimming at the Y with their dad. This summer, we've had time to sit together on the front porch together sipping coffee while the kids eat their cereal on the steps or play in the yard. We listen to the bells from the church down the street and chat with neighbors out for a stroll with their dog.

Most of our family traditions are unchanged. We celebrate birthdays the same way. We still go to see fireworks on the Fourth of July and swap candy with our neighbors on Halloween. We still roast a turkey and see family for Thanksgiving. We still put up a Christmas tree and bake cookies and watch the Rose Parade on New Year's Day.

And there is always room for trying new things that could turn into traditions down the road. Like getting milkshakes at Sonic before bed or playing along with the Beatles on Guitar Hero. 

As we discussed a church sign we'd passed last week, my daughter and I agreed that once you leave the religious mindset, it is difficult even to imagine being in it again.

In Memory of Thomas Granger

The first juvenile executed in the North American colonies was a young servant of "about 16 or 17" named Thomas Granger, who was hung in 1642 for having sex with a turkey.

According to Governor William Bradford's well-known history Of Plymouth Plantation*:

"He [Thomas Granger] was this year detected of buggery, and indicted for the same, with a mare, a cow, two goats, five sheep, two calves and a turkey. Horrible it is to mention, but the truth of the history requires it. He was first discovered by one that accidentally saw his lewd practice towards the mare. (I forbear particulars.) Being upon it examined and committed, in the end he not only confessed the fact with that beast at that time, but sundry times before and at several times with all the rest of the forenamed in his indictment. And this his free confession was not only in private to the magistrates (though at first he strived to deny it) but to sundry, both ministers and others; and afterwards, upon his indictment, to the whole Court and jury; and confirmed it at his execution. And whereas some of the sheep could not so well be known by his description of them, others with them were brought before him and he declared which were they and which were not. And accordingly he was cast by the jury and condemned, and after executed about the 8th of September, 1642. A very sad spectacle it was. For first the mare and then the cow and the rest of the lesser cattle were killed before his face, according to the law, Leviticus xx.15; and then he himself was executed. The cattle were all cast into a great and large pit that was digged of purpose for them, and no use made of any part of them." 

The curious can read more here.

The late Rousas J. Rushdoony (1916-2001) would have been right at home in Plymouth. Rushdoony was a racist minister who strongly influenced American fundamentalism and the religious right. Today he is remembered as the "father of the homeschool movement". Rushdoony repeatedly called for a return to the Old Testament legal code, including the death penalty for homosexual acts as well as for bestiality.

Rushdoony's ideological progeny Pat Robertson (whose law school teaches from Rushdoony's books) And Senator Rand Paul (with ties to Rushdoony's son-in-law Gary North) have each expressed concern that legalizing same-sex marriage is merely a slippery slope to bestiality.

Rand Paul's office now says he was merely joking. So he ought to appreciate this sunny response to Robertson that would have scandalized Governor Bradford:

*Strangely, I do not recall this story coming up when my dad read to us from Bradford's journal on Sunday afternoons, nor when it was read aloud to the staff at IBLP's Oklahoma Training Center. Does anyone know whether it was excised from Vision Forum's unabridged edition?

Strange Stories of the Bible: Jephthah's Daughter

     And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the Lord, and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands,
     Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the Lord's, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering.
     So Jephthah passed over unto the children of Ammon to fight against them; and the Lord delivered them into his hands.
     And he smote them from Aroer, even till thou come to Minnith, even twenty cities, and unto the plain of the vineyards, with a very great slaughter. Thus the children of Ammon were subdued before the children of Israel.
     And Jephthah came to Mizpeh unto his house, and, behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances: and she was his only child; beside her he had neither son nor daughter.
     And it came to pass, when he saw her, that he rent his clothes, and said, Alas, my daughter! thou hast brought me very low, and thou art one of them that trouble me: for I have opened my mouth unto the Lord, and I cannot go back.
     And she said unto him, My father, if thou hast opened thy mouth unto the Lord, do to me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth; forasmuch as the Lord hath taken vengeance for thee of thine enemies, even of the children of Ammon.
     And she said unto her father, Let this thing be done for me: let me alone two months, that I may go up and down upon the mountains, and bewail my virginity, I and my fellows.
     And he said, Go. And he sent her away for two months: and she went with her companions, and bewailed her virginity upon the mountains.
     And it came to pass at the end of two months, that she returned unto her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had vowed...

Judges 11:30-39

Engraving by John Opie, 1790

"The Bible and the church have been the greatest stumbling block in the way of women's emancipation." --Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Wisdom is the Principal Thing

“You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened...

To the woman [God] said,
“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”

To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”

Genesis 3:4-7, 16-19

...the Lord appeared to Solomon during the night in a dream, and God said, “Ask for whatever you want me to give you.”

Solomon answered, “...You have made your servant king in place of my father David. But I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties.... So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong. For who is able to govern this great people of yours?”

The Lord was pleased that Solomon had asked for this. So God said to him, “Since you have asked for this and not for long life or wealth for yourself, nor have asked for the death of your enemies but for discernment in administering justice, I will do what you have asked. I will give you a wise and discerning heart, so that there will never have been anyone like you, nor will there ever be. Moreover, I will give you what you have not asked for—both wealth and honor—so that in your lifetime you will have no equal among kings."

I Kings 3:5-13

Wisdom is the most important thing; so get wisdom.
If it costs everything you have, get understanding.

Proverbs 4:7

Strange Stories of the Bible: Lot's Daughters

Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surrounded the house. They called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.”

Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him and said, “No, my friends. Don’t do this wicked thing. Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don’t do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.”

*****

Lot and his two daughters left Zoar and settled in the mountains, for he was afraid to stay in Zoar. He and his two daughters lived in a cave. One day the older daughter said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is no man around here to give us children—as is the custom all over the earth. Let’s get our father to drink wine and then sleep with him and preserve our family line through our father.”

That night they got their father to drink wine, and the older daughter went in and slept with him. He was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up.

The next day the older daughter said to the younger, “Last night I slept with my father. Let’s get him to drink wine again tonight, and you go in and sleep with him so we can preserve our family line through our father.” So they got their father to drink wine that night also, and the younger daughter went in and slept with him. Again he was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up.

So both of Lot’s daughters became pregnant by their father. The older daughter had a son, and she named him Moab; he is the father of the Moabites of today. The younger daughter also had a son, and she named him Ben-Ammi; he is the father of the Ammonites* of today.

Genesis 19:4-8, 30-38 (New International Version)

The same Lot character shows up as a hero in the New Testament. One wonders what led the author to regard Lot as "righteous":

...[God] rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the depraved conduct of the lawless (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)...

2 Peter 2:7-8

7th-century Byzantine Christians built St. Lot's church and monastery at Lot's Cave, a site in modern Jordan.

"When women understand that governments and religions are human inventions; that Bibles, prayer-books, catechisms, and encyclical letters are all emanations from the brains of man, they will no longer be oppressed by the injunctions that come to them with the divine authority of 'Thus sayeth the Lord.'"
― Elizabeth Cady Stanton

*More on the Ammonites later.

Strange Stories of the Bible: The Levite's Concubine

    ...So he took [the Levite] into his house and fed his donkeys. After they had washed their feet, they had something to eat and drink.
    While they were enjoying themselves, some of the wicked men of the city surrounded the house. Pounding on the door, they shouted to the old man who owned the house, “Bring out the man who came to your house so we can have sex with him.”
    The owner of the house went outside and said to them, “No, my friends, don’t be so vile. Since this man is my guest, don’t do this outrageous thing. Look, here is my virgin daughter, and his concubine. I will bring them out to you now, and you can use them and do to them whatever you wish. But as for this man, don’t do such an outrageous thing.”
    But the men would not listen to him. So the man took his concubine and sent her outside to them, and they raped her and abused her throughout the night, and at dawn they let her go. At daybreak the woman went back to the house where her master was staying, fell down at the door and lay there until daylight.
    When her master got up in the morning and opened the door of the house and stepped out to continue on his way, there lay his concubine, fallen in the doorway of the house, with her hands on the threshold. He said to her, “Get up; let’s go.” But there was no answer. Then the man put her on his donkey and set out for home.
    When he reached home, he took a knife and cut up his concubine, limb by limb, into twelve parts and sent them into all the areas of Israel.  

Judges 19:21-29

"Come, come, my conservative friend, wipe the dew off your spectacles, and see that the world is moving. Whatever your views may be...your political and social degradation are but an outgrowth of your status in the Bible...Whatever the Bible may be made to do in Hebrew or Greek, in plain English it does not exalt and dignify woman."    

--Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the introduction to The Woman's Bible (1898)

The Rights of Women

Quick history review:

One hundred years ago, women in America were still marching for the right to vote.

An American suffrage event in 1913

Jeanette Rankin, the lonely female voice in Congress in 1917, was proud to vote for woman's suffrage. Her male colleagues finally approved women's voting rights in 1920, ratifying the Nineteenth Amendment more than forty years after Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton first drafted it. Men in Switzerland did not approve federal female suffrage till 1971.

Much more recently, married women in Wichita still needed their husband's permission to get a library card and women in Memphis could only get a library card in their husband's name.

In the 1980's, I grew up in a religious cult that did not permit women to wear pants (lest they cause a man to lust after them and rape them). Contraception was also considered immoral, so my mother had 15 pregnancies: 4 miscarriages, 11 births. When I realized (just a few years ago!) that women actually have equal rights with men, I was amazed. And then I discovered that those rights are under attack right here in heartland.

For example, our governor and some of our male state legislators are continually eroding, in the name of religion, the rights of Kansas women to not be pregnant. If women were making these rules, that affect only women after all, maybe I would feel differently. But these men were born with the right to never be pregnant. Why would they insist that a woman grow another human inside her body against her will?

My daughters need to know they can be whatever they want to be. That motherhood is their choice--even if they are victims of sexual violence. Even if they are minors. Even if their birth control fails. Even if they are ignorant or irresponsible. Even if they don't discover they are pregnant until 8 weeks later. And if they choose to exercise their constitutional right to an abortion, they should not have to fight a state-mandated obstacle course of shame, fear and lies. 

Men, especially religious men, have a long history of telling women how God intended women's bodies to be used:

For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another...
--St. Paul (Romans 1:26-27)

You really wrote that, Paul? "The natural use of the woman"? Oh, God. Got that straight from Him, did you? You'll be glad to know the church in Rome took it seriously. In fact, they've spread the good news all over the globe--letting it be known that the only morally acceptable place for a male orgasm is inside a woman's vagina. Yep. Thanks, Paul.

Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man.
--St. Paul (I Corinthians 11:9)

Of course. What was I thinking?

But others drink potions to ensure sterility and are guilty of murdering a human being not yet conceived.
--St. Jerome (Letter 22, to Eustochium 13)

How the heck? I don't think that word means what you think it means.

Therefore, women do wrong when they seek to have children by means of evil drugs. They sin still more grievously when they kill the children who are already conceived or born, and when by taking impious drugs to prevent conception they condemn in themselves the nature which God wanted to be fruitful. Let them not doubt that they have committed as many murders as the number of the children they might have begotten.
--St. Caesarius of Arles (Sermon 51, 4; CC 103, 229)

Inconceivable!

By that primitive name [Eve], says he, He showed for what labor the woman had been provided; and He said accordingly, "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth." Now, who among ourselves denies that the woman was provided for the work of child-bearing by the Lord God, the beneficent Creator of all good?
--St. Augustine (On Marriage and Concupiscence, Book II, Chapter 12)

 I guess no one else is going to do it...

...We see how weak and sickly barren women are. Those who are fruitful, however, are healthier, cleanlier, and happier. And even if they bear themselves weary—or ultimately bear themselves out—that does not hurt. Let them bear themselves out. This is the purpose for which they exist. It is better to have a brief life with good health than a long life in ill health.
--Martin Luther (The Estate of Marriage, LW 45)

I've seen such women. It is a heartbreaking sight.

Woman is more guilty than man, because she was seduced by Satan, and so diverted her husband from obedience to God that she was an instrument of death leading to all perdition. It is necessary that woman recognize this, and that she learn to what she is subjected; and not only against her husband. This is reason enough why today she is placed below and that she bears within her ignominy and shame.
--John Calvin (author of Institutes of the Christian Religion, cited by Brown in An Apology to Women)

So glad I don't live in Calvin's Geneva.

Woman in her greatest perfection was made to serve and obey man, not to rule and command him. After the fall, she was made subject to man by the irrevocable sentence of God. In which sentence there are two parts.
    (a) A dolor, anguish and pain as oft as ever she shall be a mother.
    (b) A subjection of her self, her appetites and will to her husband and his will.
From the former part of this malediction can neither art, nobility, policy nor law made by man deliver women: but, alas, ignorance of God, ambition and tyranny have studied to abolish and destroy the second part of God's punishment.
--John Knox (First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women)

And so it goes on. From Calvin and Knox to Doug Phillips and Jim Bob Duggar. Let the women kill fleas!

Sisters, we have come far. Occasionally with the support of religious groups, more often without. Our daughters are watching us to determine their own value. For their sake, let's not give up any of our hard-won progress now.

Library Shelf: Foreskin's Lament

I have to love Shalom Auslander. His memoir Foreskin's Lament is poignant, amusing, daring, and unsettling. One minute it made me giggle, the next I wondered if I was tottering on the brink of insanity.

Though he was raised Jewish and I was Christian, and he went to school while I was taught at home, I can relate to him far too well to be comfortable. His stories of sneaking Slim Jims at the municipal pool Snack Shack made me laugh till my chest began to heave with sobs.

"Cheese or regular?"

Cheese? Pork, with cheese?

Oh. My. God.

I wasn't sneaky, but I envied the wicked with their pepperoni pizza. And I savored every mouthful of my first breakfast bacon as an adult. With stuffed apricot French toast at The Spotted Hog in Peddler's Village, Lahaska, Pennsylvania, with my grandma in 1999. It was amazing.

In one chapter, Auslander describes his school's "Blessing Bee" (you really should hear him tell it!) --a uniquely Jewish competition that could have life-or-death implications for Shalom's family. Only in the darkest depths of religion can a glass of milk, flicking a lightswitch on Friday, and masturbation become lethal weapons wielded in self-defense. Honestly, you need to listen.

Growing up under the "Umbrella of Protection" principle, I had no trouble taking Auslander seriously. And my familiarity with the rules of the Old Testament God  caused me to identify strongly with this weary but determined kid growing up Jewish in New York.

"Sitting on the lawn was prohibited because the grass could dye your clothes - dyeing, category 15. Some held that it was also a violation of plowing, category 2, and, should the grass be pulled out of the ground by the heel of your shoe, reaping, category 3." It should be borne in mind that not all Jewish belief is like this. Of a friend who belongs to Reform Judaism, Auslander says he has, theologically speaking, more in common with a Christian.  

(from a review in the Guardian)

"Belief can be incredibly exhausting", Auslander remarks in an interview with Terry Gross, who found him "angry".

Auslander sees no significant difference between a madrassa and a yeshiva. Different books, different dress codes, but the message is the same. I would add fundamentalist Christianity to the list. When you are taught what God wants and what are the horrific consequences of choosing your own will over God's, it is easy to understand where religious extremists come from.

Like Auslander, I am troubled (he feels "dumbfounded and distraught") to see people around me finding god, when I am "trying to lose him".

Also like him, some family relationships are painful and difficult, thanks to religion. I am still negotiating these.

In the meantime, I find stories like these to be cathartic. And honesty like that expressed by Shalom Auslander is yet another beacon along the way to living out an authentic and contented life.

Building on Sand

I was about six when my parents gave me my own copy of the The Living Bible and encouraged me to begin reading in Genesis. I loved the illustrations and the crinkly sound the thin pages made. And I listened to the dramatized audio version of the New Testament by the hour. The book of Acts was my favorite: I learned most of the lines and all the voices by heart.

My family read through the books of Psalms and Proverbs every month for years and years. On the 5th of any given month, for example, we'd read Psalms 5, 35, 65, 95,  and 125, plus chapter 5 of Proverbs, taking turns reading our share aloud.

Following breakfast, Mom would read to us from a children's devotional. We might sing a hymn together. Then she would set a timer for 15 minutes and each of us went to our rooms for our own "Quiet Time", reading our Bibles or Bible storybooks.

In addition to mere reading, I started Bible study young. There was a Navigators' study I did with my parents, a couple of correspondence courses for young people, a discipleship study at the Quaker church. There were topical studies, Sunday School classes, Baptist and Mennonite vacation Bible schools, and family foreign missions camp with New Tribes missionaries who taught the Bible in jungles far away. When I was older, I participated in Bible studies at the local jail.

I had my own Strong's Concordance, and studied New Testament Greek. The phrases of the King James version permeated our family's speech, and our humor. The Picture Bible was our comic book, the judges and David's mighty men our superheroes. The Old and New Testaments--revered as true in every detail--  not only determined our theology and ethics, but also our understanding of science, history, relationships, diet, and sexuality.

Mom and Dad had us memorizing passages from the Bible before we joined ATI. It only got more intense when we started the Wisdom Booklets. Dad paid us to learn chapters, or entire books, and urged us to recite the Christmas story in concert at holiday gatherings, like a Peanuts special. Knowing the challenge of memorization, I looked up to men who were said to have memorized the entire New Testament.

In our household, the Bible trumped all other arguments. We learned to wield scripture like the ultimate weapon. We knew it backwards and forwards and could use it like lawyers for defense or prosecution of any position.

As I grew older, I came to view our scripture obsession as a kind of idolatry. It was as if our Bible was an extra person of the Godhead.

I felt we'd confused The Word that came from God (Jesus) with "The Word of God" (the Holy Bible). On the other hand, everything we knew of Jesus was revealed to us only through the scriptures. How would we have heard of him otherwise? I decided the secret was to read the Bible more simply, with less commentary from "experts", less interpretation, less wrangling over application.

While I sorted out my own theology, I spent a year living among a group of missionary linguists who labored year after year to express the words of the Bible in other languages and with strange alphabets for villagers who lacked schools, jobs, hospitals, toilets. Sometimes I got to help out, as when I helped type a manuscript of the Gospel of John.

One of my friends there had completed a New Testament, yet the fruit of her labors sat in boxes; many people of that region practice a folk Islam and have little interest in reading it. Another woman described her feelings when she finally completed her translation. Releasing it to be published and distributed to people as the word of God "traumatized" her, she said. Though the New Testament was the main priority, a few worked on translating the Old Testament with its stories of ancient battles, instructions about nocturnal emissions, and abecedarians for the Hebrew alphabet. An elderly translator spent her days refining the book of Job for a rural ethnic group with its own gods and folklore beliefs. (Thinking about it now brings to mind Samuel Wesley's Latin commentary on Job.)

Still, I believed that giving anyone the Bible would offer them Christianity in its purest form, guiding them to all the benefits of faith with the fewest glitches and hang-ups. Rather like the reassuring note the pharmacy prints on my prescriptions: "Remember that your doctor has prescribed this medication because she has judged that the benefit to you is greater than the risk of side effects."

Then I got married. After the wedding, we were faced with the daunting task of finding a church that fit the two of us. We spent months visiting different services, listening to pastors and interim pastors and guest speakers, trying out small groups. Even when we settled on a church, our loyalty was not exclusive. Each fellowship and each denomination seemed to have unique strengths, and I figured the clearest, most faithful image of God's would be a mosaic formed from contributions across all of Christendom.

So in spite of our freakishly encyclopedic Bible knowledge, we took numerous opportunities to learn from other angles. I did Bible studies at a conservative Lutheran church ("You should see how Baptists do baptisms. They have a hot tub up behind the altar!"), a megachurch with an awesome ladies' brunch every Tuesday, a tiny Christian church with no other text than our Bibles, a Methodist church with video lectures and graduation certificates. And the more I learned about what how other people interacted with this book, the more questions I had and the less impressed I became.

I was teaching the Bible to my kids by this time. Helping them memorize its most famous passages. Taking them to AWANA clubs. Rewarding them for reading "God's Word". Giving them their own children's editions.

But eventually, the questions caught up with me. What made this book different from other texts? Was it more reliable than other writings held sacred by other faiths? Was it a superior guide for morality? Surely its characters were no more virtuous than other ancient heroes.

And the God it described gave bloodthirsty orders that horrified my children. It was a stretch to connect this God of Genesis, Deuteronomy and Judges with the Jesus in the happy little board books of their toddlerhood.

Did the prophets really hear God speak? Or were they like my anxious friend who would hear God telling her she shouldn't eat more granola for breakfast?

How did these books come to be compiled? Who decided what God had said, and when? The eminent Bible translator Martin Luther, architect of the "grace" theological model, thought the author of James' epistle "mangled" and "opposed" scripture. "I will not have him in my Bible to be numbered among the true chief books," he wrote.

Why did some of my Bibles include Matthew 6:13 ("For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever") while others left it out? The more I researched about translation, texts, and manuscripts, the less confident I felt. If God had intended to make his character and desires clear to mankind through a book compiled over many centuries, he could have done a lot better.

The paradoxes in scripture had never bothered me much before. Some passages just had to be read metaphorically; sometimes you had to count fractions and not whole days or nights; sometimes you had to use your imagination, other times some common sense. Photosynthesizers could use some other kind of light before God made the sun. The writer of Hebrews meant that Sarah was "as good as dead". Or maybe he meant Isaac. A miracle here and there could clear up a lot of the seeming contradictions.

Thing is, I didn't much believe in miracles anymore. Oh, I might still pray in my head while searching for a missing library book, but it was more a habit than an expression of faith. Something akin to saying "gosh". Parenthood had given me a lot more experience with biology, and the laws of nature seemed pretty immutable.

And I was losing patience with everyone who had given me half-truths, exaggerations, well-meant deceptions, and bald-faced lies. My God was above that kind of thing. He was the Truth. He wasn't the author of confusion. Well, I was confused. His whole church seemed confused. They were confused about what it meant to be a believer and how God wanted them to treat other people and how to find mates or raise children. My God didn't manipulate, so why did I find myself invoking his name to make my kids feel guilt and shame?

Turns out I was still pretty fucked up. The one influence that had been consistent for 30 years of my life was the book I was devoted to. The book that taught me about my god, about relationships, about my self. A book that contained the most shocking and disgusting stories I'd ever read. A book used to promote both benevolence and abuse. To defend the weak and to subjugate them.

To quote from that troublesome book of James: "Out of the same mouth proceeds blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be. Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter? Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear olive berries? either a vine, figs? so can no fountain both yield salt water and fresh."

Jesus taught that a wise man built his house on the rock, and it did not fall when the rain came down and the streams rose and the winds blew and beat against it.

"But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash."  --Jesus

Strangely enough, what I thought was rock-solid turned out to be sand. I see lives built on it collapsing all around me.

I tried to build a life on Jesus' words, but became exhausted repairing cracks in the wall every time the wind picked up. Eventually, I fled for firmer ground to build a life that I hope will be happier for me and a whole lot safer for my children.