The following is an article by Farrell Till from TSR 1997. Yahweh's rules for women and how they are to be treated are just a few examples of his embarrassing and disgraceful teachings found throughout the "Holy" Bible; and what should be considered an insult to any person's intelligence:
by Farrell Till
A popular claim of Christianity is that the Bible has given
women a dignity and status far superior to societies that are dominated
by other religions. That the ranks of Christianity include so many
women is evidence that there must be some truth to the axiom that says
if a lie is told enough times, some will believe it, because only
someone who is relatively ignorant of the Bible could believe that it
is in any sense complimentary to women. From beginning to end, the
Bible insults women and speaks of them with a disdain that one would
think women in modern times would no longer tolerate. But tolerate it
they do, for the membership rolls of churches probably include many
more women than men.
The men who wrote the Bible wasted no time getting down to one
of their favorite themes: all the pain and suffering, sorrow and grief
that the human race has to endure is the fault of women. Right in the
opening chapters of God's inspired word, the first woman ate a fruit
that God had told her not to eat, and that's why men have to earn their
living by the sweat of their brows. Never mind that this grievous
offense also caused women to have to endure the pain of childbirth (Gen 3:16). What are a few labor pains compared to the men's ordeal of
having to till soil that brings forth thorns and thistles (v.18)?
Ever since the Genesis writer put the blame on Eve, God's
emissaries have continued to lay it on thicker. Paul, the chief apostle
not just of Christianity but of blatant sexism too, used Eve's sin as
an excuse to put women into the basement of Christianity, which they
have yet to climb out of. Writing by the inspiration of the Holy
Spirit, who is presumably another person in the one "godhead," Paul
told women that they were welcome in the churches as long as they kept
their mouths shut: "Let your women keep silent in the churches, for
they are not permitted to speak; but they are to be submissive, as the
law also says" (1 Cor 14:34). Well, gee, if women are not permitted to speak in the
churches, how can they be expected to learn things they may need to
know? Not to worry; Paul had the answer to that: "And if they want to
learn something, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is
shameful for women to speak in church" (v.35).
It's hard to see dignity and respect for women in any of this, but
obviously many women have bought it and meekly acquiesce to the sexist
rantings of a religious mystic whose denigration of half the world's
population has been rivaled only by other religions that have enshrined
the same primitive, male-chauvinist nonsense.
Christians can't say that Paul was just in a bad mood when he
wrote his epistle to the Corinthians, because if he was the author of
the pastoral epistles, as most fundamentalists claim, then he gave
orders for his sexist views to be taught as ecclesiastic law: "Let a
woman learn in silence with all submission. And I do not permit a woman
to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence" (1 Tim 2:12). Why, heavens, no, never permit a woman to teach, even
if she has a Ph. D. in theology and the only alternative is a male with
the IQ of a doorknob. The guy has to get the nod. Presumably, then,
Paul believed that a penis and a pair of testicles somehow qualified a
male over a female for teaching assignments no matter what. Maybe God
just has a penchant for testosterone, or maybe he considers sex organs
more important than brains. After all, this God is a "he" too, isn't
he?
And what was God's reason for giving men the preeminence in
his church? "Paul" told us why: "For Adam was formed first, then Eve.
And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into
transgression" (vs.13-14).
So there it is. It all goes back to Eve. She ate the forbidden fruit,
and so everything is her fault. Not only that, but everyone born since
then with the misfortune to have two X chromosomes has had to bear the
brunt of Eve's mistake. Talk about injustice, this has to be the
granddaddy of all injustices.
"Paul" never bothered to explain why Adam was so blameless in
this affair of the forbidden fruit. The Bible says that Eve ate the
fruit all right, but it also says that she gave some to Adam and he ate
it too (Gen 3:6). There isn't any arm-twisting even implied in the story, so if
eating the fruit was all that bad, why did men get off with just having
to sweat to earn a living? If given the choice of either working to
earn a living by the sweat of his brow or carrying a child to full term
and then giving birth to it with the pain roughly equivalent to
expelling a watermelon from his abdomen, even the most ardent male
chauvinist would choose the sweaty brow.
"Paul" can't be accused of completely lacking empathy for
women, because in the very next verse of his ecclesiastic instructions
to Timothy, he did assign women a role in the church: "Nevertheless,
she will be saved in childbearing if they continue in faith, love, and
holiness with self-control" (1 Tim 2:15).
So it all ties together. A woman brought grief and suffering upon
humanity, and so all of her descendants of the same gender have to pay
for it with no recourse except to redeem themselves from something they
didn't do by bearing children. What woman wouldn't be deliriously happy
to have a role like that in the church that God's omniscient wisdom
foreordained before the foundation of the world (Eph 1:4), while the male descendants of Eve's co-conspirator get to be
top dogs in the plan? It's hard to find fault in such wisdom as this.
No one can claim that Paul was just a maverick voice on the
subject of the place for women in God's grand scheme of things, because
all through the Bible women were denigrated by the earthly vessels whom
God allegedly chose to write his inspired, inerrant word. In Gen.19, God sent two angels to Sodom to warn Lot of the impending
destruction of the city so that he could flee to safety. When a group
of men surrounded Lot's house and demanded that he send out the "men"
so that "we may know them" (v.5),
Lot tried to save the men from gang rape by offering his daughters to
the mob: "So Lot went out to them through the doorway, shut the door
behind him, and said, `Please, my brethren, do not do so wickedly. See
now, I have two daughters who have not known a man; please, let me
bring them out to you, and you may do to them as you wish; only do
nothing to these men, since this is the reason they have come under the
shadow of my roof'" (vs.6-8).
Do you get the message implied in this? Sexually abusing men would be
doing "wickedly," but abusing women wouldn't be so bad.
If anyone thinks that such a despicable proposal as this made
Lot an abomination to the infinitely good Yahweh, then think again.
Yahweh saved Lot from the fire and brimstone that he rained down on
Sodom and then later "inspired" a New Testament writer to describe Lot
as a "righteous" man who was "sore distressed by the lascivious life of
the wicked" (2 Peter 2:7-8). So if a man who would offer his daughters to a mob of
men to appease their sexual demands could in any sense be described as
a "righteous" man, we can only wonder how depraved the rest of the
people in Sodom were. At any rate, this story makes very clear the
attitude of the Bible god. If it is necessary to sacrifice the honor of
women, in order to protect the honor of men, then so be it. This is the
god that millions of women trek to churches each week to oooh and ahhhh
over.
There is more--much more--that could be said on this subject,
but it will have to wait till the next issue.
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