Why women should boycott the Bible
This Sunday, while searching for God in the Holy Book, I found instead a sexist primitive preachers of disrespect and chauvinistic teachings against women
By Amer Mayen Dhieu, Brisbane, Australia
May 29, 2016 (SSB) — I was baptized without my due permission. My religion is a choice from my parents. A perfect choice of course because I have come to like being a Christian, more or less just like how we all like our various religions. However, as I became a grown up, mature Christian and started dating an atheist, I was urged to validate my religion especially the existence of Super Being who I, along with many Christians, believe to be my creator. The quest for the fundamental answers was to tame my doubts, reaffirm my convictions and more importantly to be able to preach what I know confidently to whoever question me about my religion.
I started meditating after I got involved with many personal commitments that demand my full attendance and participation on Sundays. From this time onward, I didn’t have enough time at hand for Church prayers; thus, my only avenue to stay connected to my faith was through meditation. Each morning, I would wake up, and took five to ten minutes of meditation, most often, depending on how much time I have before starting driving to work. This ad hoc routine became my culture of faith and the biggest way of finding pure answers I needed to conceal all the doubts and curiosity then swelling within me. In search for my spiritual answers, I ended up discovering, appreciating and believing there is something special and spiritual “right there” that none of us knows not his or her exact name.
To all of us who have meditated or have once involved themselves in soul searching activities, one will know the process that takes place during meditation: the calmness of the nerves and the purity of the soul. When you switch your mind off everything else around you, the room and the bed you are sitting on or the sound of the birds or cars around and primarily focus on the sound of your own breathing you will be transported to the places within yourself that are often-time block away by our earthly commitment and practices.
Special enough you will find yourself communicating with something so mythical and gracious. Something you feel and believe exists within and above your surroundings. This spiritual something or someone is what people called by names such as God or Allah or Yahweh or Nhialic. I was taught and made to believe at young age that my creator and protector is God the Trinity comprises of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Having proven the existence of these spiritual three things despite not agreeing with their names and role allocated to them, I was convinced that every Christian should always meditates and prays to seek spiritual logic and guidance of the Trinity at their own times of their days at their own respective places.
Not until this morning of the Sunday of the 29th of May did I decide to take my research to the next level. When I was young, I did read almost the entire Old and New Testament written in my mother tongue and I believe the secret behind was the fantasy I get and feel when I adventured my mind through any written material and that is to mean any written book. Reading has been my favorite hobby given the number of books I have read through to my adulthood. The wonderful thing about the books I have read when I was a kid was that I literally remember what I have learnt or deeply understood in them. This is what happened to me with the Bible. The time I completed reading it was a time when my quest and curiosity was at its lowest level. Little did I pay attention to some verses that are so segregating, discriminative and disrespectful to the gender I called mine: the women. I first stumbled on the book of Leviticus in the Old Testament and merge to the evilness of Corinthian, Peter, Titus, Ephesians and many more. This Holy Book is often associated with God, as it is claimed to have been written by those who were inspired by the “Holy Spirit”. Unfortunately, the inspiration from heaven is so one-sided that it ended up favoring women inferiority to man.
Indeed, some verses promote sexism as well as the superiority of men over women. Below is the scripture written in Leviticus that I came across:
19: “Whenever a woman has her menstrual period, she will be ceremonially unclean for seven days. Anyone who touches her during that time will be unclean until evening. 20: Anything on which the woman lies or sits during the time of her period will be unclean. 21: If any of you touch her bed, you must wash your clothes and bathe yourself in water, and you will remain unclean until evening. 22: If you touch any object she has sat on, you must wash your clothes and bathe yourself in water, and you will remain unclean until evening. 23: This includes her bed or any other object she has sat on; you will be unclean until evening if you touch it. 24: If a man has sexual intercourse with her and her blood touches him, her menstrual impurity will be transmitted to him. He will remain unclean for seven days, and any bed on which he lies will be unclean.
25: “If a woman has a flow of blood for many days that is unrelated to her menstrual period, or if the blood continues beyond the normal period, she is ceremonially unclean. As during her menstrual period, the woman will be unclean as long as the discharge continues. 26: Any bed she lies on and any object she sits on during that time will be unclean, just as during her normal menstrual period. 27: If any of you touch these things, you will be ceremonially unclean. You must wash your clothes and bathe yourself in water, and you will remain unclean until evening.”
28: “When the woman’s bleeding stops, she must count off seven days. Then she will be ceremonially clean. 29: On the eighth day she must bring two turtledoves or two young pigeons and present them to the priest at the entrance of the Tabernacle. 30: The priest will offer one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering. Through this process, the priest will purify her before the LORD for the ceremonial impurity caused by her bleeding.”
31: “This is how you will guard the people of Israel from ceremonial uncleanness. Otherwise they would die, for their impurity would defile my Tabernacle that stands among them. 32: These are the instructions for dealing with anyone who has a bodily discharge—a man who is unclean because of an emission of semen 33: Or a woman during her menstrual period. It applies to any man or woman who has a bodily discharge, and to a man who has sexual intercourse with a woman who is ceremonially unclean.”
After I finished reading the most sexist text in the Holy Book, I find it hard to sustain a healthy belief in the heavenly inspiration that birthed the Holy Scripture. How on Earth do Christian called Bible a Holy Book? How could a Holy Book hold something so dark to the point it subjected one sex to eternal condemnation over cyclical occurrences preordained by nature? The fact that a menstruating woman is defined and referred to as unclean by the proclaim writers inspired by the Holy Spirit portray the radical side of the Bible that modern preachers avoid to talk about.
I feel deep inside, have the deepest conviction, that there are some scriptures in the Bible that need wider exposure and discussion due to their involvement in promoting discrimination of women in our society. Controversial ‘Holy’ Scriptures like these in Holy book are not a source of inspiration for women; rather, they are a source of despair, a sharp thorn in the flesh, a constant reminder, in women’s determination to proclaim and celebrate their God-given rights and freedom on this planet.
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