Quirks, questions and qualms... How the crap do I read this thing?

I've been wrestling a lot lately with how to read the Bible.

Just a things I'm processing/asking God about lately...

• I'm irritated that translators took the liberty to change female names to male ones. If they did that, what else did they do? How much of the message has been lost to biased translation?

• Paul was a misogynist. Feels really good to get that one off my chest. And I'm nursing a grudge toward Martin Luther, founder of sola scriptura -- the idea that only the Bible ought to be used as an authoritative source -- because of the views he had toward women. Luther, a celibate monk before he stirred up a little change in Christendom called the Reformation, wrote that if a woman wasn't pleasing her husband in bed, he could go next door. In order to, you know... umm... borrow something...
  

• I don't understand how back in the middle ages we certain books of the Bible were deemed canonical (Christianese for "that's chill with us to put in our book"), others were tossed aside and today people refute my questions with the one-size-fits-all one liner that the Bible was put together by God, and obviously, he knew what he was doing. No, it was written by people, people! And during the middle ages in the first ecumenical councils, people decided what was in and what was out. So who's to say we haven't included things that shouldn't have been (even Martin Luther and John Calvin were reluctant to include Revelation with the canon) or failed to include things we ought to have?

• It bothers me when people (and in saying this I indict myself), "proof text," choosing certain verses or passages to prove a point. Sometimes I get really angry about this, especially when people justify their judgmental behavior toward fill-in-any-person/group-different-from-them with a single verse, while ignoring all context. I am tempted to respond in kind when faced with opinions that really get under my skin. Coming from the perspective that a narrative of love ought to serve as the lens with which one reads scripture doesn't exactly serve me well when I want to retort back at someone who has rattled off a series of numbers -- Matthew 15:12! Malachi 1:5! Take this! And that!
  

There you have it. Some of the things on my mind lately.

I want you to know that in spite of this, I haven't given up on the Bible (although to be sure, I've given up certain ways of seeing it that are not life-giving). To the contrary, I feel as though the process I am in right now is helping me to see the Bible in a more textured, profound way. I've also been deeply shaped by the biblical narrative, and I hope my faith will grow by wrestling with the text.

For my friends who are asking questions too, I want you to know you're not alone.

I resonate with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, when he wrote to a friend, “You would be surprised, and perhaps even worried, by my theological thoughts and the conclusions that they lead to; and this is where I miss you most of all, because I don’t know anyone else with whom I could so well discuss them to have my thinking clarified. What is bothering me incessantly is the question what Christianity really is, or indeed who Christ really is , for us today.”

I'm grateful for the folks who've listened to my ramblings, asked really good questions and helped me to process.

What keeps surprising me is the way God keeps showing up in unexpected ways. God in human skin, the word made incarnate, as it were. Jesus keeps me asking these questions. He's the one who keeps drawing me back again and again and again. And what I love about the Bible, in the midst of all my questions and qualms -- or perhaps because of them -- is that it brings me back to him.

I'm so grateful that this journey is taken one day at a time. It is to be savored, and to be lived with patience and perseverance. Each conversation over a cup of Spanish coffee. Each whisper of gratitude when I look up at the gorgeous Sierra Nevadas. Each moment of grief and frustration and loneliness. Each whirling, joyful night of salsa in the bar below my apartment. I'm stumbling, dancing my way with Jesus. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

I've greatly appreciated Rachel Held Evans' series on "Loving the Bible for what it is, not what I want it to be." She engages several fascinating books, including N.T. Wright's Scripture and the Authority of God: How to Read the Bible Today, which I'm looking forward to reading when I'm stateside.

Spring has sprung, so has sexist stupidity

It's spring in southern Spain, and that means people are coming out of hibernation, enjoying the lovely weather.

There's a refrain that gets said around this time. "Cuando viene la primavera, la sangre se altera." That is, when spring comes, the blood gets altered.

This is a euphemistic way of saying that when the change in weather hits, men of all ages become emboldened in their lewd, nasty behavior toward women.

I have been the recipient of more obnoxious comments in the last week than in the totality of my half year living here. The female friends who I have talked with in the last couple of days have had similar experiences.

It doesn't help matters that I'm tall and light-haired -- an obvious foreigner. I seem to draw piropos (pick-up lines and sexually overtoned comments made on the street) like a pile of crap draws flies. Or something like that.

And it is making me so indignant I might end up punching the next idiot who makes the mistake of saying something sophomoric.

I asked a friend yesterday, "how do you say sexist in Spanish?" and she replied, "machista." Now, sexista would be the literal translation. But machismo, (derived from the root word macho, which means male), is taken to mean a male-dominated culture that subjugates women, and is a much more accurate word to use than sexism.

Latin cultures get deemed machista all the time. In Spain, sexism is synonymous with and epitomized by machismo. The currents of machismo have pervaded this culture profoundly. It's evident in the male-pronoun-dominated language, in the way women's bodies are used to sell everything, and not least of all in the piropos launched at women as they walk down the street.

Trust me, you never hear a woman walk past a group of guys smacking her lips and calling them machines in bed. The opposite does with disturbing regularity. So much so that it's considered perfectly normal.

It's different in the United States, of course. In America, we're equal, men and women.

Women aren't used to sell cars, or beer, or sex-enhancing drugs. Women are treated with respect. Women have a voice in government, in the workplace, and it goes without saying that women are ennobled and their rightful human dignity recognized within the church.

Bull shit.

We need to stop kidding ourselves.

Of course machismo exists in America. But we disguise it in the form of sexism.

Sexism is a nice politically correct word. It makes it seem as though the discrimination of people based on gender runs both ways. And in the U.S., we love to be politically correct.

But let's be real, shall we?

Machismo is alive and real in the U.S., and it has a frightening pervasiveness, thanks to having a foothold in the nation that is the world's biggest exporter of entertainment.

I'm from the school of thought that the words we use really do matter. Words can shock life back into us. They can also numb us. Sometimes, we have to reclaim words, fighting for the intended meaning to be the one that profoundly resonates today the way it did for the people who first used it to spin stories, write poems, inspire communities. There are also moments when we have to put to death words that have become clichéd and trite, losing their power to express the important ideas they are meant to communicate.

A few of the words I believe worth fighting for are words like:

Hope.

Grace.

Love.

Sexism is not one of those words.

I propose we kill the word sexism and replace it with the word machismo. That would be a much more accurate and telling word for what is actually going on. And what is going on is this:

The systematic oppression of women.

It's time to stop telling ourselves that we have this problem sorted and to start acting in the context of our own society to free women and girls from the slavery of machismo.

Oppression of women is not somewhere "out there." No, oppression of women is in our cities. It grins chauvinistically from highway billboards. It bares its nasty teeth in the language we use to to talk about things we don't like (i.e., "that test was a bitch"). And it rears its head in churches, the very place where women ought to be celebrated, their value upheld as intrinsic and indispensable to the building of the kingdom of God, where all people are equal.

OK, rant over (for the moment).

For more on this topic, I recommend checking out:

• Gayle Tzemach Lemmon on thinking of women beyond "micro-loans", as well as all the other terrific talks focusing on women for TED.

• Rachel Held Evans' blogs on the issue of women in the church, particularly this post where she asked male readers to blog their thoughts in response to John Piper's comment that Christianity has a "masculine feel."
  

• The poem "I'll Never Return" by Meena Keshwar Kamal inspired me this week. Kamal fought for the rights of women in her native Afganistan. She was assassinated in 1987, most likely by secret police. I participated in a dramatic interpretation of this poem, wearing a burka as my friend read the majority of it, and letting the garment fall to the ground at the poem's climax. I was shocked by the heaviness I felt when I first donned the burka. I have been impacted deeply by this courageous, strong woman.

I'll leave you with the full text of the poem:

I’m the woman who has awoken
I’ve arisen and become a tempest through the ashes of my burnt children
I’ve arisen from the rivulets of my brother’s blood
My nation’s wrath has empowered me
My ruined and burnt villages fill me with hatred against the enemy,
I’m the woman who has awoken,
I’ve found my path and will never return.
I’ve opened closed doors of ignorance
I’ve said farewell to all golden bracelets
Oh compatriot, I’m not what I was
I’m the woman who has awoken
I’ve found my path and will never return.
I’ve seen barefoot, wandering and homeless children
I’ve seen henna-handed brides with mourning clothes
I’ve seen giant walls of the prisons swallow freedom in their ravenous stomach
I’ve been reborn amidst epics of resistance and courage
I’ve learned the song of freedom in the last breaths, in the waves of blood and in victory
Oh compatriot, Oh brother, no longer regard me as weak and incapable
With all my strength I’m with you on the path of my land’s liberation.
My voice has mingled with thousands of arisen women
My fists are clenched with the fists of thousands compatriots
Along with you I’ve stepped up to the path of my nation,
To break all these sufferings all these fetters of slavery,
Oh compatriot, Oh brother, I’m not what I was
I’m the woman who has awoken
I’ve found my path and will never return.