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It helps to remember that the Bible was written by men, a very long time ago
The woman’s guide to reading the Bible and staying sane: Part Four
Much of the pain that I experienced in facing the sexism in the Bible and its unrelentingly male focus was because I had been taught to assume that the primary voice speaking in the Bible was God’s voice and that God decided what the Bible would be like. If I believe that God chose every word and wrote it as a love letter to his precious children, including me, then the sexism becomes pretty personal. And very hurtful.
The more I’ve learnt about the Bible, the more convinced I have become that seeing the Bible as being written by God in this way doesn’t actually make sense. That realisation helped me to step away from the assumptions and contradictions of biblical inerrancy (discussed in part three of this series), into a clear space, where I could be honest about what we actually read in the Bible. Where I could be honest about the fact that it was written by human beings, more specifically by men, who lived an extremely long time ago in cultures very different from our own.
I never quite signed on the dotted line as biblical inerrantist. Increasingly, though, I realise that I have carried the DNA of that doctrine in my spiritual assumptions and…
