"Bad Girls of the Bible:" Observations and Revelations

Last night, I had the privilege of speaking with a great group of women at the church where I do my "day job" these days, Tempe First United Methodist. I've known I was going to do this almost since I started in my position, and I knew from the start what I wanted to do. I had spoken to the United Methodist Women (UMW) at Gold Canyon UMC 12 years ago, and I wanted to readdress the same subject - a book by Liz Curtis Higgs called Bad Girls of the Bible.

I must admit though, that my presentation last night didn't go as well as I would have liked. I feel that I may have disappointed the wonderful women I met with. I rambled...

Of course, I generally prepare a manuscript so that I can have my thoughts in order. For this presentation, I revised my original talk. As I went over the stories once again, I found I had much more to say about them. Too much, truth be told. You'll see. Here's what I wrote:

INTRODUCTION

Thanks for letting me talk to you this evening!

About 12 years ago, I was invited to review a book for the UMW at Gold Canyon United Methodist Church. At the time, it came as rather a surprise to be invited. I was the new secretary, just out of my undergraduate work at Arizona State University. I’d majored Religious Studies and minored in Anthropology. What had I read recently that I could discuss with a bunch or church women? I thought perhaps I should choose something with deep social impact; something that would highlight a concern of mine, like the status of women in the third world, or even in our own society today.

Or, perhaps I should discuss the life of a woman who has impacted the church in the past. I thought of a wonderful book I read in college about the struggle of Native Americans just after WWII. So many ideas swirled about in my head that I finally just gave up and went to the UMW library, where I saw many titles that fell right into the categories I’d considered, but none piqued my interest that day. Then I saw this book

This might be fun, I thought – and so it was! I’m not going to talk deep theology here; it’s just a book review of sorts. It’s my way of letting you in on a little bit about me, too.

This book is about biblical women that we’ve all heard of. Some are very famous, like the woman at the well – and some are not so famous – like Michal, daughter of Saul, wife of David. More than that, this book is about us – women everywhere.

Liz Curtis Higgs writes in her introduction, “we’ve all been bad girls…and…we all long to be good girls.” According to Higgs, what constitutes “bad” is a heart hardened to God.

She says that when hearts open up and we begin to listen to God’s message for us, we begin to become “good girls.”

She illustrates this point in the way she introduces our women. She begins each chapter with a fictitious modern day woman whose story resembles that of a particular biblical woman. 

Her stories are interesting; they draw you in as you begin to remember which biblical woman she is introducing.

It was as I read the fictitious stories I found that there were some characters that I identified with more than I did others. As I segued into the biblical stories, the ancient women, our spiritual ancestors, in fact, began to take a new shape. I experienced a few epiphanies – those little ah-ha moments – when I saw a new meaning in stories that I had once thought I understood – even some that I had overlooked in the past.

I found myself identifying with the ancient women on a personal level. Suddenly, the story had a new impact it on me. 

I would love to share the entire book with you, yet I wouldn’t want to take from you the pleasure of discovering these stories for yourselves, if you haven’t already. So, I decided to choose a few chapters – not necessarily in order – the ones I most strongly found myself in. If you have already read this book, I hope you find something new; perhaps a new way of looking at yourself and your faith.

As I do this, I will share three stories: Liz’s fictitious story, the Bible story, and finally, my own story.

RUTHIE

I found a story that resonated with me as soon as I started the book. In the introduction, Liz tells the story of Ruthie, an abused girlfriend whose life is controlled by the one-time “man of her dreams.” A bad dream, indeed. He took everything that was hers and made it his. If Ruthie balked, she met his fist.

Reading about Ruthie brought me back to my first marriage. Eight years of abuse and fear. It didn’t start out that way, of course. I met my husband – that is, my first husband – when I was in the Air Force. We were both stationed on Guam. We were both cooks assigned to the main dining hall at Andersen Air Force Base. He seemed so attentive, and I fell in love with him. Not that I really knew what love was. I wasn’t even 20 years old, and I was naïve. Like Ruthie, I was a good girl, who had never seen known that people hurt the one they professed to love. I was in love with love. We had moved around a lot when I was young (14 elementary schools, 7 high schools, 10 states). I was always the new girl. The new girl, especially a shy and quiet one like me, finds one good friend in every bunch, usually another retiring type. The other, outgoing kids, are an intimidating enigma. At least, they were to me. So, when it came to boyfriends, I was inexperienced. With no frame of reference, I was caught by surprise.

Liz Higgs reveals that Ruthie’s story is her story. To move into her own personal strength, she looked to the women of the Bible for inspiration. We can too, if we can identify with their stories. The author has created fictional characters who reflect the qualities of the biblical characters and help us bridge the gap of time and see ourselves in light of our ancient predecessors.

SOFIA

The first story I want to share is about Sofia. Now, Sofia was a rich woman. She hadn’t started out that way. She was what they call “Nouveau Riche.” She really wanted to climb the social ladder. You’ve seen or heard stories like this before. One of my favorite movies, “The Unsinkable Mollie Brown” with Debbie Reynolds shows this real life character, Margaret Tobin Brown, whose husband struck gold, as someone like Sofia – newly rich and dying to be accepted by the social elite. A few embarrassing hi-jinx ensue before Mollie becomes the great heroine of the sinking Titanic. Not so much hi-jinx for Sofia.

Sofia and her husband are invited to a high society charity dinner. In order to take this chance at being accepted by the “old money” they need to donate a minimum amount of money. Something terrible happens, though. Sofia’s husband loses all their newly acquired money in the stock market, but they don’t want to give up the status they have gotten so very close to attaining. So, they decide to sell a piece of property in Florida to raise the cash they need. They tell everyone that they are going to donate every bit of the income from the property to the charity.

But guess what? They make more money on the property than expected! So what do they do? I think some of you probably know where we’re going here. They decide to hold back some of the money for their own personal security. At the dinner, the husband joins the men, where he hands over the check for exactly one million dollars. But the sale is public information, and when he is confronted with the fact that he didn’t give it all, he suffers a heart attack and dies.

In the book of Acts, Sapphira and Ananias want to join Peter’s group of Way-Followers. Like our fictional couple, they have a piece of property to sell so they can give the proceeds to Peter as an offering. When they make the sale, they can’t bring themselves to give the entire amount away, so they hold back a good portion for themselves. Ananias goes by himself to give Peter the amount he and Sapphira had agreed to share. But…Peter knows what they have done. When he confronts Ananias, the poor man falls to the floor, dead.

Sapphira shows up later, and Peter gives her the opportunity to tell the truth. Not knowing that her husband has died, she tells Peter the same story Ananias had told. She, too, dies.

Now, I found myself identifying with this story when I thought about the way I make my offerings to the church or to charitable organizations that I want to help fund. I feel a sense of fear that if I give too much, I won’t have enough to make it through to the next payday. This fear was stronger during the many years that I was a single mother with three children to raise and one income. Yet, I am still working the ability to give a percentage of my pay on a regular basis without fear.

I understand that this comes from what they call a “poverty mindset.” It also comes from experience. I have filled out pledge cards for church, called in and pledged for public television and radio, adopted children across the world, and once promised to give a regular donation to Christian radio. Each time, I’ve had to stop giving after a few months or a few years when my income decreased or my expenses increased. Each time, I’ve made the decision to stop payments, it out of fear of not having enough

I know in my heart the God will take care of everything. As long as I am doing my part, there is always enough. Yet, I still sometimes forget to put my trust in God when it comes to money. I am afraid. Of course, I am not going to drop dead, literally, because I didn’t give what I promised. Once I made the decision to stop giving as much, I was wracked with a sense of guilt – I had not followed through on my promise. This guilt can become a wedge between myself and God.

Have any of you read The Screwtape Letters? For those who have not, this wonderful book is written in the form of a collection of letters from a senior devil to his protégé, who is working on turning a human away from God. In this book, C.S. Lewis writes, “There is, of course, always the chance, not of chloroforming the shame, but of aggravating it and producing Despair. This would be a great triumph.” Guilt, becoming despair, is a sign that we have not accepted the forgiveness that God has offered me through Christ. It is a kind of spiritual death, losing the faith I had in God.

So, I’ve stopped pledging a certain amount of money or a percentage of my income, for now. If by doing so I am setting myself up to separate myself from the goodness of God through guilt, it’s better that I live by giving what I can when I can as long as I can, whenever I can.

JASMINE

The second set of stories I’d like to share starts with Liz’s character, Jasmine. I like the name Jasmine – I almost named my oldest daughter Jasmine, but instead named her after my favorite character in Children’s Fiction, Betsy Ray, from the Betsy-Tacy series by Maud Hart Lovelace. But I digress. Higgs’ Jasmine is a vodoun (voodoo) queen in early New Orleans, sort of like Marie LaVeau, but not as interesting. Jasmine has married a weak man. He is envious of a neighbor’s land, and wants to purchase it. The neighbor won’t sell, because the property had been in his family for generations. Jasmine’s husband Abe is a whiner. He whines and whines about this land until Jasmine decides to get it for him just to shut him up.

Well, her way of getting it includes calling upon the Loa – Vodoun spirits – as well as some illegal activity, such as forgery. Jasmine has connections with many who work in powerful places, and because of her work with them as a Vodoun priestess, she has power over them as well. Through her activities, she acquires the property for her husband.

Abe sits in his room overlooking the new land, feeling both pleased and belittled, because Jasmine also holds her power over him. As he sits there one day, an old friend of his comes into his room and accuses him of murdering the man who had previously owned the property. Abe is incredulous as he hears that the previous owner had committed suicide. The other begs to Abe to worship God again, as he did before his wife battered him into converting to Vodoun and believing in many spirits. The other man tells him that Jasmine will meet a horrible death, and he will not be spared. Abe realizes that he had turned his back on God in return for Jasmine’s power and money.

Of course, you’ve likely figured out that this story segues into the story of Jezebel, who is considered the worst Bad Girl of the Bible. Her story is in 1 Kings, where she is married to Ahab, King of Israel. Their marriage is a political and economic alliance. Jezebel is a devoted worshiper of Baal, and is determined to wipe Israel clean of all of the Hebrew prophets and priests. She gives orders to have them all killed, and brings in 400 priests and priestesses of Baal and Ashera, Baal’s consort. Ashera is a fertility goddess, whose worship includes temple prostitutes, while Baal’s worshipers practice child sacrifice.

Ahab,does nothing to stop Jezebel from following her agenda. He is a self serving individual with desire for little except property acquisition. Like Abe in our story, Ahab has his heart set on a specific piece of land that the owner will not sell because it is his inheritance. In fact, by Mosaic law, it is illegal for him to sell his inheritance. Ahab doesn’t care. He pouts and whines until Jezebel makes it her duty to acquire the land for him. She forges his signature on letters, and sets up the landowner, Naboth, as traitor to God and King. He is put to death, and the land becomes Ahab’s.

Now, the Hebrew prophet Elijah comes along and accuses them. Ahab repents once, temporarily. Then, as he is dying from an arrow wound, he repents again. Jezebel remains a proud, conniving kind of Queen, and in the end is thrown from her palace walls and torn apart by dogs, as predicted by Elijah.

I bet you’re wondering what kind of secretary they’ve chosen for this church if I can find something in this story to identify with! There are some other ways to interpret Jezebel’s actions that make them more understandable, but that’s for another discussion. I didn’t choose this story because I did anything in my life as horrible as the things Jezebel did. I can’t identify with her thirst for power at all costs, nor her complete and utter disregard for her husband’s God. I chose this story because there are small elements of her nature inside me.

You see, I can sometimes be a bit of a “control freak.” I have trouble letting go of my ideas, my feelings…my desires. I have to work hard – very hard – to delegate work. I want things to be done my way, and often I find myself feeling frustration when things aren’t done my way. A good example of this is the time I decided it was time to hand over the church newsletter to someone else. I loved doing that newsletter. My creative side rejoiced in writing articles, aligning photographs to appeal to my own aesthetic. It really hurt me to have someone else doing the job, even though I really didn’t have the time. A lot of times, though, I even find myself praying for things to happen my way – rather than asking for guidance or the ability to accept things as they are.

I’ll go through a list – “Please God, I want this, this, this, and this.” The Jezebel in me can feel quite powerful in certain situations. I have to work daily to repent of my desire for personal power, my prideful and controlling behaviors. When things do go my way, it’s easy for me to feel prideful, even gloating (in my head) “See I told you!”

There is certainly a place for empowerment for us as Christians, but it is extremely important that we remember where the power comes from!

LIZ

The last story of Liz’s that I want to share is about Crystal. She works at a bar called “The Oasis.” She has a bunch of ex-husbands and a lot of experiences behind her. One day, a man comes into The Oasis and asks her for some water “on the rocks.” She gives him a glass and charges him two dollars. After he drinks it down, she asks him if he likes it. He says, “I’ve had better.” Crystal wants to know what kind of water he’s had that’s better than hers.

“Life,” he tells her. She gets busy, having some trouble with an ex-husband. The man – the one she gave the water to – starts serving the customers. They are all ordering alcohol, but he’s serving water. Crystal notices, and tells him, “That’s not what they asked for!”

The Man says, “No, but that’s what they need.” He starts telling her about herself, and hands her a glass of water. She asks for more.

Of course, this story is one we’re all familiar with from the New Testament. It’s told in John: Jesus and the disciples come upon a well at the time of day when there would likely be no women there. The disciples go on into town to grab some groceries, and Jesus takes a seat by the well to rest. While he’s resting a woman comes alone to get water from the well. While she’s drawing the water, Jesus asks her for a drink. She’s incredulous that he would talk to her, not only a woman, but a woman of Samaria.

After drinking the water she draws for him Jesus begins to tell the woman about the water of Life. This opens the door for her; she begins to ask him some theological questions. After all, the Samaritans actually worship the same God as the Jews. In fact, they claim the same forefathers. The well they are at is Jacob’s Well, after the same Jacob that the Jews call ancestor. I find it quite interesting that in this conversation between Jesus and the woman at the well, we come to understand that worshiping God is not something tied to place, but that it is a spiritual activity. 

Jesus begins to tell the woman about herself, that she has had a number of husbands and that the man she lives with now is not her husband.  Of course, she asks him who he is, and if he is a prophet. He tells her that he is the one that has been expected! He hasn’t told anyone else this much – it is a woman who first learns Jesus’ identity. She drops her jar and runs back to town, where she gathers up others to come learn from him. Of course, the apostles are incredulous that Jesus would talk to a woman like her, especially a Samaritan woman.

I love this story because it illustrates many wonderful things about Jesus and his relationship to women and to others. Not only does he reveal himself to this woman, but he discusses deep theological subjects with her. Then, he talks with her about very personal issues, making her life as important as any man’s.

In fact, she brings both men and woman back to with her to hear him speak. I think an important issue in this story is that of understanding between people of different spiritual backgrounds. This is an issue that is very relevant for today. The Samaritans shared the ancestry of Jacob; they could be called a “People of the Book,” as are Christians, Jews, and Muslims today. All three groups can claim spiritual ancestry to Abraham. Yet, because they worship in different ways; because they do not agree about Jesus as Messiah, there is a lack of understanding and communication between the mainstream factions of the three.

Now, I’m not talking about fundamentalism and extremism, but the “regular people.” Jesus himself, in this story, illustrates that there is much to be learned and understood through discourse between those of different cultures. Avoiding one another only enhances misunderstanding and fear.

The Nature of Jesus is debated even among those who call themselves Christian today. In his time, even his own apostles were unsure who and what he was. I see myself, in some ways, as this woman at the well. I knew God all along, as did she – but I didn’t know how well God knew me; that God could tell me everything about myself.

Unlike the woman at the well, I already knew about Jesus. I knew about him, but I didn’t necessarily know him, because by making some of the choices I made in life, I essentially walked away. Like the woman at the well, I have been married more than once and I have lived with someone without being married. I’ve even practiced other religions and explored different spiritualities.

And like the woman, I have come back to the well, where I have come to truly know Jesus. Throughout the years since I returned to the church, I have come to know that God is with us always. In Jesus, Immanuel, “God With Us,” he walks with me.

SUMMARY

Even in revisiting this book, I had an interesting experience. I’ve touched on the same stories I did the first time around; I think because these same stories continue to be easy for me to identify with. Before I read this book, I used. to identify strongly with the New Testament woman Mary, sister of Martha. You may recall that Mary sought knowledge at the feet of Jesus listening to his lessons with rapt attention. As I grew older and became a working single mom struggling to keep a home, I began to identify a little more with Martha, who begged Jesus to tell Mary to get up and help her.

It was one of my very favorite stories, for it is a clear statement about the status of women in Jesus circle.  However, neither Mary nor Martha are “bad” girls – no, they are both open to God’s word; fortunate women who stood in the Presence of the living Christ and never questioned.

I once thought that I never questioned God, either. However, after reading Liz’s book, I see that some of my own choices were questions in themselves – they created a wall between my own heart and the simple message of Love that God wanted me – wants all of us – to hear.

No, I was never intentionally bad – like Potiphar’s wife; nor was I ever purposefully hateful toward God and God’s people – like Jezebel. I was, however, guilty of self-centeredness and self-indulgence. I still can be these things. This book is sort of a wake-up call to me – a reminder that each day, I need to consider my actions and reactions carefully. Each day, I need to review my activities, my decisions, my interactions with others and see – have I been one of these bad women for a moment? Even for a small moment in time? If so, I must ask for forgiveness and for the strength and ability to do better tomorrow.

You know, when I first picked up this book 12 years ago, like most people, I read the back cover. Rather than kudos from other Christian writers or critics, there is a note from Liz Curtis Higgs herself. Her first comment is that as she studied all the usual women of the Bible -- role models – she found she had nothing in common with them at all. This led her to discover the lessons in the stories of the “bad girls.” I actually felt a little sorry for her – she couldn’t find anything in herself reflected in the “good girls?”

I noted, too that she describes her own writing in a strongly self confident manner –- “I’ve included plenty of “Lizzie style” commentary to keep readers smiling…,” she writes. While this may be true, the fact that she pointed it out herself almost turned me off. Sure, we should all be self confident; we should all know our strengths and be willing to reveal them. However, my personal reaction to Liz’s comment was the sense that she is rather smug about herself. A little “prideful,” I thought. But then, I reassessed, maybe I’m being overcritical, a little judgmental? So I read the book anyway.

In the end, I was glad I read it. Looking through it again, after all these years, I can still find something that makes me go “ah-ha!”

So, you’ve learned a little bit about this book – and a little bit about me. If you read “Bad Girls of the Bible,” you’ll be sure to learn a little bit new about yourself.

If you don’t mind, I’d like to let you in on a little kept secret – you can learn a little bit about my past in this book. It’s available on Amazon in print or Kindle.

Thank you for having me!