Lost in Translation
LINDSEY MOOBERRY
I stopped reading my Bible three years ago. I removed it from its long-inhabited home in my nightstand and put it in a cabinet. Behind a door. Out of sight and out of mind. In reality, though, getting it out of my mind is one of those easier-said-than-done things. Growing up evangelical drilled it into me deep, impressing a narrow and rigid interpretation upon my young mind and heart.
In Sunday school classes, there was this activity known as a sword drill. The leader would call out a verse reference, and then all of us kids would race through our Bibles to find it. The first to find it and start reading it out loud would win the drill. My adult self now wonders why it was ever a good idea to equate the Bible with a sword — a weapon. I’ve felt the wounds the Bible can make when handled as a weapon — to divide, exclude and define people; to control and fill with fear; to cherry-pick verses for proving points and winning arguments.
The thing about growing up in that fashion is that I learned how to play that game as well as anyone else — to prove everything with sufficient biblical references. But I had to prove things that never should have been necessary to prove. It should have been a given that women are equal to men and worth just as much, and I’m not sure I’ll ever understand why I had to justify my existence and worth from words written by men thousands of years ago. Even though I totally can.
There’s a story in Numbers 27 where five sisters — Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milkah and Tirzah — approached Moses to ask that their deceased father’s property be given to them instead of another family since they had no brothers to inherit it. This was a story I had never before heard in church, but when I found it, it seemed like challenging the men with the power and asking to be treated equally was a perfectly biblical thing to do. So that is what I did with the pastors in the church I grew up in and the sexist theology that was being taught. As can probably be guessed, that did not end well, and I didn’t get what I asked for like the sisters in the story had.
What I did get was a lot of Paul thrown at me — what he said seemed to be greater than anything Jesus said or did. And Genesis — lots of talk about “God’s design” and the “created order” and “biblically-defined gender roles.” When I asked why women couldn’t be ushers, the Bible had to be consulted for even that. (Remind me again in which letter Paul outlines the qualifications for being an usher?) And when I inquired as to how all of this set up a divinely-justified power imbalance that feeds into the abuses women face and keeps them trapped — nothing but crickets.
I had more than enough biblical references of my own, but they were all dismissed in one way or another — by vague spiritual lingo, by patronizing comments about my emotional state, by prayers that I would be able to accept how God made me as a woman or by the admonition to go talk to women about this topic (twice, actually, because I was that much of a nuisance).
It felt like the Bible and the stories within it were more important than the living, breathing person sitting before them. How the stories that were being told were affecting my story didn’t matter because the “correct” view of the Bible had to be maintained at all costs. Except that cost was me.
Buried in Judges 11 is a disturbing story where a father sacrifices his daughter because he made an oath to the Lord after winning a battle. He promises to make a sacrifice out of the first creature that greets him when he arrives home — which turns out to be his daughter. He then blames her for his feelings of agony over having to sacrifice her, like this is somehow all her fault as the victim. Where is the space for what she was feeling about having to actually be the sacrifice? She goes along with it, though, because who is she to question what the man above her told her the Lord required of her?
I hope pulling a metaphorical meaning out of this story doesn’t make light of the horror, but something in here still manages to feel true to me. Women are expected to sacrifice all of themselves — their passions, talents, personality, well-being — on the altar under the guise of it being a holy act as dictated by God or the Bible or those interpreting it. For the record, sacrifice of oneself to that which is abusive is never holy.
And furthermore, I can no longer think of this story without also thinking of the story in Genesis 22 where Abraham almost sacrifices his son Isaac. Almost. At the last moment, that is prevented from happening by a ram suddenly appearing. But why was there no intervention to prevent the sacrifice of the unnamed daughter?
I have a hard time figuring out what I can take out of the Bible anymore because it’s difficult to see myself in something written largely by, for and about men. It’s been so misused, and there are so many translation issues that bother me.
One such issue is the word describing Eve in Genesis being translated as “helper,” thus giving off a subservient tone. The original Hebrew word is ezer, and it is used 21 times in the Old Testament — two times about Eve, three times in a military sense and 16 times about God. It is not the least bit less than, but the strength of that word has been lost.
Or how the name of Junia, noted as an outstanding apostle in Romans 16, was translated for a time as Junias — the male form of the name. Or the addition of the subhead in Ephesians 5 that splits verse 22 about the submission of wives from verse 21 that first outlines mutual submission, even though in the original language, those two verses are one sentence. (Some translations have now moved that subhead to be before verse 21.) Or how what transpired between David and Bathsheba is sometimes labeled adultery instead of rape. Or how so many women aren’t even named, or are only named in relation to the men around them or according to their perceived flaw. Or how the feminine metaphors for God are overlooked. I could keep going.
In the way I grew up, the human element of the Bible (and the idea that there could be bias in the recording and translation) wasn’t given a lot of airtime. What was emphasized was it being God’s word — divinely inspired and inerrant. The line between the Bible and God was quite thin at times so that questioning the Bible equaled questioning God. Instead of loving one another, we sacrificed each other to the god we had made out of the Bible.
So, this is why I finally put the Bible down — to detox my system. I need space from the voices and interpretations that have colored it for so long in order to let my own long-buried voice and thoughts emerge. It was spiritually abusive to have my own original thoughts and feelings silenced, to be taught explicitly and implicitly from a young age by the church that I was less valuable, to have lived in fear of going to hell or getting left behind, to have not had much of a say in the beliefs thrust upon me and to have carried beliefs within me that were harmful.
“Do you want to be healed?”
Jesus asked that question to a man with some kind of illness lying near a pool in John 5, and I used to find it to be an odd question. Well, duh, of course he wants to be made well. Who wouldn’t? But what I see and appreciate in that interaction now is that Jesus gave him a choice and honored his agency with that question. Jesus didn’t force anything on him. Because that is part of healing — regaining some agency where it before had been stripped away.
Healing is not a magical, instantaneous act. I think it requires a certain amount of work — to process what has happened; to feel all the feelings, however uncomfortable they may be; to find the right kind of supportive people along the way; to make one’s own meaning out of one’s own experiences. I don’t really subscribe to the notion of God having a plan and working all things for good anymore. It just makes me feel like an expendable pawn in some twisted cosmic game — that how my experiences felt to me and what my experiences did to me didn’t matter in comparison to how much glory God would amass from it all.
But if God is love, then I really believe She understands how and why I am where I am, with all the pieces of my former faith I have burned to the ground. And how I feel that is in the people around me making space for my whole self, fire and all.
Lindsey is a 4w5 and an INFJ who can’t write anything short to save her life. Except for this bio because writing about oneself in the third person feels really weird. She also enjoys watercolors, chocolate, bright colors and mid-century modern anything.