My Grandmother was an extremely religious woman. She had a sweet voice, was even tempered to all us grandkids, and when she would come a visiting, she would always underline all the religious programs in the TV Guide when no one else was looking. It was in fact a comfort to look for one’s favorite Saturday morning cartoon, and see the crooked markings that her shaky, sun-spotted hands had made.
One of my clearest memories of her took place in my Grandparent’s trailer on the outskirts of Stockton, California. My brother and myself were about three or four, when my Aunt Pauline, who struggled mightily with many obstacles in her life including epilepsy, had just suffered a seizure. As my father and his older brother Jim, were carrying her out of my grandparent’s single wide trailer towards the car to take her to the hospital. My grandmother gently stroked our hair and fed us M&M’s, repeatedly telling us to only look into her eyes; using her soothing bell-like voice to calm us. It kept us from being frightened.
She was a genial and stubborn woman who lived life on her own terms. As much as a woman could, considering she was married and had her first child at the age of fourteen; the last one arriving at the end of her thirties. The Bible gave her solace as she raised her brood during the great Oklahoma dust bowl, including various crossings to California; when the family farm first faltered and eventually was lost. The San Joaquin Valley is where she saw her children either pick fruit, survive Polio, or scurry off to war. Her family grew up hard headed, strong willed and fertile. They and their children respected her words, admired her convictions, and rarely questioned her actions.
It was because of my Grandmother that I purposely wanted my children to go to a religious based school. I want my kids to be able to have a complete understanding of the Bible for different reasons. The first: should they ever fall upon dark times, perhaps they, like my grandmother before them, could cherry pick it’s passages for comfort and solace when everything else had turned grim. The second: should anyone try to shove religion down their throats, they could be well-versed in it’s knowledge, and be able to spout a quick witted response. In other words, shut those folks down cold, hard and fast.
Women my age, give or take twenty years on either side of that mysterious and awkward number, thankfully lead different lives then our grandmothers, due to having more rights and opportunity. So here’s my point. It really makes me conflicted to see religious memes posted on social media sites by women, arguing the inclusion of the Bible in government.
In Judges 19:24-25 it states “Behold, here is my daughter a maiden, and his concubine; them I will bring out now, and humble ye them, and do with them what seemeth good unto you: but unto this man do not so vile a thing. But the men would not hearken to him: so the man took his concubine, and brought her forth unto them; and they knew her, and abused her all the night until the morning: and when the day began to spring, they let her go.” This verse is about a father who offers his virgin daughter to a drunken mob. When the father says, “unto this man do not so vile a thing.” He makes clear that sexual abuse should never befall a man (meaning him). Yet a woman, even his own flesh and blood, or a concubine belonging to a perfect stranger, can receive punishment from men to do what they wish.
There are moments when this notion against women still persists to this day and we have the Bible, in large part, to thank for this attitude against women. And it boils down to this - there isn’t two-shits given for the raped girl. If you are a person who believes that every word of the Bible comes from God, it shouldn’t surprise you if others don’t want to use it when it comes to the laws that govern all of us.
I tell my boys all the time about my sweet grandmother. How she was actually born in a covered wagon, how one of her babies died from sleeping sickness on a failing dust riddled farm, or how her smile warmed every heart that passed in front of it…Unless you screwed up big time and were ordered to pick out your own switch from the lilac bush, which grew wild from beneath the trailer’s side.
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