Should the Bible be "X" rated?

The Old Testament, talk’s a lot about sex and violence. It includes stories of fornicators, adulterers, prostitutes, polygamists, ethnic cleansing and other forms of cruel activity.

The Old Testament is also full of sexual violence. We read of rapists, pimps, and other perpetrators of sexual exploitation. The Bible is not different than everyday life in 2015. There are moral lessons to be learned from the Bible that apply to us today.

Most Christians tend not to read those stories or they don’t pay attention to them and in doing so they miss out on the moral lessons the authors are trying to teach. We certainly miss the main premise of the Bible which is the love of God and His forgiveness when we try to ignore them. It always amazes me how some ministers can manage to take the ‘X’ rating out of these stories when they present them on Sunday mornings.

Father Abraham slept with his wife’s servant. In Egypt he ordered his wife to tell the Egyptians she was his sister. He allowed the Pharaoh to reward him for permitting him to make his ‘sister-wife’ part of his harem. Abraham was more concerned for his own safety than his wife’s. Yet, the Bible calls Abraham a man of great faith and he was, but he was far from being perfect.
 
Before you start condemning Abraham you need to ask yourself how many Christian church goers cheat on their wife’s and how many Christian church going women do the same? What would you do if today you were faced with death or telling an untruth. Abraham chose to lie, would you? When reading these stories do you stop and think how they can apply to our lives in 2015? 

Judah was tricked by his dead son’s widow Tamar to have sex with her. He did not know who she was because she was disguised as a prostitute. Should Judah a man of God be having sex with a prostitute in the first place?  Judah was sexually immoral and a judgmental hypocrite when he planned to have Tamar killed for having sex with an unknown man. When he discovered that the twins Tamar was carrying were his own he became a changed man and repented.

By all cultural and tradition practiced at the time Tamar was only doing what was right to make sure her dead husbands line continued, but she went about it in the wrong way. Even so God blessed her in the end. God forgave Judah and Tamar and God will forgive anyone today that repents and changes their life. When you read the story, if you did, what did you focus on, the forgiveness of God or the sin?

The most notable rape story in the Bible is one that most people don’t associate with rape: David and Bathsheba. The story is familiar. David is at home in Jerusalem when he should have been off at war with his men and the army of Israel. Walking around on his roof one evening, David noticed an attractive woman, Bathsheba, bathing. He summons her, they have sex, and she conceives. When David’s plan to cover up the scandal fails, he has her husband, Uriah, killed in battle. We ministers sometimes try to pretend that Bathsheba had the freedom to say NO to the king. That way we can make it appear it was not rape and Bathsheba was as guilty as David.

I even heard a minister say Bathsheba was used by the devil to tempt David. She paraded around on her roof top naked and bathed on the roof. That was the custom of the day. They wrapped a large piece of cloth around them and bathed on the roof. They bathed underneath the material. The Bible does not say Bathsheba was naked. David just had a wild imagination and a large sex drive and he let it get the best of him.  It is also interesting that in many countries today when people do not have indoor showers they bathe the same way Tamar did outside and I do not think any of them are inviting someone to rape them.

God blamed David. Nathan blamed David. David blamed David. So why do we have a difficult time admitting David was a rapist. Sexual violence was rampant in the ancient world, as it is today. The authors of the Bible did not try to hide these stories they told them so thousands of years later we could understand that we Christians and really society as a whole are called of God to a greater standard. We are made aware of sexual temptations that are in the world.

Ruth, Rahab and Tamar are even mentioned in the New Testament as part of Jesus’ genealogy. They all had questionable backgrounds. We should not be judgmental of others. We should not be hypocritical. God used people with shady backgrounds then and can do the same today.

In some way’s Jewish Law was more just than our laws today. There had to be proof of a woman’s infidelity and immorality before she was found guilty. A woman’s accusation of rape was listened to then. Today our court system still leans towards punishing the women more than the men involved in rape or sexual misconduct.  God instituted laws to protect women. Unfortunately men of power ignored those laws as many do today. We still read of cases like Bill Clinton and Bill Cosby who use their position to sexually abuse women. There are many members of government and church leaders around the world that have raped women, young boys and girls.

You may have wondered why God does not act quicker or intervene more when women are abused and rape – I do not know! Perhaps God expects us to protect those that are being treated unjustly. I am a firm believer that God does not do for us what He has equipped us to do for ourselves.  I have learned not to question God’s justice.

It is important to note David did not escape punishment. His later years were filled with trouble and bloodshed. God’s punishment can be severe, but His forgiveness is even greater. No sin is beyond God’s redemption. This is not to say there should not be or there is not consequences for sin, there is. But, we must always be willing to forgive a repentant sinner as God does. God disciplines sinners because He loves us and there will be times when we must discipline members of society not out of hatred or revenge, but out of love. 

The Bible presents the reality of life so we can learn from it. People can mock the Bible or learn from it and I choose to learn from it. These stories if read with an open mind teach us that God can and does use imperfect people, God has a heart to love and forgive, there are consequences to sin and we should be very careful when passing judgment on others.