In my last post we looked at some bad boys, 43 in all, and two bad she-bears. In this post I want to look at some bad girls in the Bible using Liz Curtis Higgs writings, especially Bad Girls of the Bible. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to purchase the ebook because of copyright restrictions in Africa but I do have some other sources for her Bible study methods. Higgs has published many articles on Bad Girls in Today’s Christian Woman magazine. They include:
- Bad Girls
- Lot’s Wife: A Backward Glance
- The Forgiven Woman: An Outpouring of Grace
- Jezebel: The Lost Queen
- Mary Magdalene
- Rahab: A Hooker with a Heart for God
- Delilah
- The Woman Who Touched Jesus
Higgs divides the bad girls of the Bible into three categories:
- Bad to the Bone: Sapphira, Jezebel, Michal
- Bad for a Moment: Eve, Lot’s wife, Delilah
- Bad for a Season, but Not Forever: Woman of Samaria, woman who anointed Christ’s feet, Rahab
I’ll allow you to look at some of the links above and make up your own mind about Higgs’ hermeneutics. I’d like to limit my analysis to Old Testament bad girls in the second and third categories. Higgs’ methods are very much in line with my thinking in Bad Boys Bible Study. Women like Eve and Lot’s wife are held up as cautionary examples to learn from in our own lives. The two most interesting examples for me are Lot’s wife and Rahab. I look at them in more depth below.
A Lot of Salt
This we know: Despite much whining and gnashing of teeth, Lot obeyed God; however quiet she might have been, Mrs. Lot defied God.
Her story ends as abruptly as her life did—"she became a pillar of salt" (Genesis 19:26)—yet her example lives on: Choose wisely. Choose well. "Choose life and not death!" (2 Kings 18:32).
Source: Lot’s Wife: A Backward Glance
This story begs for an allegorical reading. The person rescued from the world shouldn’t look back. That’ll preach. And underlying this story is a more straight-forward typology than that found in the story of Goldilocks, er, I mean, Elisha and the two bears. But I think a Christian reading of this story needs to take into account the follow-up story of Lot and his two daughters. Otherwise we end up with some sort of message like, “God has saved you, so resist the temptation to look back at the things you’ve left behind.” Such a legalistic message is far from the spirit of the Gospel. Far better in my opinion is a message like, “You are helpless to look back. And even if you do make it to the mountains, if left to your own devices you’ll end up drunk and raped by your daughters.” Phew, that’ll preach! As distasteful as that sounds, that’s the kind of message we should be taking away from the Old Testament Bad Boys and Bad Girls. Christ has rescued us from our Sodom. Like the angel he has taken us by force. We are powerless to resist the allure of the world or the pressure of culture. But in Christ we overcome. In Christ we are transformed into his likeness not through our determined resistance but through an inner spiritual transformation that changes our desires into his. That, my friends, will preach. And that’s the strength of a “negative example” reading of the Old Testament.
The Scarlet Thread
One house remained standing. "Joshua spared Rahab the prostitute, with her family and all who belonged to her". Because of her faith, God saved Rahab in every sense of the word. The Israelites welcomed her into their camp, where a man named Salmon chose her for his bride.
Rahab gave birth to a son, Boaz, who married a woman named Ruth, the great-grandmother of King David. And you know where that lineage leads.
Rahab’s story is unquestionably inspiring. A woman with a past. Yet, a woman with a confessed faith in the God of Israel. She parallels several other women in the New Testament: Mary Magdalene, the woman caught in adultery, and the woman who anoints Jesus’ feet (It can be argued that these are all the same person). In what way might Rahab’s story be a “negative example?” For me, she seems to be almost entirely a positive example of faith and courage. Again there is an element of allegory in her story that corresponds very tightly with the gospel story of salvation through faith.
Salivating over saintly stud muffins
Higgs does a lot of things right in her approach to the Bad Girls of the Bible. If she fails it’s usually in trying to apply the story of someone like Jezebel or Potiphar’s wife to a Christian lifestyle. Here’s a sample:
That last story—of an Egyptian temptress married to the head of Pharoah’s bodyguards—is one tawdry tale. We want our kids to read the Bible, but think twice about starting with Genesis 39 and the story of a wife who decided she could ignore her marriage vows and graze in greener pastures.
Joseph, her husband’s Hebrew slave, was indeed "well-built and handsome"—a stud muffin of a guy—but he wisely resisted her provocative invitations, one after another.
Ten points for Joe. Zero for Mrs. P.
What can you learn from a woman like her? How not to get yourself in such a situation. We can’t assume that because we’re happily married our head won’t be turned by the appeal of a muscle-bound delivery guy or a cute carpenter working on our new deck. It happens to Christian women every day—with tragic results.
Source: Bad Girls
That made me say, “Ugh.” You have to admire a Christian writer who can use the term “stud muffin,” but I can’t help thinking that this is stretching the concept of negative examples too far.
Another fantastic post! Here you’re listening to a woman listen to women as portrayed by men. Not surprisingly, there are thematic threads to these stories and to our eavesdropping of these stories also.
For example, this whole Lot’s wife’s looking back as “bad” is something the Greeks told about women very often. The obvious: Helen! But there’s this other one looking back as well (as Anne Carson remembers): “ἐντροπαλιζομένη is how Homer says Andromache went after she parted from Hektor – ‘often turning to look back’.” As for an example of the red thread, Anne Carson’s noted much about that from Greek lit too: as in her Autobiography of Red. Hmmm, what do these recurrent culture pervasive themes mean?
Hmm. So according to the Bible the only sin girls need worry about is inciting lust, incest, adultery, or looking back toward a townful of sex-minded men.
Yet you hear of women killing their husbands; You can’t avoid their babbling as they covet after their neighbour’s dress, high heels, hairdo, etc; they are just as capable of stealing, and of course there’s no reason for girls to be unable to lie. Seems like there’s a serious deficiency of warnings (not relating to stud-muffins) in bad girls of the Bible.
[...] Bad Girl Bible Study: It was strange to me that this post didn’t get more reaction. I think it was possibly overshadowed by the previous post. [...]
How on earth do you (or did she) get to classify Michal as “bad”?
I think it has something to do with not singing the song, “Stand by your man.”
Whether she could sing, or did, she certainly “stood by her man” despite the way he treated her. Good girl – bad boy.