Apologetics: Debunking Deconstruction – Is God (and the Bible) Misogynistic?

After last Friday’s break from this series, we’re back with another claim, though I hadn’t seriously heard of this accusation until a few months ago. Did I know that some people claimed that the Bible is evil because of that gosh darn patriarchy? Yes. Did I take it seriously? No. I thought it was just some more yapping from feminists who want to sleep around, abort their kids, etc. However, apparently this is a common issue that’s quite pervasive in many people’s choice to deconstruct that we should take seriously, so let’s take a look at some of the reasons why people think the Bible is misogynistic and debunk them, shall we?

#1: God’s Design for Men and Women

A lot of women read the verses from Ephesians 5:22-24 about wives needing to submit to their partners, take them out of context, apply modern conventions upon them, and claim that they’re misogynistic. This is especially a problem for women (and rightly so) who have left churches that also took this verse out of context to justify men being disgusting towards their wives and there’s good reason why. Who would want to follow a God that seems to sanction that?

However, if you read Ephesians 5 in context, we see that husbands are commanded to love their wives as Christ loved the church and to love them as their own bodies. Given that Christ acted as a servant for his disciples and laid down his life for them and the rest of mankind, you can’t justify any misogynist reading of Ephesians 5 on either extreme. In fact, this command was groundbreaking at the time since the pagan culture, despite having powerful female goddesses such as Isis, Gaia, Aphrodite, Athena, Hera, etc. (the worship of whom is quickly returning amongst the feminist movement in the name of empowerment), was quite misogynistic. Women had very few rights, were often seen as property, were subject to the poor treatment of their husbands, weren’t allowed to learn anything except home making, were seen as only being good for making babies or satisfying men’s desires, etc. While you could make the argument that for years, the Christian church did this too (especially in the Middle Ages) the difference was that that was done because of the doctrines of men that were suspicious of women.

Compare this to how God treated women throughout the Bible. Throughout the Bible, we see many strong women who were used by God, such as Deborah, Ruth, Esther, and others. At the end of Romans, Paul names 16 notable female leaders and contributors of the early church. Additionally, Jesus treated women respectfully as human beings (look at how he treated Mary and Martha), and the Bible provided commands for men to do so to, eventually paving the way for more rights for women in the future. Meanwhile, in the rest of the pagan culture, you saw nothing like that, and misogynistic and sleazy behavior was actually something the gods partook in a lot. This dichotomy between the Christian and the pagan view of women can still be seen today in different countries.

Feminists have also claimed that the Bible is misogynistic for its portrayal of women as being complementary to men. They claim that women can do anything that men can do, so this complementary view is evil. This is a ridiculous claim because the complementary view doesn’t mean that women can’t be respected and have rights. What it does is it acknowledges our biological strengths and weaknesses and how the two sexes highlight those things and encourages us to celebrate that fact. That’s not misogynistic. That’s just realistic.

#2: Eve was Framed

A lot of feminists take issue with the fact that Eve – a woman – was the one who first ate the apple in the creation account, especially since that was used by a lot of people in the church for centuries to justify their arguments that women are the lesser sex. However, what these feminists miss is the fact that everywhere else in the Bible, Adam is considered to be the one who brought original sin into the world because he was likely there when the Serpent was talking to Eve. He knew what he was doing was sin, but still willingly transgressed God’s command. Eve was tricked into it, but Adam did it with full knowledge that he was sinning.

#3: Mary

We’re talking about the Mary Magdalen, not Mary as in Jesus’ mother. I actually heard first heard this claim from a certain atheist claiming that it was misogynist for Jesus to not let Mary touch Him, but let Thomas touch Him. This is ridiculous because nowhere does the Bible imply that it was motivated by the fact that Mary was a woman. This was instead a strengthening of Mary’s faith because Jesus was going to ascend to heaven and couldn’t stay on Earth forever. In essence He was telling her that she needed to walk by faith, not by sight. Meanwhile, Thomas had to touch Jesus because he needed to believe in the resurrection to walk in faith.

#4: Purity Culture

As a GenZer, I’m not entirely sure how many churches still teach purity culture. Are there some aspects of purity culture at my church’s youth group? Yes, to some extent, but it’s nothing like what I’ve heard millennials went through. I’m pretty sure no one would start freaking out if someone in my youth group started dating someone else and they were sitting closer together than six inches or were caught holding hands.

That said, I know that purity culture was something that many youth groups pushed in the 90s and early 2000s and was a source for deep-seated trauma for many millennials years later, especially for women. While there were aspects of it that were taken from the Bible and were common sense teachings (like “Don’t sleep with your boyfriend before marriage”), there were aspects of it that I agree were taken way the heck too far. For example, comparing someone who had lost their virginity outside of marriage to used gum is not something that Jesus would’ve approved of (He hung out with prostitutes and treated them like humans, for Pete’s sake!) Because of this, from a lack of good leadership and especially the lack of willingness on the part of parents to have the hard discussions with their teens about the realities of sex and sexuality, I can see how this became something that became a massive red flag for a lot of people who eventually deconstructed. For example, a little while ago, I ran across a Reddit post from a husband who had grown up in the church with both him and his wife buying into the purity culture and they ended up deconstructing because when they got married, no one had really taught them about the realities of marriage (if you catch my drift).

However, the purity culture of the 90s and early 2000s was and is not representative of the teachings of the Bible and how God treated women. If anything, it was more representative of people such as Bill Gothard (who pioneered a lot of things in the purity culture) who were psychos.

So no, the Bible and God are not misogynistic.

Until next time,

M.J.