Want to Ban Books? Start With the Bible

Sex, Murder, Infidelity, Surrogacy Gone Wrong! It’s all in the bible.

“What are you reading?” my husband asks, seeing me deeply engrossed in the same book for two nights straight. “It must be good.”

Oh it is, I tell him. It is a book about seduction, sex with multiple partners, schemes to have a rival eliminated, incest, murder, mayhem, thievery, infanticide, family violence, sexism, surrogate mothers, polygamy, religious intolerance, and bloody wars. All the typical situations you’d expect to find in a best seller.

“And the author is?”
“God,” I say showing him the Bible.

As a relationship writer, I need to keep the well pumped, so to speak, for new ideas. Having gone through articles on messy celebrity divorces and problems of the rich and brainless, I decided the Bible might have some good, sane information on the relationship between man and woman.

Sane isn’t what I found. Many of the relationships I read about rival their modern-day counterparts in absolute shock value. Talk about drama of epic proportions-this book invented the genre! Take the story of Genesis starring Adam and Eve.

Here’s a man and woman who are, literally, in paradise. This is the real one, not the one you find at an all-inclusive resort in the Caribbean; the original deal, designed and landscaped by God. They have everything.

There’s just one little no-no in this perfect land of honey. They are forbidden to eat the fruit of one tree. In fact, God tells them, in no uncertain terms, ADAM! EVE! DO NOT EAT THE FRUIT! (God believes in big letters and underlining).

So what do they do? They eat it, of course!

When they’re caught, they immediately start assigning blame. The man, utters a line that has been documented as the first ever case of sexism, by immediately saying,

“The woman made me do it!”

She in turn, looks around and blames another creature by telling God,

“The snake told me to do it!”

(To which I’m sure God was tempted to reply, “Adam, you’ve got free will, no one can make you do anything, and Eve, listen if the snake told you to jump off a cliff, would you do that too?” but God being God refrained from petty commentary.)

Then the couple makes matters worse by attempting to slur the heretofore unblemished reputation of the snake by calling it the Devil. They lose Paradise and have to actually work for a living causing tremendous marital discord.

Sexism, defamation of character, diminished lifestyle; Genesis has it all.
If you like watching weepy made for TV movies that begin with infertility, surrogacy gone wrong and end with jealousy and “cat” fights, then the story of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar, is perfect for your reading pleasure. Sarah and Abraham are having difficulty conceiving so Sarah attempts to solve the problem by using the ancient tradition of surrogacy. At that time, unfortunately, surrogacy meant handing over a female servant to sleep with your husband so he could get her with child. This is a little troubling for any wife.

Hagar, Sarah’s servant, gives birth to a son, Ishmael, and, fool that she is lords it over Sarah, the first and only wife, for thirteen long years. But guess what? After all those years of trying, Sarah finally gets pregnant herself and gives birth to her own boy, Isaac!

Then like rival lionesses fighting over territory, the fur begins to fly and the mommy jealousy factor kicks in hard. Hagar preens it over Sarah that her, meaning Hagar’s son is the first born and that makes him the true heir, but Sarah shouts back something along the lines that says, “Hey, listen servant, I happen to be THE wife here and my son is the legal heir. Your son is only the child of a lowly, unmarried I might add, concubine. I have had it with you! We’ll see whose son is the legal heir. Abraham?! Abraham!! Where are you? I need to speak with you now!!”

Knowing that two women with rival sons can never, ever live peacefully in the same tent together, and agreeing with Sarah that her son really is the real legal heir, Abraham decides to use the standard practice for getting rid of a troublesome woman. He banishes Hagar and her son to the desert with only a basket of food and a bottle of water. Spousal abuse and child abuse all rolled into one!

Thank goodness an angel, on a mission from God, happens to be winging it over the desert just when Hagar is at her wit’s end, running out of both water and food. The angel saves the foolish Hagar and her young son Ishmael prompting the creation of that old saying, “God watches out for fools and little children.”

For sheer drama, though, read about the craziness of David and Bathsheba. Exhibitionism, adultery, an unplanned pregnancy, a non-compliant husband, and premeditated murder, makes this one of the best relationship stories.

Bathsheba was a bit of an exhibitionist who liked to bathe nude on her rooftop for all the world to see. Seeing this one morning during his daily walk, David decides that he absolutely must have her. That he has a slew of wives and concubines to scratch his sexual itch doesn’t matter; he wants her and invites her for an intimate dinner.

The after dinner entertainment he has planned is a game called getting to know to know you in the, ahem, Biblical sense.

A few months later, Bathsheba is telling David he’s going to be a daddy, and that yes, the child is his because her husband is away at war and she doesn’t sleep around. Not to worry says Dave, he has a plan. He’ll call her husband back from battle; she’ll seduce him, and pass the kid off as hubby’s.

But the plan goes south because her husband will not sleep with her. Why? Because he is valorous, honest, and a man’s man; he cannot bring himself to rise to the occasion and enjoy sex with his hot, young bride in a soft luxurious bed knowing that his fellow soldiers are sleeping on the hard, cold ground.

(Bathsheba, lying all perfumed and naked before him, was said to have nastily remarked that at least something was hard!) But, nothing she could say or do would get her husband, noble Uriah, to mount her instead of his horse.

Suffering from bloating and morning sickness, the unfaithful wife is getting panicky and goes to the king.

David devises a plan. He sends Uriah, to the head general on the battlefield, with a sealed note. The “I-trust-others-because-I-am-trustworthy-myself” Uriah has no idea he is carrying his own death sentence.

He is put in the front lines, deserted by his men, and mortally wounded. Shocked by being left to die by the very men, for whom he gave up a night of hot, passionate sex, rumor has it that his last words were, “What a (bleeping) idiot I am! I could’ve at least had …….,” before he keeled over.

The wedding festivities of David and Bathsheba take place shortly after Uriah is killed but, naturally, they don’t live happily ever after, even though Bathsheba does eventually give birth to the future king, Solomon.

Infidelity and premeditated murder are not exactly the best way for any couple to start a marriage and of course, God isn’t gong to let this whole incident get swept under a Persian rug. You know the phrase,

“God will get you?” In this case it was totally accurate.

With all the human pathos in its stories, no wonder the Bible is the top seller. The only problem is that it seems male/female relationships haven’t really changed all that much over the centuries. Every human flaw mentioned in the Bible is still with us today. It looks like man and woman have always been in need of relationship counseling and relationship writers.

Whatever the reasons, the book has given this relationship writer a wealth of material to use for years to come.

© copyright 2023 Kristen houghton all rights reserved
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