When I was a little girl, I had a pink Holy Bible that my fraternal grandmother gifted me before she passed away. I don’t recall my parents ever reading me passages of this book. It seemed to just be on my shelves, mixed in with all the other books I collected.

I was an early reader and I can remember my small hands grabbing the smooth leather bound heavy book, the pages flopping downwards as I laid it on my lap and looked over the pages. I was intrigued by the thinness of the pages and felt I’d never finish a book this long!

As I began reading, I felt a lot of things. I wondered how true this world was in this book. Was this a fairytale like the other books my parents read to me? “In the beginning…” in the beginning of what? Was this just another “once upon a time” tale?

I wasn’t raised in a home where my gender restricted my dreams or goals in life – though I admittedly participated in stereotypical female gender roles throughout my childhood and early adolescence. I suppose if you asked my parents they’d say it was my choice. Regardless, my being a girl never occurred to me until I got 3 chapters into the Bible.

Genesis 3:16 tells the fallout of the “fall” and God tells Eve what her “punishment” is for falling into deception. “… Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you…” I scoffed, and slammed the book shut and hid it away in my bookshelf. A terrible fairytale I thought to myself.

Over the years, especially in my early teens as I began struggling with flashbacks of the child sexual abuse I endured, I found myself being pulled back to that book that brought me so much disgust. But ultimately, I found a relationship with God through writing out my pain, not by reading through scripture.

In my early 20’s I was gifted a bible and told to read the New Testament because the Hebrew text [read Old Testament….] shows a mean and angry god. Apparently in the minds of many, god is both the same and changing. This is a confusing message for a newbie evangelical.

Try as I might, the God I had spent years in the dark with, fighting flash backs, memories and the demons crawling over my skin, pulled me to the Hebrew text, and that my friends is where I struggled the most with the faith I had verses the faith people told me I needed.

The Genesis story has always caused a frustration in my bones, but what I was always so struck by was that many whom I knew in my evangelical world were so quick to accept the structure of life set up in that story.

Even if taken literally, which to be fully honest with you, I don’t, I asked the question – couldn’t you also read this as a revelation as opposed to a punishment? Isn’t it possible the words weren’t a directive, but were rather a statement of exasperation…

God, in all their wisdom, looking at the creation they made to reflect themselves after they’ve just been deceived saying, because of what you’ve done… you will struggle in ways never intended. You and Adam will no longer see each other as equals and instead will fight to be in charge, and sadly men will win out.

Yet, so many in our world struggle to see the compassionate god of the New Testament in the Hebrew text. I can’t seem to see God in any other light, unless I let the god of the evangelical belief system super impose himself over God. Thus the abusive nature we so often see in man suddenly becomes our image of god… But, my friends… we bare the image of God, not the other way around.

A friend and fellow survivor of sexual violence speaks to this issue brilliantly. In her talks with churches, she draws the parallel images between a trafficker/pimp and the god often found in churches today.

As a victim of trafficking herself, she found it impossible to heal in the evangelical world, though her faith tied her to it. Yet the more she focused on healing, the more she saw her evangelical community spouting off similar expectations that her trafficker had of her. Like pleasing a trafficker/pimp, at some point it becomes impossible.

Not only this, and I’ll get into specific verses in later blog posts, the god of the evangelic world became either an active agent in the abuse of the vulnerable, or at best an inactive bystander. I had to ask myself, “why would anyone bow down to a god so evil as to allow a 5 year old to be molested and raped?” …

Then I thought…. my… how many have I known just briefly in this evangelical world who have stood by and allowed a 5 year old to be molested and raped? How about a 16 year old? Or an 18 year old? Or 20 something old wife?

I made the decision to walk away from the god people propped up after recognizing that their god looked a whole lot like them and nothing like the Hebrew or New Testament God.

In looking through the Hebrew text, you can see a God so encapsulated with love for their creation. While looking at the god of the evangelical world, all I saw was a god hungry for power…. Sound familar?

Genesis 3:18 “…. he will rule over you….”

-Jess