Bad Girls Of the Bible
This Book changed how I saw Women in the Bible. When Women in the Bible are referenced, we usually think of them as pristine characters who made little or no mistakes. Maybe it's just me or maybe it is the summarized manner in which many accounts of women are recorded in the Bible. The lack of details leaves us with highlights of the person whereas many male characters have lengthy passages which give more insight into who they were.
"Bad Girls of the Bible And What We Can Learn from Them" is the creation of Liz Curtis Higgs. She starts each chapter with a modern day tale of a woman in a comparable situation to a Biblical Woman.
It is a page turner and the words of Liz in the Introduction resounded with me "I have trouble learning , though, from women who get it all right. I spend my energy comparing, falling short, and asking myself, How do they do that? It's discouraging, even maddening. It also doesn't get me one step closer to God." So, if you have a hard time identifying with princesses or saints, maybe regular women are a better example. Women who made bad decisions, like you and I sometimes do or have done in the past.
Eve, Potiphar's lustful wife, Lots wife, "The Woman at the well", Delilah, Rehab, Jezebel, Michal and "The Sinful Woman" are all reviewed.
The ends of their stories vary, the details are of their personalities we can all identify with if not in ourselves than probably in someone you know or have heard of. Each chapter ends with a look at what we can learn from the lives of these women.
If like me, you long to identify with characters in the Bible and see them face real challenges, make mistakes and see some then turn it around, this is a great study. I used these chapters to then read the scriptural references myself and sometimes saw things a bit differently to the author BUT it got me looking up women - and wondering what emotions they grappled with and how peoples opinions affected them. It also shows that though the times were very different, there are many human circumstances that we can learn from.