What if Paula, not Paul, had written to Corinth?

'But the Bible clearly says...' I hear this a lot, far too often to be comfortable with it. It has been my experience that the Bible 'clearly' says whatever the opinion of the person making such a claim says. This is problematic.

I need to start by justifying myself, unfortunately. I am still an evangelical. A lot of people doubt this because I don't agree with their opinion of how the Bible should be read, but I really am. The Bible is the most wonderful, and most reliable picture of God we have, so it is incredibly important to me. What I won't say, however, is that it's the final word on God. I like the Celtic idea of God's big book and God's small book, the small one being the Bible, and the big one being the whole of creation... which incidentally the Bible tells me God created. This is how I can indulge my childhood love for dinosaurs without having to say that the Devil buried dinosaur bones just to test the faith of believers. It also means I don't have to live in the same culture as the people who wrote the Bible. It's called a Living Word for a reason.

The men who wrote the Bible, and they were predominantly men, saw the world in their own particular way. They had their own sensibilities, and their own frame of reference. They understood the world they inhabit in much the same way we understand ours. So that influenced how they thought, and what they wrote. It's usually at this point that some Christians get their knickers in a twist saying that even though they were men of their age (and they were almost all men), that God transcends that and told them everything exactly as it should be written down and so it's perfect... and stop with all this Celtic stuff.

I disagree, respectfully. And I think that the Bible will agree with me on this one. We don't have four Gospels of God, instead we have the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John. The Bible has no issue in ascribing human authorship to its books, so why should we?

And it's a really easy issue to think about. Let's pretend for a minute that I am God and I want you to understand something I am telling you. You're reading this article so I know that you speak English to some extent. How effective would I be at communication if I said to you Ein Tad, yr hwn wyt yn y nefoedd? That's Welsh by the way, you'd do well to learn it since that's all we'll be speaking in Heaven. But were I to convey this message in Welsh, you wouldn't understand it (well, most of you anyway), so it makes sense that I write in English. Now if I am smart enough to do this, I am sure that God is too. So God communicated with people in a familiar language, and to a culture they are familiar with. Those authors (I need to remind you that they're all men, I think) went on and found ways to communicate what God had told them to a public who also understood their own world.

Now to most of you, this makes perfect sense. But here's the thing folks, we ain't in Kansas any more, and neither are we Middle Eastern men living in the Ancient World and Antiquity. Maybe the way God was explained things back shouldn't be the way God is explained today.

Please don't think that I am saying that we need six billion different Bibles, one for every person on the planet, or that I am saying that I want a Bible just for me. That isn't my intention at all. What I want us to do is to look at God's big book, look at God's small book, and try to figure out what one says to the other.

I have a great example of this. I have a friend, he is very dear to me, and he and I cannot come to a middle ground on the gay issue. I have no issue with gays and Christianity, he tells me that the Bible clearly says that God does. Maybe he's right, I don't think so, but I am big enough to say that I might be wrong. In his mind, the Bible clearly says that being gay is wrong, and we should not allow gay marriage. Fine, if that's the stance you want to take, then please do. So what about polygamy and slavery? It's quite rife in the Bible, it's condoned and even encouraged. Whenever I ask about the planned march for my right to own people, to buy them and treat them as property, Christians get their knickers in a twist (great business opportunity there, Christians are always needing knickers). Apparently Christians don't like that stuff, even though it's in the Bible, because that's from an older time and we just don't do that any more.

I'm confused.

We can accept that some parts of the Bible, the parts that we don't like, should be left in the past. But we want to implement laws which keep other parts of the Bible in the present.

And then there's men. Those dastardly moustache twirling baddies. So the whole of the Bible is written by men, and I think this shows. Let us imagine for a second that a woman wrote Genesis, would she have the same opinion of Sarah throwing Hagar under the metaphorical bus just so her husband can get ahead? I'd like to think not. Then there's the whole issue of Paul and women, how would Paula had communicated all that stuff? Do you think maybe she would have had a slightly different view if she was writing to 21^st Century Cardiff rather than 1^st Century Corinth?

I am not even advocating for a wildly different outcome, I am just wondering if women would have phrased things differently, chosen different words, because of their perspective.

As it stands, we only have the one Bible. What I would ask of you when you read it, is to always keep in mind when it was written and by who. Think of how many ways your lives are different to that of a Middle Eastern man living thousands of years ago, and just pause. Ask yourself what the real message here is, and what parts of the past God really wants us to keep in the present.