How do Christian women believe the Bible?

I will say this right out of the gate:  far too many christians make excuses for the moral failings of the old testament.  Some denominations of christianity bypass this by claiming that all of the OT is simply mythical or metaphorical.  This approach has it's own set of problems, but we'll save that discussion for another time.

So this post is addressed mostly to the christians who believe in a literal OT.  You believe that these are real people that experienced these events.  The purpose here is to demonstrate to you that human morality is much improved today above the morals of any ruler, judge, or person in the OT.

Let's begin with 2 Samuel 13, shall we?  I won't post the entire chapter here for brevity's sake, but the story here is that a woman is raped by her brother.  That would be bad enough on it's own, but we read in the same chapter that Absalom advised the woman NOT TO TELL ANYONE WHAT HAD HAPPENED.  Absalom was the woman's BROTHER.  The king is made aware of what has transpired, and he does absolutely nothing to punish the crime.

But wait!  There's more!  Immediately following the crime that was committed, the rapist ordered his servant to throw the woman out and lock her out.  And the servant complies.  Is anyone keeping score at the number of morally bankrupt decisions being made here?

1.  Rape and incest, planned by two men.

2.  Servant assists the rapist, zero effort to help the woman.

3.  Woman's brother tells her to keep her mouth shut.

4.  Authority figures do nothing whatsoever.

5.  2 years go by before the rapist is executed in a revenge killing vigilante style.

And this book is supposedly inspired by a morally perfect, eternal deity?  The law and the leadership of the people written about in that passage did nothing about a rape that the king himself was aware of.  If such a deity exists, he would be most assuredly evil, not worthy of worship, but of contempt.  It would be quite bad enough if this was the only passage rife with such a barbaric mindset, but it's far from alone.

Another notorious example of how the bible treats women is Deuteronomy 21:10-14.  It's quite plain that female captives in warfare were fair game for soldiers who wanted to have their pick of the booty and take one home with them.  The woman had to cut her nails and hair, get rid of the clothes that she had upon capture, and then mourn her dead family for a month.

After the month was up, the soldier was allowed to treat her as his wife, and she had zero say in the matter.  Pretty much the dictionary definition of kidnapping and rape.  The scripture then specifies that if the woman does not bring the man pleasure, he may set her free.  He is not permitted to sell her into slavery, very kind of jehovah to throw that tidbit in there.

This article goes into the theological background of Deut 21:10-14 in much more detail:  Rape

Had enough yet?  Oh, there's more.  Numbers 31: 17-18 clearly states that soldiers were to execute defenseless captives.  Men, women, and children were to be butchered ruthlessly, except for the VIRGINS.  First, was there a method of determining which girls were virgins and which of them were not?  Second, does anybody have any doubt as to the purpose of preserving the lives of these virgins?  Third, which is worse:  the fact that thousands of captives were being executed, or that virgins are being kept alive for less than pure purposes?

How many verses like these do you have to read for it to sink in?  Can you imagine standing in the shoes of these women?  Would you stand up and say that these acts were moral and honorable?  After all, they were inspired to be written by your loving god of choice.

Deuteronomy 22:28-29 states that if a girl is raped, the man must pay her father 50 pieces of silver.  Not only that, but the girl is required to marry her rapist.  Absolutely outrageous, can you imagine the headlines if something like that happened today?  Heads would roll.

We can't leave out Judges 19, the story of the concubine that was sexually abused for hours, to the point of death.  The story here is strikingly similar to the story of Lot in Sodom and Gomorrah.  They are in fact similar enough to draw suspicion of plagiarism.  In both stories, women are treated as disposable.  There is no indication of love or care for women in either story.

A person might be forgiven for ignoring one or two verses of questionable moral standing.  Perhaps apologetics experts could find clever ways to dodge the hard issues with a few verses.  However, when a significant majority of scripture has a common theme of treating women like cattle, we have to make the conclusion that this book is not divinely inspired, but rather written by backwards sheep herding iron age barbarians.

What really blows my mind is how modern women can read these "holy" verses and just accept the obvious failures against their particular sex.  It is painfully obvious that women are not treated well at all in the OT, and yet women just accept it as truth and moral perfection.  Perfect example of cognitive dissonance.  Either realize it's immoral and throw it away, or keep lying to yourself.