Over the past few months, thousands of women throughout the United States have courageously come forward and told their own stories about sexual harassment. This is a good thing.
This post, though, is not about that.
As it seems to be the case with all movements, especially in our current age of social media, people search for slogans and #hashtags to promote them further. And although slogans and #hashtag campaigns can serve as a positive thing to galvanize people and promote some very worthwhile causes, the simple fact is that we live in a pretty screwy society. And the moment a slogan catches fire and Twitter starts exploding with #this and #that, it is simply inevitable that there will be those who latch on to those things and twist them for their own personal agenda.
That’s why so many email scams or fake news sites at first might look legitimate, because the scammers have taken a well-recognized logo and tweaked just a little bit, so the unsuspecting victim will click on it, thinking it is something it isn’t.
In any case, my point is simple: there will always be opportunists who latch on to something worthwhile, and then proceed to put out some really, really pathetic stuff that serve their own agenda.
Enter Tamara Kolton…
Case in point, Tamara Kolton’s February 6th internet article entitled, The First Story in the Bible was the First Case of #metoo. According to her bio, Kolton is both a “humanistic Jewish rabbi” and a psychologist. Incidentally, if you google her name, you’ll find that back in 2011, none other than Richard Dawkins interviewed her about what it was like to head an “atheistic Jewish temple.”
Well there you go…are you intrigued yet about what she says in her article?
Apparently, there were a whole lot of people who sent her hate mail over it, because they were so angry. Heck, even Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis took to his blog to call the article “blasphemous,” and even called for Kolton to repent and look to God who died on a cross to save sinners just like her. Amazingly at it may sound, Ken Ham actually said one or two things that I actually agreed with about Kolton’s article.
But perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself. Before I even comment on Kolton’s article, and if you are not in the mood to read it, allow me to summarize it for you…
How Tamara Kolton Interprets Genesis 3
In light of the recent conviction of Larry Nassar, and in light of the thousands of women who have found the courage to finally speak out against their abusers, Kolton wanted to take the opportunity grab some headlines by stepping forward and speaking out against the worst misogynistic abuser of them all…God.
That’s right, Kolton makes the claim that the first sexual assault in history is found in Genesis 3—the victim was Eve, and God was the sexual perpetrator. Here is how Kolton reads things:
“I want you to think about this. Here is a young, beautiful, intelligent, naked woman living in a state of Grace. She’s hungry, so she does the most natural thing in the world and eats a piece of fruit. For following her instincts, trusting herself, and nourishing her body, she is punished. Her punishment? She will never again feel safe in her nakedness. She will never again love her body. She will never again know her body as a place of sacred sovereignty.
“’What have you done?’ God thunders. Eve wants to defend herself, but she is too ashamed to speak. Eve, our first mother whose name means the ‘mother of all living things,’ is silenced, much the way the ‘patients’ of Dr. Nassar were.”
And, as Kolton claims, it is this story in Genesis 3 that has given men permission to violate women. She writes, “It teaches us that women are liars and sinners. Even if ‘She’ is telling the truth, she deserved it. God told her not to eat that apple, or wear that skirt, or go out after dark, or be pretty, or desirous, or in that bar or on that street or in that car or born a girl.”
Then, at the end of her article, Kolton says that such “misogynistic mythology” must be seen for what it is, “even if it comes to us from our most sanctified text.” And then claims that “Eve is with us,” and that she is proud that women are finally finding their voices. Kolton then sanctimoniously concludes, “She, who was lost to us so long ago, is actually here with us now, marching in the streets, testifying, raising her voice, at last. Just listen…Eve, our blessed mother, is saying, “#Metoo.”
Okay…Here’s the Problem (…like you really have to be told)
Let me be brutally honest. Kolton’s article is so laughably bad, that I can’t be angry about it…at all. Yes, it is great that women are finding the courage to speak out against men who have abused them…of course! But Genesis 3 has absolutely nothing to do with sexual assault.
After laughing at what I was reading, I thought, “And this woman is a rabbi???” Are you kidding me? There are so many things wrong with this…
- Lets start with the fact that God is not a “man.” Yes, linguistically, He is referred to as “He,” but, as is made clear in Genesis 1:26-27, mankind–male and female together–are made in God’s image.
- “Nakedness” has nothing to do with sex here; it has to do with childish naivete and vulnerability.
- “She just hungry so she eats a piece of fruit”? Really? Nothing about the actual context of the story, in which the woman (and the man!) purposely disobey God, and eat the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, not because “they were hungry,” but because they wanted to be like God?
- She’s not punished because “she nourished her body.” She (and the man!) suffer the consequences for disobeying God and, as the early Church Father Irenaeus says, for trying to partake of something of which they were not—in their child-like state—able to bear.
- Her (and the man’s!) punishment is not that she will no longer feel “safe in her nakedness.” It has nothing to do with not being able to love one’s body or knowing one’s body as a “place of sacred sovereignty.” No, the consequence of sinning is that they will experience pain and suffering. Nevertheless (and this is what Kolton conveniently leaves out) life still will be brought forth. And not only that, but even before God speaks of those consequences, He speaks of working through the woman’s offspring to eventually crush the head of the serpent, and thus defeat death and sin.
- And I’m sorry, but did Kolton really compare God in Genesis 3 to Larry Nassar?
Now, on one hand, I can see how an article like this might make someone seething with anger. I’m guessing some of you who are reading this are getting angry over it. Ken Ham calls it “blasphemous”—and well, yeah, it is.
…but you can’t let yourself get angry over it. Why? Because it is so mind-numbingly stupid that it doesn’t deserve your anger.
But I can tell you what you should get angry about: the fact is, this pathetic article by Kolton is going to end up hurting a movement that has been long overdue. Women who have been the victims of abuse do need to speak out, but articles like this will have the effect of causing people to not listen. Instead some may respond with something like, “Oh, another #metoo story? You’re in the Tamara Kolton camp? That article was so full of crap—God wasn’t sexually abusing Eve! What Kolton said obviously isn’t true, so why should we believe you?”
And that is tragic. Such opportunistic salacious garbage will end up having the effect of hurting the very true stories of some women.
…And then Ken Ham said
Here’s another horrible effect articles like Kolton’s has: they help feed into Ken Ham’s culture war narrative. But the thing is, as this article actually does show, there is a seed of truth to Ham’s culture war narrative. He said that “Kolton is simply reading her feminist agenda into the text.” He’s actually correct! That’s exactly what she is doing.
Ham also pointed out that Kolton completely ignored Adam in the story, and simply invented “a false, misogynistic god for her essay and agenda.” Again, he’s actually right!
But the sad thing is that he is going to use articles like Kolton’s to spur himself to double-down on pushing is own agenda by roping evolution and “millions of years” in with all the typical hot-button issues involving “the culture wars,” and then claiming that the only way to combat all that stuff is to insist that the universe is 6,000 years old and that Noah had power tools and advanced technology.
It’s all so ludicrous.
The Older I Get…
I hope this doesn’t sound mean, but the older I get, the more I realize just how insanely stupid so many people can be. I’m sure the information overload of social media amplifies the stupidity-factor in our society, but my goodness, it simply boggles my mind how anyone can even take the Koltons and the Hams of this world seriously.
And yet they do. And it’s not limited to those two, obviously. Social media is filled with opportunistic voices that try to incite, offend and shock people with the most salacious and outrageous stuff imaginable.
They seek to hook you in, get you angry or obsessed, and reel you in. But the fact is, they are the ones who are ripping you and society apart. Be aware of them. Point them out for people to avoid. But don’t let them take root in your heart, for they are the thorns that will choke the life right out of you.
