Another Take on the Reading

       

The reading for tomorrow and Jonathan’s post about how he came to be at the present moment of his life inspired me both to share my own history and how I was affected by Alice Walker’s text.

            Like I said in class the other day, I have never known much about feminism. Through my education, I have always been taught to believe that it was merely an anti-male movement and the things I saw on the news always reinforced this idea. I am happy to be taking this class then so I can finally receive a better understanding of what this movement is all about. This being said, however, I must also make the claim that I have never felt the disadvantages of being a woman that others have clearly felt; in this way, I must count myself as blessed. Although my family is a very conservative both religiously (I was raised Catholic) and socially, I have never felt myself put down because I was female and I can say this also for my mother. She has been and will always be an incredibly strong person and much of my own determination I know I have inherited from her. Both she and my father always made it clear that if I stood by my principles and worked hard, I could be anything I wanted to be. It is from this position then that I want to look at some of the key points found Alice Walker’s “The Only Reason You Want to go to Heaven is You’ve been driven Out of your Mind, Off your Land and Out of your Lover’s Arms”  more closely. 

            When I first read Walker’s lecture, I was dismayed at the attitude towards the Bible. While it was written by men and there are certainly passages that are anti-woman, I think dismissing it entirely as a sexist text would be doing it a great disservice. Walker talks about, for instance, through her character Nettie how she always viewed Jesus as light-haired and blue-eyed and how a black woman could not relate to this Jesus; she also makes the comment that she could not relate to a God that ordered the slaughter and enslavement of women. In these two points, I agree with her entirely. It is impossible to relate to a religion that spouses such a limited and violent doctrine especially against women. As much as I understand this viewpoint, I cannot accept it. The stories in the Bible should not be taken literally. Although these stories represent the supposed history of the Jewish people, their primary purpose is not supposed to be 100% factual. Rather they are there to instruct their readers on moral behavior and their relationship to God. Another thing to think about when considering the Bible is that it was also written more than three thousand years ago; there was no such thing as equality between the sexes and it was also a more violent time. It should therefore be a text judged within the context of its time. The problem with the Bible does not come from the stories themselves but the limited and narrow perspective in which some people view it. Walker talks about the horrible persecutions that took place throughout the centuries in the name of Christ and how they qualified their views through the Bible. Rather than saying the Bible is at fault for these viewpoints, I think the fault lies in the interpretation and analysis of the work. The people who do violent things in the name of religion are singling specific phrases out without giving thought to context or to the actual overall theme of the text. I think this also goes to Sarah’s point about the different churches today; the fault, in my opinion, is the interpretation of the Bible and not the text itself. The fact that women cannot preach or speak in some churches, seems to be a perfect example of how some people (many church leaders) focus their attention too narrowly on certain passages.

            While I liked Walker’s idea that one must find God through oneself; they are the ones that must search for God. “God is inside you and inside everyone else. You come into the world with God. But only them that search for it find it inside” (28) I  did not agree with her view on the Bible, which does not mean to say I thought her wrong in her opinion.  I just know that I have had a different experience from reading the Bible and I, in many ways found God again by reading scriptures. We all find God in different ways, but I would not dismiss the Bible as being able to be one of those pathways.