*Please note, this post, while not explicit in nature, does address violence against women.
Over the past couple of years, the woman taken in adultery in John Chapter 8 has come into my mind again and again. While it is the consensus among Bible scholars that this particular passage containing the story of the woman was added centuries later and there are varying opinions on whether or not the story actually happened, that information doesn’t matter much to me, because in my religious upbringing, the story was always taught and told as truth, and so I took it as thus. Even if it is not true, the attitudes about this woman are indicative of what has pervaded culture for hundreds of generations.
The Woman taken in Adultery, c.1621 (oil on canvas) by Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) (1591-1666); 98.2×122.7 cm; © Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, UK; Italian, out of copyright
Clearly there are good intentions to teach about forgiveness and the grace of Jesus Christ, which I have always loved, but there is also a part of this story I have missed entirely until now. I had not ever considered what this woman’s side of the story might be.
The way these scriptures unfolded themselves throughout my childhood and into adulthood was based on this idea that the woman taken in adultery had clearly done something wrong, had sinned gravely, and we can only hope that she heeded Jesus’s grace of instruction to go and sin no more. Rarely did I give the woman much more than the time it took to read the verses. I did not give her or her future much thought. Much less, her future as it was changed given that singular event.
It wasn’t until recently that I even questioned the very premise of the story. When I think of this it now, I want to go back and tell the woman taken in adultery that I am so sorry. I am sorry that for my whole life I’ve called her that, “the woman taken in adultery.” I am sorry that I was not even curious about her side of the story. I did not question, nor even think much about why she was doing what she was doing and the fact that more than likely, the adultery was not her choice, but quite possibly was a situation of rape, violence and trauma.
I am positive the title given this unnamed woman does not aptly describe her. I know the point of the story, at least as I’d always understood it up until this past year, was to point out the gravity of putting chastity at stake and the kindness of Jesus’s willingness to quickly forgive her. I also understand that the Pharisee’s did recognize their own sin, and while that is mildly useful, they likely did not face the social ostracism that this woman did by simply acknowledging their own sins to themselves.
The story of a bad woman who is forgiven is not the story I understand now. It is not the story I am interested in passing on to my children.
The truth of this woman is that we actually know nothing about her situation or the reason she was found committing adultery. We do know that she was not given a voice to tell that story. Her words are recorded no place. And even if she was “committing adultery”, we don’t know if she was simply doing what she could to earn money for her children in a system that was woefully unfair to women in the first place, or if she was coerced by a man in power for a myriad of reasons. We don’t know the injustices that cobbled together a life in which at a certain point, she found herself in a very unfortunate circumstance. I want to think then, of this woman in John chapter 8 simply as a woman, not as a woman taken in adultery or a sinner. From here on out, I just want to think of her as a woman who did not get to tell her side of the story. I want to fill in this story with kindness and belief in the woman when I repeat these scriptures from here on out. It is us who need to speak for the people whose voices are silenced or go unrecorded.
I love what this incident does teach us about Christ and his devotion to emancipate women. In an article titled, “Reading John 7:53-8:11 as a narrative against male violence against women,” Michael O’Sullivan says, “By speaking, listening to, and hearing her, he treated her with the dignity, care and empowerment that corresponded to her as a human person, which contrasts strongly with how the kyriarchal Pharisees and scribes communicated with and related to her.” –Michael O’Sullivan, HTS Theological studies.
I trust that Christ did know her heart and the shortcomings of the system in which they both lived. I want to love what I had been taught about the beauty of the moment when Jesus quickly and fully forgives. As John Piper, a Bible Scholar at Bethlehem College and Seminary says, “The most remarkable point of this story is that Jesus exalts himself above the Law of Moses, changes its appointed punishment, and reestablishes righteousness on the foundation of grace.” This concept is genuinely a beautiful one, and perhaps why the verses were added to the Bible centuries later.
It does still however, make all of these points at the expense of a woman. It is still a woman’s story as told by a man. Whether the events are based on an actual story or not, the woman is not allowed to speak her side of the story.
I wonder if Christ said the phrase, “Go and sin no more,” simply as a formality so she wouldn’t have to face the repercussions of a corrupt government. I want to believe that His refusal to punish her or even reprimand her was a silent agreement of belief. He is not eager to launch into a sermon on self-improvement and the dire need to dwell on the sin. He seems to know something more about this woman’s heart. The way she did not need a rebuke, but the silence of someone who loves her without judgment. I want to hope that He knew the woman would leave that scene and enter the arms of women in the community who would care for, heal and listen to her. I don’t know. It’s still hard for me that He did not do more, did not stand up and overturn some tables in anger here, but I also do not understand everything.
In the same article by O’Sullivan, he writes,
The interaction between their [women who have had violence done to them] experience and this story can break open both their experience and the story. Instead of believing that God somehow ordains the violence against them, they can be persuaded that a Jesus who intervened against powerful men for the sake of preventing the prescribed killing of a woman and healing her trauma, and who did so in order to highlight the true meaning of God’s order of salvation, and at the risk of great danger to himself, must also want an end to contemporary violence against women and the forces in society and religion that contribute to it. He must also want instead the establishment of caring and considerate relations of mutuality and equality between men and women in Church and society.
I wonder then what would happen in our own communities if instead of teaching this story with the slant and emphasis of how the woman had sinned, if we instead taught this concept stated above, that it is our Christ-like duty to speak out and against violence against women? How different would the world be if every woman could trust that she had an advocate that she knew would listen and believe her, no matter the cost?
Today, there is not the same threat of danger in believing women that there was in Christ’s time, at least in America. Certain cases may come with threat of violence, both for the victim and the advocate, but in more likelihood, it may look something like ruining the reputation of a man, sometimes an important or successful one. It may mean losing friends, or becoming unpopular, it may mean judicial proceedings that require re-telling of the trauma, and certainly in some cases it does mean danger or continued violence. Sometimes truly believing in change and justice means butting heads directly with the systems and classes that uphold long held beliefs.
I wonder, and this is purely speculation, what this woman might have done as she leaves that scene with Jesus and moves back into her daily life. My heart drops here for her. For what I, as a reader, and believer, did not do for this woman at this point. Until now, I have not wondered how she possibly re-integrated herself into a society who believed her broken and dirty. I had not considered the emotional trauma of her public call out by powerful figures. I had not wondered how she dealt with the trauma of seeing her accusers and/or perpetrator daily in the streets. I had not considered that because there was no place to tell her story, and no space for belief that it was not her fault, she had to keep whatever had happened wrapped in her heart like a heavy stone. I did not consider the state of her body, the physical pain she could have been in, the lasting wounds she sustained. I did not consider that the violence might happen again and she had no one to protect her from it.
It is in scenarios like this that it is so clear how much we need feminine voices in leadership, how much we always have needed them. We need female writers. We need female stories. We need female witnesses. We need women who will hold space for other women to speak, even when it is different from what they would say. I like to think that a woman with literal authority would demand silence from the Pharisee’s until the whole story was told, however long it took. And then I want to believe that the woman’s story would be believed immediately, no matter the consequence or tarnish of the reputation for whatever man, or men, that were also “found in adultery”— The other half of the sin that is never mentioned in the scriptures.
So yes, of course this post is speculation. I recognize that it is perhaps a bit blasphemous to pick at the Bible in such a way, but do you know what else? I’m tired of taking the writings and stories written solely by the hands of men at full face value while the stories of women have been relegated to a simple exercise in black and white chastity lessons. I refuse to call the woman in John chapter 8 “the woman taken in adultery.” She was a woman, probably a really wonderful and complex one, who never had the chance to speak her side of the story, let alone be believed. There is the slight chance that she simply was a terrible, home-wrecker out having a good time, but given what I know now about history, I highly doubt that was the case.
From here on out, I want to do this woman the justice she deserved from me all along. I want to apologize for my assumptions, for my laziness in not pulling at a story that always seemed a little off in my Sunday school lessons. For my fear in how I might be seen if I had defended her. So, while I cannot go back and speak to this woman face to face, while there is so much I will never know about what happened, I can be more brave in listening to and providing space for women who need to speak up now. I can insist that their stories are told when they are ready to tell them. I can fight hard against fear when I know that men, even powerful ones, will be tarnished in the process of these stories coming to light. Over the past couple of years, I have watched women, many close to my heart strings, tell their own stories of abuse, some publicly and some in private. I have seen the repercussions of telling these stories, and clearly, they are not pretty or easy. Right now, it seems the job of women is to re-write histories, for ourselves and each other, and the job of men to believe what we are saying. We can do better for the woman in John chapter 8. We can do better for the women speaking up now, and better for the ones who aren’t yet able to. This is a global issue, a national issue, a religious issue, a Mormon issue, a personal issue. It belongs to all of us.
