The Season of Bathsheba
It’s that time of year again – March madness! No, not the NCAA Tournament (as unpredictable as it’s proven so far). Instead, it’s the season when every oppressed Karen of both biological genders on social media takes a break from marching in circles around Grace Community Church to once again pledge allegiance to the Patron Saint of Shevangelicalism, Bathsheba the Raped.
Arriving each year on the third Sunday after Shepcon (or fifth if Julie Roys sees her shadow being abused), the season features many traditions. Some of the most popular: The Feats of Strength (where women remind everyone via touchscreens how they can totally lift more than men), the Simpathon (where middle-aged men try to see how long they can play White Knight for their online feminist gal pals before their wife finds out) and of course the costume party featuring an endless parade of women dressed up like pastors.
The name of the holiday is thought to have come from the combination of “bath” (the routine cleaning Shevas and their pet beta males penitently deny themselves) and “Sheba” (the favorite food of all twelve cats living in each Sheva home). In any case, the primary purpose of the festivities is to declare with one voice that, in the same way there is no possibility that Bathsheba was anything less than entirely innocent in her sexual encounter with King David, all women who enjoy anything less than full authority in any relationship with a man can cast their cares on Bathsheba, who cares for them as no man ever could.
During this not-at-all-unhappy time, faithful Shevas remind one another that any woman who runs back to her rapist at the first sign of trouble, is trusted by him to keep the rape a secret, and is willingly comforted by said rapist after he murders her husband can now look to Bathsheba, Patron Saint of #notme, for reassurance God understands that women (despite their undeniable agency and infallible selflessness) sometimes have no choice. Doing what is right must never subject a godly woman to risk. It must never cost anything. God knows she was just doing what she had to do.
The Bathsheba Season is also an opportunity to reiterate that, contrary to the archaic, biblical teaching of submission of women to their husbands at home and in all churches of the saints, the modern church has finally figured out that God’s actual design was for women to exercise co-headship (apparently like some kind of spiritual Chimera), just as the enlightened modern church is clearly co-head with Christ. Bathsheba’s acolytes remind the church that, rather than “neither male nor female in Christ” (Galatians 3:28) being about equal spiritual standing and value unto salvation, it really means Jesus has finally done away with whatever God’s outdated purpose was in creating them male and female (Gen. 1:27). While Shevas remain unsure about why Jews, Greeks, and various other stations in life are still around, they give thanks to Bathsheba that at least the male/female distinction described by Paul via Genesis (1 Tim. 2:11-14) has finally disappeared. Shevangelicals give praise to Bathsheba that the church can finally have peace by declaring that the modern, godless world has been right about gender this whole time.
Sadly, the Season of Bathsheba still has its opponents. Every year, the festivities are disrupted by misogynistic, power-hungry men (and their brainwashed wives) who insist on quoting scripture like somehow God was able to iterate universal, lasting principles for his Church that still apply in our modern, enlightened times. These has-beens point to the calamitous consequences of the breakup of the nuclear family, the infiltration of sexual perversion into the culture and culturally-submissive churches, and how the lack of protective fathers and husbands leads to abusive ministerial relationships as some sort of evidence against the clear moral superiority of God’s new gender-flattening standard.
Fortunately, Bathshebian shevangelicals can count on their allies in the LGBTQ+ world, who are happy to take a break from the push to cut the breasts off of children to join hands against the Bible-thumping common enemy of patriarchy.
Yet the work is not done. Despite every vocal Sheva clearly ruling over their own husbands and households, the original sin of patriarchy will only be eliminated from the world once all differences between men and women, advantages and disadvantages, and outcome disparities are eliminated – just as Christ intended this side of glory. The systemic injustice of male headship must be met with perpetual female headship in order to keep the scourge of masculinity from once again taking dominion over the world. Each Bathsheba Season is a chance to remind the church that the push female headship is not at all like a car-chasing dog that will be run over if it ever gets what it wants. Rather, gynocracy is the path to utopia in and out of the church, and there is no chance old-fashioned, male-led civilizations around the world will see this as a weakness to exploit.