By Emma Kakololo
WINDHOEK
Within Christianity, of which the majority of the Namibian people are believers, some abusive men have misinterpreted texts in the Bible to justify their behaviour towards women. One such text is taken from Ephesians 5:22, which states that wives be subject to their husbands.
This was said by Ludwig Beukes, Programme Officer of the Council of Churches in Namibian (CCN) when he addressed delegates at the country’s first-ever Gender-Based Violence Conference on Wednesday.
“Sometimes people interpret the Bible for their own benefit to enforce gender-based violence” he stated.
The verse, Beukes asserted, was used by a preacher at a wedding ceremony in trying to interpret the word “submit” as being the wife’s love for the man.
“If I was the woman, I would have stopped the whole story of marrying the person,” he said.
What startled him though, he said, was the fact that at another wedding ceremony, a woman preacher also used the same scripture Ephesians 5, but decided to start with verse 21, which calls for both husband and wife to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
“Her message was very challenging for me as a man to submit. I asked myself why was the male pastor starting with verse 22 and the female pastor with verse 21.
This is how I see it. Christianity was brought by people with a specific cultural background.
Those of us who have received it, have received it within a specific context.
Our African context has influenced us in understanding the Bible, and because of that, people interpret the Bible with some specific elements of their cultural context,” he stressed.
He urged: “We need to take out the (correct) message from God for ourselves and bring it into our context, then we will be able to say ‘thus says the Lord’. Wrong interpretation and application of the Bible can lead to gender-based violence in the Christian religion.”
“When such crimes occur, people normally ask where these people (perpetrators) are. I believe they are in our midst; they look just like me and you – for example, the man from Okahandja who would drive to Windhoek to look for prostitutes and got infected with HIV and decided to look for the prostitute who infected him with the disease and kill her.
“He would drive to Windhoek and take a prostitute to his farm. Because he suspected that the prostitute who infected him had a belly-button, he would ask the prostitute to undress.
If he saw that she did not have a belly-button, he would rape her and put sand in her private parts.
At night he would take out his gun and start shooting at random so that she could run away from his farm,” he concluded.
The four-day conference attended by over 350 delegates representing government, civil society, traditional leaders and religious groups, among others, ends today.