Maybe it's because I grew up with it, maybe it's because I've never truly taken a critical approach, maybe it's because my mind has expanded (biting a few more chunks off of that juicy apple known as knowledge) through university -- but holy hannah, is the Bible ever sexist.

This may be old news to you, and it might be to me, too, but you see, I grew up reading those Holy words. I may not have read read, but I certainly skimmed from cover to cover. Tired eyes, late at night, dutifully reading those holy words.

When I turned eighteen and moved away from home, to go to Bible College, you'd think that I would have metamorphosed into Ruth or Deborah. One of those young women with really long hair and a big smile, thin stature, glasses maybe, whose very flesh ebbs "caring."

Two words: Bible overload. By the end of two years, I had to drag my sorry body to church to avoid appearances. You know, then they might start chasing and prodding to figure out why you're not coming out, and then I'd have to lie or tell the truth.

When I was young and so, so faithful and earnest, I never imagined a day when I would question anything in the Bible. It's the Bible. You can't question God. (Although, one year at the local fair in Lloydminster, when I was ten or eleven, I told God to make this cute guy look at me if He loved me, and he did).

I've truly tried to become that dutiful Christian I once was. Superficial and self-righteous as I was, I was committed. I've dusted off the old book every once in a while. I even made it half way through Genesis once, for the first time in my life reading it like the intelligent being that I am. But I skipped a day, then two, and then the critic in me gazes to issues like treaty education and how boys are influenced to bully and sexually harrass women through watching WWE.

Last Sunday, I listened to a sermon delivered by my Dad. He read a section of the Ten Commandments. In the section about not coveting your neighbour, it groups together a donkey, house, wife, and servant as the man's belongings. The holy Bible promotes ownership of women.

I always knew the Bible was sexist, often scowering at those texts: submit, submit, submit! Lately, though, I've become more and more aware of how the Bible has directly resulted and caused women to be lower then men, from the very story of creation. Why couldn't Eve have come out of the same dirt as Adam? Women, it seems, were invented for men to point fingers at, stare and lust over (although then God gets mad at them for doing that, too) and to carry and raise children so that men aren't burdened and can get to doing what really matters.

It actually makes me sick. If God is omniscient, I'm pretty sure He could see the troubles women would have with the opposite sex, but equality is not promoted in those words.

And I remember, when I was younger, furrowing and pursing my lips and crossing my arms when I was told women were becoming priests these days.