Kim Lawton spent the day with her.
KIM LAWTON: Author and speaker Liz Curtis Higgs focuses on the seamier side of scripture.
LIZ CURTIS HIGGS: We're talking murder, adultery, revenge, deceit, secret babies, seances, incest. Wild Women! Maybe that's why I felt so at home.
LAWTON: Her best-selling books BAD GIRLS OF THE BIBLE and its sequel, REALLY BAD GIRLS OF THE BIBLE have struck a chord with women across the country who appreciate her unvarnished honesty and her humorous approach to faith.
MS. CURTIS HIGGS: Who's that crazy woman?
LAWTON:
Liz advocates what she calls "girlfriend theology," woman
to woman, relating real faith to real struggles. She says
her credentials for ministry are her own bad girl days.
She calls them her "pit years." MS. CURTIS HIGGS: I never do anything half way, why just dip into the pit when you can sink into the bottom!
LAWTON: It was the 70s, and Liz had left her small-town Pennsylvania church-going background for the world of rock radio. She became a DJ and plunged headfirst into a life of sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
MS. CURTIS HIGGS: I even prided myself in being a really bad girl. I decided it was my identity; I decided it was my uniqueness.
LAWTON: Things got so bad, a colleague, shock jock Howard Stern, told her to "clean up her act."
MS. CURTIS HIGGS: Why I was never arrested, I will never know -- it was a gift from God that I didn't end up in jail -- it was a gift from God that I didn't end up dead on the highway, because, driving while blind, as the saying goes.
LAWTON: As she spiraled downward, Liz took a new rock radio job in Louisville, Kentucky. There she says, she met some evangelical Christians who told her how she truly could clean up her act.
MS. CURTIS HIGGS: They just peeped down my pit of despair and said, "Liz, we have a better high for you then where you are going now." And of course, I was always up for a better high -- "oh wow, do you drink it, snort it, do it, what do you do?" They said, "you just believe it." Oh, dear, you don't mean God, do you? Yeah, we do.
LAWTON: Eventually, she says she committed her life to Jesus.
MS. CURTIS HIGGS: It's wonderful now, in the new millennium, to look back on those years and understand they were preparation for what I do now, which is encouraging women who also have a past -- to let go of it -- to embrace the grace of God and move on.
LAWTON: Since that time, she's written 15 books, from children's stories to fictional romance to inspirational non-fiction. But her emphasis on the Bible bad girls has really ignited her ministry.
When Liz started studying the Bible, she says she was initially put off by some of the role models such as the Virgin Mary.
MS. CURTIS HIGGS: I just couldn't relate! But then I got to Jezebel, and I'm like "Oh, I get this, she's a pushy broad." I get that.
LAWTON:
She realized there was something all women could learn from
these less-than perfect women, such as Herodias, the queen
who demanded the head of John the Baptist. MS. CURTIS HIGGS: I know what you're thinking: Liz, what am I supposed to learn from a story about a nasty woman like this -- even though if you are really honest with me, there have been a few men in your life you wouldn't mind seeing their head on a platter, do you know what I'm saying?
I usually encourage women to look at these women and say "is there anything you liked about them? Was there something admirable?" Because we really need to do that for each other. We tend to look around at women and say, "bad," "good." Not exactly. No one is all bad.
(To
audience): Let me try and get you picturing David. (pulls
out bag with a man on it.) OK, are we clear with Bathsheba's
situation now? 
MS.
CURTIS HIGGS: I would say yes, it is a relevant message
for those who aren't believers. However, I can't be anything
but honest with you; it would be my prayer that they would
examine faith and what it could bring to their lives. 
