Ep. 7: The Big S... It's Submission

Submission and male leadership are impossible to avoid in the Christian church. But so many of the arguments saying that women are are the ONLY ones asked to submit to their spouses just don't hold up. Today we're going to rip apart the main arguments for female-only submission and set up a 3-part series on what the Bible really wants for Christ-centered marriages and relationships.

What is We Are More: Sisters Talk Faith & Feminism?

We are Alyssa and Bri, two sisters who believe God wants more for women than we've been taught. Join us as we dive into the intersection of faith and feminism, learning together as we go.

Welcome to the We Are More podcast.

My name is Alyssa.

And my name is Bri.

We are two sisters passionate about all things faith and feminism.

We believe that Jesus trusted, respected, and encouraged women to teach and preach His

word.

And apparently that's controversial.

It's a bit comfy.

Welcome to-

Look how loud you are.

Hey welcome to episode seven.

I keep thinking of every time I make a joke, oh we're in kindergarten.

How old are you when you're seven?

Uh, second grade?

First grade?

How old are you when you're seven?

Alright, hey and welcome to episode seven of We Are More.

Bree's over there drinking coffee.

Ow.

It is the middle of the day so we shouldn't need the coffee quite as much.

What are you talking about?

I'm sorry.

There's nothing greater than a four o'clock coffee.

And I stand by that.

It's five thirty.

There's nothing greater than a five thirty coffee.

And I've always said that.

We did spend like thirty minutes in line at Starbucks today.

So I better drink that whole thing.

You better.

I already drank mine.

Are you proud?

And I stand also by, always get a large.

I don't stand by that.

Well that's because you don't drink very much.

I never will finish one.

That's silly.

I'm sorry.

No waste of money.

No waste of time.

That's why I don't get the large.

Really, really rude.

I can still hear that.

I'm trying to be quiet.

It's not going well.

I need like a camel back.

I want you to go into Starbucks and ask for a bring your camel back with you.

You know.

Bring your own cup.

Yeah.

Will they fill a camel back?

What are your thoughts?

What if you had a wine bra?

Would they fill that?

Probably.

I think that would be the option.

You'd have a lot of lift.

I mean, I assume you'd have a lot of lift if it was full of wine also.

Yeah.

I'm fine either way.

How have we already got off the rails?

We're two minutes in, Bree.

We're nowhere near the rails.

I feel like we should introduce ourselves also because...

My name's Brianna.

That was horrifying.

So if you're new to the podcast, my name is Alyssa and my sister over there who's drinking

the coffee is Bree.

I'm Bree.

I can introduce myself.

Thank you very much.

And we are working...

More.

Yes, but also we're working through a little mini series on some of the big topics of Christian

feminism.

So we have done modesty and women in leadership.

And last week we talked about some of the big questions that we've been seeing from

either side of the argument.

So why do we hate women?

I mean, nope.

We love women.

That's the point.

Why do we hate men?

There we go.

Why do they hate women?

And then also why did we stay in church and why are we still people of faith?

So if you didn't listen to that one, definitely jump back and take a listen.

I don't know.

Or plus also listen to this.

And then jump back.

And then jump back.

And listen to that one.

Because that one was pretty good and that kind of, I think, leads to foundations for

a lot of the questions that we get.

Yeah.

And our personalities.

We're a good time.

We are a fun time.

Except for when I don't want to be.

We're more fun midday than we are at 830 at night.

It's really true.

You've gotten very old.

I don't know what's wrong with me.

Like it hits 830 and I am in bed and watching TV and nothing is getting done.

No.

Last night, actually, I woke up and I was like, holy cow, it must be really early in

the morning.

I woke up.

I was like, dang, it's so early in the morning.

And it was 1053 at night.

Oh.

But yeah.

We are recording midday today, so hopefully we'll be peppier.

I don't know that 530 is midday.

I mean, it is if you stay up until 11.

I'm only up for maybe three more hours.

That's true.

But it's a Saturday, so we slept in a little bit.

Hallelujah for a Saturday.

That's one of God's greatest blessings.

Saturdays is a Saturday.

Possibly also a Sunday.

Tomorrow is Mother's Day for us.

Happy Mother's Day.

For you, Mother's Day is long in the past.

Yeah.

Welcome to the future.

Nope, the past.

To the land of tomorrow.

So today, now that we're five minutes in, today we're going to talk about submission.

The big S.

The big S.

I know another big S.

Stacey!

Shout out.

So we wanted to talk about this topic because this is probably the hottest button issue

facing women in the church today.

There have been a lot and we have gone through several of the topics, but this is the one

that for me anyway hits home probably the hardest.

And for me, makes me want to avoid marriage at all costs.

But I think that such an important part of this is that because you've experienced that,

and I thought the same thing before I got married too, this attitude towards women submitting

to their husbands, and we'll go through what that means in a second, has made us both want

to avoid marriage.

Like it's making women avoid marriage.

Is that really the goal?

And I can tell you it's not because having been in Christian circles for a long time,

the whole goal of life is marriage.

Oh my gosh, the amount of people that, maybe I shouldn't say this, that have gotten married

while they were in college, like people that I knew that got married.

And how many of them are divorced now?

It's actually, yeah, it's shocking.

And it gets, I think part of it is because it gets pushed so hard, like get married,

get married, get married.

But you're so young, you don't know yourself.

Oh my gosh.

I still don't know myself and I'm ancient.

And I mean, I got married in college, but it was incredibly unreasonably hard.

Yeah.

Because you don't realize that until you get a lot older that, oh my gosh, I did not know

everything that I thought I did when I was that age.

I mean, you're literally a child.

You are an actual child.

Your brain has scientifically not fully developed.

You can't rent a car.

And if you can't rent a car, you shouldn't get married.

We're going way off topic here.

So first we kind of wanted to talk about what submission in the church means, because if

you're not a churchy person, I don't know that this, I remember talking about this to

one of my friends who did not grow up in the church.

And I said something about like, oh, they have a really submissive marriage.

And she looked at me real weird.

Like we were talking about- Oh, yeah.

In the bedroom.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So if you're not familiar with this.

Well, also, I think it's very conservative Christian pushed because my friends who are

Catholic or just not as religious, they don't really understand what I'm talking about either.

No, I don't think it's really talked about in this way at all.

You do have like that tradwife movement, but I still think it's talked about differently

than the word submission.

But for people who grew up in the church, this is particularly women that grew up in

the church.

This is all we hear about all the time.

There's like 40 sermons on it a year.

Or like casually, maybe your pastor screams at his wife from the pulpit to submit.

Like casually.

You know, as you do.

So I think Bre made some notes that are interesting.

Honestly, I blacked out.

I have no idea what I noted.

Well, it's on the screen so you can do you think I have eyes of a what animal has really

good eyes?

An owl.

Eyes of a wombat.

Do wombat have?

I don't know.

What is a wombat?

I just made up that saying.

I just made it up.

Off the top of my head.

Eyes of a wombat.

We could name this podcast.

Eyes of a wombat.

They'd be like.

What am I going to listen to?

And it's about submission.

Great.

Love that for us.

What did I say?

How do you picture traditional submissive marriage?

Or what have you been told?

Yeah, let's talk about it.

The way that I guess I always saw it was very much like the man leads everything.

He makes all the decisions, the big decisions, the little decisions.

And as the wife, you just sort of follow along.

And you don't have a whole lot of value.

There's not a lot of importance to your role.

There's not a lot of recognition for your role.

Even though you're expected to do everything around the house, everything for the kids.

Also in the current economy, you have to have a job.

You have so much responsibility.

But no say in anything.

Very little control.

And I saw this play out many, many times in my whole community.

And it never seemed to work very well.

The way that I pictured it...

Now I wrote down a couple of notes.

This sounds really bad, but the way that I picture it is like, because we grew up with

dogs, right?

We've had 1,000 dogs.

And you can always tell when you have two dogs in a room, one will kind of bow down

to the other.

That's what I picture when I think of submissive marriage.

I think that men who really believe in it and want to live it out, see women as stupid.

See women as worthless.

See them as not leaders.

That they hold very little value.

And that because they were born with a weenie, God looked down at them and said, you are

blessed, my son.

Maybe that's a big graphic.

But in my experience, men who really believe in that and want to live it out, see women

as no greater than an animal.

Well, I think the church has tried to rebrand a little bit because the word patriarchy and

submission, they're not marketable.

It doesn't work in modern day society.

So they try to rebrand it and they'll say things like, well, it doesn't mean that she's

less than him.

It's equal.

They're equal roles.

They just have separate roles.

It's just that he's the leader.

It's just that he makes all the decisions and you do need to submit to him, but you

are equal.

And like, think about that in any other context.

If you were to say, because people love to compare marriages to companies, football teams,

whatever where you have to have one leader.

So let's compare those things.

Let's say you have a company and there's the CEO and then there's the general store manager.

No one is going to look at those two roles and say equality.

They're equal, just different.

No.

Or on a football team, you've got the head coach or-

The towel boy.

The towel boy.

Or even like a pitching coach or something like that, like a more minor coach.

No one is going to look at those two roles and say equal, just different.

And that leads us into like separate but equal.

Exactly.

Has always never been equal.

Why have we not learned that as a society?

The church is trying to push that so hard.

Separate but equal, separate but equal, separate but equal is not equal.

When the role of a man is lead, make the decisions, tell your wife what she's going to do next,

her will has to be for what you want instead.

And that's something that's a whole other thing.

But that's something that is often said is that a wife's desire should be for her husband.

So all of the wife's wants, needs, ambitions prior to marriage are supposed to kind of

become less than her husband's desires, ambitions, wants.

And you can't look at those two things and tell me, but they're equal.

Now not all conservative Christians are trying to say it's equal.

Some of them are very blatant about one role is better than the other.

God created men first, he likes them better.

Some people are very blatant about it.

But I think the church as a whole is trying to rebrand and pretend.

Well that's where the term complementarianism came from.

It's because they knew patriarchy is that it's a hot button.

You can't market it.

So it's a lot easier to say complementary.

Well let's define those real quick too because I know we've we have talked about this in

the past.

But if you aren't caught up on episodes or haven't heard that one in a while, complementarianism

within the church setting is defined by people who believe that women are complementary to

men.

So instead of being equal, instead of being on equal playing ground, the women are simply

there to complement, to be a helper for the men.

Sometimes that being their husband, sometimes it just being whoever walks by.

And then there's egalitarianism, which is the flip side.

And it's the belief that women and men are equal, made equally in God's eyes, equally

meant to rule the world together.

So that's kind of a simplistic version of that I guess.

So that's kind of how we saw things growing up and still see them today.

Yeah, I don't know that I so much thought about it when I was younger, but as I've gotten

older and more towards the marrying age, I definitely noticed that a lot more.

Like 1950s households.

That is the like epitome of a perfect submissive marriage.

Well really I think that the church idealizes, say it again, idealizes the 1950s whole lifestyle.

And for men, yeah, things were going great.

They came home from work, they put on their slippers that were waiting for them at the

door, they sat in their chair and read their newspaper and dinner was brought to them.

And their wife was beautiful.

She just recently changed out of her work clothes into her dinner clothes.

She's got on her pearls.

For women and many other groups, don't get me wrong, this is not specific to women, but

in this context for women, times were bad.

They spent the entire day doing things around the house, cleaning, some of them had jobs,

taking care of the yard, taking care of the kids and the pets and the blah, blah, blah.

And then he comes home and she has to serve him.

Well what's crazy is like, he works a 9 to 5.

She works a 24-7.

Right.

When does she get a break?

Right, but if you are looking at the world from a complementarian standpoint, that looks

great.

Because she spends her whole life in service to him.

And I guess he's in service to God in theory?

And so often you see that leads to abuse.

Oh, all the time.

Time and time again.

We have 50 examples right off the top of our heads.

Because you give someone that kind of power and slap God's name on it, of course it's

going to lead to abuse.

Well they say absolute power corrupts absolutely.

And in this very submissive standpoint, and a lot of the resources we're about to talk

about, these men are being given absolute power.

Their wives are not to question them even if they aren't following God.

Even if they're doing wrong and their wives know they're doing wrong, their wives are

still supposed to follow them.

Into what?

Hell.

I mean really?

Like at some point that's what you're asking.

You're asking wives to follow their husbands submissively into hell, and is God saving

them after that?

I have serious questions about that because if you're following your husband into sin,

knowing that he's sinning, knowing that he is doing wrong, you can't tell me that you're

not also culpable in that.

So we have two, this is going to be I think a two to three part podcast.

Because we have a lot to say.

We have so much to say.

We haven't even got to the research yet.

We're just really-

We're just mad!

You know how Taylor Swift said that her new set for the Torture Poets department was Female

Rage?

The musical?

That's what we should call this episode.

Female Rage.

But so far Brie hasn't sung.

I could start.

You could.

I have beatboxed.

That is new for us that you haven't had something to sing about yet.

I sang right at the beginning and you just didn't hit record.

Sorry.

So that's really what we're going to do.

So anyway we're gonna for this episode in particular we're gonna go through two separate

articles.

One of them is from a very complementarian standpoint and one of them is from a very

egalitarian standpoint and talk about the merits of each and let you decide from there.

Yeah.

Okay.

The first one and I want to talk about the title a little bit because it's important.

It's called Submission Does It Proceed the Fall?

Does it?

So we talked about this in a previous episode as well but in order for the concept of submission

to work biblically it has to be before the fall.

So it has to be before Adam and Eve sinned.

God's ideal perfect view of marriage.

Now, there's not a lot of stuff in the Bible before the fall.

Not a lot, no.

There was nakedness.

There's a lot of nakedness.

Which means...

So in order to believe in submission as God's perfect plan for his people it has to have

happened before Adam and Eve ate the apple, sinned, etc.

Do you think God's perfect plan for humanity is veganism?

I don't know, maybe.

God?

Who there?

So this article makes the argument that submission does precede the fall because it has to.

In order for it to hold up throughout Christianity it has to precede the fall.

That's what everything comes down to.

So he's got nine points here.

Nine beautiful points.

Nine points.

And we're gonna go through them and talk about them.

I'm not gonna read directly because I don't want to get sued.

I do.

Oh, Brie does.

So maybe she can read directly.

But we're gonna go through them.

Maybe not in order.

But... and just kind of talk about them.

So the first point that he makes is the order of creation.

We love this one.

This is my favorite.

Wait, where's my Bible?

So he is making the argument that because Adam was created before Eve, that this means

automatically that that is the foundation for how human relationships should go.

And you've got to think, this is his most important point because he's putting it at

number one.

That's number one.

Absolutely.

What came before Adam?

Everything.

Everything else.

So that means that we're at the bottom of the pecking order, ladies and gentlemen.

I better go submit to the dog.

I mean, seriously, but that is a groundbreaking point.

Everything else was created first.

Men and women came last.

The sun, the stars, the earth, the plants and animals.

And I'm gonna be honest with you guys.

Conservative people not known for their love of the environment.

They just want Jesus to come faster.

And you can't fault them for that.

But what a dumb point.

I know.

Come on.

What does he go on to say about that?

There's not a lot.

He doesn't really, he says, this may seem to be weak grounds for an argument, but it

was strong enough for Paul to mention in 1st Timothy, where he says he doesn't permit a

woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, which we will get into later.

But that's not really a point.

No, Paul is not referencing back to creation here.

No, he's mentioning culture.

Right.

So that one falls apart real quick.

In case you hadn't noticed, we're gonna rip these apart.

No, we're gonna let you decide for yourself.

You can decide for yourself, but we're gonna rip them apart.

So the second point, because we've got a there's nine of them, we got to speed through.

He calls it the representation of the human race.

So he says that Adam was the one who had a special role in representing the human race.

Adam, he says, was considered the most at fault for sin, even though Eve was first.

And then he quotes Corinthians.

He says, as in Adam, all men shall die.

So also in Christ shall all be made alive.

He then says, Christ is the second Adam, not the second Eve, as we might expect if the

Bible held Adam and Eve as being equal in representation and leadership.

I have so many questions, but they all end in, why are you stupid?

The thing is, the Bible does not say that Adam is more responsible for the first sin.

It also doesn't say Eve was more responsible for the first sin.

They're equally punished.

And frankly, Eve gets it pretty bad.

Have you heard about childbearing?

That's why I'm not having a kid.

Eve gets it pretty bad.

And when he talks about in Corinthians that Adam is referenced and not Eve, that's just

how things are written.

It's just clunky to say, as in Adam and Eve, all people die.

It's not how things were written back then because people, it was a patriarchal society.

So things were written primarily to and about men.

Women often, unfortunately, did get forgotten.

Yeah.

Like a middle child.

Much like you, the middle of the children.

Much like me.

So then these are all, they're so bad.

Okay.

No, we're going to let you decide by yourself.

So then it's the naming of women.

So Adam, as you may or may not know, was given the responsibility to name the animals and

Eve when she was created.

You have a thought?

I'm just saying, did he know that they didn't speak English back then?

I don't think he does.

So the verse is Genesis 2 23, and it's she shall be called woman because she was taken

out of man.

Okay.

And then it talks, he says, this parallels the account of creation where God named the

night and the day, the expanse, the waters.

By naming them, he showed his authority.

But let's point out, he didn't name them.

God didn't name them.

He told Adam to name them.

So the person with the most authority didn't name them.

Let's just, let's just rip that one out.

Adam says she shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.

Okay.

But where does that mean that he has authority over her?

No, it doesn't say that.

It doesn't say that.

Which means that you're reading into whatever you want to, you know, you know what I'm saying.

Not just reading into it, you're putting words in God's mouth, which is again, what Christian

feminists get accused of all the time, but it's clearly what's happening here.

All right, guys, we're only on point four.

All right.

So then the naming of the human race that it's man, not man and woman, because that

wouldn't be clunky.

Men and women.

Again, a very lazy argument.

Also, give me a verse.

Well the one he quotes, so here's what he quotes, Genesis 5, 1 through 2.

When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God.

Male and female he created them and he blessed them and named them man when they were created.

Now I want to point out that that verse says male and female he created them and he blessed

them and made them man when they were created.

So perhaps, again, we lose a lot through translation and at the time, the word man, not the word

man because it wasn't the same word in Greek and Hebrew, but was used as a gender neutral

term.

Yeah.

Now you can, this is something you can absolutely look up.

Kind of similar to how we say guys.

Hey guys.

Exactly, exactly.

It was a gender neutral term, it did not always mean just men.

Just genetically men.

So that's point four.

Point five goes back to the same thing.

He says primary accountability, that men were primarily accountable for the first sin because

God called Adam first when he was looking for them after they sinned.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I just feel like so far it seems very desperate and I think that's how a lot of these arguments

are.

It's a desperate grab at power.

Well, it has to be because there's really not a lot in the Bible pre the fall.

So you really have to grab on to bits and pieces and I want to point out that if this

was God's perfect plan, he wouldn't have made it so sketchy to figure out.

He would have made it clear.

Yeah, he would have said God is not the God of confusion.

From the moment Eve was created, he would have said and Eve submit to him.

But he didn't.

That's not what happened.

So you have to ask that question.

Why would God make this so confusing for us to figure out?

Then of course he goes into helper.

Because you gotta always go there.

He says the purpose of women.

That's the title of this segment.

Wonderful.

The purpose of women.

Eve was created as a helper for Adam, not Adam as a helper for Eve.

Now we have gone into this before.

We have done a whole podcast on the word helper, which translate as Ezzer.

And I really encourage you to go back and listen to that one because we pull it apart

in a really deep way.

And I'm not going to do that right now.

But helper, and he calls feminists out in this.

He says that feminists have made a lot of the term helper.

But it really just means that, you know, he says that she is subordinate to him.

But then he goes on to say that she's equal.

But also, God calls himself a helper.

So it just doesn't hold up.

So if you don't have time to go back and listen to that episode, Ezzer, the word used in the

Bible for helper, God uses it to describe himself often throughout the Bible.

He also uses it to describe warriors.

He doesn't use it as a subordinate term.

He uses it as a warrior term.

And let's also talk about how, I don't know if this is a valid thought or not, but like

the only time God calls something not good when he's creating it is when he was alone.

So yeah, he created Eve.

Maybe those men were just lazy and boring.

No, but he created her as a partner, as someone to come alongside Adam and help him do the

things that God called people to do.

Not that God called Adam to do, but to become a partner and do all these things together.

So the next one is the conflict.

So essentially he says that a consequence of the fall is that it introduced conflict

into husband-wife relationships, which, okay, valid point because the fall introduced sin.

Conflict would go along with that because if we weren't sinful, we would all know God's

perfect plan and just do that.

So in, he quotes Genesis 3 16 where God tells Eve, your desire shall be for your husband

and he shall rule over you.

Now in my mind, that's God saying as part of this punishment, unfortunately comes patriarchy.

Sucks.

The punishment is not a good time.

He says that what this meant is that instead of her just automatically going along with

what her husband says, that her inner self is going to now want to disagree with her

husband.

The Olympics we have to do to make this make sense.

So the desire will now be for her to interfere or distort the role of her husband, the role

that God gave to her husband.

Eve is now going to rebel against the God given authority of her husband and he's going

to abuse that authority and rule poorly.

Do they think that they're not abusing their role right now?

Do they think they're not being butt heads now?

I mean, he apparently thinks that, but instead of let's do some inner work right now.

Does he look at himself and just think, oh no, I'm not doing that, but they're doing

wrong?

Yeah.

Well, his whole article is about how women are doing wrong, not about how men are doing

wrong.

So, and I love when men get to tell women what God told them to do.

Love that.

Good times.

So instead of it being a part of the fall, he's saying that it was the perfect plan in

the first place and the part of the fall was that now she was going to be really annoying.

That's really what it boils down to.

Then he talks about the restoration, which is, so he says when Christ comes to earth,

so when Christ is on the earth, that he would undo this, he calls it the marriage order,

that essentially he, that Christ would say directly, men are no longer in authority over

their wives, because then that would be like the fulfillment of God's plan.

And he says that instead Christ tells women to overcome the sinful impulses that they

have against their husband and tells the husband to stop ruling harshly over her.

Again he doesn't provide any verses for this.

I argue when Jesus died it talks about tearing the veil, so essentially it means that we

have direct access to God, we don't have to go through a priest or something like that.

That also kind of means I don't have to go through my husband to have access to God.

Correct?

I mean, I think so.

Like I'm my own person, like I have a mind and a heart and a soul.

And we're created in God's image just as much as any man.

Now again, there are no verses here.

There's no biblical reference, there's no historical reference, he's just talking.

So take that as you will.

And then he says, the mystery.

Oh sweet mystery of life, at last I've found thee.

Now we can call it the musical.

OHH!

I don't think I'm gonna get copyrighted for that.

That's thoroughly modern Milly.

I would be surprised if the thoroughly modern Milly people come after you.

Although that is not the best of the place.

No.

But it has great music.

up pretty good music. Although I didn't make it seem like it. So the last one is, now he

goes into talking about Paul. So in Ephesians, which we, I'm hoping we'll get into a little

bit in this one, but we might have to kind of... A part two? A part two. So Ephesians

is really, it's a rough one for women and I think because it's mostly misunderstood.

But here he's going to talk about Ephesians and he quotes Ephesians 5, 31 and 32 where

he says that Paul shows the ultimate purpose in marriage is to mirror the relationship

between Christ and the church. One of my least favorite analogies. So he quotes another...

It's beautiful. He quotes another pastor here that is not a good guy. Like let's just stop

quoting pastors who have been shamed and accused of things. Let's just stop that. But why? They're

men. So the quote from another person says, although Adam and Eve did not know it, their

relationship represented the relationship between Christ and the church. They were created

to represent that relationship and that is what all marriages are supposed to do. In

that relationship, Adam represents Christ and Eve represents the church. Now I just,

I just need to make one point here. When Adam and Eve were on the earth, there had been

no Christ. There had been no church. Quite literally. Something cannot be representative

of something that doesn't exist. And also the churches we think about it is not what

the church that the Bible is thinking about it. You know? Yeah, exactly. Makes sense.

Do I know words? No, but wait, you're just, tell me if this is what you're saying. Cause

I don't want to put words in your mouth. Please do. Make me sound more educated. Please. The

church of today is not the church of Bible times. Yeah. See, I always knew you were intelligent.

Thanks. So when Paul says, you know, when Paul is referencing the church ever, he's

not represent, he's not referencing 2024 non-denominational slightly Baptist churches.

He's just not where the preachers wear very expensive tennis shoes in denim jackets and

have tattoos on their arms. Maybe one on their face. Maybe this is 2024. It is 2024. The

year of post Malone. It's the year of post Malone. Last year was the year of the Barbie.

Oh, right. I forgot about that. Was it, or was that this year? That was definitely not

this year. Was it last year? Must've been. Yeah. Definitely not this year. Yeah, it was

last year. But think about like, so saying that Adam and Eve are representative of Christ

in the church. Let's just pull that one apart for a second. Cause I love to do that. That

would be like saying that my great, great, great grandparents relationship is representative

of mine. Does that make any sense? It can't be. My marriage didn't exist yet. And maybe

it's too early for this argument too, but I love when people, men in particular talk

about how it's representative of Christ in the church. That means that you are comparing

yourself to Christ. I'm gonna tell you right now, you're not. You can't sanctify me. You

can't forgive me of my sins. You're not. And let's be like, this verse we will go into

more because the next article really, really dives into this one. I love how she talks

about it, but do you want that role? Men out there, do you want to have to be Christ? You

don't. As men and women, we should all strive to be as much like Jesus as we can. But you're

not talking about being like Jesus. You're talking about the responsibility of Jesus.

It's very different. If you're handing men the responsibility to be Jesus to their spouses.

You're failing all around the world, baby. You can't succeed at that. You can't. It's

impossible. And that would be God giving- For anyone, man or woman. Absolutely. That

would be God giving you a task that you cannot, you have no ability to complete. You have

no ability to fulfill that. Does that sound like a loving God? Not really. No. If God

is automatically setting you up for failure, that doesn't sound like the God that's been

described to me. That doesn't sound like the God of the Bible. So ask that question. Does

it stand up? Does it make sense? If God is asking you to be Jesus for your wife and you

can't possibly do it? Failure. Marriage turns into failure. Automatically. And obviously

it would result in anger too. So abuse. I mean really. Because he can't fulfill that

role. He has no ability to fulfill that role. And that would be very frustrating to think

that God asks something of you that, well, bummer, guess you're gonna fail today. It's

in conservative churches where this is preached often. And let me tell you, it is preached

to death. Honestly, we were at a not super conservative church recently and they preached

on it like five different times. In the span of a few months. Secretly really conservative.

My gosh. But whenever it's brought up, it's very emotionally manipulative because it's

like, oh, this is a beautiful representation of Christ and the church. And don't you just

want to be that? Don't you want to be a representation of who Christ and the church was? Christ loved

the church. He laid down his life for the church. And it's very emotionally manipulative.

It's a power grab. It is. Because it makes you as a woman feel like, well yeah, I want

to represent Christ to the world, but you don't get to represent Christ to the world.

You have to represent, I guess, the church. I don't know what that looks like, but you

don't get to represent Christ. Your husband does. So screw you. And what you have to say

is not important. And you are not important. And let me just say, it can be a beautiful

representation when you're the man. Because you get all the power and all the glory. You

can say, I've heard countless men say this, it's not about power. It's about responsibility.

There's so much responsibility laid on men and it's such a hard burden to bear. But that's

the argument that I have heard a million times. Men have it really hard because they have

all the responsibility of making all of the choices and controlling all of the situations.

And it's insulting to women. Absolutely. When you say that, because you're saying, because

you just get to go along with it. Nothing that you do really is important or really

matters. Everything that I do matters though. And it's so hard to be me. And it's a beautiful

representation. It's beautiful. I want them to describe why it's beautiful. Because I

think it would be really difficult. Why is it, why do you think it's beautiful to me?

Because I don't have to do anything. I'm not responsible for anything. I'm just leisure-ing.

It can be beautiful when you're in control. Yeah. It's not beautiful sitting over here.

When you tell a woman that has all kinds of leadership potential, that she now no longer

gets to be a leader, and she has to be a follower, that all of her desires have to be her husband's

desires. And help build up his dream. Absolutely. She doesn't get a voice or a say. She doesn't

get to be a person anymore. So why would I want to get married? If that is what I truly

believe God wants of women, no thank you. No thank you. And frankly, there's no loving

God in that for women. Nope. For men, you can still look at that and say, oh, what a

loving God. He put me in charge and I get to do whatever I want to do. And I'm sure

that there will be arguments of, well, but he has to do it with the good of his family

in mind. He has to do it with whatever. I would do it with the good of my family in

mind. It's not like, woo, yay for you. You're thinking of other people. No, that's just

called being a good person. Or a human. Having a family. Yeah. If I really believe that,

if I really believed that God made me to be secondary, that God made people and said,

I like this one better, he's going to be in charge. She's a little stupid. So I'm just

going to, I'm going to let her cruise. But that's how so many conservative men treat

women. They're stupid. They don't know what they're doing. They're weak. They can't possibly

lead. They can't possibly make a decision. And we could honestly just keep talking about

this all day. But I think it's important now as we're hitting kind of that almost 50 minute

mark to talk about what we're going to talk about next week as we bounce into the second

part of this really cool series. I think we're going to hold off on the next article until

our next episode. So you guys get to wait for that. It's going to be really good. I'm

very excited. I just, I feel like listen to this episode with an open heart and wait for

the next one. Cause it's yeah, next week, you know, what we wanted to do with this episode

was kind of pull apart a lot of the arguments, loosen it all up so that we can, we wanted

to get loose so that next week we can go into some very heavily research based information

and fill in some of those questions because there are a lot of questions. If God didn't

mean for women to be solely submissive to their husbands, then why does he talk about

why it is a V Ephesians have so many verses about it? Why does in Genesis he curse Eve

with her desire being for her husband? So we wanted to pull all of this part and talk

about it a little bit. And then next week we are going to read from an article and talk

about an article. And I think it would be good for, we could put it up somewhere so

people can look it up too. Oh yeah. Good idea. So the next episode is going to be, it's called

Paul's main point in Ephesians 5 22 to 33. And it goes into that really difficult passage

of Ephesians where it talks about submission. They call it the marital codes. And it's one

that I just have always really struggled with. And it's a really amazing research based article

all around that segment and what it really means instead of what we were told it meant.

I feel like we say this all the time. It doesn't mean what we've been told that it means. Because

we see it through our Western 2024 brains. But think about when this was written and what

it meant back then. Right. And Paul, and we, I think we said this a couple weeks ago too,

I did not like Paul for a long time. Paul could kiss our tushies. I struggled with Paul

because it seems like he has so much to say about women and it just all seems really mean.

And so I honestly would just kind of skip over those passages for a lot of my faith

journey. And now as I am able to do a lot of research, look into so much of this and

read great research based articles and books and things like that, I'm starting to see

Paul in a whole new light and realize that like we have done bad things to Paul's writing.

He was a great writer. He was a he made things a little bit confusing. He did make some things

confusing. But I think they're confusing because we're looking at them from here. We're looking

at them from 2000 years in the future. They probably weren't confusing back then. Probably

not. And also we're looking at it through translation after translation. It's like a

game of telephone. Imagine being there as Phoebe went and delivered Paul's letter to

the Roman church. Preached it. Girl. Preach. You know how people can't tell our voices

apart anyway? If we say things at the same time. Honestly, when I'm editing, I can't

tell our voices apart sometimes. I have to look at which mic is which. I did label them

this time. That's nice. It's helpful for later. All right. Well, we are super excited to chat

with you again in a couple of weeks about submission even further. We'll see if maybe

this becomes a three parter. So far it's just two. But it depends on how much rage we want

to put in this musical. We have a great deal to say. And I want everybody to know that

I've almost entirely drunken. Drunken? Drunk. A venti iced coffee from Starbucks during

this. So if you haven't, we would love to have you follow us on our social media. We

are on Instagram and Facebook. And Tikitalk. And Tikitalk. And YouTube. We're all over

the place. We're Mr. Worldwide. So Instagram and Facebook is we are more dot podcast. And

Tik Tok. It's stupid. I'm sure if you look up like we are more will pop up. But it's

like we dot more dot. Nope. Try again. We dot are dot more four. There we go. We're

actually quite funny on Tik Tok. I'll be honest with you. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm

just going to have a laugh. But we're pretty funny. We're going to film some right now

because we forgot to film them while we were recording. Oh, good call. Good for us. My

phone's over there. I cannot reach it. Go go Gadget Art. Alright, we'll see you guys

next week. Nope. Two weeks from now. I love you. Bye bye.