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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.
To the We Are More Pod cast. My name is Alyssa. And my
Speaker 2:name is Bree. We're two sisters passionate about all things faith and feminism. We believe
Speaker 1:that Jesus trusted, respected, and encouraged women to teach and preach his word. And apparently, that's controversial. Get comfy. Good morning. Good morning.
Speaker 1:It's actually morning when we're recording this, so we're sort of with you. Kind of. Ish. Are you listening to it in the morning? Well, that's a fair point.
Speaker 2:Or is it the middle of the night? Good day.
Speaker 1:How are you? To wherever you are in the world. Plus, we have a lot of listeners on the other side of the world, so it
Speaker 2:wouldn't be morning to them at all. This is why the Good Mythical Morning show made it mythical morning. Because you don't know what time people
Speaker 1:are watching it. That's what the phrasing means.
Speaker 2:I think so. Okay. So Brie and
Speaker 1:I were talking earlier about my breakfast issues. Are you ready for this? This is a great story. It's not. It's not that exciting of a story, but go with me.
Speaker 1:So every morning I go to Starbucks. You guys know that. You've been here a while. And I have my best Starbucks friends. And I always get, not always, but most of the time, I get this box.
Speaker 1:And it's a little bun with peanut butter and cheese and apples and grapes and hard boiled eggs. But the issue is I don't like hard boiled eggs. Which is insane to me. So I don't eat the hard boiled eggs. And that's probably primarily the value of this $5 box that I purchase every day of my life.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But they keep running out of it at my other Starbucks. And so they keep giving me this cheese and fruit one, which has so much cheese for the morning time. But they told me it's because the eggs keep exploding. My best Starbucks friend, he came up to the window the other day and he goes, I'm sorry we keep being out of these.
Speaker 1:It's because they send them to us frozen, and the eggs are literally exploding in the box. Ew. I know. He was like, I didn't think you'd want that. I was like, I mean, I don't eat the eggs, but like
Speaker 2:yeah. You should tell him that. Actually, can you still charge me for it? But just remove the exploded egg altogether.
Speaker 1:I just want the fruit and the cheese and the bun. And then I'm good. I'm going to go on
Speaker 2:a journey of making you this box.
Speaker 1:I was going to. I bought English muffins and stuff like that, and I was gonna make them. And then I absolutely never did not once. That doesn't shock me. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It shouldn't. I'm a convenience sort of person.
Speaker 2:Are you guys like this?
Speaker 1:So we turned our fridge, our main fridge, into more of a beverage fridge. Because we were like, we don't eat leftovers. We throw them away most of the time. But we like, like, fizzy waters and things like that. And so we turned most of it into a beverage fridge.
Speaker 1:But without fail, I will reach for whatever beverage is in the fridge so that I don't have to pour something into a cup. That is the level of laziness. It doesn't matter what it is. I could be like, I don't even like that thing. I'm grabbing the thing
Speaker 2:that's in the fridge so that I
Speaker 1:can just open a can and call it good. Be done. So that is my breakfast story for the week. Do you have breakfast stories that you'd like to share?
Speaker 2:Let's start every episode with just a ridiculous story.
Speaker 1:That's what we do here. We're cooking But
Speaker 2:only about breakfast. Because it's a morning.
Speaker 1:Here's the problem, though. That's that's my one breakfast story. That's all I got. That's what I eat for breakfast.
Speaker 2:Well, next week you're gonna have a new story because I'm going to handcraft you a Lunchable.
Speaker 1:It is basically a Lunchable. But it's good. And then I feel relatively full while I work, but it's not, like, greasy. Like, if you got something from McDonald's or a breakfast sandwich. But the whole point of that box
Speaker 2:is the eggs. But I don't like the eggs. Exactly.
Speaker 1:If they subbed them with, like, more peanut butter, I'm in. But they don't. And I can't coat the eggs in peanut butter. So that's what it is.
Speaker 2:Can you imagine? That'd be so gross.
Speaker 1:It'd be disgusting. I guarantee you there's somebody out there that's like, oh, yeah. I'm in.
Speaker 2:Okay. Way sidetracked. That guy that we watch on YouTube that eats the MREs and says everything's amazing.
Speaker 1:Yes. I love him.
Speaker 2:He would a 100% do that.
Speaker 1:He would. He'd take
Speaker 2:that MRE peanut butter, squeeze it onto a freeze dried egg, and be like, this is the most amazing thing I've ever eaten in my life. This is a a Michelin Star worthy peanut butter egg.
Speaker 1:So we watched this guy. His channel name is Steve nineteen eighty nine MRE or something like this. And I don't know why we watch this. This is not our wheelhouse. We watch some crazy things.
Speaker 1:We watch a lot of people who breed spiders. That was a thing for a
Speaker 2:hot minute. I also really like to watch moms who have, like, a 100 children pack their kids lunch.
Speaker 1:We watch several drag queens. Mhmm. Great content. Yeah.
Speaker 2:We there's no limit to what we enjoy.
Speaker 1:Surprising amount of murder also.
Speaker 2:I've been listening to a lot of murder and
Speaker 1:cult stuff. I do like a lot of the cult content. I watch that a lot. I just like, I don't know, weird interesting stuff. Like, stuff that's out of my world.
Speaker 1:You know?
Speaker 2:I also just like certain people.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Like, you could have the same two people or two different people tell the same story
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Of a murderer or whatever. But it's just the way that people tell it. Mhmm. Or sometimes they're just so weird and you can't look away. Like, guy who eats MREs.
Speaker 2:He's just really strange.
Speaker 1:He's very odd. But it's hilarious. Yeah. Is that why you guys are here? So maybe it's not the content.
Speaker 1:It's the people. Is that why they're here? The audience listening to us now?
Speaker 2:Well, we've just made an amazing discovery.
Speaker 1:We broke the fourth wall.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's us. It's us.
Speaker 1:But it's us because we're weird and they can't look away.
Speaker 2:Well, they're not looking.
Speaker 1:They can't turn Turn their ear away. Alright. Well, was a lightly light entrance into a much harder topic that we're going on today.
Speaker 2:Now on to the main content.
Speaker 1:So we took a short break last week and did a nicer, happier episode. This week we're doing I don't think this is
Speaker 2:a downer. I think this is just reestablishing what we've already said. Mhmm. So we've done two episodes on just hard sections of the Bible. And we've gone into detail about different stories, like Stories that are uncomfortable from the Bible, specifically the older testament.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Things that you're like, why are why Mhmm. Is this in the Bible? But we've also, at least for me, the the research that I've done is based on a lot of the comments that we've had, not just on our social media, but in real life Mhmm. Lately.
Speaker 2:And just reaffirming what this podcast is all about.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I think it's if you look on our social media, it's easy it's easy in general on social media to just dismiss what you don't wanna engage with or deal with. And so we get a lot of that, and we'll read some verses that have been thrown at us. But also in real life, we have a lot of people that want to jokingly dismiss the work that we do as though it's and I'm sure you guys have dealt with this too.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:Like, we have family members and friends and people that we really care about that are like, you'll change your mind someday. Oh, it's only gonna take one rich man to come along, and then you'll you won't care about women's rights anymore, I guess. I don't know. Oh, that only people knew me. And yet, if you actually listened to the podcast, if you heard our what is this?
Speaker 1:Episode 108, 109 now?
Speaker 2:Think it's a 109.
Speaker 1:A 109 episodes of deep research. And sometimes it's silly research. Don't get me wrong. But we've done at least a hundred and nine hours of research on top of the recording for these episodes. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:So I think it's important, yeah, to reestablish why these things are important and give you guys a base to talk about when someone throws a single verse at you and they're like, well, shut up. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:You know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think the Bible has been used to justify misogyny.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. But that does not mean misogyny is God's design. Right. People have used the Bible to justify misogyny, hierarchy, control. But if you really dig into it, that was not Jesus.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. And Jesus is our greatest example of God's intention. What God wanted for humanity, what God wants us to be. And when Jesus died on the cross for us, we then, when he left, had to become the hands and feet of Jesus. We talk about this a lot in the podcast.
Speaker 2:What does that look like? To be the body of Christ.
Speaker 1:And not just the the
Speaker 2:what's a useless part of the body? The butt. We've called them butts, hemorrhoids. I think toenails. I don't
Speaker 1:know. Will you have removed? Oh, don't have a gallbladder. Don't be a gallbladder in the body of Christ. Don't be an impacted wisdom tooth
Speaker 2:in the body of Christ. But Jesus did not model domination.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:He did not silence women. He did not treat women as lesser disciples. He welcomes them. He teaches them. He receives their ministry.
Speaker 2:He commissions them. He repeatedly rejects power over leadership. Mhmm. But when you look on our social media and you see these nice Christian men with nice Christian bios
Speaker 1:Put the nice in quotes real quick.
Speaker 2:That say, like, Jesus is king. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:They're not so nice. They're not.
Speaker 2:They desire power. Mhmm. They desire control. And they've attached themselves to a religion that they think is going to give them power and control. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:But when you dive deeper into it, Jesus doesn't say that at all.
Speaker 1:Right. That argument falls apart really fast. The moment that you bring Jesus into the story at all. And they get so defensive because yeah. They came to Christianity because it gives them power.
Speaker 1:And so what's the point
Speaker 2:if it doesn't give them power? Oh, yeah. It rips their whole worldview apart. Jesus literally says, the rulers lorded over people, but it is not so among you. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:You are meant to be set apart. Right. Yes. Patriarchy is all throughout Christian history, but that does not make patriarchy Christian. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And that is our best friend, Beth. That's what she's built her whole research on, is dismantling the patriarchy and bringing back what actual biblical womanhood womanhood actually is. So I encourage you to read both of her books. She said that there will also be a
Speaker 1:third one. She said it's gonna be a trio. So I'm excited for when that does come out.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Another person that we like to reference is Sarah Bessie. She wrote Jesus Feminist, which is the first book that you read. Right?
Speaker 1:Yep. The first Christian feminist book. I I'm sure I've told you guys this story. But in case you're new here, I spent a lot of my life because I got married really young. I got married at 21.
Speaker 1:She was a child bride, pretty much. And I I had grown up being told by a very conservative family background that I was gonna have to make myself less when I got married someday. Because I was I'm I've always been a big personality. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Maybe not outwardly, like, you need to be less. But in all these indirect ways
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:That's what it built up to.
Speaker 1:Well, it was things like somebody saying, well, you have a lot of opinions. What if your husband doesn't share those opinions someday? Or I'd get a new piercing and it'd be like, well, what if your husband doesn't like that someday? Well, I just don't care. Thank you, Barbara.
Speaker 1:Barbara Manatee. And I got married. And even though throughout my life, had been like, I can't do that. I can't be that person. I still believed I was supposed to be that person.
Speaker 1:So I got married, and I was trying to fit myself into this teeny tiny box for a long time. For the probably the first, I don't know, seven, eight years of my marriage. And I wasn't doing a good job. Don't get me wrong. It's not like I was, like, sitting in a corner embroidering or anything.
Speaker 2:No. But you were crocheting.
Speaker 1:I was crocheting. That's true. But I started to get really restless and just be like, I can't be the only one that feels like women are meant for more than this. Right? The name of the podcast.
Speaker 1:But I don't think we were not necessarily on the same age. Brie wasn't married at the time. So she still not. So she didn't have to deal with that part of things yet. And, you know, when things aren't in your direct line of vision, you haven't dealt with them yet.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. And so I started doing some research, and I had a Barnes and Noble gift card, ironically, someone at my church who definitely is very patriarchal. And I started doing some research, and I found Jesus Feminist by Sarah Bessie. And it, like, blew my world apart. If you have not read it, it is spectacular.
Speaker 1:It is a little bit progressive. Well, it's very progressive. But I mean, it's a little more kind than maybe I would be at this point in my life.
Speaker 2:She good introductory. Exactly.
Speaker 1:Yes. She's trying to say, okay, I know you're hearing complementarianism, but what if there's another way? So she's not trying to alienate people. You know? But amazing book.
Speaker 1:Highly recommend. She's just an incredible person. She's got a lot of really good books.
Speaker 2:Her whole argument is that patriarchy was not God's dream for humanity. And the church should do more beyond man made restrictions that limit women's voices and their calling. Mhmm. So just a softer way. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:She's a little bit kinder, but we're more aggressive.
Speaker 1:Just a little bit. We assume you've been on this journey for at least a hot minute and that you need some aggression in your life. But I think a lot of these verses we were talking about this earlier, when it comes to women being the only submissive partner and when it comes to women being silent in church, we'll talk about several of these verses throughout the episode. But do you read it through the lens of Jesus? Because you probably can theologically interpret it one way or the other.
Speaker 1:It's either it was only for one group of people or it was for everyone. But do you read it through the lens of Jesus? Because through the lens of Jesus, it says equality and love. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:A lot of people, when they come at us, will say, well, two thousand years of church fathers have said things this way. What makes you feel like you can argue against it? Mhmm. And my argument is Jesus. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Literally Jesus. Just look at look at how he lived his life. Look at the documentation that we have of how he lived his life and how he treated people.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. So I
Speaker 2:don't care what all these church fathers who are pushing forward their power
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Say. Is it actually biblical, or is it patriarchy wearing a Bible costume? It's such
Speaker 1:a weird argument because I could not possibly care less what two thousand years of pastors have said. I could not care less because I have Jesus. Mhmm. Now, the people in the Old Testament, they did have to listen to a lot of that kind of
Speaker 2:stuff because they didn't have Jesus yet.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. But we do. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And so why wouldn't you go to the source? Go to the source. And people say, well, Paul said this. Well, my pastor said this. Okay.
Speaker 2:Remember that that's not Jesus. Mhmm. And we get a lot of pushback. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh. When we talk about Paul, I did a video on it was probably one of our most watched TikToks on Paul is not Jesus and the anger, the absolute rage from the Christian community over literally saying Paul
Speaker 2:is not Jesus. Because they use so much of Paul's statements Mhmm. To push forward power and control. Power and control. And it keeps their power and control in line with God.
Speaker 2:Right? God tells me that I have ultimate authority. And I don't wanna be questioned on But when you say Jesus, they get upset.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It was a lot of, well, Paul was speaking directly through God. Well, Paul was a human. Regardless of what you think, Paul was a human, and I think he'd be the first one to back me up on that. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:I don't think Paul's up there like, Alyssa, screw you, actually.
Speaker 2:I don't think that's what's happening. No. People comment a lot like, well, if you just read your Bible. If you just read your Bible and here's a couple of verses. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:But biblical literacy doesn't just mean, can you quote the verse?
Speaker 1:Right. Right.
Speaker 2:Sure. I can quote a million verses at you. But does your interpretation of that verse look like Jesus?
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Jesus didn't hoard power. Jesus doesn't create an only boys discipleship club. Jesus had female disciples, whether or not the writers
Speaker 1:of the Bible felt the need to mention them. It is very well known that his mother, that the mother of John was there, that, like, many Mary Magdalene, many women were right there. Mhmm. Probably, interestingly, the wife of Peter, though she's not mentioned. Lots of them.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Jesus doesn't tell women to shrink. And I'd like to dive into what that actually looks like because you hear that a lot. But I think we don't realize what shrinking looks like. Mhmm. I know that's a weird statement.
Speaker 2:But indirectly or directly, women are taught to be less than in the church, and they slap God's name on it. And that looks like taking up less space, speaking less confidently, apologizing constantly, making everyone else comfortable first. Mhmm. Suppressing your anger, softening your intelligence, downplaying your accomplishments so that you don't intimidate or make a man uncomfortable. Asking permission for things that men are simply expected to do.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Carrying emotional labor silently. Being endlessly available.
Speaker 1:Like a pastor's wife. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Being agreeable. Never sounding like too much. Mhmm. You are more. And in church spaces, it looks like teaching girls to prepare for marriage more than their purpose.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Which we've all had stories like that. I did not go to college anticipating that my degree would be for work. Mhmm. I have an art degree, if you guys don't know that. But I just thought, okay, I'll go to college because that's what I'm supposed to do.
Speaker 2:But at the end of the day, I'm gonna get married. Right. So far, that hasn't happened. Praising women for their submission, their silence, their modesty Mhmm. Or support roles.
Speaker 2:Treating women in leadership as intimidating. Calling men strong leaders for the same behavior that women get criticized for. Expecting women to volunteer endlessly while men hold authority roles. That they get paid for. An example for this would be think about your holidays.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Think about the labor that many women put into creating nice warm spaces holidays, like cooking a meal. Mhmm. Who prays for that meal that the women labored over? The men.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Why? Who cuts the turkey?
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Sorry. Telling women that their highest spiritual virtue is obedience to male leadership rather than obedience to God.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That one kills me.
Speaker 2:Assuming men are natural teachers and women are natural helpers.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:So any man or woman that doesn't fall into that category, you feel like you're betraying God. Yeah. Like you're not fulfilling your spiritual role. Treating women's voices as emotional while men's voices are authoritative, biblical, logical.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. I think for Brie and I, we've dealt with this a lot because I don't know if you've noticed, but we are very big personalities. No. Not us. And to shrink into that box and I know that you guys feel this too.
Speaker 1:To shrink into this itty bitty box that the church has made for you. It's like a one by one little square there. Okay? It's horrible. It's awful.
Speaker 1:Your clothes have to change. I was just talking to our mom about this the other day. I was like, you know, when I was in the church space at the time where I was, you know, working there and volunteering there and there all the time. Right? I was dressing a certain way.
Speaker 1:My hair was a certain color. And now that I've been out of that very and I didn't think of it at the time as a controlling space. Now that you're out? Now that I'm no. Now that I'm out of that controlling space, I'm dressing the way that I want to dress, which apparently is all in black and with rock bracelets because I'm very into rocks now.
Speaker 1:And I'm dying my hair the colors that I want to and stuff like that. And I don't have to be smaller anymore. I don't have to be this artificial version of myself because God doesn't want that. He doesn't want a fake version of you. Remember that women, he made you with all of the skills and gifts and likes and dislikes that you have.
Speaker 1:Just like he made the men. We tell the men, oh, you have a a strong sense of leadership. You need to develop that gift from God. And yet when we do the spiritual gifts test, if the woman isn't like, administration or prayer or then we're like, no. No.
Speaker 1:No. Tamp that down. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:We're so often told in the Christian spaces that men and women are equal Mhmm. But have different roles. Mhmm. They're separate but equal. And if we've learned anything throughout history, it's that separate is never equal.
Speaker 2:Look at the black community and what they had to deal with. They had separate bathrooms. They had separate drinking fountains. They had separate schools. And they were always a little bit less.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Or a lot a bit less.
Speaker 2:Or a lot a bit less. Look at what we're doing to women now. Mhmm. Just because you call us quote unquote equal does not make us equal to you. And what we're saying is that God created us equally.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. And it's not up to you
Speaker 1:to decide. Right. Well, that's the thing. We always wanna take the control from God. We always wanna say, like, no.
Speaker 1:No. No. God, I hear you. But women are equal. But always a but in the sentence.
Speaker 1:And Jesus was great, but excuse you. Stupid. There is no but in these sentences. God stop making face. God gets the authority.
Speaker 1:Okay? The god who created you gets to say, women are equal. Because Jesus modeled that. Jesus never asked for submission. He never asked women to be quiet.
Speaker 1:He consistently modeled equality.
Speaker 2:And if that's what Jesus did. A lot of people will cherry pick the verse Genesis three sixteen out of the Bible, which is right at the beginning with Adam and Eve. And it basically says, he shall rule over you. This verse comes after shame, blame, exile.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:It's describing the brokenness of sin. It's not prescribing the beauty of God's design. This is not beautiful.
Speaker 1:No. This is a curse. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:But for some reason, the Christian community has built their theology, built their doctrine off of a curse.
Speaker 1:Because it's convenient. Because it's power. Yeah. If you they say absolute power corrupts absolutely. Right?
Speaker 1:And somewhere along the line, a man said, look, God gave me absolute power and probably went straight to hell after that. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Because here we are. Or look at we talked about cults earlier. I was watching some stuff on the Waco cult. And you look at cult leaders, and you think to yourself, how did these people get brainwashed into believing that this one guy Mhmm. Had ultimate authority?
Speaker 2:This one guy, I forget his name, one guy said, hey, I am a prophet. Mhmm. Only I speak to Jesus. You don't know this stuff. You don't need to worry your pretty little head with what God says.
Speaker 2:Only I do, and only I can interpret it. So that just conveniently gives me more power.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Maybe in the Christian community, we're doing the same thing. I think we are. And you hear a lot of non Protestant church people call Christianity a cult, and this is why. Because so many of us won't look deeper, won't pop the bubble and step out and say, okay.
Speaker 1:But from a different perspective, from not just listening to my pastor because it's easy just to listen to your pastor. It's easy just to be like, well, whatever. Especially if it doesn't impact you. And it's kinda like what we said before, but they say a lot of people in and maybe that's not this isn't culturally today because we're in such a weird place. But they do say that a lot of marriages that preach complementarianism, which is the woman being submissive, don't actually live like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And that would have been our parents growing up. They would have preached to you that the woman should be submissive. But that was never how they lived their lives. Our mom has not been submissive a day in her life.
Speaker 1:Okay? Not one single moment. Sorry, mom. But because it didn't directly impact them, because they chose to live their lives in a different way, they continued to preach it, and they didn't necessarily question it at that time. No.
Speaker 1:They've certainly questioned it now. But at that time, they didn't need to. It wasn't directly in their faces. Because things were working out for them. Exactly.
Speaker 1:But it is important that even if something isn't in your face, it doesn't directly impact you. Like, think about we're gonna start talking a lot on social media about the LGBTQ plus community. That doesn't directly impact me as a person. It doesn't directly impact Brie as a person, but because it impacts people God loves, it is important for us to figure out theologically what God meant.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Because, again, if you look at how Jesus lived his life, he loved loudly. Mhmm. He didn't shy away from the marginalized people. He celebrated them.
Speaker 2:He surrounded himself with them. And the LGBTQ plus community needs Jesus' love as much as the people sitting in the front rows of your church.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. And yet so many people get excluded because we decided what God meant. Exactly. Now there's several other verses we wanna talk about because you'll get all of these thrown at you. So hopefully, that gave you a good base on, I
Speaker 2:don't know, just feminism. Feminism, man. Feminism. We are more. Dang it.
Speaker 1:But here's a few other verses that we've had thrown at us over the last I mean, I get I've probably had half the bible thrown at me. Not the good parts. All the bad parts.
Speaker 2:They collected all the bad parts, crumpled them up, spat on them, loaded them into a straw, and shot them at Alyssa.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Right at me. It was a really big problem for me. And I got splattered from the background. Brie handles the comments, so she deals with a lot of this stuff.
Speaker 1:So one of them that somebody, they literally just put the reference in the comments. They didn't even put the text, just the reference. I was like Okay. Have you ever heard of cherry picking from the Bible? Because this is it.
Speaker 1:But that's Titus three nine. And so it says, but avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and arguments and quarrels about the law. So people will throw this at you, particularly at women, to say, like, calm down. Mhmm. Paul said, be quiet.
Speaker 1:Paul said, don't argue with each other. Don't bother with these things. But that's not as as so many of the verses that we go through, that is not what it meant. It didn't mean don't call out bad theology. It didn't mean don't talk about patriarchy.
Speaker 1:It didn't mean don't ask hard questions. And I can tell you that with absolute certainty because Paul throughout his life asked hard questions and called out bad theology and even fought the patriarchy in the way that he interacted with women. Mhmm. So Titus, which is the book where this comes from, is a pastoral letter. Titus.
Speaker 2:I meant he'd Bruce J. I'm just first and second.
Speaker 1:Are you gonna eventually get the whole bible?
Speaker 2:For second and third
Speaker 1:Jude and Rabbi. That's not the whole bible. I hate to tell you. No. But so like most of Paul's books of the Bible, and frankly, most of the New Testament, this is a letter.
Speaker 1:Right? And he's talking about false teaching. He's talking about people being hyper legalistic. So there were people at this time that were saying things like, hey, if you convert to Judaism as a man, you have to be circumcised as an adult man, which I mean, I'm not a man. I don't have those parts.
Speaker 1:But And I
Speaker 2:don't think they had anesthesia back then.
Speaker 1:I don't think so. And so there were things like that. Like, these legalistic things that people were arguing over. And they were like, well, if you don't do that, you don't get to be a Jesus follower. And things like genealogies.
Speaker 1:It's silly things. Things that people were doing just to like in our comment section, right? Just to be like, I know more than you do. Mhmm. And you know those kinds of arguments.
Speaker 1:Okay? There's a difference in the vibe of that versus, hey, equality. We know that. Right? That's logical.
Speaker 1:And you can pretend it's not if you want to, if it fits your narrative. But the rest of the world is looking at you and being like, you must be kidding. You must be kidding. And we can see Paul arguing all throughout Acts. He argued in the synagogue.
Speaker 1:And then later he argues in a lecture hall. In Galatians, he has a public confrontation with Peter. So if Paul is preaching, never argue. Never have an argument amongst yourselves, not ever. Never discuss equality.
Speaker 1:He's doing a really bad job. He's actually a truly terrible example. And that's the thing is we have to take all of these things as one big message, not individual tiny messages. Because if it's one big message, then we have to take context into consideration. And that's hard.
Speaker 1:So ask yourself if you are arguing, because that's not that there's no wisdom here. There is certainly some wisdom here. But is this a debate for your ego? Or is this a debate for clarity, for justice, for accounting for harm? Who benefits here?
Speaker 1:Becomes the question. Is it you and only you? Or is it the broader community? And literally, what would Jesus do? Mhmm.
Speaker 2:How would Jesus argue? Would Jesus argue the same way that you are? Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And if the answer's no, then stop it. And Jesus did create conflict. Pretty much every step he took, he created conflict. Yeah.
Speaker 2:He was progressive. He was pushing boundaries.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. And you'll very rarely hear this argument thrown at men in a theological seminary arguing about some tiny little point. And yet that's what Paul was talking about. Instead, you hear it used against abuse survivors, progressive Christians, women, people deconstructing, people talking about accountability, that's where you're gonna hear this verse flung about like a spitball in the wind. But it should be used against people who are just arguing stupidness.
Speaker 1:And you'll know. You'll know when you know. Now the next one that I have, I have just a few here, is Matthew eighteen fifteen. And this one basically says, if someone sins against you, go directly to them and confront just them, not have a public debate. Now this one becomes harder in the current world.
Speaker 1:You don't say. Because back in the day, having a public argument meant going to the public square and shouting at each other. Kinda like what they did to Jesus. Yeah. But now it can simply mean, according to the people on the internet, having an argument on the internet.
Speaker 1:And so you'll hear this one a lot in the context of if you are a Christian and I am a Christian I should put that in quotes. If you are a, quote, Christian and I may quote Christian, then we need to resolve whatever conflicts we have, not just personal conflicts. We'll get into that in a second. But any biblical arguments, we need to resolve those in private. We don't need to talk about them broadly.
Speaker 2:But also just, like, not disagreements.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Things that you're actually doing wrong. So a lot of times you'll see in the smaller conservative churches, hey, the youth pastor was hitting on another teen. Mhmm. Let's not go to authorities. Let's discuss this as a church.
Speaker 1:I think this potentially is the biggest reason that the church is collapsing right now. Because this verse gives an excuse to not be accountable in any way. Because there was just a church out in California within the last couple of months, And one of their pastors had been caught making women very uncomfortable. I don't think they've officially charged him with anything, but a lot of women have come forward and said that he was very inappropriate with them. He was also caught he he did prophecy online.
Speaker 1:So he would get online and do, like, TikToks and stuff. And he was caught basically looking up information about people and, you know, just faking it the whole time. Like a fake psychic. Pretty much. And instead of this happened years ago, and he was quietly, like, put into a less public role and then quietly let go.
Speaker 1:But no one ever told the church or told the public. So he was able to go on and continue behaving the way he was behaving. There was no accountability. Mhmm. Because the church uses this verse And others that they cherry pick.
Speaker 1:But like, where it says, okay, well, we don't we don't wanna harm his faith. But at the end of the day, what you're protecting Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Is the church's power. They say that they don't wanna make other people question God.
Speaker 1:But
Speaker 2:instead, people are looking at the church and saying, why aren't you protecting his people rather than your institution? So that's why time and time again, you'll see youth pastor caught doing this, pastor caught doing this, man of god caught doing this over and over and over again.
Speaker 1:That's what our feed is filled with. Yep. Well, mean, even in my own personal story, when a man decided to be very, very inappropriate with me and I went to the church, it was the same message. Resolve this quietly between you and him. And when I said, are you gonna remove him from his position?
Speaker 1:No. Because we need to do this quietly between just you and him.
Speaker 2:And also they donate a lot of money to the church.
Speaker 1:There's that too. So this one, what then does it mean? Right? What was Matthew talking about here? Because there's got to be a message.
Speaker 1:And this one does come from Jesus. And it's Jesus discussing community reconciliation and interpersonal things. So not, You've been abusive towards me, but instead to say, Hey, you know what? You said something that offended me. Instead of going to the community and saying, look how awful this person is.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna come to you first and be like, hey, that was hurtful. Because there's wisdom there. Right? If I go to the community and shout about how terrible you are, our relationship is over. We're never recovering from that.
Speaker 2:Or you said this. Is this what you meant? Because this is how I interpreted it. And then that's a discussion. But if it's actual abuse Mhmm.
Speaker 2:No. Don't handle that quietly. Handle that loudly.
Speaker 1:Well, we know that this only works I mean, just take this in in logic. Right? We know this only works when both people are safe people. When both people have relatively equal power levels.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:So not one is a pastor and one is a teenager. And when the conflict is just between those people. Mhmm. So if the conflict affects the broader community, then it needs to be brought to the broader community.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:So that's kind of that one. And you can see examples of this not happening. Right? So that's why we do need context because you can see Paul rebuking Peter in Galatians. You can see Paul naming false teachers in first and second Timothy.
Speaker 1:You can see Jesus criticizing the pharisees in public quite literally all the time. I think he spent about 80% of his time just being like, you're stupid. You're stupid. And you're stupid. So if something impacts just you, and the other person is a safe person, and you have a good power dynamic where you're relatively equal, okay, then you can go to that person in private.
Speaker 1:If those conditions aren't met,
Speaker 2:then you need extra help. Paul gets weaponized throughout the Christian circle Mhmm. To keep women down Mhmm. Because of some of the things that he said. Now, like you said, a lot of his words were letters to specific
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Churches addressing specific issues. I'm thinking like first Timothy two, where he says, I don't permit a woman to teach or have authority over a man. Mhmm. And that verse will get thrown at us
Speaker 1:a lot.
Speaker 2:But, again, context matters. This was a letter written to a specific church in a specific situation where there was false teaching and there was a major concern over that. So he wrote this letter to this specific group of people, but we have taken it way out of context and decided that no woman Mhmm. Should have authority in church. We'll give her the little piddly tasks that we don't want.
Speaker 2:Yep. They can teach Sunday school, but only in certain churches. Mhmm. Not all of them. Like, Beth Allison Barr talks about how she I think her husband was a youth pastor in a church.
Speaker 2:And she was supposed to go teach Sunday school, but they didn't want her to teach any boys over the age of 13.
Speaker 1:16. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Keep in mind, she is a professor at a college, and she teaches Biblical theology. Biblical theology and what is it? Old oldness.
Speaker 1:Medieval. She preaches Medieval.
Speaker 2:Medieval history. Medieval history. She has a ton of knowledge, a ton of authority. But yet, they don't want her to teach bible stories to boys over 13.
Speaker 1:Basically, Yeah. And think of what you miss. Think about that. Because when women don't use their gifts, there's a consequence. People will often say, well, Women just want power.
Speaker 1:Right? Like, why can't they just be content teaching Sunday school or teaching youth group or whatever? It's just because they want power. No. It's because the world loses something.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. And let's stop there. Women already have power. Mhmm. Women already have authority.
Speaker 2:They just don't wanna admit it. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Because it's God given.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:You don't get to usurp God.
Speaker 2:In the same vein that I've seen this all over TikTok lately, why did these women fight for for us to have jobs? Ew. I hate this.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And it's like, women didn't fight to have work. They were already working. Mhmm. They were fighting to get paid equally for their work. Yep.
Speaker 2:And frankly That's
Speaker 1:a offshoot. We fight for you to have the choices that you want. Yeah. I think stay at home moms are amazing. I have had periods of stay at home momhood in my life.
Speaker 1:I think women are incredible. And whatever in a safe, healthy way you choose to do, more power to you. But I want you to make that choice. Mhmm. I want it not to be a man who made the choice for you.
Speaker 1:I want it to be you saying, I'm using all of my gifts and talents. And if today it's stay at home mom, that's great. If tomorrow it's not, that's great too. I'll go where God wants me
Speaker 2:to go. Mhmm. Alright. So real quick, I wanna
Speaker 1:go over just one last one. And it's actually a combination of two verses. So two last ones, but they'll be real quick. And that is Exodus 20 verse seven and Ephesians four verse 29. So these are basically Exodus is don't take the the name of your Lord God in vain.
Speaker 1:And Ephesians is essentially don't let any harmful words come out of your mouth. A lot of people will use this to say don't swear, you know,
Speaker 2:things like I be cussing. Cuss your ass.
Speaker 1:But what we'll see here is things like, don't say OMG. And I can't say it because I was raised to not say it. So it just it will not naturally come from me. But you will also see, don't swear. Don't say anything that might be offensive to someone else.
Speaker 1:And I find that hilarious because it's so cultural. The not swearing thing is so cultural. I went to Ireland when I was younger, and swearing is part of their language. It's not really that offensive. And so where do they fit into this narrative?
Speaker 1:Whereas in The US, we tend to be more stringent and kinda mean about that. But in the broader context, I think the OMG one is the bigger issue here. And we will use it to say, just don't say that phrase. Never say that phrase. Never even use the acronym.
Speaker 1:Just don't do it. OMGosh. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I did that when I when I was little so much.
Speaker 1:When I would text people. Oh, and gosh. Because you had to be specific. You didn't want them to think that you were saying that other thing.
Speaker 2:But then there's even more conservative people that were like, well, that's just a replacement for that other word. So you shouldn't even say, oh, my gosh. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I need to be able to say things. Okay? I need exclamations in my life. But in the broader context, the Hebrew here is not really talking about God's name. Now, I'm not saying change all your language and start cussing all the time if that makes you uncomfortable.
Speaker 1:But it's not really talking about his name in and of itself. It's more talking about his identity, his authority, and his representation. So that means more. And again, we like really easy, cut and dry, don't do this, don't do this. But instead, it really is saying, don't do something falsely in God's name.
Speaker 1:Don't spew hate
Speaker 2:and slap God's name on it.
Speaker 1:Yep. Don't say this is for God when God would want nothing to do with it. Now I do have questions about our Elisha story from the other day where he invoked bears.
Speaker 2:Listen. I'm that was the episode that, hey, this stuff doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I was very confused. But examples of this that we see all the time is God told me this. God told me I was gonna marry you. How many Christian women have heard that?
Speaker 1:God told me that you
Speaker 2:were doing something wrong, and I need to bring it up with you.
Speaker 1:Yep. Or spiritual abuse or super hateful ideology or claiming that God is endorsing cruelty like we see in The US constantly right now. Mhmm. Or pastors weaponizing your faith and telling you, if you wanna follow Jesus, you have to do this, this, and this that aren't in the Bible because I said so. Especially for women.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. But I think saying OMG doesn't really dishonor God all that much. I sincerely don't think he cares.
Speaker 2:I remember the first time I think it was one of my it was someone older than me in the church.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And they were saying that, and I was, like, about to fall off my This is
Speaker 1:the most sinful thing you could do. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:You can say that? But again, it's like, is there anything really wrong with that? Mhmm.
Speaker 1:I'm really, I think I believed for a long time because it's one of those little things that sits in the back of your head and you don't think about. It felt like the most sinful thing that I could do.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Just to say that phrase.
Speaker 2:There's a song, I don't know if it's Drake or what, but there's a song called that.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And I was like, oh, I really like this song. I can't sing it because it's
Speaker 1:the worst song that was ever written. But that's not it, guys. It's saying God endorses hate. Mhmm. Because not only does that stick God's name on something God doesn't want.
Speaker 1:It would be like if I said, alright, well, is Brianna endorsed hatred of cheese.
Speaker 2:All cheese should be burned and disintegrated. Sponsored by Brianna.
Speaker 1:That would be offensive to you if someone slapped your name on something you would never want to endorse. Mhmm. So I think that's a big problem. But the bigger problem is that then people look at it and they say this is what God is. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And that's why God God says this. That's why he says, don't do this. Because now these people don't want anything to do with God. And you can't even blame them for it.
Speaker 2:Well, all throughout our social media, people will comment and be like, this is why I left the church. Mhmm. This is why I want to have nothing to do with the church. Yep. Because right now, the Christian church, if you say I'm a Christian, to the world right now, that means I hate you.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. It means that I don't believe you have as much value as I do. Yep. It means that I crave power over your safety. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And that is not what God wants. That is not what Jesus reflected. And that's not what Alyssa and I are gonna stand for anymore.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. And we're quite loud about it. We're very loud. As it turns out. Okay.
Speaker 1:So next week, we're gonna do something that is feeling very personal to us right now. I don't
Speaker 2:know what you mean.
Speaker 1:We're gonna talk about anxiety. I get overwhelmed
Speaker 2:so easily.
Speaker 1:I have talked about this before. I struggle with anxiety pretty much every day of my life. Brie is going through a major job change, and that's giving her a lot of anxiety as well.
Speaker 2:You guys pray for me.
Speaker 1:And the Bible says, don't be anxious. But what does that mean? And how do you live like that?
Speaker 2:And how do you handle it when sometimes for the last three weeks, like every, I would say, thirty minutes, all of a sudden, your heart feels like, oh, I just jumped out of a plane and I can't stop it.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. And I know we laugh and we joke, but this is a very serious topic for both of us. I have dealt with anxiety for so many years of my life. And my therapist is probably just tired of me, frankly. But we're gonna talk about that because I think so many of us are dealing with that right now.
Speaker 1:And I don't know. I I wanna talk about it. So that's what we're gonna do.
Speaker 2:So there. So there. It's our
Speaker 1:podcast anyways.
Speaker 2:So come back for that.
Speaker 1:Bring your neighbors. Bring your friends. Follow us on social media if you don't. We're mostly on TikTok and Instagram.
Speaker 2:Join the club. We have we're listened to in, like, 80 plus countries.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:So if you know anybody throughout the world Mhmm. That you feel like maybe is not one of those 80 countries,
Speaker 1:share it with them.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We would like to be eighty, ninety, 90 plus.
Speaker 1:No one in Antarctica is listening to us, and that's really bothersome to me. Tell the penguins. Yeah. Alright. We'll talk to you guys next week.
Speaker 1:Bye. Love you. Love you.