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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 name is Bree. We're two sisters passionate about all things faith and feminism. We believe that Jesus trusted, respected, and encouraged women to teach and preach his word.
Speaker 1:And apparently, that's controversial. Get comfy. This
Speaker 2:is too much for you. Are you feeling haunted?
Speaker 1:I feel like they're confused because it is still straight up August.
Speaker 2:I'm feeling very Halloween y.
Speaker 1:Last week, you were feeling Christmas y, and I was feeling Halloween y.
Speaker 2:Well, here's the deal. I'm feeling both. Because for me, the holiday season I love that I blended that music into the holiday season. For me, it's like Halloween Mhmm. Through the end of the year.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. One big holiday. But then after the new year, I
Speaker 1:have an incredible amount of depression. It's rough because there is so much shoved into, like, a three month period. And then there's just nothingness. Spread out that stuff. Like, why are we only having holidays in three months of the year?
Speaker 1:I don't and like the most inconvenient three months too. Because everybody's in school. It's cold. It's snowy. It's hard to get places.
Speaker 2:Yeah. There's been many times, like Christmas Eve, we're supposed to drive an hour away and go visit our family at some party. And there's been several Christmases that we just couldn't come because of a snowstorm.
Speaker 1:Because it's icy and disgusting. Yeah. I don't know. I don't understand. But in case you were wondering why we're spooky spooky today Yeah.
Speaker 1:We we are. We're continuing our spooky theme. Last week, we talked about a witch. And today, we're talking about mysticism. And on the topic of mysticism, just to buckle our seat belts and get ready,
Speaker 2:I
Speaker 1:experienced a mystic event yesterday. You
Speaker 2:guys wanna hear what it was?
Speaker 1:I'm Oh. Yes. I'm breath. I'm hearing a loud yes. So
Speaker 2:we have a magic eight ball in the house. Of course. And I was playing with it the other day, and I was like, I feel like it probably has a name. It's speaking to me. Is your name and then I think I asked a random name and it was like, no.
Speaker 2:And then I said, okay. Is your name Kyle?
Speaker 1:And it said,
Speaker 2:yes. And then I tested it again. I was like, you're sure your name's Kyle? And it's like, without a doubt. And then my nephew started playing with it.
Speaker 2:And he was like, his name isn't Kyle? And then he kept being a little shady. And then I took it back and I said, Kyle, is this you? And it said, yes. So we have a sentient magic eight ball in the house just letting everybody know.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And just in case you haven't tuned out because you think we're insane, We've also decided that the the you know the window where the little magic eight ball part is? Mhmm. And we've decided it's its magic stomach. I don't know why.
Speaker 2:Because you obviously answer from your stomach. Obviously, that's how it works.
Speaker 1:When people shake me up,
Speaker 2:it's a little answer pops in my stomach. My stomach says, ah.
Speaker 1:But today, we're talking about real missus. Not whatever the crap happened to Brie yesterday.
Speaker 2:Sci fi?
Speaker 1:No. Not that. So mysticism within Christianity is super interesting and has a weird history and has kind of been tossed aside by, I would say, the modern, white American church. Western church. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And it's really interesting because I've had some experiences with it, with people from different cultures, and we've read a ton about it. And Beth Allison Barr, our best friend Our best friend, Beth. Also discusses this a lot. So we wanted to kinda just talk about what it looks like and why Christians are so afraid of it.
Speaker 1:Especially when you grow up reading the Bible and it's jam packed full of supernatural events.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Right? Things that are not happening in our world today that I see. We're parting the seas.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. We're bringing people that are dead back to life.
Speaker 2:We are curing diseases that people didn't even know that they had. There's crazy stuff happening in the Bible.
Speaker 1:People are being swallowed by whales.
Speaker 2:Women are turning to salt. And yet today, we look around in 2026 and we're like, miracles can't happen. Right. And that was in the Bible times, but not
Speaker 1:now. Mhmm. Now, if you're not sure what mysticism means, it, in a biblical sense, kind of can include things like dreams or visions or prophecy, hearing God, contemplative prayer, spiritual gifts is another one. Healing, like you said, when angels come down and speak with people. So lots of things that we see all the time happening in the Bible, but we're not comfortable necessarily saying that they could happen now.
Speaker 1:And we're also not really super comfortable saying they happened in the bible. We often do try and kind of explain them away.
Speaker 2:Or our brain just turns off. I think
Speaker 1:our brain turns off that those are strange events. Yeah. Like, of course Jonah got swallowed by a whale. Yeah. The the oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:Did your brain break? The flannelgraph told me so. She forgot the word for flannelgraph. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I had to think about it for a while.
Speaker 1:So we're kind of using the term mysticism broadly today. So there's a lot of definitions. We're not doing something super, super specific because there's a lot of interpretations of it in the bible. There's a lot of ways it's being used. So it's important as always to remember that the bible was written for everyone, but it wasn't written to us.
Speaker 1:It was written to the ancient Israelites. And the ancient Israelites didn't have their boxes. Right? So we have boxes. We have our religion.
Speaker 1:Then we have science. Then we have psychology. And then we have supernatural events. And then we have natural events. Right?
Speaker 1:Like, we kind of keep them all separate. Mhmm. But the Israelites wouldn't have had that. Everything kind of flowed together. So the supernatural world really interacted with their everyday.
Speaker 1:And that's why they had these dreams that they took at face value. They were like, okay, God is speaking to me. And I think
Speaker 2:they understood their faith differently than we do. I think they expected and anticipated that the divine would communicate with them. Mhmm. And we expect and anticipate that that's not happening. And if
Speaker 1:it does, that it doesn't compute. It doesn't work in our faith.
Speaker 2:It's also very limited. Mhmm. So I feel like people are comfortable being like, okay, I need God to speak to me, so I'm gonna open up my Bible.
Speaker 1:And whatever verses are here, my magic Bible,
Speaker 2:whatever verses are here are gonna mean something to me, and that is what I have to interpret. And I think that's the level,
Speaker 1:at least the church that
Speaker 2:you and I grew up in, the white evangelical church
Speaker 1:of the USA. Right. That's the level that we're comfortable with.
Speaker 2:But if someone were to say, I was sitting in prayer and an angel came to me Mhmm. No freaking way.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Not even just no freaking way. It's like, no, and also you must be worshiping the devil. Yeah. Like, no, and you're trying to lead me astray.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. And it's really interesting because we're very comfortable asking people to believe in a supernatural god. In a unseen figure in the sky that created all life. And yet we're not comfortable saying, and my dreams could mean something. Like Or
Speaker 2:no. This isn't really connected to what we're talking about right now. But like, aliens, ghosts, demons, all of these other things.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. We're not comfortable with that. Right.
Speaker 2:But we are perfectly comfortable saying that God's in the sky
Speaker 1:and he created everything. And for argument's sake, again, is off on a little bit of a tangent, but we talked about the witch of Endor last week. And she brought forth, or God brought forth, whichever part you decide to believe, the kind of ghost of Samuel. Right? Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Samuel was dead. His spirit was brought forth, and we would kind of see that as a ghost. And yet, Christians are comfortable sitting there saying, well, but that doesn't exist.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Ghosts don't exist. Yeah. But the Bible isn't saying ghosts don't exist.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:The Bible is saying, maybe stay clear of that.
Speaker 1:Right. Right. Right. So in the Bible, like Brie said, it the Bible has rules against certain spiritual practices. We learned about that last week.
Speaker 1:In Deuteronomy 18, it talks about divination, sorcery, necromancy. Hey, don't do that crap. Right? But it didn't say don't do those things because they don't work, which makes us uncomfortable. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:It didn't say don't do those things because you should never seek out supernatural guidance. It basically said don't do those things because you're seeking out guidance from the wrong places. And if you're seeking out guidance from god, now certain things are are okay, can mean new things. So there's lots of examples specifically in Genesis, but throughout the bible, of Jacob has dreams of a ladder and a stairway. Joseph has tons and tons of dreams.
Speaker 1:Right? And then interprets his dreams in Egypt. Daniel has dreams and visions. Solomon in first Kings has he encounters God in a dream. And so there's a lot of that imagery.
Speaker 2:I guess you could say too, when Saul went to the witch of Endor, he was seeking God
Speaker 1:Mhmm. In that
Speaker 2:moment because he was saying, God isn't talking to me. Yeah. So I need God to talk to me. And you could say that's why possibly we saw dead Samuel.
Speaker 1:Poor Samuel. He had a rough time in that story. A really great verse for this is in Numbers twelve six, where God basically says, when there's a prophet among you so not just anybody, but like when there's a prophet specifically among you, I make myself known in visions and I speak in dreams. So why wouldn't that apply to today? My dreams are freaking weird.
Speaker 1:Don't know that we should be interpreting your dreams.
Speaker 2:Your dreams are super weird. Listen. And I think that comes from our mother. Absolutely, it does. I feel like if God wants to talk to me through my dreams, he's gonna have to be very specific.
Speaker 2:He's gonna have to say, Brianna. It's me, God. This is meant for you to remember. Because also weird things happen in my dreams, and the heck if I'm remembering those.
Speaker 1:You're telling me you don't want, like, a Joseph dream where he's like, and the stalks of wheat did this and blah blah blah.
Speaker 2:No. I am not that girl. I will say I did have two reoccurring nightmares as a kid, and one of them was going to space.
Speaker 1:One of mine was the house lit on fire. So I feel like these were not great.
Speaker 2:What was wrong with those?
Speaker 1:I don't know. Several things, at least.
Speaker 2:Mine was like, I'm terrified of space. And also, this woman looks like my mom, but she's not really my mom, and she's probably a
Speaker 1:monster. Monster. So So back back to to the the Bible. Bible. It also talks in Joel too, it says sons and daughters will prophesy.
Speaker 1:Old people will dream dreams. Young people will see visions. So we see this consistently throughout the Bible where it says mystical magical things are gonna happen. Benson. Whether you like it or not.
Speaker 1:Boon. And then in Acts two, so now we're in the New Testament. We're not even just talking Old Testament. We're talking New Testament here. It talks about Pentecost and how, like, okay.
Speaker 1:Now people now lots of people, your average person is prophesying and because we have the Holy Spirit. Right? So if Pentecost means god's spirit is here and producing prophecies and dreams and visions among just everyday people, you don't even have to be a prophet, just everyday people, then why did we decide that that stopped? Why did we decide that makes you weird as a Christian?
Speaker 2:I think our faith became much more accessible
Speaker 1:Mhmm. To everybody now that Jesus came and left the Holy Spirit to us. But, yeah, people people really limit it now.
Speaker 2:It seems like God is very limited in people's lives. Whereas in the Bible, anything could happen.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. I love I don't know if you guys have caught on to this. We really enjoy Disney. Mhmm. And part of why I enjoy Disney as an adult some people hate it passionately, and that's fine.
Speaker 1:That's your prerogative. But I love it because of the sense of wonder, the sense of childlike magic that you can have when you go there. Maybe not everyone experiences that, but that is something that happens for me. And it feels like, okay, this is something somewhere where some magic can happen. Right?
Speaker 1:And I think of that as how the Israelites experienced faith. When you were in a space with God, you were in a space of wonder. You were Aw. Yeah. You were in a space where some magic could happen, something supernatural that humanity can't explain.
Speaker 1:We love to explain stuff. We love to have reasons.
Speaker 2:I think in 2026 and, you know, probably a few years ago too, we love to explain things away. Mhmm. We love to explain away the supernatural.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And I guess that's just a good question is, how do you experience your faith? Mhmm. Is your experience of faith just limited to devotions and going to church on Sunday because you have a very big God out there who can do anything. And I think that's the difference in people who experience their faith more mystically, is they expect and anticipate God to be amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I think it's a way of controlling God. We we've talked about that many times. We love to try and control God. And if all God can do is speak to you through the 66 books of the Bible, if all God can do is not perform miracles anymore because that was just during the time of the apostles, well, then God is a little more controlled.
Speaker 1:God is a little more explainable. God is a little less weird. But the reality of God that I see in the Bible is that he is unexplainable. He is unlimited. And frankly, he's a little weird.
Speaker 1:There's a song there. Is there? Unexplainable. Indescribable.
Speaker 2:You want me to keep going?
Speaker 1:Yeah. I would love that.
Speaker 2:And that's a church song, you guys. So be proud.
Speaker 1:Now, the Bible doesn't just have these, you know, prophesying things. Because some of us that's, I would say, the more comfortable version of mysticism for most Christians, because we hear that all the time. Prophesying and dreams and whatever. But there's some weird stuff too. The the prophesying is a little odd.
Speaker 1:Don't get me wrong. But there's some even weirder stuff. So this was one I was not familiar with. But it's things like divination type things. So if if you have someone who believes in, say, the occult, for instance, there's divination items.
Speaker 1:So they might have think like a magic wand or something, you know, like a long Yeah. Exactly. It's an item that has supernatural abilities or powers. Right? A magic wand.
Speaker 1:Exactly. Did you already say that? I did. But I was gonna let you have it. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Now, I think we we really reel back from that. We can't have any items that have magical powers because Jesus really should be the only thing that kind of kind of has magical powers. Right? But that's in the bible too. So the bible talks about and I'm gonna mispronounce this, so prepare yourselves.
Speaker 1:But the urine and the thummim. Those are some exciting fun words.
Speaker 2:Say it one more time. The urine and the thummim. It sounds like urine and thumb.
Speaker 1:I absolutely could have been pronouncing that wrong. I have never heard a sermon that even mentions these things because they're kinda difficult. But you can find them in Exodus and Numbers and First Samuel. And basically, they are mysterious objects. We don't know what they looked like.
Speaker 1:We don't know what exactly they were. But they were associated with a high priest. And it was something used to receive God's answers to questions. So like, hey, I'm gonna hold, I don't know, this stick, and I'm gonna receive an answer from God. Like a literal crystal ball.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Basically. And we really don't know much else about them. We don't know what they were. Like I said, we don't have a lot of details.
Speaker 1:But it's like, I'm gonna hold this and God is gonna talk to me through it. Like a burning bush, but one you hold in your hand. And and that's a little uncomfy because that is almost like a conduit to God. Right? A God's cell phone.
Speaker 1:A God's cell phone. Yes. And and we don't always like that because as evangelicals, we're often saying, you can't use an object for spiritual discernment. You can't use an object to speak to God. You speak to God through the holy spirit, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1:Now these were, I think, mostly in Old Testament. But still, it's there. And then we can talk about Brie and I just learned about casting lots today.
Speaker 2:I found this very interesting. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I we've probably if you grew up in church, you've probably heard of casting lots. But do you know what it is?
Speaker 2:Basically, it's like rolling dice or something to test fate. So in the same way that we would draw straws, but we would consider it lucky. Right. Oh, you're lucky to
Speaker 1:draw the right straw. I don't know. But
Speaker 2:they would have experienced that as divine. Mhmm. This was divine intervention. Yep.
Speaker 1:So you can see this in let's see. Proverbs sixteen thirty three talks about the lot being cast. So and again, we don't have specifics on what the lots were. Some people have theorized that they were, like, rocks with writing on them, on certain sides of them, things like that. But basically, it says the lot is cast, but the decision comes from Yahweh.
Speaker 1:So you might be physically throwing the rocks, but God himself is telling the rocks what to do. And we see this quite a bit throughout the bible. Joshua uses it when he's allocating land. The temple responsibilities get assigned by lots. Jonah's shipmates, if we remember the story of Jonah, they cast lots to figure out who caused the storm going on around them.
Speaker 1:And even the apostles, so post Jesus, this is happening again, the apostles use lots to choose Judas' replacement. So they've yeah. They've got two people. They've got Matthias and Joseph. And they are not Joseph, Jesus' father.
Speaker 1:Different Joseph. Because we were not very unique with names. Lots of Marys, lots of Josephs. So many Matthews. And so they cast lots, and Matthias becomes one of the 12, which is a big decision.
Speaker 1:That's not when you leave up to fate. That's when you leave up to God. And God doesn't strike them down for this. He doesn't say, hey, you should be praying and asking me. Because this is how they were talking to God.
Speaker 1:They were talking to God by throwing rocks. Mhmm. I didn't know that's what that was. But that's pretty mystical. That is mystical and something that we definitely still use today.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:But we don't call it divine. Mhmm. We don't call it talking to God. We call
Speaker 1:it faith. Right. Just luck. But so interesting that they had that as part of their faith assuming that God would show up. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:It wasn't a question. It was, this is how we're gonna make this decision because we know the apostles, the ones who walked around with Jesus, in theory, some of the most faithful figures throughout the Bible, throughout time. And they were choosing a very mystical version of faith. Post resurrection. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:After Jesus. Just think about let's put this in context. Ready? Let's say Brie and I, we walk into a church, a church that's looking for a pastor. Right?
Speaker 1:And we're like, oh, we prayed over these two candidates. We spoke to them. We prayed. And then we took these dice that God blessed for us, and we rolled them. And we believe that God selected the winner for you.
Speaker 1:Like, think about that. We played Yahtzee, and the winner is now our pastor.
Speaker 2:Because Because
Speaker 1:God God
Speaker 2:said said so. So. We played God Yahtzee. Actually, the name of this episode? God Yahtzee?
Speaker 2:I love it.
Speaker 1:Yahtzee forgot? And it's it's just it's funny because that sounds so utterly ridiculous. If your church board came to you and said that
Speaker 2:Well, it almost sounds like they're not caring enough. Mhmm. It almost sounds like what? You didn't wanna do all of the research and make this decision and this educated decision after praying by yourself? That seems odd.
Speaker 2:It seems like you just leaving it up to fate sounds irresponsible. Yeah. It does. But to them, this is the most responsible choice that they can make is leaving it up to God and expecting that whatever choice that dice made
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Was from God. Yeah. And the biblical distinction is important here because, again, Deuteronomy tells you don't do so many of these things. But then we see faithful people kinda doing similar things.
Speaker 1:But the question becomes, who are you talking to? Are you seeking God? Well, even
Speaker 2:I'm thinking the Ark of the Covenant.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:That is an object that they considered very mystical magical.
Speaker 1:And it held representations of God to them.
Speaker 2:Representations of God communicating with them. Yeah. And it had certain rules that you couldn't touch it, you had to carry it a certain way. And that's also a little strange.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Yeah. And there's there's so many instances like that in the Bible where they it's just weird. The Bible's just weird sometimes. And I think
Speaker 2:our faith got scared of that. Yeah. I think they see that in the Catholic faith, where they have like
Speaker 1:items that the saints touched.
Speaker 2:They have their ancient relics. Maybe they have less ancient relics. But I feel like the Protestant church wanted to take all that away. And same with iconoclasm, where they wanted to take away all of the imagery. Right.
Speaker 2:So they didn't wanna associate themselves with the Catholic church at all. We just wanted so bad to be different and set apart that we lost part of our faith.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And an important and beautiful part that I think drew us closer to Jesus. Not every time, but sometimes. And, like, you can see Jesus doing this too. Just in case you think, oh, well, this is just people throughout time maybe not following what god wanted them.
Speaker 1:Jesus does this too. In Luke 10, we see Jesus say, Satan fell like lightning from the sky. That's a pretty mystical event. Okay? We also see Jesus being transfigured and Moses and Elijah appearing in Mark nine.
Speaker 1:He casts out spirits. He heals people. He speaks to angels. He predicts events. Lots of things are going on when Jesus is here.
Speaker 1:And then when Jesus goes back to heaven, it doesn't stop. Apparently, I need to go through Acts again, because there were some things in this list that I was like, oh, okay. This is a wild book. This is a wild book. In Acts five, Peter's shadow becomes associated with healing.
Speaker 1:Did you guys know that story? In Acts eight, Philip is transported after baptizing a eunuch. In Acts nine, Saul sees Jesus. In Acts 10, Peter enters a trance and sees a vision. In Acts 12, an angel breaks Peter out of jail.
Speaker 1:And it just keeps going. It's not like, oh, okay. Well, there was some mystical stuff pre Jesus. But then post Jesus, okay, we gotta get back to normal. We gotta be normal people now.
Speaker 2:But they didn't have a concept of quote unquote normal. Mhmm. Because this stuff was happening before Jesus too.
Speaker 1:Yep. And they would have seen this as just part of their normal world. It wasn't unexpected that you would have an experience with your god. Even on religions outside of Christianity, it wasn't unexpected for that to happen. So it wasn't strange for them that it was happening in their own faith either.
Speaker 2:Again, we just like to explain away Mhmm. Things that probably back in the
Speaker 1:day they would have experienced as supernatural. Even things like weather, I would say.
Speaker 2:Now we have science and we know Right. We know why the weather's happening the way it is. And we can expect and anticipate the changes in the weather when I look at my weather app, even though half the time it's wrong. Right? But they would have experienced that as like, oh, okay, this is a sign goddess trying to tell us something through the weather.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. No. I think that's a really great reason as to why we've stepped away from mysticism. But I think another reason is control. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And from our feminist lens, of course, we're gonna go there. Mysticism is interesting within faith because it gives everybody a little bit of an equal playing field. If I, as a woman, as a non pastor, as someone who doesn't have a seminary degree, as whatever, if I can say, well, god gave me a vision, now suddenly I have some level of spiritual authority. Right? And it's hard to control that.
Speaker 1:It's hard for the pastor of my church to control that. It's hard for the elders to control that. And you can see that happening in the bible and after the bible. You can see mysticism, prophecy, visions from God giving people some level of authority. You can see it in Miriam and Deborah and Huldah in Philip's Daughters Who Prophesy.
Speaker 1:And we'll talk about some stories post bible as well. But it gives them some authority as women. What did the white evangelical church of the United States not want? To give women any level of authority. Now it's important to make a note that it's not all US Christian churches.
Speaker 1:Out of The US came Pentecostalism, which is where we get a lot of like the charismatic traditions. Also, historically, Black Christianity is often very charismatic. The Catholic church has many charismatic movements as well. Apparently, Appalachian Christianity, which I was not aware of, also has supernatural folk traditions. So there's lots of things in The US still.
Speaker 1:It's just kind of like our corner of Christianity. Our flavor? Yeah. Where we've lost this. But I do think that our flavor, unfortunately, is often the loudest.
Speaker 1:That white evangelical Christianity. And I say our. Brie and I really obviously don't hold to this. But the I don't know if you've noticed this. The flavor we grew up in.
Speaker 1:And interestingly, Americans still often report supernatural experiences. A Pew Research poll found that thirty percent of adults in The US said that they've personally encountered a spirit or unseen spiritual force. That was in 2023. And then forty five percent said that they've experienced a sudden connection with something beyond this world.
Speaker 2:I'm also thinking that immediately makes me think
Speaker 1:of that. There's like a
Speaker 2:book and a movie where someone went to heaven for a little bit.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. It was a kid. Right? Mhmm. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. And
Speaker 2:I feel like the Christian community, I remember when that came out, was very into it. Like, oh my gosh. Look at this. But I
Speaker 1:don't heaven is real. I don't know.
Speaker 2:At least from my perspective, it's like, wow, this is a great testimony.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:But I don't know how much truth or how much belief Right. Was there. Right.
Speaker 1:There was there was a little bit of skepticism. Yeah. For sure. And it comes from a few different reasons. So I'm gonna go through these pretty quick because we have some wild stories I really wanna get to.
Speaker 1:But there's a few reasons that people would say, okay. No more mysticism. The first one is called cessationism. And this is people may not know this word necessarily, but this is a very common belief. And that's basically where people argue that gifts like prophecy, speaking in tongues, miraculous healing, that they served a purpose for the apostles in the time of the apostles.
Speaker 1:And after the apostles died, they no longer had a purpose, and so they stopped existing. God basically took those away. And it's an interesting thing because the bible doesn't say that. And also things were happening before the apostles even existed. Right.
Speaker 2:So why would it go away when
Speaker 1:they were gone? The bible Paul actually says, do not despise prophecy, but test it. So he doesn't say believe everything. He does say test it, but he does also say don't despise prophecy. Prophecy is important.
Speaker 1:Well, I
Speaker 2:think it's just important to recognize that with any religion or, you know, aspect of this, people will abuse it. Mhmm. Absolutely. People will abuse power. So you have I like that he's saying test it.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Make sure that it's real and that you're not being fooled.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Now another reason that we have kind of stepped away from mysticism is rationalism. We in the Western world really like, as Brie has talked about, we really like to explain things. We really like to have a reason. And if we're sitting here and we're saying, okay, we believe in miracles.
Speaker 1:We believe in visions. We believe in prophecy. Now we're weird. We are legitimately strange. And the rest of the world looks at us as as superstitious.
Speaker 1:Well, we want to trust what's logical. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Because that makes us seem a little bit more it almost seem makes you seem more educated. Right? Yeah. Why would I wanna believe something that I literally cannot explain? Yeah.
Speaker 2:That makes me seem crazy.
Speaker 1:And if you can say, well, God used to do this, but he doesn't do it anymore, it at least gives you, like, that middle ground. You can kind of play both sides a little bit. Mhmm. Now another one is anxiety over kind of, like, Catholicism aspect of it. After the Reformation, a lot of Protestants looked at the Catholics and said, oh, they have saints.
Speaker 1:They have relics. They have apparitions, miracles, blah blah blah. And they said, we want no part of the Catholic church because the Protestants are splitting from the Catholics. And so let's abandon all of that. Like you said, like, iconoclasm, where we're gonna fully step away from everything the Catholics are doing so that we look different.
Speaker 1:And that has filtered all the way down to here in 2026. It's wild when you see what's affected you because because Martin Luther didn't want to look Catholic, you know? Yeah. It's so strange. Now, before we go into the stories that I want to talk about, which are post bible stories, it's important to make a note that just because mysticism is, I think, an important part of faith doesn't mean that it can't be abused.
Speaker 1:It doesn't mean that it's all true. Paul says to test it. There are certainly we see them in the Bible. False prophets, spiritual manipulation, we see that happening in churches today. Prosperity preaching, we see with, like, Joel Osteen.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. There's lots of things where this can be abused. So as Paul says, test it. Don't automatically say everything that feels spiritual is spiritual. And ask yourself, who am I seeking guidance from?
Speaker 2:I think that's a good point is, am I seeking God?
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Or am I seeking mysticism?
Speaker 1:Right. And supernatural? Just for the sake of it. Just for the sake of it.
Speaker 2:Am I seeking God in this?
Speaker 1:Yep. Now okay. So not only was the Israelite church a little bit more mystical, but we are big fans of Beth Allison Barr. Our bestie. Our best friend.
Speaker 1:And she is a medieval Christian scholar. And so in reading her books, we learned about some of these people. And then in researching, we learned about some other ones that, like, the medieval Christian church, which was a lot less removed from Jesus' time than we are, believed some really interesting mystical magical stories. And they are freaking weird. So the first one I want to talk about is Martha.
Speaker 1:And this is Martha of Mary and Martha and Lazarus. So friends with Jesus, direct contact with Jesus. Now it's believed that the three of them, siblings, went after Jesus's death, went to France and helped convert France into Christianity. Now this is, again, not biblical. This is medieval church tradition is what it was believed.
Speaker 1:And Martha has a great story. Okay. Are you ready for it? So this story comes from a thirteenth century book called The Golden Legend. And basically, the siblings all traveled to Provence in front in France?
Speaker 1:In France. In France? And Provence had an issue. The issue was a dragon. Okay.
Speaker 1:It had a casual problem. Just a casual dragon. Now, here's here's the description of this dragon. Are you ready for it? It was part land animal, part fish, bigger than an ox, longer than a horse, teeth as sharp as a sword.
Speaker 1:It had a lion like head, a serpent tail, wings, horns. It was as strong as 12 lions, very specifically, not And it just basically chills in the river, and it sinks boats and eats people. And that's the dragon. Just a casual problem. I mean, like, you know, just just a Tuesday, really.
Speaker 1:Just, you know,
Speaker 2:something out of
Speaker 1:our fantasy novels. Like, casual. Yep. And so the medieval Christians called on Martha. And they were like, hey, could you deal with this for us?
Speaker 2:You seem like the right fit. Right? You remind me of, I don't know, Hercules. You?
Speaker 1:So Martha shows up, and she doesn't fight the dragon, which I actually love as a very female part of the story. Because so many like, if this was a fantasy novel and there's a man, you know, slaying the dragon, it's slaying the dragon. Right? But Martha goes to the dragon, and she finds the dragon actively eating a person. It's it's actively you know, like, legs are hanging out of its mouth, whatever.
Speaker 2:Ew. And I just saw the odyssey, so
Speaker 1:I feel like I can visualize this. So Martha sprinkles it with holy water, according to the story, and shows it the cross. And the dragon becomes docile. And she takes off her belt or girdle, depending on your translation. And she puts it around the dragon's neck like a leash.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Can we talk
Speaker 1:about her waist, her girdle, her belt size
Speaker 2:is the same as this dragon's neck.
Speaker 1:I feel like she's a beefy woman. She's strong. Wow. What an incredible bell. So she leads the dragon back into town.
Speaker 1:And it's it's fine. Right? The dragon's not eating people. It's docile. You could keep it as a pet.
Speaker 1:Think of it like a dog, except that the townspeople are lightly pissed that it's been, you know, eating their family members. So they kill it anyway. So that's the story.
Speaker 2:And what I find amusing about listening to these stories is to me hearing them now Mhmm. Because I haven't heard a
Speaker 1:lot about them before. That's
Speaker 2:an incredible story.
Speaker 1:It's an incredible story.
Speaker 2:But if I were from outside of this faith tradition and I heard any one of the Bible stories, I would also be like, wow, that's an insane story.
Speaker 1:Now I'm not sitting here trying to tell you that biblically Martha slayed a dragon. I'm also not trying to sit here and say that's absolutely what happened. What I am saying is that we like to take what we believe here in 2026 and push it all the way back and assume everyone was like us. But they weren't. These were the predecessors of our faith.
Speaker 1:This is where our faith comes from, and they believed this. I would also like to ask, what's the underlying message that this story is trying to tell us? Mhmm.
Speaker 2:I feel like a lot
Speaker 1:of the Bible stories, while they're crazy, are trying to teach us something.
Speaker 2:So what were they trying to learn from this story? Yeah.
Speaker 1:Dragons are crazy. Dragons are crazy. And girdles are important. Or maybe it's, you know, you don't need to slay the beast all the time.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. You can be a little gentle.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Or that faith in and of itself can calm bad situations. Mhmm. Now, there's so many more stories. Are you ready?
Speaker 1:I don't know if we're gonna have time for all of them, but they're great. There's also Margaret of Antioch. She also has a dragon in her story. Hooray. Many a dragon today.
Speaker 1:Now Margaret is a very popular saint in medieval Christianity, arguably one of the most popular. And her legend basically says she's a young Christian woman. She was imprisoned because she wouldn't renounce her faith. And while in prison, she prays to god to let her actually see the devil who's been fighting against her, which is a risky prayer. That's quite a choice.
Speaker 1:Now the devil does appear to her, so god grants her this prayer. But the devil appears as a dragon and just swallows her.
Speaker 2:Just just immediately. Right? It's like, you wanted to see me. Hello. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And Margaret, according to the story and this comes from the same book as the it's called the Golden Legend as Martha's story as well. Now Margaret, it is said, makes the sign of the cross while she's inside the dragon. And the dragon's body splits open, just basically explodes, and allows her to leave fully unharmed. And I would compare this to the fiery furnace of Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego. Or Jonah.
Speaker 1:Poor Jonah.
Speaker 2:Or Jonah. Maybe a little
Speaker 1:bit of a mix of both. So this story continues on. Basically, after the dragon dies, I don't know, the devil comes back looking like a man. Margaret immediately grabs him because she's not waiting this time. She's not getting swallowed.
Speaker 1:And she throws him to the ground and puts her foot on his neck and basically says to stay underneath the foot of a woman. She specifically says a woman. And according to that story, Satan is pissed that she's a girl. He basically says, it would have been bad enough if a man defeated me, but a girl like, he's mad about it. Right?
Speaker 1:And that's in the story. It explicitly says that he's upset at being overcome by a woman. I don't wanna get us off track.
Speaker 2:But here's what I'm picturing.
Speaker 1:I'm
Speaker 2:ready. She is Moana. She grabs him by the ear and says, I am Margaret. Margaret, a Mortonui.
Speaker 1:Will board my boat. You cross under
Speaker 2:my foot. Then you
Speaker 1:will get under my foot. So, yeah. So that's another very, very mystical magical Then there is this is probably the best one that we studied. There's Christina the Astonishing. We talked about her for
Speaker 2:a while.
Speaker 1:She is this is quite a story. So Christina the Astonishing. What a name. To go down in history. I think my name should be that too.
Speaker 1:Now the interesting thing about her story so she was like a twelfth, thirteenth century woman. And her story doesn't come from legend where like, oh, okay. People thousands of years later are writing down her story. Her story was written down in December by a man named Thomas, and he supposedly spoke to people who knew her. So this was like a secondhand story, not like a generation, you know, previous story.
Speaker 1:Now according to this story, Christina becomes ill and dies. Right? They have her funeral. She's lying in the church. And the mass starts.
Speaker 1:And then all of a sudden, she sits up. And instead of just sitting up, which on its own would have been mildly dramatic and alarming, she levitates up into the rafters of the church and chills there like a bat. I don't
Speaker 2:know. Like Dua Lipa. Because
Speaker 1:according to her story, after she returned from the dead, she found the smell of sinful humans to be unbearable. So she basically she's she's dead, mind you. Comes back and says, you stink.
Speaker 2:She's dead. She probably smells like decay. Decay. Yeah. And she levitates and says, the smell of sin is disgusting on you.
Speaker 1:And it's just fascinating. So the story that she tells afterwards is that she went up to heaven and was given a choice of whether she wanted to return back to earth and help people, help humanity get to heaven essentially, or she could stay in heaven. And she chose to come back. But there were obviously some some issues there because people stank. And so she goes through the rest of life doing kind of supernatural things.
Speaker 1:Now, they're weird, but, like, she threw herself into a burning oven. She plunged herself into freezing water.
Speaker 2:She was trying to get back to heaven. And God kept saying, no.
Speaker 1:You made your choice, Christina. Stay where you are. And it's just really it's it's weird. Like, story is weird. But the interesting thing is that people didn't immediately look at her and say, you're insane.
Speaker 1:Now could she have been? Sure. I think she probably definitely was. It's very possible. But Christianity's first reaction wasn't, you're insane.
Speaker 1:You're a witch. Go burn her at the stake. They had a category for her. She was a mystic. She was experiencing faith differently.
Speaker 1:Or they were
Speaker 2:just like, wow, god really did it again today. God, could you quit?
Speaker 1:That'd be great. And they assumed that god could work like that, I guess, is the big takeaway from her story. They assumed, yeah, God does stuff like that. And Christina went through the rest of her life as kind of a religious authority after that. Could she have been crazy?
Speaker 1:Absolutely. But the roots of our faith believed enough in mysticism that they said God can. And maybe God did. You know, there's one other story. It's not nearly as crazy, but it is it's got a little medieval torture in it, so why So this is Catherine of Alexandria.
Speaker 1:And it's a medieval legend again. And basically it says that Catherine was a highly educated young Christian woman. The emperor sends 50 philosophers to try and convince her out of Christianity. 50 of them. That's a lot.
Speaker 1:Okay? It's a long day for Christina. Nope. Catherine. And instead, she converts them all to Christianity is what the story says.
Speaker 1:After that, because kings don't like to be told no, she was condemned to torture on the the giant spiky wheel. You know, if you've seen any medieval type movies.
Speaker 2:Have you ever been to a medieval torture museum?
Speaker 1:I know you've told them this before.
Speaker 2:Don't go. It's
Speaker 1:awful. I don't think a whole lot of people are like, that's on their bucket list.
Speaker 2:Well, I've been it's in Chicago.
Speaker 1:Okay. Don't go. If you go, you may see the Catherine wheel, which this is now called.
Speaker 2:I feel that I did. You probably did. And I also probably saw a 100 other ways to torture people. Well,
Speaker 1:Catherine was not killed on on the Catherine wheel because they named it after her, which is deeply insulting. The story goes that the wheel was destroyed by a miraculous thunderbolt. So probably, like, God destroyed it. Right? Which sounds great until she was just beheaded afterwards, which is not ideal.
Speaker 1:Why did they just start with that? I don't know. Because the medieval torture, man, they wanted some torture. Man. And then the legend says the angels transported her body to Mount Sinai.
Speaker 1:It there's also a part of the story that's really, really strange where it says that Catherine had a vision where she was married to Christ. And the images, the painted images that people would use after to tell the story showed the baby Jesus putting a ring on her finger is odd. Very odd. I fear that I definitely saw these images in my art history class. You probably did.
Speaker 1:And I do not like that. And all of these stories are weird. Okay? And none of them are biblical. I'm not in any way saying that you'll find any of these stories in the bible or that they should have been in the bible or anything like that.
Speaker 1:But what they are is an example of Christians believing in a magical, mystical god and not being smote.
Speaker 2:I think it's important for you to understand your faith.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:To understand where your faith came from.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And these are our roots. These stories, Catholicism, Jesus, the Bible
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:These are all things that we should be knowledgeable and familiar about because these are how these things are what shaped our faith.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I when I was in college, I went to a talk from a man, and I don't remember exactly what his name was, and he had some wild stories. But he came from Africa and was very involved in the church there. Now he had done some some really bad stuff politically and wound up in prison. And that's where he found God.
Speaker 1:And so he started praying. I don't know exactly how he got a bible, but he got ahold of a bible and was praying that God would forgive him. And he told this story where it was the middle of the night and all of a sudden a glowing golden figure appeared to him. And he believed that it was Jesus and talked to him and said, you know, that he needed to turn his life around, that he needed to love people and etcetera etcetera. And this was my first experience because little Baptist kid.
Speaker 1:Right? Mhmm. This was my first experience with something like this. And my immediate reaction was, okay, this guy's insane. Like, he is crazy crazy.
Speaker 1:And then he went on to tell us he immediately was like, I know you guys are gonna think I'm crazy because you grew up in the white western church. He said, where I come from, no one bats an eye at this story because everybody has a story like this. Everybody has a story where they physically experienced God. Not because, oh, I come from some backwards faith tradition, but because we believe God's going to show up. Because we need and that was one of the things he said.
Speaker 1:He said here in The US, you don't need God to show up. You might want God to show up. It might be good if God shows up. But your basic needs are taken care of, and so you think I can take care of myself. There are people that live in places where they need God to show up.
Speaker 1:And God does.
Speaker 2:Oh, I just got goosebumps. Do you see them?
Speaker 1:I do not see them from here. I just that stuck with me in such a big way. I'm many, many a year out of college. Okay? And I remember pretty much next to nothing.
Speaker 1:But that stuck with me because I live in a bubble. Let's be real. We all live in our own little bubbles. And especially in faith traditions, we like to stay in our bubbles. But there are people who live a very different version of faith.
Speaker 1:And can that be manipulated too? Sure. Can what we believe be manipulated too? Sure. But there is some very serious beauty in the mysticism of faith if we can hold on to it and know who we're seeking.
Speaker 1:And I really love that. I love the idea that that god's a little magical. Got some fairy dust.
Speaker 2:I would honestly say
Speaker 1:maybe a little bit more than a little. A lot of it magical. Take a gander
Speaker 2:around you.
Speaker 1:You're a speck of dust. A speck of dust in a bigger speck of dust.
Speaker 2:So true. Like Horton Hears a Who.
Speaker 1:I I love Horton Hears a Who. I use that as a metaphor absolutely all the time. Mhmm. Now, next week, Brie and I had talked a little bit about and she's gonna be surprised by this because we haven't talked about it directly in a while. So you can learn what we're gonna talk about while she does.
Speaker 1:Oh, fantastic. Wait. I'm buckled up. Alright. We're gonna talk about hell.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. I remember I
Speaker 1:was talking about that. I think it's a good lead out from this because I think we've we've talked a little bit about kind of the weirdness of the bible. And did you know that a lot of the Christian concept of what hell is doesn't come from the Bible? It comes from the book Dante's and Fargo. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And the Bible doesn't have nearly as much to say on the topic as we want to think. So we're gonna talk about that. We're gonna dive into what the Bible says about hell, what culture says about hell, what literature says about hell. Because there's a big movement of Christians today that don't really believe hell is what
Speaker 2:we think it
Speaker 1:is, or some that it exists at all.
Speaker 2:Honestly, I feel like my day today might be hell.
Speaker 1:What a happy ending for everyone. Okay. Did you hear that? I just filtered myself. I'm so proud.
Speaker 1:We're always so proud when Brie filters herself, aren't we, folks? Thank you. Alright. So tune in next week for a nice happy peppy topic.
Speaker 2:It's casual. Maybe I'll bring back the spooky music. You should. Yeah. I should.
Speaker 2:And then it'll blend in with our outro music as
Speaker 1:Love it for us. Yeah. Alright. So we will talk to
Speaker 2:you guys next week about that.
Speaker 1:Oh, this is gonna overlap now with our outro music. Gonna be really annoying. Such a pain. Okay. We'll talk to you next week.
Speaker 1:Alright. Sorry. Bye. Love you. Bye.