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Bathsheba’s story is back for part three, and we're taking a modern look at the scandal that rocked King David’s reign. How can our current-day lenses be used to see this story for what it really was? How much more can we talk about a story that only takes up 2 chapters in the Bible? Listen in to find out! Trigger warning: We discuss themes of abuse and assault, so please listen with care as we explore the deeper side of this biblical narrative.
We are Alyssa and Bri, two sisters who believe God wants more for women than we've been taught. Join us as we dive into the intersection of faith and feminism, learning together as we go.
Welcome to the We Are More podcast.
My name is Alyssa.
And my name is Bri.
We are two sisters passionate about all things faith and feminism.
We believe that Jesus trusted, respected, and encouraged women to teach and preach His
word.
And apparently that's controversial.
Get comfy.
I want to start off by saying there's nothing worse to start your day off with than running
behind you need to get ready.
You're trying to get ready in a rush because you're stupid.
You've been staring at your phone for too long and you spray some deodorant into your
armpits so that you don't offend anybody with your smell.
And then you accidentally breathe in that deodorant.
It has been in my esophagus all day.
It has been what do you call deodorant?
Antiperspirant?
My throat has been antiperspirized.
Was your throat perspirizing before?
Well it's not now.
And it really has thrown me off all day.
I feel like I have felt it all day.
Have you tasted it all day?
I have not tasted it.
But this morning in the morning meeting I did announce it to absolutely everybody that
I inhaled deodorant.
Did they enjoy that story?
I think they just tolerate me at this point.
They have just decided that she can speak her nonsense if she wants.
Well good.
At least they do that.
They've learned to ignore it.
I don't have any deodorant stories.
I'm trying to like bounce off that.
I've got none.
I think that's good for you.
Yeah.
World, do you have deodorant stories that you'd like to share?
Have you accidentally inhaled anything you didn't intend to?
Let us know on our TikTok.
We'd love to share your story.
We'd love to share your story of accidental inhalation.
Hmm.
Well that sounds worse.
No.
It's very much real.
I have inhaled like perfume and stuff.
Like as you spray that.
Yeah but you don't feel it all day.
No.
That's horrifying.
Like it is in my soul.
Your soul?
Yeah.
I'm not stinky anywhere.
Good.
Including my soul.
So like your liver is good to go.
Not smelly at all.
Honestly I think my liver might be worse off.
Oh.
That's possible.
I don't know how deodorant inhalation works.
I don't think it makes it to your liver.
I think it has.
I'm not sure that there are like clinical studies on it but.
Not many people have studied this.
No.
I don't think many people do this.
It was like I was spraying into the pits.
You know I was spraying into the pits and there was a cloud around me.
And I moved.
And I moved back.
And I inhaled.
As one does when one breathes.
And it was a mistake.
It might be time to switch to a stick deodorant.
But like I have this so I want to use it up.
I think it just for your health it might be time.
I just want everybody to know.
PSA.
The Ultra Clear.
No.
The spray on deodorant that's supposed to last you 72 hours.
Wow.
Turns out you don't have to shower for 72 hours.
Don't breathe it in.
I have questions about the 72 hour thing.
That's on all kinds of deodorant now.
It's like 72 hours.
Is that really functional?
And also who's keeping track?
Oh I only have to apply my deodorant every.
Monday and Thursday.
What is happening there?
Nobody's doing that.
They're not.
Although I haven't researched it.
So not willing to make a statement.
No but I feel like nobody's doing that.
So today is part three of our Bathsheba series.
And I believe we are actually going to do a part four because Brie really is excited
about going into the rest of her story.
So you can kind of look forward to that next week.
Her story.
Her children's stories.
Yeah I don't know how directly related to her it is but her stories in Second Samuel
I think it's like chapters 11 and 12.
But if you read on it continues talking about King David's children and just there's a
lot of drama.
He's a dramatic human.
Wow.
If someone wrote out the entire story of my life it wouldn't make that interesting of
a tale.
You wouldn't read that book.
Honestly.
Okay.
Just letting everybody know.
Online dating out there.
Or like interviews.
Tell me something interesting about yourself.
Let me get to know you.
There is nothing interesting about me.
My mind goes blank.
I forget my name.
I forget any hobbies that I might have.
I am like a blob.
I would not recommend this being the first thing you talk about on your interview.
I don't.
I let that one you know.
Save it as a shock factor.
Yeah they can find out about it later.
Yeah.
You do what?
Two truths and a lie later on.
When you do that at your drunk Christmas party.
I host a podcast with my sister and we're raging feminists.
Two, I'm 97 years old.
Well that is the truthful one.
So now you gotta come up with a lie.
That's true.
I've never told a lie.
Lies.
So anyway.
That's Sheba.
So today we're going to be talking about some of the more contemporary looks and takes on
her.
Because last first week we told the biblical version of her story and we talked through
it I think more from the perspective of real women.
Not being told from the perspective of a man.
And then last week we talked about, we did a little bit of research on her story and
our good friend Mark's article.
So we went through that.
Both really good ones.
Both will lead into this.
But if you know the basic story I think you can start here if you want to and then go
back.
I feel like what's really interesting about doing this in three parts or four parts, however
it is, I know her story like the back of my hand now.
I could just babble on Beth Sheba's entire life.
Probably not her entire life but short little snippet of her entire life that we know about.
It's really written into the core of my memory.
But I think that's so good and I think that's why it's been really fun to take a really
deep dive into this story because how often do you get to know the women of the Bible
like this?
To really understand them.
Yeah, especially because their stories are so short.
And like we've said before, just the little bits that you hear about her in church or
in small groups, it doesn't really tell her true full story.
So this week we're looking at modern day takes on her.
Now we've talked about what we've heard in church before but I want to start off talking
about a woman named Rachel Den Hollander.
I like that last name.
It's quite a last name.
It's a lot of syllables.
It wouldn't fit on a Scantron.
It would not.
I like that that's our metric.
Scantron, man.
My last name barely fits on a Scantron.
Is your last name longer than my last name?
No, it's seven letters.
Oh, it's the same.
All right, moving on.
So Rachel spoke recently, I say recently, this article is from 2019.
So recently in the grand scheme of things but not recently like yesterday.
So she spoke at a Southern Baptist Convention.
Now if you don't know a lot about the Southern Baptist Church, they are known as being very,
very conservative but also doesn't have the best PR when it comes to women.
So they recently were voting on whether or not women could be pastors in the larger Southern
Baptist Church.
So you're not talking about one single church.
You're talking about a group of churches that is governed by a board or whatever it is that
they call themselves.
A log.
Yes, I think a log is what they call themselves.
It's crazy.
Like it was okay yesterday but today it's not and Jesus said it's not.
Right.
So even if it wasn't looked down upon in that circle to begin with, it would have been kind
of wild.
But yeah, it's like, ah, well, your calling from God doesn't matter to us anymore.
See you bye.
And all of the people of your community.
And your education that you have the same as the guy next door.
So this woman that we're about to talk about, she spoke at a Southern Baptist Convention.
She is part of, I believe, the Southern Baptist Church as a whole.
Sorry for her.
Which is not known for being kind to women.
So when she got up at this conference, this is, I'm gonna go ahead and say the actual
word because I think we'll be okay.
Maybe YouTube won't like it.
So this is what she said.
She is an attorney and a stay at home mom and I'll go into her story a little bit in
a second.
But she got up and she said, David didn't fornicate, David raped.
Which is quite a statement in A, a conservative space.
And in B, a Christian space at all because that's just not a word that they like to use.
At all costs, they want to make this situation, if they're talking about it at all, they want
to smooth it over as much as possible and put as much blame on Bathsheba as they can
because they don't want to mess with David's reputation.
And again, that's what we do in society now.
So it was pretty, I can't say it was overall inflammatory.
I wasn't sitting there.
I don't know.
But here are some of the comments.
So one of the things that she said is if you understand the power dynamics and you understand
the Hebrew and you look at the Levitical examples and discussion of rape and you understand
what Nathan, who's the prophet, is saying in his parable, it is abundantly clear from
that text that David raped.
And then she goes on to expand upon that.
So on Twitter, now these are not necessarily people who are even of the faith, but comments
on Twitter that came back.
Ruthie You mean X.
Bekkah Oh, I do actually.
I do mean that, but I hate that I mean that.
So one comment said, I love what the Den Hollanders have done for victim awareness, but this kind
of thing is a perfect example of why it's really dangerous to let your own experiences
cloud the way you read and understand scripture.
This was from a pastor in Chicago.
Ruthie No, I think your own experiences make the Bible more real to you because you're
able to read that and say, oh, this is what happened to her.
Bekkah So then another comment, it was a male commenter,
that's all we know about him.
And we'll go into her story in just a second.
But another commenter said, if she wasn't a willing participant, she could have simply
refused and dealt with the consequences.
Ruthie What?
Bekkah Countless people have chosen death over violating
their own consciences.
Ruthie What?
Bekkah Uh huh.
Now this is Twitter, guys.
Trolls are everywhere.
Ruthie That's just an insane statement.
Like, preserve David.
Don't say David did anything wrong.
She should have died rather than let David take advantage of her.
Bekkah Well, let's also make the point that she
may not have had even that option.
Ruthie That's true.
Bekkah David's men, his guards, whatever you want to call them, went to get her.
She didn't know what was happening.
Did she have the option to throw herself off the roof at that point?
Probably not.
They probably came, grabbed her arms, carried her off, whether she wanted it or not.
Ruthie Yeah.
Oh my gosh.
Bekkah I know.
So Rachel's husband commented back, and I think it's really, his comment is very poignant.
So they do a lot of this advocacy together.
And he was basically paraphrasing what that man just said.
He said, if she's not dead, it means she's an adulterous woman.
Ruthie Oh my god.
Bekkah He's just paraphrasing what was already said.
Ruthie Yeah, but that's true.
Bekkah But yeah, when you boil it down, and think of that in the context of today, of
assault today, if a woman walks down the street and is assaulted, and she doesn't die to stop
that from happening, now she's part of it.
She's part of the wrongdoing.
Ruthie I dare you to look into the eyes of a woman who has taken advantage of and say,
your life is not worth living.
You should have died.
Bekkah Well, that's why these things are said on Twitter, and not to someone's face.
So Rachel, her story is quite incredible, actually.
So she, if you didn't hear about this story, this was very big where we live, because we
live in Michigan, and this happened at Michigan State.
She actually grew up not too far from where we went to college.
Ruthie We went to college right next door to each other.
Bekkah We did.
Ruthie I didn't want to go to your college.
I didn't want to be associated with you.
Bekkah You loved me.
I was with you all the time.
Ruthie I think you loved me.
Bekkah I think at this point, again, we've morphed into the same person.
Ruthie We have mutual love.
Bekkah So Rachel was one of the women, actually one of the first women to go public with accusations
against Larry Nassar, who was the doctor for the gymnastics team at Michigan State.
And he was accused and convicted of assaulting hundreds of girls.
Was it just the Michigan State gymnastics team, or was it the Olympic?
Bekkah He was at Michigan State, it had something to do with the Olympics.
I'm not 100% clear on where all of the girls came from, but they were primarily underage,
if not all underage.
And so this happened to her, and then she didn't say anything, or didn't get traction
on having said anything for about six or seven years.
And this was happening to girls the whole time, before her, after her, and other people
had come forward and said things, but it was again, brushed away.
Ruthie Exactly, because we need to keep him in power, or his job is more important than
your literal well-being.
Bekkah So Rachel went on, she was the first one to get some traction with an accusation,
she wasn't going to drop it.
She essentially organized a group of women willing to testify, she was then the last
woman to testify in his case.
And she got up on the stand, and she essentially begged the jury to give this man the full
possible sentence, the highest amount of years in prison that they possibly could.
And she ended her statement by saying, how much is a little girl worth?
And then she went on to say, these victims are worth everything.
I plead with you to impose the maximum sentence under the plea agreement, because everything
is what these survivors are worth.
Now I want you to imagine looking at this woman, this woman who was assaulted, and then
who built an army of people to go against the man that hurt them.
And I want you to imagine looking her in the face and saying, you were complicit in that,
because you should have died instead.
Ruthie You should have died instead, yeah.
Your life isn't worth living if you have lived through this.
Bekkah I just, it's beyond me.
That's insane.
It's insane.
And so this again informs where the pastor that commented on Twitter, when he said like,
oh, your personal experiences have shaped the way you're seeing the Bible.
When this woman says, I'm looking at a story and I'm seeing assault, abuse and rape.
You don't question that.
Ruthie You do not question it.
How dare you?
Bekkah She knows what she's talking about.
A whole lot more than a random pastor from Chicago.
She knows exactly what she's talking about, so don't question her when she says these
things.
Additionally, even if let's say you looked at this and you were like, I don't know, maybe
you don't know her story, something like that.
The Bible backs her up.
Ruthie Yeah, it really does.
Bekkah Like it really, really backs her up to the point that even a lot of conservative
pastors are flipping around and saying, yeah, okay, the Bathsheba really wasn't at fault
here.
Ruthie And we talked about that in the last two episodes, but like specifically the story
of the lamb that Nathan talked about.
How innocent that says she is.
She's completely innocent.
She is without fault.
And again, at no point was she told Bathsheba, we're back on Bathsheba now.
Bekkah What about Bath?
Ruthie At no point was she told, go and sin no more,
turn from your sinful ways.
Like whatever you want to, whatever phrasing you want to use that was used with other people
in the Bible, wasn't used with her.
It wasn't there.
So the Bible in no small way says that it's her fault and really distinctly says that
it's David's fault.
So it's really hard to get to a place where it's not 100% on him.
So that was kind of her story.
And I just thought that was really powerful and I was really excited to learn about who
she is.
She's gone Rachel, Rachel Dunhollander.
Sorry, we're going back and forth between multiple she's at this point.
Bekkah I was following you, but not everybody's your sister.
Ruthie Okay, sorry.
So I was excited to learn about Rachel Dunhollander because she has gone on to write, I think,
four books.
Yes, so four books.
One is a memoir that's titled What is a Girl Worth?
She also has two children's books out and titled How Much is a Little Girl Worth?
And then How Much is a Little Boy Worth?
And then she also has a third book called Discover Your True Worth.
So she's really taken her advocacy to a whole new level.
Bekkah That'd be interesting for us to read.
Ruthie It was published by Tyndale.
So if you guys want to check any of those out.
Bekkah Different from Ashley Tisdale?
Ruthie Yes, and she's now married and has four children.
So person who wants to say that your life is over after these situations.
Clearly God was not done with her story yet.
Very clearly God was not done with her story.
And very clearly God was not done with Bathsheba's story.
Because she goes on to be the mother of Solomon and through her is the lineage of Jesus.
That's a pretty big I'm not done with you.
Bekkah That is a pretty big slap into the face of...
Into the face?
Ruthie Slap in the face.
To that guy on Twitter.
Bekkah Yeah.
Ruthie Like really?
Bekkah Yeah.
Ruthie Without her you wouldn't have Jesus.
Without her you wouldn't have heaven.
Dang it all the heck.
I want to slap that guy on Twitter.
Bekkah Well I don't think he can because we don't know who he is.
But maybe we can find out.
Ruthie I was watching a YouTube video today.
You told me to research and so I was trying with YouTube.
It was like this untold story of Bathsheba.
And it was just so interesting to me the power of words.
So it's not someone reading the actual verses of her story.
It's just someone kind of giving the general gist of her story.
And they said their adultery.
Their adultery.
And just the power of words there.
It wasn't up to her.
It wasn't adultery.
It was rape.
Bekkah Yep.
And that's the wording that you find almost everywhere.
So another one of the articles that I read.
Now this is a little bit of an older one as well.
It's from 2017.
Ruthie Why are you saying that's old?
Bekkah I'm sorry.
Ruthie I'm feeling incredibly old.
Bekkah I'm sorry.
That was seven years ago.
Oh my gosh.
Bekkah And the reason a lot of these resources are older is because Bathsheba's story got
some press.
And it became very unpopular to call her the one at fault.
So you started seeing even conservative pastors kind of like backpedaling at least publicly.
Now you're not seeing the same thing in church services where it's not necessarily being
recorded and posted or even if it is it's not getting a lot of views.
You know your local church may post a video and get a hundred views on it.
Two hundred views on it.
But the likelihood of that getting a lot of negative feedback is pretty low.
So you do see it in churches still but you aren't seeing it necessarily on people's blogs,
on people's Twitter, on people's whatever.
Actually one of the articles that I was reading she calls and I think this is a fairly common
term but it's newer for me.
She calls the like the men that are all about you know the patriarchal Christianity and
women submitting and whatever she calls them Theo bros.
And I thought that was hilarious.
But she even said that most of the Theo bros have kind of turned the other way on this
story if they talk about it at all which you're not going to get them to talk about it very
often but if you do then they'll at least say she wasn't at fault.
They won't necessarily call it out for what it is but they at least will try not to say
it's her fault.
Right.
I saw a TikTok today.
This is not necessarily on topic but I sent it to the we are more TikTok we can repost
it.
But this lady was just saying essentially why do you think these Gen Z men are flocking
to the church?
They're flocking to the church because they found an institution that tells them they
have no faults and that they are in complete power and now you see just droves of women
leaving the church because this institution has told women that they are worth nothing
other than bearing the children of these all-important men and that everything is their fault.
Well I think that actually really ties into I was working on an article at work and it
talked about how I think they say 70% of divorces in the United States are initiated by women
and that gets thrown out by the theobro community and people like that to say look women are
terrible, they're just divorcing men left and right, they hate the institution of marriage,
etc.
But the reality is what's happening is women are starting to have the ability to value
themselves more and they don't have to sit there while you treat them like garbage.
Well they've said that on other TikToks that I've seen marriage is great for men specifically
because it gives them someone to take care of their children, it gives them someone to
cook, to clean, to run their house, but it's not necessarily fantastic for women because
they still in 2024 have to have a part-time or full-time job to help support the family,
but they also are taking on all these like traditional roles too so it's not necessarily
great for women.
It's not necessarily a benefit, so it's like you said a couple episodes ago and we're a
little off topic but we'll come back.
I think you said...
I've said a lot of things.
You said in order to get married a man has to be more valuable to you than being by yourself.
Yeah, you have to compete with me, with my time, with how much I like being by myself
and that is a big competition.
I love spending time by myself.
I think you can see...
I don't find the divorce rate a horrifying thing.
I know that's like a really controversial thing to say as a Christian, but I think God values
you more than he values your marriage.
He values your safety and well-being, whether that's mental well-being or physical well-being,
more than he values the rule of staying married.
I truly believe that in my heart and so I find that the ability, not that divorce is
a great thing, not that it isn't hurtful, not that it doesn't rip people to shreds at
times, but the fact that the ability is out there for women to walk away, for Christian
women to walk away from terrible situations, I'm applauding that.
I'm totally behind that.
When were women legally allowed to initiate divorce?
I don't know.
I'm Googling.
Oh, it's not an easy answer.
It's probably state by state.
But it's not all that long ago that women were actually allowed to initiate divorce.
And even beyond allowed to, that most women, let's say most women, had the financial stability
to do so.
And now you're looking at a world where a lot of women do, not every woman, but a lot
of women do and I think that's something to applaud.
Yeah, equality.
Equality.
All right, now back to our main topic.
And back to our scheduled episode.
So another article that I read, it's from Diana Lee Matthews and it's her website is
dianaleematthews.com.
I read a little bit about her.
I'm not really sure if she lands on the more conservative side or not, but she has a pretty
robust blog and she-
That's how I take my coffee.
Robust.
So she has a series called Mothers of the Bible and one of them is Bathsheba.
Now there are just a couple of things that I want to highlight.
Her overall article is pretty solid.
She talks about Bathsheba's whole story.
She also goes into after David dies and Solomon takes over as king, etc.
But a couple of things that I want to point out is one, the pictures that she uses.
Now she does not say where these come from.
I don't know exactly where she got them from.
A lot of them I was noticing on the YouTube videos I was watching today were AI.
Oh, well this would have been before AI.
This was 2017.
Seven whole years ago.
Far, far in the past.
So I'm going to show these to Brie right now.
She has not seen them.
What in the heck?
So the first one is Bathsheba standing-
This looks like a flanograph.
Is that what they call it?
Flan-o-graph.
What is a flanograph?
It's a flanograph.
So the first picture-
I've seen that picture.
I literally think that's a flanograph.
That's not a flanograph, you weirdo.
No, I'm like 50% positive that's a flanograph.
Well I've seen that picture before.
So the first picture is Bathsheba standing just sort of out in the middle of wherever
and she's covering up her boobs with her hair and her arms and her bath is just out in the
middle of nowhere and she's like got her head off to the side and she's very clearly being
seductive and you can see David very nearby.
I mean like he's 50 yards away staring her down and if you were this woman in this picture
you would absolutely know that that man was staring at you.
The second picture is then I assume a similar- it's supposed to be the same moment and she's
stepping into the largest bathtub that's ever existed or an actual pool.
I don't think they remember what the Bible times were like.
This person didn't.
Because she was the wife of a soldier.
She wasn't like royalty.
No, and nobody had this anyway.
This is a pool.
She's literally stepping into a pool.
An Olympic sized swimming pool bare naked.
And she's- he's staring at her.
And again very close by the woman in this picture would have known that someone was
staring at her.
I just want everybody to know that I just googled Beth Sheba flannel graph and nothing
popped up.
So Bree's 50% chance when she says later on 50-50 ignore her.
I was in the wrong.
So then another couple things that I want to point out here.
One of the things that she says is we do not know how innocent or complacent Bath Sheba
is in her affair with David.
Most likely she is given no choice.
And I think that's how a lot of Christians approach it.
Like well we just don't know.
The Bible doesn't say for sure.
I think it does.
It does.
It says he went and got her.
Yeah, let's just end this argument right here.
The Bible itself, not just Alyssa and Brianna sitting here.
The Bible tells you what happened.
You have to be in full denial to not recognize that that is what the Bible says is happening.
If today you were sitting in your room and literally in your room in your house and two
people from the government, two FBI agents show up at your door and they say, hey, the
president would like to see you.
And then you, do you have an option there?
Do you have an option to say-
They've literally come into your home.
No thank you.
No, they're taking you whether you like it or not.
Right there at that moment, you are at no fault for what's about to happen.
Just right there.
Just right there.
Forget the rest of the story.
Exactly.
Where David is a peeping Tom.
He's a peeping Tom.
Where he's being a creeper.
He's a liar.
He's a murderer.
I understand that it's easy to defend him because it makes your life easier.
It makes your faith a little bit easier potentially because you don't have to work out why does
God say this is a man after God's own heart?
Why does he write several portions of the Bible?
You don't have to figure that out.
But one of the quotes that I found I believe from Rachel said that it costs you nothing
to defend the abuser.
It costs you nothing.
It costs you something oftentimes to defend the abused.
And so it's going to cost us something in this scenario to defend Bathsheba.
It's going to cost us some confusion about our faith.
It's going to cost us some questions.
It's going to cost us talking to God about really hard stuff.
I think your faith cannot grow and mature and you can't have a real relationship with
God unless you start to question some things.
You start to really dig deep into why do I believe this?
Why do I have faith in heaven and God and Jesus?
You have to question things.
And I think God encourages it.
I've had a lot of periods in my life of...
I've also had a lot of periods.
How often are we going to mention our periods?
It's a lot at this point.
Sorry, Dad.
No, but I've had a lot of times in my life where I've struggled with my faith.
Where I've either...
I don't think I've ever not believed in any sort of God, but either believed that God
was not good or things like that.
Where I've just really struggled with that.
I was taught by churches, by many people, to not question too hard your faith.
Don't ask those big questions because then you might walk away from your faith completely.
I was thinking about this story the other day and asking some really big questions.
I had that feeling of like, oh, shouldn't do that.
Like that stopping yourself moment.
I just felt this...I know this is going to sound weird, okay guys?
But I just felt like God was telling me, you can question me.
I'll hold up.
That's not weird.
This is a Christian podcast.
You're not familiar with the faith.
Of the faith.
No, but I really felt like God was like, I'll hold up.
You can ask all the hard questions.
Faith is called faith for a reason.
It means that you don't have all the answers.
It doesn't mean that you have all the proof.
You can still have faith and you can still have questions.
Some of these questions we're not going to get answers to until we meet Jesus.
Hopefully sooner rather than later.
Well you are 97.
I am 97.
I'm not sure how much longer it's going to last.
I'm barely able to turn my head to breathe.
Someone's going to actually believe that at some point.
They're going to be concerned.
I look good for 97.
You do look great for 97.
You don't look great for...
Zip it.
And I do.
Thank you very much.
So that was all I wanted to go into on that one.
So I'm going to read a couple of quotes and talk about them.
I wish you would.
I will.
I love when people read to me.
I know you do.
You really do.
It's kind of strange.
I don't have to do anything else.
I don't have to focus on anything else.
Okay, just sit and listen.
All right, well listen, it's a one sentence thing.
So one of the quotes that I found, it said, stop gaslighting people with Goliath's death
while Bathsheba is killing you.
So I'm not exactly sure.
I think it's...
That's a lot of words.
I need you to break that down for me.
I think essentially they're saying he was writing the fame and the like, oh look, God
wants to use me of Goliath's death from when he was younger.
Right.
I forget that those are the same people.
It is.
And then...
It is.
Shut up.
I'm just going to continue that sentence and it's going nowhere.
And then in modern day, Bathsheba's existence, I guess, is killing him.
But the reality is, again, we use her name here instead of saying your sin is killing
you, your lust is killing you, your stupidity is killing you.
We use her name as though it's her fault.
I saw another YouTube video today.
I was looking at all of them.
It was like, Bathsheba, victim or villain?
Is that even a question?
I think unfortunately it is something that people are asking.
That video did say victim, but to even put that as a question is disgusting.
Right.
Well, I think people are right now trying to use it as like a buzz phrase to get you
to click on it.
But the unfortunate reality is the reason that that can happen is because she's been
turned into the villain in the past for countless years at this point.
And how often...
I know that we've said this a million times in all of our other Bathsheba podcasts, but
how many times in modern day are we villainizing women for being victims?
All the time.
All the time.
Her dress was too short.
She was asking for it.
Did you see how low cut her top was?
She was walking in the wrong part of town.
She was drunk.
Just the argument of whether or not she was naked is the same argument as what was she
wearing.
Right.
Do you shower naked?
I mean, when I was a kid I used to wear my socks in the shower because I thought I was
being rebellious.
What?
I don't know.
I was a weird kid.
Not all the time.
Just sometimes.
You know, I think I know everything about you and then you spit stuff like that out.
You never wore your socks in the shower just to see how it felt?
You have an utter terror of wet socks.
Partially wet socks.
But if they're fully submerged, it's fine.
It's the same sensation across all your feet.
I don't think so.
I worry about you.
Deeply.
I worry about myself too.
Anyway.
Starting off that same vein, one of the things that I found was called Bathsheba Syndrome.
Like the villain from The Incredibles?
No.
Syndrome.
But that was a good movie.
I think they're making a part three.
What?
Yeah.
I think they announced that at D23.
Which is Disney Comic Con for those of you who are not fully Disney adults.
Anyway.
So Bathsheba Syndrome.
I had never heard of this.
So I don't know that this is the most mainstream term in the world.
Let me guess what it is.
Hang on.
You shower naked.
Yes.
So you all have it.
Except for Brianna.
Bathsheba Syndrome.
Who showers with their socks on.
Not now.
Only when I was a child.
That doesn't make it better.
You weirdo.
I'm not weird.
Someone out there will really.
No, they won't.
So Bathsheba Syndrome.
Like I said, I don't think this is a super common term, but it was one that I came across
in my research.
And primarily used for religious leaders, but I think it could be used for any leaders.
Google says Bathsheba Syndrome is a term used to describe the ethical failures of successful
leaders who are unable to deal with the consequences of their success.
What?
The term comes from the story of King David, which is familiar in many traditions.
Why are we calling it Bathsheba Syndrome?
Because I don't know.
So essentially it's describing.
David.
David.
But because we have to put it on the woman all the time, we call it Bathsheba Syndrome.
Now.
Is it just because her name was more fun to say than David?
I mean.
Ew, David.
I think David Syndrome might be a little bit confusing.
However, Bathsheba Syndrome absolutely makes it sound like she's at fault.
She's causing the problem.
She has created an issue.
She caused her brother in Christ to stumble.
I want to do a whole episode on that.
I want to do five episodes on that.
You know, it'd be a good song to go with all of that.
You got me trippin.
Ooh, stumbling.
Ooh, man, man.
Now you guys.
That's Fergalicious.
Nope, it's Fergie.
Just in general.
It's called Clumsy.
Fergalicious is another song.
Oh, good.
By Fergie.
So I just thought that was kind of insane.
Yeah.
That everywhere this poor woman is depicted, whether it's in art, whether it's in classic
literature, there's actually a movie I found as well.
Like from.
I want to say it's the 50s.
The 50s?
They weren't allowed to do that in the 50s.
You couldn't be nude on TV.
They didn't have nude on TV.
They didn't have that in the 50s.
You couldn't be nude on TV.
They didn't have Netflix back then.
Oh, another quote on the similar vein.
David defeated Goliath but lost to Bathsheba.
Our real giants are the desires we haven't killed yet.
But it's not Goliath.
What?
I want to point out.
She wasn't looking to take him down.
She was looking to take up Earth.
I also want to point out that it says we haven't killed yet.
Oh, good.
We've talked before about how when you look at the risk for men versus women when it comes
to rejection, when it comes to any of these things, oftentimes, not always, but oftentimes
the risk for men in putting themselves out there or in telling their story or in whatever
is pretty simply rejection.
I'm not saying for every moment.
I'm not saying.
A little bit of hurt ego.
Yeah.
I'm not saying rejection is not difficult in certain circumstances.
But you compare that with the risks for women and it's right in this quote.
It's right here.
We're trying to stay alive.
Our risk is death.
How often are you watching the news and you hear something tragic that happens?
You know, XYZ that you see on the news.
Terrible, horrible things.
How often are you seeing a woman being the main villain?
And it does happen and it does happen occasionally.
It's like, whoa, that's crazy.
It's shocking.
It's not shocking for a man to murder his wife or his girlfriend or go crazy in a grocery
store or school.
It's just why are we always accepting that men are so violent?
You know, how do we flip the script?
How can women become more violent?
I think it's as I look through all of, I've got a bunch of screenshots here and it's David
sin with Bathsheba.
That's one of the titles of a sermon that was against, right?
How about many things?
It's just, it becomes abundantly clear that as Christians we are working overtime to keep
David clean.
To keep his story pure.
But the Bible isn't doing that.
Even modern day, and like I said, it's not popular to anymore blame her because-
Because we're getting woke.
Well, at least on the internet, people are trying not to seem quite as bad.
So this is a quote from Baptist News Global.
My favorite.
And it's a quote that they are just describing something.
So it says male dominated cultures like Bathsheba's and our own teach women that they are responsible
for men's lust.
Women may think and may have been told that their behavior evokes this response in men.
Somehow they have telegraphed availability messages.
As a consequence, when men lust after them, some women feel guilty.
Somehow they think they have caused the sexual harassment, the unwanted sexual come ons or
touching or even the rape.
Do you think they feel that way maybe because society tells them they're at fault?
The church tells them they are at fault?
They tell them that the very sight of their bra straps could cause their brother in crisis
to stumble?
One of the articles that I read as well was saying that maybe part of the reason that
these megachurch pastors are so quick to defend David and pretend that this is not a story
of what it is, is because think of how many of those pastors have maybe not- some of them
have done such an extreme act against women, but many, many, many of them have been accused
of terrible things against women.
I mean just a couple of weeks ago.
We heard from people in our own community.
So if you think about the fact that there's an ulterior motive here.
Yeah, of course.
If they make him look a little less guilty, they don't feel as guilty themselves and they
can write off a lot of wrongdoings of their own.
Because this was a man after God's own heart.
Yes, and so am I.
Right.
And if God was willing to excuse David's sin, then well, mine's probably fine also.
And turns out I can do whatever I want if I just ask for forgiveness.
The more you look into it, and we've really researched this story, okay?
To death.
It's only two chapters of the Bible, guys.
We've really researched this story.
And it becomes so painfully clear that anyone defending David in this story is wrong.
Is wrong?
And is not reading their Bible.
No.
God is not defending David in this story.
It's almost like, you know when you're talking to someone and rather than listening to you,
they're thinking about how they're going to respond.
That's how people read their Bibles half the time.
That's good.
I know.
It's the wine.
They're not actually reading to learn from God.
They're learning to excuse themselves.
Or find a loophole.
Yeah.
How can I use this passage of the Bible?
I've been watching, I'm sure I've said this before, but I've been watching a lot of Mormon
content on YouTube.
Between you and Mom, I'm convinced you're going to become a Mormon in Mom's Anomachy.
I'm very confused.
Well, I've been watching, if it helps, ex-Mormon content.
And I'm just fascinated by the Mormon Church.
It's very different from anything that I grew up with.
It's interesting.
And they talk a lot about the fact that it's a high control religion.
And so people are always trying to find loopholes.
Because if it doesn't exactly say you can't do this specific thing, then it must be fine.
And I think that Christians are often doing the same thing.
100%.
And I wouldn't necessarily consider Christianity a high control religion.
Now you may disagree with me on that, but when I look at Christianity I see-
Compared to other religions.
Sure.
I see choices.
God's not about to kick you out of the church because you sin, because you do this, because
you do that.
There's not a list of rules.
Whereas, actually, with Mormonism there is a list of rules that you then can't enter
the temple if you've broken them.
I don't see that happening in Christianity.
Now there may be certain spaces in Christianity where that's happening.
But I think because we like to do our own thing, follow our own rules, whatever, we
do try and find those loopholes.
Some people use this story, certainly, as a loophole.
How can I get out of doing what God tells me to do?
How can I excuse my own horrific behavior against women?
Well, David did it.
So it's probably fine.
It's probably fine.
He was a man after God's own heart, so I can do what I want.
And we'll just forget that chapter 12 where anything comes in.
And maybe that's not conscious thoughts, but it's all these little things that you're being
taught in church or not being taught in church that add up to that conclusion in your head.
But it's okay.
Whatever I'm doing is fine.
Well, think of also, we talk a lot about making the women of the Bible real, turning them
into real people, real women that have female experiences and fears and rage.
And I think in churches we do sometimes get that with the men of the Bible.
To me, David feels like a real person.
Paul feels like a real person.
These men of the Bible, I've heard enough about them that they feel like real people.
But how often have you heard this story told where Bathsheba becomes a real person to you?
Never.
Literally never.
Not until now.
Because she's not the important part of her own story.
But if we make her into a real person, now we can follow what the Bible has actually
said, which is she was a victim.
She was told to show up.
She was not loved by her husband.
There's not even, and some of the resources that I was looking at said, oh, and she was
able to forgive him for his sin as well.
And then they had this great connection after that and blah, blah, blah.
But that is not in the Bible.
It's super not.
And I think we have to assume based on David's relationships with his other wives that we
aren't really seeing at all and the fact that David was a relatively selfish person, that
they probably didn't have much of a relationship at all moving forward.
So this was a woman who had been raped, whose husband had been murdered, who then had to
marry the man that raped her, lost her son because of her now husband's sin against her.
And then she has to stay married to this man.
And we don't know what kind of relationship they have.
This is going off of the fact that we don't know, the fact that there's no talk of it.
I think if it was important enough, it would be in the Bible.
It would say, and Bathsheba forgave David and they lived happily ever after.
Because that would be an important part of the story.
But it's not there.
It's not there.
Now, she does have a really incredible after he dies part of her story, because she was
probably significantly younger than he was.
So he died.
Ha ha.
And then she keeps going.
But she was a real person with this real story.
And I think until she becomes that real person for you, it is really hard to see that she
was a victim here.
But as we close out this part of the series, now we'll again talk about the rest of her
story and her children and David's children.
Yay, Brie, for more research.
Woo!
So we'll go into that next week.
But just as we close out this part of her story, I hope that she's become real to all
of you.
I hope that you can move forward with her story and ask really hard questions yourselves.
I don't want to answer those questions for you.
No, I'm not here to do that.
Start researching.
Start asking big questions.
Start asking them of the people in your life, of the Bible, of God, of the internet, if
that's helpful for you.
Read these stories in the Bible with no expectations, no other preconceived notions.
Just read what the actual words say and try to come to some conclusions on your own too.
Read it in multiple different versions, like Elyssa did.
I wrote it in a lot of versions.
And I think God will speak to you in that.
God will meet you right there.
And if that happens for you or if you have questions, please reach out to us.
We would love to hear them.
We would love to talk about them.
We might not have all the answers, but we can talk.
We can talk.
We will talk.
And we can research.
I can research.
I'll send you a TikTok.
Briel will send you a TikTok.
All right, guys, I want to go to bed.
Wait.
Um, are you from?
Oh no.
Thailand?
Okay.
Thailand!
I like your food.
They do have good food.
So if you're from Thailand and you would like to listen about females, faith, and feminism,
and sisters, and wine.
And periods.
And periods.
That's it.
If you would like to listen to us.
You guys can also follow us on TikTok and Instagram.
On TikTok we are we.r.more4.
Just search the hashtag we are more.
And I don't really know what, search the hashtag we are more on Instagram too.
I would have to look up what our technical username is.
I don't know.
We are more something.
But we do a lot of previews over there and we love to get any of your feedback.
We've been getting some great feedback lately and maybe we'll have a whole episode where
we get to talk about it.
But we have talked about a couple little things.
A little bit of here and there.
So if you have any questions or comments.
Concerns?
I have many concerns.
Where do I, do you have an inbox I can send them to?
Yeah, it's called shutup.com.
All right, we'll see you guys next week for part four.
Goodbye!
I love you.
Bye!