Ep. 3: We Are Warriors

Have you ever had the word "helpmeet" thrown in your face? If you're a woman who's spent much time in Evangelical churches, we bet you have. In episode 3 we'll dive into the origins of this word and why it simply doesn't mean what we've been taught. It turns out, God made women to be warriors. Too bad no one told us that... until now.

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

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

Welcome to the We Are More podcast.

My name is Alyssa.

And my name is Bri.

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

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

word.

And apparently that's controversial.

Get comfy.

Hello.

Hello everyone.

Welcome to episode three.

Episode three.

Huzzah!

I don't- do we have a title yet?

Of We Are More?

No, I mean of the episode.

Oh, how about-

Shut it.

Uh, nope.

Nope.

The first thing that came to my head was what that guy said.

Shut it.

Hey, you know what?

Maybe.

Maybe that's the title.

That is the title.

The episode today is called Shut It and Listen.

You guys will be hearing this a little bit after Easter.

However, in real time, it's so many weeks before, I don't even know.

I know.

We're working way ahead.

Good for us.

Yeah, we're very proactive for now.

Just like the skincare is.

So anyway, in real time, our podcast, the very first episode just went up, what, three

days ago?

Yeah, it was on Thursday.

Today's Saturday.

Yeah.

And we had about almost 50 so far.

I'm really happy.

Yeah.

So that means like unique downloads.

So they only count one play per device.

So that means that 50 different people wanted to listen to us.

How many people are on a football team?

Did we decide?

I don't know.

We guys, we, we know nothing about football.

It's 50.

Um, it's a bunch.

It's a lot.

50 is what did we decide?

A hundred ears.

Yeah, we did.

A hundred ears if people heard of it.

And that's just so cool.

Yeah.

It's really cool.

And I know we didn't talk about a lot of in-depth stuff on our first episode, but we did get

to tell our stories.

You got to know us a little bit more.

Yeah.

You're welcome.

I mean, we're a treasure.

We really are.

Fantastic.

You're welcome, everybody.

So we're really excited about that.

In, I don't know, housekeeping type news, I guess.

So we're working a couple things out.

We have bought new microphones.

They are cute.

They have rainbow lights on them.

I know.

It makes me feel like we're at a rave.

They're a little intimidating.

I know.

Very like, very professional.

I know.

Nathan had to watch some videos today to help us get it set up because I didn't know what

I was doing.

So I feel like these are perfect for ASMR because the whole time I've been like, stop it.

It picks up everything.

It does.

I'm scared what you're going to hear.

So if you hear us breathing really heavy or drinking our coffee at some point, just don't

worry about it.

It's fine.

So one of the other cool things that we noticed was that the day after we posted our podcast

was International Women's Day.

Happy Women Day.

For them, it's like way in the past at this point.

So we just thought that was really cool.

And we've just noticed that everything seems to really be falling into place as we live

into what we really believe God is asking us to do.

Everything from when we posted and the responses that we've gotten to designing the logo.

Getting the intro and outro music.

Finding beautiful pink and blue headphones.

We look really good.

We do.

We look coordinated and professional.

Yeah.

As we sit here in Bree's room.

Actually, we switched headphones today.

We did.

Now for you guys, it's right after Easter.

Happy Easter.

So we thought it would be fun to talk a little bit about what we do on Easter.

Ham.

We do.

We do ham.

We ham it up.

I do not like ham.

Not a fan.

So when I was a kid, because we've always done ham on Easter.

Most people like ham.

Everybody does ham.

Okay, well, it's sweet and I don't understand that.

So every single Easter, I would not get any ham, right?

Like I would eat the sides or whatever.

And my grandpa would come up to me and he'd be like, Lissa, where's your ham?

Because where's the ham?

Grandpa loved ham.

Okay.

I mean, he loved food, but like he loved ham.

And I was like, grandpa, I don't like ham.

Every single Easter.

What?

No, you just got to try it.

You got to try it.

I said, grandpa, I try every Easter.

But obviously not because it wasn't on your plate.

So quit lying.

I did.

But he made, he would always make me take a bite because it's delicious.

It's not.

It's weird.

It's pink and it's sweet.

And meat should not be pink or sweet.

Ham is from pigs.

Pigs are pink.

Pigs are sweet.

I don't know how to respond to that.

I don't want you to question it ever again.

So apparently I have to eat ham this Easter.

And every Easter forever more.

So we always go over, well, I would say this is a newer tradition in our family.

Our extended family gets together at every possible opportunity.

And I know you guys are out there listening.

They're out there listening and.

And now we're talking about them.

You're in the podcast.

So we always go over to one of my cousin's houses and have the most absurd amount of

food.

Like it is insane.

The amount of food that we have.

Anybody can come over practically.

You're all welcome.

We'll feed them all.

Then we do this really cool Easter egg hunt.

My aunt and cousins all set it up and there's like a horde of children at this point.

And they all go out in the backyard and hunt for these Easter eggs.

They like they're the plastic ones and they fill them with stuff and like little toys

and candy and whatever.

And it's so cute.

Like no one did that for me as a child.

Mom, we hit real eggs.

I don't want to eat real eggs.

I want chocolate.

Do you want to eat plastic eggs?

No, I want to eat the chocolate inside the eggs.

You're going to make mom so mad.

She's going to be like, we had an Easter egg hunt every year.

Sorry mom.

She's like, you have the worst memory, Alyssa.

She does.

She tells me that all the time.

Because you do.

I know.

That's why I have a whole three pages worth of notes for this podcast.

You might have a book.

So today we're going to go into a couple different things.

We are going to talk about the phrase help meet, which Rina really hates.

Help am.

And kind of where that comes from, the Hebrew words for it, things like that.

And then we are going to talk about being anti-cultural.

So before we bounce into kind of the meat of the meat.

We should just exclusively call it ham.

Into the ham for this episode.

Before we do that, we wanted to define a couple of terms for you guys.

Partly because they're important in this space.

And partly because I don't think that people really have heard them.

Unless they're really researching this.

And because it's like, we're learning all this stuff alongside you.

Here's a couple of terms that we've learned along the way.

Exactly.

So those two terms are complementarianism.

Dun dun.

And egalitarianism.

Sorry, we can hear my son singing in the other room right now.

A B C.

Nom nom nom B.

So Brie is going to talk about egalitarianism.

So she's going to read a definition for you about that.

Basically, egalitarianism is also known as biblical equality.

Basically, egalitarianism is equality.

So the doctrine that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities.

And I think that's a term...

You do hear that occasionally out in the real world.

But it's a pretty religious term.

You hear that in religion a lot.

Yeah.

And then complementarianism is kind of the flip side of that.

It's not exactly the opposite of it.

Do you guys hear the train?

We live in a town that gets cut across by a train.

Anyway, so complementarianism, I'm just going to read a definition for you,

holds that God has created men and women equal in their essential dignity and human personhood,

but different and complementary in function with male headship in the home and in the church.

And then she goes into... this is on theopedia.com.

So kind of like an encyclopedia but for the electrical stuff.

So she kind of goes into what it's characterized by.

And she says, it's a generally patriarchal view of the family with the father responsible to lead,

provide for, teach his children to know and love God.

The belief that a Christian husband should love his wife as Christ loved the church.

The belief that a Christian wife should submit to her husband as the church submits to Christ.

And then it kind of goes on.

Oh, and also the belief that only men should be appointed to authoritative positions of leadership in the church.

I think also something important to note that I learned in the book,

the making of biblical womanhood by Beth Alzenbar, which is the best of the books and everybody should go get it.

She talks about how there's a little bit of pushback during like a certain time.

And the Christians kind of rebranded the term patriarchy into complementarianism.

So it sounds a little bit nicer, a little bit better, but essentially it is patriarchy.

Absolutely. And you'll hear like there's different levels of both of these.

You know, there's extreme complementarianism and then there's middle of the road complementarianism.

And there's the same thing for egalitarianism.

So if you're researching into this space, you're going to come across those terms.

So we just kind of wanted to define them as best we could, I guess.

So that kind of launches us into the ham, the ham of it.

And we're going to talk about another term, another term that is commonly currently known as helper or help meet.

And that pops up first.

It actually pops up a lot in the Bible, but it pops up first in Genesis when God creates Eve

and essentially says that he has created what current translations call a helper for him.

Now in Hebrew, that is the word helper is right.

And I'm going to butcher pronunciation, guys.

Again, I don't know. OK.

This is not what I was educated in language.

We tried to look it up and I think this is the proper pronunciation.

So says YouTube. So says YouTube.

And it could be wrong, as YouTube often is.

But it's as a connecto. And so that has been translated as I, depending on your translation of the Bible, as either helper or help meet in current English.

I literally like in my mind, it does not compute because it's not meat like ham.

No, it's meat like nice to meet you like M E E T. Yeah.

It doesn't make sense in my head. Help me. Help me meet you.

I think that's what they're referencing.

I think there is a reason that meat got added at some point, but we'll have to kind of look that up.

And I'm not sure. I'm not sure. It's weird.

It is. It's a strange phrasing. But when you look deeper into it, biblical scholars say that it means so much more.

It's really difficult word to translate because it's it's not just.

There's no perfect translation. So as you dive deeper into the word, we find that it starts to mean rescue to mean save to mean strong.

And I think we touched on this a little bit in one of the previous episodes, but we were both at this church service where Pastor Scott shout out.

He's he's a good guy that I know of.

He was defining this in one of his sermons and he's like, it doesn't just mean help.

And then he dropped to his knees and he says, it means, I tried to whisper a scream for you.

You're welcome. But he legitimately screamed. He screamed like he goes.

It's a term that a soldier that's in battle that's like he needs to be rescued.

He screams like he's dying.

And then another fighter soldier comes in and rescues that person.

So when you are at your like on your deathbed, yeah, your worst.

That's what you're asking for. Like you're asking for someone to save your life.

But that's the term that was used for Eve when God created Eve.

And we've simplified that essentially into just a helper.

And so one of the really interesting things as you dive into this phrase is that it's used 21 times throughout the Old Testament.

A few of those are used for when Israel is asking for help from other military.

It's used 21 different times.

And the times that it's not used for Israel looking for military help,

it's used to describe God jumping in and helping and saving Israel.

Literally, God, the creator of the universe, uses this phrase to describe himself.

So the same phrase that's describing women is describing God. Right.

There's we're not drive that point home.

And I think we've like you look at how simplified we have made that when we talk about women.

And it's honestly, sincerely, it's blasphemous.

It's offensive. It is. It's offensive to to God. Yep.

It's offensive to women because I think once again, it's fitting someone else's agenda. Right.

If we want to keep women down, we're going to translate this into just simplified helper, like most simplified that we could possibly make it.

Right. Well, and I mean, imagine saying that of God.

Imagine if we took the word helper or help me and stuck it in when we're talking about God.

God, our rescuer, our maker, our everything. Yeah.

He can just help me out. But really, I've got this. I've got this. Right.

No, no, smite.

And so that's that has shaped Christian womanhood.

Mm hmm. That one word, the one word.

And I can't remember if we talked about this in the past or not.

So in order to really believe in male hierarchy, whether in marriage or church or society, you really have to believe that it was God's perfect plan.

Yeah. So it happened before the fall. Right. Right.

And the only way to make that work is if this phrase right here as our connecto, I forget that you guys can't see me.

I'm pointing at a piece of paper is if that really just means helper, assistant, subordinate, complimentary.

Yep. That's the only way it works.

The whole argument dies if that doesn't work.

So that's why we're kind of driving that home early on in hopefully a long podcast.

Maybe it's two hours, three hours. I got all night. Do you know I got into eight.

What time is it now? Seven forty four. You get an hour of my time.

Plus, it's daylight savings time today.

But I think what's funny is like, let's say, let's say that you do believe that female submission is a result of the fall.

It's part of women's punishment. And God does say that.

He says that your births are going to suck. Yeah. Your desire will be for your husband.

But the interesting thing is, if it is part of the punishment, if it's part of the fall, which we're not arguing, it is absolutely part of the fall.

Why are we holding on to it so hard? Let it go. Just like Elsa said.

Because I can't copyright. Probably Disney will go after us.

And if we get banned from Disney, we're. I'm stopping this podcast.

Yeah. If if you really believe that that's not God's perfect plan for you, why continue it?

Right. If it's if it's something that God didn't want in his perfect world in the first place.

Why why are we fighting for it? And you don't see anybody fighting for other parts of the fall.

You don't see anybody bursting into the labor and delivery room and saying, Christian woman, you can't have an epidural because this is your punishment.

This is your punishment. Can you imagine?

No, I think people like the entire population would just drop.

Well, let me tell you, someone who's given birth, let me tell you someone who's seen birth.

So essentially. Back to what as her means, it means more.

More more. Would you might perhaps might you say we are more?

Perhaps I might. And this is super controversial because we're just talking about our interest.

And apparently that's controversial. Get comfy.

And it if it means warrior, if it means the way that God treats his people, I think I'm being pretty loud, though.

Just turn it so it's like this. Yeah, if you're going to look at me and talk, I look at you and talk.

You're beautiful. Look into my eyes.

No, thank you. Cut that part out. I don't want to hear myself sing.

You've sang three times.

Well, excuse me.

And I'm not cutting them all out.

I'll edit it. Stop screaming, Johnson.

So then another, I guess, piece of evidence for the fact that as or did not mean simply helper is that you can find as or used in male names in the Bible.

See those genealogy sections that you just skip over because because you can't pronounce them.

You can't even read them. There's like Eliezer.

I don't again. I don't know how to say these. There's Abiezer.

Nebuchadnezzar. Yeah.

Ebukanezer. That's not the Bible.

That's Ebenezer.

Oh yeah, you said it wrong again. That's the second time.

I think that's the fifth time.

Ebukanezer.

So when obviously when like Jewish parents were naming their sons with these names like Jewish names are meant to mean something.

Right.

And they would never have put an insult in their child's name.

Right. That'd be like naming your kid worthless.

They wouldn't have said, this is my son helper.

They wouldn't have said that because that would have been a mockery.

It would have been insulting.

Right. Unlike names of today, which mean like absolutely nothing.

My name means a flower.

My name is Irish, but I don't know what it means.

Mine literally comes from a flower.

You're a beautiful flower.

So one of the other things that as I was researching all this, I've got pages and pages of notes on this.

Pages of pages of poorly written notes. I'll tell you that much.

Hey, I just can't follow a straight line. It's fine.

I'm concerned for you.

So one of the things that I took a note of is one of the questions that was asked was, you know, when Adam was created in the garden, God gave him dominion over the animals and land and etc.

However, there wasn't a ton to do at the time.

Oh, because like you don't have a job. Your job is to luxuriate in the garden of Eden. Come on.

Yeah, he wasn't hunting his food. He wasn't cooking his food. Like all was well.

So if God had created Eve to be keeper of the home, to be bearer of the children, to be simply a helper, at this point, she would have been a burden to Adam.

She wouldn't have been helpful. She wouldn't have been complimentary. She would have been complimentary.

If she was simply dependent upon him, she would have been a pain.

Why would God have done that to Adam?

You want to talk about daughters of Eve being clingy.

Really, like Eve would have been really annoying.

She would have had no role because Adam wasn't doing a whole lot at this point either.

She was also luxuriating and eating various fruits.

Sounds great, frankly.

And vegetables.

All we know of are trees.

Or our vegetables are a result of the fall.

Yeah, that's probably it.

Why can't I speak?

Okay, so a quote that I was reading that I think is really, I don't know, poignant? I think poignant is the word I want.

That's a nice word.

Thank you. It's by Victor Hamilton. He is a theologian, theologian?

Theologian.

Theologian and a professor at Asbury University. He's also Canadian.

Don't you ever cuss at me again.

And one of the things that he says is connegdo, so the second part of this word, suggests that what God creates for Adam will correspond to him.

Thus, the new creation will be neither a superior nor an inferior, but an equal.

The creation of this helper will form one half of a polarity and will be to man as the south pole is to the north pole.

No greater than, no less than.

Well, because both are created in the image of God.

God wouldn't be like, part of me is less than. All of them is great.

And really, I feel like we can almost mic drop here and just never film another podcast.

Because it is, it is that simple. And while there's so much more to talk about, this is a really rich topic and we love talking about the women of the Bible.

Rich.

And we love talking about, you know, Paul's stance on women and Jesus's stance on women. We'll get into that as time goes on, but you could almost stop here.

That's how impactful this part is.

Right. Right in the beginning, he references it and he establishes it right away.

As soon as Eve is created.

You're just together.

You're just together.

Created in my image.

And I love you both.

And it is that simple.

They are created to correspond to one another.

To be what the other one needs in that moment.

But also to be independent image bearers of God.

Free will baby.

Look it up.

And she's as much an image bearer as he is. I don't know. I'm not going to mic drop there.

Because we just bought these mics.

We don't want to drop them.

I fell so hard today, Alyssa. I am so like, I can feel it right here. A giant bruise is coming.

Brianna fell out of a closet today.

I was trying to put something up in my closet and I fell off the stool.

She was trying. Okay. Let's back up a moment.

Brianna was putting a suitcase seven feet up into the top of her closet.

Brianna is all of five foot three.

And this suitcase is an oversized full sized hard suitcase.

Probably full of crap.

Oh, there's two cases.

And then she fell out of the closet.

It hurt.

So now you know what our day was like. I hope your day is going better.

Everybody got hurt today. Everybody was falling. It wasn't a good day.

I tried to do a backbend. It went poorly.

Because you threw me to it.

Shut up.

You shouldn't be doing that.

Unless you're like, but you don't stretch.

When you get back on track, I'm going to have to cut this whole section.

So one of the things that Bri is going to talk about later and I'm going to talk about now because, wow, is it horrifying.

Well, don't call me that.

That was the amount of bad resources.

Oh my gosh.

I didn't know that's where you were going with this. Yes.

So much bad stuff out there.

When you try to Google like any kind of information about this topic, like what I did was Google like feminism in the Bible or something like feminism related to the Bible.

One of the articles I found was from this church. I assume it's a church.

There's a website called No Limits Church. I assume it's a church.

And it's called feminism in the Bible. And let's see who it's written by. Let me scroll all the way to the bottom.

I don't know if you're allowed to read the name.

Why?

Lawsuits?

All right. It rhymes with schmad michmang.

Wow.

Schmad schmang. I'm sure you'll be able to find this article.

But just like this is the kind, like you said earlier, this is the kind of information that's out there that people are looking to, that men are looking into specifically to justify their position.

And it says, let me quote this.

You can't label me as some sexist spigot because I've proven otherwise through my actions in this church.

So to all my false accusers, shut it because you are full of lies.

That is why I think we should name this episode Shut It.

I want everybody else to shut it.

It's so horrible.

And if you have to justify yourself to that level, no.

He says, all you have to do is examine how I treat my wife, my three daughters, my mom, my grandma, and the women in this church.

You are valuable and we couldn't do this without you.

Which to me says like, you're not part of this.

But also, it goes on to be so much worse.

It goes on to be so much worse. But if you have to justify like, oh, I'm not a sexist spigot because I have tons of friends.

I know so many women, tall women, short women.

That means nothing. Right. That means nothing.

Well, and one of the ones that I was looking at, too, this woman, and again, like you really have to dig to find Christian feminist resources.

Now, once you find one or two that'll lead you to some more. But there's not a lot of people in this space.

It's a scary space to be in. It's it's very villainized, I guess is a good word to use.

But one of the things that I looked up and this this blog was by a woman.

And as we have seen, I don't know if you've seen this as well, but as we have seen, oftentimes this patriarchal view and this complementarian view are pushed forward by women because it's what they've been told.

Right. I mean, it's it's hard to it's hard to blame them in some ways because it is what they were grown up.

Well, you're challenging like who you are.

You're challenging your faith. Yeah. Because complementarianists have tied this to God.

Like if you don't know, this is very like simplified.

But if you don't enjoy doing your laundry with a happy face on and then you aren't as much of a Christian.

Right. Your faith is not as strong as some of the other women in your church.

You're not a biblical woman. Yeah.

A Proverbs 31 woman. We'll dive into Proverbs 31. Not today.

But so this this blog in particular, like I said, is written by a woman.

And she says that she really struggled with the concept of being a helper until she dove into what Ezra Konegdo meant.

And so she she goes into how to find the quote exactly. So she goes into how being an Ezra,

which is a phrase that they use a lot, is a position of great responsibility.

It's an honor from God because God used this phrase to talk about himself. Right.

So it must be an honor and that it doesn't just mean follow your husband in whatever he does.

It just means to she says it's not about fulfilling my husband's every wish and desire,

rather it's about being a trustworthy companion for who fights for his good.

And sometimes this means celebrating him. And sometimes it means holding him accountable for wrong decisions, as God does with us.

As I started to break that down a little bit, break it down now.

OK, so we're on five times of singing. That was beatboxing. It's different.

At its core, we're saying a lot of the same things.

Maybe it doesn't mean submission. Maybe it means a partnership.

And these things that you're saying, these things that she's saying, why would they only apply to women?

I want a partner who holds me accountable, who praises me when I do well, who helps me when I'm doing poorly.

If that only applies to women, men are doing a bad job. Right.

And I think something important that you mentioned earlier is like, if you both are submitting to God, if you both are listening to God,

like you said, God is not the God of confusion. He's going to give you both the same answer.

He's going to lead you both in the same direction. He's not going to lead you apart from each other.

So why do you need a human leader? Because your human leader is going to fail.

Or like me as a single person. Shout out to all the single people out there.

If I am following God right now, why, if I were to get married, would I then like say, OK, God, I'm going to put a pause on our direct relationship right now.

I'm going to add someone to the call. I'm going to add someone to the call, God.

And I'm not going to talk directly to you. I'm going to kind of like talk through you, through a person to you.

Why? It makes no sense in my head, which is like half the reason why I'm not married. That's not true.

Someday we're going to start getting people asking for dates for you.

Because I'm so beautiful. Just wait until our photo shoot.

One of the other things that I wrote down too is if Ezarkhinegdo means being a servant to men or being submissive to men as women,

then doesn't it also mean that when God describes himself as Ezarkhinegdo, that he is also submissive to men?

Yeah.

Like if one is true, then the other has to be true, right?

Right.

And that sounds a lot like blasphemy too.

Yeah, because why would God be submitting to anybody, let alone his own creation?

Exactly. So it just like the logic just really falls apart when you dive into it.

And I think that's why when you Google this stuff, it's just a barrage of anti-feminist garbage

because they know if they can get the high Google ratings, you're probably not going to dig a whole lot deeper.

No.

And then they win.

Yeah.

But we're here now.

God is not the god of confusion, but people are.

Particularly some of these people.

Yeah.

So let's see, I have to turn the page on my notes. One moment please.

There's a fun drawing of a man here.

I ripped the whole page off. What is your problem?

I don't know how I did that.

You are a strong, confident woman.

Thank you.

So to finish off this section, I think it's really important, and this is a good transition,

that we believe that patriarchy and complementarianism were not God's dream for humanity.

And that actually is a quote that comes straight from the book Jesus Feminist by Sarah Bessey.

And if you are new to this topic, that's a really great starting off point.

We should have like a book list somewhere.

I can do that. I have, guys, if you go on our Instagram, I have a picture of a stack of books,

and it's not even all of my books, but the amount of books I have on this topic.

Gosh, I wish I was literate.

We'll try, Bri. I'll teach you to read.

It's like Beauty and the Beast.

Yeah. I'm the beauty.

I'm the beast.

You want to make me sing again?

We have a whole other topic to do, and we are 43 minutes in.

Good for us. We can cut out a lot of it.

Yeah, but still.

Good for us.

So to kind of move into our next section, we're going to talk a little bit about how, you know,

in scripture we're told to be outside of culture, right?

We're supposed to be a little bit anti-culture to some degree. We're supposed to be set apart.

Another word that you hear a lot in the conservative Christian world is like worldly.

Yeah.

The whole term worldly is very like, you do not want to be of this world. That's very a no-no.

Be set apart from whatever. And it's used just really broadly. We're at broad strokes here.

Everything from don't get tattoos and piercings to...

Definitely don't get a piercing again, because you're going to stab Grandma through the heart.

That's what she tells me every time.

All the way to not going to the movie theater, which was more when my mom was a kid as opposed to now.

You can get even as far into like what you wear, like pants, low-cut tops, spaghetti straps.

Are you showing your bra strap? Because women are always being objectified.

So the Bible says to be not part of culture. And so we've taken that to mean not part of this culture here in America in 2024.

Which is crap.

Because one thing that's important to remember that I've learned in Bible class is that...

And this has really stuck with me from college.

I'm glad something did.

Shut up. Not a lot.

Sorry if any of my professors are listening.

They're not.

I'm still friends with a few of them on Facebook.

They might be.

But that the Bible was written for everyone.

For everyone across the span of time.

But it wasn't written to us here in the United States in 2024.

It was written to the Israelite people and the early Christian church.

Because that's all they knew.

Well, like even the idea, and I've talked about this before, at least to you.

Like our idea of modesty now in this culture is totally different from their idea of modesty back then.

Right.

We're going to do, I think our next episode should be on modesty.

We have a lot to say about modesty.

Me too.

In saying don't be of the world, don't be of culture.

What they were saying at the time wasn't don't be of the world of the United States of 2024 culture.

It was don't be of the culture of the Roman...

The Roman culture. The Roman patriarchal culture of the time.

Exactly.

Because that is what they were living in.

They were living in Rome.

They were living in, not in Rome, but they were living under Roman rule.

And there was a lot of stuff going on.

There was a lot of idol worship going on.

There was a lot of things that we don't necessarily deal with.

So that's what they were talking about.

They were talking about don't be of this current culture.

And the Bible really supports that.

And the Roman culture was extremely patriarchal.

So Bri is going to go into a little bit of that.

Well, this is also out of the Making of Biblical Womanhood.

Chapter 2, page 46.

I don't know. You all can follow along with me.

Why am I so weird?

Because it's 8-12.

Nearly bedtime.

She talks about the Roman culture and the Roman law.

Wives legally had to submit to the authority of their husbands.

Unmarried women had to submit to the authority of their fathers.

Or nearest to male relatives.

Women could not own property or run businesses in their own right.

Women could not conduct legal or financial transactions without a man acting on their behalf.

Are you loading again?

Yep. That's all she said.

But then, that is Roman law.

So Paul goes on to talk about Christian law.

And that was mind-blowing for the people at the time because he gave, or God gave, rights and rules to each person.

Each person was identified.

The slaves, the children, the wives, the husbands.

They were free from the oppressive elements of the Roman law.

So that's when he's talking about be different.

Be different from that patriarchal world where people are oppressed.

Be free with God.

Well, you can even see that earlier in the Bible too because we were talking about the Proverbs 31 woman earlier.

And in that segment, she's talked about as owning property, as handling her own finances.

She's essentially creating an empire, okay?

And that would have been very against culture.

Well, the ideal woman, from my perspective, growing up in conservative Christian schools,

the ideal woman is a wife, is a mother, preferably stay at home mom, embroiderers.

Seriously into embroidery.

Which there's nothing wrong with that. I'm not trying to say that anything is wrong with that.

But saying that that is the ideal woman, that all women should strive to be that way, is not fair.

It's not biblical.

It's not biblical because biblical women are driving tent stakes into each other's eyes.

Well, not each other's.

Women of the Bible were warriors, and they were preachers, and they were teachers, and they were judges.

And they were mothers, and they were homesteaders.

I don't think they were homesteading back then.

They were everything.

But now we've just... They weren't repressed. They weren't told they couldn't.

Because Jesus told them they could.

And encouraged them to.

In Jesus Feminist, she's got a chapter titled Jesus Made Me a Feminist.

Girl.

And I think that's so impactful because Jesus himself did not treat women as though they should be submissive to him, despite the fact that he was God, and that everyone should be submissive to him.

Right.

He didn't treat even women that way, who, according to Complimentarianism, are even lower than the men on the rungs.

And you can see that. I mean, I've got a whole list of things here, but you can see that all over the place.

There were female disciples that followed around with Jesus as well.

His mother Mary followed. Mary Magdalene was there. There was like a whole giant group of women.

And they weren't mentioned as much because at the time, societally, women just were not as important.

So when the authors of these books were writing, yeah, there were women there, but kind of who cares?

I think we should do a whole episode on his mother Mary.

Oh, 100%.

Because what were you talking about earlier?

Well, we should talk about that. So Mary, Jesus' mother Mary, there's a whole bunch of Marys.

Nothing but Mary.

I don't think that was probably their real name. I'm sure this is like a translated name.

Not a lot of Debs.

Not a lot of Debs.

Or maybe.

But a bunch of Marys. So Mary, the mother of Jesus, was incredibly obedient to God.

And if patriarchy and complementarianism and things like that were correct,

God wouldn't have come directly to Mary to say, this is what I want of you.

Because she would have had to ask her husband first.

Now, she wasn't married, but God would have gone through Joseph,

or he would have gone through Mary's father, who I don't think is named.

His name was probably Bob?

Yeah, Bob, I think was it.

And that's what God would have done, because if there's a hierarchy in place,

if God has set forth this hierarchy, then of course he's not going to break it. That's silly.

He's going to go through whoever first. Now, God does talk to Joseph eventually,

but he goes to Mary. He goes to Mary first, and he says, Mary, this is what I want of you.

Not of your husband, not of your family, not of whatever. Just of you.

I just need you to trust me. I just need you to follow me as an individual,

as someone who has the full capacity and intelligence to do so.

Again, mic drop. Do we need a lot more than that?

Stop dropping our microphones.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry, microphones. I love you.

We should probably name them.

We could.

Guys, I have a cricket. We could name them and put their names on them.

Correction.

Guys, Brie has a cricket.

Here's the thing though. Brie has used the cricket maybe once.

Yep.

And I use it all the time.

Yes.

All the time.

You rent my cricket.

Yeah.

That is a good business idea. You'd want to own your own.

Forget the podcast.

Forget the podcast. I'm renting my cricket.

This is the longest we've ever talked.

Wow.

You're welcome, world.

There's still so much more. But in addition to Mary,

I think there's so many more examples, particularly through the New Testament,

but there's plenty in the Old Testament too,

where Jesus is welcoming women to learn to have a relationship with him,

to be their inequality with the men.

Right.

At this time, because Jesus was a rabbi,

other rabbis were not welcoming women into their...

No.

I don't know, hoard?

Their posse?

Yeah.

Like women wouldn't have been welcome to just walk around with them

and listen to their teachings.

These women were spreading the word of Jesus at the same level as the disciples.

This is what it means to set yourself apart.

This is the world that God is envisioning.

Jesus was different than the other rabbis for many, many reasons,

but one of which was how he treated and valued and held women up.

Right. All people up.

Yeah, exactly. Women ministered with him.

I mean, you can see where Jesus has women anoint his head with oil, things like that.

It happens time and time again.

I could find a million examples for you,

and maybe we'll pull one out and dive really deep into some of those stories.

But just as an overview, one of the people that I so want to dive deeper into,

because I admittedly don't know as much about her as I would like to,

is Mary Magdalene.

Mary Magdalene had a reputation of being a prostitute.

Not in the Bible, right?

But somewhere along the line, the Catholic Church, the Pope,

kind of without a lot of reference or reasoning,

was like, yeah, Mary Magdalene was a prostitute.

He sort of announced this to the world.

What do you say he said, once upon a time, long ago, she was a hoe?

We're going to have to cut that out.

So that kind of became part of just her story, I guess.

We have no evidence that this was true.

It's not in the Bible. It's not in any historical records.

But because of that, it changed her story a little bit.

Now, Mary Magdalene was incredibly important to Jesus.

She was listed in all the Gospels, right?

In all the Gospels. She was there when he was on the cross.

She was one of the women there when he came back from the dead.

I mean, she was there.

So a quote that I had found that I wanted to read,

it's from Robert Cargill, who is an assistant professor of religious studies

and also an editor of the Biblical Archaeology Review.

Another Bob.

Yeah, another Bob.

He says that Mary appears to have been a disciple of Jesus.

What's important is that Jesus had both male and female disciples in his ministry,

which was not necessarily common at the time.

The prostitute and wife theories, and that's a whole other thing,

may have been around for centuries, but they are legends and traditions

that grew up long after the fact.

He emphasizes that either of them is rooted in the Bible itself.

And this article goes on to kind of theorize that the reason that we turned Mary Magdalene into a prostitute

was because she was so important to Jesus.

She was doing so much work with Jesus.

She was preaching his word.

She was, after he died, she went on to do the same thing.

She was loved deeply by Jesus and spent a lot of time with the disciples.

And so the theory is that she was threatening to modern-day Christian patriarchy.

And so we turned her into a prostitute because then that lets us compare her to other women in the Bible

who weren't as important, who didn't do as much.

Or to justify women not preaching in the church, too.

So we make her small. We make all the women small.

We amplify everything that they've done wrong,

all the time.

And we minimize their contributions.

And I'm tired of it.

And apparently that's controversial.

Get comfy.

I think we've talked about all of these. We just have to do an outro.

Are you guys having hand?

First.

I'm scared.