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In this episode, we wrap up Bathsheba’s story and dive deeper into the broader narrative of women in the Bible. Bathsheba's story is one of resilience, strength, and the impact of her legacy. But she isn’t the only woman in the Bible whose voice has been overlooked or misunderstood. From Queen Vashti's defiance to the tragedy of Tamar, there are countless women whose stories have shaped history, faith, and the role of women in the world today. We’ll explore why it's important to tell these stories and discuss the significance of hearing “she” and “her” from the pulpit. Representation, even in scripture, matters. So today, we ask—what does it mean for us now, and how do we carry these stories forward? Join us as we reflect on the lessons these women teach us and why their voices deserve to be heard just as loudly as the Davids and Josephs of the Bible.
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's Bri.
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.
And apparently that's controversial.
Get comfy.
The other day, you have to say hi first.
Oh, hello.
Your toes are on my headphones.
Nasty.
Hello.
Hello.
Welcome to episode.
Actually, I think it's 26.
A good year.
26?
A tolerable age.
Actually, I take that back.
That's the year you get taken off of your parents' insurance.
That's a tough time.
It's not fun.
No, before you hit that point, it's like, all right, well, I can still have a little
kiddish job kind of and whatever.
And then you hit 26 and you have to start figuring out whether or not to even bother
being insured.
It's like, how much of my life do I want to put in my own hands?
Once you hit 26, you have to fight for your right to have medical care.
For those of you not in the United States.
It must be nice.
It really is.
It's crazy because all of a sudden you have to find a grownup job that offers insurance.
But even then, the insurance that gets offered usually sucks.
Or if you're me, just abuse your boss into paying for it.
I mean, most full-time people get offered insurance.
So I think that's fair.
Yeah, but sometimes you have to threaten to quit.
Feels reasonable to me.
Yeah.
Welcome to episode 26.
You started this by saying the other day and then I interrupted you and said you had to
say hi.
That was completely not even any kind of topic.
But the other day, this girl at work came up to me and she was standing in front of
me and she's like, I just feel like I need one of those.
And she like lifted her hands up to her face and I knew exactly what she was going to say
before she said it.
And if you've seen High School Musical where that sister and brother, they go, yeah, I
knew she was going to do that.
And it's funny because who talks about High School Musical?
I don't know, that's wildly obscure.
So brrr brrr, ma!
To all of you.
And welcome.
And welcome.
To this part four of our Bathsheba series.
Yeah, I don't know how much Bathsheba we're going to talk about today.
We're going to kind of wrap up her story, but we're also going to go off and do some
other stuff.
Yeah.
Because we've talked about her story quite a lot and I think that's been really good.
But I think now we need to kind of transition into what does it mean for us?
What does it mean for women?
Yeah.
Where do we go from here?
And just talking about the importance of talking about women in the Bible and other important
women throughout history too.
Just know that their story needs to be told.
As much as we've heard about David and Joseph and all of the other biblical man names.
Matthew Mark Luke, John.
And then Marie went to Bible college.
Ah, did.
I think I've probably said this before, but when we heard a sermon probably about a year
ago at this point, maybe even longer, and they were talking about women like a really
positive light, which was, you know, groundbreaking, life changing, whatever.
And just hearing, hearing she said from the stage over and over, I was in tears just because
of that.
And not she should submit.
Right.
But just like hearing she and her and like references.
I mean, we talk in the normal world about how important representation is, you know,
and in church it's important too.
To hear someone talked about from the stage that you can relate to.
For whatever reason, in this case obviously it's gender, but like in different ways that
you can relate to it, like that makes things more real for you.
It helps you relate.
It deepens your faith.
And so I think that's why we need to talk about these women.
I think we've talked about this many times before, but like making your faith your own.
It's really hard to really truly understand these stories and these people in the Bible
if you can't put them into like your real world context.
You know, you can't picture them in your head.
So yeah, I think I like that we're going through and seeing the women of the Bible and relating
them to our real world experiences too.
Yeah, there are so many women that people keep coming, now that we're doing a series
like this, people keep coming up to me and being like, oh, you should do an episode on
this woman of the Bible.
And maybe we'll be so good at this podcasting that we'll get to every woman of the Bible
for every single woman ever.
But there's just so many and we don't realize that there's so many because they never get
talked about.
But like I've been having all kinds of conversations lately about Queen Vashti, who is part of
Esther's story.
And she's just a very small part of that story, but she's a really significant part of that
story.
And I would love to do an episode on her sometime at some point.
There's another Tamar, not the one that you're thinking of, another Tamar.
Actually a daughter of King David that I would like to talk about too.
Yeah, she has quite a tragic story.
Quite a tragic story, yeah.
But today we're talking a little bit about, Brie, what are we talking about?
Well listen, I was sitting there on my bed thinking of what the heck should we talk about
on this podcast?
We talk constantly and I'm just talked out.
You say that like we couldn't go and go and go.
We're the Energizer bunnies of talking.
I know.
But you know, I went back to basics and I said, where's my Beth friend Beth?
Your Beth friend Beth?
Where's my best friend Beth?
Beth, listen, I think I'm tongue tied.
So her book, The Making of Biblical Womanhood by Beth Alison Barr, our bestie, I have read
through it once and now, well I listened to it.
I listened to the audio version and now I'm going back through the actual physical book.
That counts.
And I like highlighting it, being able to have that physical book in front of me.
But I was like, let's just peruse through here.
What can we talk about?
So in chapter three of her book, if you'd like to follow along with me, open your books
to page.
She was talking about her life a little bit and she was the wife of a pastor.
And in her super conservative Christian church that her husband worked at, they didn't allow
women to even teach Sunday school because there were boys older than 13 in their Sunday
school and women can't teach boys over the age of 13 in this super conservative Christian
church.
So her and her husband were petitioning the church to allow her to keep in mind she's
like a professor.
She has her PhD.
Yeah, like this is what she does for a living.
Yes.
She's not like any of the pastors there.
She's a medieval historian, correct?
She is.
Yeah, she's a medieval historian and she focuses on biblical studies.
So the perfect person to the bare minimum teach your Sunday school.
I would be honored to have this woman teach my Sunday school.
Just think about how much money people pay to go listen to her lectures or to be taught
by her.
Tons.
So you could just go for free to the church.
She had this quote in here that said, do we really want to go down this path?
Because she's thinking about her comfort.
All of the people that she's grown with and loved in her church, now she's having to step
away from that and go against the grain and say, yeah, I do believe that women have the
right to teach and preach and that might cost her her job or her husband's job or think
about the risks there for her.
The position in her church, her friends.
And it's like, is it really worth going down this path?
And that just kind of struck me.
I'm like, oh, what we're doing here is going against the grain.
Yeah, we, I don't want to say we've gotten a crazy amount of negative feedback, but we've
definitely gotten some pushback from people that we care about, from random people on
TikTok.
And you do have to ask the question, wouldn't it be easier to just not?
There's a comfort level there to just kind of sit back and accept it and say, well, maybe
I am a feminist, but I don't want to speak out too loudly because it's more comfortable
and safe to stick with the status quo.
Well, I think one of the comments that I have heard is, well, you can believe what you believe,
but why can't you just be quiet about it?
Why can't you just believe what you believe and let everybody else believe what they believe
and that's fine.
And my answer is always the other people aren't being quiet.
The people who believe in patriarchy, the people who believe that men should be the
head of the household, who believe that men should make all the decisions and be the teachers,
et cetera, et cetera.
They're not being quiet.
They're writing books, they're writing blogs, they're preaching about it and nobody tells
them to be quiet.
Nobody says, hey, you can believe that, just believe it more quietly.
Nobody says that.
So why are you saying it to me?
Why don't I get to have a voice?
Why?
Because I'm a woman in a Christian circle.
And unfortunately, stereotypically, that means I should be quiet and demure and submissive.
So yeah, people out there, are you a closeted feminist?
Now is your time to come out.
Didn't you say, I think it was you that told me this, that you saw a TikTok and it was
like instead of asking people if they're a feminist, you should ask if they're a massage
ist.
Yeah.
I'm going to assume that you're already a feminist.
I'm going to assume that you like equality.
I assume that you believe men and women are equal.
I saw another TikTok.
I sent it to you.
Welcome to the dark side.
And it said something about everyone is born a feminist because no one is born with hate
in their heart for another people group.
It's just like how we talk about how racism is taught to children.
It's not inherent in them.
It's taught.
Sexism is the same thing.
Absolutely.
So everyone is born a feminist and you become a massaginist.
And I thought that was so incredibly powerful because if you're born believing in equality,
if you're born a feminist, then that means that's how God made you in the first place.
Yeah.
God created you with a desire for equality and you chose something else.
You chose to walk on a path that if you're a man, gives you power and autonomy and makes
you feel a little like God.
Yeah.
And I just want to go up to the people believing that and say, why?
Why do you think that God would give you the right to hurt and oppress people and that's
what he wants.
He loves his people.
He loves the women just as much as he loves the men.
I think what I hate about that though is the idea that, and actually one of our cousins
brought this up to us quite a while ago, is that people that believe in male headship
or female submission or whatever, and if you're not familiar with these terms, they sound
a little inappropriate.
I was going to be like, well, listen, shut your mouth.
But these are the terms they use people.
I didn't make them up.
But the people who believe in that kind of thing believe that the men are being loving
to the women by leading them, by guiding them in the path that God wants them to be guided
in, by taking more responsibility for their spiritual growth, I don't know.
And it's such a load of crap.
Yes.
It's such a load of crap.
How do you get to a point where you tell yourself, it is loving for me to tell you that you can't
handle yourself?
Well flip the script.
If I went up to my husband and I assumed that he could barely turn his head to breathe,
and that I had to gently guide him in the direction so that he could do whatever he
needed to do, if you think about it that way, you would think, oh, that's demeaning.
You shouldn't talk to your husband that way.
You shouldn't talk to another person that way.
Yet they're trying to do that all the time and slap God's name on it.
I don't need my partner to take more responsibility with God for me.
No.
I'm good.
I'm my own person.
I'm responsible for whatever I've done in my life, and God blankets whatever I've done
in my life with Jesus' love.
And so I'm good.
I'm good.
I don't need an intermediary of a man.
Jesus did it for me.
I'm okay.
There's a couple different types of communication, and one of them is parent to child, and the
other one is parent to parent.
So if I'm coming up to you as my team member and I talk down to you, that's not going to
make you feel good.
That's not going to make you want to rise to the occasion or do your job.
And that's like parent to child.
You want to talk to people parent to parent.
That's how you lead people.
That's how you guide people.
We're on the same level.
And I'm not going to baby talk you.
I'm not going to make you feel bad about it.
Here's what needs to be done.
There you go.
And I think that's how we should treat all relationships, including our romantic relationships.
But I think, and you talked a little bit about this in the research that you were doing,
just so everyone knows.
So Bree and I lived together, and it was the middle of the night.
In the dark of the night, I was tossing and turning.
And she sends me a text from down the hall and she's like, Hey, I want to talk about
the podcast.
Come over here.
I'm okay.
I'm in bed, guys.
Once I go to bed, you have to understand when I go to bed, I'm done.
I'm out for the day.
Not that I'm sleeping, but I'm like through with my day.
This is how much I love my sister, folks.
I got my butt up.
I came all the way down the hall.
All the way down the hall.
All the way.
And I sat there while she preached at me.
So prepare yourselves.
They feel overwhelmed.
Bekkah No, but I think you did talk about how women,
Christian women are supposed to be demure.
Bekkah Demure, mindful, cutesy.
Bekkah Because of that, that does impact the communication.
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
It's all about comfort.
Women, I think specifically, are always taught to be peacemakers.
I don't know if that's specifically taught to women and girls or if that's just subliminal
messaging from all around them.
But you always want to make the other person comfortable.
You never want to make a situation awkward.
You want to diffuse the situation.
And part of that, I think, is safety too.
Because if you escalate a situation, you don't know what's going to happen to you.
But you always think of your comfort as coming second.
Bekkah Yeah.
Well, I think, I mean, let's talk about that a little bit with Bathsheba's story as it
goes on past the story that we've talked about.
So the next portion of her story, I guess, she has Solomon as her son.
Now they actually, her and David actually have several children, but Solomon, I think,
is their oldest surviving child.
And when David is on his deathbed, he's naming the next king.
Now I find this really interesting because it seems like maybe he didn't really talk
to God about this because God had a plan and David did what David wanted to do.
But David names his oldest son as king and I don't remember his name.
But prior to this, back when the prophet Nathan came to David and talked to him about them
having a son, he also said, and your son will become king.
So Bathsheba and David's son Solomon was supposed to be king.
Bathsheba knew that, David knew that, but forgot it, I guess.
But then when the time came and David is naming the next king, Bathsheba didn't say anything
initially, which I think is super interesting.
And this is totally like conjecture.
This is just me putting the way I would feel on her, so definitely could not be the case.
But if I was her, I think the reason that I didn't say anything would be to keep the
peace.
Who knows who she's going to offend if she says something?
Who knows what's going to happen to her?
And she's already been through so much tragedy.
And women were taught not to speak up back then.
You're right because you don't know what's going to happen to you.
You don't have any rights.
You're just a woman.
Well, and what could have happened to her son?
Let's say she says something and that makes the person who does become the next king really
angry.
You don't know what's about to happen there.
So it's better to keep the peace, keep the status quo, not rock the boat.
Don't rock the boat, baby.
So the next part of her story is that the prophet Nathan comes back.
The prophet Nathan?
I say the prophet because my husband's name is Nathan and it really is throwing me off.
The prophet Brianna.
The prophet Brianna should shut up.
No, the prophet Nathan came back to Bathsheba and was like, hey, remember what I said?
Remember.
And you need to go remind David of this because God said Solomon should become king.
And then she does.
And actually that's another interesting thing that I was reading is that people use that
part of the story and they'll say Bathsheba.
She was like some kind of out to get her own political gain.
She was scheming all along.
Like her and Nathan got together and came up with this plan to get Solomon to be king.
But in order to make that work, again, you've got to really jump through hoops to make that
story work.
And that's just another way of making the women of the Bible look bad for no reason
at all.
In order for that to work, you have to believe that Nathan was never a prophet of God.
And the Bible calls him a prophet.
So now the Bible is lying.
And you have to, like you said, jump through a lot of hoops to get there.
The Bible does not say that.
If it wanted you to understand that, it would have said Bathsheba was out to get her own
political gain and tricked King David into making her son king.
But it doesn't say that.
That doesn't and anything else then that Nathan says later as he prophesies from God, then
you have to take this idea that he plotted with Bathsheba and assume that he's a liar
every other time he speaks.
Are you willing to do that?
But most people don't.
It's just we're going to take this one story and we're going to cherry pick it.
And we're going to say that because we have to make someone into the villain in this story,
even though there doesn't need to be a villain in this story.
Well, just a total side note that I would love to go into at some point too.
Did you all know that Bathsheba was the one who not technically wrote but gave the message
that was the Proverbs 31 woman?
I didn't.
I didn't either.
But our mom actually brought this up to us recently.
Because when Solomon writes it out, he says this was a message from my mother of the type
of woman to find.
It's totally an offshoot that we want to do the Proverbs 31 woman at some point, but that's
a really big topic.
I'm going to have to spend a week fasting before we do that.
Wow.
When we did, I don't know if your churches out there do this, but there's a program called
Rooted.
And our old church used to do it all the time.
It's kind of like an intro to small groups, I would say.
But one of the days, they have you do fasting just for like 12 hours or something.
It's not long.
It's really short.
It's like, just skip breakfast, lunch, you can eat dinner.
And I did Rooted like three separate times because we, I don't know, it was a whole thing,
but we did it a bunch of times.
Every single time we got to the fasting day, I was like, I'm going to kill people.
Someone needs to die.
Can I tell you that, okay, when I did Rooted, I was in a small group with a lot of divorces.
Yes, you've said before.
The people know.
But it was a great time.
We would get together and just drink wine.
Except for the day that was fasting, I got there, I hadn't eaten anything all day, then
chugged a glass of wine.
I was like, wow, this is amazing.
I love Rooted.
I feel so close to the Lord.
All right, people, now you know.
The secret is fasting and drinking.
Good.
I'm sorry, my family out there.
Don't listen to that message.
But circling back, circling back, keeping the comfort.
I think, and you talked about this too, to pull it around to real life with dating.
Yeah.
Ladies and gentlemen out there, dating is hard.
As a woman, you're always, again, concerned about making sure that you don't make the
situation uncomfortable.
So you'll agree to things that you're uncomfortable with.
I'm not trying to make it weird at all, but agreeing to a second date, or agreeing that,
oh yeah, this drink is fantastic.
I don't know, just to keep the situation comfortable.
I don't want to say, no, I don't want to go on a second date with you right in front
of that person because I'm worried about making him feel bad, even though he's been making
me feel bad.
He's not concerned about my comfort.
Well, we were talking about this too, and I know these are just a bunch of random real
life examples, but I think we think about things in the context of the church because
that's the perspective that we live in.
But these things happen in the broader picture too, so like dating.
And then if you guys watch, so one of the really popular YouTubers is MrBeast, right?
So my daughter loves his videos.
It's a rough time, guys.
But he does a lot of competition type videos.
That's kind of his thing now.
And he did one, and it was like guys versus girls, and there was a team of guys and a
team of girls living out in the wilderness.
And then once a week or something, they would come onto this bridge and have a challenge,
and whoever won the challenge got some sort of reward.
So finally, there's just one guy and one girl left, and they meet at the bridge.
And he says, okay, really simple challenge today.
You guys each have a piece of paper and a pen in front of you.
I want you to write down something that you want.
Whatever it is, the other person gets to decide if you get it.
Okay, reasonable, right?
So the girl turns hers around.
It's an art kit.
She wants an art kit because she's bored.
She's all alone.
And honestly, she had a lot of food at that point.
She was doing pretty good.
So the guy's like, okay, yeah, of course you can have an art kit.
Who cares?
That's not going to help you stay here any longer.
And he thinks she's stupid, right?
But she got what she asked for.
He asks for a personal chef for the rest of the time that he's there, expecting that she's
going to say yes.
Because why would she ever say no to him?
Women are taught to say yes.
Not to make the situation uncomfortable, to make themselves less.
Well just like what you were talking about before, why can't we both have different opinions
and why can't you just keep yours quiet?
Because I'm allowed to have my opinions too, even if they make you uncomfortable.
And I'm allowed to be loud about it.
Heck yeah.
Really loud apparently.
Yeah.
And I will say, circling back to that video, she said no.
And I was very proud of her.
And he was shocked, boys and girls.
He was shocked.
You didn't allow me to have a personal chef while I allowed you to have an art kit?
If she had said yes, he would have won.
That would have been the automatic thing.
But because women are taught to just do what we're told to do, he expected her to be nice.
Well think about, I know that I've seen TikToks about these.
They're called like micro feminist movements.
So people go around saying like, what micro feminist thing do you do?
And so some people are like, oh, instead of assuming that the doctor is a man, I assume
that she's a woman.
And let them correct me if I'm wrong.
Or I say the woman's name first instead.
One of the things that they do though, is instead of stepping out of the way when you're
walking towards someone, if you notice, men don't move out of the way.
As a general rule, I'm not saying all men.
But when you're walking towards someone, they don't get out of the way.
You have to get out of the way as a woman.
So instead of doing that, you just walk into them.
Look at them like, what the crap?
I saw that video and she's like, I have walked into six men today.
I've started doing that.
I think it's hilarious, especially Disney and Black Friday when you're in big crowds.
Because the men look at you like, what are you doing?
You should get out of the way.
And I'm like, you should get out of the way.
Well, you don't even realize it.
You don't even realize that that is a thing until you start doing something like that.
You're like, oh my gosh, I've been moving out of the way.
And that would be perfectly fine if it was a mutual respect kind of thing.
I'll move out of your way and you move out of my way.
No one needs to get in a head on collision here.
But the fact that nine times out of 10, the woman is going to be the one to step out of
the way, to inconvenience herself to make that other person not have to get out of the
way.
It's just, it's wild.
So yeah, do we really want to go down this path?
Do you really want to sacrifice your comfort for the courage to step out and say that this
isn't right?
This is what I believe.
I'm tired of complying to what has been said for me to do all along.
I'm going to go against the grain.
Some people that did go against the grain.
So Beth talks about a great cloud of female witnesses in this chapter of her book.
And when she was talking about her husband ended up getting laid off from his job because
they disagreed with their stance.
They made waves.
They made waves.
So her husband got fired and she's like, I was sitting there and thinking about Marjorie
Kemp.
Just take a pause.
I know you guys don't know who this is yet.
We'll get there.
But you're sitting there in tragedy.
What sort of person is sitting there in tragedy and thinking of historical figures?
She's like, this medieval woman.
I just couldn't get her out of my mind after my husband got laid off.
I love that.
She's great.
And Marjorie Kemp was arrested in 1417 for pretty much just loving the Lord too much.
She had a lot of money and could get away with a lot more than what other women of her
time could get away with.
But she would go into churches and she was talked about how wild her worship was.
She would get on her knees and she would just love the Lord too loudly.
And she would go and she would kind of teach the Word of God to other people.
And so they arrested her because they said women aren't allowed to preach.
And so she argued with the Archbishop and said, but I'm not preaching.
And she gave all these biblical references that Paul says that defended that she did
have the right to teach and share the Word of God in the name of Jesus.
And she actually ended up winning against the Archbishop.
The Archbishop called her a wicked woman.
And she's like, actually, I think you're a wicked man and you should repent for your
sins otherwise you're going to hell.
That's what she told the Archbishop in 1417.
This woman did.
Again, let's mention too, when you look at certain men in the past, let's take some major
historical figures.
Martin Luther or someone like that.
He could get away with so much.
Now, I'm not saying that things went great for him in the end, but he was able to go
quite a bit further.
Whereas for her, I mean, right then and there, first offense, chop off her head.
Obviously, that's not what happened, but that was the risk she was running by saying anything
to begin with.
Whereas men could, they may not have been able to get away with it forever and ever,
but they could get away with a lot more.
And so she's risking her life to push the needle forward a little bit.
And in the book about Marjorie Kemp, it says that she was surrounded by a great cloud of
female witnesses to help back her up pretty much, which I just feel like that's such a
comfort.
Oh, I think about that all the time.
It's one of my favorite things.
All these incredible women throughout the Bible, throughout history, that were not quiet
and compliant, and they didn't necessarily think of other people's comfort all the time.
They thought about, how can I push forward the kingdom of God and be loud about it?
So people like Mary Magdalene, who was called the apostle of the apostles, she was called,
wasn't she called Jesus's favorite at one point?
So that's actually in her own book.
So the Gnostic Gospels, which are not included in the main Bible for many reasons, but in
there, supposedly, if those books are true, Peter calls her Jesus's favorite.
Is Mary Magdalene the same as Mary of Bethany?
I don't know.
But there's like 7,000 Marys.
There's like 7,000 Marys.
This is a quote from Beth Allison Barr.
For the medieval Christians, Mary of Bethany was not just a woman who sat quietly at the
feet of Jesus.
She was a repentant prostitute.
So I do think it's Mary Magdalene.
And former demoniac.
She was the apostle of the apostles, the first apostle who carried the good news of the resurrection.
She was the missionary of Christ, affirmed by Peter.
She preached openly, performed miracles that paralleled those of the apostles, and converted
a new land to the Christian faith.
That is not a woman who is quiet.
I think you have to look at almost every woman featured in the Bible.
Now correct me if I'm wrong here, but I'm thinking of all of the examples of women named
in the Bible.
And I can't think of a single one who was quiet or compliant or who sat back and let
their husbands lead them onto the path God wanted them to be on in the first place.
Like that's very convoluted.
Jesus will lead you to the path he wants you to be on.
You don't need a person in front of you.
And I think of Mary and Martha.
They just followed Jesus.
That's what they did.
They just simply followed Jesus.
Mary the mother of Jesus.
Esther.
Ruth.
Like I can point you at Pua and Shifra that we talked about forever ago.
Big Deb.
I wanted to say Naomi.
Naomi in the Bible I just think is hilarious.
I was reading a little bit about her this past couple days.
She changed her name after her husband died and she moved back to wherever she was from.
Tamara which essentially just means like despair.
That is so funny to me.
Like can you be so sad that you look at someone and just say like don't call me by Brianna.
Just call me miserable.
And be fully serious.
Do not call me Brianna.
And imagine the people of the town that are like trying to interact with her and they're
like hello miserable.
How are you today?
I'm sad.
Obviously.
That is a level of just insanity that I aspire to.
It was so tremendous.
It was written down in the Bible.
They were just like we need to remember this.
Paula of Rome who I was reading about.
I think Beth does talk about her in her book as well but I read an article about her.
This is the woman that we talked about a while ago who left her kids to follow Jesus and
actually she's like an incredible person.
It's a wild story.
She was a mother of five.
She was widowed early in her 30s.
She joined a study with other very wealthy widows because she was wealthy herself.
Go her.
And that's where she met Jerome.
I don't exactly know who Jerome is but he's important.
He's important.
He's important and his name is Jerome.
So she decided to leave Rome and go tour the Holy Lands with one of her daughters so she
didn't leave all her kids.
She brought her favorites.
Well I think the story that Beth tells too of her, there's like this legend of her standing
on the bow of a boat staring at her children and her children are like sobbing asking her
not to go.
And that's part of why this story is wild.
It's hard because as mom I can't even begin to imagine this but she was following what
God asked her to do.
And sometimes that hurts.
It hurts a lot of times and it's not just about leaving your kids.
It can hurt for different reasons too.
And I'm not recommending that you all get on a boat and leave your children but in this
particular case it's very clear that God had something for her.
Yeah she ended up in Bethlehem actually and she started three different monasteries.
So one was just for women, one was for men, and one was for tourists.
Now the one that she ran specifically, all of the women there became experts in the ancient
languages and they preserved a lot of the ancient texts so they duplicated them and
they were preserved for centuries.
And then her, her daughter and Jerome were responsible for translating those texts into
a Latin version of the Bible called the Vulgate which was used for over a thousand years.
Which made the Bible accessible to how many people?
Well us even today.
It's still being used I'm sure.
That impact is being felt.
And I just think it's such a contrast to the people that say, well women your primary calling
is to be wives and mothers because you're nurturing, because you're loving, because
you're whatever.
Don't get me started.
This woman left her children.
And again I'm not saying that this is the ideal situation but her job in life and she
knew it and God knew it for her was not to be a mom to these kids.
And that hurts.
That's a hard story.
But her job, her calling, her following God was her going out and preserving the Bible
for the rest of time.
And she had so much faith in God that she knew her kids are going to be taken care of
and okay.
I think when I first read this story, because I read the Making of Biblical Womanhood quite
a long time ago at this point.
And when I first read this story I think I pictured her as really callous.
She didn't want to be a mom in the first place and she's glad to get rid of these kids.
Peace out.
I didn't know her.
She was in 1417.
No, that was Marjorie Kemper.
Oh sorry.
I think this seems wrong.
347 to 404?
It's possible.
But I didn't know her.
She was a long time ago.
Long dead.
But I would imagine because I see the fruits of her labor, because I see how much she cared
about humanity, how much she cared about the women that she was working with, that it probably
hurt really bad to leave her kids.
As I'm peeling apart this story I would imagine that it hurt really, really bad.
And then I liken that to when Jesus was walking through towns and asking all of his disciples
to drop what they were doing and follow him.
And that had to hurt.
She didn't become a Christian until she joined this study with these other widows.
And she became on fire for the Lord and was able to keep that fire going for the rest
of her life.
I feel like for you and me we were born into it, right?
We've been Christians, we've been in the church our entire lives.
So it's hard to find that spark again to get yourself back on fire for the Lord and have
that same level of faith.
But I think stories like this and these other incredibly strong women are lighting that
fire again because I realize my God is so much bigger than I ever thought he was.
Yeah, I think, you know we talked about representation.
And when you're sitting in church and you never hear a story about a person who looks
like you, and I'm sure this is true for many, many people groups, but when you never hear
a story about a person who looks like you, whether that's a story from the Bible or a
story from history, it does get really hard to make it feel real.
Because it feels like it's not for you.
Yeah, because if all you ever hear about is Daniel in the lion's den and Moses parting
the sea and Noah in the ark, why can't I do that?
Why can't I build a freaking ark?
Well, I don't want to.
It took him a really long time.
It's like hundreds of years.
I think one important point to make also is that Paul was doing the same thing that the
disciples were doing, right?
The disciples were told drop everything.
Don't say goodbye to your families, to your whatever.
Just follow me.
Just follow me.
Drop everything that you're doing and follow me.
And they did.
And we don't judge them for that.
No.
But we sit here and we hear her story and I absolutely guarantee you that everyone is
sitting there judging her for that.
When Jesus came to her and said, take up your cross and follow me.
That's what she was doing.
And the really hard reality is that when Jesus said that, there was a consequence.
Just like with his disciples.
When he said that there was a consequence.
There was a hard choice that had to be made.
I actually always question, and this is not biblical at all, but I always question were
there people that Jesus said follow me and they didn't?
There had to have been.
Yeah.
Wouldn't you think?
We never read into the story like that, but I just kind of always have wondered that.
Were there people that said no?
And was it okay that they said no?
This is totally offshoot.
Did they still end up becoming Christ followers?
I don't know.
I just think that's an interesting thought.
Because it's a hard path to walk down.
It is.
Like we've said a million times during this podcast, it's not a comfortable situation.
There are times where I do, there's a part of me that wishes I could just be happy with
the status quo.
Because it would be easier.
It would be so much simpler to just be able to be what was expected of me.
What I was told to be as a child.
People would be more comfortable around you.
Yeah.
Everyone wouldn't feel like they have to like awkwardly ask, how's the podcast going?
I don't really want to talk about this, but...
Or anytime anyone says a sexist comment, just like look at you.
Please stop making sexist comments.
Let's just stop that.
I don't know if I want to keep this in or not, but I was talking to a person.
And they said, well, this is just women's work.
This isn't a man's job.
And I was like, give me more information.
Tell me more about that.
Why do you feel that way?
Because again, trying to keep the situation comfortable.
I don't want to be like, piss off.
He was talking about bathing a dog and how this is just women's work.
And I was like, what do you mean by that?
And he was like, well, women are just naturally more nurturing.
And I was like, that's not true.
Yeah.
I'm not nurturing.
Which I feel like I am.
You definitely are.
But I think it's so stupid when it's like women are more nurturing.
You are nurturing, but men also can be nurturing.
And should be.
Men should be.
I think nurturing just means caring about another person, occasionally putting them
before yourself, and being aware of their needs.
How about everybody should be nurturing?
Everybody should be.
That should just be an expectation.
I think part of that is how we raise boys.
Yeah.
And we don't-
Well, because we raise boys to say that their needs and comforts come before everybody else.
Right.
But yeah, that's wild.
I think I've said that's wild like five times in this episode.
That's wild.
I didn't have any alcohol, so I don't have any more flowing words coming out of me.
This is my third glass of wine today.
Wow.
So to end this on an ending Bathsheba note-
We're gonna end Bathsheba.
To wrap up all of the talks about her.
Real quick.
Yeah.
I think Bathsheba was surrounded by a cloud of witnesses too.
Doesn't that just make it like gives me shivers down my spine?
I think there was a cloud of female witnesses around her saying, we hear you, we're here
to protect you, and things are gonna be okay.
Because your name is gonna be written in the book of life forever and ever.
I just, I can't begin to tell you, if you guys haven't read Beth's book, read it.
It's just spectacular.
But that particular segment where she talks about the cloud of female witnesses and just
the empowering feeling of that, of thinking all of these incredible women throughout history
would back me up.
They would back us up here.
Yep.
They would say, yeah, keep doing it.
And even when the TikTok trolls jump on and call us children for the things that we say-
Or AI.
Or AI.
Yeah, we did get that comment.
Or whatever else they want to throw at us.
All of these women, plus also Jesus, are behind us.
And I just think that's super cool.
But I think to move to the end of Bathsheba's, the story that we know of her.
So Solomon becomes king, her son Solomon, and becomes, I think overall, quite a beloved
king in Israel.
He ends up building the temple, things like that.
She becomes the queen mother.
Yeah.
And she basically, there's a story where she comes to him and wants to talk to him and
give him some advice.
And he pulls a throne up right next to him.
And she's right there.
And it goes from just the worst that life can give you.
The beginning of where we land in her story in Second Samuel, I would argue is just the
worst life can offer someone.
She was powerless in so many situations.
And then she loses her child.
There's nothing good in that story.
And I don't want to say, oh, but everything was fine, because look at the end of her story.
No, her story, the beginning of her story still sucks.
But look at when she steps into her own, when she decides not to let everybody else be comfortable,
when she follows what she knows God told her to do, look where she lands.
She is the most influential woman in Israel during this time.
I heard a TikTok the other day that said, your trauma did not make you stronger.
Your trauma traumatized you.
And it's okay to admit that and it's okay to accept that.
But you can move past it and you can become strong from it.
But it's okay to accept that it traumatized you too.
Yeah, I think it's your reaction to the trauma, your choice to build yourself back up that
made you strong.
I think yeah, that's a really twisted way that we in modern day look at things.
It's like, well, you should be thankful that you went through X, Y, Z, because if you hadn't,
then you wouldn't have what you have now.
And I've actually, we've seen that comment a couple of times on our TikTok of like, well,
she went through this because she was supposed to be queen and this was the path that God
had for her to become queen.
No, she went through an absolute trauma.
If God wanted her to become queen, there were other pathways for that.
Oh yeah.
There were other options.
I don't know if you know this, but God has ultimate power and he can do whatever he wants.
I mean, she could have just married David in the first place.
Her husband could have actually died in battle and then David could have married her after
that.
Many options.
But the reality is yeah, her trauma was traumatic and what an incredible thing to have in the
Bible because now all the people who go through trauma have a way to see themselves in the
Bible.
Their story is there and yet also redemption is there and the end of the story is there
that they can see that it doesn't just stop, that it keeps moving forward, that God keeps
moving forward with Bathsheba.
God is faithful.
One of the things that I wanted to say too because we talked a little bit about how in
this story everybody always defends David because the Bible calls him a man after God's
own heart and that's a really tricky thing to get past when you look at what he did.
This is not the only bad story about David.
He was a troubled soul.
But our pastor this last week, or my pastor I guess, this last week talked about David
and Bathsheba which I thought was really interesting.
I think that's just another affirmation that we are in fact doing what we're supposed to
be doing.
Yeah.
So he started talking about us like, hey, I know that story.
Did I manifest this?
Sitting there with my hands up.
No, but what he said I thought was just so really impactful about David.
So the series we're going through right now, I really like it.
It's called Shame Off You.
He was talking about how we can struggle a lot with that phrase.
How could David be a man after God's own heart?
And then also be this horrific person who hurt so many people.
And he said, I don't think it's a reflection of who David was because David is sinful.
David has done a lot.
David could be a soap opera all on his own.
He said, I think it's a reflection of how God sees David and how God sees all of us.
So not David is a man after God's own heart because he's such a wonderful exemplary human
being.
But David's a man after God's own heart because once you accept God into your heart, God sees
you as someone that he cherishes, as someone who is after his own heart, his flesh and
blood.
Yeah.
As his child, as perfect in his eyes.
That turned everything on its head for me because I struggle with that a lot in this
story of how do we get past that?
But I thought that was a really good way to put it.
And a way to talk about this story that doesn't excuse any of his behavior, but also makes
the Bible make a lot more sense to me.
Yeah.
All right, so I think that's the end of our Bathsheba series.
I hope you guys have enjoyed four hours of us talking about her.
Similar to the length of Colin Firth's Pride and Prejudice, which we thought was four hours,
but was in fact six.
So should we do two more episodes, guys?
I don't think I can talk about Babs anymore.
No, I think we got to give it some time.
I would love to hear some suggestions about what you all want to hear about.
Send us some DMs, comment on our TikToks, our Instagram posts.
What topics would you like us to dive into and just talk for hours and hours and hours
about?
And if you don't, we're going to talk about TikTok for a long time.
I feel like after four hours about talking about Babs, we deserve that.
So maybe our next episode should just be, let's talk about our TikToks.
I actually wouldn't mind going through, Brie and I send each other feminist TikToks, religious
TikToks, constantly.
All the time we're obnoxious.
Anyone else would hate us.
My algorithm is so messed up.
Oh yeah, mine's a disaster.
It's like so, so feminist, but then also like, can I tell you something about sharks that
you never knew?
They don't have legs.
So I do think it would be fun though.
I saw this one today.
There's just a list of like, you know how to like make a hug great?
Lean in and whisper these things.
And it was like, I know what you did last summer.
Or help me.
Just like look back at them.
Just totally normal.
Or I killed Mufasa.
I reposted it on my personal one.
Okay, good.
Not on ours.
No, you can find my personal one if you want.
If you guys ever see us reposting just like a lot of bizarre crap, know that Brie and
I got ahold of the TikTok.
I reposted I think two different ones today.
Did you?
Yeah.
Okay, so we'll maybe do that next week because that would be kind of fun.
Just go through all the weird TikToks.
I bought a book and okay, so I bought it on Amazon and we share like a family Amazon account
and my dad saw it and he was like, who bought this?
What is this?
So it's called like 109 ways to piss off men.
Like, I'm, look guys, I realize that that's a little bit inflammatory and I'm not saying
like, oh, we should go around and make each other angry.
But I actually would really like to talk about it because I was reading through it and I
was like, okay, these are hilarious, first of all.
But also like, what is the base reason of why this would make a stereotypical man angry?
One of them, okay, so my favorite one, if we go into it later, I'll read some more of
them too, but one of my favorite ones is tell a man, I don't believe you can run that fast.
And the little comments under it were like, he'll eventually figure out that you're manipulating
him, but by then he'll have run so far away that you can just leave.
It's like my favorite thing.
So I want to talk about, so maybe we'll talk about TikToks and also that book.
I think that'd be good.
Grab your popcorn, grab your wine, we're in for a weird week.
All right, we'll see you guys next week.
May the Lord bless you and keep you.
Okay.
Bye.
Bye.