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We are Alyssa and Bri, two sisters who believe God wants more for women than we've been taught. Join us as we dive into the intersection of faith and feminism, learning together as we go.
To the We Are More Pod cast. My name is Alyssa. And my name is Bree. We're two sisters passionate about all things faith and feminism. We believe that Jesus trusted, respected, and encouraged women to teach and preach his word.
Speaker 1:And apparently, that's controversial. Get comfy.
Speaker 2:Hello, world. Happy day because we don't know what day you're listening to this. It could be the future or the past, but today is Sunday. You're welcome.
Speaker 1:It could be the past? I was with you on the future, but if they're listening to it in the past, I'm it I'm confused. Listen.
Speaker 2:We don't know what
Speaker 1:the future holds. It holds the past?
Speaker 2:Do you remember Phil of the Future? Yes. I almost broke out into the theme song just now. You should've.
Speaker 1:Do you guys remember that? That was a Disney Channel original. And
Speaker 2:I thought the guy who played Phil was so cute.
Speaker 1:You had such a crush on him.
Speaker 2:I liked him, and I liked on Wizards of Waverly Place, the oldest brother. Which is bizarre, because now looking back at that, I'm like, that is not my type Not whatsoever. You also liked Dylan Sprouse.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Zach from Zach and Cody. Yeah. Loved him. The people Brie had a crush on as a child.
Speaker 2:All Disney Channel original stars.
Speaker 1:That's because that's all we were allowed to watch. Yeah. We were just talking about this the other day. So we grew up, obviously, as super Baptist little kids. Right?
Speaker 1:And so what we were allowed to watch on TV was very particular. And I think Nickelodeon as a channel was just fully out.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:There was nothing from Nickelodeon being watched in our household. And if you asked our mom why and I'm sure that she had other reasons. Because, like, I don't let my kids watch a lot of that stuff too. But the reason that she would give you is because the people in it are ugly.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Like, the animation style is what she meant. Yeah. But she would just say, they're ugly. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I remember not I guess it never occurred to me that that was odd until I got to college. And I told Nathan, my now husband, that exact thing. I was like, oh, yeah. I wasn't allowed to watch that. And he was like, why?
Speaker 1:I was like, oh, the people were ugly. The look on his face is like a core memory for me. He was so horrified.
Speaker 2:No. We watched and I was just talking about this with someone too. We watched a good amount of Disney Channel, but not all Disney Channel. There were things that were out. We're allowed to watch most of the animated series Mhmm.
Speaker 2:But not the Hercules series.
Speaker 1:Well, Hercules was about other gods. So
Speaker 2:And we didn't watch Hercules until I think the first time I watched it was in high school. Yeah. And also Hunchback of Notre Dame, which I don't blame anyone for because going back and watching that is dope. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And the real story is even worse. Like, the real actual I mean, I don't think it really happened, but the original story. We were allowed to watch a lot
Speaker 2:of older movies, like Mhmm. Think Turner classic movies, like Doris Day and Cary Grant, that kind of stuff. But also going back and watching some of the, like, Doris Day movies, I'm like, wow.
Speaker 1:I know.
Speaker 2:She was a dirty old lady.
Speaker 1:There's one called Pillow Talk.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And I watched that within the last couple of years. And I was like, oh my gosh. I'm sure all of it went over my head. Mhmm. But still Yeah.
Speaker 1:Mom, what were you doing? Mom, Nick
Speaker 2:at Night. We watched Nick at Night.
Speaker 1:Yep. And now you know a new part
Speaker 2:of our childhood There you go.
Speaker 1:That you never heard before. Probably you did. We're we've been here for, a 115 episodes.
Speaker 2:I often forget what we have talked about, and we've talked about most of our childhood.
Speaker 1:Yeah. At this point, there's not a lot of new things. So, you know, there you go. Harking to the past. I thought we were harking to the future so that
Speaker 2:we could hark to the past. They could come up with a time machine in the future that brings them back to the past is what I was talking about.
Speaker 1:And after they've gone through the time machine and gone to the past, this scientific mirror They
Speaker 2:brought this podcast with them to listen to in the past.
Speaker 1:They said this is what we're doing. We're listening to Alyssa and Brie.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah. I'm assuming we'll be super famous. The world loves us. The world does.
Speaker 1:They and then they also hate us.
Speaker 2:The world loves us except for all the men on Instagram.
Speaker 1:Yeah. They really hate us. Women, we need you to come on Instagram. Okay?
Speaker 2:Yes. I love that you're
Speaker 1:on TikTok. We love you there. But if you could, like, help us on Instagram, there's some men there that need
Speaker 2:getting right. I think it's the men that are afraid of TikTok because, you know
Speaker 1:I don't know. Because we skew young and male on Instagram. It surprises me. We skew more like 13 to 22.
Speaker 2:But they're the ones that are like, I'm not downloading TikTok on my phone. The the the people are gonna steal my information.
Speaker 1:The 21 year olds? Yeah. What are the 21 year olds doing? What's wrong with them? Anyway, now that you've gone to the past, listened to us because we are the most important thing that you could do after time machining to
Speaker 2:the past. You're welcome.
Speaker 1:We're gonna talk about purity some more. Yes. So buckle up. The last two weeks, we've been talking about some different aspects of purity culture, kind of from an adult perspective, from a young kid perspective. And now we're gonna talk about it from a biblical perspective because while I do think it's important to take a lot of the shame away no matter what decision you make in your life, it's also really important to say, okay.
Speaker 1:But what what does the Bible itself actually say? Not your pastor, but the Bible.
Speaker 2:I will tell you one thing for free right off the jump. Right off the jump?
Speaker 1:Sure. Why not?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Right off the jump. The Bible does not say, you are a used piece of gum. It does not say that. It does not say, your flower is crushed.
Speaker 2:If anything, it says, you are so valuable. You are so valuable. Let shame go. Mhmm. Jesus died on the cross for you, not so you could feel like a car in a used car dealership.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Like, you could never do anything to change the way that God loves you, to make God love you less, to make God value you
Speaker 2:less. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:It doesn't matter what decisions you make in your life.
Speaker 2:No. I'm not saying this is a free pass for everything. Let's go wild. I'm saying your decisions should always be aligned with God. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And do your thing.
Speaker 1:And God will love you through it.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:So today, we're gonna talk mostly about verses. I feel like we've got a lot of verses. We've got a lot of Hebrew and Greek to talk about. So buckle up for some scholarliness.
Speaker 2:I wish I could do a seat belt sound effect.
Speaker 1:No. That wasn't it.
Speaker 2:What does seat belt sound like?
Speaker 1:Not that. No. Nope. Alright. Moving on.
Speaker 1:Okay. We should get like a soundboard or something. Okay. So the big question is, does the bible say no sex before marriage? That's what this all boils down to.
Speaker 1:Right? Because your church would tell you it does. Purity culture would tell you it does. Maybe your mom and dad tell you it does. But what does God say?
Speaker 1:What does Jesus say? And the Bible talks a lot about sex. The Bible is a sexy book.
Speaker 2:We I if anything you've learned from the past two episodes, it's that the Bible loves a sexy time.
Speaker 1:And I think we love to think the Bible gives a simple answer to this.
Speaker 2:Well, I think in general with faith, if only Mhmm. Answers were simple about everything. Mhmm. It's not. Yeah.
Speaker 2:We didn't get like a
Speaker 1:10 commandments about everything in life. Mhmm. I don't know why. That might have made life a little easier, but god wanted us to have free will. And he didn't make life that easy.
Speaker 1:So that's just how it is. Also, we have to look at the Bible through context. Right? Because the Bible was written for everyone, but not to us. And ancient Israel didn't have the same culture that we do.
Speaker 1:They didn't have purity rings or purity pledges or any of those stuff like that or traditional marriages Right.
Speaker 2:The way that we see them today. If you go back through the Bible, and we've talked about this before, but their marriage was more a partnership do hang on. Bear with me. I'm ready. It was for economic status.
Speaker 2:It was for political status. It was for financial gain or, like, binding together two groups of people. You know, it wasn't necessarily, like, romantic.
Speaker 1:Right. It wasn't, I'm in love with this person. Not that that never happened.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:But that wasn't the expectation. Mhmm. And they also had polygamy. There were also concubines. There were like, Abraham had sex with Hagar.
Speaker 1:You know, like Prostitution. Exactly. Very different cultural expectations. A lot of which the Bible doesn't condemn.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:I think we would love for it to condemn it, but it doesn't. And that makes things complicated.
Speaker 2:What I think it does condemn, and what we'll talk about in a minute, is sexual exploitation of others. Mhmm. And we talked about this in the last episode, but trying to control someone else Mhmm. Rather than just control yourself.
Speaker 1:Right. Now, when the Bible talks about sex, a lot of times what it is talking about is sex within the family structure, if that makes sense. I know that sounds gross, but go with me. Okay? Because because it wasn't necessarily romantic.
Speaker 1:Because it wasn't, I'm in love with this person, and so we're falling into bed together.
Speaker 2:This bed wasn't made of this isn't a Casper mattress. Ah, this is hey.
Speaker 1:My hip. I swear, doctor. I just fell on it. Anyway. So there the broader concern I hit the thing.
Speaker 1:The broader concern was, like, having legitimate errors.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:So a woman was expected only to sleep with one man, not necessarily because, oh, they love each other. Oh, it's gonna ruin the marriage covenant. But because that family depended on legitimate heirs.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And not just the family, but the everything that surrounded that family as well. Inheritance, family honor, identity. There was also the concept of a bride price, which I'll talk about in a second. And also male control. A lot of it boiled down to men controlling women because societally Mhmm.
Speaker 1:That's that's how it was.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And within that, and we've talked about this, I think, in our Tamar episode Mhmm. How there were rules in place to protect that woman too, should her husband die
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So that they could keep it within the bloodline. Right? Like, her if her husband died, then her brother was responsible to get her pregnant. Brother-in-law.
Speaker 1:Bro Not necessarily. This is Bible times. Brother-in-law. And if
Speaker 2:the brother-in-law couldn't do it, then it was her father-in-law. And yeah. Creepy gross stuff.
Speaker 1:But stuff nonetheless. And it's important to point out that this wasn't necessarily a universal thing. It was focused on women. And it was focused on women because a woman is pretty certain that that baby is hers.
Speaker 2:Yeah. They say that a woman always knows who her child is. Mhmm. Right? Because she pushed it out.
Speaker 2:A man doesn't necessarily know.
Speaker 1:And a man's sexual history wasn't treated the same way as a woman's. So as we'll talk about, if this was a universal rule, then we probably would have been talking to men just as much as we would have been talking to women. But we're not. And a large part of that is because culturally, that's how it
Speaker 2:was. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Not, hey, this is an amazing universal thing we should all be using. But, hey, we live in this culture and the Bible was written in this culture.
Speaker 2:We live in this culture and it's patriarchal and men hold all the power and want to keep all the power Mhmm. And control women.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:So it was control over women. And let's just mhmm. Let's just continue it throughout history.
Speaker 1:Now there are some important Hebrew words that I am going to introduce here. Brie's got a couple that she's gonna introduce as well. Just because it's important to say this is what was used at the time. That being said, I will mispronounce them. So just accept that.
Speaker 1:The first one is Betula. I bet you don't know how to say that. And that was it meant virgin. Someone who was assumed to never have had sex. Right?
Speaker 1:Specifically a woman. This would have referred specifically to a woman. My understanding is there was not really an equivalent male word. Interesting. But this is used in laws about marriage and virginity.
Speaker 1:There's also mohar, which would be the bride price. Essentially what the man is paying to the father of the woman he's marrying. All sorts of sexism there, but again, culture. So then there was aras, which was betrothal, legally binding engagement. Again, not love.
Speaker 1:This was a legally binding contract. There also is zana, which means to prostitute oneself. And that's an important distinction too. That's a different word. And it can also mean committing sexual immorality, being unfaithful, things like that.
Speaker 1:Na'af meant adultery, and pilagesh was a concubine. So someone not the spouse necessarily, but someone that the man kept to have sex with. Have another one as well. Right? Or a couple?
Speaker 2:I have a few. So a lot of the language from the Old Testament that we use to talk about purity is specifically talking about ritual cleanliness.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Not moral worth. Mhmm. So words like
Speaker 1:it's it's spelled t a h o r. Tehor? Sure. Why not?
Speaker 2:Which means clean, ceremonially pure, fit to enter sacred spaces. And that you can see in like Leviticus, Numbers, Ezekiel. There's tame, which means unclean or ritually unpure. And you can be ritually unpure during menstruation, childbirth, touching a dead body, certain skin diseases, think like leprosy. But also, mom, close your ears, semen emission.
Speaker 2:So ejaculation. Yeah. That you can also be considered unclean or unfit to go into the temple, etcetera. There's also Lev Tehor, which literally means clean heart. And David talks about this in Psalms.
Speaker 2:So like Psalm fifty one ten, which says, create in me a pure heart, oh God. Mhmm. He is talking about integrity, renewed inner character alignment with God. Mhmm. Not sexual purity.
Speaker 1:Well, clearly not with David.
Speaker 2:Yes. And then, like, the language in the New Testament shifts more inwardly. Mhmm. I would say. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Not necessarily sexual, but it's talking about your heart. Right. Right. Your integrity in So your you'll see words like, I don't in the Greek, it's it's
Speaker 1:koino koino. Let me see it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's hard. K o I n o o with a little accent on top of it. Koinoi. Which means to defile, make common, make unclean.
Speaker 2:There where's where's my favorite word? Oh. The Greek word is porneia. Mhmm. Which I think you talked about on the podcast.
Speaker 2:Not the podcast. On Instagram. I did? The other day. Yes.
Speaker 2:Which, like, that word specifically, there's a lot of debate between scholars of what that actually means. Mhmm. Because it has multiple different translations. There's no one word definition that equals porneia. In first century Greek, it broadly, it broadly referred to It meant like illicit sexual behavior.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And actually, that's the word, like in the family of words, that we get pornography from.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So the porn part of it is prostitution. Mhmm. And the graphia part of it means written or depicting. So the two of those things together
Speaker 1:would mean like depicting prostitution. Interesting. Okay. But that's just a side note. You're learning something today.
Speaker 1:There you go. So let's talk through some of the verses that get used when we talk about purity, like what the Bible says. So one of the first ones is Exodus twenty two sixteen through 17. And just like, I'm not gonna read the whole verse for every verse, but the basic concept is if a man seduces a virgin when he is not married to her, then he must pay the bride price for her. If she if he can, he's supposed to marry her.
Speaker 1:If the father says absolutely not, then he still has to pay the bride price for her. And then she, I suppose,
Speaker 2:just lives her life. I like that.
Speaker 1:So purity culture uses this to say, hey, look. Sex before marriage is wrong. You shouldn't do it. And if you do, you're gonna be punished. And you're gonna have to marry this person who you maybe don't like in the first place.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But this was a civil law, and it had a purpose. It wasn't purity. It was what happens to her. Because this happens all the time in many, many cultures.
Speaker 1:Right? What I find a lot in the Bible that is interesting, there are
Speaker 2:so many laws in place protecting women. Mhmm. And we think that it's damaging to women. But at the time, it was not of its time Right. To actually protect a woman.
Speaker 2:And now what we see is we're using those laws that were meant to protect women to Hurt them
Speaker 1:in a box. To hurt women. Yep. Well, yeah. So what would happen here is, like, let's say that a woman is forced into this situation.
Speaker 1:Right? She now doesn't have value in her society because she's not a virgin anymore. Mhmm. And so her bride price isn't there anymore. So a man's not gonna pay for her.
Speaker 1:That means her father doesn't see her as having value because family structures also weren't the same. There wasn't that same, like, oh, I adore you. You're my child. Like, I'm not saying that never happened, but it just it wasn't the same.
Speaker 2:Unless you're Joseph. Right? Well, yeah.
Speaker 1:Joseph was the favorite. But she doesn't have value to a husband. She doesn't have value to her family. She probably isn't gonna get married, so she may not get to have kids. There's a whole circle of things here.
Speaker 1:If that man sleeps with her because he feels like it, and then doesn't marry her, doesn't pay for her, which
Speaker 2:is also horrible, but still. As a woman at that time, you don't have a lot of options. It's not like you can just go get a job and survive on your own. Mhmm. You can't.
Speaker 2:You can be a prostitute, And that might be it. Yeah. Or you can beg on the streets. Right. Which then you just give away things for free.
Speaker 2:So
Speaker 1:this one isn't about purity. Let's debunk that. Mhmm. It's about keeping women safe. It didn't say, hey, if you have sex before marriage, you have no value.
Speaker 1:It said, hey, if you have sex before marriage, I'm still gonna protect her. Mhmm. That's what that one says.
Speaker 2:Hey, there's Leviticus fifteen nineteen, which says, when a woman has her regular flow of blood, the impurity of her monthly period will last seven days.
Speaker 1:I find that hilarious that that's in the Bible. Who knew? How come I've never heard a sermon on that one? Yeah. How come?
Speaker 1:So strange how that happens. I wanna know if you have a female pastor out there. Are you hearing stuff like this preach? Because I would love that. Well, it's it's confusing.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Right? In our culture, we don't have periods of being unclean. Mhmm. If you're on your period, it doesn't mean that you're unclean. But in that time, it meant so much more.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Right. Okay. So the next one I wanna talk about is Deuteronomy. I'm gonna stick in the Old Testament for a
Speaker 2:little bit, and then we'll
Speaker 1:move into the New Testament. But Deuteronomy 22 starting in verse 13. And this one is it's kind of a long story. So let's say it says, basically, if a man gets married and after he sleeps with her, he slanders her and says she wasn't a virgin when I married her. So he's already slept with her.
Speaker 1:So there's no proof anymore. Right? And he says, no. I she wasn't a virgin. Then the young woman's father and mother will bring it the town elders basically to prove it.
Speaker 1:And the father will say to the elders, I gave my daughter in marriage to this man, but he doesn't like her. Now he's slandering her. And then they're supposed to it says, then her parents shall display the cloth before the elders of the town. The cloth would have been like, when you have sex and there's There's blood.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Also, can we talk about and this has actually been all over my social medias. I don't know if I'm engaging with it too much or whatever. Probably. But popping the cherry Yeah.
Speaker 2:In air quotes. Talks about breaking the hymen. Mhmm. Right? But not all hymens are the same.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. And so some people are born without them. Some people, it's just a thin layer of tissue that kind of stretches out of the way. Some of it regrows. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Some like, no two hymens are the same.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:So the idea of, like, quote unquote popping the cherry is not the same.
Speaker 1:That's so interesting. And they can be broken really easily as well. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Or as you age and you get older Mhmm. It's rare that it's still intact. Even if you are a virgin and say you're like 45 Mhmm. It doesn't necessarily mean that your hymen is still there.
Speaker 1:Right. Right. So anyway Like, that was just footnote. You're welcome. So at the end of what's happening here so the parents basically show that she was a virgin.
Speaker 1:And then the elders are gonna fine him a 100 shekels, which would have been a lot of money.
Speaker 2:Shekels, shekels. Hide, shekel. Hide, shekel.
Speaker 1:And it says, so they shall find him a 100 shekels of silver and give them to the young woman's father because this man has given an Israelite virgin a bad name. She shall continue to be his wife. He must not divorce her as long
Speaker 2:as he lives. Which is frustrating. Can you imagine living with that?
Speaker 1:But note what it says. It says he must not divorce her as long as he lives. It does not say they must not get divorced. It says he must not divorce her, and then it goes on to some other things. But women couldn't divorce.
Speaker 1:Right? Right.
Speaker 2:Right. They couldn't initiate a divorce?
Speaker 1:But it's I think it's important to note again this culture. Does that stick her in a crappy marriage? Yeah. Were most marriages crappy? Yeah.
Speaker 1:Does it still keep her protected? Yes. And now society knows what happened. Now society is watching. The elders are watching.
Speaker 1:Her parents are watching.
Speaker 2:But it also hopefully puts some pressure on this dude not to just make stupid claims. Mhmm. Just because he's not in the mood to Exactly. Deal with
Speaker 1:So purity culture uses this verse, or this many verses, this section, to say, hey, God requires female virginity before marriage. Because it does go on to talk about if she's not a virgin and what happens then as well. But here's what's happening. This isn't about God requiring virginity. It's about a man abusing his wife.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. It's about a man using his power to say, meh, wasn't what I wanted. So I'm gonna get out of it however I feel like. Which was common at the time. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:It was something that was being done. And the stakes here aren't important. It's her family's reputation. It's her legal status. Any siblings that she might have.
Speaker 1:Right. That's gonna affect them. It's the inheritance of like, let's say he takes on another wife and only sleeps with her and has kids with her. Now inheritance is going through that line. There are important things here.
Speaker 1:And it's not saying she needs to be a virgin because we're gonna police this and we're gonna make sure. It's protecting her. Again. Mhmm. Again, God is protecting her.
Speaker 1:Keeping her safe. Not saying, hey, if she's not a virgin, you have to throw her to the wolves.
Speaker 2:Yeah. If she's not a virgin, you might as well burn her at the stake. You know what? You might as well chew her up like a piece of gum.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Do do that thing. Okay. So the next one is also in Deuteronomy. And it says, if a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married, so she's engaged, and he sleeps with her, you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death.
Speaker 1:The young woman because she was in a town and did not scream for help, and the man because he violated another man's wife. You must purge the evil from among you. That is one of those verses. It's one
Speaker 2:of those verses that you're gonna sit with for a while, and it's gonna throw you into deconstruction, and you're gonna lose it.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. It's it's uncomfy. It's icky. It's horrifying on every level.
Speaker 2:So let's talk about it. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:So we use this to say sex outside of marriage is forbidden. It's horrible. Sex creates an obligation to be married to that person. And it also means that you couldn't possibly ever marry someone else. She was engaged to someone else.
Speaker 1:She now can't marry that person, etcetera, etcetera. Right? But this passage describes an engaged woman specifically. It's not talking to un unengaged women at all. It's specifically talking to an engaged woman.
Speaker 1:Now that doesn't make the outcome better. But it's not my point is it's not a universal rule. It's not, hey, women. It's, hey, one group of women. And also, betrothal was legally binding.
Speaker 1:It was a legal issue. So that sex essentially functioned like adultery. I don't know how to deal with parts of it. I don't know how to deal with the part that says, and she should have screamed for help, so therefore stone her too. Other than to say, sometimes I don't like the Bible.
Speaker 2:Sometimes we have to remember, it was written not to us. Mhmm. It was in a different time. And possibly just quoting the law of the time. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Right? But this verse existing does not then give people permission to treat women like garbage. Mhmm. Like disposable. Like not human.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Well, in all of these verses we just did an episode not too long ago on tough verses. This would have been a good one. Yeah. But in each of these verses, the goal behind it is stop men from doing crappy things to women. Now the other two, the woman isn't punished in this way.
Speaker 1:This one she is. But the goal behind it is, don't do this. Hey. Don't force yourself on women.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Because you're gonna get
Speaker 1:stoned. Because you're going to be cast out of society. Because no one will ever look at you again. And so the goal in the end is don't let this happen. Hopefully,
Speaker 2:in some way
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:This verse is telling women to fight for your life. Mhmm. Right? To scream for help Yeah. If you can.
Speaker 2:But we know from being women, that's not always so simple. Yeah. And what if no one hears you? And there's so many layers to that discussion. Right.
Speaker 1:Well, this is an easy one for elders and things like that to abuse. Because maybe the verse is saying, like, absolutely fight for your life. Scream. Kick. Knee him in the balls.
Speaker 1:Hey. But it would be easy, you're right, for elders and humans and people to say, well, she didn't.
Speaker 2:So screw her too. There is a there's a clip that always comes across my, like, TikTok and Instagram. And I don't know if it is a clip from a movie or something, but a woman in this situation, she's in the room with her husband and what I assume to be, like, a lawyer. Mhmm. And the woman had been assaulted.
Speaker 2:And the lawyer is saying, like, well, why didn't you why didn't you tell him no? Why didn't you, like, they're gonna ask you these questions, so I'm gonna ask you them, why didn't you say no? Why didn't you fight more? And all of a sudden, the husband comes up to this guy with a knife Mhmm. At his neck.
Speaker 2:And he says, now logically, your brain is telling you, I'm not gonna cut your neck.
Speaker 1:That would be ridiculous.
Speaker 2:But your brain is saying, do whatever you need to to survive because there's a possibility that he's gonna cut my neck.
Speaker 1:Right. Right.
Speaker 2:And that's the female experience in that moment. It's if I scream, he could kill me.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. It's not simple.
Speaker 2:No. I'm gonna do whatever I have to do
Speaker 1:Yep. So that I survive. And your body and your brain will force you into that. Mhmm. That's what they do.
Speaker 1:Now it is important to say that even though we use this to say, hey, no sex outside of marriage, the Hebrew words being used here, the word taphos means to seize or take hold of. The word ana means to afflict, violate, and it's often used in discussions of sexual violence. So the bible here is not talking about consensual sex. Mhmm. It's not talking about, oh, a romantic tryst in the barn.
Speaker 1:That's not what's happening here. It is talking about violence.
Speaker 2:In the woods.
Speaker 1:Alright. So then there is the real sexy books. Okay? Like, there Proverbs talks about sex, and then we have Song of Solomon or Song of Songs, depending on how you learned your bible books. And both of those talk a lot about sex.
Speaker 1:They just do. Proverbs five, six, and seven. Here's just some little excerpts from those. Drink water from your own cistern. The bible's being very vague here.
Speaker 1:Okay? They're trying to keep your little Baptist ears clean. Can a man scoop fire into his lap? With persuasive words, she led him astray. So this is, like, innuendos.
Speaker 1:Right? It's innuendoing. And purity culture uses these types of verses to say, avoid sexual temptation. Don't even look. Don't even look in that direction.
Speaker 1:Stay away from the bubble. All the things. Right? Guard your heart. Stay pure, etcetera.
Speaker 1:Guard your loins. But these passages were not, again, about premarital sex. No. I feel like this whole message, you're gonna be like, alright. She's telling us just to sleep around.
Speaker 1:Whatever. I'm just telling you what the Bible says. You get to make your own life choices from here, whatever they are. Pray. Talk to God.
Speaker 1:Make your own choices. This is just what the Bible says. But these passages were not talking about unmarried sexual sex. Yes. They were talking about adultery, particularly with someone who was married.
Speaker 1:So it was talking to young men who wanted to sleep with married women. Hey. Don't do that. And that's pretty much everything coming out of Proverbs is that adultery concept when you look at the Hebrew.
Speaker 2:And again, that's protecting women because what happens if the woman who is married is found out to have had relations with someone else?
Speaker 1:What happens to her? She gets thrown out on the street. At bats. So don't do that. Right.
Speaker 1:Right. Right. And then one more from the old testament before we get into what Jesus says is from Song of Solomon. And here's a little excerpt. It says, do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires.
Speaker 1:Ew. Song of Solomon is a sexy sexy motherfucker.
Speaker 2:But I feel like what that's saying is, hey, don't force yourself on someone. Mhmm. Right? That to me, that says, don't get sexy until you're both sexy.
Speaker 1:Well, this gets used to say, again, wait for marriage. Don't start getting sexy before you get married, which is an impossible command. God doesn't give us rules that we couldn't possibly follow. I'm sorry. We've all been teenagers.
Speaker 1:Right? We've all gone through puberty. Well, I I hope. But if you haven't, this probably isn't the episode for you.
Speaker 2:This isn't for you.
Speaker 1:Most of us have gone through puberty. Right? And you've all had the hormones. Mhmm. We all know.
Speaker 1:There is no way that you could follow this rule. There's just not. It's not practical. And and saying that is dangerous Mhmm.
Speaker 2:For people. Telling young kids going through puberty that any sexual thought throughout your head is wrong, and you're gonna be punished for it, is wrong. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And it hurts them. Mhmm. It makes them go through life in shame and suffering.
Speaker 2:It creates so much shame. It creates a division between them and God Mhmm. When there is none. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:I have to hide this from God. I have to pretend it's not there.
Speaker 2:Or I have to hide this from other people. Like, I can't talk about this with my peers because they're gonna think
Speaker 1:that Oh, my parents. Sinner. Yeah. Yeah. And let's remember the context of Song of Solomon.
Speaker 1:Song of Solomon, sexy book. It's erotic. It's a spicy, spicy novel. And it's not written as legal instruction. It's not, okay, and here is what you must do.
Speaker 1:So when we take a specific verse and we turn it into legal instruction, we're reading the bible wrong. So we have to ask what makes sense in this book. And I think it's exactly what you said. Don't awaken desire too soon Doesn't mean, hey, don't even think about sex not ever until you're married. Because obviously these people are.
Speaker 1:There's no discussion of and they wed in the rain under a willow tree. No.
Speaker 2:What a scene. There's roots and bugs. Okay.
Speaker 1:I think you're right. It probably means, hey, wait until you're both comfortable, until you both feel safe, until you both have desire so that in a culture where men are expected to force themselves on women, we're not doing that. Mhmm. And let's talk about Jesus. Let's talk about Jesus.
Speaker 2:Jesus. Oh.
Speaker 1:Nope. That's a bad song for that. Cut that. Jesus does talk about sexual ethics. And that's important because a lot of times, if Jesus talks about it, I'm going straight to what Jesus says.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. I'm not saying throw everything else in the garbage, but my gold standard is what Jesus said.
Speaker 2:Because everything else, remember, is human. Mhmm. But Jesus is God.
Speaker 1:I have gotten into so many debates on the Internet with people equating Paul with Jesus, with people equating anybody else with Jesus. And they'll pretend that they're not doing it. But when I say, hey, what Jesus said is the most important What Paul said is important too, but what Jesus said is the most important. And they'll tell me, well, Paul got all of his messages directly from God, and therefore Paul's words are just as important as Jesus'.
Speaker 2:I'm not saying that Paul's words are not important and not inspired from God. But we believe that Jesus is the son of God. Mhmm. Listen to Jesus. Right.
Speaker 1:Paul can come later. Even if Paul's words come directly from God. And there's a lot of theological debate about that. But even if Paul's words literally God's brain went to Paul's brain direct line. Right?
Speaker 1:The same is true of Jesus. Right? God's brain, Jesus' brain. No. They're the same brain.
Speaker 1:Okay? True. There is no separation. Okay. One brain.
Speaker 1:And Jesus still ranks higher. Mhmm. Because Jesus is still the son of God. Mhmm. Regardless.
Speaker 1:It doesn't matter how you rank everything. Jesus still gets a higher place. If Jesus,
Speaker 2:I have trust issues. I'm not going to believe Paul over Jesus.
Speaker 1:So, if Jesus talks about it, we should talk about what Jesus talks about. Mhmm. That's the most important thing. Now we're gonna mostly be talking about Matthew because that's just where my research took me. So let's start with, I think, one of probably the most quoted verses about this, and that's Matthew five twenty seven and twenty eight.
Speaker 1:And it basically says anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery. So if you've looked at someone, you've wanted to have sex with them, then you've committed adultery. And so purity culture takes that, and they say lust equals sex. Wanting someone sexually means you may as well have already had sex with them. Therefore, attraction is dangerous.
Speaker 1:Therefore, bounce your eyes, as we talked about last week. Don't be anywhere near someone of the same sex. Don't have any sort of conversation with someone you find attractive. But that's not what is being talked about here. And that can be very clearly said because we've gone into the Greek.
Speaker 1:Hooray. Hooray. Now, here's another word I can't pronounce, and that's epithemeo. That looks pretty good. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Don't know if it's correct, but it is there. And that would mean to desire, covet, or lust. Okay? And in this context, it didn't just mean I look at someone, I find them attractive, I find them sexy. Okay?
Speaker 1:It meant I want to possess that person because I have a right to do so. I want to aggressively take something that is not mine. That's the sin being spoken about here. Not, I find that person sexy. Because if that was the case, we are all sinning a lot.
Speaker 1:We just talked about Dylan Sprouse. Okay. I'm uncomfortable now. You were, like, nine. Calm down.
Speaker 1:It was not nine. And on top of that, this verse gets used to say women should dress a certain way in order to stop men from having to deal with this. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And for free, I will tell you, it doesn't matter what you wear. Mhmm. We scientifically and research, it's been proven. More often than not, it's body language Mhmm. And not showing enough confidence or not being aware of what's around you or literally being a child and not being able to control it or an older person not being able to control.
Speaker 2:Like, it doesn't matter what you're wearing. Mhmm. At the end of the day, people are gonna assault other people.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. But this gets twisted. We are twisting Jesus' words. We are manipulating them to say what we want them to say. And the most convenient message we can get out of this, because men control the church, the most convenient message for them is to say, women, cover up.
Speaker 1:Well, because it's an easy way
Speaker 2:to blame someone. It wasn't my fault. She was wearing a little skirt, and I simply couldn't control myself.
Speaker 1:That's not what Jesus says here. He doesn't even speak to women here. He's speaking to men. So if anything, apparently I can look at as many men as I feel like and say they're sexy. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I don't think that's the point.
Speaker 2:Have you seen Jason Momoa? Hello. The
Speaker 1:point is simply, you shouldn't look at someone else with the desire to possess them and take away their autonomy. Don't be a dangerous person. Exactly.
Speaker 2:Don't be a danger to other people. Yes. Control yourself.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Now let's talk about more of the things that Jesus says. In Matthew nineteen four through six, he talks about two becoming one flesh.
Speaker 2:When to become one. That's the place, girls.
Speaker 1:I think that's the first time you've sang this episode. That's not true. I'm pretty sure.
Speaker 2:Is I think so. I need some love like I never need a lovey. Go ahead. Okay.
Speaker 1:And so we use this to then say, okay. Sex can only be within marriage. No sex outside of marriage because you become one person. And if you become one person with someone that you're not married to and then you become married to someone else, now you're one person with two people. And that's just confusing.
Speaker 1:But Jesus here is talking about divorce. That's the context. And this is why we can't rip verses out of where they belong. Right? Jesus is talking to men who throw their wives to the side when they get bored with them.
Speaker 1:He wasn't talking about premarital consensual sex. He was talking about a culture where a woman had value within the context of marriage, and she needed that protection. So once you have sex within marriage, now you are one in the eyes of the law, in the eyes of culture, etcetera, in the eyes of Jesus in this case, so that she's safe. And you can see that with the Greek words used here, one of which means divorce or send away. So we're literally Jesus is using the word divorce.
Speaker 1:Okay? Like, he's talking about don't divorce your spouse just because you feel like it.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:No. I'm not talking against necessary divorces. Please don't hear that. Mhmm. Jesus is talking to a culture where divorce destroys women.
Speaker 2:Jesus is constantly saying, protect women. Mhmm. Respect each other. Have integrity. But somehow we've misinterpreted his words into dominate over someone else.
Speaker 2:Disrespect someone else. Mhmm. Matthew fifteen eleven, I don't know how often this is used within purity culture, but I think it's a verse of note. Because I think a lot of the verses regarding purity, quote unquote, in the New Testament were more so involving your inward self. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:So Matthew fifteen eleven says, it's not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth. So the Greek word here is that word that we were talking about earlier, koinu. Hard hard to pronounce. Hard to say. Which means to defile, make common, make unclean.
Speaker 2:Jesus is challenging systems that equated external rituals with holiness. Mhmm. He says, the issue isn't food. The issue is evil intentions, greed, hatred, deceit, pride. Which we see all over the New Testament.
Speaker 2:He's saying, just like, live with integrity. Don't be evil.
Speaker 1:The whole Bible summed up in one sentence. Now Paul had a lot to say. I think before we fully wrap up, we should probably say, like, Paul had a lot to say about sex. He taught he said, flee from sexual immorality. Each man should only have sexual relations with his own wife.
Speaker 1:Not even a hint of sexual immorality. Avoid sexual immorality. Control your own body. Marriage should be honored by all. Paul had a lot to say about sex.
Speaker 1:He had a lot of thoughts for someone who never got married. And we use Paul all the time. Again, Jesus is your gold standard. Keep going back there. Keep jumping back.
Speaker 1:If Jesus talked about it, go there first. Regardless, Paul is still in there. He's still in the Bible, so it's important to talk about. Each of these moments and I don't have enough time to go into every single one. And if we kept going with this series, I think you all might hate us forever and
Speaker 2:ever. But
Speaker 1:Paul is writing for instance, in Corinth, he's writing to a society with issues that included prostitution, sexual exploitation. In Ephesians, he is talking about Roman norms. How to
Speaker 2:be set apart from that.
Speaker 1:Exactly. He's not necessarily saying to a modern culture where women have the same rights as men, for now, hey, never do this ever, ever, ever. He's talking about often abuse.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Well, says avoid sexual immorality. What is that? Mhmm. Right?
Speaker 2:You're right. It's abuse. Abusing children, abusing family members, abusing strangers. Don't do that. But consensual sex between two people of age that can consent
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:He's not talking about that.
Speaker 1:Right. Remember that that wasn't happening in the same way. Mhmm. Talked really couldn't. Right.
Speaker 1:We talk about this in context of, like, the LGBTQ community a lot. And how there was not a super visible version of a healthy, consensual relationship that way because of laws surrounding it.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. That's not to say it wasn't happening. No.
Speaker 1:But it wasn't visible. It wasn't, you know, something that in Paul's culture that he would have been seeing in a healthy, good way. Whereas now we can see it in a healthy, good way. In the Bible, there weren't a lot of examples. I'm not saying it never happened, but there probably weren't a lot of examples of men and women having safe, healthy, consensual sex before marriage.
Speaker 1:It just wasn't happening because of the way women were viewed in society, because of the way that they were treated. Well, because women were not seen as fully human Exactly.
Speaker 2:At that time. Yes. And hopefully, as a group of people, we can agree that that we see women as human, question mark? No? Question mark.
Speaker 1:And so you have to say, okay. Paul couldn't have been talking about what we see today. He was talking about keeping yourselves safe. Keeping your heart pure. What's more important?
Speaker 1:Whether your hymen is intact or whether your heart is pure? That should go on a t shirt if anything should.
Speaker 2:And knowing that at the end of the day, nothing can separate you from God Mhmm. I think is the biggest takeaway over these last three episodes. That is the danger with purity culture. Is teaching people to feel ashamed of themselves. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And creating division between them and God.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:When God says there is none.
Speaker 1:Right. And if you ever say, hey, I don't believe their interpretation of this. I think it's important to do your own research to check out all all of this. But also remember that the Bible does not have examples of this. Our modern purity culture is not in the Bible.
Speaker 1:It's just not. We don't see it anywhere. We talked about this on the last episode. If this was the ideal Mhmm.
Speaker 2:We'd see it. And we've said this before. If you wanna read the Bible through a lens of control Mhmm. You can find that. Sure.
Speaker 2:But if you wanna read the Bible through the lens of Jesus, you're gonna find a lot more love Mhmm. And a lot more kindness and caring.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:And why not live a life like that?
Speaker 1:Why not, man? It's so much more lovely on this side of the fence.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Why not use your faith as an excuse to love someone
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Rather than an excuse to judge someone? Right.
Speaker 1:And on that note, which I think is a lovely note You're welcome. Next week we are gonna be talking about Judith of the bible.
Speaker 2:Of the bible. Of the bible. Not of your
Speaker 1:Not your aunt Judith. Not your cousin. Not Judith from down the road. Not Judith from down
Speaker 2:the road.
Speaker 1:Judith of the Bible. Because we like to talk about biblical women, and we like to raise up their voices. And frankly, this is one that I'm not super familiar with. So I'm excited to read her story. I know some Brie was telling me some other faith traditions focus on her a little bit more.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. So I'm excited to learn about that, and I hope you are too. Yeah. I think she
Speaker 2:was a violent woman, and I'm excited about that.
Speaker 1:Love that for her. If you don't follow us on social media, you can find us at the hashtag we are more on Instagram and TikTok. I almost said Facebook. Don't bother with that.
Speaker 2:Honestly, who's on Facebook anymore?
Speaker 1:Older people, I think. Some people call it face pages. Some people do. But we will talk to you all about that next week. We hope you enjoyed this long, long segment on purity.
Speaker 1:This trinity. This trinity of purity.
Speaker 2:Is that offensive? Probably. Trilogy. We're gonna switch it. Purity trilogy.
Speaker 1:Oh, sure. The Star Wars. Sure. Isn't there, like, the the oh, so many people hate you right now. Star Wars, the final frontier.
Speaker 1:Okay. We're gonna leave now. It's late. Brie needs to go to bed.
Speaker 2:Okay. Love you. Bye. Love
Speaker 1:you. Bye.