Theology in the Raw - Revisiting Sexualized, Vilified, and Marginalized Women of the Bible: Dr. Sandra Glahn

Episode Date: March 21, 2024

Sandra Glahn is a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary and the author most recently of Nobody's Mother. She's also the general editor of the fascinating book: Vindicating the Vixens: Revisiting Sexualized, Vilified, and Marginalized Women of the Bible (Kregel Academic), which forms the basis of our conversation. We talk about the Samaritan Woman, the wealthy women who funded Jesus' ministry (Lk 8:1-3), Tamar (Gen 38), and other misunderstood women in the Bible. We then talk about male/female relationships in the church and how we should best respond to the problem of abuse and misogyny in the church.  To enter to win a FREE COPY of Vindicating the Vixens: https://forms.gle/6sx3jq1onyuSZzxT8 Support Theology in the Raw through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theologyintheraw

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology. And around my guest today is the one and only Dr. Sandra Galland, who is a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary and the author of her most recent book, Nobody's Mother. And she's also the general editor of the book, Vindicating the Vixens, Revisiting Sexualized, Vilified, and Marginalized Women of the Bible, which is a fantastic book. And when the publisher, Kriegel Academic, when they heard we're doing this interview, they said, hey, we're going to give away some free copies. So if you go down to the show notes, you will see a link where you can go and enter to win a free copy of Vindicating the Vixens. I found this book to be incredibly engaging, well-written, and very thoughtful. And we talk a lot about some of the contents of the book in this podcast conversation.

So really enjoyed this conversation. We start by talking about the content of this book, different women of the Bible that have possibly been misunderstood. Then we go to talk about very practical stuff as it relates to the church today. And the conversation just keeps getting, I would say, more raw and more real the further it went. And you'll see what I mean if you listen to the entire episode. So please welcome back to the show, the one and only Dr. Sandra Glahn. Sandra Glahn, welcome back to Theology in the Raw. It's good to have you back. Preston Sprinkle. Thank you. I think it was, was it just about a year ago?

Just about a year ago. Sorry. Just about a year ago, Nobody's Mother. Nobody's Mother. That was before it was published. I see your nice copy up there. You see, I got some books behind me. That book, I think it's been well-received, right? I'm sure it's had its... Yes, thank you, Preston. I have been particularly thrilled with all the male colleagues that have sent me a Yugo Girl. I wasn't expecting that at all. Yeah, it's been really wonderful. Well, the scholarship in, and we're going to talk about this other book,

Vindicating the Vixens in a second, but nobody's, I mean, the scholarship was very responsible, but also incredibly like fresh and engaging. Like I would say, and obviously you're touching on sensitive issues with women in the church and all this stuff, but wasn't- That wasn't the main thrust.

It wasn't the main thing. It contributes to that. But I would say anybody who gets excited about the Bible and biblical scholarship, even if they were like, say, hardcore commentarian or something, which again, isn't really the point of the book, but it was anybody who gets excited

about sound biblical scholarship should appreciate the book. Just. Yes. And I quoted a bunch of what you just described. Yeah. Yeah. That wasn't, yeah, it wasn't about that debate at all. And, and I didn't know what was going to leave me when I started the research. It was just sort of a whodunit for me of who is she and is she behind the text? So yeah, it was fun. And so much fresh scholarship. I didn't know there was, I knew from, maybe it's from me reading your book or maybe reading,

maybe talking, I forget, but like this whole like examination of the potential influence Artemis had on 1 Timothy in particular, well, the pastorals, that there was this old wave of scholarship that relied on later sources.

And really there's a lot of new stuff that has come out and there's been a lot less work done with the new material. Is that? That's a good summary. And also, an argument was made that just in terms of Paul, he has a so what. Here's my reason for giving a restriction to women. And in the past, it's been the so what was totally cultural and eliminated Genesis. And I'm saying, no, it didn't eliminate Genesis. It actually drew in Genesis. Nevertheless, what we've done, I think, in ramifications is off. But yeah, so just new resources help.

Right, right, right. Well, it's an outstanding book. We are talking about another book that you worked on. I'm going to hold that for my YouTube audience called, I love the title, Vindicating the Vixens, Revisiting Sexualized, Vilified, and Marginalized Women of the Bible. You were the general editor on this. There's several, I want to say a dozen or so writers and scholars. I was 17.

I was pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. And some really, I mean, Carolyn Custis James, Lynn Kohik, Eugene Merrill. So you did have some more. This isn't like a bunch of raging egalitarians or something trying to say. This is men and women, complementarian and egalitarian, American and Arab, and experts in Hispanic studies. and Arab and, you know, experts in Hispanic studies. Like we tried to get a more,

a more nuanced flavor from a lot of different eyes on the text because, and we were unanimous in our agreement that there are women that we have wrongly vilified, you know, something like Jezebel, she deserves to be vilified, but there are other women in the text that we have wrongly vilified. And so really working across disciplines, which you probably figured out is something I love to do. Whether it's the humanities and biblical studies in the last book that we described, or in this one, it's working across country, across gender, across nationalities, and even perspectives on women. What was your motivation to want to work on a project like this? And the manner in which you did it? So glad you asked me that. Yeah. So for years and years, I was editor-in-chief of Dallas Theological Seminary's magazine. And I started

noticing that, first of all, I had a file of who my really good writers were, right? The people who, if they sent me something, I knew I was going to run it because they just could write. But I started noticing a number of them, again, men and women, one was an Arab scholar, re-looking at some of these women of the Bible, and I was convinced. And they're like, oh, you're right. For example, Hagar, Tony Malouf, who's now with the Lord, but he was at Southwestern over in Fort Worth, and an Arab scholar looking at Hagar and saying, when God makes her a promise, she has to go back to abuse, but God gives a mother a promise, but your kids are never going to be abused. And in fact, your son is going to be like a wild donkey. And we read that as most people would read a donkey is a not very nice thing.

And Dr. Malou said, what's Jesus riding into Jerusalem? What is Solomon riding on his coronation day? The donkey is the Mercedes-Benz of the Middle East at this time. And he said, maybe a closer translation would be a free stallion. Well, that really changes how you think about, okay, now it is an incentive. She's going back, but your kid is never going to suffer. He's going to be free. What mama wouldn't go? Okay. What good mama wouldn't say, I'll put up with junk if it means my progeny are always going to be free. That made a whole lot of sense. And then I started noticing promises made to Hagar's son that I had never noticed. Anyway, I started collecting a file of these and pretty soon I had a pretty good stack. And then it was about a 10-year

passion project when I just started thinking about who would be really good for Rahab, and maybe even who's an underrated scholar that I know is doing good work, which is, was Sarah Bowler on Bathsheba. Not a name a lot of people know, but I had seen her scholarship and knew she's doing good stuff in the text. Oh, yeah. Oh, right there. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, she wrote the chapter on Bathsheba.

That's right. Oh, she wrote the chapter on Bathsheba. That's right. So just a few. So some of the names that you deal with, Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, Virgin Mary, Eve, Sarah, Hagar, Deborah, Huldah, Vashti, the woman at the well, the Samaritan woman, sorry. Yeah. And Mary Magdalene and then Junius slash Joanna. Yeah.

So you're dealing with a wide range of different characters. And one of the, I guess, one of the common themes is that all of these women have, according to modern interpretation, have been, you're proposing it, well, the scholars writing this too, so, you know, misunderstood

that they've been sort of vilified as particularly immoral in ways that they might not have been. Would that be a good summary? Well, not all of them necessarily. I mean, sexualized is one group, but then marginalized is going to be the Virgin Mary in a Protestant context. Oh, right.

I had been through a gazillion studies of women in the Bible and had never studied Mary IV, most mentioned person in the New Testament. That's crazy. Yeah, you mentioned that. I was like, is that? Wow. The pendulum swings the other way. And it was like, you couldn't even say her name without a knee jerk.

Well, don't go too far. It's like, okay, but actually let's look, re-look at her and let's include her in our narratives and our sermon studies and our studies of what it looks like to be a godly person. And so marginalized might be maybe underrated, but written off in some way as dangerous. So then you've got Junia slash Joanna. Amy Peeler makes a really strong case. I think Richard Bauckham as well shows up in some of her work that this could be the same person. And at first I'm like, nah.

Then I read the research and went, well, okay, then. I haven't gotten that part. I did read recently Richard Bauckham's, what, 80-page chapter on Junia. Well, it's at the end of that where he kind of makes the connection with, it could be Joanna and is it Luke 8? One of the wealthy women that surrounds Jesus, I think. Good job, Luke 8, 1 and 2. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But they're bankrolling the guys, yeah. All these women funding Jesus and the disciples' ministry. Well, it's not a threat in his manhood. That's a whole sermon. That's a wild passage because Luke mentions it almost in passing. I mean, Luke's such a, I mean, all the biblical writers are intentional, but I mean, Luke's, he's so, he's just so creative in how he frames his narrative. So the fact that he's just kind of like, oh yeah, by the way, here's a bunch of women.

FYI. Yeah. Before we move on. Yeah. Yeah. They show up. Here are the women traveling. They show up to the hotel and the women are like, hey, step aside, Yeshua. I got this, you know. I got this. Yeah. I wonder in that culture, like in our culture, the one with the money kind of has the power. I would say, yeah, it's kind of the same thing there too. Like that said something, right? Wealthy women funding Jesus's ministry. Yeah. My hunch is Luke is trying to say, hey, this isn't just the poor people, although Jesus has a heart for the marginalized, but also respectable people in very high places think he's the one.

Yeah. You know, you've got the wife of Herod's steward mentioned, right? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, by the way, guys. Let's talk about the Samaritan woman, because this is one that's one of the most familiar. And I think, so Lynn Kohik wrote that chapter and just as she is only capable of doing, you know, a masterful job with exquisite scholarship. Yes. Yeah. Talk to us about the Samaritan woman in popular understanding in the church. It's

very popular understanding, very widespread. Very popular understanding. And I'll confess, I held very negative views of her. But let me frame this with my mother was received into the Antiochian Orthodox Church in her 70s, as was my older brother, who is an art history major and a museum curator, and by the way, a Multnomah grad. And so one of the things my mother told me was, you Protestants, love ya, been one, but you don't know your church history when it comes to Fotina. I'm like, who's who? She said, the woman at the well in our tradition has a name and she had sons and she's a martyr. And oh, by the way, before the Reformation, she was not considered to be a loose woman. She was considered someone to emulate. So this is where one of the voices

has me going, how did you get that? I mean, the one you're not now is not your own. Then I started noticing there's that story where the Sadducees come to Jesus and they're talking about a woman who's had seven husbands. And is she loose? Well, no, actually she's not. They've all died. And then I learned that the number one cause of death for women is birth, but the number one cause of death is war. And that the early virgins in the church weren't into purity culture. Part of it was standing up to empire. No, I'm not giving you soldiers. I am not part of this. No, I am committed to the kingdom because there's this pressure. So all of that, I wanted to say as a backdrop to, we come to this story.

And one of the first details that shows up as a commentary in, I think it's the late middle ages is the detail that it's noon. She's at the well at noon, and we Westerners who don't go to a well to get water to drink have read into that that she's ostracized as she's going alone. But people in the developing world go, actually, it depends a lot more on how much water you can carry, because water's heavy. So if you don't have children, the African proverb is an infertile woman sends her own thigh. So you are going many times a day to get water, depending on how much you can carry. And so again, that's the first detail that

says she's ostracized when really, if you look at the text to go, why is that detail there? Well, probably because that explains where the disciples went. They went to go get lunch because it's lunchtime. So Jesus is hungry and thirsty. So you're saying, so the common assumption is that she goes to get water at noon because she wants to, all the other women went in the morning, but because she's been outcasted and stigmatized because of her sexual past, she goes when nobody else is going. That's the assumption that's read in it. Exactly.

That's it. And there's nothing in the text that says that. It's just something that got added to the commentary and picked up and spread. And so then the idea that the man you have now is not your own, you know, in an American context, if you're living with a guy that's not your husband, it means you're shacking up with somebody. But, you know, in the ancient Near East or Levant, in this part of the world, you could have a polygamous or bigamous, right? A bigamy is being practiced.

You could very well, if you lost seven husbands, it could be very much like Judah with Tamar going, I think you're bad luck. I'm not marrying you. And so the best she can do to eat is to be a second wife in a situation where somebody already has one. It could also be somebody like the sort of heel in the roost story who doesn't want to split up his inheritance among his kids and so passes on being a good redeemer for Ruth because he doesn't want to divide the inheritance. So there could be lots of reasons for a woman to be with a man who's not her own and not be a woman of ill repute. And if that's the case, if this woman has either been dumped or widowed multiple times, or probably a combination of those things, and now she even

has to share a husband, then Jesus, instead of confronting her for her sin is confronting her with her pain and saying, you know, I see you. And he's omniscient. Nobody's going to guess that many losses in that situation, right? You're just not going to be, you might say, hey, I know you've been married three times and you just happened to get it right. But nobody's going to say five husbands and an extra. So you back up and go, the argument that John is making when he puts chapter four in there, when he puts this woman in there, he's establishing that Jesus is God and he is the one. And so Jesus goes out of his way. And a key part of who Jesus is in this text is, how does he know that? Huh? He's the same guy who saw Nathaniel under a tree and knew. So then when her response,

I perceive you're a prophet, is not deflecting. It's, oh, let's have a spiritual conversation. Maybe you can answer some of my questions because we know she's waiting for Messiah. She knows when Messiah comes, you can almost hear the longing. He's going to, you know, solve all this for us. Well, what if Jesus knows there's this multiply wounded Samaritan woman who is hoping for him? It seems completely in character for him to go out of his way to hang out at the well. And she's the only person that he ever comes right out to and says, egoe me, I am. You know, he hands a lot of times people, are you the one? Wait, are you the one? But for this one, this woman, he's like the one talking to you. Ego me. I am. That's wild.

So the whole assumption, you know, we, for most of my Christian life, I've heard Jesus say, you know, go grab your husband or whatever. And like, I don't have a husband. Aha. You have had five husbands, you know, you immoral woman, you know, bouncing around from man to man to man. And it, you know, know, even the tone there, it's like, I just, I literally have like heard Jesus,

you have had five, you know, like just really confronted rather than, and again, in that society, and I always thought, well, she's just bouncing from guy to guy. She's obviously sexually promiscuous. It's like, well, hold the phone. There's zero cultural possibilities for something like that,

for a woman to like initiate these relationships and go from man to man. Then I, a few years ago, I was like, oh gosh, no, she's a victim of maybe being divorced from all these men. She can't, extremely rare for a woman to initiate divorce. It wasn't completely, there's a couple of random examples, I think. Exactly. You know, in the Mediterranean, But I mean, extremely rare. I don't even know if it was even possible in the Samaritan culture.

But okay, maybe she's a victim of being divorced by these men. But it was actually Lynn that, I think in a podcast conversation, before I even read this, I think she told me like, well, even that would have been unlikely, much more likely that she would have been widowed. Maybe a couple of divorcesces maybe one or so but probably the majority are these men keep dying which would have much more likely which would have created a ton of stigma like you you mentioned right i mean is this woman bad luck and you have isn't there there's uh oh is it tobit the

apocryphal book where you have some women? You are out of my league now, Preston. Somebody can look it up. I don't have time to look it up, Brenda. There's a book where it has kind of a similar story of a woman kind of like bad luck. And these men keep dying. We have it in Genesis 38, obviously. So not only heartbreak, but destitution financially. Like, you know, an American woman

today deprived of a spouse, it's a disaster. She can also put on her flats and go apply for a job in many contexts. That is not an option for a woman in this world. She has got to be connected with a man and she's, or she can't eat. So it's a tragedy. It's just a tragedy. Even if she was, say the guy she's with that's not her husband, even if it was a shack-up kind of situation, it's still not, it would be motivated by survival, social, really patriarchal, misogynistic cultural factors that go into it. So even that would be Jesus.

Even if there was a sinful component here, it's within a much larger picture where she is a victim of abuse and marginalization. You're not wrong. What's really interesting is the early church fathers did not see shame in her, did not see fault in her. The Middle Ages are not seeing it. It's really not until late Middle Ages, but it's really the reformers. And there's a shift in theology that happens with the Reformation where you're, instead of the number, the first thing needing to happen is seeing God for who He is, it's I need to see myself for who I am. If you think about, for spiritual laws, the first thing

is I'm a sinner. It might start with God has a wonderful plan for my life, but it really starts with that self-revelation. And so understanding her through those eyes is really consistent with how the reformers are starting to look at everything theologically in terms of part of trusting Christ is having an encounter where you see yourself first. And so we do see that sort of developing in the theology. So while there might have been misogyny behind some of it, also, I think there's a deep root also in how we're beginning to look at the text differently in some of those ways, looking for those sort of elements.

Jesus never tells her to stop sinning, like you see with the woman caught in adultery. He never says anything about sin. There's no exhortation to change. He just has a good theological discussion with her. And isn't it implied that she, when she goes back and preaches the gospel, basically, that they listened to her? Like she has, doesn't that imply at least that she had some kind of, well, she didn't have some major character flaw that would have tarnished her word, you know? So that is what Lynn would argue. Sandra Gwan might say, yeah, but maybe they saw a dramatic change in her. Oh, okay.

But Lynn's probably right on this one. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, there's explicit things in the text and then things that are implied and the implications we just have to kind of hold with a loose hand. Okay, let's talk okay the one in in here um and i just read this a couple days ago the one on tamar um this is one of it's actually one of my well favorite would it's it's such an interesting in your face weird chapter of the bible like you are not wrong what were the angels the editorial angels thinking when they said, let's put this in the story. But actually it's, it's interesting because you have

the Joseph story, Genesis 37 to 50, and Joseph is just really man of character, right? So he, he kicks it off in Genesis 37 and then in Genesis 39 picks right back up and you have this interlude Genesis 38 where everything is wrong. Like it's just, it's just such a, you know and you have this interlude, Genesis 38, where everything is wrong. Like it's just, it's just such a, you know, you have, you know, Judah goes and marries a Canaanite woman, has some sons and they keep doing evil inside of the Lord. So God keeps killing them. And then, you know, you have finally the younger brother is supposed to do his duty and raise up a seed for his deceased brother. And he, in the words of the Bible, our bible our holy text you know he's spilling his seed on the ground not you know raising up a seed for his deceased brother and so tamar kind of runs off so i'm not going to get any sons out of this family you know and then she ends up dressing up like a

prostitute has sex with judah who's whose pickup line is here, let me come into you. You know, that's his way to woo the woman. And they get, I know, this is the Bible. I've actually preached sermons on it. It's my favorite sermon. Good for you. No, and I quote the Bible. No, because it's at the very, I've always framed it in terms of,

here's Joseph, this squeaky clean, almost so squeaky clean. You want to kind of, you know, smack him upside the head just because it's like, you know. And then it's so, so Judah impregnates his daughter-in-law, Canaanite daughter-in-law. And they have twins and it's through those twins that God uses to send the Messiah. Messiah is going to come through your line. So it's this masterful picture of God's grace. He actually doesn't use Joseph who would have been our choice. He actually goes through this disastrous affair to send the Messiah.

Anyway, it's Carolyn, right? Carolyn Custis-Stan. Yes. It was a beautiful writer and thinker. Um, uh, and, and I've, I've seen this interpretation before, and this is one where I'm not quite convinced. I truly mean that like, maybe it's, it's right that she's portrayed that Tamar's portrayed. Well, he, he, Jude even says it, you're more righteous than I, and I've always taken that kind of as part of this, just this whole story is just off. And is she more right? Maybe she's more righteous than him, but she's not, she's no saint either, you know. But she...

I think she is. So let's have an argument. Okay. So that's kind of where I'm coming from. Why don't you summarize, maybe a different way of reading this passage as it pertains to Tamar? Yeah. So I think you sort of hinted that what is Genesis 38 doing here? We're tracing this wonderful, faithful man who has no reason to be faithful. And he's actually been sold to slavery by Judah. Right, right.

Who is, you know, you're scratching your head going because you know this is the line through which Messiah is coming. And you're like, Judah, really? Like he's a human trafficker. He has trafficked his brother. He hates his brother because he's jealous. And why is the story of the seduction of Tamar with her father-in-law, Judah, in this story? And then we pick it back up with Joseph again. And I think the author of Genesis is giving us the reason for Judah's character arc. I think it's part of the argument of Genesis. And that's why it disturbs me when people, unlike you, skip the story, because I think it's essential to, here is this woman. She is a Canaanite. Judah had no excuse for going down to Canaan. Canaan is the archenemy of his people, and he's gone and

married a Canaanite, and his sons are like him. He's wicked. He sold his brother. His first son, we don't know what he did, but it was so bad, God just said, I'm done with you and killed him. he did, but it was so bad, God just said, I'm done with you and killed him. And the second one, as you said, would rather avail himself of his widowed sister-in-law's body rather than give her and his dead brother the honor that is due them. So he's a scuzzbag, and God says, I'm done with you too. And then Judah is thinking that she is the one, you know, he's superstitious. Like, I'm not giving you my third one anytime soon. Cause you know, my sons die. You're like, maybe Judah, you should think about these are your sons. Where did they get that creepiness? Um, and so Tamar is owed a couple of things. She is owed the ability to eat in her future.

She's gone back to her family. But when her parents die, how is she going to eat? And the most tragic thing for a woman in this day is to either be infertile or to be unmarried because, again, it's not just the honor of having a child and the beauty of a family. That is way down on the priority list. It is eating. It is your 401k. It's your meals on wheels.

It's your social security. It's your savings. And not only that, I suspect somewhere around the campfire, Tamar has heard that Judah got the promise from his dad that he's the one. And it must be puzzling to her to go, why would you guys in this family have so little regard for the fact that you have these incredible promises? And I think it fits a pattern that we see throughout scripture where God is constantly using Gentiles as foils, not because their their sin, but because of his people's sin, going, you know, you think about the story of Jonah, and it's the sailors that are praying to

God while Jonah's sleeping. You have the story of Rahab, and it's the spies who are, wait, what are they doing at her house? While she's saying, hey, we've heard about your God, and she uses all the names for God and, you know, basically, you know basically accepts him as her savior, if you will. She gives the formula of a believer. And the spies had one job. And here is Rahab getting it right and the spies aren't. I think you have the exact same thing happening with Judah. Here is somebody who gives a rip about the future, gives a rip about that line passing on, and she is with the very people who she care the most, and they do not care. And one of the things that Carol and Custis James says in there is we've translated, you're more righteous than I, but you could

translate that, you're the righteous one, not me. And I think that that's probably accurate in this situation. She has done a good thing. She has tried to honor the sleazebag husbands that she's had, and they have done nothing but make her life miserable. And she has still guaranteed that Judah's line is going to continue. And I think we see it in the blessing of God then that she has twins. So the righteousness of her act is continuing the line of Judah. Is that one of the... Yes. And Judah is so stunned that the next time you see him, he is offering his life for Benjamin.

Something happened. Oh, interesting. What happened? Oh, that's right. Oh, yeah. I didn't think about that. Okay. All right. All right. You're, you're okay. I did. I will ponder. I will ponder because I always thought clearly Jude is a chain wreck and she is too, is how I read it. But so what about, I mean, dressing up up as a so she's just doing well i think she's within her legal right in the culture i think that's why there's the little detail in the text that he's widowed that uh in in not in the jewish law but in the canaanite law the leverant law the law

of the brother-in-law right that you take your sister-in-law, which, I mean, it's a creepy law, but it's there and it's there so you can eat, but it's large enough to allow for the father-in-law. And so I think in her mind and her mind of Canaanite law and what's right and what's just, she is not violating another woman's right. so according to her according to the broad yeah maybe canaanite law she's not doing some creepy like incestuous thing it's it's within the same kind of purview of what we'd call the leverite raw law um which you see clearly at the beginning of the chapter that's what it's all about that's why you know the brother needs to, so dress up as a prostitute. Was that, was that just the opening story that, um, Carolyn talks about was, was actually, I mean, really helpful. Where was it? The, the moral dilemma. She, she gives an example of a Jewish girl.

Yeah. During World War II, uh, Nazi Germany, you know, basically giving herself to these soldiers. Nazi Germany, you know, basically giving herself to these soldiers. Your family will die unless you do. So that's what she does. And yeah, so Carolyn Custis James compares it to that and sees in that a parallel. Yeah. I would differ only in that you would still say that the Jewish woman is doing something immoral. And I don't think in Tamar's mind, that's how she saw it. I think she

knew that Judah was an evil enough man. He would totally take the bait. She had no question that this is what he would do. But she probably also knows he wouldn't go near her if he knew it was Tamar because she's bad luck to him. In his mind, it's her fault that things have gone badly with his sons. Even though the narrator clearly says they did evil on the side of the Lord, so the Lord killed them. It's such an abrupt- We don't get a lot, exactly. We don't get a lot of the sense that Judah really cares about what's going on in the side of the Lord up to this point, no. And then he uses the word righteous. I always took that as more ironic. Who is he to even know a category of what righteousness even is.

That's funny. Yeah, but you have to take it not just in the historical, what Jude actually said, but how the narrator's framing it too. There's just kind of that interplay there. Exactly. And that's where I think we have missed a woman's places in the story in that this is not some bizarre little bunny trail where we're telling the Joseph story and then we're going to pause for this weird little narrative and then get back to Joseph. I think it's essential to the Joseph story, which is why we park it to give the background of elaborate marriage and give us a reason why Judah is so different the next time we see him. He is a changed man. He's done a 180. He's doing the opposite with Joseph's brother as what he did to Joseph, even at the expense of knowing his father. He can't break his father's heart again, for one thing. He did.

It was his fault the first time. It was kind of like his conversion experience in some way. A little bit, yes. In the Old Testament kind of way. Yeah. Interesting. From a Canaanite. How ironic.

But that, yeah, and that element, like you kind of said before, that's very biblical. God's often using kind of non-religious, non-Jewish people to kind of like demonstrate righteousness more. Which that alone has a- Let that be a warning to us. What's that? Let that be a warning to us who have all this access to scripture and teaching of, don't get sick on candy, folks. We got some accountability here.

So I mentioned it in the intro, but I'll mention it again. We are doing a book giveaway. So if you want to check that out, click on the link in the show notes for the publisher, Kregel. Sorry, I almost gave the wrong publisher. Kregel Academic was kind enough when they heard we're doing this interview to say, let's give away some books. So if you want to enter to win a free copy of Vindicating the Vixens, click on the show notes below. And you said that all of the authors, which normally get some kind of advance, a cut of the profits, you said you're giving all of that to International Justice Mission.

Is that correct? Correct. So you have all these scholars who want to do something to fight human trafficking and women who are sexualized and vilified. But we're scholars. And that doesn't mean you can't do volunteer work. But we just decided, well, actually, we can use our pens. You know, Martin Luther said he fought the devil with ink. So all the authors unanimously agreed

that 100% of our profits on this book go to benefit the international justice mission. And one thing that was really fun when we did the book launch party was we just posted it on Facebook and opened it to the public. And three women showed up who just came and didn't know that we were working with to give this to IJM. And they said, we have just been appointed by IJM to start a chapter in this area. We had no idea that this was an IJM, you know, fundraising event. So that was a fun little sidebar. That's awesome. That's so cool. Yeah. What a great project. Um, I, you're, you're a scholar, obviously, uh, but you're also a woman of the church. Um, and from what I know about you,

yeah, you, you, you merge the two, your, your scholarship is kind of born out of your heart for the church. So let's fast forward to contemporary culture today. Yes, gladly. Yes. What, what was there some kind of underlying, like what was, what kind of like ecclesiological kind of like byproduct do you want to see this book contribute to? You know, I'm throwing you a softball. You know what I'm, you know where I'm going. Thank you. Yeah. So I think that part of seeing so much abuse that's coming to light, and thank God it's coming to light. I don't think that it's that there's more abuse. I think to light, and thank God it's coming to light. I don't think that it's that there's more abuse.

I think that there's more exposure of it. But part of what has helped abuse continue is vilifying of women, thinking that the Bible teaches that women, you should suspect every woman, that women are voracious in their appetite for power. And they might hide it really well. But we know from Eve, and we know from, you know, name your woman, that this is at her core. And it gets taught subtly, like when you're going through a sermon series on all the women

in Jesus's genealogy, and it's taught that the thing that they all have in common is their sexual sin. I don't really know where the Virgin Mary fits in with that, but maybe it is a stretch. But anyway, just those sorts of messages that tend to vixenize women, instead of saying, hey, a healthy view of women is that there are sisters and we are sisters and brothers. And would you talk about your sister that way? Would you treat your sister that way? Would you treat your sister that way? We can socialize people to act like family. And so part of my

heart for the church is let's get our scripture teaching right. Because part of our scripture teaching, talking about men and talking about women has been messed up. And then it's had ramifications in how we treat each other in the church. And that needs to change. We need each other. We were made to partner together. We need committees with men and women. We need to stop segregating some of our activities where we need each other that there's no reason to be segregating. A missions committee, a greeting committee, the people that stand at the front if you have an altar call, men and women, all of those are rooted in our theology of male and female. So it didn't sound like you're arguing for full on every church needs to be egalitarian,

because even the things you mentioned there within a complementarian theology can do all of that stuff, you know? Yeah. So if I have a spiritual animal, it's going to be a Venn diagram. And so I'm constantly trying to work with comps and gals to say, look, we got, we both agree that Genesis holds up a high vision for men and women partnering, and we are not doing a great job of that. And so one place I think every church can start, no matter where you are on the spectrum, is to say, where are we not partnering? Is our third grade Sunday school class, do we have men and women? Or in our lower grades, men and women? Do we have men and women? Because you have so many kids coming out of broken homes that need to see that model, right? The church is

the place where family can be modeled and healthy, and we need to look like brothers and sisters because we are brothers and sisters. And I love some of the projects even that are like Her Bible, where they have women reading the Bible, because some women are triggered by men reading the Bible because they're coming from abuse in church. And one of the ways to help some of that healing is to just say, hey, we need men reading the Bible and we need women reading the Bible. But ultimately, hopefully, you heal to a place where you can hear men and women reading the Bible. And we need to hear it in men's voices and we need to hear it in women's voices.

And I don't think we need to dissect what women bring to the table or men bring to the table, because then you pretty much fall into stereotype. I think femininity, I'm sorry, biblical womanhood is the fruit of the Spirit embodied as a woman. And biblical manhood is the fruit of the Spirit embodied as a man. And the minute you start to say courage is for men, you're like, what about Esther? And serving is for women. And you're like, what about the deacons and acts, right? How about making Philippians 2 our goal? Is it Christ-like? And then you can embody it as a man or a woman, but it's the fruit. Well, and all the biblical commands, let's just take Paul's letters. I mean, they're given to mixed congregations. So even in 1 Corinthians 16, when he says,

act like men, andridzomai or whatever, he's selling... And he's saying it to men and women. Men and women. So it can't... Yeah. It can't be...

It's not man up, man. It's... In that culture, act like... It meant to be courageous and strong, but he's telling women and men to do the exact same thing. In fact, almost every biblical command in the New Testament and old is given to a mixed audience.

There's a couple of occasions like in Titus 2, right? Where you have Paul saying older women teach younger women. But even there, I've actually went through and looked at, I think there's like 10 commands there. Older women teach younger women too. And he gives a bunch of, but almost every single one is elsewhere would equally apply to men. Be sober minded, pure, all this. The only one, there's two, there's two that might only apply to women. And it's the teach younger women to submit to their husbands. Okay.

So here, even if you take this through like a strict, hardcore complementarian lens, there's still only two. Submit to your husbands and then be busy at home. But even there, it's like, I don't, we read that through a post-industrial lens where it's like, the man went off to work. That's right.

We're not canning at home and working. Yeah, that's right. So the most conservative reading of that passage would be eight of the 10 commands are equally applying to men elsewhere. And I'm not saying never segregate. I'm saying we overdo it on that. And if you want to believe in the complementary relationship of men and women, you recognize that we need each other. There was a piece of research I love that came out after the Bernie Madoff financial scandal where somebody said, hey, this is an all-male board. It was totally unethical. What if it had been an all-women board? So they started doing

research on ethics and you're not surprised, all-women boards were as unethical as all-male boards. But when boards had men and women on them working together, they made more ethical decisions. It was something about needing each other. I have a question. And I like to ask honest questions. So I would only expect an honest answer. Let's look at where you're going there. You know, mixed boards, mixed groups, mixed, you know, the missions committee, men and women, the, you know, whatever financial decisions being made by men and women. What are some ways in those mixed settings that men can unintentionally, let's just overpower women.

In what way, and flip it around, in what ways do women feel like, even though it's mixed, even though I'm a woman, even though I have a seat at the table, I don't feel like I can be completely honest or like my voice isn't completely heard. Can you give us, again, I want to reach the unintentional stuff. I love that you asked that. Thank you. Can you give us, again, I'm talking, I want to, I want to reach the unintentional stuff. I love that you asked that. Thank you. Thank you. First of all, there is good research that said men tend to feel more comfortable interrupting women, but there's also good research that says women feel more comfortable interrupting other women. And so one thing is just for everybody present to be conscious that I need to let, you know, let this person or be conscious about interrupting. There's a time to interrupt, but being conscious that it might be because you're having just

less respect for this person. I think sometimes, you know, you've heard the trope and it's true. The men might go out and play basketball and make decisions on the court or sitting around and you're, you know, you weren't part of that. And so you can really feel left out of, or they might go out afterward and the women aren't invited because it might not be, you know, appropriate, but then start discussing the business and make decisions. So just even being conscious of putting the parameters around, hey, you know what, We're just not going to talk about that until we're all together. I think another, another thing is if both men and women, sometimes when they are really being vulnerable, they will choke up. And, you know, I think we should normalize getting choked up over emotional things and not

write it off as a girl thing. It's not just a girl thing. It's a human thing. And tear ducts are sometimes the way truth leaks out. And to not just say, you're having an emotional response, as if maybe anger isn't an emotional response. Right? So I think just trying to, even just asking the question, Preston, just even going in saying, I want to be careful as a woman or a man coming into this in a way that is, would I treat my literal sister this way? Would I treat my literal brother this way? And I don't mean like your kid brother that you pick on. I mean, right? I mean, a peer. mean like your kid brother that you pick on i mean right i mean appear is it um no i'm nervous to interrupt i actually had a comment years ago that's funny years ago is one-off comment on my podcast that i constantly interrupt women and not men or something and i was like i don't think i had not noticed i don't think of it so i felt extra like oh my gosh i needed not if even somebody had that impression i would even need to not do that.

That's horrible. But also a podcast host has to interrupt. That's just part of the job. You're looking at that counter going, hmm. If my guest, and I'm not thinking of anybody in particular. If I had a guest that was overly talking, and sometimes it's just nervousness. They don't know how to land the plane, so they're just talking. People want to hear a conversation, not just somebody talking for like 20 minutes straight.

So they're male or female. I'm going to jump in. Or if somebody said something that I know the audience isn't going to understand, I might jump in real quick and say, hey, can you explain that a little more? Just in case people don't know what the parousia means or something. Right, right. that Parousia means or something, you know? Would it, if so, okay. Say I'm in a meeting committee, there's men, there's women. And I noticed that men are doing most,

if not all of the talking, is it patronizing for me to say, Hey, I want to, can we hear from some of the women? Like, is that, is that, was that fine? I wouldn't think it was patronizing, but you, it might be better to say, I want to hear from some of the people we haven't heard from yet. Don't genderize it, right? Because it could also be some of your introvert men who didn't feel like they were the alpha males that get the floor. Okay. I have been noticing that more in the last couple of years, especially like in mixed settings.

And sometimes there might be a strong woman who dominates, you know, so I'm not saying it's always just men. But a lot of times, especially in Christian circles that are a bit more conservative, maybe that's, yeah, maybe that's where. Because we women are socialized not to. Yeah. Do you have any funny stories at ETS, the Evangelical Theological Society? Oh my gosh. These crack, they're sad, but they're also kind of humorous too. Thank God this has not happened recently,

but my first years of ETS, people were constantly asking me where my husband taught. And I'm like, Sunday school in my church, but I'm the professor here. Oh gosh. That you're like, no, I actually. But again, that's not happening as much as it did because there are more women.

And also because I think our name tags typically say what school we're with. So that's not happening quite as much. know, pick up the ETS program and look to see if we're represented and are often disappointed that women of color and men of color are less represented than we would like them to be. But that's not a funny story. That's just something we all need to work on. If it's any consolation, every time I submit a paper to present ETS, I've got rejected. So it's been years since I got one. That is not true. Yeah. I don't even submit anymore. Cause it's a waste of money. It just keeps getting rejected. So I don't even, yeah. So well, our loss, I mean, that's debatable.

No, it is. I mean, I've been to your ETS presentations. They're good stuff. So I, the only time I presented the last like five or six years is if i get invited by somebody else saying hey can you you know like that somebody did a review of my book a couple years ago so i i did it there but yeah i was at that one that's good yeah that was interesting yeah which book preston that was uh embodied what was its title embodied embodied um thank you for the shout out okay so other ways in which, let's just say churches in particular that, and I don't even, do I want to make it a complementarian egalitarian thing? Because it's funny, like I keep hearing more and more that even like denominations that

are egalitarian, you know, the male to female ratio of leadership is like, so I'm in Idaho. It's a big, tons of Nazarene churches here. But if I was going to do a poll on how many senior pastors at Nazarene, they're egalitarian, but there's hard, I don't, I don't know how many Nazarene churches in the Idaho area have a senior pastor that's a woman or even like, you know, like, so I think sometimes even egalitarian churches on paper say they value women leadership and practice. I think it's still has a ways to go. Do you have any thoughts on that in particular? Yeah. The example I just gave of the guys playing basketball was actually straight from the lips of

a woman that works in an egalitarian church saying, sometimes when you think you value women, it's like you check the box and you don't think about it anymore. And you don't realize how many habits are still there. And she said, in some ways, it was harder because there was a sense of feeling good about themselves that they included women and then going and not including them. That was sometimes easier in churches that acknowledged that women didn't always have a voice. So, yeah, I think, I guess it's my preference is to address the problem rather than the label, right? Because the label complementarian has, I think I've identified seven different views within the comp camp. And there's such a range, such a range of where you fall on that. But what we can talk about is, are women at the table? Are men and women partnering?

Do we believe in the partnership? And I think there are sort of two different kinds of perspectives on those who do really emphasize male leadership and or male hierarchy. really emphasize male leadership and or male heart hierarchy. There are sort of those that think the more men that are in charge, the more male graders, the more that that is a sign of church health. And then there are those who say the more we can partner, that that's a sign of church health. And you probably figured out I'm, I'm more in that camp. I don't really know how it is that we, in every case that we need each other, I just know we do. Is there, so I want to say like maybe 10 years ago, or maybe it was maybe longer than that. I just feel like I remember hearing kind of over and over that the church is just wired more for

women and we need more men to come and show up and serve and do all that. Oh, I got a story for you on that. Yeah. Am I thinking of it? I feel like there was kind of this movement that's like, gosh, everything's gotten so quote, and I'm just repeating the mantra, quote unquote, feminine. Too feminized, yes. The music's very feminine. Everything's kind of very feminine.

And so we need more men to come and show up and go to prayer meetings and serve. And so, I don't know. So somebody at a church I have attended that I felt was not giving women a place at the table asked me, okay, from the minute you walk in to the time you walk out, just tell me your perspective. And it, it, it was a church of people that would have, have ascribed to the church is too feminine. I said, I walk in the door and there are only ever male greeters. I walk into the service and not only are the ushers all male, but we don't say the ushers will now collect, we say the men will. It's only men passing the communion plate. It is only ever men giving

announcements. It is only men ever speaking during the worship if there's any guided conversation, certainly only men preaching. And then if there's an altar call at the end, it is the men rather than men and women. So I wouldn't bring a woman with an abusive background to a context like that. She's not going to go forward. And so it seems so ironic to me to be saying we have feminized, like in whose world are you, because we're not represented. And I don't know how you can say the songs are feminized, unless you're making them all songs about me and Jesus, in which case, I don't think that's a feminine problem. I think that's just a self-problem.

Well, what are some ways in which the church can do things that are unhelpful, if not triggering, if not really harmful towards women who have experienced abuse? Because we're talking 20 to 25% of women in general. I mean, that's a big part. I mean, we are seeing a mass exodus of women and some of them it's abuse. Some of them it's because they have gifts that aren't being used. And so a couple of things that I would start with your Bible translation. If your Bible translation is hospitable to women in places where women are actually present in the text, go with a translation that shows they were there. I am a seminary professor and it has been in the last 10 years,

even though I know Greek, it's been in the last 10 years that I realized when Jesus said, I'll make you fishers of men, he was saying, I'll make you fishers of people. So even though I know how to mentally make the jump from men to people, there are still enough places that it's not done for me that I don't even question it. And so I think starting with your translation, that if the word is a Delphoi, which we tend to translate brothers, but it's siblings in that includes sisters. If they're present, then siblings is a better English translation because brothers is getting more and more literally to mean only the guys. So again, if the translate, I'm not asking anybody to say something that isn't in the text, So again, if the translate, I'm not asking anybody to say something that isn't in the text, but if the text has women present, then go with the translation that includes them

because representation does matter. And it helps us imagine who we can be in Christ. If we know that we are part of this calling, part of the call to have courage, part of the call to share the gospel, all of that. So translation is where I would begin. part of the call to share the gospel, all of that. So translation is where I would begin. I think also, I remember a Father's Day sermon where the pastor got up and told all stories about fathers and sons. And one of the moms who only had daughters, you know, kind of leaned to me and said, fathers also have daughters. You know this, right? From experience. So even just thinking through illustrations,

and I think sometimes people have thought, okay, well, then I'm going to not just do football for men, but shopping for women, equally as insulting. I love football, and I hate to shop, right? So even thinking about, you know, when I, the kind of illustrations I think that help are, okay, let's look at how many single women we have in the church. Okay. So let me use a female manager in one of my illustrations. Let's not make all the workers men and all the female. If they show up in illustration, let's not make them all the moms at home. Now they need to be included. Those moms at home. They have a thankless job, but it's not the only job that women have. And for most of their lives, right? I mean, if you're at home with kids, maybe 20 years

and women living in their late eighties, that means a whole lot of years where that's not your primary day. Right, right. Okay. So I have kind of a personal question advice. I was going to ask you this offline, but I'll just, why not? We're already recording. Go ahead. Put me on the air. So I, well, I did mention offline to you that, you know, I'm hosting. So the XLS and Babylon conference, which if you listen to the podcast, you probably know about a conference here in Boise, Idaho in April. And one of the sessions we break it up into, we do four sessions where we go deep into a certain topic. So we're looking at deconstruction and the gospel.

So we're hearing different stories of deconstruction. We're looking at what does it look like to include LGBT people within a traditional, with a framework of a traditional sexual ethic? What does that look like? We're doing three Christian views of politics. We're doing an Israel-Palestine back and forth conversation. Yeah, we're hitting all.

Too bad you're avoiding all the important issues. I know, I know, right? And then we're doing a session on the timing of the rapture. So the other session we're doing is on women, power, and abuse in the church. I got four female speakers, mutual friend Sandy Richter doing like a theology of, of women, um, uh, of a person sharing, uh, who's a survivor sharing her story. Um, uh, Tiffany Bloom is, is talking about kind of the abuse of power in the church on more ecclesiological perspective. And then, uh, Julie Slattery is going to, you know, deal with it from more of a psychological

perspective. I'm still the host. Here's my question. I deliberately said, I want to have all women speaking. It makes the most sense. Not that we couldn't have had, you know, a male voice of a pastor, maybe who's trying to step into this conversation. I think that wouldn't have been wrong at all. It just, you know, I didn't just didn't go that route, but I'm still the male moderator, the host. I'm the one that picked which women I want. I'm the one that's kind of asking the host. I'm the one that picked which women I want. I'm the one that's kind of asking the question. I'm the one, you know, like, I still am occupying a position of power by being the host. And even as I, so what we do is we give short talks, then we all go on the couch and have a long hour long conversation, audience Q&A. It's

very interactive. Any advice for me? How do I know? So I'm nervous. I'm actually really nervous because I know there's gonna be a lot of pain opened up in that room. I'm sure. How do I navigate that conversation as the male host? Any pieces of advice? Yeah. Well, first of all, thank you. Thank you for addressing that topic. It's essential. I'll briefly say a brief anecdote that I was at the beginning of church to me too. I was in a room with a lot of people who train leaders and the knee jerk was we need to train men on how to defend themselves against these charges. I'm thinking, wait, 90% of them are true. So we need to teach men how to listen to these charges and know how

to go forward with them. So just that you're even addressing that issue, I appreciate. Also, it is really healing for some of my students who are coming from abusive backgrounds to have healthy brothers in the room. So I love that you are present. And so one thing I would advise is just own that you have power, but you have shared it and given a platform for voices that are often neglected. I had one, a retiree, a male retiree who came to a class every week as an audit student that was dealing with a lot of these hard issues and predominantly women just to be a healthy male, just to listen carefully, just to say there are brothers that care. messages from female students throughout that semester going, I am so thankful Rick showed up because it reminds me I can't vilify all men in the abuse, but there are healthy people there, that they're good guys. And there are, I'm married to one, you're trying to be one. There are lots of good guys. And so just being present in the conversation and listening and

asking the hard questions and valid validating, and saying, I believe this happens, and I don't think that you're overreacting. What about, okay, so here's, again, I thrive on honesty. I like to just, hey, here's what I'm thinking. I'm just going to throw it out there. Let me know if I'm wording it wrong, whatever. Like, I'd rather, I don't like when people self-censure to where we're just kind of so crippled where we don't have honest conversations. Here's an honest question I do have. And again, I'm asking on the air here. I've toyed with, is this even exciting? It's one of those questions that I know people are going to have. What about that 10%? Because I have at least two, maybe even three, no, three actually now,

three no three actually now three friends who were part of that 10 percent who were to the best of my knowledge and i and i try to not just rely on my friend's perspective i try to look into it and say i don't know just because i mean it does happen yeah yeah and and and in a couple cases it was really damaged like it it hurt their family, their, their whatever. And it was really, yeah, it was heartbreaking. Um, that, and I say that, and I would turn around, hopefully it's obvious and say, yeah. And the 90% of cases that are legit are absolutely like that. Just statistically, that's a much bigger problem is males abusing their power in the church, whether it's physically or emotionally or spiritually, that's numerically the biggest problem in this conversation.

Hands down, I affirm that. Do we also, how do we also show concern about, wait a minute, no, this guy was actually wrongfully accused or... Totally legit. I think one of the ways you do it is prefacing it by the very thing you just said, like acknowledging it, but then saying, but it's still real. The other thing is, I think you pay attention to the percentages of, I mean, it doesn't have to be legalistic, but am I giving more time to a certain kind of victim than another? It needs to, the one who gets the most

time needs to be the predominant problem. Just in how you divide that time, it communicates something, right? If most of the focus is on defending yourself against falsehood instead of listening to victims then that's not what you're doing but if you were that would be a red flag right yeah i think just being conscious of it and paying attention to that is because i i would say well let me ask it as a question because this is very anecdotal. In most contexts, if the woman speaks up, she's going to be questioned. In most contexts, the guy could probably get away with it. Okay, so turn around. I got a friend who was very much a victim of a man abusing his power and

lost her job. It's horrible. I, if I was at a pacifist, you know, um, but then another context I do not like, and I've even heard women say like, Oh yeah. If I, if I even mentioned something negative about some guy or even said, yeah, he looked at me wrong or, you know, I was uncomfortable with that. He would, people would, you know, hell uncomfortable with that he would people would you know hell hath no fury like it would it would it would it would be bad for him if i even gave a hint that you know he hugged me too you know a second too long or so even even if i even if it wasn't anything bad like i can i have the i have power now and opposed me to movement so i don't even know is it is it is it is yeah i guess i don't

even know what i'm is is that something has the pendulum in some context swung too far i mean i of course the answer is yes in some context but is that something we need to be super concerned about or do we need to adjust to 90 before you even like you know give much space towards possibly swinging the pendulum too far in certain contexts. Does that make sense? I'm kind of dancing around because I'm nervous about the very question that I'm asking. Well, again, thank, thank you for even bringing it up. And I, and I, I mean, a victim, a victim or a survivor, whatever you want to call it,

like it's still a trauma and it, and it needs validation, whether it's a rare thing, whether it's a minority thing, or whether it's the main group that is receiving it. We need to know how to listen. And we need to know what are the healthy next steps that you do when somebody does come forward, male or female, what is the best way to protect the church? The church should be the safest place, not the creepiest place. I do want to tell an anecdote that I hope will encourage though. And that is when I had, I lost a pregnancy and, you know, I was devastated. We were going through infertility. We never did end up going on to have biological children. And I had a hunch that that was going to be the last time. And I was in a context of men who've been very careful with women, to their credit,

but also touch is a human thing. And I appreciated so much. There were two of my brothers, when they got the news, one of them ran across campus and threw his arms around me. The other was our president who came up and gave me the biggest side hug and said, we love you. And my point in that is, even with the healthy boundaries, the brothers who can say, I understand, I can discern a legitimately safe person and a safe context. And touch is a human thing. And Jesus did touch.

And not to go the other extreme of acting like you have a disease that I can't touch you. That also is healing to be a brother, to be a sister with each other, and to not always be making somebody feel like I have to keep a boundary around you because you might not be safe or I might, I need to protect myself, but I want to be Christ. It's hard. Like the physical touch, like hugging and stuff. I I'm, I'm just more excited. I hear all that. I a hundred percent like affirm that that's a beautiful thing. And, and brothers and sisters in Christ can hug each other. I mean, gosh, they're kissing each other in the first century. So, um, uh, and when I, you know, my wife's from France, when I go to France,

it's like, your greeting is, you know, two or three kisses. I've got a funny story about, okay. So, um, yeah, first time in France, uh uh visiting some friends of my my wife's uh family you know so they go back you know and there's all these like and this is my wife and i were first married so like two years in our marriage and there's all these uh like the the wives of the of the young men who are about my age you know and we go through the line and i think i was first in line the greetings i'm like shaking hands shaking. I turned back and everybody's kissing each other. I'm like, oh, okay. I guess that's what I'm supposed to do.

So then halfway through, I start kissing all the women. It sounds bad, you know, in the greeting, the French greeting. But then I realized why didn't kiss the other ones? So then I go back in line because the makeup where I left off, then it looks, then I get confused where I began and left off.

So it looks like I'm just like going in for seconds or something. And everybody's like, crap, they're dying laughing because I start turning, I'm like, I don't know what's going on here, you know? Oh, I didn't. Oh, yeah.

So. That's hilarious. I'm glad we don't do it. That would be, I don't, that'd be a lot for me to get used to. Here's, I'm just gonna, I might release this episode just to my Patreon supporters.

I'm keeping behind a paywall. I am nervous about physical touch being misinterpreted. Again, because I have stories of that very thing. Like literally there's like a hug being interpreted as sexual assault, which is like, oh my gosh, even if 19 out of 20 women that I might hug on a friendly basis might have your experience. Like I was so comforted. I'm so glad that treated me just like a human being that that one might, it might not be interpreted that way.

And that does make me nervous. It makes me more like, gosh, I know we're beyond purity culture now. We're trying to get over that. But at the same time time like it turned around i keep seeing guys being accused of stuff that in most cases they did something wrong in some cases and also people have been traumatized and hug is not appropriate i think i think what's essential in my stories is both of those brothers that know me

long enough to know how I would read them. And, and, and the point is just discernment, right. Is just to discern and to be in relationship and to be in family and to treat each other like family. And you, you know, you're absolutely right that there are lots of people in my life who, uh, don't, don't, you better not touch me because I'm recovering from something. Right. Um, so my, my point is not just to be flagrantly, you know, affectionate. It's, it's to, it's to be wise, just to be wise. And with that relation, that, that is a, that's a, if there's a relationship already established and that's, that's different than just being a hug in every stranger that, you know,

you meet. I was, I was on a trip to Russia in the nineties and they were doing that Russian cheek thing. And, you know, a kiss in our culture is more affectionate than a hug. And I guess one of the brothers noticed me bristling because he says to me in my world sister a hug is way less i mean a kiss is way less than a hug i was like oh okay actually that's helpful to know it kind of makes sense i mean it does the percentage of body contact and a hug is way higher than just a you know um that's interesting i never thought like that well sandra Sandra, I thank you for this interesting conversation. Vindicating the Vixens. Yes. Vindicating the Vixens is the book. Again, check out the show notes for a link where you can enter to win a free copy of this really fascinating book. What I love, I mean, there's so

many things I love about the book. What you said in the intro that you didn't, like you let individual authors have their individuality. So some are more scholarly. Some are less scholarly. You know, some are coming from. Some disagree with each other. Exactly. Yeah. And that's what I actually love that you didn't like strong arm people into this kind of one perspective.

So yeah, get the book. It's fantastic. Well, there was one review that's like, where was the editor in this? I'm like, right here. But sorry, you here, but sorry. Their voices don't sound the same. Do not pay attention to those one-off reviews that say something.

That's right. That's right. Thank you so much for being a guest again on The All-Gender Raw. Always a pleasure. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.