WEBVTT 00:00:19.000 --> 00:00:19.000 Good, that's good for us. 00:00:19.000 --> 00:00:20.480 So we're talking through this book. 00:00:20.480 --> 00:00:24.440 It's by Zach Lambert, it's called Better Ways to Read the Bible. 00:00:24.440 --> 00:00:27.480 And the main focus of the book is on lenses. 00:00:27.480 --> 00:00:29.320 See what I did there? 00:00:29.320 --> 00:00:31.320 It lends the way he's talking about it. 00:00:31.320 --> 00:00:36.200 That's an interpretive framework or a worldview, and 00:00:36.200 --> 00:00:40.720 that impacts that we apply to how we see the world. 00:00:40.720 --> 00:00:44.600 In this case, we're specifically talking about how those lenses affect 00:00:44.600 --> 00:00:48.920 the way that we understand the Bible, and the way we interact with the Bible. 00:00:48.920 --> 00:00:54.080 Now, an important point that Zach makes is that we all have lenses, okay? 00:00:54.080 --> 00:00:56.880 There's no way to not have a lens. 00:00:56.880 --> 00:01:00.720 We can try to be objective, and we can try to acknowledge them. 00:01:00.720 --> 00:01:02.440 But there's no way to not have a lens, and 00:01:02.440 --> 00:01:04.040 they're not inherently problematic. 00:01:05.560 --> 00:01:10.640 But they can become so when one, you like ignore that they exist, or 00:01:10.640 --> 00:01:14.240 you don't acknowledge them, or you forget that it's there. 00:01:14.240 --> 00:01:20.360 They can also become harmful when you apply lenses that then 00:01:20.360 --> 00:01:25.080 create hard, harmful outcomes for yourself or for others. 00:01:25.080 --> 00:01:28.880 And then it's also harmful when we demand that the lens that I prefer, 00:01:28.880 --> 00:01:33.040 the one that I like, is the only one everybody else should use too. 00:01:33.040 --> 00:01:36.000 So they can become harmful in those ways. 00:01:36.000 --> 00:01:41.520 And so in the book, Zach talks about four harmful lenses that maybe we've 00:01:41.520 --> 00:01:44.840 been taught, maybe we've grown up with. 00:01:44.840 --> 00:01:50.120 Maybe they've been handed to us as kind of the right way to read the Bible. 00:01:50.120 --> 00:01:54.480 But throughout history, and in a lot of our own experiences, 00:01:54.480 --> 00:01:57.640 we can see that they can lead to harm. 00:01:57.640 --> 00:02:02.960 And so these four harmful lenses that he talks about are the literalism lens. 00:02:02.960 --> 00:02:08.440 He talks about the apocalypse lens, the moralism lens, and the hierarchy lens. 00:02:08.440 --> 00:02:10.880 We're not going to go into a big recap of all those today. 00:02:10.880 --> 00:02:13.400 I highly recommend reading the book, 00:02:13.400 --> 00:02:17.400 those chapters to get a better understanding of maybe how you've learned 00:02:17.400 --> 00:02:23.080 those or how they're showing up in your life, and really how they can cause damage. 00:02:23.080 --> 00:02:26.360 But so he talks about these four harmful lenses and 00:02:26.360 --> 00:02:31.400 then contrast them with four different that are healing lenses. 00:02:31.400 --> 00:02:36.200 Now the idea is that we can set down the harmful lens and 00:02:36.200 --> 00:02:39.400 instead utilize some of these healing lenses. 00:02:39.400 --> 00:02:44.000 Lenses that can help us as we say every week here at the arsenal, 00:02:44.000 --> 00:02:46.720 that can help us go love well. 00:02:46.720 --> 00:02:51.080 And so the healing lenses that he talks about are the Jesus lens. 00:02:51.080 --> 00:02:52.800 We talked about this one last week. 00:02:52.800 --> 00:02:57.080 This is interpreting the Bible, New Testament, Hebrew Bible, all of it, 00:02:57.080 --> 00:02:59.840 through what we know the teachings of Jesus. 00:02:59.840 --> 00:03:02.080 So there's a story in the Gospels of Matthew, 00:03:02.080 --> 00:03:07.280 Mark, and Luke in which Jesus is asked like, what's the greatest commandment? 00:03:07.280 --> 00:03:11.560 Okay, this was a common question to ask of a rabbi in the first century. 00:03:11.560 --> 00:03:17.680 Because it would tell you how they interpret all 613 00:03:17.680 --> 00:03:19.920 commandments that are found in the Torah. 00:03:19.920 --> 00:03:23.880 I know we tend to think of like the 10 commandments, right? 00:03:23.880 --> 00:03:25.720 But there's actually 613. 00:03:25.720 --> 00:03:29.280 Now, don't tell the Texas legislature, they'll have to mandate. 00:03:29.280 --> 00:03:36.240 Not just posters, but a whole wallpaper for classrooms to include all of them. 00:03:36.240 --> 00:03:40.680 But so when Jesus is asked what the greatest commandment is, 00:03:40.680 --> 00:03:43.080 he says there's two actually. 00:03:43.080 --> 00:03:45.760 He says, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, 00:03:45.760 --> 00:03:49.720 soul, mind, without all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. 00:03:49.720 --> 00:03:50.960 That's from Deuteronomy. 00:03:50.960 --> 00:03:53.640 Then he says, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. 00:03:53.640 --> 00:03:55.120 That's from Leviticus. 00:03:55.120 --> 00:03:59.920 So Jesus basically says the way that we're supposed to interpret everything in 00:03:59.920 --> 00:04:05.200 the law, the prophets, we can assume he would include the rest of the Hebrew 00:04:05.200 --> 00:04:10.560 Bible as well as all the scripture in the New Testament is through this lens of love. 00:04:10.560 --> 00:04:14.920 If it doesn't help you love God, love others, love yourself better, 00:04:14.920 --> 00:04:17.080 then you're understanding it wrong. 00:04:17.080 --> 00:04:19.760 That's the Jesus lens. 00:04:19.760 --> 00:04:24.240 But this week, we're going to talk about the context lens. 00:04:24.240 --> 00:04:25.540 This one I'm really excited about. 00:04:25.540 --> 00:04:29.040 And then in the next few weeks, Brittany mentioned she's teaching next week. 00:04:29.040 --> 00:04:31.280 Next week is the flourishing lens. 00:04:31.280 --> 00:04:34.320 And then we're going to talk about the fruitfulness lens. 00:04:34.320 --> 00:04:36.800 So there's lots of good stuff on the way. 00:04:36.800 --> 00:04:41.680 So if we've ever gotten the chance to talk for any length of time, 00:04:41.680 --> 00:04:47.320 especially if we're having beers, you know that I love talking about 00:04:47.320 --> 00:04:49.080 the context of the Bible. 00:04:49.080 --> 00:04:51.960 I've said it before, but as I began to understand the Bible, 00:04:51.960 --> 00:04:57.760 is less of like this magical book that fell from heaven in modern day English. 00:04:57.760 --> 00:05:03.760 And more as an ancient human collection of documents that was put together 00:05:03.760 --> 00:05:06.920 from oral and written traditions, spanned thousands of years, 00:05:06.920 --> 00:05:14.600 multiple languages, the deeper and more powerful the Bible becomes. 00:05:14.600 --> 00:05:19.400 But to talk about the context of such an ancient document, 00:05:19.400 --> 00:05:22.840 we can start kind of in the presence, okay, so we're going to play a little game. 00:05:22.840 --> 00:05:28.440 Because understanding any bit of language, any language at all requires context. 00:05:28.440 --> 00:05:32.000 It's mandatory, there's no word that means something apart 00:05:32.000 --> 00:05:35.800 from the meaning that people give it. 00:05:35.800 --> 00:05:37.200 So we're going to play a little game. 00:05:37.200 --> 00:05:42.280 So for example, what does the word bet mean? 00:05:42.280 --> 00:05:46.080 Gen Z, I'm asking you specifically. 00:05:46.080 --> 00:05:48.480 What does bet mean? 00:05:48.480 --> 00:05:52.480 Yeah, I mean, it's good, yeah, okay, cool, let's do it. 00:05:52.480 --> 00:05:56.480 What about cap? 00:05:56.480 --> 00:06:00.480 Cap is to lie, slay. 00:06:00.480 --> 00:06:03.480 Slay means, yeah, you're crushing it. 00:06:03.480 --> 00:06:09.480 These words also have old meanings too, for all of those over 25. 00:06:09.480 --> 00:06:13.480 But you have to know the context like how old is the person using the word 00:06:13.480 --> 00:06:16.480 in order to understand the meaning, right? 00:06:16.480 --> 00:06:19.480 Now, some day centuries from now, this is going to be fascinating, 00:06:19.480 --> 00:06:22.480 but somebody's going to be studying 21st century American culture, 00:06:22.480 --> 00:06:26.480 and it's going to be so crucially important that they know the difference 00:06:26.480 --> 00:06:29.480 between a but dial and a booty call. 00:06:29.480 --> 00:06:34.480 Context, right, context, context, context. 00:06:34.480 --> 00:06:36.480 Okay, that's today. 00:06:36.480 --> 00:06:42.480 And so if you think back a few decades ago, words like bad, sick, gnarly, 00:06:42.480 --> 00:06:45.480 that all meant negative things, right? 00:06:45.480 --> 00:06:50.480 But it switched, it turned over, and now it means something is great. 00:06:50.480 --> 00:06:54.480 I think about the word gay, in the 90s, I feel like I remember my grandmother 00:06:54.480 --> 00:06:57.480 telling me how she thought it was great that all these people were talking 00:06:57.480 --> 00:06:59.480 about how happy they are. 00:06:59.480 --> 00:07:02.480 It's like, awesome, I guess that's not that far off base 00:07:02.480 --> 00:07:05.480 when you get to live as your authentic self. 00:07:05.480 --> 00:07:09.480 But yeah, why wouldn't being happy be a good thing? 00:07:09.480 --> 00:07:13.480 You think back further, you think about Shakespeare, Chaucer, 00:07:13.480 --> 00:07:17.480 you have to read like Beowulf when you're in high school? 00:07:17.480 --> 00:07:20.480 It's like those are English, right? 00:07:20.480 --> 00:07:24.480 From the past like 500, maybe a thousand years, 00:07:24.480 --> 00:07:28.480 and they're really hard to understand, and we speak English. 00:07:28.480 --> 00:07:31.480 So just imagine if the text is like twice as old, 00:07:31.480 --> 00:07:35.480 and it's written in languages that we don't speak natively, 00:07:35.480 --> 00:07:38.480 that's going to make things a lot more difficult, right? 00:07:38.480 --> 00:07:42.480 We can admit that that's going to be, that's going to take some work. 00:07:42.480 --> 00:07:45.480 So what we're going to do today is we're going to take a look 00:07:45.480 --> 00:07:50.480 at a few parts of the Bible that kind of illustrate this issue. 00:07:50.480 --> 00:07:53.480 First though, I'm going to give you the TLDR. 00:07:53.480 --> 00:07:56.480 If you're not an auditory learner, you think this is boring, 00:07:56.480 --> 00:07:58.480 you want to go back to watching YouTube videos, 00:07:58.480 --> 00:08:00.480 playing a game on your phone, that's fine. 00:08:00.480 --> 00:08:03.480 No judgment at all, I see you. 00:08:03.480 --> 00:08:07.480 But here you go, so here's the TLDR. 00:08:07.480 --> 00:08:11.480 We don't intrinsically understand the biblical context, 00:08:11.480 --> 00:08:15.480 so we must do everything we can to understand the various aspects of it. 00:08:15.480 --> 00:08:21.480 Things like culture, author, audience, purpose, language, and genre. 00:08:21.480 --> 00:08:26.480 Reading the Bible out of context while pretending that we have no biases 00:08:26.480 --> 00:08:31.480 is a dangerous proposition because it often leads to incredibly harmful interpretations. 00:08:31.480 --> 00:08:35.480 It's on page 135 of the book. 00:08:35.480 --> 00:08:39.480 To see how that works, let's look at a few passages of the Bible 00:08:39.480 --> 00:08:43.480 and we'll see how an incomplete understanding of words, 00:08:43.480 --> 00:08:47.480 the rest of the text around it, and the time frame genre, 00:08:47.480 --> 00:08:50.480 that kind of thing can lead us off track. 00:08:50.480 --> 00:08:55.480 So like we talked about, the meaning of words varies over time, 00:08:55.480 --> 00:08:59.480 culture, eras, so plucking a verse from its original place 00:08:59.480 --> 00:09:01.480 and time can cause some problems. 00:09:01.480 --> 00:09:06.480 For example, Proverbs 1324, you've probably heard this one, 00:09:06.480 --> 00:09:10.480 but it says, "Whoever spares the rod hates their children, 00:09:10.480 --> 00:09:14.480 but the one who loves their children is careful to discipline them." 00:09:14.480 --> 00:09:18.480 Maybe you've heard a paraphrase, "Spare the rod, spoil the child." 00:09:18.480 --> 00:09:22.480 Anybody heard that in the context of like corporal punishment? 00:09:22.480 --> 00:09:26.480 Definitely in context of spanking your children. 00:09:26.480 --> 00:09:32.480 But here's the thing that we miss, because we don't live in the same context, 00:09:32.480 --> 00:09:37.480 this passage is probably employing like shepherding imagery. 00:09:37.480 --> 00:09:41.480 So the rod here that it's talking about is actually like a shepherd staff. 00:09:41.480 --> 00:09:47.480 It's not a switch or a wooden kitchen spoon, like I experienced. 00:09:47.480 --> 00:09:52.480 But shepherds, they'd use their rods to direct sheep away from danger, 00:09:52.480 --> 00:09:55.480 to prod, just kind of prod them along the proper path, 00:09:55.480 --> 00:09:59.480 maybe pull them back to safety if they stumbled into rocks. 00:09:59.480 --> 00:10:03.480 It makes sense then that the word that's used here that gets translated is discipline. 00:10:03.480 --> 00:10:07.480 It's the word "musar," in the second half of verse. 00:10:07.480 --> 00:10:12.480 It's not talking about like any kind of physical harm or physical violence, 00:10:12.480 --> 00:10:18.480 but it's instead understood as like instruction, correction, chastisement. 00:10:18.480 --> 00:10:23.480 Now that makes more sense, like we don't live in an agrarian society, 00:10:23.480 --> 00:10:27.480 but I've not heard of a good shepherd beating their sheep. 00:10:27.480 --> 00:10:31.480 So context is important there to understand that. 00:10:31.480 --> 00:10:36.480 So in other times, we can miss what's going on around the verse, 00:10:36.480 --> 00:10:41.480 and that can often be the case with Jeremiah 2911 that we're going to look at. 00:10:41.480 --> 00:10:46.480 Now I want to pre-apologize, if this verse is very meaningful to you, 00:10:46.480 --> 00:10:52.480 I'm not in all saying that that encouragement, that confidence that it's given you is invalid 00:10:52.480 --> 00:10:54.480 or that it's lessened in any way. 00:10:54.480 --> 00:11:00.480 We're just looking at how, if you, we're just illustrating how things can change in meaning 00:11:00.480 --> 00:11:06.480 when we pull them out of their original context and only think about it through our present day lens. 00:11:06.480 --> 00:11:08.480 So let's look at it. 00:11:08.480 --> 00:11:13.480 Jeremiah 2911 says, "For I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord, 00:11:13.480 --> 00:11:17.480 plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope in a future, 00:11:17.480 --> 00:11:23.480 very encouraging to be sure, but I've also seen it used as kind of like toxic positivity, 00:11:23.480 --> 00:11:27.480 kind of spiritual bypassing when things are hard during life." 00:11:27.480 --> 00:11:31.480 And it ignores the context that's around the verse. 00:11:31.480 --> 00:11:36.480 This was written by prophets speaking for God to a people who had been conquered 00:11:36.480 --> 00:11:40.480 by a foreign empire exiled from their homeland. 00:11:40.480 --> 00:11:45.480 He wasn't talking to recent high school graduates. 00:11:45.480 --> 00:11:52.480 God goes on to say that he would gather them from all the nations where I have banished you. 00:11:52.480 --> 00:11:57.480 He says, "I will bring you back to the place for which I carried you in exile." 00:11:57.480 --> 00:12:02.480 So God sent them away into exile, but promised to bring them back to their homeland 00:12:02.480 --> 00:12:04.480 after their time in Babylon. 00:12:04.480 --> 00:12:08.480 I guess for some, maybe going away to college can feel like banishment. 00:12:08.480 --> 00:12:12.480 I don't think, though, that's what Jeremiah had in mind. 00:12:12.480 --> 00:12:18.480 And it's interesting because we can even see this happen to like whole books of the Bible 00:12:18.480 --> 00:12:22.480 when we don't understand the genre, when, why they were written. 00:12:22.480 --> 00:12:25.480 And this often happens with the book of Joshua. 00:12:25.480 --> 00:12:26.480 We'll talk about this. 00:12:26.480 --> 00:12:28.480 It can be a problematic book for us. 00:12:28.480 --> 00:12:29.480 This is the book. 00:12:29.480 --> 00:12:33.480 It's the first one in our Bibles right after the Torah. 00:12:33.480 --> 00:12:38.480 This is relating to the conquest of Canaan, so the promised land 00:12:38.480 --> 00:12:41.480 when the people of Israel go in and take the land, right? 00:12:41.480 --> 00:12:45.480 So if you grew up in church, you've definitely heard the story of Jericho, 00:12:45.480 --> 00:12:48.480 the walls falling there. 00:12:48.480 --> 00:12:53.480 But the stories throughout this book are actually pretty violent. 00:12:53.480 --> 00:12:58.480 There's passages where God commands Israelites to slaughter every man, woman, child, 00:12:58.480 --> 00:13:04.480 sometimes animals of the indigenous people groups in the land. 00:13:04.480 --> 00:13:06.480 Modern times? 00:13:06.480 --> 00:13:09.480 That kind of sounds like genocide. 00:13:09.480 --> 00:13:11.480 That makes me really uncomfortable. 00:13:11.480 --> 00:13:17.480 Isn't this the same God that like later in the books is defined as love itself? 00:13:17.480 --> 00:13:19.480 So what do we do with that? 00:13:19.480 --> 00:13:21.480 Well, sometimes people apply. 00:13:21.480 --> 00:13:23.480 We talked about some of the harmful lenses. 00:13:23.480 --> 00:13:30.480 They'll apply a literalism lens, or they'll apply this hierarchical lens. 00:13:30.480 --> 00:13:35.480 And explain it away as just saying, well, the people were evil, so they needed to be punished. 00:13:35.480 --> 00:13:37.480 Or if God does it, then it can't be wrong. 00:13:37.480 --> 00:13:40.480 Or God's ways are higher than ours. 00:13:40.480 --> 00:13:46.480 But I think that God gave us intellect, reason, moral compass. 00:13:46.480 --> 00:13:51.480 And they're not asking us just to check those at the door when we come to the Bible. 00:13:51.480 --> 00:13:58.480 So if we look at the context, there's not really a need to explain it away when we understand 00:13:58.480 --> 00:14:02.480 a few things about where this book comes from. 00:14:02.480 --> 00:14:07.480 First of all, scholars think the text was compiled during this Babylonian exile. 00:14:07.480 --> 00:14:13.480 So sometime in the mid-500s BCE, probably incorporated a lot of earlier texts. 00:14:13.480 --> 00:14:19.480 Some other stories that had come together maybe about a century earlier. 00:14:19.480 --> 00:14:21.480 The first part of the book is the older part. 00:14:21.480 --> 00:14:25.480 So that's this genre that's known as a conquest narrative. 00:14:25.480 --> 00:14:32.480 So this was a popular form of literature that portrays a king or a nation, maybe a God as 00:14:32.480 --> 00:14:37.480 like mighty, fearsome, dominant, just unbeatable. 00:14:37.480 --> 00:14:41.480 Basically it's a story of like, we're the best. 00:14:41.480 --> 00:14:46.480 And it's style of literature that was really common throughout the ancient Near East, Egypt, 00:14:46.480 --> 00:14:49.480 Babylon, other Canaanite cultures. 00:14:49.480 --> 00:14:55.480 So it makes sense then that the Israelites, the Hebrews, would write their own. 00:14:55.480 --> 00:15:01.480 Second, it's purporting to relate history, but there's no archaeological evidence 00:15:01.480 --> 00:15:04.480 that any of this happened. 00:15:04.480 --> 00:15:10.480 There was the closest that we get is, there's a period where several of the cultures in 00:15:10.480 --> 00:15:15.480 a number of the cities in the region kind of declined, but none of it is none of those 00:15:15.480 --> 00:15:18.480 cities, almost none of them are ones that are mentioned in Joshua. 00:15:18.480 --> 00:15:23.480 And it was happening like from Egypt all the way up to present day Turkey. 00:15:23.480 --> 00:15:28.480 So it was well beyond what the scope of the stories in Joshua are. 00:15:28.480 --> 00:15:36.480 But there's no like evidence of just this massive swift, you know, obliteration of a 00:15:36.480 --> 00:15:39.480 lot of the cities in the region. 00:15:39.480 --> 00:15:44.480 And then also like we have to understand, there was no concept of history as we think 00:15:44.480 --> 00:15:48.480 of it back when this was written. 00:15:48.480 --> 00:15:53.480 The goal of history back then is not to like capture the objective record of what happened. 00:15:53.480 --> 00:15:58.480 The goal was, like we said, to demonstrate how much better our King, our nation, our 00:15:58.480 --> 00:16:00.480 God is than all the others. 00:16:00.480 --> 00:16:06.480 So the point of all this context is to say that it seems the events in Joshua didn't 00:16:06.480 --> 00:16:07.480 actually take place. 00:16:07.480 --> 00:16:13.480 So God didn't actually command the slaughter of men, women, children, animals. 00:16:13.480 --> 00:16:18.480 It's not in fact a book about how God condones genocide when it's chosen people to do it. 00:16:18.480 --> 00:16:23.480 It's absolutely not a justification for like manifest destiny or just war. 00:16:23.480 --> 00:16:31.480 But when it's taken out of context, it can be used to prop up some of those oppressive ends. 00:16:31.480 --> 00:16:38.480 Instead, Joshua illustrates how a conquered exiled people believe that their God and their 00:16:38.480 --> 00:16:44.480 nation were once powerful and triumphant because they needed to encourage this nationalistic 00:16:44.480 --> 00:16:51.480 and ethnic pride at a time when their identity was just under existential threat. 00:16:51.480 --> 00:16:55.480 It helped them process what had happened to them and wrestle with the questions of who 00:16:55.480 --> 00:16:57.480 they are and who God is. 00:16:57.480 --> 00:17:02.480 And I don't know about you, but that's something that I can definitely relate to. 00:17:02.480 --> 00:17:06.480 But we definitely get to very extremely different interpretations, right? 00:17:06.480 --> 00:17:11.480 Like God condones genocide or no, he doesn't. 00:17:11.480 --> 00:17:14.480 God, see how much context matters. 00:17:14.480 --> 00:17:15.480 It's really important. 00:17:15.480 --> 00:17:21.480 So in the book that we're talking about, Zach digs into two passages from the New Testament 00:17:21.480 --> 00:17:25.480 that have also been used to unjust and oppressive ends. 00:17:25.480 --> 00:17:30.480 Specifically, they've been used to argue that women should be kept in a subordinate second-class 00:17:30.480 --> 00:17:34.480 role in the church, in home, in society, in general. 00:17:34.480 --> 00:17:39.480 And so the two verses that Zach looks at are found in two letters that are attributed to 00:17:39.480 --> 00:17:46.480 the Apostle Paul, 1 Timothy 2, 12, and Ephesians 5, 22 through 24. 00:17:46.480 --> 00:17:48.480 So first, a bit of context. 00:17:48.480 --> 00:17:52.480 We need to understand the time and place in which these are written. 00:17:52.480 --> 00:17:55.480 And that's 1st century CE in the Roman Empire. 00:17:55.480 --> 00:18:01.480 I know everybody's surprised that a dude's talking about the Roman Empire, but this is 00:18:01.480 --> 00:18:06.480 where we end up when we talk about the New Testament. 00:18:06.480 --> 00:18:13.480 So, like many cultures throughout history, Roman culture was extremely patriarchal. 00:18:13.480 --> 00:18:15.480 Women had no legal rights. 00:18:15.480 --> 00:18:19.480 They weren't even considered individuals that were under the purview of the state. 00:18:19.480 --> 00:18:23.480 They were absolutely subject to the rule of a man. 00:18:23.480 --> 00:18:29.480 So that could be their father, husband, another leading male relative in their lives. 00:18:29.480 --> 00:18:36.480 Women were subject to that man in the same way that a slave was subject to their master. 00:18:36.480 --> 00:18:41.480 So these texts were born from and speaking to a highly patriarchal context. 00:18:41.480 --> 00:18:47.480 Second, Biblical scholars aren't sure if Paul actually wrote these. 00:18:47.480 --> 00:18:52.480 So of the 14 letters, epistles, as we call them, that are in our New Testament, 00:18:52.480 --> 00:18:55.480 scholars are pretty sure that Paul wrote about seven of them. 00:18:55.480 --> 00:19:00.480 For three others, that includes Ephesians, there's some spirited debate. 00:19:00.480 --> 00:19:05.480 There's a lot of reasons to believe he did and a lot of good reasons to believe he didn't 00:19:05.480 --> 00:19:06.480 write those. 00:19:06.480 --> 00:19:09.480 For four others, that includes 1st Timothy. 00:19:09.480 --> 00:19:12.480 Consensus is pretty settled that Paul did not write these. 00:19:12.480 --> 00:19:17.480 There's a variety of reasons ranging from the subject to the writing style to some of the 00:19:17.480 --> 00:19:21.480 words that get used that support that conclusion. 00:19:21.480 --> 00:19:26.480 Feel free to read more about the authorship debates of the Pauline epistles for yourself. 00:19:26.480 --> 00:19:32.480 I find it really interesting, but that's why I'm the nerd. 00:19:32.480 --> 00:19:37.480 I will say this doesn't mean that somebody was trying to deceive people or the authors 00:19:37.480 --> 00:19:41.480 were trying to trick anybody. 00:19:41.480 --> 00:19:46.480 Instead, they were just trying to speak in the spirit or in the authority of Paul. 00:19:46.480 --> 00:19:50.480 It's like saying, I think if Paul were here today, that this is what he would say. 00:19:50.480 --> 00:19:54.480 Nobody's trying to be underhanded about this. 00:19:54.480 --> 00:20:01.480 With that in mind, let's look at the one, the verse that often gets used to say that women 00:20:01.480 --> 00:20:03.480 aren't allowed to preach. 00:20:03.480 --> 00:20:12.480 1st Timothy 2.12 says, I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man. 00:20:12.480 --> 00:20:15.480 She must be quiet. 00:20:15.480 --> 00:20:22.480 Maybe we're missing something in the surrounding verses, maybe in some of the meaning of the 00:20:22.480 --> 00:20:23.480 words. 00:20:23.480 --> 00:20:24.480 Let's back up. 00:20:24.480 --> 00:20:27.480 We're going to look at verse 8 through verse 15. 00:20:27.480 --> 00:20:33.480 That says, therefore, I want the men everywhere to pray, lifting up holy hands without anger 00:20:33.480 --> 00:20:34.480 or disputing. 00:20:34.480 --> 00:20:39.480 I also want the women to dress modestly with decency and propriety, adorning themselves 00:20:39.480 --> 00:20:45.480 not with elaborate hairstyles or gold or pop or expensive clothes, but with good deeds appropriate 00:20:45.480 --> 00:20:48.480 for women who profess to worship God. 00:20:48.480 --> 00:20:51.480 A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 00:20:51.480 --> 00:20:53.480 This is the verse we read before. 00:20:53.480 --> 00:20:56.480 I do not permit a woman to teach or assume authority over a man. 00:20:56.480 --> 00:20:57.480 She must be quiet. 00:20:57.480 --> 00:20:58.480 4. 00:20:58.480 --> 00:21:01.480 Adam was formed first, then Eve, and Adam was not the one deceived. 00:21:01.480 --> 00:21:04.480 It was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. 00:21:04.480 --> 00:21:11.480 But women will be saved through childbearing if they continue in the faith, love, and holiness 00:21:11.480 --> 00:21:12.480 with propriety. 00:21:12.480 --> 00:21:17.480 There's a lot to unpack there. 00:21:17.480 --> 00:21:26.000 I'm not sure what saved through childbearing means or why we just want to enforce the women 00:21:26.000 --> 00:21:31.560 must be quiet part, but not the requirement the men raise their hands, holy hands to pray, 00:21:31.560 --> 00:21:36.840 or that they're not supposed to be angry or disputing. 00:21:36.840 --> 00:21:38.200 We're not going to go into all that today. 00:21:38.200 --> 00:21:43.200 Zach does talk about several of those points, but let's talk a little bit about some of 00:21:43.200 --> 00:21:44.240 the words here. 00:21:44.240 --> 00:21:49.800 So the words that gets translated as woman is the same word that can increase, that can 00:21:49.800 --> 00:21:52.000 mean wife. 00:21:52.000 --> 00:21:54.920 The word for man can also be translated as husband. 00:21:54.920 --> 00:22:01.060 So you could understand this as being a prescription directed at married women, okay? 00:22:01.060 --> 00:22:06.060 That's different than a blanket prescription of all women teaching, but maybe the writer 00:22:06.060 --> 00:22:09.200 just prefers what single women have to say. 00:22:09.200 --> 00:22:12.120 I'm not really sure. 00:22:12.120 --> 00:22:17.200 But as we discussed, this probably wasn't written by Paul himself, and that makes sense 00:22:17.200 --> 00:22:21.960 because of the way that Paul talks about women in teaching and leadership roles in other 00:22:21.960 --> 00:22:26.160 books, especially ones that we are really sure that he wrote. 00:22:26.160 --> 00:22:33.120 Bacon Romans, Paul specifically mentions Priscilla, her husband Aquila as missionary partners. 00:22:33.120 --> 00:22:37.960 He talks about Phoebe, who's a leader at the church near Corinth. 00:22:37.960 --> 00:22:42.040 Paul calls her a deacon, sister a patron. 00:22:42.040 --> 00:22:47.400 The word deacon is the same word that he also uses to describe Timothy. 00:22:47.400 --> 00:22:51.120 Paul commands Junia as a prominent apostle. 00:22:51.120 --> 00:22:55.480 That's an evangelist, that's a church planter. 00:22:55.480 --> 00:23:02.000 The same descriptor that we use for Paul, and she had even actually been imprisoned for 00:23:02.000 --> 00:23:04.600 her work. 00:23:04.600 --> 00:23:10.200 There's also a part, so there's a part in 1 Corinthians 14 that says something similar 00:23:10.200 --> 00:23:14.360 to the 1 Timothy passage, but there's a lot of debate over whether that was included 00:23:14.360 --> 00:23:19.560 in the original text or that got added in later, or maybe Paul was quoting, there's 00:23:19.560 --> 00:23:23.800 no punctuation, unfortunately, in ancient Greek. 00:23:23.800 --> 00:23:28.940 But so maybe Paul was quoting something that got said a lot at the church in Corinth, because 00:23:28.940 --> 00:23:35.320 in verse 36, he immediately is rebutting it. 00:23:35.320 --> 00:23:42.040 So not quite sure what is going on there, but either way, it contradicts what he writes 00:23:42.040 --> 00:23:48.160 in 1 Corinthians 11, where he's upset at women in the church, but he's upset because they're 00:23:48.160 --> 00:23:53.320 not covering their heads while praying and prophesying, not because they're speaking. 00:23:53.320 --> 00:23:58.760 And then it's definitely inconsistent with what he writes in Galatians 3, and that's 00:23:58.760 --> 00:24:03.480 where Paul really just dismantles divisions and hierarchies within the church. 00:24:03.480 --> 00:24:08.040 When he says, "For in Christ Jesus, you are all children of God through faith. 00:24:08.040 --> 00:24:12.600 As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourself with Christ. 00:24:12.600 --> 00:24:17.120 There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer 00:24:17.120 --> 00:24:20.840 male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. 00:24:20.840 --> 00:24:27.840 If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise." 00:24:27.840 --> 00:24:36.400 So when we jump over to Ephesians 5, 22 through 24, that's used often to say women are subordinate 00:24:36.400 --> 00:24:37.400 to men. 00:24:37.400 --> 00:24:42.080 We're ignoring that Roman context we talked about, and many other parts of these writings 00:24:42.080 --> 00:24:43.080 of Paul. 00:24:43.080 --> 00:24:45.520 So here's the verses in question. 00:24:45.520 --> 00:24:50.040 It says, "Wives submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord, for the 00:24:50.040 --> 00:24:56.200 husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which 00:24:56.200 --> 00:24:57.600 he is Savior. 00:24:57.600 --> 00:25:03.600 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything." 00:25:03.600 --> 00:25:11.600 Again, I'm not sure what unmarried women are supposed to do, or women who are not married 00:25:11.600 --> 00:25:13.400 to men. 00:25:13.400 --> 00:25:19.880 There's no mention of y'all here, so I guess you're just off the hook for any kind of submission. 00:25:19.880 --> 00:25:21.800 Which is cool. 00:25:21.800 --> 00:25:24.760 Or are you? 00:25:24.760 --> 00:25:31.320 Because if you look back at the verse right before this one, verse 21, it says, "Submit 00:25:31.320 --> 00:25:34.800 to one another out of reverence for Christ." 00:25:34.800 --> 00:25:40.000 So everyone is actually told to submit to each other. 00:25:40.000 --> 00:25:42.000 It's like he's setting Galatians. 00:25:42.000 --> 00:25:44.940 There's no divisions and hierarchies anymore. 00:25:44.940 --> 00:25:47.560 There's supposed to be unity in the body of Christ. 00:25:47.560 --> 00:25:54.760 Now, I'm not going to go so far as to declare that Paul is a feminist. 00:25:54.760 --> 00:25:59.840 He was still raised and surrounded by staunchly patriarchal culture. 00:25:59.840 --> 00:26:08.240 But he spends three verses talking to wives, but then he spends verses 25 through 33. 00:26:08.240 --> 00:26:14.200 That's nine verses, three times as many, telling husbands to love their wives as Christ loves 00:26:14.200 --> 00:26:16.680 the church and gave himself up for her. 00:26:16.680 --> 00:26:19.400 So remember that Roman context we were talking about? 00:26:19.400 --> 00:26:21.880 Wives had to submit to their husbands. 00:26:21.880 --> 00:26:23.680 There was no choice. 00:26:23.680 --> 00:26:24.680 He basically... 00:26:24.680 --> 00:26:29.200 So basically he says, "Hey, keep doing what you're doing, except do it for Jesus." 00:26:29.200 --> 00:26:30.840 Not a big deal. 00:26:30.840 --> 00:26:35.960 But instructing husbands to love their wives selflessly and sacrificially, that would 00:26:35.960 --> 00:26:41.000 have been radical, that would have been something unheard of. 00:26:41.000 --> 00:26:45.840 But it's in line with how we see that Jesus interacted with women. 00:26:45.840 --> 00:26:51.240 The gospels tell us that some of Jesus' first disciples were women. 00:26:51.240 --> 00:26:56.440 Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna, they're all listed specifically, is going around with 00:26:56.440 --> 00:27:03.720 Jesus during his ministry, supporting him financially, bankrolling Jesus' work. 00:27:03.720 --> 00:27:09.680 There's a Samaritan woman, a Samaritan woman that Jesus encounters at the well. 00:27:09.680 --> 00:27:15.000 She's one of the first people that we ever see in the gospels who goes out and declares 00:27:15.000 --> 00:27:17.440 that Jesus is a Messiah. 00:27:17.440 --> 00:27:23.120 Mary Magdalene, she's the first person to witness the resurrected Jesus and the first 00:27:23.120 --> 00:27:27.080 person to declare the good news to Jesus' other followers. 00:27:27.080 --> 00:27:32.000 So she's often known as the apostle to the apostles. 00:27:32.000 --> 00:27:39.480 When Jesus kicked off his ministry, he chose a verse in Isaiah to declare, "The spirit 00:27:39.480 --> 00:27:44.440 of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. 00:27:44.440 --> 00:27:49.840 He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, 00:27:49.840 --> 00:27:55.160 to set the oppressed free to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." 00:27:55.160 --> 00:28:01.360 So you see, in the kingdom of God that Jesus brought to earth, things are upside down. 00:28:01.360 --> 00:28:04.440 The first is last, the last is first. 00:28:04.440 --> 00:28:07.720 The servant is the greatest of all. 00:28:07.720 --> 00:28:12.480 Whatever you do to the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, the prisoner, 00:28:12.480 --> 00:28:14.920 that's how you treat the son of God. 00:28:14.920 --> 00:28:21.480 Where the Romans saw women as property and less than Jesus and Paul lifted them up. 00:28:21.480 --> 00:28:26.080 They were entrusted with the gospel early and often. 00:28:26.080 --> 00:28:32.120 So why would I ever be so proud as to believe that God can speak through me, but not my 00:28:32.120 --> 00:28:38.240 wife, not my friend, not my sister, mother, my daughter? 00:28:38.240 --> 00:28:45.360 I know that what I'm about to say can't begin to make up for a lot of the damage that's 00:28:45.360 --> 00:28:51.360 been done by taking these verses out of context or away, so far away from the teachings of 00:28:51.360 --> 00:28:52.480 Jesus. 00:28:52.480 --> 00:29:00.280 But to any woman out there who has felt this desire to share what you've learned or thought 00:29:00.280 --> 00:29:06.440 or experienced, but you've been told that God says you're not allowed to do that, that's 00:29:06.440 --> 00:29:08.040 a lie. 00:29:08.040 --> 00:29:14.340 I'm sorry that your voice has been stifled and that what God wants to say to all of us 00:29:14.340 --> 00:29:17.360 through you has been withheld from the body of Christ. 00:29:17.360 --> 00:29:18.520 That's a loss. 00:29:18.520 --> 00:29:19.520 We need you. 00:29:19.520 --> 00:29:26.040 We need your voice and we need what God has uniquely revealed about herself through you. 00:29:26.040 --> 00:29:30.400 I'd love to do anything I can to help your voice be heard. 00:29:30.400 --> 00:29:33.600 I'm really excited to have a woman speak next week. 00:29:33.600 --> 00:29:39.460 Yeah, and I haven't explicitly said this, but I ask this, but I know that the leadership 00:29:39.460 --> 00:29:47.200 of this church would want to support you in your desire to share. 00:29:47.200 --> 00:29:54.320 To any woman who's been taught that God says you're second class, that God says you can't 00:29:54.320 --> 00:30:00.720 lead in the church or at home or anywhere in the world, I'm also sorry. 00:30:00.720 --> 00:30:06.840 That too is a lie, and I hope we can keep doing the work to dismantle these systems 00:30:06.840 --> 00:30:11.040 of oppression that that lie continues to sustain. 00:30:11.040 --> 00:30:16.440 So, it's as Jesus said, and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. 00:30:16.440 --> 00:30:23.200 If the gospel that you hear and that you follow oppresses anybody, it's not the gospel of 00:30:23.200 --> 00:30:24.520 Jesus. 00:30:24.520 --> 00:30:28.960 The kingdom of God is about elevating the less than the oppressed, because in doing so, 00:30:28.960 --> 00:30:31.560 you're actually elevating everyone. 00:30:31.560 --> 00:30:34.040 You're bringing everyone into the kingdom. 00:30:34.040 --> 00:30:39.840 If the gospel doesn't apply to some people, you know, those people that are definitely 00:30:39.840 --> 00:30:43.600 out, then it's not good news. 00:30:43.600 --> 00:30:49.680 I believe Jesus was including everyone when he gave the greatest commandment, to love 00:30:49.680 --> 00:30:54.720 God, love others, and love yourself. 00:30:54.720 --> 00:30:56.880 We're all in. 00:30:56.880 --> 00:31:02.160 So, as we go today, let's follow that command. 00:31:02.160 --> 00:31:04.840 Let's go love well, arsenal. 00:31:04.840 --> 00:31:07.880 It's who we're made to be. 00:31:07.880 --> 00:31:08.880 Thank you. 00:31:08.880 --> 00:31:08.880 We'll see you next week.