WEBVTT 00:00:17.000 --> 00:00:27.200 And this morning, I am starting what's going to be a two-week talk. 00:00:27.200 --> 00:00:34.520 And I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I felt like a lot of times when things, terrible 00:00:34.520 --> 00:00:42.080 things like what happened at Cornell, come out in the news and become major talking points, 00:00:42.080 --> 00:00:45.800 that the church just kind of glazes over it. 00:00:45.800 --> 00:00:49.440 It doesn't ever talk about it. 00:00:49.440 --> 00:00:53.160 And I said, I was going to do that, and so this is the, I'm going to do that. 00:00:53.160 --> 00:01:01.840 We're going to talk about some of the, some of the things that are so harmful in our 00:01:01.840 --> 00:01:06.080 culture, our society, and in our churches. 00:01:06.080 --> 00:01:10.440 And so I'm going to talk about today, I'll talk about the manosphere, I'll talk about 00:01:10.440 --> 00:01:19.600 patriarchy, and how the church has been complicit and actually kind of a front-runner in a lot 00:01:19.600 --> 00:01:25.680 of things with this idea. 00:01:25.680 --> 00:01:31.040 I understand that this could be a tough topic for quite a few people. 00:01:31.040 --> 00:01:42.740 And so as I wrote this, I had you in mind, so I tried to focus on systems, historical 00:01:42.740 --> 00:01:48.800 facts for us to look at and not rehash trauma. 00:01:48.800 --> 00:01:55.800 So hopefully I was able to do that in a way that we can listen and have questions and 00:01:55.800 --> 00:01:59.520 be okay with this conversation. 00:01:59.520 --> 00:02:03.060 It won't be easy, but that's okay. 00:02:03.060 --> 00:02:11.320 And I, I know Britney mentioned already that we have a care team here who if at any moment 00:02:11.320 --> 00:02:13.640 you're like, I need to talk to somebody. 00:02:13.640 --> 00:02:14.640 Please go do that. 00:02:14.640 --> 00:02:17.160 If you need to leave, you do that. 00:02:17.160 --> 00:02:20.800 You're not going to hurt my feelings, I understand. 00:02:20.800 --> 00:02:23.980 So if you need to do that, you're welcome to do that. 00:02:23.980 --> 00:02:29.680 We're going to talk for a few more minutes about this topic. 00:02:29.680 --> 00:02:36.240 I called it be quiet, and you can notice the crossout of the quiet. 00:02:36.240 --> 00:02:41.640 I'm going to, I'll get into that in a minute. 00:02:41.640 --> 00:02:49.680 So I have four kids, one of my kids, he's a 12-year-old boy. 00:02:49.680 --> 00:02:52.880 His name is Jett, most of you guys know Jett. 00:02:52.880 --> 00:02:57.360 He's probably hiding in the back right now. 00:02:57.360 --> 00:02:58.960 He's curious about everything. 00:02:58.960 --> 00:03:00.560 He asked real questions. 00:03:00.560 --> 00:03:09.300 I told you one night we sat down and had a conversation about a, oh man, biomimicry and 00:03:09.300 --> 00:03:13.920 how we look at animals and we create things and we sat and just talked and went on a rabbit 00:03:13.920 --> 00:03:18.160 hole down YouTube and he asked real questions. 00:03:18.160 --> 00:03:19.160 And here's the reality. 00:03:19.160 --> 00:03:24.600 He's exactly at the age, a lot of very expensive software is looking for. 00:03:24.600 --> 00:03:32.360 A couple years ago, researchers in Dublin set up a brand new accounts on, I believe it's 00:03:32.360 --> 00:03:36.840 on YouTube for YouTube shorts and on TikTok on brand new phones. 00:03:36.840 --> 00:03:39.960 So no history at all on the phones or the platforms. 00:03:39.960 --> 00:03:45.320 They registered as young guys and then they just watched what the app served them. 00:03:45.320 --> 00:03:52.360 Within 23 minutes, those feeds were serving up what people call the manosphere. 00:03:52.360 --> 00:03:59.040 Men teaching boys that women are beneath them, that a real man is in charge, that softness 00:03:59.040 --> 00:04:04.960 is weakness, nobody went looking for it. 00:04:04.960 --> 00:04:09.240 It went looking for them. 00:04:09.240 --> 00:04:13.920 But here's what I noticed is I read those studies. 00:04:13.920 --> 00:04:22.080 The men in those videos aren't saying anything new, they're not inventing a story. 00:04:22.080 --> 00:04:30.200 They are repeating one that women are less, men are made to rule and that's just how it 00:04:30.200 --> 00:04:32.800 is. 00:04:32.800 --> 00:04:38.720 And it's not a TikTok idea, that's just the platform that has carried the story now. 00:04:38.720 --> 00:04:41.520 It's one of the oldest stories human beings have ever told. 00:04:41.520 --> 00:04:49.800 And for most of the last 2,000 years, the church told it louder than almost anybody. 00:04:49.800 --> 00:04:53.400 So this morning I want to take the question that we've asked all year about all kinds 00:04:53.400 --> 00:04:58.160 of things and pointed out the biggest target yet and that question is who told us this 00:04:58.160 --> 00:05:00.800 was just the way things are. 00:05:00.800 --> 00:05:09.120 And I want to say this again about how I'm going to go and do this. 00:05:09.120 --> 00:05:13.600 I'm not going to retell anyone's pain this morning. 00:05:13.600 --> 00:05:20.320 I know again for some of you this subject is not an idea, it's a memory. 00:05:20.320 --> 00:05:30.400 You don't need me to describe it to you and I'm so sorry that this is your reality. 00:05:30.400 --> 00:05:40.320 I wish that wasn't true but I know data tells me that it is reality for many in this room. 00:05:40.320 --> 00:05:46.520 And you need the people in this room to understand how it happens and to help stop it. 00:05:46.520 --> 00:05:48.400 So that's what we're going to do. 00:05:48.400 --> 00:06:01.680 Again, if you need to step out please do that. 00:06:01.680 --> 00:06:07.040 Somebody took over my computer. 00:06:07.040 --> 00:06:12.560 By now most of you have seen the story out of Cornell, that they've dubbed Cornell 7. 00:06:12.560 --> 00:06:21.680 One man, a woman talked about like she was inventory, that young woman sexually assaulted 00:06:21.680 --> 00:06:26.640 and raped by people she thought were her friends. 00:06:26.640 --> 00:06:34.080 And then a fraternity group chat where dozens of guys read a message and said nothing. 00:06:34.080 --> 00:06:40.720 And I'm not going to walk through it again, like I said, we're not rehashing that. 00:06:40.720 --> 00:06:47.080 But I want to ask about the part underneath all of that. 00:06:47.080 --> 00:06:56.480 How does a 19-year-old learn to see a woman as less than him or as less than human? 00:06:56.480 --> 00:06:59.200 Nobody's born with that. 00:06:59.200 --> 00:07:03.800 Somebody handed it to him. 00:07:03.800 --> 00:07:06.640 And I'll say this once is my own observation. 00:07:06.810 --> 00:07:14.310 I follow a lot of big platform evangelical pastors online and I've watched that feed 00:07:14.310 --> 00:07:18.410 fill up all year with what they're against. 00:07:18.410 --> 00:07:22.790 And I've watched it stay quiet about this. 00:07:22.790 --> 00:07:25.510 You've got the same feed, you scroll it, you probably see it, maybe you don't follow a 00:07:25.510 --> 00:07:26.850 bunch of pastors. 00:07:26.850 --> 00:07:33.270 I'm just glutton for punishment I guess. 00:07:33.270 --> 00:07:38.530 As part of why this series is called be quiet with a quiet crossed out. 00:07:38.530 --> 00:07:43.590 Be quiet is one of the oldest words the church has given women. 00:07:43.590 --> 00:07:45.390 It's in our Bibles. 00:07:45.390 --> 00:07:48.390 First Timothy 2 says she must be quiet. 00:07:48.390 --> 00:07:52.550 First Corinthians 14 says women should remain silent in the churches. 00:07:52.550 --> 00:07:57.950 And for a lot of the women in this room, that's the word they heard most. 00:07:57.950 --> 00:08:02.350 And be quiet is what the guys in that chat did. 00:08:02.350 --> 00:08:07.070 And here's what the research tells us about a room like that, this group chat. 00:08:07.070 --> 00:08:11.670 One study found that the strongest predictor of whether a man would step in was whether 00:08:11.670 --> 00:08:15.430 he believed the other guys would. 00:08:15.430 --> 00:08:19.710 Most of the guys in the room like that are uncomfortable too. 00:08:19.710 --> 00:08:23.510 They just think they're the only one. 00:08:23.510 --> 00:08:26.430 So it takes the one. 00:08:26.430 --> 00:08:33.870 A voice that tells everybody else in the room that they're not alone, that this is not okay. 00:08:33.870 --> 00:08:40.190 But they're all waiting because they've got something to prove. 00:08:40.190 --> 00:08:42.750 So this is the word we're crossing out for the next two weeks. 00:08:42.750 --> 00:08:55.790 We're not going to be quiet. 00:08:55.790 --> 00:09:02.110 Before we go any further, I want to define a word that I use a lot this morning, patriarchy. 00:09:02.110 --> 00:09:06.590 Some of you hear the word and maybe your shoulders go up a little bit. 00:09:06.590 --> 00:09:09.030 So let me tell you exactly what I mean by it. 00:09:09.030 --> 00:09:12.150 And I think we need to define this so that we're all working with the same definition 00:09:12.150 --> 00:09:14.590 and the same idea of the word that I'm talking about. 00:09:14.590 --> 00:09:18.270 The word literally means rule of the fathers. 00:09:18.270 --> 00:09:20.270 Here's how I'm using it this morning. 00:09:20.270 --> 00:09:28.150 Patriarchy is a system that ranks men above women and then makes that ranking feel natural, 00:09:28.150 --> 00:09:34.350 normal, maybe even holy. 00:09:34.350 --> 00:09:36.510 Notice it's a system. 00:09:36.510 --> 00:09:38.750 It's not another word for men. 00:09:38.750 --> 00:09:40.390 It's not a word for dads. 00:09:40.390 --> 00:09:42.230 I'm a dad. 00:09:42.230 --> 00:09:44.630 It's a story all of us were born into. 00:09:44.630 --> 00:09:45.790 It's a system. 00:09:45.790 --> 00:09:52.430 And it shows up in our homes, our jobs, our laws and our churches. 00:09:52.430 --> 00:09:55.510 Because it's a system, anybody can carry it. 00:09:55.510 --> 00:09:58.190 Men can push back against it. 00:09:58.190 --> 00:10:03.230 Men can walk in it blissfully. 00:10:03.230 --> 00:10:06.390 Women can be taught to defend it. 00:10:06.390 --> 00:10:09.230 And that's how systems work. 00:10:09.230 --> 00:10:12.590 So when you hear me say patriarchy this morning, I'm not pointing at the man sitting next to 00:10:12.590 --> 00:10:16.390 you, I'm pointing at the story we were all handed. 00:10:16.390 --> 00:10:19.230 And here's a problem with a really old story. 00:10:19.230 --> 00:10:25.550 After enough, generations, it stops sounding like a story and it starts sounding natural 00:10:25.550 --> 00:10:27.790 like nature. 00:10:27.790 --> 00:10:31.790 You maybe heard the phrase saying a fish doesn't know it's wet, water is just what 00:10:31.790 --> 00:10:34.750 the world feels like. 00:10:34.750 --> 00:10:38.430 Psychologists have spent decades studying how this thought process happens for us. 00:10:38.430 --> 00:10:43.350 The story, how it becomes natural, how we hear a story long enough that it just becomes 00:10:43.350 --> 00:10:45.470 like this is how it is. 00:10:45.470 --> 00:10:46.870 And two findings explain a lot. 00:10:46.870 --> 00:10:49.550 The first is about roles. 00:10:49.550 --> 00:10:54.150 Researchers Alice Eagly and Wendy Wood have shown that when one group of people hold certain 00:10:54.150 --> 00:10:58.910 roles for long enough, we start believing the roles reveal who they are. 00:10:58.910 --> 00:11:02.270 So for centuries, men were the only ones allowed to lead. 00:11:02.270 --> 00:11:05.230 So men were the ones we saw leading. 00:11:05.230 --> 00:11:10.910 So we looked around and said, "See, men are natural leaders." 00:11:10.910 --> 00:11:14.310 But the reality is the role came first. 00:11:14.310 --> 00:11:20.830 The nature got invented afterwards to explain it and to hold up a system. 00:11:20.830 --> 00:11:23.150 The second is about fairness. 00:11:23.150 --> 00:11:27.910 Psychologist John Jost calls it system justification. 00:11:27.910 --> 00:11:32.390 Human beings have a deep need to believe the world we live in makes sense and is fair. 00:11:32.390 --> 00:11:37.950 So we defend the arrangement we've already got even when it costs us. 00:11:37.950 --> 00:11:43.110 And his research finds this even among the people the system works against. 00:11:43.110 --> 00:11:48.150 It's always been this way, feels like evidence, but it isn't. 00:11:48.150 --> 00:11:50.630 It's just familiar. 00:11:50.630 --> 00:11:53.350 And there's a reason it's so hard to let go of. 00:11:53.350 --> 00:11:59.190 I saw a post this week on Instagram, a bunch of slides from an account called the Philosophy 00:11:59.190 --> 00:12:02.670 Dose that said it better than most textbooks I've looked at. 00:12:02.670 --> 00:12:07.990 It says this, "Most of the beliefs we hold most firmly were handed to us before we were 00:12:07.990 --> 00:12:10.350 old enough to examine them. 00:12:10.350 --> 00:12:15.350 And once a belief becomes part of who we are, questioning it stops being an intellectual 00:12:15.350 --> 00:12:16.270 exercise. 00:12:16.270 --> 00:12:20.790 It feels like questioning your family, your upbringing, your community." 00:12:20.790 --> 00:12:25.510 And then this line, which is basically the story of half this room, they said this, "What 00:12:25.510 --> 00:12:31.390 begins as a search for truth can feel like an act of betrayal." 00:12:31.390 --> 00:12:42.910 Even studying this and having this conversation, there is that like, "Am I doing right?" 00:12:42.910 --> 00:12:47.350 Everybody else is not saying it, why should I? 00:12:47.350 --> 00:12:52.230 It's because it just feels familiar and it becomes who we are. 00:12:52.230 --> 00:12:53.230 Psychologists have a name for this. 00:12:53.230 --> 00:12:57.150 They call it identity protective thinking. 00:12:57.150 --> 00:13:03.050 When a belief is tied up with who we are and who we belong to, we stop weighing the evidence 00:13:03.050 --> 00:13:05.150 and we start defending the identity. 00:13:05.150 --> 00:13:06.150 We see this. 00:13:06.150 --> 00:13:08.590 This is what identity politics is. 00:13:08.590 --> 00:13:16.030 That's why you can almost never argue somebody out of patriarchy with a Bible verse. 00:13:16.030 --> 00:13:23.910 It isn't living in their head, it's living in their belonging. 00:13:23.910 --> 00:13:28.550 And I know somebody's already thinking, so I'll just say it, but men and women are different, 00:13:28.550 --> 00:13:29.550 Chad. 00:13:29.550 --> 00:13:30.550 Yes, they are. 00:13:30.550 --> 00:13:38.990 Like, there are real differences on average and there's a lot of overlap, but different 00:13:38.990 --> 00:13:45.190 isn't the same as ranked. 00:13:45.190 --> 00:13:49.030 Like your left hand, your right hand are different, but nobody's ever looked at them 00:13:49.030 --> 00:13:52.710 and been like, "Okay, this one gets to vote. 00:13:52.710 --> 00:13:54.950 They're different, but we still use them." 00:13:55.130 --> 00:14:05.750 If the ranking was like the idea is that the difference is a real, but the ranking was invented. 00:14:05.750 --> 00:14:06.750 This is a system. 00:14:06.750 --> 00:14:09.770 This is something we've been told is a story we've been told. 00:14:09.770 --> 00:14:11.730 The ranking is something we were told. 00:14:11.730 --> 00:14:14.850 It was invented. 00:14:14.850 --> 00:14:18.610 And if the ranking was invented, then it has a history and a beginning. 00:14:18.610 --> 00:14:19.610 Somebody built it. 00:14:19.610 --> 00:14:21.090 So we're going to look at that today. 00:14:21.090 --> 00:14:24.530 The historian Gerda Lerner spent her career showing exactly that. 00:14:24.530 --> 00:14:27.210 She says this, "The patriarchy isn't biology. 00:14:27.210 --> 00:14:28.770 It's a system with a history. 00:14:28.770 --> 00:14:32.730 It was built over centuries, written into laws, and held in place by institutions. 00:14:32.730 --> 00:14:34.730 And here's why that matters. 00:14:34.730 --> 00:14:40.290 Anything that has a beginning can have an end." 00:14:40.290 --> 00:14:44.570 Kristin Du Mez ends her book, "Jesus and John Wayne," which is a great book you should 00:14:44.570 --> 00:14:47.050 read it, "with one sentence. 00:14:47.050 --> 00:14:53.770 What was once done might also be undone." 00:14:53.770 --> 00:14:56.530 You can watch it get written down in history. 00:14:56.530 --> 00:14:58.390 We can trace this back. 00:14:58.390 --> 00:15:03.770 About 400 years before Jesus, the philosopher Aristotle, put into his book on politics. 00:15:03.770 --> 00:15:06.130 And about as plain a sentence as you'll find. 00:15:06.130 --> 00:15:11.130 He says this, "The male is by nature superior and the female inferior. 00:15:11.130 --> 00:15:14.570 One rules and the other is ruled." 00:15:14.570 --> 00:15:21.370 This idea shaped how households were run across the whole Greek and Roman world. 00:15:21.370 --> 00:15:23.770 In that same book, Aristotle actually makes the point. 00:15:23.770 --> 00:15:29.050 He says this, "The same argument that says men are born to rule women, also says some 00:15:29.050 --> 00:15:32.930 people are born to be slaves." 00:15:32.930 --> 00:15:34.010 It's one idea. 00:15:34.010 --> 00:15:38.490 Some people are made to rule and some are made to be ruled. 00:15:38.490 --> 00:15:40.770 Now here's the sad reality. 00:15:40.770 --> 00:15:45.210 The church inherited both halves of this story. 00:15:45.210 --> 00:15:49.770 And for centuries, it used the Bible to defend it. 00:15:49.770 --> 00:15:55.930 Beth Allison Barr says it like this, like racism, patriarchy is a shape shifter, conforming 00:15:55.930 --> 00:16:01.650 to each new era, looking as if it has always belonged. 00:16:01.650 --> 00:16:03.530 Which matters, I think, for a lot of us. 00:16:03.530 --> 00:16:10.450 Because this is also the world that the New Testament was written into. 00:16:10.450 --> 00:16:14.730 This was what was happening at the time, that the New Testament was written. 00:16:14.730 --> 00:16:21.630 This was the story that was told, Barr goes on to say in her book The Making of Biblical 00:16:21.630 --> 00:16:26.890 Womanhood, "Patriarchy exists in the Bible because the Bible was written in a patriarchal 00:16:26.890 --> 00:16:30.090 world." 00:16:30.090 --> 00:16:33.330 The Bible was written in that world. 00:16:33.330 --> 00:16:42.770 The question has always been whether it was written to keep us there or to lead us out. 00:16:42.770 --> 00:16:44.650 So we've got to go back to the beginning of the book. 00:16:44.650 --> 00:16:46.290 Let's go back to the beginning of Genesis. 00:16:46.290 --> 00:16:48.770 In Genesis 1, God makes humanity in His image. 00:16:48.770 --> 00:16:54.450 Male and female, He created them both equally, image-bearers side by side. 00:16:54.450 --> 00:16:58.530 There's no delineation in Genesis 1 where they're created. 00:16:58.530 --> 00:17:01.450 The second creation story, you know there's two, right? 00:17:01.450 --> 00:17:05.050 Second creation story in Genesis 2, the woman is called a helper. 00:17:05.050 --> 00:17:08.530 And we grab on to this and we created the theology out of it. 00:17:08.530 --> 00:17:11.770 For a long time, that word got read as assistant. 00:17:11.770 --> 00:17:17.810 The Hebrew word is ezer and the Bible uses that exact word for God. 00:17:17.810 --> 00:17:26.450 My help comes from the Lord, same word, but nobody thinks God is our assistant. 00:17:26.450 --> 00:17:29.730 And then you get into Genesis 3. 00:17:29.730 --> 00:17:33.710 After the fall, Adam and Eve have eaten of the fruit. 00:17:33.710 --> 00:17:37.730 They realize they're naked, they cover themselves, they're hiding from God. 00:17:37.730 --> 00:17:39.490 God comes looking for them. 00:17:39.490 --> 00:17:42.290 God asks Adam, like who told you you were naked? 00:17:42.290 --> 00:17:43.730 Remember all of this? 00:17:43.730 --> 00:17:49.170 And then after the fall, God describes what's going to happen now that sin has entered the 00:17:49.170 --> 00:17:50.170 world. 00:17:50.170 --> 00:17:52.530 The ground will fight back. 00:17:52.530 --> 00:17:54.330 Work will hurt. 00:17:54.330 --> 00:17:55.930 Death is coming. 00:17:55.930 --> 00:18:01.210 These are all things that we inherited from the fall. 00:18:01.210 --> 00:18:08.850 And to the woman, He says, "Your desire will be for your husband and He will rule over you." 00:18:08.850 --> 00:18:13.250 Look where that line is in Scripture. 00:18:13.250 --> 00:18:14.850 It's not in creation. 00:18:14.850 --> 00:18:18.410 It's in the curse. 00:18:18.410 --> 00:18:19.410 He will rule over you. 00:18:19.410 --> 00:18:21.610 Isn't the blueprint that we're supposed to live by? 00:18:21.610 --> 00:18:23.850 It's the damage report. 00:18:23.850 --> 00:18:25.610 This is the wrong way to do this. 00:18:25.610 --> 00:18:28.610 God says, "This is what the curse is going to do." 00:18:28.610 --> 00:18:32.410 And if we're new creations in Christ, we're supposed to step out of the curse and no longer 00:18:32.410 --> 00:18:35.370 live that way. 00:18:35.370 --> 00:18:39.690 Rachel Held Evans who was an incredible writer who asked an incredible question. 00:18:39.690 --> 00:18:41.250 She died way too early. 00:18:41.250 --> 00:18:42.850 She said it in seven words. 00:18:42.850 --> 00:18:48.890 "Patriarchy is not God's dream for the world." 00:18:48.890 --> 00:18:54.730 And for most of church history, we read the damage report as the blueprint and we've put 00:18:54.730 --> 00:18:55.730 it into practice. 00:18:55.730 --> 00:18:58.690 You can hear it in the people we call church fathers. 00:18:58.690 --> 00:19:04.930 If you go back in church history, you can hear it in the people we have read and created 00:19:04.930 --> 00:19:06.650 theologies off of. 00:19:06.650 --> 00:19:12.690 Tertullian, around the year 200, told women, "You are the devil's gateway." 00:19:12.690 --> 00:19:14.250 We carried that. 00:19:14.250 --> 00:19:19.610 Thomas Aquinas, maybe the greatest theologian of the Middle Ages, wrote that women, that 00:19:19.610 --> 00:19:24.370 woman, is naturally subject to man. 00:19:24.370 --> 00:19:29.730 And then Martin Luther said, "A woman should be as a nail driven into the wall. 00:19:29.730 --> 00:19:34.090 She sits at home." 00:19:34.090 --> 00:19:39.010 You can watch it happen in translation, too, like the way that scripture has been translated. 00:19:39.010 --> 00:19:43.770 In Romans 16, Paul greets a woman named Junia. 00:19:43.770 --> 00:19:47.850 He calls her outstanding among the apostles. 00:19:47.850 --> 00:19:56.650 And for centuries, translators that took Romans 16 to write it into another language, 00:19:56.650 --> 00:19:59.890 turn her into a man. 00:19:59.890 --> 00:20:06.310 They put an S on the end of her name and called her Junias, and they said she was a man, 00:20:06.310 --> 00:20:10.450 which Junias is a name nobody has found anywhere in the ancient world. 00:20:10.450 --> 00:20:11.730 It was a made up name. 00:20:11.730 --> 00:20:16.370 They wrote it because they didn't want Paul talking to a woman and saying that she was 00:20:16.370 --> 00:20:19.370 among the apostles. 00:20:19.370 --> 00:20:28.450 When the text didn't fit the story, we just changed the text. 00:20:28.450 --> 00:20:31.850 This has been our history. 00:20:31.850 --> 00:20:33.650 It's not just ancient history. 00:20:33.650 --> 00:20:40.210 The system that most evangelical churches call complementarianism, got its founding 00:20:40.210 --> 00:20:45.970 document in 1987. 00:20:45.970 --> 00:20:47.010 It's about 40 years old. 00:20:47.200 --> 00:20:51.060 Do you guys know what complementarianism is? 00:20:51.060 --> 00:21:00.600 The woman is the helper, she is, this is in the year 2000, the largest Protestant denomination 00:21:00.600 --> 00:21:06.880 in America, Southern Baptist Convention, wrote into its statement of faith that a wife is 00:21:06.880 --> 00:21:13.660 to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband. 00:21:13.660 --> 00:21:19.280 And in just the last three years, that same denomination voted overwhelmingly to remove 00:21:19.280 --> 00:21:28.440 a church for having a woman pastor, and voted this June to write a ban on women preaching 00:21:28.440 --> 00:21:31.240 into its constitution. 00:21:31.240 --> 00:21:38.760 In the same years, it approved a database to track abusive pastors and never built it, 00:21:38.760 --> 00:21:44.160 because women are more dangerous. 00:21:44.160 --> 00:21:50.680 And I'm not trying to guess at anybody's heart that's in these places. 00:21:50.680 --> 00:21:54.840 I think that's simply where an institution chose to spend its energy, and we've got to 00:21:54.840 --> 00:21:57.040 ask why. 00:21:57.040 --> 00:22:03.320 Beth Allison Barr again, similar to what she said before, she says, "Patriarchy may be 00:22:03.320 --> 00:22:10.200 a part of Christian history, but that doesn't make it Christian." 00:22:10.200 --> 00:22:16.080 And I'm not talking about the history of this from the outside, I believed it. 00:22:16.080 --> 00:22:21.480 Some of it I taught, I grew up in a system like this. 00:22:21.480 --> 00:22:26.400 And honestly, the thing that finally cracked it open for me, it wasn't a sociology book, 00:22:26.400 --> 00:22:34.120 it was two things, it was my wife, who has always been like, "Wait a minute, what do you 00:22:34.120 --> 00:22:35.120 mean?" 00:22:35.120 --> 00:22:37.000 She didn't grow up in the same system I grew up in. 00:22:37.000 --> 00:22:41.920 She grew up in her own systems that we've had to work through. 00:22:41.920 --> 00:22:46.880 It was my wife, and it was the Bible. 00:22:46.880 --> 00:22:51.200 I grew up hearing this story, and you guys have heard this, I've preached this before. 00:22:51.200 --> 00:22:54.360 I grew up hearing the story of the woman at the well, the Samaritan woman at the well. 00:22:54.360 --> 00:22:57.960 It's in John chapter 4, I'm not going to get way into it right now, but I always thought 00:22:57.960 --> 00:23:02.920 one thing about her, she was the sinful woman. 00:23:02.920 --> 00:23:04.800 The woman with five husbands, do you remember this? 00:23:04.800 --> 00:23:09.000 Jesus is talking to her at the well, she comes in the middle of the day because she's sneaking 00:23:09.000 --> 00:23:12.840 out to the well, so that nobody sees her, this is a story we were given. 00:23:12.840 --> 00:23:16.800 She had five husbands, and now the man she's living with now isn't her husband. 00:23:16.800 --> 00:23:20.000 And we were told Jesus is calling her out in her sin. 00:23:20.000 --> 00:23:21.880 I heard that sermon so many times. 00:23:21.880 --> 00:23:29.120 It was a way to say, hey, Jesus sees us in our sin, and he invites us in to be with him. 00:23:29.120 --> 00:23:31.480 I probably preached it that way. 00:23:31.480 --> 00:23:34.960 Then about 10 years ago, I found out that a lot of Christians in the world, Christians 00:23:34.960 --> 00:23:42.040 outside the world that I grew up in, have never read this story about her that way. 00:23:42.040 --> 00:23:46.960 Like think, what we didn't do was ever ask the questions, you have to think about her 00:23:46.960 --> 00:23:50.160 world for a second. 00:23:50.160 --> 00:23:57.680 Back then, this woman, this Samaritan woman, usually legally couldn't divorce her husband. 00:23:57.680 --> 00:24:02.560 And she sure couldn't cheat on him, because if she had and she was caught in adultery, 00:24:02.560 --> 00:24:08.000 we've seen what happened, she would be stoned to death. 00:24:08.000 --> 00:24:15.440 Now he could divorce her, because in that age, in that time, she was basically property. 00:24:15.440 --> 00:24:18.840 She couldn't work, she couldn't make her own money. 00:24:18.840 --> 00:24:24.720 So if a woman sitting at a well has had five husbands, this isn't a list of her sexual 00:24:24.720 --> 00:24:26.520 conquest. 00:24:26.520 --> 00:24:30.240 It's much more likely a list of her losses. 00:24:30.240 --> 00:24:37.880 Men who died that she had to bury, or men who sent her away, for whatever reason. 00:24:37.880 --> 00:24:42.960 This is a woman who is carrying trauma and hurt, and seen as something less than because 00:24:42.960 --> 00:24:48.080 she's been through five husbands. 00:24:48.080 --> 00:24:52.080 If you look at the story again, Jesus never calls her a sinner. 00:24:52.080 --> 00:24:53.680 He never tells her to repent. 00:24:53.680 --> 00:24:55.680 He never says go and sin no more. 00:24:55.680 --> 00:24:58.640 Which when I've taught this in this new way, people have come up and been like, but Jesus 00:24:58.640 --> 00:24:59.640 told her go and sin no more. 00:24:59.640 --> 00:25:05.960 No, that's a different woman, different story. 00:25:05.960 --> 00:25:14.360 What he does is have one of the longest conversations in all of the gospels with her. 00:25:14.360 --> 00:25:16.040 She pushes back in the conversation. 00:25:16.040 --> 00:25:19.280 She asks him, well, hold on, we worship here, they worship there. 00:25:19.280 --> 00:25:20.280 Where are we supposed to worship? 00:25:20.280 --> 00:25:21.280 Which one's right? 00:25:21.280 --> 00:25:22.280 Where are we supposed to worship? 00:25:22.280 --> 00:25:27.360 And she is theologically debating Jesus. 00:25:27.360 --> 00:25:32.440 And then after this conversation, she runs back to town and John says many people believed 00:25:32.440 --> 00:25:36.560 in him because of her testimony. 00:25:36.560 --> 00:25:40.400 And you might remember the verse that we started Arsenal Stories with it a while back. 00:25:40.400 --> 00:25:44.320 In the Eastern Orthodox church, she has a name. 00:25:44.320 --> 00:25:48.880 They call her Saint Photini, she's a saint equal to the apostles. 00:25:48.880 --> 00:25:50.720 Photini means the enlightened one. 00:25:50.720 --> 00:25:55.400 They honor her as equal to the apostles and they set aside days every year to celebrate 00:25:55.400 --> 00:25:56.400 her. 00:25:56.400 --> 00:26:00.000 I never got that story. 00:26:00.000 --> 00:26:05.320 Same woman, same verses, a completely different story. 00:26:05.320 --> 00:26:10.440 So when I heard this, I had to ask myself if the text didn't change, what did? 00:26:10.440 --> 00:26:19.760 Well, the lens did, the way that I read the story did, my lens changed. 00:26:19.760 --> 00:26:22.000 And she's not the only one. 00:26:22.000 --> 00:26:31.280 For about 1400 years, Western art and preaching painted Mary Magdalene as a repentant prostitute. 00:26:31.280 --> 00:26:34.520 The Bible never says that, not one time. 00:26:34.520 --> 00:26:40.240 It goes back to a sermon by Pope Gregory the Great in the year 591, where he blended her 00:26:40.240 --> 00:26:45.000 together with an unnamed sinful woman from Luke's gospel. 00:26:45.000 --> 00:26:50.360 One man's sermon and the first witness of the resurrection got remembered as a sex worker 00:26:50.360 --> 00:26:54.360 for 14 centuries. 00:26:54.360 --> 00:27:00.200 The Catholic church actually quietly corrected her title in 1969. 00:27:00.200 --> 00:27:05.680 And in 2016, the Vatican raised her day to a full feast. 00:27:05.680 --> 00:27:14.520 And now they celebrate her, but for 1400 years, she was just a sex worker. 00:27:14.520 --> 00:27:17.320 With Junia, we changed the text. 00:27:17.320 --> 00:27:20.240 With these two women, we didn't even have to. 00:27:20.240 --> 00:27:23.160 We just read through the story we already believed. 00:27:23.160 --> 00:27:24.360 We wrote it into the text. 00:27:24.360 --> 00:27:27.800 It wasn't even there. 00:27:27.800 --> 00:27:32.120 This is what happens when you have a system that creates a way of thinking that you have 00:27:32.120 --> 00:27:36.200 to see things through that lens. 00:27:34.500 --> 00:27:40.020 I've had to unlearn a lot about what a man is, what a woman is, and who's supposed to 00:27:40.020 --> 00:27:43.980 be in charge that I'm not done. 00:27:43.980 --> 00:27:46.260 There's a lot of unpacking. 00:27:46.260 --> 00:27:53.620 But if a white dude named Chad can do it, so can you. 00:27:53.620 --> 00:28:01.700 There's a book I read last year called Men Who Hate Women, and it is so sad, and there's 00:28:01.700 --> 00:28:09.980 a lot of just really, really terrible things in it, but this woman is doing a study on 00:28:09.980 --> 00:28:13.260 incels and the incel world. 00:28:13.260 --> 00:28:20.540 And I found out that in the incel world, the guys that they don't like, they call Chad's. 00:28:20.540 --> 00:28:21.540 So whatever. 00:28:21.540 --> 00:28:26.500 So if I can do this, so can you, that's what I'm saying. 00:28:26.500 --> 00:28:30.660 How does belief like this actually get into a person that's not usually through one terrible 00:28:30.660 --> 00:28:35.740 sermon, but it's through a hundred small, nice sounding ones. 00:28:35.740 --> 00:28:40.300 Psychologist Peter Glick and Susan Fiske found that sexism comes in two flavors, listen 00:28:40.300 --> 00:28:41.780 to this. 00:28:41.780 --> 00:28:46.980 There's the hostile kind you can expect that women are trying to control men or against 00:28:46.980 --> 00:28:47.980 them. 00:28:47.980 --> 00:28:49.140 Like we know this one. 00:28:49.140 --> 00:28:51.660 This one's easy to find. 00:28:51.660 --> 00:28:59.340 This dude's a sexist, like we could probably name some pretty high up people. 00:28:59.340 --> 00:29:06.820 But then there's the benevolent kind that says women are pure, delicate, they need protecting. 00:29:06.820 --> 00:29:11.180 We put them on a pedestal and it sounds good. 00:29:11.180 --> 00:29:13.900 It sounds like a compliment. 00:29:13.900 --> 00:29:17.420 A lot of us have heard it from a pulpit as a compliment. 00:29:17.420 --> 00:29:19.660 But here's what the research found. 00:29:19.660 --> 00:29:23.460 The two ideas travel together. 00:29:23.460 --> 00:29:27.700 People who score high on one tend to score high on the other. 00:29:27.700 --> 00:29:33.100 In the nice kind, predicts blaming women for what men do to them. 00:29:33.100 --> 00:29:35.820 Let's say this. 00:29:35.820 --> 00:29:44.500 A pedestal is still a place you put something so they can't move. 00:29:44.500 --> 00:29:48.260 It gets more specific than John Jost, the same research I mentioned earlier. 00:29:48.260 --> 00:29:54.260 He ran studies where women read descriptions of men and men and women as complementary. 00:29:54.260 --> 00:29:57.140 Men strong and capable, women warm and nurturing. 00:29:57.140 --> 00:30:02.780 And afterward, those women were more likely to say the whole system was fair. 00:30:02.780 --> 00:30:03.780 And complementary. 00:30:03.780 --> 00:30:08.620 That's the exact word for the theology that we've built it on. 00:30:08.620 --> 00:30:13.420 It's the exact mechanism that makes an unequal arrangement feel fair to the person it's working 00:30:13.420 --> 00:30:16.820 against. 00:30:16.820 --> 00:30:20.460 Then you add in purity culture. 00:30:20.460 --> 00:30:27.100 If you grew up in this, the way a lot of us were raised, boys learned two lessons. 00:30:27.100 --> 00:30:35.460 Your desire is a beast you can't control, and her body is the problem. 00:30:35.460 --> 00:30:40.100 Researchers at a Christian university found that the more people held purity culture beliefs, 00:30:40.100 --> 00:30:44.580 the more willing they were to excuse sexual violence. 00:30:44.580 --> 00:30:47.900 He couldn't control himself. 00:30:47.900 --> 00:30:48.900 Nah. 00:30:48.900 --> 00:30:55.020 Now teach your boys that they can, that they can control themselves. 00:30:55.020 --> 00:31:01.580 That it's on them, not on her. 00:31:01.580 --> 00:31:05.980 Every single Sunday, without anyone saying a word, a church teaches its children whose 00:31:05.980 --> 00:31:11.300 voice carries the word of God, and we are complicit in this, I believe. 00:31:11.300 --> 00:31:15.300 And it's something that we're trying to work on that we've made some steps for. 00:31:15.300 --> 00:31:19.660 Kids learn who matters by watching who holds the microphone. 00:31:19.660 --> 00:31:31.100 A white dude, sitting on the stage talking, we're complicit. 00:31:31.100 --> 00:31:33.220 I don't think that that means we remove it. 00:31:33.220 --> 00:31:40.500 We're trying to figure that out, but this is how our kids learn, and they see. 00:31:40.500 --> 00:31:43.460 Put these lessons together, she's the temptation. 00:31:43.460 --> 00:31:48.060 He can't help himself, he's the head, her voice doesn't carry, and you don't need a sermon 00:31:48.060 --> 00:31:52.340 that tells a boy to treat a woman like inventory. 00:31:52.340 --> 00:32:00.420 The theology never has to tell him to do it, it just has to teach him that she's less. 00:32:00.420 --> 00:32:06.660 And I want the men to hear this part because the story doesn't only cost women. 00:32:06.660 --> 00:32:14.860 bell hooks, who may read her books, one of the wisest writers I know on this topic, put 00:32:14.860 --> 00:32:16.700 it like this. 00:32:16.700 --> 00:32:23.060 The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. 00:32:23.060 --> 00:32:30.320 Instead, patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, 00:32:30.320 --> 00:32:34.460 that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. 00:32:34.460 --> 00:32:39.820 And she says the very first lesson a boy learns is how to wear a mask. 00:32:39.820 --> 00:32:45.300 Asks to give up the true self in order to realize the patriarchal idea, boys learn self-betrayal 00:32:45.300 --> 00:32:52.140 early, and are rewarded for these acts of soul murder. 00:32:52.140 --> 00:32:57.700 A couple weeks ago, I told you if you wear the mask all day, and you go home and you 00:32:57.700 --> 00:33:02.740 take the mask off, you were never truly loved that day. 00:33:02.740 --> 00:33:05.180 Only the mask was. 00:33:05.180 --> 00:33:11.740 And we hand this mask of patriarchy of what masculinity is to boys that grow up and to 00:33:11.740 --> 00:33:18.160 be men, and they have gone through acts of soul murder. 00:33:18.160 --> 00:33:22.660 They are disconnected from who they really are. 00:33:22.660 --> 00:33:25.860 This is where the mask comes in. 00:33:25.860 --> 00:33:30.740 We hand it to boys before they can say no. 00:33:30.740 --> 00:33:33.540 It's what's happening in that group chat. 00:33:33.540 --> 00:33:36.940 A creator, I follow, put it this way. 00:33:36.940 --> 00:33:42.900 Those men were loyal to a twisted and distorted sense of belonging. 00:33:42.900 --> 00:33:48.380 More loyal to that than to her humanity. 00:33:48.380 --> 00:33:53.340 The mask was doing exactly what it was made to do there. 00:33:53.340 --> 00:33:58.620 Researchers looked at young men who most believe the rules of what they call the man box. 00:33:58.620 --> 00:34:03.340 Be tough, stay in control, never need anybody, treat sex as a scoreboard. 00:34:03.340 --> 00:34:09.420 And those young men were six times more likely to say they'd sexually harassed a woman in 00:34:09.420 --> 00:34:12.260 the last month. 00:34:12.260 --> 00:34:20.260 To be tough and to be staying in control and never need anybody to ignore emotions led 00:34:20.260 --> 00:34:24.180 men to a place where they were six times more likely to say that they had sexually harassed 00:34:24.180 --> 00:34:25.180 a woman. 00:34:25.180 --> 00:34:26.180 last month. 00:34:26.460 --> 00:34:32.380 The same set of rules tracks with worse mental health and men refusing to ask for 00:34:32.380 --> 00:34:38.980 help. This hurts men. Men in this country die by suicide at four times the rate of 00:34:38.980 --> 00:34:47.060 women. The story that makes a boy dangerous to her makes him dangerous to 00:34:47.060 --> 00:34:53.100 himself. It costs us our friendships, our feelings, sometimes our lives. And 00:34:53.100 --> 00:34:56.860 patriarchy promised men the top of the ladder. It never mentioned what the 00:34:56.860 --> 00:35:03.500 climb would cost us. This is not a good system for anybody. Not to be a healthy 00:35:03.500 --> 00:35:11.940 human being. Here's the good news and I'll try and rush through this a little bit. 00:35:11.940 --> 00:35:17.980 Jesus walked into that world. Aristotle's world. The world where women were 00:35:17.980 --> 00:35:22.620 property and their testimony often didn't count. And he told a completely 00:35:22.620 --> 00:35:27.340 different story. Luke tells us that traveling with Jesus were a group of 00:35:27.340 --> 00:35:33.300 women who were funding the whole ministry out of their own money. Mary of 00:35:33.300 --> 00:35:37.780 Bethany sits at his feet the posture of a rabbi student. The place women were not 00:35:37.780 --> 00:35:42.900 supposed to be. And when she's criticized Jesus defends her right to be 00:35:42.900 --> 00:35:47.780 there. The longest theological conversation I said earlier is Jesus 00:35:47.780 --> 00:35:52.700 has is with in any of the gospels the longest conversation he has one-on-one 00:35:52.700 --> 00:35:58.780 with somebody is with a Samaritan woman at the well. St. Photini. And then the 00:35:58.780 --> 00:36:03.420 resurrection in a world where a woman's word often wasn't trusted. God chose 00:36:03.420 --> 00:36:07.180 women to be the first witnesses of the most important event in history if we 00:36:07.180 --> 00:36:13.660 believe this. And Jesus sent Mary Magdalene to go tell the men who were 00:36:13.660 --> 00:36:18.580 hiding because they were scared. The church would later call her the apostle 00:36:18.580 --> 00:36:26.580 to the apostles. Even Aquinas who had had talked down on women called her the 00:36:26.580 --> 00:36:32.140 apostle to the apostles. And Paul writing to the church in Galatia says there's 00:36:32.140 --> 00:36:36.740 neither Jew nor Gentiles, neither slave nor free nor is there male or female for 00:36:36.740 --> 00:36:41.540 we are all one in Christ Jesus. So here's the reality of this. The curse said he 00:36:41.540 --> 00:36:46.180 will rule over you and Jesus came to undo that curse. We just haven't 00:36:46.180 --> 00:36:52.820 listened. Maybe some of us have. And I think there's real hope in the research 00:36:52.820 --> 00:36:58.820 to you. You see them going back and forth here because I think it matters. A few 00:36:58.820 --> 00:37:02.740 years ago researchers ran a randomized study in Ugandan churches. They 00:37:02.740 --> 00:37:05.900 trained pastors to teach shared power between husbands and wives straight 00:37:05.900 --> 00:37:10.860 from scripture. Afterward fewer wives in those congregations were being hit. Go 00:37:10.860 --> 00:37:19.620 figure. What gets preached changes what happens at home. And it cuts both ways. 00:37:19.620 --> 00:37:27.620 And for most of the 2000 years it has cut the wrong way. And it doesn't have to 00:37:27.620 --> 00:37:37.500 anymore. I realize we're a little church and we're a little community and this 00:37:37.500 --> 00:37:42.860 isn't always a popular message. Like I watch guys who have thousands and thousands 00:37:42.860 --> 00:37:46.860 and thousands of followers who are going to preach the opposite of this today. 00:37:46.860 --> 00:38:00.380 Not directly. But that's not the message of Jesus. And we can be people who stand 00:38:00.380 --> 00:38:10.100 against it. And men you have to be. We have to ask these questions. Because if we 00:38:10.100 --> 00:38:17.500 don't again if we live in this patriarchal system you're four times more likely to 00:38:17.500 --> 00:38:24.220 take your own life. I don't want anybody to do that. So let's get you out of a 00:38:24.220 --> 00:38:28.700 system that tells you that you're not enough. And let's teach you that you can 00:38:28.700 --> 00:38:36.580 say that something's wrong. Next Sunday we're gonna go to the next half of this 00:38:36.580 --> 00:38:42.440 and talk about exactly that. How we tell our boys a different story. And what it 00:38:42.440 --> 00:38:46.100 looks like for this church to fight for women to be treated as full equals. 00:38:46.100 --> 00:38:55.380 Starting with us. We're gonna look at the story the way that Jesus showed us. I'm 00:38:55.380 --> 00:38:58.580 going to give you a practice this week. It's kind of the same thing as always. 00:38:58.580 --> 00:39:02.420 And I don't think I mentioned this at the beginning. In the app there's like a 00:39:02.420 --> 00:39:06.300 note section that has some of the points from this in there. And this is in there. 00:39:06.300 --> 00:39:10.980 I want you to pick one thing you believe about what men are and what women are. 00:39:10.980 --> 00:39:19.300 Just one. And ask it the question we've asked all year. Who told you that? Who's 00:39:19.300 --> 00:39:22.500 supposed to lead? Who's supposed to be emotional? Who's supposed to take care of 00:39:22.500 --> 00:39:26.460 the kids? Who's supposed to speak first in the meeting? Like pick one of them. 00:39:26.460 --> 00:39:32.140 Ask where it came from. You don't have to fix it this week. Just ask the question. 00:39:32.140 --> 00:39:38.580 Some of you are like I know where it came from. I hear me asking this question. I 00:39:38.580 --> 00:39:41.940 don't think it's a verdict. Something you were handed isn't automatically wrong. 00:39:41.940 --> 00:39:46.000 And something new isn't automatically right. So that's something I'm saying. 00:39:46.000 --> 00:39:53.540 Like that same post I talked about earlier from the Philosophy Dose ended 00:39:53.540 --> 00:39:57.700 with a line that I love. This is this. A belief doesn't become true because it's 00:39:57.700 --> 00:40:01.940 yours. And it doesn't become false because someone else gave it to you. The 00:40:01.940 --> 00:40:07.780 question doesn't decide anything. It just makes you look. Because the story only 00:40:07.780 --> 00:40:14.740 feels like nature until somebody asked where it came from. And if you want to 00:40:14.740 --> 00:40:22.180 keep going in this, there's a lot of the books that I've mentioned. I'll put a 00:40:22.180 --> 00:40:25.340 list up. I'll put it out on the app that you can see like Jesus and John Wayne, 00:40:25.340 --> 00:40:33.580 bell hooks' book, The Will to Change. They're books that help me unlearn. And I 00:40:33.580 --> 00:40:38.380 want us to be a place as unlearning harmful things that are hurting all of 00:40:38.380 --> 00:40:43.380 us. Because at the end of the day you're made to be a conduit and a 00:40:43.380 --> 00:40:46.780 representation of love. And we talk about this every week. You were made to 00:40:46.780 --> 00:40:55.620 practice love and love never ranks the people it was made for. So Arsenal, I'm 00:40:55.620 --> 00:41:04.820 done. If you have questions, please come ask or send them in the in the app but 00:41:04.820 --> 00:41:10.860 go love well. Ask the questions. Where did this come from? Who told me that? And 00:41:10.860 --> 00:41:14.340 love well, it's who you're made to be. We'll see you next week. We're gonna learn 00:41:14.340 --> 00:41:17.250 how to teach our boys different. Thanks.