Behind Closed Doors Domestic Violence in Churches

In this episode, Ruth sits down with Jenna Smith from Christian Direction to shine a light on the prevalence of domestic violence within biblical narratives and its echoes in modern faith communities. Discover how the stories of Hagar, Princess Tamar, Samson and Delilah, and others from the scriptures reflect the psychological and emotional abuse that many still face today. Unearth the staggering findings of the Rafa study, which indicates that a significant portion of Quebec's churchgoers have experienced domestic violence. Listen as Jenna passionately advocates for a church that is a sanctuary of healing, actively working to combat abuse. We delve into the importance of context in interpreting scripture and celebrate the liberating power of theological education for survivors. This episode is a call to transform our understanding of the divine Word and an inspiration for those seeking to reclaim their faith in the face of adversity.

Join the conversation by commenting below or reaching out to us. Your thoughts and experiences are invaluable as we navigate these challenging topics together.

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Transcript

00:17 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
Hello, my friends. This is Out of the Darkness with Ruth Huff-Supian, and today my guest is going to be Jenna Smith from Christian Direction. This is an organization that is looking after the needs of Montreal and of Quebec, and Jenna herself is actually a researcher, a theologian, and we are going to talk about a topic that is very, very important, whether we are in the world or we are in the church, and that is domestic violence. Welcome, jenna. 

00:51 - Jenna Smith (Guest)
Thanks, ruth, I'm really happy to be here. 

00:54 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
Well, let's start off first of all and I'm going to take this from something that you had sent me in a note when we were talking about you coming on and that is by looking at the occurrences of violence against women in the Bible. So I said to me, dear me, what is Jenna talking about? And I had to really stop and think about it and I started to go through my Bible and go mm-hmm, mm-hmm, I see it. So some of the ones I picked up on and there's one I'm going to leave for the last because I want to talk to you about that one really is, first of all, in Genesis. Listen, it's the first book of the Bible. 

01:33
And here we are, right at the beginning. Smacked up at the beginning, hagar, who is, you know, met with violence. Then we're going into 2 Samuel with Princess Tamar and, of course, then there's in Judges, we have the unnamed concubine. But, jenna, you talked about you put one down on your list and I'm going to. I need to talk to you about this one. It is Samson and Delilah. So you know, before we get into, you know the numbers and today's church, and you know domestic violence, tell me why you think that Samson and Delilah is domestic violence. 

02:19 - Jenna Smith (Guest)
Okay, okay, let's just jump right in, because you're rocking the boats. 

02:22 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
Yeah, yeah, let's rock the boat right out of the gate, come on. 

02:26 - Jenna Smith (Guest)
Okay, so Samson and Delilah wind up in a very passionate and, I would say, codependent affair, and it's very important to remember for our listeners. Samson was an anointed judge. His mother could not conceive and then she is prophesied that she will and she has a son and he's one of the chosen judges, which means he's not supposed to cut his hair, he is supposed to refrain from certain foods and he is supposed to have a spiritual and legal authority in Israel. Now, sidebar, samson, I think, is probably gorgeous. He's tall, beautiful mains of luscious locks of hair. He is strong, he's like, he's like a biblical Hercules. Okay. 

03:20 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
I have to agree with you. 

03:22 - Jenna Smith (Guest)
That's the image. I love Samson. We've got a Samson and he's also horrendous in his love life. He gets married to a woman that he should not marry and then he leaves. And then he winds up with Delilah, who, just for people who really want to get complicated, it is possible that Delilah was being trafficked because she is being told by the Philistines seduce him and bring information back to us. So she is not an entirely free agent. 

03:54
Now she's not innocent because she is being incredibly manipulative. Now she puts Samson in harm's way, to the threat of his life, because she keeps on saying to him what is the secret to your strength? What is the secret to your strength? And he's lying to her. So they do not have honesty in their relationship. And every time he gives her a hint as to what the secret of his strength is, she sells him out to the army that is his enemy and they try to kill him. 

04:23
And then the verse that told me that this is actually psychological abuse and emotional abuse is written she pesters and pesters and pesters him until he wanted to die in his soul. And that is almost word for word what certain women have told me in terms of what the effect of domestic abuse did in their lives, where they felt that they were tired and frayed and almost dead in their souls. And I think what's fascinating about Samson and Delilah is that we have a female abuser. We never think about that. And also to anyone who has ever had and I hope this is not the case, but it probably is for many listeners If you've ever had somebody in your life who was caught in the cycle of violence and you want to bang your head against the wall going, why don't they just leave? 

05:20 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
Why don't they? 

05:20 - Jenna Smith (Guest)
just leave, just chew on this for a minute that Samson was one of the strongest men in the world, powerful, anointed, and he could not break free from the cycle of abuse. 

05:35 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
You know, when I read that in what you sent me, I went okay, jenna, how is Samson and Delilah domestic? And I have you know, in all good, in truthfulness, I went back and read the story half a dozen times, from the beginning of it to the end, and each time I read first of all, in all truthfulness, I thought is she saying that Samson? Because he was so you know, his temper was so quick, right, he tied the fox's tails and let them go. I was like, is she telling me that Samson was abusing Delilah? And I'm like, but he didn't, it was her. And then, as I read it, I went uh-huh, I see it and we don't pick up on that. But yes, I came to the same conclusions. 

06:26 - Jenna Smith (Guest)
I'm glad we're on the same page. Okay, we could say it's physical abuse, because it led to physical violence against him. She was not the one who committed physical violence, but she certainly held the tools. It was a domination cycle. She was dominating him to his harm and she was doing it intentionally. The whole story is a mess. 

06:51 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
The whole story is a mess and you know from my experience whether it's personal and those that I have heard from other women Sometimes, or many times, verbal abuse, emotional abuse, are harder to heal than physical bruises, right, Because those reach you to the very, very core and it's very hard to heal. 

07:23 - Jenna Smith (Guest)
So yeah, I mean, I had one woman that was part of the study that we did and she was. There was very little physical abuse it happened a little bit at the end it always happened at the end of the relationship, right, it was all psychological and verbal. 

07:44
And she has had to do what we call neurofeedback therapy, where, because the messages that you receive the gaslighting, the insults, the demeaning behaviors, and they were married a very long time, very, very long time, and so, over decades, it rewires your nervous system where you no longer know how to trust yourself. You have, there were, some women who had such horrible self-image issues, and so she was having to do a lot of work spiritually and, thank God, her faith is so strong and she had a lot of spiritual guidance, but she was also having to do medical intervention and that was all because of verbal abuse. 

08:37
And so we do not take seriously enough the other forms of abuse because we think if we don't see a bruise it can't be that bad. But, it is very, very bad. 

08:52 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
Tell me a little bit about. I'm very curious to know about the study that you did, and I think you just stated something that is very true within our churches especially. That's the context we're talking about. But even in general, we look at abusers in one way and we look at those that are abused and say why doesn't the person walk away? Why don't they do this? Why don't they do that? That's not abuse, that's just tough love or your marriage is so hard. 

09:27
Yes, your marriage is so hard, or you, if you didn't do that, he wouldn't do this, or vice versa. I mean, we're saying he's the abuser, she's the abuser, but it's the other way. We know that it goes the other way around as well, and those are even harder sometimes to acknowledge because men are told to be tough and not talk about it. But tell us a little bit about what you saw in this study, because I think it's very interesting to know the what's important for our listeners. 

10:07 - Jenna Smith (Guest)
This was a community-led study, so we didn't do it from university or from an academic field. We did it with people who were on the field, on the front lines. And so Christian Direction is a non-profit, a paratroop organization, and we had a group of people who were women's shelter directors, trauma nurses, pastors, sociologists, and we built a study that would basically send a survey out to churches in Quebec. This was the church in Quebec and we wanted to know basically several things. One, does domestic violence happen within church-going Christians in Quebec? And then we wanted to know what are the experiences of those who are victim, survivors, victims or survivors we prefer survivors is the term. And then the third thing we wanted to know is how's the church responding, like, how are they helping, supporting, equipped, are they preventing? Are they, you know? So those are the, and so we called the whole study the Rafa study, which Harafa in Hebrew means healing. 

11:20
And we just kept on saying the first step to healing is revealing. You have to reveal in order to heal. So we questioned over 500 people across the province of Quebec from multiple church families Baptist, pentecostal Catholic, anglican, presbyterian, methodist, non-denominational and what came out the two stats that I really communicate over and over and over is that 37% of respondents self-identified as victims of domestic violence. So I said to the question I consider myself a victim of domestic violence, 37% said yes. And then to the question, do you know somebody in your church community who is a victim of domestic violence? It's 67%. A response said yes, or one or several people. 

12:22
Now, those statistics, they're hard to swallow. I should say as well, like some people may not be in a violent relationship anymore but still said yes because it was an experience that they had. But these statistics, these 37% and these 67%, what we saw is that across Canada, statistics put out by the Canadian Women's Foundation and by Health Canada, by our government, they're very, very similar. And at the beginning of our project I have a dear colleague and friend. He's a Christian sociologist and he said Jenna, get ready, because what we see in terms of social phenomenon in general society, we usually see exactly the same thing in the church and I'm like you're crazy. And he's like in the 80s smokers the same amount of smokers who were non-Christian, who were Christian. I'm like, oh, come on. 

13:29 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
Yeah, you know, I say the same thing when I talk about addictions to sexual or pornography. And I'm told this in the oh yeah, and I'm not in the church. And I'm like, really Not in the church. You know why? Why not? Let me play this devil's advocate a little bit. I don't like doing it, but let me do it right now and say why not in the church? Are we not made of the same flesh and blood and same desires and same pridefulness and same sin? Yes, we've come to the Lord. 

14:06 - Jenna Smith (Guest)
But we have a broken, wretched world. Yes, and unfortunately. What we need to accept is that you can come to church and you can sit on a pew and you can listen to a 25 minute sermon, sunday in, sunday out. But sanctification is a practical thing, it's a lived thing, and until we are intentionally actively pursuing a life of sanctification and in sanctification I use that term very broadly, it also means healing from trauma. It also means creating communities of mercy, spaces and places where you have your precious three people or four people with whom you can share everything, and until we have leaders and servants in the church who are taking intentional vocal positions that say we are saying no to addiction, and we're gonna put everything in place for that no. 

15:18
Or we're saying no to violence, and we're gonna put everything in place for that no. Our Sunday morning doesn't create the antidote that we need to all the sin. 

15:34 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
We're always scrambling after the fact to put things into place. Right, as a church, we're not being proactive, we're being reactive in these instances, right? So somebody comes and tells the pastor or someone I'm being abused or I have this addiction, and what do we do? We suddenly scramble as a church of how are we going to react to this? How will we support this person? What do we have in place, which is okay? At least they're acknowledging and doing something. But that's kind of too late, almost. Why don't we have this support? Like, why do we not, you know, if it was a business? Right, as a business, we sit and we talk about things. Right, if this scenario happens, what do we do? You know, for everything that happens, there's going to be a reaction. 

16:31 - Jenna Smith (Guest)
But we never do that in the church. Yeah, it's such a good question, ruth. I mean, I think, if I'm to be like as merciful as I can be, I think we don't want to believe that these precious brothers and sisters and friends that we have in the church are dealing with anything worse than a growing grocery bill. 

16:52 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
And when it comes out, we then are we don't want to talk about it, because then we look like hypocrites that we are saying that you, you know, you're a sinner, you need to be born again, you need to give your life to the Lord. And then, on the other hand, we're hearing about pastors who are being caught out abusing their family, whether it's physical, emotional, even spiritual. We're not even talking about spiritual at this point. There's a whole other kind of abuse that you know the spiritual abuse. And what about the addictions that pastors have? We are, we are kind of saying, oh, once we are under the blood of the law, you know, if Christ, we don't have to worry about these things. 

17:43 - Jenna Smith (Guest)
Yeah, and we had substantial answers, both in our quantitative and in our qualitative study, from women whose violent partners were in positions of leadership, if not pastoral leadership. 

17:59 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
Shatters my heart. 

18:00 - Jenna Smith (Guest)
It was heartbreaking. And then we had to get into conversations in our research team about like structures of power and systems of oppression, because that is another thing that we look at. So there's some things that are like easy answers, you know, like, and those answers are good too, like okay. So churches need to do better prevention. So there should be posters up in the women's bathrooms about you know calling the help line yeah, you know how? About prayers for victims of domestic violence? Absolutely. 

18:32
Yeah, you know like, and the thing is, unfortunately there was a heck of a lot of churches not even doing that. But those are, those are like quick. 

18:41 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
Those are bandages, I'm sorry. 

18:43 - Jenna Smith (Guest)
I mean it's a start. 

18:44 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
It's a start, yeah. But then you're being more merciful than I am. I know. 

18:51 - Jenna Smith (Guest)
But also then we have to have the part of conversations about systems of domination in the church, about women's voices who are not heard. 

19:01 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
Yeah. 

19:01 - Jenna Smith (Guest)
And that there are no channels or believed or believed. Yeah, how come? 

19:06
how come in the, the culture of such and such church, women don't have a place where they can voice what is going on how come we protect pastors who we know are dealing with either addiction or violence, because we're just not comfortable having those conversations with someone that we love and who's a really good preacher or a really good fundraiser. These are the harder, yeah, but I do not think. If we don't have those conversations, I'm I'm convinced that in 20 years I'm going to be back on this podcast saying yeah, it's changed. 

19:42 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
You know, you and I have been around the Christian community all our lives and we have seen things and we have heard things, and at one time we would not be having this conversation, Jenna, because, first of all, it's a taboo to talk about things and uncovering the dirt within the church, and my intention of having these conversations on my podcast is not to to make the church look clownish or ridiculous or to make fun of it. What I want to do is just the opposite. The opposite of all of that is to shake the foundation and say wake up. Unless we make our pastors I'm going to say it Pastors have become gods in our eyes. Our worship leaders have become gods in our eyes. We are looking at the wrong person for that God image. 

20:49 - Jenna Smith (Guest)
God is and what happens, is the alter, the personality alter? 

20:55 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
Yes, and they're not accountable to anyone. Where is this accountability in our church? Okay, I'm going to get off my soapbox. 

21:04 - Jenna Smith (Guest)
No, I love it, I'm here for it, it's great. I don't say like I don't think in Quebec, which was our, like that's our field focus, like I don't think there's any pastor or priest that I would ask, hey, would you rather have a safe church or an unsafe church? No one would answer I want an unsafe church. So you know, I think what we're seeing is a tragic. Well, okay, best case scenario is a tragic blind spot. Yeah, worst case scenario. We have systems of theology, of governance, of communications in our churches that are sorely, sorely underserving people in vulnerable situations. That's a tough one, but I, every time I go to scripture and I'm trying to see like what you know, okay, divorce, okay, violence, okay, addiction, I always approach scripture going where is God showing favor for? 

22:16
the oppressed or the vulnerable, and from the beginning to the end of scripture we see God's long project of holiness and also of favor for the oppressed and the vulnerable. 

22:31 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
Yeah, we're so legalistic that we forget the hurting. 

22:36 - Jenna Smith (Guest)
That's it. And Jesus spent a great portion of his ministry looking at the hurting person and actually stepping away, like not necessarily deconstructing because I mean on the day of his death on the cross the temple was still standing but stepping away from the legalistic readings and stepping away from the structures of power, questioning, prophetically questioning, those structures of power and always, always, always, the eyes on the vulnerable, always. 

23:12 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
Yeah, I. One of the things that I really push whenever I'm speaking somewhere or counseling someone is you need to get to know your Bible. Take the time, get to know what the Bible says, get to know the word of God, because if you don't, you don't know what is, if something is being said, whether it's in the pulpit, whether it's on a podcast or something you're reading, if it's correct or not, or if it is the interpretation of the person. Let me go on a little side note on that. 

23:54
I was growing up, I grew up in the church and I I didn't have my own faith. I, you know, I made, I made a commitment to the Lord, you know, at a young age, but it wasn't my faith. I was walking the faith of others and I hated it. When we sat in Sunday school or a Bible study and we would read a verse and I would be asked, because it went around the room what does this verse speak to you? How does it speak to you? What does it say to you? Or how do you see this verse? I was uncomfortable with it because my faith was what it was, and I think about it now. 

24:36
I'm looking at it at a very different way, as someone who is growing in my faith. You know, for the last nine years that's what I've been doing. The last three, four years, I'm really reading and studying the Word of God to get the answers, because I don't know it all. No one does. And something clicked in me the other day about this and I said, wow, we're not reading the Word of God and saying what is the Lord telling me? I'm taking it and saying this is how I can use this in my life. We are, we are. We're not taking the Word of God as it is being given to us. We're interpreting it to meet our need, or you know. 

25:32 - Jenna Smith (Guest)
I'm not sure if I'm explaining it. Yeah, he says you know when we do Bible studies. Okay, so how are you reading Scripture? 

25:42
And then he says also how is Scripture reading you? And it's a really good question to ask how is Scripture reading you? Because what is going on right now and I think this is the joy of sacred text is that you come the text we believe. We believe that our sacred text is living, breathing, and that it continues to speak to us. And what certain passages say to you at one point in your life when you're 20, and what they are saying to you when you are 30 and then 50., and that you know it's going to be completely different and that is the joy of sacred text. 

26:15
I'm glad that you brought up Scripture because that was a real issue that came up in our interviews with survivors. We had 13 women who we interviewed and they were all women who were no longer in their relationships of violence. We did that out of ethical concerns and they were Christian and attending a church at the time of their abusive relationships. And the amount of comments made, testimonials given, examples of how church practice, church teaching, biblical scripture was used, I guess, and it was weaponized, I guess them was utterly heartbreaking. Utterly heartbreaking, and I am so grateful there is a good many of the women who are still really, really faithful Christians, that they're critical thinking, their intelligence, the Holy Spirit and their own like journey out of violence, of healing and spiritual healing, actually the ability to say I am going to figure out what scripture is actually saying about this, I'm going to choose a new church, I'm going to find myself a pastor who's going to properly pastor me. 

27:41
That was all a journey of self determination and for people who live under violence, empowerment and self determination is everything, because violence, at the core of it, is a removal of power, and so to reclaim power over their own lives, the ability to find a new journey with Jesus Christ was so important. And there were women who went back to theology school and did brilliantly and they were like, okay, and one of them said my good grades in theology were actually one of the elements that helped me get out of my violent relationship, because I was told by professional theologians and pastors and ministers that I wasn't crazy. I had a good reading of scripture. It was beautiful to hear Now the scriptures that were always weaponized against the women. There were two things that came back over and over and over. 

28:44 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
I know hear me coming- I hear you, I want it to come from you. 

28:49 - Jenna Smith (Guest)
Okay, god hates divorce. That one was pulled out at like the. It was the cards that everyone played. It was the card that everyone played. And the second one wives, submit, wives, submit. And I couldn't believe it was that easy. It was almost like a trope. I was like you could not, you could not be serious, and I was going into the study again. I was so naive, through so naive. I was like you can't tell me that a person who's violent would literally use that verse during an episode of violence. We had one woman literally during episodes of violence. It's like he got a playbook, because all the people who were using violence, they were like, just like the same stuff would come back over. It's like they got a playbook and he would literally say you know, you're supposed to submit to me, that's what's written in Ephesians 5. And she would bravely say it is written that husbands are supposed to love their wives sacrificially, the way that Christ loves the church. And he said we're not talking about husbands, who are talking about wives. 

29:53 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
Yeah, this is where this is the danger of taking verses out of context. 

29:58 - Jenna Smith (Guest)
Totally. 

30:00 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
And, and using verses out of context. You need to read the whole thing, the whole chapter, the whole book. 

30:09 - Jenna Smith (Guest)
And you need to do. 

30:10 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
And then the book before and the whatever you have to read the whole Bible. 

30:15 - Jenna Smith (Guest)
I'm sorry, you know you need to read several translations as well, yes, 100%. For anyone who's blessed to be bilingual. So I am French and English. I read my Bible in French and I read it in English. If you're trilingual, read it in three languages and you need to know your history. 

30:38 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
Exactly If you don't learn the history. You know this isn't about violence, but you know, I think this is so important and this is the Bible is what we need to, what will empower us right, those that go through a divorce, those that struggle with violence in their lives. The power is here and if we know it and we are being spoken to in a way to belittle what we have experienced or are experiencing, man, the damage we're doing, you know, I'm on the other side of healing and we talked about this earlier, before we started to recall. I'm on the other side of healing and I look at things very differently and I don't point fingers and I do not blame anyone for my choices and my actions for 15 years of addiction and not walking with the Lord. I never do that. I need to put that out there. 

31:38
But there's a huge but. When I was struggling with my divorce and going through that very difficult time I'm a PK, I'm a pastor's kid, grew up in a church no one knew in my church how to deal with it, except to tell me that as a wife, I need to submit to my husband. Tell me, gentlemen, do you know what is happening behind closed doors? What is being said, what is being done or what is being what. 

32:14 - Jenna Smith (Guest)
How can we do this, and I would just like so. You had a previous guest, charlene, if I'm not mistaken. 

32:21 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
Yes, charlene Clint. Yes. 

32:23 - Jenna Smith (Guest)
She called out Lazy Theology 100%. So I found her very courageous for saying that, and so I'm just like I'm going to follow suit the law. If I'm not mistaken, so I have studies in theology and, ruth, you and I have very similar backgrounds. Like I grew up in church too, and so we've seen it all right. Yep, the longest running text in the New Testament that addresses marriage. We love to use 1 Corinthians 14 at our weddings. 

32:55 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
Yep. 

32:56 - Jenna Smith (Guest)
Which I, by the way. I used to be so bored with 1 Corinthians 14 because I'd been to like a thousand weddings as a kid I was a flower girl in all of our church. You know, like 1 Corinthians, her love is patient. Love is kind of like snow, or you know. Now I'm just like boy. Paul was onto something. We can only live according to 1 Corinthians 14. 

33:15 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
Amen. 

33:16 - Jenna Smith (Guest)
The longest text, single text, in the New Testament that touches on marriage is actually 1 Corinthians 7. It is long and I have spent a good amount of time in 1 Corinthians 7, and the more I read it and the more I become acquainted with it. I am floored. Feminism was not a term that was known in the ancient Greek or Roman Empire, but this is definitely early feminism Every, and I would encourage listeners to go and read 1 Corinthians 7, and again with this question in mind, where are we seeing God turn his face towards the vulnerable? 

34:01
And you will see section per section and I'm not going to go through it all because it would take us hours. But every instruction given to men in marriage in 1 Corinthians 7 is equally given to women and there is no undue burden laid on women that is not also laid on men. This is Paul is trying to pull people out of sexual immorality, which apparently in the church of Florence it was just rampant. 

34:31 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
Rampant yes. 

34:33 - Jenna Smith (Guest)
Also love matches back then. We have a very different idea of marriage today than we did back then. Love matches were almost non-existence. It was a contract. It was the joining of two houses, especially if they were rich houses. It was an economic thing, and so divorce was. It was so easy because it was just like. It was almost like you know, like a business transaction, it's like, demerge and then merge with another household. 

35:03
And so, okay, paul talks about women who are separated, and this verse is used. It's just weaponized against women. But what's really interesting, he says I would prefer for people not to be separated. So again, he's like what's the ideal? But then what's the reality? But then he says but if they are, remain single or reconcile? He never says to a woman who is separated from her husband, that's it, banished from the church, you're done. He never does he. 

35:41
And he uses the word concession earlier in the chapter and we are seeing him make these concessions because he is understanding what an imperfect world looks like. And then he says to the men, husbands, don't divorce your, your wives. Why? Now, sometimes this is mistranslated, but he goes, because your children will be illegitimate. And again, where is God showing favor to the vulnerable? If a child was illegitimate in that society? They had nothing, they had no money, they had no status, they had no land. It would have been very difficult for them. 

36:16
Paul was trying to take care of children so that they would not be declared illegitimate. And a woman could not ask for divorce. It had to be the man, with some exceptions, but generally. And so he who holds more privilege, holds more responsibility. And then he makes concessions and he talks to the widows and he talks to the virgins, and he talks to the people who are going to get married, because basically they were pretending to be single but they were. They were sleeping and he seems like, just be honest, yeah. But what's beautiful as well in 1 Corinthians 7 is that he treats everybody like they are full members of the body of Christ. And sometimes we have an idea of what the church should be it has to only be happy nuclear families. And yet you go back to 1 Corinthians 7. First of all, the top dogs are the single people, which is really different. Paul's like I'm single, I'm happy, I think you will be too. And he tells the widows don't get remarried, which is amazing because he's treating women like they are more than just their reproductive systems. 

37:25 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
But you know, this comes with the with with the knowledge of the word of God, knowing your Bible and not just accepting what is being preached or talked about or taught, because not everybody sees this In the way we are talking about. Right, they'll take a verse and just give a sermon on that verse. It doesn't work that way. There's a whole lot more and you know, this year I challenged myself on something and you know I I I'm so glad I did was I wanted to read the Bible in full every month just like. 

38:07
I would a book, just like I would Now. That doesn't negate the fact that I also have a time for Bible study and quiet time. That's just reading it through, and I've read it through in chrono the way it's written. I've read it through it within. You know the time, you know going from one book to the other, because I wanted that, that very straight story. There's so many ways to read it, but every time I read it, I've read it something new pops up and I go, oh my goodness, why did I think that? Why Because at one time I sat there with no effort on my part to know any better and I just took it in and regurgitated it and gave it back out to whoever my platitudes without knowing really what the Word of God was talking about. The responsibility is on each and every. In the 21st century and 2024. We all have a Bible at the moment and then we have. 

39:16 - Jenna Smith (Guest)
We have tools at our fingertips yes, 100%, if you disagree, like some people may be listening to the interpretation, I just gave a first Corinthians 7 and they may disagree with me and we are free to disagree and I encourage them then to do their research. Yep, but I would not be nitpicking these verses like in the granular level of study that I have been giving to some of these passages Samson and Delilah, for instance, or first Corinthians 7, but it's because people are being harmed. 

39:46
Yes, 100% People are being harmed by bad biblical readings, and so I have same as you, ruth. I have been putting it on myself. I said, okay, what is my lane? I am not a lawyer, I am not a psychologist, I am a theologian, and so I can do this one thing, yeah, and so I really do encourage people. Again, like you say, we are all responsible for our own learn, for our own learning, like we have been given brains. We have wonderful, wonderful biblicalists and writers. Research them. We have wonderful church historians out there. 

40:21
It's available on Amazon Like go and do research with trusted people who have their own lives, their lives reading and researching, and I think there is freedom to be found in that learning. This is what I have seen with the survivors that I've worked with. 

40:43 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
Yeah, I can keep talking with you, jenna, but I really want to thank you for being here with me today. It's been eyeopening and refreshing and fun if I can put that into this conversation but I love it when I get a chance to speak with someone who is so passionate about things and wants to give this message out and has an eloquent way of talking about things and making it very pertinent to us and anyone who is listening today. I thank you so much. If you have questions, if you don't agree with us, I'd love to hear about it. Leave a comment below, send me an email whatever way you want, and I'm going to put the contact information for Jenna Smith in the show notes and you can also learn more about Christian Direction from their website. But I thank you so much, jenna, and I thank you for being with us today. 

41:51 - Jenna Smith (Guest)
Thank you so much, ruth.