Episode 313: To Heal or To Harm: Making Sense of Weaponized Bible Verses feat. Steven Tracy

Today I'm talking with Dr. Steven Tracy, author of "To Heal or Harm," about how scripture has been twisted to keep abuse victims trapped. We're diving into passages that discuss things like, "wives submit," "God hates divorce," and "a gentle answer turns away wrath" to show what they actually mean in context. And spoiler alert: none of them tell victims to stay in abuse. If you've ever felt like the Bible was being used against you, or if you're a pastor who wants to understand how to truly help abuse victims, this conversation is essential.

PLUS: A special announcement with Rebecca you won’t want to miss!

TO HEAL OR TO HARM: Get the book here!

COMING SOON:

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LINKS MENTIONED: 

• Mending the Soul website
• Reporting on John MacArthur excommunicating Eileen Gray for leaving her abusive husband

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro & Love & Respect Deep Dive Series Announcement
• 1:40 Meet Dr. Steven Tracy & His Book "To Heal or Harm"
• 4:08 How Well-Meaning Leaders Can Set People Up for Abuse
• 6:14 Spiritual Abuse Is at the root of so abuse, and why its so damaging
• 8:43 The Origins of the Mending The Soul organization
• 11:48 "A Gentle Answer Turns Away Wrath" - Why This Doesn't Apply to Abuse
• 18:58 The "Two or Three Witnesses" Rule That Protects Abusers
• 24:14 What Eli's Story Teaches About Leadership Accountability
• 26:08 How Submission Teaching Has Been Twisted (Featuring Terrible Quotes)
• 30:37 "God Hates Divorce" - What Malachi 2:16 Actually Says
• 35:35 Honoring Your Parents vs. Calling Out Abuse
• 40:13 Why Boundaries Are Actually Loving
• 42:59 "Don't Touch God's Anointed" & Silencing Victims
• 48:19 Matt Chandler, John MacArthur & the spiritual abuse of church discipline
• 53:04 Should You Endure Suffering? (Spoiler: Not Avoidable Abuse in the Western Context of Today)
• 57:35 Finding the Heart of Jesus for the Abused & Finding Hope in the Gospel
• 1:03:36 Rebecca's Thoughts: Meeting People Where They Are

Transcript

Sheila
Welcome to the Bare Marriage Podcast, I'm Sheila Wray Gregoire from BareMarriage.com where we talk about healthy, evidence based biblical advice for your sex life and your marriage. Rebecca is here with me right now.  
Rebecca
Hello? Hello. 
Sheila
We're going to do a big interview, and then you're going to come back at the end. So you're just here for a little bit. But one of the reasons you're here is because something really exciting is happening next week! 
Rebecca
We are launching a deep dive series that Joanna and I have been working on for a year now. Yeah, mostly. Joanna. I had to give credit where credit is due. Joanna has done an astounding amount of research, and we are doing a deep dive series into The Love and Respect multi-verse as we've been calling it. This whole concept, we're looking at the book, the conference, the teachings, how they affect people, what the research actually says, whether the research was any good and if the theology really holds up and we're we've been talking for a while about wanting to be able to try to reach people outside of our typical audience. And this is really a big goal for that is we tried to do it in a way where, you know, maybe YouTube will actually throw it in people's, yes, algorithms and stuff. Who are you still watching? Religious deep dives and.
Sheila
Yeah, all that we're excited is that's going to come next week. It's going to be on this podcast, but only the first episode. After that, you're going to have to listen to the Good Fruit Faith podcast channel. If you're watching on YouTube, we'll be cross posting on both channels on YouTube, but if you're listening, then you'll have to sign up for the Good Fruit Faith podcast channel.
I will put the link in the podcast notes so that you can join up next week and yeah, that's coming. And so now I want to bring us our interview, and then we'll come back and we have some more to talk about.
Well, I am so thrilled today to bring on Dr Steven Tracy, who is the author of a new book, which is really important.
It is called To Heal or Harm. And I'm going to let you give the subtitle.
Dr Steven Tracy
Scriptures Use as Poison or Medicine for Abuse survivors.
Sheila
Perfect. Thank you for being here.
Dr Steven Tracy
Glad to.
Sheila
Really, I really appreciate this book. You know, because we've done so much on the Bare Marriage podcast talking about how evangelicalism does not handle abuse well. And what you've done is you've written this book that is so grounded in Scripture that is so accessible to even your most complementarian and pastor, you know, you're just saying, let's get back to what Scripture actually says, and let's show you how the main message in Scripture is to stand up for the oppressed and help the vulnerable.
Dr Steven Tracy
Exactly. Sheila, I do a whole chapter on social justice as I define it. As a trained theologian, biblically, a lot of word studies from Greek and Hebrew. And it's such a shame is way too weak a word. It's a satanic delusion that you're woke, which is, you know, whatever that means. But as bad as you don't want to be, you're woke.
If you have passion to address abuse, if you care about injustice, of, of whatever variety. And there's a lot. I live in Portland, Oregon. There's, there's some crazy social justice stuff in our world, but that the idea of justice and mercy for the abused, the oppressed, the vulnerable is eminently biblical. Not just biblical, but it's a dominant biblical motif and call for the people of God.
Sheila
Yeah, I love that. And, you know, so much of what has caused the church to as you as you say, Scripture can either be used to heal or to harm.
Dr Steven Tracy
Right?
Sheila
And so often the church has used it to harm and abuse. Victims have felt stuck, like they can't do anything about the abuse, or they can't speak up about it because of these faulty views of Scripture. And so, you know, your book zeroes in on how do we interpret Scripture is one part, and then how has Scripture been used to harm, and then how can we use it to heal instead?
And I love it. I want to concentrate on the second part, if we can, and look at and look at how it's been used to harm. But before we do that, I want to talk about You opened the book with the story of Cheryl. Yes. And who had just gone through this horrendous abuse and.
Dr Steven Tracy
20 years’ worth
Sheila
And she had not found help with the church. Like she really didn't find help till she saw a lawyer, you know, which is awful.
Dr Steven Tracy
Yeah. And a wonderful Christian therapist who knew how to use scripture. Well, yeah. Yeah. What a shame.
Sheila
I know. And one thing that stood out to me in that story was that it wasn't only the people who had abused her, who hurt her, or who set her up to injure the abuser, tolerate the abuser, and stay for so long. It was also the people who hadn't been abusive but had taught her bad things. Yeah, so she talks about this youth pastor who was actually a father figure to her and was very kind to her and lovely, but he taught her that you obey, you obey no matter what you obey.
Dr Steven Tracy
Yeah, that's a really good point, Sheila. There are several layers here of ways that we can be harmed. And obviously abusers, that's the primary category of harm that we typically think of. But almost equally harmful can be the collaborators who didn't do the abuse, but they overlooked it, denied it, and functionally facilitated it. And that's the category I would put that youth pastor and he wasn't overlooking a particular abuse, but in misconstruing, twisting scripture, he set her up for additional abuse in the future.
And I'm sure that's not what he would have ever wanted. But, regardless of the internet was the effect and it was a very injurious effect.
Sheila
Yeah. And there's a lot of youth pastors like that who need to read this book, so I hope they're listening to this podcast.
Dr Steven Tracy
I was one of them at one time. I've apologized to various parishioners, took him I pastored for 15 years, three churches. And, you know, you don't know what you don't know, but there's no excuse once it's been brought to your attention.
Sheila
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Okay, so your wife is a psychologist and a trained counselor, Licensed counselor?
Dr Steven Tracy
Yeah, a master's level therapist for 20 years, focusing on trauma therapy.
Sheila
Yeah. And you told this story, or she. She wrote the story of how, you know, she had just for years she'd been sitting in this chair listening to people's stories, and they were all the same.
Dr Steven Tracy
Yeah.
Sheila
Like it was all people who had endured such trauma and such betrayal. But the root of it was this spiritual abuse piece.
Dr Steven Tracy
Yeah, she and I both, neither of us went into our respective fields for me as a seminary prof. Or at least as a clinician, neither of us anticipated focusing on abuse that was miles away. We didn't grow up in abusive families. We didn't experience abuse. But it was for her as a clinician, me as a shepherd. We just kept running into abuse as a as a root issue
You know, the presenting issue was sexual dysfunction and marriage conflict, alcohol abuse, etc. but as we probed deeper over and over, we were seeing abuse as a as core foundational issue. And she saw so, so much of the spiritual abuse and found that the spiritual abuse and she dealt with, you know, all categories of abuse. But she found spiritual abuse to be among the most damaging and difficult to heal from because it poisons the well of truth.
Yeah, it kind of soars off the very land you need to sit on for health and growth.
Sheila
Well, yeah, and especially too, it steals Jesus from you, right? Like if you're a abuse victim, if someone is abusing you, if someone is physically or sexually or emotionally abusing you, and yet you are also told that God wants you to stay and that God wants you to suffer, and then the God that you're supposed to be able to go to for comfort is stolen from you.
Dr Steven Tracy
Right? Right. Then you're afraid of him. But then you feel toxic shame that you're, if you don't trust God. Yeah, a God that actually is not the God of Scripture. But that's you've come to understand a twisted version of who God is. How sad. Yeah. How sad.
Sheila
And so together you had this realization that abuse was such a problem. And together the two of you formed this organization called Mending the Soul.
Dr Steven Tracy
Yeah, it was in 2003. It was actually really quickly a precipitating event and missionary family had come off the field. All three girls had been molested by a missionary colleague and the pastor called Celeste and said, here's the situation. It's blown up. The family, the girls that are the missionary team, can you help them? And we collected an offer and we could pay for five sessions combined.
And, you know, that's not enough to adequately assess. And so let's say, of course, slider her fee and all that. But she was just beside herself and she called all around to that night. It was, you know, in the evening to see if even secular are there any resources to supplement. And there was nothing Christian or secular in the city of Phoenix.
Zero. Well, that was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. And, you know, we prayed under a streetlight in our neighborhood on a long walk and at the end of that she said, I know what we need to do. Just say yes.
To what she said, you need to write a book and systematically address abuse, and then I'll create a workbook and we'll offer it to churches, lay people. That'll be a tool that they can heal. They won't have to pay thousands of dollars to get help to heal. And that was the start. And almost 20 or well over 20 years.
And we watched God bless the work because he's a God that delights to heal. Yeah, yeah.
Sheila
And you're taking it to Africa and other places too, which is.
Dr Steven Tracy
Most of our work is done now. And in Africa, particularly the Democratic Republic of Congo. So thankful Congo has some of the worst violence really in the world. You once called it the rape epicenter of the world, and it is. And it's really, really painful. But, you know, if biblical principles don't work in the hardest situations. How can I be sure they'll work in any?
And we have seen the miraculous hand of God and some of the most grotesque context of damage and massacre, etc., and has given me more confidence than ever that there is no sin there is no evil, there is no pain, that our God isn't delighted to heal doesn't mean it's instantaneous. Doesn't mean in this life there may still not be some scars.
That's true. Physically it's to spiritually the gods are redeemer. And so I stand on that.
Sheila
Yeah. And of course, and this is a God who often the way he heals is in community to also as we as we call for justice and say absolutely yes, we as we uphold the oppressed. And I think that's right. Okay. I want to turn to some of the ways that things have gotten really twisted, because I think that this is really going to help our listeners, because a lot of them have heard these arguments.
And so to hear you say, you know, this is what this really means will be good. So I want to take one of the first places that you really call out some of the biblical counseling ideas. And one of them was when they misuse a verse from Proverbs and Proverbs 15 verse one says, A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.
And I'm going to read. And this is a; you quoted a biblical counseling manual or book or something. And this is what looks like. Yeah, yeah, this is what it said. So those are not your words. These are like the biblical correct. What they said the biblical counselors should not stop at dealing with the externals of abuse. However, he should also kindly yet courageously deal with the root of the problem the existing anger of the one person, which increases to the point of abuse upon the provocation of the other.
In other words, abuse is almost always a double responsibility problem. Without the angry individual, it does not develop, but also without the provocation of the other individual. Abuse does not develop either. This can be said with some confidence biblically because a gentler answer turns away wrath. Yeah. Wow.
Dr Steven Tracy
Yeah, that is such a weaponization of scripture.
Sheila
Yeah.
Dr Steven Tracy
Oh my goodness. Well, let me first of all, just note that the phrase biblical counselor means a lot of things. Yes, there's a wide spectrum. And in fact, I had several people that accepted that title and endorsed the book. So I definitely want to clarify that for our listeners. But there is a more conservative, for lack of a better word group that calls themselves biblical counselors that I find they do on occasion some appalling things with Scripture.
And this would be one of those examples. And in the first part of the book, I give six principles for interpreting Scripture, because I really want the readers to be able to do what the Bereans did. The Bereans didn't just accept the fact that Paul was an apostle and a former Pharisee and an expert on Scripture. They search the scriptures themselves to see if this new teaching that he was bringing about Jesus was accurate.
And Luke commends that. So one of the principles that I give is that we always have to interpret scripture based on its literary type. The word that's often used as genre. Yes. Well, proverbs are a specific kind of literature. And you don't read Proverbs the way you do the epistles or historical narrative. And if that sounds too academic, we do this intuitively.
I don't read a political cartoon the way I do a poem, the way I do a historical biography, and we just innately, you know, understand that all Scripture is literature. Now, it's divinely inspired literature, but it's literature and we have to do the same thing. Scholars are virtually I mean, there's a universal agreement that Proverbs is wisdom literature and nature.
It's a specific kind of wisdom literature. When that was widely done in the ancient Near East, they wrote wisdom literature, and it's understood that the nature of proverbs as a type of wisdom literature is to give, describe how life generally works. Not that admits no exceptions, but all things being equal, here's how life works. And if you read Proverbs and not and don't recognize that, then you make a statement, a watertight rule that it always works this way with no exceptions.
And that's what's happening here. And it is true that, generally speaking, a soft answer does turn away wrath. You know, if you get irritated at your grocery store clerk or they're irritated with you, a gentle response will often assuage that. But not all things are equal in life, and abusers are. They don't abuse because they've been provoked, they abuse because there's something twisted and broken inside of them.
And another principle for interpretation as well. Always let Scripture interpret Scripture, so you don't just take one verse and make that the whole teaching on a given topic. You always have to compare and think about this one. There are countless examples in Scripture of godly individuals who had people enraged at them, and no matter how gently and godly they responded, the rage didn't end with that.
With Jesus, we see that with the Apostle Paul, I could give countless examples. Abusers get angry when this truth is spoken. Yeah, so I think the clearest example that perhaps is in Luke 4, when Jesus is in his hometown of Nazareth and he's preaching, you know, his first public sermon in his hometown, according to Luke. And the people are saying that they're marveling at what gracious words.
They're just eating it up. They love it. Until he starts citing instances of Gentiles and essentially God's heart for the Gentiles, literally within minutes, they, they try to throw him off, throw them off.
Sheila
Throw him off a cliff, cover.
Dr Steven Tracy
Yeah. Now.
If you take Proverbs 15:1 as a watertight rule that admits no exceptions, then Jesus himself was to blame for the crowd being enraged and wanting to kill him. And no one in their right mind would say that. And that just illustrates the fact that that biblical counselor was distorting Scripture in a really tragic way.
Sheila
Yeah. I remember, for instance, I did this on a podcast a while ago where Emerson, who's the author of Love and Respect, a woman, wrote into him and said, we're having trouble in our small group because when the wives bring up issues, the husbands aren't listening to us and we don't know how to bring them up so that they might listen, even though we're trying to be respectful.
And he quoted a proverb that said, like a wise husband accepts his wife's counsel. So if your husband isn't accepting this, it means you're doing it wrong, because obviously it benefits the husband to have this good counsel. So, you know if he's not accepting it, then you're doing it wrong. Like it was wild. It was just.
Dr Steven Tracy
Wild. And even on that one, you might say, well, that does not indicate they're not being wise.
Sheila
I know, like it's just crazy. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So let's look at, let's look at some of the other ones that church can misuse. So first Timothy 5:19, this one is brutal. So that says not to entertain an accusation against an elder. Except there if there are 2 or 3 witnesses and you gave a story of a young, a young man observed a youth pastor engaging sexually with the girl, and he took it to the executive pastor. But the pastor wouldn't do anything because there weren't 2 or 3 witnesses.
Dr Steven Tracy
Yep, he said, basically, we're a church that founded on Scripture and I feel for you. It sounds like a terrible situation, but my hands are tied because Scripture says, I can't. I can't even entertain. I can't even think about this accusation. It has to be meaningless to me unless you can bring forth another witness or two.
Sheila
Yeah. Which is wild because sexual abuse happens in private.
Dr Steven Tracy
Well, exactly. Well, based on that criterion, there's almost no abusive, sexually abusive church leader that will ever be discovered. And I know common sense. I don't give common sense as a hermeneutical principle. But there does come a point where we have to say it. Could that really be what God is saying to us through the Apostle Paul?
And furthermore, might that fly in the face of some other? Biblical teaching that Paul is actually citing from Torah? I don't remember the text off the top of my head, but I think it's in Deuteronomy, which says, in the Law of Moses, you're not to find someone guilty just based on the word of a single person. Interesting that Chris, right, and his wonderful Old Testament ethics book talks about that text and says that was to protect the vulnerable because we have plenty of examples, such as when the evil king, the husband of Jezebel, Ahab.
Sheila
Oh, Ahab.
Dr Steven Tracy
Yeah, you know, wanted some land. So he just got someone to make up a lie about, not the owner. And then they convicted him and killed him. So that's actually protective of the vulnerable. And so to misuse it, just to fail to protect the vulnerable. So I'd say two things. One, Scripture has so much to say about protecting the vulnerable.
I have a whole chapter on the overwhelming data, the biblical mandate to protect the vulnerable. Secondly, again, if we want to look tightly in the Law of Moses, you have an example and we who love Scripture interpret Scripture. What happens in a case where a woman is raped in the countryside and there's no one around to be a witness?
How can that be adjudicated? Well, Deuteronomy makes provision for that, and the judges are to decide and then apparently decide just based on her testimony. There are certain things that are of such a grave nature that you can't just overlook them and say, well, we don't have another witness, and Scripture itself allows for that. So I would say as a general rule, yeah, what Paul's saying would apply.
You don't condemn a church leader if there's just one person saying I, you know, I have found them to be harsh or dishonest, but when it comes to abuse, that that's its own category. It's all sin is not created equal. Yeah, abuse is its own category. God. God describes sin as a particularly heinous, destructive behavior. And we'd better take that seriously and hold elders accountable if it's one. One woman who says to this pastor raped me. We better act.
Sheila
Exactly. Yeah. Before it, before they get a chance to hurt someone else to get its justice for this particular woman. But it's also protecting people in the future. I think that's what that's what drives me crazy to when, when pastors say things like this, well, I need 2 or 3 witnesses, or this isn't for me to adjudicate.
You don't have a choice. Now, maybe in certain states, I don't I don't know what it is in every state, but certainly in Canada, you're a mandated reporter. It doesn't matter whether you believe it or not like it. Just like once you hear that someone may have done something, you have to call the police. You have to report it. And it's like so many pastors ignore that.
Dr Steven Tracy
Yeah, I don't know what it is in Canada, but here in the States, that's generally true. There's some variation, but generally that's true for if the abuse was perpetrated on a minor
Sheila
On a minor Yeah.
Dr Steven Tracy
Different. If it's an adult as far as the mandated reporting laws. But you know, one biblical text that I, I really encourage church leaders. And in scenarios like this where they're told about abusive behavior that's being alleged. If you want to know what God thinks of leaders that don't take decisive action to stop abuse, think. Think of Eli in the book of first Samuel.
Yes, it is. It is actually a shocking account because Eli was not abusive. His sons were. Yes.
Sheila
Hafsa and Phineas. Yes. They were terrible. Yes.
Dr Steven Tracy
Hafsa and Phineas, what names, they were taking advantage of women sexually in the temple. We don't have the details, but, given their position as the priest and the women as it clearly that that is abusive behavior and also physically, they were threatening and abusing people. The text tells us that. I think it's in chapter two that Eli said, what is this I hear my sons and I words he verbally chastised them, but he didn't stop it. And then we get to chapter four, and God strikes Eli dead because he didn't stop his son's abuse. In other words, he didn't remove them from being priest in the tabernacle. He had a responsibility. It's not enough to just say, knock it off, give a warning.
And that's so often, at best, what churches do when they hear hideous reports. And it seems like there's some validity, or they don't even investigate out of fear when by whatever, God will hold leaders accountable for their failure to protect.
Sheila
Absolutely. Thank you for saying that. Yes, I think people need to hear that.
Dr Steven Tracy
Yeah.
Sheila
All right. Let's move on to some of the passages about marriage. I don't want to get into them in too much detail because we've done that so often on the podcast. But there were several quotes that I just need to read. So you did one of our favorite things, which is you pulled out a bunch of awful quotes about submission from various books just to show what is being taught, because I think it's important that people.
Dr Steven Tracy
And these are books, several of those books I cited from, have sold hundreds of thousands of copies.
Sheila
Yeah.
Dr Steven Tracy
Like I wasn't drawing from obscure stuff that no one's listening to.
Sheila
Yeah. And I just, I just going to read you give a whole bunch of examples. I just want to read two. Okay. Here. Here we go. People. Submission is positively exemplified by Sarah in Genesis 12, when she submitted to her husband Abraham's directive to lie to Pharaoh by saying she was Abraham's sister, making herself vulnerable to being raped.
Yeah, so she's so it's good to submit, to make yourself vulnerable to being raped. That's awful.
Dr Steven Tracy
Yeah. How many men would go with if the shoe was on the other foot?
Sheila
Yeah, yeah. Hey, you're supposed to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And yet men would never stand for this being done to them. Okay, here's another one. Submission. Graciously consents and submits to her husband’s proclamation that their children don't need to wear a seatbelt while traveling in the car, which may result in their being thrown from the backseat when he suddenly hits the brakes.
Dr Steven Tracy
Well, that was the example. But yeah, this guy had to stop. Suddenly, the children are thrown into the front seat, but hey, they didn't get hurt. So it shows that God honored the wife's submissive like, oh, this, this is just sick.
Sheila
This is totally sick.
Dr Steven Tracy
Yeah.
Sheila
Yeah. And over and over again, this is how, you know, submission has been distorted. I wanted to focus on one tiny thing, though. Ephesians 5:21, which is submit one to another. A lot of heavy, complementarians like Wayne Grudem have said that that passage doesn't apply to husbands like it doesn't apply to those in power. Yeah. What would you say to that?
Dr Steven Tracy
Well, first of all, it's really important to recognize that the discussion on family life, and particularly marriage begins in verse 21 because verse 22 has no verb in grace. Yes, the verb is assumed from verse 21, once most of our Bibles have verse 22, which deals with the wife’s submission, the new paragraph. That's wrong. It starts with submitting one to another.
Yeah. My former colleague Wayne Grudem, who I respect for his character and a lot of things I just really, really, really disagree with him on this. And he appeals to a reflexive Greek pronoun there all alone, some to others, and tries to make the argument that submission is not universal here. It's just in some categories. And that just doesn't apply if you if you just look at how that Greek word is used over and over in the New Testament, it's not a partial reciprocity.
It's complete. I mean, as much as you can. So grammatically that just that doesn't fly. And I would also point out you have other biblical text. Well, complementarians tend to say, well, there's no examples in Scripture of men ever being told to submit to their wives.
Sheila
What about Sarah? Abraham was told to submit to Sarah and to obey her.
Dr Steven Tracy
That that could be an example. But within the Pauline literature, first Corinthians seven is, yeah, incredibly powerful because Paul, same author, it's always best if you can go author to author in a comparison, Paul says the ends in the context as you know well, of sexuality in marriage, verses one through five, Paul says the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.
And then it's reciprocal. The wife doesn't have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And similarly, the husband doesn't have authority over his own body. But the wife does. Like tell me that's not mutual submission. That's exactly what's being described there. I don't know what else to call it. It's explicit. So there are examples and that I think being, the clearest one of mutual submission.
Sheila
Yeah. Amen. Okay. Let's move on to Malachi 2:16, which is famously translated as God hates divorce.
Dr Steven Tracy
God hates divorce.
Sheila
Yes. And we've talked about this on this podcast too. But how you know, it actually it actually in context, it's talking about how God hates those who clothed themselves with violence and. Right. Yeah.
Dr Steven Tracy
Yeah. It's amazing this, this is one I mean probably this this text God hates divorce and wives submit and everything are the two most frequently weaponized passages particularly against women. First rule of hermeneutics, biblical interpretation, is look at the context and context in mind.
Sheila
And the second rule is to look at the context. And the third rule is to look at the context.
Dr Steven Tracy
Context. I do think comparing Scripture with Scripture is a close second, but yes.
Sheila
Yes
Dr Steven Tracy
But yes, context is everything. You can make scripture say anything if you rip it out of out of this contextual setting. What's the context of Malachi two? It's Jewish men. And it's important to note at this time, Jewish women did not have the legal right to initiate divorce. So you have to factor that into what's being said here.
And you always have to factor in the cultural setting. Men were leaving their wives and abandoning them, possibly for foreign wives. I don't know if this is a pretty philistine syndrome or what, but they're abandoning their families. And of course, in ancient Near Eastern culture, being so patriarchal, a woman who's abandoned has mean she's destitute, very little means of livelihood.
So that is the context. And in the previous paragraph, God is so clear that the men are saying, asking why God's not listening to their prayers. And God's response through the prophet is essentially, I detest your prayers. I'm not going to listen to you because I hate divorce. And the man who covers his garment with violence. But so often we cite the I hate divorce and we just stop mid verse and don't hear.
And the man who covers his garment with violence. And we don't know if that was literal or metaphorical, and it doesn't really matter either way. God detest the abandonment of family by someone who should be cherishing the wife that God gave him. Yeah.
Sheila
And I think it's amazing how that passage was meant to protect the vulnerable, as so many passages are in Scripture, and we now use it to tell abused women that you can't leave an abusive man. It's like we've reversed everything.
Dr Steven Tracy
We've reversed everything. That verse does not, is not addressed to the woman. It's addressed to the abusive man who has abandoned her. That's God's condemnation.
Sheila
Yeah.
Dr Steven Tracy
So we take it out of there, we're in trouble.
Sheila
And I like, I like what you said, too, about talking about divorce. How if you have grounds for divorce, you also have grounds for remarriage. I think that's something that people often don't like. They forget, they think, well, Jesus may have said you could divorce, but he didn't say you could remarry. And so if you divorce, you can't remarry.
But it's like in in ancient times, God wouldn't have said to a woman, yes, you can get divorced, but you can't remarry because she would have been destitute. She would have either been a prostitute or like she would have no way to support herself or her kids if she couldn't remarry.
Dr Steven Tracy
And even the. Without going into the details, the grammar of the exception clause in Matthew 5 and 19 assumes remarriage. I mean, if you just look specifically at how it's worded, if you divorce your wife except for Poornima and marry another, so it's built right into the rules that if there are grounds for divorce, then remarriage is permissible.
Sheila
Yeah. So I just wanted to throw that in there because I often get questions about that for women who have divorced for what they think are good reasons, but then they think they can't remarry and just yeah, there's grace there. Let yourself off the hook.
Dr Steven Tracy
So I would and you may have talked about this in another podcast, I would note that there are a growing number of evangelical scholars, Wayne Grudem included, who recently, Russell Moore, others, I mean, most notably Wayne John Frame, very conservative in the case of Grudem and Frame, very complementarian, who are acknowledging abuse as grounds for divorce and remarriage.
I'm thankful for that.
Sheila
Yeah, yeah, it's been a long time coming, but I am thankful for it yes.
Dr Steven Tracy
A long time coming. But, you know, I'm thankful.
Sheila
Yeah, hopefully the next generation will do better. Yeah. Okay. Let's talk to about some of the things that are said about not just abuse in marriage, but in family situations as well. The idea of honoring your parents, how you must honor your parents even if they've been abusive. And so, you know, you can't have boundaries. You can't cut them off.
That would be mean. And you talk about the difference between assigned and achieved honor. Can you tell us what those two things are?
Dr Steven Tracy
Honor is such a huge topic in Scripture, and until recently, scholars didn't even address that, or at least Western scholars, because we're in a very individualistic culture. But honor is and even in the West, in our individualism, or maybe I should say our particularly Caucasian West, other ethnic groups really get the honor piece, but it's still extremely important to us honor and shame.
It just looks different from culture to culture. Achieved honor is, as the name suggests, honor that comes from what you've done. Paul had achieved honor, I should say. Saul. And when you see it in Philippians 2, when he gives his pedigree, it's having honor because of the things you've done. And then there's attributed honor, which is honor for the position.
Dr Steven Tracy
I thankfully haven't gotten a traffic ticket in many years, but, you know, regardless of the personal character of the judge, they're referred to as Your Honor. And typically, the courtroom stands when the judge comes into the room. That's not based on character, but the position. And it's important, I think, to distinguish and Scripture does, we are to honor our parents.
That's a biblical command, both Testaments and the Ten Commandments in the New Testament. But we need to distinguish. Scripture does not call us to give honor to that which is dishonorable in the in the sense of achieved honor. Yeah. There's a time to say it's essential to say this is wrong and I'm not going to call black. White.
Sheila
Yeah, I want to read something you said, I think I think it just put it so well here we can and should respect even abusive authorities, including parents, for their position. But we must not call honorable what is not. If a parent acts dishonorably, they are dishonorable. We must not distort reality and call what is black, white. Achieved Honor is to be reserved for the honorable.
Dr Steven Tracy
Yeah, yeah. And one other text that is rarely brought into the discussion. But Jesus being the perfect example of what character looks like in a wide variety of contexts.
We do well to remember that in Luke two, when he's 12, he's on this family trip to Jerusalem and gets lost for, well, he wasn't lost. But the families lost track of him for three days because it was an extended family and they all thought of someone else.
Sheila
He's with the cousin Jim. Yeah
Dr Steven Tracy
Exactly. And they finally realize and retrace our steps and find him in the temple debating, talking to the Jewish leaders. And his mother kind of chides him. And, you know, Tracy paraphrased, son, don't you realize you had us worried and he comes back at her and he's respectful, but basically says, don't you realize? Didn't you realize I would be doing my father's business?
In other words, honoring biblically doesn't mean you do everything that a parent wants or expects. It doesn't mean that you can't respectfully challenge them. Jesus did all that, and it's interesting. Then Luke kind of summarizes the early years of Christ right after that incident in Luke two and says that that Christ continued in submission to his parents. Isn't that interesting?
Submission of a child again is in a bigger context of not always doing what they want or expect and even challenging them. Yeah, so we have to factor that in. Honoring parents, especially as adults. Absolutely does not mean cannot mean. We don't call sin, sin.
Sheila
I think one of the things I really appreciated about your book is you kept you kept coming back to it in several different areas. Was that one of the ways that we can honor someone, that we can show love to someone, that we can bless someone that we can, you know, return blessing for evil, you know, instead of evil.
For evil is actually to have boundaries, like to have boundaries and to say, you know, I will not be in this room when you're yelling at me, whatever, whatever the boundary might be. Because by having those boundaries, you give the other person a chance to repent like you. You, you know, you're putting them in a position where they're more likely to see that they have done something wrong, and they're more likely to get right with God.
Right. And I thought that was really interesting, that you're actually blessing them when you have boundaries.
Dr Steven Tracy
Motives, I say this as a Christian ethicist, motive is always central to the morality of a given behavior. And why am I doing this? And if we can set a boundary in a harsh way that that that truly is sinful because I just detest to and I'm going to cut you out of my life, blah, blah, blah. So some boundary setting isn't healthy or godly when our motive is I and there's nothing ungodly about protecting yourself, Jesus, Paul, David, and others fled abusive authorities. David fled. Abusive head of the family, Saul who is his functional head, etc. Self-Protection is a very legitimate Biblical motive for setting boundaries. But we also set boundaries because we do care about the eternal well-being of this unhealthy, if not abusive person. And we know that if they continue in their abusive ways, they will stand in God's judgment.
And we don't want that. That's a loving motive. But it may not to other people look godly. They may sin. I mean, how many times I've experienced and witnessed this? Well, you don't know, you're not being loving, blah blah blah. Well, if my motive is, I don't want you to stand under God's judgment. And on the current, current pace, you're on the current trajectory of your life.
You stand condemned. And I'm going to set some boundaries here. I can't keep you from this destructive behavior, but I can limit your choices. You can't have you can't pretend to have a relationship with me and keep acting this abusive way. That actually can be a blessing, an act of love. So I want to redefine what love looks like And in this kind of context.
 Sheila
Yeah, I think that was, I think that was really powerful. Yeah. Powerful part of your book. You also talked about a lot of the verses that are used in church situations to tell people that they can't bring up issues of abuse, so that if they mention that someone is abusive, if they talk about how someone hurt me, they are then accused of doing something wrong.
And that means that. And we've seen this played out repeatedly in all kinds of different places. Mark Driscoll situation, James McDonald situation where you had these really spiritually abusive pastors and nobody could say anything and no one would listen to them. So Psalm some 105:15 says, do not touch my anointed ones.
Dr Steven Tracy
Yes.
Sheila
And you quote Benny Hinn by saying that this means we must not raise a voice of criticism against a man of God, even if he is wicked. That is a wild interpretation. Like that is wild.
Dr Steven Tracy
I have heard it repeatedly, and you probably have as well. Yeah. Don't touch God's anointed. This is found at least twice. Well, in Psalms, Chronicles it's actually found elsewhere. And the context is physical assault. Yeah, the context isn't that I say something critical of a leader, it's that I actually assault them.
Sheila
Yes. I don't punch a leader in the face.
Dr Steven Tracy
Yeah, yeah. That okay. I think we could agree that that wouldn't be appropriate. Yeah. The clearest example is the time David, in in first Samuel 24. I think it is. Or it happened twice, maybe 24 and 26. And he had a chance to kill Saul, who was chasing him to, to kill him, once in the cave. And then time was gone, put him under deep sleep.
Saul and his whole army, and David's mighty warrior was ready to just pin him to the ground with the spear. And David's response is, far be it for me to touch God's anointed right? So that's the context to take in this verse. This phrase has become the get out of jail free card for abusive spiritual leaders. You're not to say anything critical.
Well, let's think about that. Do we find any examples in Scripture of people saying critical things about false prophets or spiritual leaders? Well, read Matthew 23. Jesus himself. Lambasts his spiritual leaders, the Pharisees, were Jesus spiritual leaders and he calls them whitewashed tombs. Hypocrites, on and on. And that's just one of many examples; ungodly behavior should be called out
There's a way to do it, of course, that Scripture gives guidelines for, but it is not breaking the prohibition against touching God's anointed. If, if I speak the truth about the abusive behavior of a spiritual leader that I think that's a responsibility.
Sheila
Yeah. And you bring up, you know, Paul called out people by name, like Alexander the metalworker who has done great harm to me, and he's.
Dr Steven Tracy
Done much harm. Beware of him. Second Timothy
Sheila
And he, he even, even called out Peter to his face. Right.
Dr Steven Tracy
Galatians 1, yeah there's so many examples of this, when you think about it just for a little bit biblically, this just falls apart. The, the claim that you can't say anything negative about a spiritual leader, even if they're wicked, man, that's that. That is a grotesque distortion of biblical teaching.
Sheila
Yep Okay. Then there's the whole Matthew 18 thing. And so in Matthew 18, Jesus tells us that if we have something against someone, we should go to them first. If they don't listen, we bring 2 or 3 witnesses, and if they still don't listen, then we take it before the community. And many people have turned that into. And I know I've had this happen to me too, where I go to talk to someone in leadership about another person who is treating me badly.
And they say, I don't want to hear it. You need to go to them. You can't talk to me about it. You need to go to them. And you actually wrote a really good paragraph about this. So I know this makes authors uncomfortable when I just read your words while you're just sitting there, but I'm going to read this because it's so important.
So this is what you said, instructing abuse victims to go privately to the more powerful one who allegedly abused them is a ludicrous application of a general principle never intended to apply to every situation. This very chapter of Matthew suggests the guidelines in verses 15 to 20 about going privately to the one who sends is a general principle. Later in this chapter, verses 28 to 31, Jesus tells a parable about an unforgiving servant who abuses or chokes and unjustly imprisons a man who owes him a small amount of money.
When their fellow servant saw this, instead of going to the abusive man, they went straight to the master and reported the abusive behavior. Strictly speaking, they violated Jesus's previous instructions by going privately to the one who sent. But Jesus doesn't comment on, let alone condemn, their procedure. He places the focus and blames squarely on the unforgiving abuser.
Dr Steven Tracy
Yeah, it's amazing when we pay attention to the details of the biblical text when it starts to pop out to us. Yeah, yeah.
Sheila
I also appreciated you told the story of Karen Hinckley and Jordan Root where they were missionaries. They were married. She has taken her maiden name now, but they were missionaries and a lot of stuff came out. She realized he was watching child sexual abuse materials. They came back home to the United States. She got her marriage annulled, but they had been members of the Village church, and as such, they had signed membership covenants.
And so the Village church and Matt Chandler, the lead pastor there, put her under church discipline because she refused to go to counseling with them to reconcile. And she took it to the press. This went national. And then Matt Chandler later apologized for this. But this problem of you can't divorce unless the church gives you permission, right?
This happens a lot in areas where people have especially signed membership covenants.
Dr Steven Tracy
But I don't find a membership covenant a restrictive one that some of the Conservative churches are doing to be a biblical concept. I have one Lord and his name is Jesus, and we're very involved in our little church here in Milwaukee, Oregon. Love our elders. I listen to them, but they don't dictate terms in my life the way some churches seem to think elders have a right to do.
I don't find that in scripture.
Sheila
I find it's interesting when you look at these membership covenants, they have all of these things that you as a, as a congregation member parishioner, could be subject to discipline for and all these things that you have to do. But there's very little things that the pastor and the elders are held accountable for. Like it's not reciprocal.
Dr Steven Tracy
It's often, yeah, one sided.
Sheila
Yeah.
Dr Steven Tracy
And that's not how I see scripture describing spiritual authority. Yeah. Think of the apostle Paul, an apostle. So he had a level of authority that no pastor has today or elder. Where in all of his epistles do you find Paul demanding that people act a certain way? Do don't do this at the other because I'm your authority. I'm your apostle. He doesn't. He threatened to do that a couple times, but he doesn't. He appeals especially to his example. He appeals to the relationship, etc. So if the apostle Paul, who had so much authority didn't operate that way, where do we get off today as modern church leaders, thinking that we have this all-encompassing authority in our parishioners’ lives? I don't see that in scripture. Yeah.
Sheila
Yeah, absolutely. All right, then there's all the terrible, more terrible things that are told to abuse victims. Things like First Corinthians 13 seven, that love endures all things. And so you should. I mean, John Piper famously told women that they should endure abuse for a season, getting smacked around for a night, etc. First Peter three one that we should win our husbands over without words.
Dr Steven Tracy
Yeah. Yes.
Sheila
And you gave the example of Eileen Gray at John MacArthur's church, which is just a tragic story. I'll leave a link so that you can read the bigger story. Julie Royce has a lot of reporting on it, so I'll put a link in the podcast notes everybody. But basically, her husband was beating their kids, severely threatening to kill them.
We found out later that he was also sexually abusing them. And he's in jail. I don't know if he's out yet, but he went to prison for sexual.
Dr Steven Tracy
Abuse, I think it was a 20-year sentence.
Sheila
Yeah. Like it was.
Dr Steven Tracy
Bad.
Sheila
And the elders knew about this and what they said to her when they found out that she wanted to leave him, was that even if the husband was not repentant, Eileen should model for the children how to suffer for Jesus by enduring her husband's abuse. And when she refused, John MacArthur announced to the congregation that she was under church discipline.
Dr Steven Tracy
Yeah. And the abusive husband was never put under church discipline.
Sheila
No. In fact, John MacArthur is still supporting him. Well, John MacArthur died, but before that he was, he was promoting the guy’s Bible study materials that he was writing while in prison.
Dr Steven Tracy
It's unbelievable. It makes a mockery of victims and a biblical teaching. There's all too much about suffering, particularly from the real, real conservative wing of the evangelical church that that makes all suffering particularly wives suffering and under abusive husbands, godly and redemptive. Where do you find that in Scripture? Again, I would point to Jesus, Paul, David for starters, who fled abusive authorities.
And in David's case it was a family authority. It was his, so to speak, God ordained. Authority in the home. He was functionally part of Saul's household. But they didn't they didn't just stay and take it. Yes. There are times we suffer for the sake of the gospel, and we have a lot of experience with that and our partners in our work in Africa.
Sheila
And you think of what's happening in Iran right now. Oh my.
Dr Steven Tracy
Absolutely. Yeah. And I actually would say that for a Christian wife who's in a Muslim context under Sharia law. First Peter 3rd maybe the best way for her to respond given her situations. A lot like Christian wife in first century Roman culture where wives had very little recourse against abusive husbands legally and slaves had none.
Yeah. So there is a context culturally where you simply entrust yourself to God and accept the abuse and trust God to give you strength. That's the situation in first Peter two and three. It's not the situation in the West. So we had to ignore the context to rip those principles out of the cultural setting and ignore the countless other passages in the scriptures where people flee the abuse of authorities for self-protection, that's just a hideous abuse of Scripture.
Sheila
Yeah. Like when it says that we're supposed to endure suffering, that suffering is supposed to be coming from the world like we're supposed to be persecuted by the world. You know, we're not supposed to be persecuted by fellow Christians, you know, by family members who are proclaiming Christ right. And so, yes, we do have a choice. Yeah, yeah.
Dr Steven Tracy
There's times God may lead us to our partners in Congo. They face all kinds of threats. We lost one of our directors three years ago to a Muslim terrorist group who assassinated her. She knew the risk, and she was willing to take it for Christ.
Sheila
Her name was Sylvie, right? I read about her in her book. Yeah.
Dr Steven Tracy
So, yeah, that's a biblical principle. But again, let's put it in its context. And even in the New Testament, Paul’s is a good example there. For the sake of the gospel, there were times he was willing to suffer. He didn't claim his Roman citizenship in Philippi when he could have avoided the beating. And the spirit must have led him to do that.
And the Philippians jailer and his household ended up coming to Christ right later in the same book of acts, Paul does appeal to his Roman citizenship to get a trial. And there were times in the book of acts that he fled persecution, and there were other times he went into it. So it's context specific in general, and I see nothing in Scripture that commends avoidable suffering.
And for a wife to stay because it's just must be the godly thing to stay and be beaten to a pulp. How, like, how is that in her best interest, the children's best interest? The husband’s best interest, it is in no one’s
Sheila
Exactly.
Dr Steven Tracy
Yeah.
Sheila
And I think even if your colleague Sylvie, who is who is murdered, I mean, she was murdered by. And she was abused by, you know, terrorists. She wasn't abused by her husband. Right. Like, I think there's a huge difference and.
Dr Steven Tracy
World of difference.
Sheila
There's a world of difference. And somehow, you know, women who are being abused in whatever way, emotionally, spiritually, physically. And we know that emotional abuse has physical repercussions down the road. More autoimmune disorders, more, you know, PTSD all of these problems. So it's really difficult to actually distinguish emotional from physical, I think, because they end up being physical.
But, you know, all of these kinds of abuse, they're not supposed to be coming from the person that you love and from your husband. But the abuse that Paul is talking about, the abuse that Peter's talking about, it's from outside the church. And somehow, we're told that, well, if he's your husband, you have to, you have to stay.
It's like, where is that?
Dr Steven Tracy
Like, it's not there. It's not. And it's almost always men who say that sometimes we don't experience that with very few exceptions. Yeah.
Sheila
Yeah So what you do in this, but you go through all these different ways and I've only dealt with a very, you know, a few you have all kinds of different takes on, on different Bible passages to show us that the, the, the way the Bible has been misused is completely a misreading of these situations
Dr Steven Tracy
Exactly.
Sheila
And then you show how you can actually use Scripture to heal. And we see the real heart of Jesus for the oppressed and, and the vulnerable and how that's actually the whole that's you can't separate caring for the vulnerable and the oppressed from the work of the kingdom of God. You can't separate it because they are the same, right?
Dr Steven Tracy
Yeah. It's really sad that there are some evangelical theologians that are saying justice, mercy is not the work of the church. The work of the church is only proclaiming the gospel.
Sheila
But what is the gospel then? Like I just, I find this wild.
Dr Steven Tracy
It’s ludicrous. And even if we go to the Great Commission, disciples of all nations teaching them to observe all things I've commanded you, yeah, it's evangelism, discipleship. And Jesus himself, particularly Matthew 25, hinges our eternal destiny to caring for the vulnerable. I mean, these are Jesus words, not mine. It's such a dominant biblical theme to care for, protect the vulnerable, the marginalized, the abuse, the oppressed.
Sheila
You said that as we come to a close, I'm just I'm interested on your reading, on what's happening today because you said that, you know, Wayne Grudem has rethought here because he was one of the staunchest people saying that you couldn't divorce for abuse for years. And now he has rethought that. But at the same time, it's like there's a big conservative push right now in the church to become even more conservative, even more complementarian.
Do you see areas of hope when you look out there? I need some hope, Steven. I need it.
Dr Steven Tracy
Some. Boy, this is my world. Well, as long as Jesus sits on the throne. There's hope. Yeah. Book of revelation. One of the dominant themes of revelation is to endure, to persevere. And God honors our perseverance. So we're to persevere because we have a God who delights in redeeming and healing. And he is a God of justice, and he promises to reward those who spend themselves.
Isaiah 58 is an anchor passage for us, those who pour themselves out for the hungry and the afflicted. And there's this litany of blessings God will answer before we even call, and he'll be our rear guard, and we'll flourish in the desert. And I mean just this magnificent list of promises. So that's what I keep coming back to in our work.
The other is, there does seem right now to be a resurgence of malignant patriarchy among many young men. But I don't, you know, who knows how long that's going to last? The political cycles go up and down, cultural trends go up and down. There are a lot of young people that aren't buying that, and I have not lost hope.
But as to the day, whatever happens in our culture, as I told my students over and over, the darker it is, the more power our testimony will shine if we keep our eyes on Jesus.
Sheila
Amen. Thank you for that. Well, I really do believe that, especially for pastors who have been, you know, raised where well, if it's not in the Bible, if it's not explicitly in the Bible that abuse victims can leave, or that I need to stand up for abuse, then I can't touch this. And it's like you show how that is a total misreading of Scripture.
So in your book is so anchored in Scripture and showing how this has a, a logic to it and that logic is Jesus, that logic is how we see the threat of Jesus throughout Scripture and how we need to interpret, you know, Scripture in light of what we know of, of God and of other Scripture. It's just it's I think it's very convincing for those who are, at least I hope it is. It seems to me to be very convincing for those who are in the midst of it.
Dr Steven Tracy
I trust it is. Yeah. Many years in coming.
Sheila
So thank you for that. And the book again is to okay. Is it To heal or harm.
Dr Steven Tracy
Yes.
Sheila
Yes. To Heal or Harm a subtitle I can't remember, but that's okay. I can never remember my own subtitles either. But why don't you read that again? What is it again? The subtitle.
Dr Steven Tracy
Scriptures use as poison or medicine or abuse survivors.
Sheila
Amen and amen. And let's make sure that it is medicine from now on and not poison. Okay?
Dr Steven Tracy
Yeah. And that we have a lot of the last three chapters of the book are the medicine. Yeah, wonderful, wonderful promises. And statements about God's commitment to redeem, heal and restore.
Sheila
Yeah, I love that. And where can people find you on social media? Are you anywhere or.
Dr Steven Tracy
I'm very bad at social media, but mending the soul has as, a Facebook account. Okay. Our communication director is going to be setting me up and we have a nice website, mendingthesoul.org. And it has lots of resources. We have all kinds of healing resources, some healing workbooks, many of my journal articles are on there, downloadable, etc.
Sheila
Okay, wonderful. I will put a link to those things in the podcast notes and also of course, to where people can get, To Heal or Harm. So thank you. It's been great to talk to you.
Dr Steven Tracy
Likewise. I really appreciate it.
Sheila
I really, really appreciated talking to him, and we had a great talk after the recording stopped too, about some of the work he's doing in Africa. I would love to go to Congo with him and his wife. So really, really neat guy. And he's written, I think, what's an important book? And here's what I want to talk about.
Okay, so I, I, I've been thinking about how to explain this to our audience, but let's say that on the theological spectrum, we're at Q okay. And I'm just picking that at random. All right. So like if you think about it from A to Z, let's say that we're at Q. And I'm not saying that Q is right.
I think he was right. But, but whatever, whatever. There are probably people who want us to go further. There are probably people who think we haven't gone far enough. But let's say that we're at Q and let's say that you're, you're totally on board with this. Maybe you're sitting at Q as well, and you agree with everything we say, or maybe you're at P, you're not quite at Q, but you're pretty darn close.
Right? And you're looking at people who are at A, right, like they are the people who still are heavily complementarian and who think that that you can't divorce for abuse, who think that women shouldn't really have any authority at all, and that they are totally under their husbands. How do you get someone at A to get to be at Q?
You don't tell them Q right. Like I mean you can and maybe some of you were at A and then you came across one of our podcasts and it totally blew your mind and, and you became Q, you probably didn't. You probably became like M and then you were. O. And then you know, whatever. Like you probably took a little bit
Sheila
But if you want someone to get to Q, you almost need someone preaching D you know, and then once they're a D, you need someone preaching H and then you need someone preaching M and then you need someone preaching Q like you really there's value in moving people along. And I think often what we do is yell at the people who are preaching, you know, something that isn't quite right without realizing. But maybe their goal is, is to bring people further along.
Rebecca
Yeah, I think when it comes to specifically women in the church. So let's just talk about this particular topic, right? There are different groups of people. There are people who are like I would say your Timothy Keller's who say, well, of course women are honored and to be loved and cherished and respected. And men's leadership is more about responsibility than it is power.
Right? But then they also work their entire lives to prop up voices that do promote male power, and they're actively preaching to make sure people don't go beyond where they are, and they're actually tying it to salvation. And I know a lot of people like Tim Keller. That's fine. I do think he will go down in history as one of the reasons that American patriarchy took over, because he was so nice about it.
A nice sexism is still sexism. And so you have people like that versus you have people who know that they want people to embrace true equality, but they're just trying to speak the language of, of their group. And I and I know there are certain people who are doing that are not going to name them because, yes, they're kind of incognito currently.
But people who might say things like, your husband's leadership is important and does not include X, Y, Z explaining what abuse is. And if that's the case, you need to check out these resources. And then they're actually sitting at like again, if you're going to use your alphabet analogy, they're sitting at C and they're trying to usher people to G.
Yeah, they're trying to actually people past them. Yes. Those are the people you need to leave alone. Not that people are saying I'm C and I am as far as you are allowed to go, know people who are like, hey, I'm using your language and let's try to open your mind a little bit. Let's stop getting in their way is kind of the perspective where we need to actually, we need to actually see ourselves as like the idea of the body of Christ.
Or maybe like, I don't know what other kind of imagery we could use, like a bus stop.
Sheila
Like Paul said to the Jews, I became like a Jew to like a Jew. When the Jews, you know, like you speak their language, you don't you don't give anything up like you don't. You don't sacrifice truth, but you speak people's language so they can hear you. And I really feel like that's what this book did, because, you know, Steve, he taught at the same seminary as Wayne Grudem's right for years.
So he was right in the middle of that. He was right in the middle of this patriarchy stronghold, you know. And so he knows how to speak their language. And that's what I'm excited about this book, because, you know, there are books that I don't even want to use the word egalitarian because he doesn't like he doesn't really do that.
And I but like there are books that would be way more in the egalitarian side, which would be making similar arguments, but they don't do it in the same way as he does, because what he does is he uses Wayne Grudem’s methods of going through all of the different Bible passages and really concentrating on Bible passages. And, and, and he speaks the language of the people that are really patriarchal.
Rebecca
Yeah. And I think because of that, if you're someone who is a normal listener of ours who is very much an egalitarian, the book is probably not going to resonate with you in the same way. Yeah, because he does talk about men's leadership. Yeah. And authority.
Sheila
Yeah, a little bit, Now, his definition is exactly what we would say.
Rebecca
I know, but we're using but we're using the words. But what we're hoping is that maybe it's people who are listening who are saying, I really wish I could give my mother-in-law the Philip Payne book that we talked about, right? The Bible versus Biblical Womanhood. But they're just not there yet. Yeah, right.
They need it to sound Baptist.
Sheila
Yes.
Rebecca
This might be a good starting block where you guys can find some common ground. Yeah. And that's kind of what we're hoping is how do we actually have these conversations. What's the actual research behind how we change people's minds? And we need to have accessible options for different levels of deconstruction and where you're at and you know, it's just really nice to have an option where we can very firmly come down against abuse in a way that doesn't immediately scare off and trigger those thought stopping words that are often so trained in conservative circles where they hear you say one thing and then they shut down, they're not listening to anything else.
Yeah. And then hopefully it causes people to start asking questions and keep going and keep going.
Sheila
All the spectrum. Yes. Yeah. Exactly. So yeah. So I think this is a great book for like especially pastors, but not only pastors, like anyone who is really used to these deep theological books or just books that that are, you know, if we're going to do a Bible study, it's going to be a 15 proof text on something like this speaks their language, and yet it shows so, so firmly that Jesus is on the side of justice and that Jesus is on the side of the oppressed, and that you cannot use these proof texts to argue that abuse is okay or that women's suffering doesn't matter.
Rebecca
So and often when you convince people and you help them see the light in one area, often they can't help but see it in other ways as well. So even if this one is quote unquote only about abuse, you know what I mean? Like it's quote unquote, I know that I don't like using the word only, but like, yeah, sizzling is solely focused on like the, the, the clergy abuse and the spiritual abuse.
You start getting people thinking about this stuff in a way that doesn't feel threatening to them but is still challenging. And that's the difference. There's a lot of non-threatening books that aren't challenging. That's not helpful. Yes, we need it to be challenging. You need people to read a book and realize I might actually have to change how I do things because of what I have learned here.
I need to change my thinking. I need to, but they're not going to do that if they feel their ego threatened. And I don't mean ego in terms of like; I'm a big manly man. I mean ego interests like the psychological concept of the self.
Sheila
Yeah, right. Like if you if you're Stan, I know I am a Christian, I'm a Bible believing Christian. And I go for the plain reading of Scripture. And so if you challenge me at all on the plain reading scripture, then I can't listen to you, you know, then then often they yeah, they do tune us out. But because he is, is really focused on, on scripture, then they won't turn him out the same way.
So anyway, I appreciate him doing that work and again, the link for the book To Heal or to Harm is in the podcast notes. And that's actually something, you know, to change course just a little bit. That's one of the things that we talk about a lot behind the scenes at Bare Marriage is, you know, who is our target audience and how can we move more people along this spectrum towards justice, towards equality, really what we think is towards Jesus, right and away from hierarchy and control and power, because religion should not be focused on hierarchy and control and power and you know, I don't I don't know if this is fair to say. Keith and I were talking about this the other day, but to a large extent, you know, over the last few years we have been so vocal about women in the church and about healthy sex and healthy marriage, that if people were in the middle of these evangelical churches and they wanted to believe, they could have. Right. And I know there's still so many more that we haven't reached.
Rebecca
But I'm going to be very honest with everything happening globally in the church. It's been now 15 years of this. There is a level where we are now dealing with people with hardened hearts and that was not the case. Eight years ago because a lot of people were still discovering things. Everything. At this point, it has been discovered people are there by choice.
Yeah. And that doesn't mean that we don't have compassion or think, but it does mean we had to change our tactics.
Sheila
Yeah. Because, you know, Keith was saying, well, is there even still a need to be talking about this stuff? Because if people wanted to hear that, hear it, and I and my for my theory is that there's still a lot of places that we haven't infiltrated in the same way. And so we are still going to be trying to give the same message.
Yeah, but there's one group of people that will always need the message. Yeah, absolutely. And that.
Rebecca
18 to 25, 18.
Sheila
18- To 25-year-olds, because they are growing up in the extreme Christian fundamentalist bubble. It's not working for them for all kinds of reasons. They get to be young adults. They get out on their own. They realize it's not working, but they don't know what to do. And those are the people who we're always going to have because.
And so what we're trying to do with, with our Good Fruit faith channel is to reach the younger audience with the kinds of media that they're consuming, like longform video.
Rebecca
Yeah. Deep dives that you watch while you're cleaning the house or while you're also goofing off on your phone. Let's be for real.
Sheila
And that doesn't mean that you won't find it interesting if you're older. No, not I love I love video deep dives myself too. So. And I'm Gen X I'm a lot older. But you know we just want to keep current. Yeah, with that group because my heart really goes out to them. What really breaks my heart is the thought that people can grow up in a fundamentalist Christian bubble, get to be 20 or 21, realize they've been lied to, realize that none of this makes sense.
Or, you know, maybe they're just starting to have doubts and it's not working for them and they don't know why. And a lot of that is becoming self-hatred and, and all of this stuff. And then as they process it, they feel like, well, then all of it was a lie. And I need to walk away from God entirely.
And I know some people are there, and I'm I, I understand that when you've got when you've when you've grown up in a toxic place and I'm not trying to say that that you should know that there's anything wrong with you. But my heart is that people will see that that wasn't Jesus to begin with.
Rebecca
Yeah. And I think that, I mean, from the conversations I've had with people who have deconverted through deconstruction, that is also what they wanted to be able to do. But because they were given such a toxic message for so long, it just wasn't possible.
Sheila
But they also often really championed what we're doing. And that's why even though they reconverted, even though they're not Christians anymore, they want us to speak up.
Rebecca
Yeah, I have I have a very good friend who has said that she just she wishes she could have learned about, like she could have met the Jesus that I always had before it got too bad. And we're just trying to kind of introduce people to that Jesus earlier along the line, so that they aren't meeting that Jesus for the first time after their entire world has crumbled, but that rather they can have an anchor as they allow everything else to crumble.
Sheila
Yeah, yeah. So that's what that's kind of what we've been thinking about. And so thank you to everybody who donated in December during a big fundraising push for the Good Fruit Faith initiative of the Bosko Foundation, which we are a part of, Bosko, the Bosko Foundation brought us on to be their Good Fruit Faith initiative, where we are trying to create a faith that bears good fruit.
Yes, and part of what we do with that money is create this docu series. The other big thing that we've been doing, and this is really exciting because this happens in just two weeks too, is there is a Spanish version of The Good Girls Guide to Great Sex coming out. There's a Spanish version of The Good Guys Guide to Great Sex coming out in six months, and then Good Fruit.
Faith is also going to be putting out the Great Sex Rescue later on, too. So that's another big thing that we're doing. So we just want to thank you for donating. We are always looking for monthly donors so that we can keep this going. We have enough now to reach our goals for like the beginning part of 2026.
But if we want to keep going, if we want to keep meeting the needs of the younger generation, we do need the sustaining donors. So take a look at the at the link. We've got that in the podcast notes too. And if you are in the United States, it is tax deductible. If you want to support us, but you aren't in the United States, or if you want to support us in a different way in the United States, our Patreon group is also an amazing place.
You can give as little as $5 a month. Our Facebook group is super fun.
Rebecca
And if you joined the higher tier at $8 a month, Joanna actually is doing an amazing job at hosting a monthly book club, and I know we talk a lot about how do you actually grapple with text, how do we actually increase our critical thinking skills? How do we do these kinds of things? Joanna is just doing it like it's great and it's super fun and people having great discussions and debating about whether or not characters made the right choice and why we should just come.
Sheila
January was The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
Rebecca
We're doing Animal Farm in February.
Sheila
Animal Farm in February, so yeah. So come on over to our Patreon group too. So thank you to all that. Please check out the book To Heal or Harm. The link is in the podcast notes. Join us at Good Fruit Faith and especially get ready for next week and spread the news because our Love and Respect podcast series is coming.
Thanks. We'll see you later. Bye bye.