Episode 333: Good Fruit - Are We Measuing It Right When It Comes to Christian Marriage Teaching?

What does Jesus actually mean when he tells us to judge a tree by its fruit - and what happens when we apply that idea to marriage and Christian teaching? Today Joanna, our resident statistician, joins us as we dig into the biblical meaning of “good fruit,” unpack the research behind our marriage studies, and explore what trust, spiritual fruit, and decision-making have to do with one another. We also welcome Dr. Camden Morgante and discuss her amazing book “Recovering From Purity Culture”. Settle in for Part 2 of our 3-part series to kick off this new season - you don’t want to miss this one! 

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• Join our Patreon for as little as $5 a month to support our work (and get access to the book club!)
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LINKS MENTIONED: 

• About Josh Butler’s book  “Beautiful Union” 
• Our podcasts referencing Josh Butler:
  • Episode 260
  • Episode 301
• M.J. Langham Thread link
• Dr. Camden Morgante’s book, “Recovering From Purity Culture”
• Dr. Camden’s Substack
• Harmful Outcomes of Purity Culture Facebook Quotes

Transcript

Sheila
Are we making too much out of good fruit? Are we being too fruity? Are we being not fruity enough? We are here at Bare Marriage.
 
Rebecca
Is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable? Genuinely, is a tomato a fruit is actually closest to what we are going to be talking about today. 
 
Sheila
Welcome to the Bare Marriage podcast. I'm Sheila Wray Gregoire from baremarriage.com,  where we like to talk about healthy, evidence-based biblical advice for your sex life and your marriage. I am joined today by my daughter, Rebecca Lindenbach, and this is the second of a three podcast arc where we're going to be looking at the big question of how a number of evangelical authors and organizations are trying to rewrite history, to deny the harm that they did in the past, and to redefine what it means to bear good fruit.
 
Because we've been pointing out that the fruit is rotten in a lot of their teachings. And today we're going to focus on what it means to bear good fruit. And one of the big ways that we do that here at Bare Marriage is we are evidence based. So we've done four huge studies. We've done the largest studies so far of evangelical marital and sexual satisfaction that have been done.
 
We have three peer reviewed articles with more on the way. We have turned them into five, big books, including our groundbreaking book, The Great Sex Rescue. And others; The Marriage You Want, She Deserves Better. Good Girls Guide to Great Sex, Good Guys Guide to Great Sex. And there's been a lot of buzz about that.
 
But our research has been fundamental to that. And there's been a group of people who have been helpful for our research, instrumental in our research. And so we just want to do a big thank you to our patron group, who supports us on a monthly basis, even for as little as $5 a month. And then they get to join our Facebook group where we have some awesome discussions.
 
And if you are in the United States, you can also give money through the Good Fruit Faith initiative of the Bosco Foundation and get a tax deductible receipt. And that funds our research. It funds our translation projects. We're working on a lot of stuff in Spanish right now. More information about that's going to be coming soon.
 
And so yeah, we're just trying to make an impact and you are the ones to help us do that. Okay. Becca, last week we were looking at how Dannah Gresh, we were using Dannah Gresh as an example.
 
Rebecca
But, it's really a lot of people in this space
 
Sheila
Yeah, it isn't only her, who are rewriting history and saying that I wasn't part of the harm.
 
Rebecca
Yeah. Who said like, yeah, purity culture hurts people because it taught this thing that I definitely didn't teach, even though it's been quoted from my book multiple times in multiple books.
 
Sheila
Yeah. And we'll be looking at that later in the podcast. But another thing that's happened lately, and I find this one really interesting, is that they have started debating with us on what fruit is.
 
Rebecca
They started talking about good fruit and defining good fruit in, in very convenient times for their points.
 
Sheila
Because one of the big things we say in all of our books is that we take Jesus at His word. And Matthew seven, he said that a bad tree can't be a good fruit, and a good tree can't bear bad fruit. And so you can judge things by their fruit. And we named our, we named the, the nonprofit in the US, the Good Fruit Faith initiative.
 
That Good Fruit Faith initiative supported the docu series, the video docu series that we put out earlier this year on Love and Respect. We've really run with this good fruit thing, and now we're starting to hear people reevaluate what fruit means so that it doesn't have to mean good outcomes anymore. And to explain, why don't we just let them say it in their own words?
 
Okay, so here is Juli Slattery speaking on her podcast Authentic Intimacy. When Dannah was the guest talking about the new version of her book, then, And The Bride Wore White and here's Juli.
 
Juli Slattery
I've heard the verse over and over again. Used. You got to look at the fruit of the tree. And if a teaching doesn't bear good fruit, if it makes some people miserable, it's a bad teaching. But when we actually look at when that passage is used, it's actually saying, look at the teacher of the fruit of a teacher's life.
 
Do they have the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, self-control? Yeah. So I think, you know, part of this is like you're saying, the discernment of what is the spirit behind the critique. And is it ultimately defining flourishing? Is reconciliation with God or something else?
 
Rebecca
Here's the thing that I found so shocking about that. The Bible actually, like, as much as we don't want the Bible to be clear. The Bible actually does present a very clear idea of what fruit is. And she said that's not what the Bible really said. But Jesus really says that. No. What if Jesus could say this?
 
And I'm like, it just sounds so much like how Scripture is twisted in scripture. Sure. Like the examples of when people are twisting scripture, when they take something where it's like, feed the poor. What do you really mean? That poor person, right? Yeah. Well, who.
 
Sheila
Is it my neighbor?
 
Rebecca
Right? Yeah. God, really say yeah, right. That's the vibe I got from that thing. Actually, you know what? It is very important. Yes. That all of us individually have the fruit of the spirit. That's not the issue of the fruit of your teachings. Yeah. And to say that it is, is doing. But did Jesus really?
 
Sheila
Because what she's really saying doesn't matter. The fruit of the teaching doesn't matter as long as the person is a good person.
 
Rebecca
But if the person is a good person, they're going to care if their teaching hurt people. Yeah. And so yeah, it doesn't even make sense.
 
Sheila
Yeah. Can I and can we actually look at the Bible for a minute?
 
Rebecca
Sure.
 
Sheila
Okay. Hold on just a second. Okay. I have my old lady glasses on now. I got to put them a little bit down my nose so that I could see, especially the grandma look is great. All right, so we're going to turn to Matthew seven where Jesus is talking about the fruit. And it's interesting to see what comes right before and what comes right after.
 
So the chapter opens with do not judge others. Right. But then it immediately says, don't throw your pearls before swine. And so it's like, how do you know they're swine unless you judge? So he's not.
 
Rebecca
He’s clearly not saying, you're not allowed to use judgment.
 
Sheila
Right.
 
Rebecca
Clearly. Still, we're allowed to use judgment.
 
Sheila
What he's saying is, you know, don't be a hypocrite. Yes. The point of that is don't be a hypocrite. If you're going to use a measure, make sure that you use the same one that you use on yourself. Right. And then he goes into, asks, seeks and knocks and he tells you a little bit about the nature of God.
 
And I think this is really important because he says that if your child asks for a fish, will he give him a snake? Will you give him a snake? And he's saying, God is like that. God wants to give good gifts to his children. Keep that in.
 
Rebecca
Even those who are evil know how to give good gifts to your son. How much more Heavenly Father you know, like that's the verse, right?
Sheila
And then he gives the golden rule and everything do to others as you would have them do to you. And then he talks about the narrow and the wide gate. Okay. And how there's this wide gate, and so many people are going into it, and there's a narrow gate, and not a lot of people find it. And then immediately after that he goes into the tree and its fruit.
 
And so the tree and its fruit comes in the middle of this discussion of the wide and the narrow road. And so he's saying, look, a lot of people are thinking that the wide way is right and it isn't. And the context of this, again, is that God wants to give good gifts to his children. All right. And then immediately after this, he talks about, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven.
 
And so there's a lot of people who genuinely think they are serving God who are not. And that verse used to scare me to death because I thought like, well, how would you know? How would you know? But then if you look at the rest of this chapter, this is how you know, we are serving a God who wants to give good gifts to his children, who wants his children to flourish, and who says, when you are trying to figure out if you're on the narrow or the wide path, the way you do it is you look at the fruit, the way, the way that you tell whether someone is teaching you something correctly is you look at the fruit, he is not saying you look at the teacher, he's saying you look at the fruit because there.
 
Rebecca
Teachers are all saying, Lord, Lord. Yeah, looks pretty good, doesn't it? Yeah. Going to enter the kingdom of heaven. That's what he's saying. Yeah.
 
Sheila
He's saying, he's saying, you know, Yeah. Like he says on that day, many will come to me and say, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not cast out demons in your name? And did we not do deeds of power in your name? These are people who were super productive for the name of Jesus, the church, the church numbers were going up because of these people.
And Jesus said, no, I didn't know you because you missed the whole point. You missed the whole point.
 
Rebecca
You kept putting burdens on people but with the Lord should be light, right? Not easy, but light.
 
Sheila
Yeah. And so like, I think that this is really clear that fruit is measurable. And that fruit points us that the kind of fruit that God is looking for is the fruit of flourishing and the fruit of people doing well. And we'll talk more about that as we talk to Joanna.
 
Rebecca
The thing that I always get from Matthew seven is that God gave us brains, and to assume we are not to use them is kind of insulting to God. Right. Like I, I look at all the stuff and I'm like yeah. So, God's saying listen, you have the information right in front of you.
 
You can trust that information. You know, how come your kids have good gifts? Why would you need that? God's out to punish you. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So, when you see people trying to redefine what good fruit means you have to ask why. But do they benefit from this? Right. Yeah. Why are they motivated to do this?
Sheila
Yeah, I do want to say one caveat here, which is I am not saying I don't believe in the prosperity gospel that, you know, bad things will never happen to you if you follow Jesus. I'm not saying that that, that that's not the correct interpretation of that passage. I think it's just it.
 
Rebecca
The person who said my burden is easy and my yoke is like also setting up your cross and follow me. Yeah, both of those things exist.
 
Sheila
Both those things can be true at the same time. Okay.
 
Rebecca
One more thing.
 
Sheila
Yes.
 
Rebecca
Before we go on to the next one. Because I think it also makes sense. I think often what people say when they try to critique our idea of good fruit is to say, well they just everyone just, they want if they say even one person's hurt that's toxic. And like no because we're not like stop insulting our intelligence. Like, yeah, writ large. Well yeah. Walnuts are poisonous to me. They are not poisonous to my sister for whom they were fantastic like when she was pregnant snack.
 
Sheila
Right.
 
Rebecca
They are healthy. Walnuts are objectively good for you. They are filled with fatty foods like healthy fats.
 
Sheila
Yes.
 
Rebecca
They fill you up. They're filled.
 
Sheila
With protein.
 
Rebecca
To get calories in like yeah, they are a fantastic food . Yeah. I have an Epi Pen There are teachings that are like walnuts. And then there are teachings that are rat poison.
 
Sheila
Yeah.
 
Rebecca
And we're saying rat poisons back. Yes. Oh, they just don't like to eat walnuts. I'm like no I would just like you to stop feeding my kids rat poison. Yeah. Yes. If my kid is allergic to walnuts.
I'd like you to not give the walnuts either. But you can do my other key walnuts. Like, we as a collective group, like we are allowed to recognize they're insulting our intelligence here. Yeah. These bad faith arguments. We've never said that the same advice needs to go for everyone. But what we have said is that there is advice that is just objectively toxic.
 
If you give rat poison to 20 people, ultimately, they're not all going to die. Right. They still eat something toxic.
 
Sheila
Yup.
 
Rebecca
Right.
 
Sheila
And the thing is, when we're talking about books, a lot of times the rat poison is mixed in with stuff that is good. Because you know what? Almost all Christian books tell you that you should be getting your joy from God and that God loves you. And these are good things and that God has a plan for you. Those are good things to believe. And so, we're reading some good things and some rat poison, and some people, when they're reading it, are going to kind of ignore the rat poison. And so, the book isn't going to do them as much harm. That doesn't mean the rat poison isn't rat poison. And so, you know, it's like that.
 
Rebecca
That was a smart cake to bring to the potluck.
 
Sheila
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And so that's what we're trying to say. So here you had this great example of someone who has heard our critiques about good fruit, and they're now trying to redefine good fruit. I want to play you something else. This is from the same person. This is from Juli Slattery. Again, this is four years ago when she appeared on Focus on the Family.
 
Sheila
Here we go.
 
Juli Slattery
As modern Christians, we want the fruit of a good marriage. We want our husband's love as well. We want him to help with the kids we want. We want to be good wives that encourage him. That's fruit. The root is what is God doing in my heart? And do I really trust that God is good?
 
Sheila
All right. So, what do you think of that one?
 
Rebecca
Well, apparently, she knew what good fruit was. Yeah. Fruit. Yeah. Because she did agree that Like having a good marriage and flourishing and, like, being involved with your children. Being a good parent being filled with the Holy spirit. She agreed to that four years ago. But now, it's about the teacher's personal life. Yeah. So, what's changed.
 
Sheila
Yeah exactly. And the thing that's changed is accountability and.
 
Rebecca
Yeah, being unwilling to deal with that.
 
Sheila
Yeah. And like we said in last week's podcast we did talk a little bit about Juli Slattery. I do think that of all the people, she's probably come the furthest. It's just the big thing that she seems to constantly be covering up for other people who are trying to avoid accountability. I remember when Josh Butler came out with that book Beautiful Union.
 
Rebecca
Unfortunately, I do remember all too well.
 
Sheila
The one that talked about how the semen is the Holy Spirit that you give deposits in her most holy place.
 
Rebecca
And who did not listen to our podcast that you are talking about are just going, what on earth am I listening to?
 
Sheila
Oh, it was insane. It was.
 
Rebecca
So much worse than you can.
 
Sheila
Possibly imagine. I'll put a link to my article on it in the podcast notes because it's really something to behold. But anyway, Josh Butler published this book. The world reacted with horror. It was one of those only times. It was actually a very fun time on the internet because you had these, like.
 
Rebecca
The SBC pastors and the progressive Christians were all.
 
Sheila
We were Kumbaya. We were all in agreement that this was gross. And, and the book got the book, and it went downhill really, really fast. But she, she, she tried to rehabilitate him. And so, she has this it just seems to be a consistent thing that she does when people are trying to avoid accountability, she shows up and gives them cover. And I don't understand why exactly. But here she's really trying to dismantle our argument. Which is that
 
Rebecca
Which is that the teachings, how they affect people actually matters. Yeah, but if they're a nice person, we shouldn't call them out. Yeah, yeah. But that is a take that you can only have if you are lucky enough to be rubbing shoulders for all the people in power with the 99% of Christians who aren't.
 
Sheila
Yeah, exactly. So, I thought what we could do is we could invite Joanna onto the podcast to talk about actual fruit and measure it.
 
Rebecca
And whether or not we are measuring.
 
Sheila
It properly Okay. Well, when we want to talk about fruit, we turn to Joanna Sawatsky, who is our stats person. She is the coauthor of, She Deserves Better and The Great Sex Rescue. She's  running all the stats for the book I am writing right now, called Fawn
 
Hello, Joanna.
 
Joanna
Hello. Hello.
 
Sheila
So, you know, we've been talking about this critique that we are saying. Good fruit is all about happiness, when really it should be about obedience. Yeah. And we thought, hey, I bet Joanna would have some super sassy things to say about that.
 
Joanna
I would like to start. As the former International Bible quizzer that I am.
 
Sheila
This is how we met you.
 
Joanna
That's my win. That's how I met my husband. Like, yeah, everything in my life I have is because of Bible quizzing. It's really quite funny. But one of the things I wanted to just point out is when we're like, well, we actually have to look at obedience. It's like, well, no, no. The whole point, Jesus says that we judge a tree by its fruit. Not that we judge a tree by the state of its xylem, phloem, bark or roots, or leaves. It's the fruit which is an outcome. It has to be different from the tree. Right. So, if the question is how does following the precepts of Jesus cause us to follow the purpose of Jesus?
 
Sheila
Yes. Yeah.
 
Joanna
What I think of the presupposition that's asking us to judge the tree by the tree, and actually we know that Jesus differentiated between the tree and the fruit because he cursed the fig tree.
 
Sheila
I was going to bring that up, too. I read a really great thread on this yesterday. Can I read part of that thread?
 
Joanna
Go for it.
 
Sheila
It was so good. Okay. And I will credit the person too.
 
Okay, so this is from, M.J. Langham on threads and, and he wrote like an eight and eight thread thing on the fig tree. And I will link it. I think it's eight. Maybe it's even more. Yeah, it's eight,
 
Jesus declares, therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit. And I'm reading from the middle of his thread. Israel had the appearance of spiritual life, but no proof. Its temple was a beautiful building, but empty of the spirit and full of treachery.
 
And the religious leaders were whitewashed, tombs full of dead men's bones, green trees without fruit. Jesus cursed the tree as a symbol of his judgment against Israel and its religious institution. Though they had been the Lord's cherished nation, they now had only the appearance of fruit and were tragically barren.
 
And then he goes on to talk about that. But yeah, that's exactly what it is. Right. So, you see this green tree that looks all like it should have fruit, but then it does it. And that's what Jesus got upset about. Yeah.
 
Joanna
Yes. And the other thing that's really interesting is that the tactic of saying, well, they're only looking at happiness. And I know that that's me being a little dismissive, but that is what they're saying. Yeah. And I would like to say two things about that. First of all, joy is a fruit of the spirit. And Christ promises us an abundant life. And I'm sorry the abundant life cannot mean you are miserable the whole time.
 
Sheila
Yeah, yeah.
 
Joanna
The abundant life means that your life is characterized by the fruits of the spirit, which include joy. Yeah. Joy is the. The Bible talks about being a cheerful giver. It talks about being. Having a joyful heart is good medicine. Like, of course we're supposed to shoot to be happy. Not in some hedonistic, short-sighted way, but in the deep, soul empowered, soul quenching way that the living waters of Christ give us. So first of all, I'm pro happiness. I think that's a cold take.
 
Sheila
Yeah. Yes.
 
Joanna
Secondly, I feel like we're saying that because we measured self esteem and we have a paper that came out about self esteem. Right. And I think that's easy to be like, well they're just talking about self esteem and so who cares right. Self-esteem is just loving yourself. Okay. So self esteem first of all in the psychological literature is correlated with like every good thing like we do want to have good self esteem. It is actually a beneficial thing for us to have writ large. So, there's that. But we're going to discount the scientific argument. And now I'm going to say it in a Jesus way, because I want us to notice this.
 
Because if I don't say, well, I'm just thinking about happiness. And they just talked about the other team; it had no what we looked at. Were the people in our survey able to see themselves as the daughters of the king that they are? Were they able to be in touch with the fact that they are image bearers who have a high and holy calling to be Jesus's hands and feet in the world?
 
It's the same thing. That's me using Jesus’ language or psychological language.
 
Sheila
Yep, yep.
 
Joanna
But we're looking at the same thing. We're just taking a different angle on the fruit. It's like if I took a picture of a fig with a wide-angle lens, and then I zoomed in on the fruit with a microscope and took a picture of how the cells looked. It's the same fruit.
 
Sheila
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And speaking of fruit, I thought that one of the really fun things that we could do. And this is what I assigned to you, Joanna, as I was thinking about this podcast, I called Joanna, and I said, they are saying that we are ignoring the spiritual and we are only talking about happiness when really that isn't the fruit that we should be worried about.
 
And so, I thought, well, what is the fruit that we should be worried about? And how better can you express it from the fruits of the spirit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control? I think I got those in the right order.
 
Rebecca
Yes, you said it.
 
Sheila
The two International Bible quizzes do agree.
 
Joanna
I know multiple songs.
 
Rebecca
I know I gotta have love, joy, peace, patience, something that I have in my head.
 
Joanna
All the slugs and bugs one is actually very good. That's a new one that my kids to grow up with.
 
00:21:23:20 - 00:21:49:00
Speaker 1
And, And so I asked you, do we have questions that coincide with, with each of the fruits of the spirit? And can we see how those questions are affected by how people make decisions, but whether they're complementarian or egalitarian? Because so many of these critiques, of course, have been coming from people who are reacting to us saying that complementarianism bears bad fruit and egalitarianism bears good fruit.
 
Sheila
So, you called me yesterday and you said, Sheila, I have a hot take.
 
Joanna
I have a take. So, I was looking and I was like, okay, I'm going to use this question for a piece that I'm going to use this question for. And then I was looking at the scales that we had in, the survey we did for The Marriage You Want, and I realized something, which is that, well, actually, it was that I was struggling between goodness and kindness because a lot of the items worked for both. Yeah. I realized that I was pulling questions, like, entirely from this one scale that I love very deeply. It's called the trust and close Relationship Scale. We used it a lot in the Marriage You Want. It wasn't mostly we used, as our outcome variable, the marital flourishing scale, but all the scales for marital satisfaction. They all travel together. They're highly correlated.
 
Rebecca
Yeah.
 
Sheila
So, we used to be clear. We used different scales. We talked about this in the marriage. You want to judge marital satisfaction. So, what they're saying that we did was we said to people hey are you happy in your marriage? That's actually not what we did.
 
Joanna
I mean, one item from the couples’ satisfaction Index is more or less, are you happy in your marriage? Yeah. There's just like 20 other questions in that. Exactly. And it's been highly validated in the psychological literature. So yeah.
 
Sheila
So, we didn't, we didn't, we didn't reinvent the wheel. You took scales that had already been used, had already been validated, had already been shown. Yes. This is a really good measure of trust in close relationships. And we used those scales in our survey. And yeah.
 
Joanna
Yeah. So, then I was like, oh well actually here's what we're going to do. We're going to take a peek at the different items in the scale. And actually, they work for multiple fruits because, who would have thought that if you're kind, you might also be good or patient, which is annoying because patience is the one that I am. I personally, on the struggle bus with, but anyway, let us go through the trust and close relationship scale, and we'll see which fruits we think each one measures. And then we're going to look at what happens, when we know how that fruit differs by different outcomes. How do trees lead to fruit? Okay.
 
My partner has proven to be trustworthy, and I am willing to let them engage in activities which other spouses find too threatening.
 
Rebecca
Now self-control.
 
Joanna
And faithfulness.
 
Sheila
And faithfulness.
 
Joanna
Faithfulness. Yes. Yeah. And probably good is probably all of these are goodness honesty.
 
Rebecca
I mean I think goodness is so I was going to say I think that we can assume goodness.
 
Joanna
Yeah. So just everybody adds one to the score for each of these items. For goodness we're going to keep going. All right. Yeah. Even when I don't know how my spouse will react, I feel comfortable telling them anything about myself, even those things of which I am ashamed.
 
Rebecca
Gentleness
 
Joanna
and kindness
 
Rebecca
and love. Yeah, I think peace as well.
 
Joanna
Yeah.
 
Rebecca
Bringing peace.
 
Sheila
Yeah. The thought that you can share, the thought that you can be truly vulnerable with your spouse is a real gift.
 
Joanna
Yes, it is for sure. So, it's such a powerful question.
 
Though times may change in the future is uncertain. I know my spouse will always be ready and willing to offer me strength and support.
 
Sheila/Rebecca
Faithfulness, peace. Love. Love.
 
Sheila
Yeah. That's kindness too. Yes. Okay
 
Rebecca
It's a lot of them.
 
Joanna
Like, oh, we're looking at a lot of fruits with just one question. I feel uncomfortable when my spouse has to make decisions which affect me personally. This one obviously we're looking for is a polarity flip.
 
Rebecca
So, this would be a lack of kindness, a lack of,
 
Joanna
Self-Control.
 
Rebecca
Lack of righteousness, probably.
 
Joanna
So, we're lacking goodness.
 
Sheila
If we're lacking good things.
 
Joanna
Even when my spouse makes excuses which sound rather unlikely, I am confident that they are telling the truth.
 
Rebecca
Yep. So that would be trustworthiness.
 
Sheila
That's Faithfulness, righteousness.
 
Joanna
Yeah. I have found that my spouse is dependable when it comes to things which are important to me.
 
Rebecca
Faithfulness.
 
Sheila
Yeah. Yep, yep.
 
Joanna
Whenever we have to make an important decision in a situation we have never encountered before, I know my spouse will be concerned about my welfare.
 
Rebecca
Okay, kindness, goodness, I'm just him. All of us. All of us. Yeah. Self-control. Because you have self-control to care about someone else other than yourself. Yes, righteousness, like.
 
Joanna
All of them. Yeah. Even if I have no reason to expect my spouse to share things with me, I still feel certain that they will.
 
Sheila
Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's just trusting your spouse. Yeah. I got to trust and close relationship scales. Yeah.
 
Rebecca
That's just faithfulness too.
 
Sheila
Yeah. Yeah.
 
Joanna
I can rely on my spouse to react in a positive way when I expose my weaknesses to them.
 
Rebecca
Love kindness gentleness.
 
Sheila
And patience as well. Right.
 
Joanna
Yeah. Yes. When I share my problems with my spouse I know they will respond in a loving way. Even before I say anything.
 
Sheila
Love.
 
Rebecca
Oh yeah. Yeah.
 
Joanna
I am certain that my spouse would not cheat on me even if the opportunity arose and there was no chance they would get caught.
 
Rebecca
Self-control and.
 
Sheila
Faithfulness. Yeah. There you go. Righteousness. Yeah.
 
Rebecca
Righteousness. I just like that stuff.
 
Joanna
I sometimes avoid my spouse because they are unpredictable. And I fear saying or doing something which might create conflict.
 
Rebecca
A lack of peace, a lack of self-control, a lack of gentleness, a lack of a lack of all the fruits.
 
Sheila
And I want to point out something here, too, that people may not realize is that, in question sets and surveys. They often do that when they switch, which is good or bad, because it's one of the ways that you can measure.
 
Rebecca
It is because it makes sure that you don't get, you don't prime people towards a certain. Yeah, there's a whole bunch of reasons for it. Yeah. But one of them is if you're reading it and, they're all positive and your kind of going, absolutely agree. Absolutely agree. Absolutely agree. You can kind of get into a bit of a. We are on autopilot.
 
Yeah. And then you're not reading them. And so, it also is a way that we can check for reliability. We can check to make sure they actually were reading the questions if they answer the ones that have a negative polarity differently than those that have a positive polarity.
 
Sheila
So yeah, there's a lot to it. I just do people like nerding out on this stuff. So, I just thought I'd mention that.
 
Joanna
Okay. We love getting into the weeds.
 
 I can rely on my spouse to keep the promises they make to me.
 
Sheila
Faithfulness. Faithfulness?
 
Joanna
Yes, all of them. When I am with my spouse, I feel secure in facing new, unknown, new situations. Peace.
 
Rebecca
Peace comes. Peace
 
Sheila
I think that's also gentleness. Like when you're with your spouse, when you feel secure, it's usually because they're. Yeah, often.
 
Joanna
Because of what I just pointed out. Also, that the one thing that we had the least measure of in this particular scale is joy. Now, we cover joy in lots of other survey instruments, but this one in particular, the fruit that it measures the least is joy, because they didn't make a fruit of the spirit scale. It's a trust in close relationship scale that just happens to overlap with the fruits of the spirit.
 
Because wouldn't you know, Paul pointed it out pretty well against such things. There is no law. Everybody likes this stuff. It's good for you.
Sheila
Yes. And so and so. I just want people to see that this argument that people are making is that we are making way too big a deal about marital happiness. And we're not talking about faithfulness and people's obedience to Christ is crap.
 
Joanna
Because it's an excuse to not have to deal with our actual argument. Right? So instead of saying, well, here's why I think, I don't know, obligation sex isn't as bad as you make it out to be, because that's really hard, that's a big lift, bro.
 
Rebecca
Hard sell.
 
Joanna
Yeah, that bro.
 
Rebecca
Hard sounds like. I know you think you should have good sex. Here's why you have bad sex.
 
Joanna
Having bad sex is not horrible. Great. So, you say you maybe make something up about our survey methodology.
 
Sheila
Yep.
 
Joanna
Yeah. Right. And that happens all the time because instead of looking at our peer reviewed articles, we make stuff up about how we did things or we downplay our success.
 
Sheila
Other people. When you talk about other people, you mean we
 
Joanna
Say we talked about others I'm talking about them. Yes. I'm using we like as we do, as.
 
Rebecca
I wish . French is so much better. French has an article. Yes, yes. What? So. Yeah.
 
Sheila
Yeah.
 
So? So anyway, we have this trust on a close relationship scale, which truly is measuring both happiness and like, spiritual fruit.
 
Rebecca
It's frankly measuring obedience to Christ. And that's it's so funny when they're like they just care about if people are happy, not about obedience. And I'm like, no, we care about if you're someone who is faithful in your marriage, it's safe for people to talk to who can take feedback, who's humble, who's gentle, who's kind, who's faithful, who's self-controlled, who's trustworthy, who's patient, who's loving, who's like. Those are the things that we are meant to be in obedience to Christ. And so now that we've established that, yes, we showed that their complaint just doesn't really have any actual real foundation. Let's talk about the stuff they don't want to talk about. How do the outcomes of this scale, which is in essence, just measuring whether or not you possess the fruits of the spirit, how does that change based on decision making in America?
 
Joanna
Yeah. So, and one of the things I want to say is that we are not here talking about why women should make unilateral decisions in their marriages, and I actually ran that too. So, we're looking at unilateral decisions by either spouse. And then we're also going to look at collaborative decision making. And then we're also going to look at collaborative decision making where just this is about like the last time you had to make a big decision.
 
If you came to an impasse and you simply could not find a mutually agreeable solution. Okay. And what I did is I took the trust and close relationship scale, and I just, I multiplied it so that it went instead of going from, I think it was like 0 to 36 or something like that, I just rescaled it.
 
So, I went from 0 to 100, just so that it's really easy for us to get a sense for where the numbers are that's completely statistically valid. I just multiplied everything by a multiplier. It's fine. Okay, so, when we look at women, here's what we find. The highest trust and close relationship are an 80 on average is for people who made decisions collaboratively.
 
Then there's a big drop. These two are not significantly different. Even though there is a numerical difference. If the woman decides after a discussion the score on average is 63.75. If the man decided post discussion it was 58.31.
 
Rebecca
So, both those are big drops. So, it doesn't matter who's in charge. If anyone is in charge, you're seeing at least like around a 17-point drop.
 
Joanna
Yeah. Yeah.
 
Sheila
And I just want to stress that there in our surveys we found far more instances of male unilateral decision making than female. And the reason that we talk about male unilateral decision making is that it is that complementarians teaches that.
 
Joanna
Yeah. There's nobody walking around saying that, you know, what needs to happen is that women need to make all the decisions.
 
Sheila
God that God told women.
 
Rebecca
Yeah, God. And so those two like whether or not the man or the woman makes decisions, those are statistically significant from each other. Right. Doesn't matter.
 
Joanna
They're not, yeah. Doesn't matter who did it, but they are statistically.
 
Rebecca
Significantly different from.
 
Joanna
The group above. And just to be.
 
Rebecca
Clear, you said it wasn't Statistically significant.
 
Joanna
Yeah. Sorry sorry.
 
Rebecca
Sorry. It's not statistically significant. Doesn't in essence, it doesn't really matter which sex is the one making the unilateral decision. Unilateral decision making is simply bad. Which means all these people who also were saying that like, well, it is God's design, so it's better than like a matriarchy is also wrong. Yeah, yeah. Like it doesn't matter who has unilateral decision-making power. It is wrong. And if this were truly God's design, would it be damaging people?
 
Joanna
Yeah, yeah yeah. Now interestingly the next drop we're down to 48.5. Is collaborative decision making. But they can't decide on a mutually agreeable solution.
 
Rebecca
Yes. Which makes sense.
 
Joanna
Yeah. That's also lacking an important relational skill. And some sort of there's something that's missing or wrong. And then we have for the women man this scale goes down the tubes. It's bad news for these two. It doesn't matter if the man or the woman is doing it there. There's no statistically significant difference between those two. But if they make unilateral decisions without a discussion, if the woman makes the decisions, the mean is 27.56. And if the male makes a decision without discussions, it is 24.94, so.
 
Rebecca
Oh, so you know what that tells me, is what's happening in a lot of people's marriages. Yeah, yeah. Say that you have two people who don't have good social skills. They don't have good relationship skills. They're not emotionally mature people. They are not able to come to a decision together. What are the different reasons that that could happen?
 
First of all, you could have an abusive man and a woman who is no longer putting up with it. Yeah. And who simply. And we have a lot of those people. That's a lot of people who are abusive or are married. It doesn't matter. One partner is abusive and the other partner is no longer kowtowing and submitting to whatever it is.
 
Joanna
They're not abusive. They might just be non-rational and unwilling to change. They may just be really well.
 
Rebecca
That was the next one. The next one was just flat-out immaturity. Yeah, just flat-out immaturity. They're not rational. They're not willing to do something. Maybe they have something really big. That's a huge stressor going on in their life. And so frankly, they're just not able to have the capacity to handle big marital conflict right now. There's also that like there's all these answers for why someone might be in that category where they believe in collaborative decision making when their answers are but they're not able to come to conclusions together. Right. There's all sorts of answers. So, when the church comes in and says, we have the answer, and the answer is he makes a decision, it feels better.
 
Sheila
Yeah.
 
Rebecca
Because you go to 58 from a 42 or whatever it is.
 
Joanna
Yes. Ten points.
 
Rebecca
Yes, ten points. It gets ten points better. It feels better and that's enough to make you think this is the right thing. Yeah, right. We used to try to make decisions together and it didn't work. And so, then we went to our church, and they taught us about male headship and women's mission. And now we're so much better.
 
I'm like, you're still barely passing the class. Yeah. There. And then the other answer was always there. Learn emotional regulation skills, learn relationship skills, improve your social skills, and learn to actually collaboratively make decisions where you actually can come to a conclusion together. Accept that one or both of you is being selfish when addressing whether or not there are dysfunctional or abusive dynamics, but just saying, well, the man needs to make the decisions.
 
Yeah, that's why so many people get roped into this, and that's why so many people say that love and respect helped them, because it did help them. They had a freaking 43 and that's like a 56. Yeah, that's not a celebration like we need. We God calls us to life abundant. Not you're going to barely not get divorced by the skin of your teeth.
 
Like this stuff is not that it's not supposed to be. And then you'll follow Christ and it will get marginally better. But you'll have to continue to gaslight yourself for the rest of your life, because everyone around you who's doing it differently and you think isn't following Jesus the right way, is actually experiencing the benefits of the fruit of the spirit, and you're not.
 
Sheila
Yeah.
 
Rebecca
I think that often people think that the egalitarian viewpoint is simply that, like. All the time, if everyone always makes this, there's always going to be better. It's like, no, the egalitarian viewpoint actually accepts the nuance that some people are really immature, or selfish in a way that the complementarian viewpoint does not know because we're like, not yeah, your marriage sucks, bro.
 
We are not lying about that. You need to learn to improve because you cannot railroad your wife, even if it would be easier and it would feel better for you because there's something even better for you out there. And we're not going to let you do something that damages your soul and damages your relationship because it damages your soul and relationship less than the other thing you were doing.
 
That's not acceptable. Not when there's an option out there which actually causes flourishing for everyone. One of them is getting an A, one of them is getting an A grade. The others are celebrating a D. Yeah.
 
Sheila
And I think the other thing is that people will say as.
 
Joanna
Say, and to be clear, a grade in Canada is different than in university, is different than a grade in the States. Just when to say that they get a different you know. Yeah, a Canadian A.
 
Sheila
But I do want to say that I think that a lot of our critics will say, well, yes, but it's just that you're measuring egalitarianism who never
 
Rebecca
That's a pretty big decision.
 
Sheila
You know, like one of us was prepared. One of us felt like we needed to let him go, and one of us felt like we couldn't, and thankfully, that decision was taken out of our hands in some ways. But that was big. And that was really hard at one of the worst times of our lives. But we figured it out, you know, or decisions on where to move to or decisions on.
 
Rebecca
Even in the last couple months are not nearly as big as what you guys had dealt with. But Connor and I have had all sorts of decisions that have to do with things like we had to renovate a whole bunch of stuff, and we had to make very big money decisions. And what are we prioritizing? What are we not prioritizing?
 
What's this year's project? What's an anothers year project? The kinds of things that I'll be very honest about. My friends will talk to me about how they cannot get to those conclusions together. And I'm like, we just do. Yeah. And that's the kind of thing where if you have a lot of these scales and a lot of this stuff, and I think this is what people are not willing to recognize because it requires you actually change is what we are measuring is whether or not you have emotional health and relational skills, and those things are actually a result of the fruit of the spirit.
 
Yeah. And that's what's really tricky to recognize is, you know, if your relationships are constantly going badly, if you're always struggling, that means something is likely wrong and not to overly spiritualize it. That's not what I mean. What I'm not saying is. So, if you have a bad marriage, you need to read your Bible more. That's not and that's not necessarily what I'm saying.
 
What I am saying is that we have taken a really wonderful tool that God has given us to point us towards introspection. That is meant to be a sanctifying agent. And we have shut it down. We have cut it off at the knees. We have said, well, no, you just need to submit. And what we've done is we've silenced the Spirit's voice, because I firmly believe that discomfort in these areas where we can feel the lack of spiritual fruits is a way that the spirit talks to us, and that is an easy way for us to realize something's wrong here.
 
I need to change. I need to realize the truth of my situation, and a lot of complementarian churches has come around and just neutralized people against the Spirit's prompting in the name of complimentary theology. Because when you look at what we're measuring here, we are measuring the fruits of the spirit present. And if you're unhappy in your marriage and you go to just a complementarian viewpoint now, you might feel happy enough to get by, but you're still not showing the fruits of the spirit in the same way that the people who actually did the hard work to learn those skills are experiencing And the Christian walk is one of hard work, and we need to be willing to address that.
 
Joanna
And also, it gets better, right? Like, yeah, you get the fruit of the spirit and then you're happier as you have fortunately, more peace like those are all good things.
 
Rebecca
Yes. Why? Burden is easy and my yoke is light.
 
Sheila
And I think the other thing that complementarians need to grapple with is that when you tell people when you can't agree on something in marriage, he makes the final decision. What does it do is short circuit conflict resolution?
 
Joanna
I was just about to just say that.
 
Sheila
Yeah. And so, we saw a lot of evidence of this in some of our other questions. And we won't get into the weeds too much. But we saw a lot of evidence of this in our service and in our focus groups too, where, you know, people have some who bring something up, they can't agree in the first hour. So, he says, well, I guess this is one of those instances where I just need to make the decision where God is calling me to take leadership and exercise my headship and lead this family, whereas if you didn't have that escape valve, you would have had to sit in that discomfort.
 
Rebecca
For days, weeks for.
 
Sheila
More and figure it out together and maybe consult other people, pray about it for a while, do more research. You know, whatever it might take. And, and people who don't believe in complementarianism have learned those skills and have and because of that, they have learned to listen to the Holy Spirit more. They've learned to wrestle with the Holy Spirit more. And guess what? They tend to be a lot happier. And, and, you know, we've been married. How many years have we been married? 35, 35 years this year. And he's never had to make the final decision because we just figure it out. And sometimes the way you figure it out is like it is. You say, you know what? And I do this all the time. Like, I had a tick. I had a tick last week, where I.Found it.
 
Rebecca
For people who are privileged enough to live in areas that don't have Lyme disease. Those are small, gross arachnids that burrow into your skin and give you diseases.
 
00:43:46:12 - 00:44:04:10
Speaker 1
And I found one in the shower, and I appropriately freaked out. And anyway, a whole bunch of stuff happened, and the doctor offered me an antibiotic treatment if I wanted it. And I said to Keith, do I want it? And he's like, well, I mean, there's these risks and there's that risk. What do you think? And I'm like, no, no, no, you are the doctor. You tell me this to you because you no longer want it. And they said, yeah, I think you do. And I'm like, okay. And yeah, like and there's some, there's some places where I'm just like, you know, more than me. I want you to make this decision. And he does the same thing with me. Yeah. When it's stuff that I know more about, you care more about.
 
Rebecca
That's a big one.
 
Sheila
For me and I. Yeah, if you like, if it's something to do with the kitchen. I love baking, I love cooking. So, if it's something to do with the kitchen I'm going to get to, to make the decision because I'm the one who has to live with it. Right? I mean, like it's just little things like that. It doesn't mean that you always see things the right way or the same way. It's that you just sit you, you wrestle it through and you're like, okay, what makes the most sense here? You know, and I also.
 
Joanna
I would like to, to bring it back to my other obsession. My obsessions are, as you know, statistics and Jane Austen. And I just recorded our Patreon book club has been going very in a very detailed manner through Pride and Prejudice, because I cannot help myself. And if you want a close reading of Pride and Prejudice with lots of commentary on where people suck and me giggling at how silly Lady Catherine is and, you know, maybe a discussion of what her job would be like if she were alive today?
 
Come join us on the Patreon. That plug aside, we just talked about Darcy's first proposal, which is, as we all know, a very big hot mess. Yes. And then Darcy and Lizzy proceed to have a giant fight. The just is a headache, and he has come in and not been thoughtful about how she's feeling. Her head has been pounding, and it is fully his fault that she has this terrible headache because she's been crying about her sister, whose life he ruined accidentally.
 
Like it was actually justifiable. But still, he did ruin her life from this perspective. And so yes, she's been crying her eyes out now. She has a headache; she doesn't have Advil. He walks and he proposes. He does a bad job. She tells him off. He leaves and writes her a letter explaining why he was actually right. And dang it, he actually was.
 
But she's right that he did everything very poorly and that his methodology sucked. And you know what? They both completely change how they act because of that fight. Yes, yes, because of that fight, he fully changed. That man is like, no, I need to be better. Not because I want to get Lizzy, but because I want to be a better person.
 
And then he does and she goes, crap. I thought that I was a super thoughtful person and able to see all the nuances. And I've been fully missing it because I was blinded by my own partiality and by my selfishness. Brutal. They both take a really hard look at themselves and make major changes. But you know what would have happened if they hadn't had that fight?
 
They would have both stayed less mature. And that's the hard thing is sometimes, I'm sorry you do need to have that fight. Yeah, sometimes it's better and it's not about fighting unfairly or whatever. But sometimes conflict is good, sometimes conflict makes you change, and sometimes actually having to go through the steps of saying, hey, this isn't okay, and I'm not going to try to say it in ten words and dance around the problem and hint that perhaps and say oh, or say, oh, I can't be his Holy Spirit. I can't point out what's actually wrong in my marriage. Like, no, you're allowed to say, hey, this isn’t cool bro. But we need to fix this. We need to do better at that. You can do better. But it's because this is a shortcut. Okay. What's the saying in the Lord of the rings? Shortcuts make long delays.
 
Sheila
Yeah.
 
Joanna
Right. And you didn't even get a moral blade that you could use against the witch king of Angmar.
 
Rebecca
Okay. Actually. Okay. Just got a worse marriage.
 
Sheila
Yeah. And what we need to do in the Patreon group after you finish Pride and Prejudice is you need to work through the other Bennet sisters because it was awesome.
 
Joanna
I don't want to because I like the characters in the book, and they changed them a lot. And that's how.
 
Sheila
Okay, but Mr. Collins is amazing.
 
Joanna
He was amazing in the show.
 
Sheila
Oh my gosh, look. No, but it's just that I was blown away. And so, I'm sure that of everything people comment on in this podcast, the other Bennet sister will be the big one. So, tell me what you thought of episode seven, everybody in the scene with Mary and Mr. Collins. Because that killed me. Just kill me in the best way possible. Okay? Okay. Thank you. Joanna,  Well, we'll bring you back again soon.
 
Rebecca
It does seem like a lot of these teachers are really nice in their personal lives, that they're positive members in their community, that they're kind. Yeah. They're probably pretty gentle. Just like Juli said, the teachers themselves are lovely. I'm sure they are. Yeah, but that's not what we're talking about. And to change the definition of what Jesus said, because it helps you and your buddies feel better about themselves, I think I would take that very seriously.
 
Sheila
Yeah. And I also want to say, because I do believe that what Juli Slattery was saying about fruit was, was against us. Yeah. The insinuation is that there's something wrong with our characters because we're coming after the authors who have said these things. And I just find that such a warped way of looking at this whole thing, because when we're saying, hey, your words in this book hurt hundreds of thousands of people and they say, we're being mean by pointing that out.
 
Jesus said that you leave the 99 to go after the one. Yeah, like Jesus said, that the one is so important that we go after them. We're not even asking you to leave the 99 to go after the one. We're asking you to leave, the one to go after the hundreds of thousands.
 
Rebecca
Yeah, well, it's not even left the one to bring the one into the flock as well. Yeah. To be living in truth. But not saying you have to abandon anyone. It's like, hey Dannah, you are so free to deconstruct those.
 
Sheila
Yeah.
 
Rebecca
Like but these and there's no. And also, like the one was in danger. That was the point. It wasn't about the number. It was that if a shepherd has 99 sheep and the nine that are said to be safe, but the one that is being hurt, is being harmed in danger, he's going to leave them. He's going to go find the one, the good shepherd goes and saves all of his flock from danger. Yeah, well they're saying, well, I've got my favorite lamb is fine. Yeah, let's screw everyone else.
 
Sheila
Yeah. And I just, I find that I find that incredible. We will hear more about that next week on the third installment. But for today I want to bring on another guest, who has written, recovering from Purity Culture, a great book about purity culture and talks a lot about the book. And the Bride Wore White, and I just wanted to get her take on what was happening.
 
Well, I am so thrilled to welcome back to the podcast, Doctor Camden Morgante, who is the author of Recovering from Purity Culture. Hello, Camden.
 
Dr Camden
Hi, Sheila. Thanks for having me back. It's good to reconnect with you.
 
Sheila
And for those of you on YouTube, you can look forward to this book. Forward was written.
by Sheila Wray Gregoire of Recovery from Purity Culture. It's just a wonderful book. For those of you who grew up like Camden did in the midst of all of all of these messages. And, Camden, we're talking today about, the idea of bad fruit and, and good fruits and how sometimes a lot of these classic purity culture books actually bore a lot of bad fruit. And one of the things that I really got from reading your book was how much And The Bride Wore White played a role in your own story, but also in the things that you see. So, can you tell us what your take is on that book?
 
Camden
Yeah. I was so glad you asked me to do this podcast with you, because when I found out that they were reprinting And The Bride Were White in the sixth edition, I was just thinking like, why are we still doing this? Like, why are we still listening to the same voices? The people who pretty much ordered and perpetuated purity culture are now supposed to be like the healers.
 
For those who are, you know, trying to heal from a culture that should not be like. And so, I just got really mad about it because The Bride Were White was really the number one book that haunts me. It was Purity Culture. Most people will say I kissed goodbye or they'll name another book like that.
 
But for me, it really was. And The Bride Wore White because I really latched on to the fairy tale myth that she presented. She uses a lot of language in the, and the addition that I read a lot of language of like, princesses and, you want to have the dress of a princess and the kingdom of a princess in the conduct of a princess.
 
Like just a lot of promises of you'll get your fairy tale spouse, you'll get your beautiful marriage, you'll get an amazing sex life. And then that became what I now call the fairy tale myth and the flipped switch myth that once you get married, sex is going to be a blast. She actually said that, and a quote that I took from and quoted in my book, if you wait, it will Sex will be exciting. It will be a blast. The blessing was more than we hoped for.
 
Sheila
Yes.
 
Camden
I truly believe that when we save ourselves, he's able to bless us immeasurably beyond what we could have imagined within our sex lives, she said. And like, well, true that God can, bless you, of course. Or that, like you, not everybody who came out of purity culture has a difficult time in their sex life. That's just that's not the norm for sex would be a blast or exciting or, immeasurably blessed. You know, right away. And so, I think all of that just set up a lot of false promises that I saw myself having to grapple with and deal with. And then I saw my clients, too.
 
Sheila
Yeah, yeah. What you do in Recovering from Purity Culture, you have the five big purity culture myths that you take on, one by one. And in the fairy tale myth, which is myth two, you actually opened that chapter with a quote from, And the Bride Wore White as well. So here I'm going to read this quote that you have. From the moment I wrote my shopping list for him. I never dated a guy for a second time unless he met the criteria on that list.
I am happy to say that eventually God did bring me a man into my life, who was everything I dreamed of in that list. It was really neat to write. You are everything across the list and presented to him one day. One day you will probably find the special one God has created just for you. Until then, pray for him.
 
Camden
Okay? Yeah..
 
Sheila
That had a harsh like that's a harsh message for single women.
 
Camden
Yes. Yeah. I have that one because that just epitomizes what my experience was like because I read in The Bride Wore White I was probably 11 or 12 maybe when I read it and like I made my list, like, I.
 
Sheila
Sure, you were one of those little precocious girls who was reading all like the other, but I was too. Yeah.
 
Camden
Right. Yeah, my mom bought it for me, and, and I Kissed Dating Goodbye. And I read that, and I made my list because I was all about wanting to be a good girl, you know, firstborn oldest daughter, like, just wanting to be and wanting to honor God and, like, just be, you know, good in his eyes.
 
And so, I made my list of, like, all these qualities I wanted in a future husband. And what you do when you read something like that at 12 is you don't read it with nuance and you don't read it, especially when it's not written with nuance. You don't read it as this is just this one person's story. You read it as a formula of if I follow this, then this will work for me too, because it worked for this author and she wrote a whole book about it.
 
And so. Yeah. So, I made my list and I prayed about it and I thought, well as long as I, you know, save myself for marriage and do things the right way, God's going to give me this whole list. And then that didn't happen as I shared, you know, some of my story in my book is I went through a really big heartbreak in college with my first serious relationship that I thought was the person I thought I was going to marry. And we broke up, and then I was single for the rest of my 20s until I met my husband, and we got married when I was 30, which is pretty late in evangelicalism. And so, like spending most of my 20s single and just wondering where was this promise that that Dannah promised me if I did all the right things and I have?
 
And where is it? You know, what does that mean for my faith? What does that mean for how I feel toward God? What does that mean for how I feel towards purity, even.
 
Sheila
You know, when we played a clip last week on the podcast where Bob Gresh at Cedarville University was quite upset at the critics, and he was saying, stop saying that a book harmed you.
 
Camden
Yeah, yeah, they actually quoted me in that chapel, like they pulled up an article I've written about the five minutes of purity culture and quoted me and brought up parts of the article before my book had been written. I think it's just it's such a lack of humility and such a lack of willingness to look at themselves because even in the new edition of the book and in podcast where I've heard Dannah talk about the new edition, she does say that purity culture got some things wrong, but she never admits that she was one of the authors of purity. Yeah, like that. She was one of the creators of the things that went wrong. Like she. Yeah, she wants to blame it as this kind of external third thing outside of her, instead of really admitting, like she had a huge part in that she's not the only person like to blame, but she had a huge part in that.
 
I mean, she likes books about modesty. She has ministries just about modesty that are still going on today. I see ads for them, even in my old town, down the street at a church, down the street. And it makes me so mad that that is still going on to harm another generation of girls. Because that's what she doesn't take responsibility for.
 
Sheila
Yeah, it's one of the things she does too, is she is she. She claims that the harm of purity culture was that it equated virginity with purity. And instead, what she wants to do in this new edition is talk about holiness and how we should be pursuing holiness. She also says that she was the one who started raising the alarm about this, and she never equated virginity with purity because she herself had lost her virginity to a boy when she was 15. And so how could she be one of these proponents? Was that your take when reading And The Bride Wore White, that she was not equating virginity with purity?
 
Camden
That was not my take. Yeah. I mean, I just don't know that she ever explicitly said that that's true. But she did say, here's a quote. God asks us to prize our virginity and hold it up as our only blood covenant.
 
Sheila
I was about to say that quote too.
 
Camden
I really like that.
 
I yeah.
 
Sheila
So, I got so excited about that, that I kind of overshadowed it. So why don't you read it again?
 
Camden
Oh, okay. Okay. God asks us to prize our virginity and hold it up as our only blood covenant to him. And there's a lot of emphasis on virginity and bleeding on your wedding night as a blood covenant to God when not every woman bleeds the first time, they have sex. And also, like, it's just very strange, the heavy emphasis on bleeding and the hymen and the wedding night, and that this is a sign of a covenant. Yeah, it's very strange.
 
There was also no mention of, like, if it could be painful and what to do then and you know, all the work that you've done on how purity culture can contribute to increased rates of sexual pain for women. So yeah, I feel like that quote implies that virginity is purity, even though she never explicitly says that she does admit that she wasn't a virgin when she got married and that God, you know, could forgive her and still use her, which is absolutely true.
 
But yeah, it's strange that she doesn't see or take responsibility for the ways that her teachings came across, even if that wasn't her intent. I know we speak a lot. Both of us speak a lot about how, like, impact is more important than intent. You know, even if it wasn't to teach girls that their purity and virginity were synonymous, that was the impact it had.
 
And you need to listen to the people who are sharing that impact and try to understand them, rather than just listening to the positive stories. And of the impact of your book, because she and Bob love to talk about that. And how many people have been helped by their book. And there's just a lot more to the story than that.
 
Sheila
Yeah. So, Camden, you're a psychologist, a PhD psychologist now, and you have a practice. And one of the things that you specialize in is recovery from purity culture. Hence the title of your book. And again, we are going to put the link to Camden's book in the podcast notes so that you can get it and take a look.
 
It's really wonderful. It's not only about analyzing purity culture, but it actually is a step-by-step guide to help walk you through what a therapist would do, essentially, to help you if you are struggling with a lot of these aftereffects. But can you tell us how this shows up in your therapist's office? Obviously, there's privileged information that you can't share, but just in general terms, how does this show up in your clients?
 
Camden
Yeah, sure, sure. So, I shared a little bit about my story, and that's some of what I hear in clients too. Is this just disillusionment and disappointment? If I did everything right and then this is what happened. You know, one friend of mine describes it as like this bargain that God wrote, but then he didn't fulfill. His end of the bargain is how she felt, because of these promises. And so, when there is prolonged singleness, unwanted prolonged singleness, or when there is difficulty with sexual intimacy in your marriage, or a difficult and unfulfilling marriage that can feel like, why did I like, why did I wait for this? You know, none of that was worth it.
 
And so, it can cause people to start to question their faith or just their, again, their beliefs about sex and about purity and what the whole point of it was. And I also see all the sexual problems that you talk about in the Great Sex Rescue. You know, I see higher rates of sexual pain. I treat a lot of that. I treat a lot of low sexual desire and, difficulty having an orgasm like all of that is, is kind of the bread and butter of what I see for my purity culture clients. Very typical for them to have experienced all that, because when you've been told for decades that sex is for the man, he has a need you don't have, but it's going to be amazing. It's going to be a blast. Like you don't realize the work that you need to put into sex, or the conversations that you need to have with your spouse. In fact, in the In the Bride where white Dannah discourages having conversations about sex with your significant other before marriage and like she's writing to teenagers. So, like there may be some wisdom in that, but there also needs to be some guidance on when do you have those conversations?
 
How do you talk about sex? Because then the readers get married in their 20s, usually young 20s, and then they don't know how to have those conversations. They don't know how to talk about it. So then sometimes they end up talking to me and, you know, trying to work through it with me, and figure out how to have a more fulfilling sex life. And usually, a lot of what I do is correcting myths and misunderstandings about what sex is supposed to be like.
 
Sheila
Yeah. You talked about the fairy tale myths, which is very much a part of. And The Bride Wore White. I mean, even that, even that whole it's very aspirational. What sort of. As a side note, one of the things that I found in her book, too, was the way that she was describing your future wedding. She was talking about having an orchestra in the garden.
 
And I just remember thinking, who can afford that? Like, I know some people can, but it's not very many. Like, this is what she is, what she is painting as. What we should be looking forward to is something that the vast majority of people are never going to have. Like, I found that very strange. But the other myth that you talk about is the gatekeeping myth.
 
And I know that that is a big part of what's in. And the bride wore white, can you explain that one to us?
 
Camden
Yeah. So that's the myth that women are the gatekeepers of men's sexuality, that they have to be the ones to put out breaks and boundaries before marriage and constantly monitoring if we're going too far. And then after marriage, you have to be sexually available to meet their husbands’ supposed needs. And so, when I was looking back at quotes of hers that kind of demonstrate that, she did say like it's about respecting the great weakness God has created in guys, so.
 
Sheila
Oh my God, I forgot about this one. Okay, it says it.
 
Camden
There's so much wrong with that theology that God created this weakness in guys like, not that it's like a sin even, or that it's like something that they have to, like, work towards self-control. But it's a God given weakness. And then she also said that sometimes young women are terribly naive or deny the overtly sexual desires that God built into guys and women are using everything in their power to pursue the guy sexually. Sometimes a girl's actions, clothes, and dating choices are perfectly explosive fuels that may cause a relationship to burst into the flames of a tragic ending.
 
And so, like, how quickly does that slip into rape culture, right. Yeah. Like, yeah. When you're blaming the clothing choices, her actions, her dating choices, where she goes, how she acts like that is rape culture. And I know that's not what she intended to promote. And I know that she would never agree that you know, to that explicitly. But that's really again, the impact of her words.
 
Sheila
But here's the thing that I keep coming back to, you know, I said things in the books that I wrote in the 2000s that I regret now, and I've since taken those books out of print. Never talk about them. But it isn't hard to realize. Oh, wow, I shouldn't have said that. And then just stop saying it and stop talking about those books.
 
And when I rewrote The Good Girls Guide to Great Sex, which wasn't even that bad, the original, like we did a rubric at 48 points, it would have scored 47. Like even back in 2012, it really wasn't that bad. But I didn't like the way, even though technically it would have scored well, I didn't like the way I framed a lot of the chapters, and so I completely rewrote that baby, like completely. And I was very upfront about what I didn't like about the original, and if it truly is that she didn't intend it, then when people pointed it out, why wouldn't she say, wow, I never intended for it to sound that way. And so, I'm going to correct it. Like, why wouldn't you admit it like this.
 
This is what I just keep coming back to, because she mischaracterized the critiques as being simply about, oh, these people just want to tell people to have to have sex whenever they want it. Like, no, we're just saying, let's not contribute to rape culture and let's not tell eight-year-old girls their bellies are intoxicating.
 
Camden
Right? Yeah, yeah. I think if she heard some of these quotes in isolation and not in context, I wonder if she might be horrified by how it sounds now. I would hope so. You know, after it's been, you know, ten or so years since maybe the last edition. And to be fair, I haven't read the newest edition that just came out, maybe because I don't want to contribute to her royalties.
So, I refused to buy it and read it. But I did read the latest one before that to prepare for this episode. And yeah, I hope she would be horrified by some of these quotes taken out of context and realized like they don't. The impact is not what she intended, and I hope that she would choose a different language now. But when I hear her speaking in podcasts, you know, just in the last few weeks, I don't hear that level of accountability and responsibility, and I don't hear a lot of personal ownership. Like I said earlier, she will say purity culture got some things wrong. I don't hear her say, I got some things wrong.
 
Sheila
Yeah.
 
Camden
And in the new edition, I did see that she changed purity to sexual integrity. That phrase feels better to her, I guess. Or, sounds, sounds less stigmatized or something. And I did see that she added in, you know, things here and there I think more about, like technology and stuff like that too, to be more updated with the times.
 
But, but yeah, I, I would hope that she has re written some of these awful quotes and really thought about how it implies rape culture, even though that's not what she means.
 
Sheila
Yeah. Yeah. All right. Any last thoughts before we go? Yeah.
 
Camden
Sheila, I just, as I look at this new edition of her book, I see that she says she's sold over 300,000 copies, and that's a huge number in the Christian, publishing world. And she touts that number as like, look how many lives I've changed. Like, look at all this, like the positive impact I have. And when I look at that number, I think I'm one of those 300,000 like my clients or one of those 300,000 like, we're not a success story or look at how many lives she positively changed.
 
We were hurt by what you've done, the work that you've done and what you've written and our stories out of the 300,000 matter too. And so, yes, there are positive stories and a positive impact she believes she's had. But until you listen to the stories of the people that you've harmed too, you're really missing the picture and you're really missing out on your own personal growth that could come from this, too. I think she's kind of blinded to some of her own personal growth that could come from listening and humility to other stories.
 
Sheila
And we make this out a lot. And I just want to zero in on it too. Here too, people will say yes, but every book can either harm or help. And that's actually not true because not every book contains toxic messages. And you know, not every book contains messages that we know are correlated with negative outcomes. Your book Recovering from Purity Culture doesn't harm people. You know, our books don't harm people because we are not propagating what we now know are harmful messages. And if we ever did find out that we did propagate a harmful message, we would admit it and change our books.
 
But And the bride wore white, and especially Dannah’s modesty books, etc. these are all propagating what we have measured in our studies and what we now have out in peer reviewed journal articles, that this stuff is correlated with actual negative outcomes down the line. Right. And so, the idea that every book does some will harm some people. It helps some people.
That's actually not empirically true. Some books don't harm.
 
Camden
Yeah. I think there's a difference between you don't agree with or don't like a book because there are people who feel that way about my book and yours, I'm sure. You know, I read those reviews of my own. So, there's a difference between I don't agree with it or don't like the author's perspective. And this objectively causes harm. Like, okay, so yeah, you're really highlighting, like through your peer reviewed studies, like here's the objective harm that this does.
 
Sheila
Yeah. Well thank you, Camden, I really appreciate your time. Tell people where they can find you.
 
Camden
Okay. You can find me on my website. drcamden.com. And I'm on all the social media @DrCamden.
 
Sheila
Yes. And you have great Substack, too. We will put a link to that as well. That's a great place to find her. And again, her book is Recovering from Purity Culture, and we will put the link in the podcast notes. Thanks, Camden.
 
Camden
All right. Thank you.
 
Sheila
I do; I really think that everyone should get Camden's book. I really like these books that make therapy accessible to people. I mean, obviously the best thing is to see a therapist. If you can afford to, please see a therapist, but a lot of people can't afford it. And so, she's walking you through this. This is the sort of homework a therapist would give you if you're suffering from this. And so, take a look at the book. It's really great. I want to end today on listening to some of the people that have been harmed because we've been told that we need to listen and we need to be kinder to the authors and not call them out.
 
But I want to elevate the voices of the people that have been harmed. And the first voice I want to listen to is actually quite a famous one. Elizabeth Smart, who was the Utah girl who was kidnaped when she was, I think, what was she, 14 at the time? 15. And she was held for several months.
 
Rebecca
And she's, she's such an incredible advocate now.
 
Sheila
So incredible, so eloquent. And here's what she has to say about purity culture.
 
Elizabeth Smart
Nobody was out there talking about it. Nobody openly talked about sexual assault or sexual violence. And then any talk that even came remotely close to it was when I'd go to church and people would be like, you have sex before marriage. It's like you're a chewed-up piece of gum. I really don't care what your beliefs are. I just think no matter what, if you are going to teach abstinence, you have to teach the other side and be like, this is abuse.
 
This is not your fault. This is not the same thing as true intimacy. This is not the same thing as consent. This is what coercion is. Can still happen between a boyfriend and a girlfriend, between a husband and a wife. It's not just a stranger thing, because otherwise you'll be like me where you sit there and you think, is it worth surviving for everyone to look at me differently?
 
Is it worth surviving if nobody is ever going to love me or want to be with me?
 
Sheila
I mean, that's just heartbreaking. Imagine thinking, I don't know if it's worth being rescued because what are people going to think of me now. That's the outcome of purity culture. I have a bunch of quotes from people that were left on my Facebook page when I said, hey, how did  Purity Culture affect you?
 
01:13:20:08 - 01:13:21:25
Sheila
You want to read some of them back and forth.
 
Rebecca
Going to read these? We're not going to comment on them and say we just yeah, listen. And there's a chance that Dannah and Juli and also that we're talking about and talking to our listening. And so, you know what? It's time to listen.
 
Sheila
Yeah, I think I chose four out of literally hundreds. I'll put a link to the post so that you can go read it yourself. Like there were so many, so, so, so many. And here's just a few.
 
For me, it was the sense of constantly being surveilled. I truly believed that the men surrounding me were lusting after me all the time, unless I did everything in my power to be hyper modest. And I also believe the older Christian women around me were policing my clothing to make sure I was following the rules. I never felt peace in my own skin and my own body.
 
Rebecca
The most damaging thing purity culture taught me was that it was my responsibility to protect the men in my life. I knew immediately that the way I was told to dress was not just to keep the boys in my age group from lusting. It was my responsibility to keep my boyfriend, now husband, from going too far when we were together.
 
Then, of course, it was my job as his wife to give him hot sex, and I found myself having trouble with arousal because I've been keeping track of everything, we did together. It took years of marriage for me to start calming down, and the healing is still a process. I married an amazing guy who didn't really get taught the toxic stuff I did either.
 
Sheila
It taught me to cut the hand off if something was causing you to sin. As a result, I ran from any relationship where there was physical attraction because it was not honoring God. I dated and married a seminary student who I struggled with attraction. The marriage was bad and ended in a biblical divorce. Why did I even end up in such a bad marriage? Because purity culture taught me that that road was best.
 
Rebecca
The most harmful thing about it, for me personally, was the message that all men or teenage boys are always constantly lusting after sex. This harmed me because when no boy ever asked me out on a date or seemed remotely interested in me, or gave any indication that they found me attractive, I thought there must be something really wrong with me. I must be really unattractive or just plain ugly. After all, boys are sexually attracted to all girls all the time. So, what does it mean for me if no boys ever seemed interested?
 
Sheila
And then the last one.
 
Rebecca
as a survivor of childhood sexual assault. Definitely the insinuation that I was somehow less in value because of that abuse. The chewed-up gum analogy broke my heart. Many times. I remained very conservative with my sexuality outside of the abuse I endured but still believed that I had lost so much of myself with something so painful and completely out of my control.
 
It's a large part of why I never told anyone and literally moved out of state as a young woman after college, that I could finally go to counseling without anyone knowing.
 
Sheila
Yep, yep, that's the fruit that's not of Jesus. None of that is of Jesus. Which of you, if your child asks for a fish, will give them a stone? That's not of Jesus, and we need to do better. And that and doing better means taking accountability for what we as an evangelical culture did in the past, owning up to it and making it right and correcting it.
 
Rebecca
Now we're going to be talking about how we can do that next week.
 
Sheila
Yeah. So, join us next week for the Bare Marriage podcast and we'll see you then. Bye bye.