Latest / Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo / Daniah Greenberg: Biblical Feminism And Solutions To A Confused Culture

Transcript

Daniah Greenberg: Biblical Feminism And Solutions To A Confused Culture · Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo

• 0:00
  Hello, friends, family and Christ. Welcome. The biblical narrative emphasizes that while men and women are created uniquely different,
• 0:07
  they are equally essential and valuable in the tapestry of life.
• 0:12
  However, evil wins when men and women are pitted against one another.
• 0:18
  But rest assured, evil always overplays its hand.
• 0:23
  The deception of neo-feminism, for example, is that it empowers women.
• 0:29
  The reality is it sets them up for failure and destroys the foundational building blocks of family.
• 0:36
  Today, we're going to talk about biblical feminism and explore how the God of Israel defines genders with distinct roles and responsibilities that are critical to our health and well-being. That's next.
• 0:49
  Welcome to World View Matters, discussing controversial issues, discerning current events, defending biblical Christianity. No topic, off-limits.
• 1:04
  And now, here's your host, David Firazo.
• 1:10
  All right, friends. Welcome. Great new guest today, Danya Greenberg. She's an author and speaker and the founder of the Tree of Life Translation of the Holy Bible.
• 1:20
  There's also a Bible app we're going to tell you about. So get your iPhone ready if you are on your iPhones.
• 1:25
  We're going to really get into a little bit of her background and also talk about a brand new book that she's got out called Biblical Feminism.
• 1:34
  What's this all about? Danya Greenberg, welcome to World View Matters. Good to see you. Thanks for your time.
• 1:40
  Thank you so much, David, for having me. I'm excited to talk to you today.
• 1:44
  Yeah, so you got the book out. That's exciting. And we will get to that because we need a healthy perspective on feminism, especially for those of us who grew up and went through the late 60s and 70s and saw the quote-unquote women's lib and feminism and the radicals that have taken it off the rails today.
• 2:03
  What we see, it's not true feminism, but we'll get to that. You've got a very interesting story.
• 2:10
  But tell us about the Bible app. By the way, let me give you the website friends. It is T L V Bible Society dot org. That's T L V Bible Society dot org.
• 2:22
  And Danya's website is danya greenberg dot com d a n i a h danya greenberg dot com. So tell us about the the app and the Bible Society.
• 2:37
  This is exciting. I was used by God, along with me and my family and my first husband, Rabbi Mark Greenberg. He went on to be with the Lord, but while we had our 34 years together married, we raised up a congregation of Jewish believers in Messiah Yeshua.
• 2:54
  And that led us to be involved in a community where we needed resources for our children because they were Jewish kids that came to know that Jesus is a Messiah.
• 3:04
  But where were they going to find a Bible that said Yeshua Messiah in it? So we got to work. We got our community together, 32 different organizations.
• 3:13
  We just we had a wonderful time creating the T L V Bible. And that came about because I wanted my children to love the Bible like I did because I came to know Yeshua as my Messiah. And I wanted my children to have a relationship with God.
• 3:27
  Well, you mentioned something before we got on the podcast. I want you to share that with the audience and how important it is to hear your mother's voice and to hear to be bringing up your kids in the Bible. We were talking a little bit about homeschooling and and mothers raising their children with the word of God, which you said you didn't have growing up.
• 3:47
  Yeah, I had a grandmother that loved me and gave me a children's Bible that was done by Jewish and Christian scholars. It came out in I got it back in 65 and I dragged that children's Bible around with me my whole life.
• 4:01
  But my life didn't I didn't get raised praying and worshiping God the way we sought to raise our children. But I didn't know that the Bible was a mainstay that I had to have in my life. And I learned about Jesus through that Bible.
• 4:16
  So when I had my horrible falling away and made so many mistakes in college that I regret and ended up eventually even in a jail cell after putting myself through college, I still ended up lost and alone in a jail cell.
• 4:31
  And that's when I really cried out to God and asked, I asked Yeshua, at that time I called them Jesus, I said, you know, Jesus, if you'll get me out of here, or if that people haven't prayed that before, if you could get me out of this, I'll follow you all the days of my life.
• 4:45
  I had heard the Bible, I had heard the message of salvation as, you know, while I was in college, but I certainly didn't believe until I was faced with the crisis and I needed God to save me.
• 4:56
  But the only way to get well, the salvation, you know, it's funny, your relationship with God is not simply transactional, it's not simply about praying one prayer.
• 5:06
  It's about building a relationship with your creator and you learn that love from your parents. Usually it starts with your mom and being loved and cared for by your mom.
• 5:17
  So having a mother's voice, sharing biblical knowledge with you is the most basic element of parenting that's got to be celebrated. It's just got to be celebrated today.
• 5:29
  Well, we mentioned the app if you go to, how do people get the TLV? Is it TLV Bible app? How do they get the TLV Bible app?
• 5:39
  The TLV Bible app, just go to your Google Play Store, go to your app store, right? And if you go ahead and look up Tree of Life Bible, you're going to see my little face on there because I do the daily proverbs on there for people who are looking for wisdom from the Bible.
• 5:53
  The great thing about the TLV Bible app is that it gives you so many different ways to engage with the Bible. It's got three whole art collections on it. There's art for adults, but there's also children's art so that you and your child can learn side by side, which I just think is fascinating.
• 6:12
  I was able to curate a 101 illustrations for this Bible and with 32 PhDs involved of Jewish and Christian background, all believers in Messiah issue. This is just a fantastic translation. And the Bible app gives you the audio, gives you the art collections.
• 6:31
  We have curriculum available that you can print right off your phone for your kids every week. You can follow the Jewish reading cycle and connect it to verses that Yeshua Jesus said Himself and you can bring together the old and new testaments because we really need to be getting our knowledge, our wisdom from the Bible.
• 6:51
  I love that you've got the daily verse here today. It's Romans 13 verse 12. The night is almost gone and the day is near. So let us put off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.
• 7:05
  But I want to go back one verse because verse 11 is one of my favorites as well. Friends, besides this, know the time that it is already the hour for you to awaken from sleep.
• 7:18
  For now, salvation is nearer than when we first came to trust. And so again, TLV Bible app it is free. And it sounds wonderful. Yeah, it sounds wonderful. I've got on my phone. I haven't used it a lot obviously because just put it on there. But anything else you'd like to share about that before we move on about the app. Yeah, let me just tell you this cool thing. So this is what God told me to do.
• 7:43
  So when I was first saved and I started reading the Bible, I was reading it like three hours a day just to be able to keep myself from being afraid because I had fallen down such a deep hole. I didn't know how to get out of it.
• 7:59
  So my husband and I got married. We were pregnant with our first baby. And I'm reading the Bible like three hours a day like it night just to be able to go to sleep at night. And so I've been reading the Bible that way for probably 30 years because reading your Bible is what literally creates wisdom and knowledge inside you.
• 8:18
  It's God's wisdom that we access by reading the Bible. And so biblical literacy is really important. But you learn that by reading the words and God's presence being with you every time you open those pages.
• 8:31
  So with the Bible app, I wanted to find multimodality ways of teaching the Bible. So audio, visual, reading, searching, all of those ways you interact with the Bible. The more time you spend in God's word, the more he's going to bathe you with this presence and lead you into all truth.
• 8:51
  He will lead you and guide you into all truth. I want to quote from this must be the introduction of the book and let's you just expound a little bit, Danya. The Bible is a handbook for living life at peace with others.
• 9:08
  Knowing ultimately, God gave us a clear pattern of how to auto correct our thinking and live life fully alive by becoming his child. And then you say, as I share my true life tale of overcoming evil and alienating chaos.
• 9:26
  Let me assure you that the same ancient truths of 3,400 years ago are still true today if you dare to believe in spirit and in truth at the same time.
• 9:41
  I love that. Share whatever more you'd like on that.
• 9:46
  You know, I appreciate the presence of God in my life because Shalom means nothing missing, nothing broken. And the more you come to understand what the Bible is teaching you.
• 10:03
  The more you realize that it's not just that when you talk about God as he's like the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, I wish that people could see that end does not mean an end time. It means the fullness of the knowledge of God.
• 10:20
  And so with biblical feminism and the reason I wanted to use this title was because I was hoping that women and mothers could begin to see that going where you're celebrated not tolerated is the goal.
• 10:36
  The goal is that you would share your faith that you live it out as God is speaking to you in the Bible. And then you would lead your children into that truth by using your Bible for your dictionary, your Almanac, your opinion, your compass, your GPS.
• 10:54
  If you're looking for a way to make wise decisions, then reading the Bible is how you figure that out. It's simply your time in your Bible and your willingness to share that with the people that you love that changes the world.
• 11:10
  Before I get into some other question specifically from the book, biblical feminism, we've talked a lot about the declining. There it is. It's on Amazon and also on her website, danya greenberg.com.
• 11:24
  We've talked a lot on this podcast about the declining biblical worldview, but not just out there in culture among people who don't believe the Bible who have never read the Bible who are not Christians in the church.
• 11:39
  The problem is the church. We are not influencing like salt and light our culture for righteousness because we're not we don't know enough of the Bible. We're not applying what we do know a lot of problems in the church.
• 11:54
  So you care to comment on that before we dive into the book specifically more.
• 12:00
  Yeah, I would like to say something that I think is the crux of the matter. Please read the Bible for yourself. Please don't rely on other people teaching you what it says over what God will speak to you about it by simply reading it.
• 12:16
  Don't ever think that really honestly is there is been so many years so many decades of teaching about the three point message and they understand that when you want to teach somebody a certain set of rules and instructions and you want them to walk away memorizing it. There's great value in that. I think that's wonderful. That's not the way the Bible works.
• 12:39
  The Bible is about God. He's the protagonist of the story. We so often teach the Bible based on teaching about the characters in the Bible when what you really should be learning is God's character reflected in the stories within the Bible. He's the protagonist.
• 12:57
  You know, an interesting way to look at it is is look at it this way for God so loved the world. He gave his only begotten son right God is the subject. The verb right is still God loving. That's why God is love and then the world is the object of his affection.
• 13:18
  You know, when we made the TLV young readers edition and by the way, if you want to just start getting to know the Bible and maybe you're not as Bible biblically literate as you want to be, we came up with this is like actual scripture. It's not paraphrase. That's another thing. Stop reading paraphrasing and stop reading so many commentaries read the Bible. The truth will set you free.
• 13:39
  You know, so what I did was we came up with the children's Bible not by doing the entire Bible because there's things kids aren't ready to read. So what we did instead was we took the pictures. So our we find a picture there for me, Sam.
• 13:53
  So we so we in our regular full Bible there are 101 pictures. So what we did is we took 54 of those stories and we made pictures in them. Oh, here's the picture of David. Here's a really good one right everybody knows the story of David and Goliath right there's David and Goliath.
• 14:11
  But there's actual biblical text but it's literally a page and a half. So in our Bibles, the adult the adult Bibles, they have adult artwork in black and white right where the story is.
• 14:23
  But then if you go in the young readers edition, they have 54 stories and in those stories, the actual scripture has been curated so that what you can do is look at how little the story is. It's just three pages. Just read one a night for 54 nights in one year.
• 14:40
  You can learn the meta narrative of the scripture because people want to take what people do when they teach the Bible is they decide what they want you to learn and then they find three places in the Bible where they can take you on a journey to get to what they want you to learn.
• 14:55
  Open the Bible and read it line by line. Read it like you're sitting on your mom's lap. Read the words and then think about what's not in the story because people put so much in there that's not actually in there.
• 15:10
  They make huge lessons out of their opinions about what they think happened. But if you read it critically, you'll begin to see that it's not us studying to it's not about us dissecting the word till it says what we think it should say.
• 15:29
  It's about letting the words wash and bathe over us like like when you get baptized and right when you get baptized in water, it's the water cleans the outside of you.
• 15:41
  Meanwhile, what you read changes your perspective because you recognize God's love and then that changes the inside of you.
• 15:49
  If people could you want to know what's so great about mothers is that mothers teach the simplest lessons and your Bible teaches that blood cleans the inside.
• 16:01
  You cannot take a little scouring pad and scour your heart. You can't clean your heart with water, but that's why the water and the blood both testify.
• 16:10
  That's the kind of stuff the book is about. Is there so many truths in the Bible?
• 16:22
  It's so funny. We shouldn't have to work to get to biblical worldview because we already live in a seven day signature week.
• 16:30
  We already we live inside the seven day signature of God, whether you choose to take that day off and recognize that you're one day off with God is worth more than the six days you had in the secular world.
• 16:47
  If people would understand that that one day, it's still a binary pattern, y'all. It's still secular, seventh, secular, seventh, male, female, alpha, omega. It's still it's still the same.
• 17:03
  That's good. So it's so easy. You know, we've got to take a brief pause. I want to give the website one more time. It's TLV Bible Society dot org. We'll be right back on Worldview Matters.
• 17:13
  Today's show is brought to you by Harbinger's Daily. World News Biblically Understood. Stay informed at Harbinger's Daily dot com.
• 17:31
  So friends, I want to bring in Daniel Greenberg again. And we're going to finish up this interview with some points from her book Biblical Feminism. But we've talked with Olivier Melnik several times on this podcast. And by the way, you can go to the website and the search you can type in Olivier Melnik.
• 17:51
  He's shared something very important, very profound. Same thing as you. I said, well, people, there's antisemitism is growing. And I don't understand this. People that claim to know their Bibles in America. I said, what's the solution to this? He says simple three words. Read your Bible.
• 18:07
  Amen.
• 18:09
  Yes, it's we take a pastor's word for it. And a lot of people, unfortunately, Danya are not going to churches where the pastors are truly discerning and equipping the saints and preaching the whole council of God.
• 18:24
  But that's for a whole nother podcast. Let's go back to your book now Biblical feminism, a couple questions I have. You've mentioned wanting to move past cultures, quote, angry feminist narrative.
• 18:39
  What part of your book or how does your book Biblical feminism help people do that?
• 18:45
  I think the male and female, the way you read it in English, those two words seem like they're dependent on each other. The word male is inside the word female. It says male and female he created them in Genesis. The word male and female in Hebrew are two totally distinct words.
• 19:03
  They are not dependent on each other male and female are are each uniquely created because together they are the reflection of the image of God.
• 19:15
  They realize that we should work cooperatively, even if it includes cooperative overlap, even if we talk over each other, it's better to find out what each other bring to the table than to somehow segment ourselves and become competitive.
• 19:30
  I'm just not interested in focusing on whining about misogyny. I'm over it. I'm so over it because it just doesn't help anybody. It's better cooperating with one another and caring about the next generation.
• 19:46
  I think one of the things that's really frustrating for me in the Biblical arena and watching the fascination that people have with the TLV, with the Tree of Life version, is that it's done by Jewish believers in Yeshua.
• 20:02
  What's the advantage of being Jewish? What says much in every way for they were entrusted with the sayings of God? Well, this is the first translation by Jewish believers in Yeshua. These are PhDs that start off getting saved in the Jesus movement.
• 20:17
  And they end up growing up, coming to understand, walking alongside Christians, understanding, bringing back the Jewish roots of the faith, brings clarity to the word.
• 20:28
  Like the feast of dedication, it talks about in the New Testament, is Hanukkah. The last supper is Passover.
• 20:37
  The coming again of our Messiah is foretold in Zachariah. The book of Revelation tells you more about the Old Testament than it does the New. You'd be shocked if you could just see the transformative way you read the Bible when you understand it from a Jewish perspective.
• 21:01
  It's so beautifully written and easy to understand. I'm just the word Shalom is such an amazing word because do you know something funny?
• 21:11
  Do you know that when we were talking about the difference between God is the only one who can be one. Everything else in creation is binary minimally divided by two.
• 21:21
  Because the only one that exists alone is God. That's not rocket science. But if you think about it, if everything, if seeing it twice, right, when God declares his character, Lord, Lord, he says in Exodus 34, then when Yeshua is saying in the New Testament, Yeshua meaning Jesus says, Amen, amen, I tell you.
• 21:43
  It means you might see it said as verily, but actually it's the word, Amen, let it be so, let it be so, and let it be so, and then he makes a declaration.
• 21:57
  Because when you double, when you have both, it's a complete thought. Just like when you have male and female, it's a complete representation of God. Why would you only need to hear from half of humanity about the Bible? What sense would that make if you didn't learn from when you were newborn, from when you were a baby? That's where you learned to love and trust.
• 22:17
  So women should feel great about teaching the Bible. Yes, yes. And you mentioned women's Bible studies. And in fact, let me just go there real quick.
• 22:28
  Excuse me. You've mentioned that women's Bible studies are the backbone of our country. I think you already covered a little bit about that, speaking the importance about about mothers, teaching the Bible, their children, hearing it in our mother's voices. Talk to us about women's Bible studies. They are very important, aren't they?
• 22:47
  I think women's Bible studies are what's keeping our country on track, to be honest, because I didn't even realize this was a thing until I became a grandmother and I had.
• 22:57
  So I was, I was a rabbi's wife for many, many, many years, but as my kids grew up and they took on the ministry, I had the opportunity to go to women's Bible studies with my Christian friends. And they were so excited about the TLV that kept asking me to come to their Bible studies.
• 23:12
  I had no idea there was a women's Bible study movement across America everywhere, right because I was learning in synagogue with my husband and my kids.
• 23:20
  So I'm amazed at the amount of time that women dedicate to spending in the word, because remember, we read the Bible to draw close to God number one, number two, we're looking for wisdom, and number three, we're looking for comfort.
• 23:33
  And you, that, that's just the most important reason to open up those pages, but women are driven to the word of God because we know we're, we're aching for wisdom, isn't that, isn't that what we're first looking for?
• 23:46
  Isn't that a good thing to look for wisdom? Absolutely. As long as we're also willing to turn to God for it instead of other places.
• 23:55
  So this may be our last question, maybe not we'll see, Danya, but let's talk about men, men have been beat up and the gender roles have been confused.
• 24:06
  And I think on purpose, the enemy has done this. And then culture goes along with it, sadly, the lies, but you've said that both men and women are oppressed by current cultural narrative.
• 24:18
  So how does biblical feminism help get some sanity and truth into what we're seeing about people just being beat up over just being a man or a woman, male or female?
• 24:30
  I think that men are amazing. And I think that strong men attract strong women. I think there's this lie out there that if you're a strong woman, you're with a weak man. And that's just not true.
• 24:42
  The truth is that strong men are not, they are not put off by women who are strong.
• 24:49
  Being strong in the Lord and in the power of his might is recognizing that all power comes from God. Any power that's delegated to man is delegated by God, right?
• 25:00
  So what you're looking for is you're looking for men to be strong and to be courageous. God tells us again again,
• 25:07
  if we're not willing to work in partnership with men, if we're not willing to put aside the idea of being offended with who God chooses to do what, just celebrate the fact that God is on the move in the earth and that strong men are what we want.
• 25:28
  We're not looking, we're not looking to cancel each other out. That's a lie from the pit of hell. And I'm not interested in following that narrative.
• 25:35
  I want the narrative where strong pioneering men and women bring our country back to center where children are safe, where mothers are protected, where dads are celebrated, where we can all be who we need to be and who God created us to be.
• 25:50
  I love leadership and men because if men aren't willing to lead, then children are protected.
• 25:57
  Point blank. Godly love comes before brotherly love. Godly love first. Then love your neighbor is yourself. The first commandment is hero Israel, the Lord thy God, the Lord is one.
• 26:09
  Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your might and love your neighbor as yourself.
• 26:17
  Starts with loving God. That's a great perspective to end with. We ran out of time. I knew it would go by quickly.
• 26:24
  Tell us about TLV talk. Is that that's a weekly every Friday podcast. What is it?
• 26:31
  Yeah, it's a podcast. I started with my son Joseph. He's an adult. He's got kids of his own and we work through the scriptures.
• 26:41
  We give you all kinds of neat intel about where the Bible came from and how to find it and looking at the leather scrolls.
• 26:50
  I don't know that most people even know that the Bible was on animal skins. That's why that's how it's kept alive and listen.
• 26:57
  Animal skins less a lot longer than papyrus. This is really where the word of God is. We read it on rice paper.
• 27:04
  It's been saved for 3400 years. The same words that saves the children of Israel save us every day because they prophesied the coming of our Messiah.
• 27:13
  Praise God. Sounds great. So I want to give the websites again.
• 27:18
  Tree of Life Bible Society is TLV Bible Society dot org and your website, Donia Greenberg dot com biblical feminism, not just feminism.
• 27:32
  Not just beating up man or making women feel like they're whatever or something they're not. But let's go back to the Bible friends.
• 27:38
  Those three words read your Bible. Thank you, Donia, for emphasizing that again.
• 27:43
  Thank you, David. It's been great. Appreciate your time. Friends, God bless you. Thanks for sharing the podcast and as always keep speaking the truth about things that matter.