Latest / We Are More: Sisters Talk Faith & Feminism / Ep. 76: Christian Idol (pt. 1)

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Ep. 76: Christian Idol (pt. 1) · We Are More: Sisters Talk Faith & Feminism

• 0:12
  Speaker 1: To the We Are More Pod cast. My name
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: is Alyssa. And my name is Bree. We're two sisters passionate about all things faith and feminism. We believe
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: that Jesus trusted, respected, and encouraged women to teach and preach his word. And apparently, that's controversial. Get comfy.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: Pants on the ground with your pants on the ground. Looking like a fool with your pants on the ground. Do you remember that? I do. The February American Idol was really
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: it. It was the time of our lives.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: It was the time of our lives. It was the worst of our lives. And these are the days of our lives.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Frankly, American Idol, I feel like, defined our generation in a way very few other things did.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: There are so many things that I do all the time that come directly from American Idol. Like, you know when Paula Abdul would clap and her fingers, like, were hyperextended? Yes. And I don't know if it was just on purpose, or she was trying not to break a nail, or what the deal was, but we often, in our family specifically, will clap like that. Mhmm.
• 1:23
  Or, there was some oh, that's a no from me, dog.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we do say that a
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: From Randy. I say that.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So it has seeped into not just overall culture, but our personal culture.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: Mhmm. The song that I sang at the beginning was one of the, like, songs that they sang during the what what was it? The auditions? Yeah, the auditions. Those were incredibly stressful.
• 1:49
  Well, they would purposely bring bad people in Mhmm. To get views. Kinda like how now on TikTok and social media You have clickbait. Yeah. And they got they took a lot
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: of heat for that because they brought American Idol back, and they had to kinda, like, stop doing that because people were like, this feels a little icky. It just feels overproduced Mhmm.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: Too. Like, you're you're seeking terrible people out, or people are on purpose acting crazy just to get on TV.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And the I I honestly haven't watched the modern version of what they're doing. I think Katy Perry's on it, or she was?
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: I think so. I don't know.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: I'm not overly into singing shows anymore. There was a time.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: But For a while, we were really into America's Got Talent. Oh, yeah. Just it was not just singing. It was any kind of talent you And could possibly I could go on there. I can do the wave with my eyebrows.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: You can. I think you should.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: Maybe that's the next step for me. Yeah. Let's well, this is
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: the last episode of the podcast, because Brianna is going on America's Got Talent with her eyebrows. Yep. Do you remember, though? So this is gonna age both of us in a big, big way. But when American Idol was, like, at its peak, you had to call in to vote.
• 3:09
  And there was one point where each phone number only got one vote, And so you could only call one time. But then eventually, it was, like, as many times as you called, that's how many votes you got. And we would just, like, redial and redial and redial. Mhmm. I wish I could remember the exact message.
• 3:24
  It was like they recorded the person. Were like, thanks for voting for me.
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: Yep. And there were specific people we were really into, like David Archuleta.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: He's on Broadway now.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: Look at him go. And Carrie Underwood. We went to Carrie Underwood's concert, air quotes Mhmm. At a local Yeah. When she, like right after she won, which is really funny.
• 3:46
  Mhmm. Yeah. I don't really stand behind her anymore.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: No. Not so much. There were quite a few. We watched it for many a season.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. Catherine McPhee, she was on there. She was on that show Smash. Yeah.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: It was just it was just who we were as people. And then you waited for the commercial breaks to, like, pee or get a pop.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. And you run as fast as you can. That was just like kids these days would never understand. These days would never understand the dash to the bathroom while there's a commercial. And then like, listening for the timer on the oven so you can go get your bagel bites.
• 4:23
  And not wanting to miss anything. Like, I remember I was in the car with my niece and my, like, phone wouldn't hook up to the car or something. So we're having to listen to the radio. And she's like, turn on this song. And I was like, I can't.
• 4:39
  It's just the radio. I don't understand.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: Or just the inability to pause. You can't pause anything on live TV or you couldn't back was in
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: old. You know, it was a simpler time. Was a simpler time when there was a limited amount of space on your DVR where you could record things, and you wanted every episode of Mythbusters on there. You didn't wanna delete any.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: Because you might need to know what myths had
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: been busted. Yes. That or I Love Lucy, for some reason, we also had, like,
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: all the episodes. That was because we watched old TV. Yeah. We did.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: We're old souls with newfangled ways of thinking. We have gray hair.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: Not anymore. We dyed it out. It's gone now. We're aging rapidly. Yeah.
• 5:32
  We are doing that.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: My knees don't work. And I pulled a muscle in my neck. You did.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: That was sad. Just by, like, turning your head.
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: Ugh. I can barely turn my head to breathe.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: You really can't. Anyway, so today, we're gonna be talking about idols. In case that wasn't clear.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: You couldn't catch on to the deep American Idol chat.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: At least we stayed sort of on topic in our our main intro.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: And we only rambled for, like, five ish minutes.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: Don't worry. I'm sure there's plenty of rambling to be had.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: Oh. You're in luck.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: We've got a solid fifty minutes to go.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: Should should we cut in with the American Idol sound the theme song? No. Because then we're gonna get copyright infringement. Just sing
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: it real quick. I don't know it. Do you know it?
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: I know. Goes,
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: Alright. That'll be our transition music for the day.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: I think idols is a pretty popular topic in church. Mhmm. I have heard sermons on idols many a time.
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: But it's like social media and money and your job
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: or, like phone.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Pretty innocuous stuff that I mean, everybody it's not that those things can't be idols. They absolutely can. Mhmm. But I think that they are not necessarily the most important idols.
• 6:56
  I think it's like scratching the surface, you know?
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: Well, and also, you think like an idol is anything you put above God. But you also have to think of like the times back in the day like, the golden calf. Mhmm. Looking for, like, a physical idol to represent God. Mhmm.
• 7:13
  And we're gonna get into that later.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: We are gonna talk about that. So we have some moderately volatile ones that we're gonna talk Yes. About
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: We're gonna because we've done an episode before. If you wanna travel through our library of 76 different episodes, I think it is. I think you're right. We did do one on idols before. I think it was called Your Idol is Showing.
• 7:37
  Mhmm. So feel free to go listen to that. But this one dives even deeper. Because now we're even more aggressive.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah. We've stripped away all of the facade of like, oh, we don't know if we should say this or not. And we've decided it's just We're just gonna say
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: the things. We're just gonna say the things, and we no longer care.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: And that's where we are in life. Mhmm.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: And I
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: feel that that's probably where most of you are too. So the first one we're gonna talk about is marriage as an idol. Not like, oh, you idolize your husband because he's so amazing. That that's not what we're
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: talking about. The institution. The concept of everyone
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: must be married. And this hits the church hard.
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: Oh my gosh. As a single person, it it it makes me so uncomfortable going into these Christian spaces. And I know I've talked about it on the podcast before, but, like, there was one pastor who said, everybody raise your hands that is single here. Now look around. See all those hands up?
• 8:38
  That you don't need a dating app. Those are your potential people that you can get with. So rather than going to church to, like, get some knowledge, get closer to God, It's all about hooking up and getting married. Mhmm. That's your biggest goal right now is just to find a significant other.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: Well, and from what I've observed, because I've been married for a really long time, but, like, observing the differences in how people interact with me in a church versus how they interact with Brie in a church Mhmm. Because I'm married and I have a young family, so we're, the ideal church member or whatever, people pay attention to me in a way that they fully ignore you as a single person.
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: Well, I make people uncomfortable, I think. And that's not just, like, because I stink. People literally don't know what to talk about with me because those are, there's just like key things that you go up to someone and talk about, tell me about your family. What are your kids doing? And if I say I don't have either of those, okay, well, now there's an awkward pause in this conversation.
• 9:42
  I have other things about me. I am a person. I'm a full person. You can talk.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: But churches don't know how to deal with single people. And I've heard that not just from you, but from many, many single people
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: That try to attend church regularly, that there's just no space for them. Mhmm. And so we wanted to talk a little bit about how much the church idolizes that institution
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: And how damaging it can be. Because marriage is treated like like the best thing you can do with your life.
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: Both frankly as a man and a woman.
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: I think it's harped on more for women, but a single man still makes the church uncomfortable.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: And yet the Bible doesn't say that. I saw a kid walking out of church today. It's Sunday. And this kid was walking out of a church. We were driving by, and he had a shirt on.
• 10:35
  And it was like the sticker I've I'm sure I've told you guys about. And it had a picture of the I don't know. Not Jesus, because we don't we don't have pictures of Jesus. But what Jesus is supposed to look like. And then it says, I didn't say that.
• 10:49
  And that's that's what this is. Mhmm. The Bible does not say that marriage is the ideal. Mhmm. In fact, it says the opposite.
• 10:56
  Mhmm. Paul says don't get married. If you can at all help it, just don't. Now, I don't necessarily ascribe to all of Paul's ideas on marriage and sex, but he did say it. It is in there.
• 11:11
  If you wanna, like, ascribe to everything, it's there. Mhmm. So I have some statistics for you. The first one is just about general marriage. You know, there's a cartoon on the naked pastor who I know we reference a lot.
• 11:27
  He's in the nude? He's in
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: the nude all the time. Weird.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: I know. Strange. But he did this cartoon, and it was this woman kneeling at a gravesite. She's in her wedding dress, and her daughter's sitting next to her, she has, a black eye. And she's kneeling at a gravesite, and the gravestone says marriage on it.
• 11:46
  And his caption and you can go on and look at it. There's a lot of details to it. But his caption essentially says, you can do everything right as a woman in an evangelical marriage. And that doesn't mean that your marriage is gonna be good or that it's gonna last. There's no guarantees here, and yet you've sacrificed everything at the altar of this marriage.
• 12:05
  Mhmm. So a 2015 study showed that evangelical Christians divorce at almost the exact same rate as non Christians.
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: So your faith is not really holding this marriage together.
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: And to the people who are trying to hold the marriage together, you also have to think, like, the marriage that you have, is that a Christian marriage? Is this what God would intend for you? Is this shining an example to other people on a godly marriage? Probably not. But you're so scared of divorce, thinking that that's a greater sin, so you sacrifice yourself in the process.
• 12:48
  You sacrifice your relationship to God for your relationship to another person.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: And that is idolatry. Absolutely. I think we think because the Bible says, don't hold to the letter of the law, but instead to the spirit of the law. Jesus said
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: that. Mhmm.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: And when we look at our marriage certificates and we say, I have to hold to this no matter what, no matter whether there's abuse involved, emotional, physical, spiritual, financial, any of the above Mhmm. Or frankly, if you're just being treated like crap Mhmm. All the time, or your spouse is not representing what would be I don't know. A good partner. A good person.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: And you're in that marriage simply simply because of the piece of paper, you're quite literally holding to the letter of the law.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: And not the spirit of the law, which said, love one another. Mhmm. Be there for one another. Show the rest of the world what a loving relationship is because Christ loved you. And we've said this before in the Bible.
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: It says they'll know you by your fruit. Mhmm. What kind of fruit are you showing off for people? Mhmm. Because if people are looking at you and they see a traumatic marriage, someone who is staying around in an abusive situation, they're not seeing happy fruit.
• 14:16
  Mhmm.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: It's pretty shriveled. And you're not encouraging women in particular to join your religion, let me just tell you.
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: No. If I'm looking at that as a shining example of, like, this
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: is what Christian marriage should be.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: Mhmm. This is what I should expect of a Christian marriage. I really don't want any part of it.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: Mhmm.
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: I don't want to be treated that way. I want a direct relationship with me and my God. And if you're saying that I have to go now we're getting into the weeds, kind of. But if you're saying that I have to now go between, to get to God, have to go through my husband? Mhmm.
• 14:54
  No.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: And if you're not a religious person in the be like, to start off with, and you assume not only is that what a religious marriage is, but that as a religious woman, you're supposed to be married Mhmm. Then you don't want anything to do with the religion at all. Mhmm. Like, just throw it all out. Mhmm.
• 15:14
  Because it's not looking good. No. And most of the Christian marriages that I see around me and I've said this to, like, everyone in my life. I have never seen a submissive marriage where, like, the wife is submissive and the husband is authoritative and whatever. I've never ever in my life seen that work.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: Well, because I don't know if this is a because, but in specifically Christian circles, you see a lot of women getting together. They're doing their Bible studies. Or at any get together, they're having a devotional, and they're teaching each other. They're constantly getting into the Word and trying to teach each other. But they're not told that they have any authority or any power.
• 15:59
  They're told to submit to these men who want golf clubs and are told that just because you were born with something between your legs gives you ultimate authority, makes you godlike. And you don't have to learn about leadership. You don't have to try to educate yourself on the best way to lead. You're just naturally a leader. And that's awesome for you.
• 16:26
  So you get to dominate whoever you want. And more often than not, what we're seeing in the Christian church is abuse. Abuse of power. Abuse of women. I don't want any part of that.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: Well, so then there's another study from 2024. And this showed men who overclaimed knowledge of the Bible. So that doesn't mean that they really understood the bible. It means that they said they spouted off a bunch of stuff that the bible doesn't actually say, which we have all heard men say. They would say the bible says this, but then the bible didn't actually say that.
• 17:00
  Mhmm. Well, the bible references this, and the bible didn't actually reference this. Or I interpret this like this, and that's not what it said. So in those cases where men overclaimed biblical knowledge, there was a much higher rate, like a significantly higher rate of abuse in those relationships. Mhmm.
• 17:20
  Of physical abuse in those relationships. Mhmm. So you see more often than not, this is gonna be like the hyper Christian marriages where you do see that power dynamic. A much higher rate of abuse there.
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: Mhmm. And they're slapping God's name on it. Right. And I
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: think that's that's the most insulting part for
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: me Mhmm.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: In most things right now. But that not only are you being a crappy human being, but you're telling me I'm being a crappy human being in the name of God. Mhmm. Like, if you're gonna suck as a person, do that on your own time. But don't stick my God's name on it.
• 17:59
  Mm-mm. Because frankly, we're not worshiping the same God.
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: Mhmm. It's a very different situation. The thing is, if Jesus wanted submission in the marriage, he would have preached it. And he didn't. Read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
• 18:17
  But we've created marriage and submission into this idol better than anything else. You need this. In order to be a Christian, you need to be married. Is kind of what I hear in the church today.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: And as a woman, a submissive wife.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: And your role, because you have to have roles now Mhmm. Because it's easier to categorize it in our brain, right, to say, like, some sense of order, your role is to birth babies
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: Mhmm.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: And raise them into strong Christian people when really your job as a Christian person is to love God and love others.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: And that's it. It doesn't get more complicated. Mhmm. Jesus didn't make it more complicated. That's not to say that there aren't other things that the bible talks about.
• 19:09
  You know, don't murder. That's an important one. That is an important one. But the main things that you're answering to God for at the end of your life are, did you love God and did you love others? Not did you get married?
• 19:22
  Not did you go to church every Sunday? Not all of these different things. They also did a study and they surveyed the same people in 2005 and then again in 02/2015. So they did like a ten year gap. And they asked them specifically, would you stay or should you stay as a Christian in an abusive marriage because of your faith?
• 19:48
  And an overwhelming majority of them said that they would stay in that marriage and seek out counseling. Now they were not being asked, would you stay in a marriage where your husband was annoying you a little bit or where you disagreed on some things? They were being asked if you were in an abusive marriage. This person is harming you. And the presumption then would be also you have kids because as Christians, we're all supposed to have kids.
• 20:16
  Right? And so your kids are either experiencing or seeing
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: this. Mhmm.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: And people said they would stay both in 2005 and 02/2015. So this didn't really change significantly over time.
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: And that's really the sad thing to me when we talk about idolizing marriage. God values you a whole lot more than he values your marriage. He values you more than that piece of paper. He values your kids if you have them more than that piece of paper. Don't keep yourself in bad situations.
• 20:56
  Don't keep yourself in abusive situations, but also don't keep yourself in situations where you're not being appreciated Mhmm. Or respected or treated well. Demand better for yourself, Christian or not. And both men and women. Mhmm.
• 21:10
  Absolutely.
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: I think more often than not, women are the ones being abused in this situation, but men are, too. Mhmm. And you don't have to stick around. You can go and treat yourself better and be a better Christian
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: for it. If God loves you so much that he calls you his child, imagine watching your children in marriages like this. Now, I will say there are some very religious parents that will send their kids back into abusive marriages. Because We've seen them. Yeah.
• 21:41
  We've seen this happen because they believe so strongly in this institution of marriage because they've idolized this institution of marriage.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: Because they've tied together your faith and your marital status.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: However, for those of us who are kind of on the normal plane, imagine watching your kids go through an abusive marriage and how much you love your children. Or if you don't have kids, imagine the person that you care about the most in the world and watching them go through something like that.
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: And it's interesting to me looking at the difference between religious people or Christian people and nonreligious people. Because I heard a story about this woman who lived across the country, and she was in an abusive situation, like, real bad. Flew home for a wedding or something, had a suitcase, you know, like a checked bag. That was it. And her family saw the evidence of her abuse from that marriage.
• 22:36
  And they literally took her plane ticket away. They said, hey, guess what? You're not going back. We're going to make the hard decision for you. And we're gonna take you out of that.
• 22:46
  And so she did. She just had her suitcase, and she had to start over her life with just that. But she is in such a better place. And her family obviously loved her so much that they were not gonna send her back to a possible death sentence.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: And that on the flip side, you have Christian families Mhmm. That are watching that same situation happen and are saying, well, you need
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: to get back faster so you can fix this. They're saying, I'd rather sacrifice my child than have to deal with the shame of a divorce. Think about that. Because the worst could happen, and it has happened. Statistically, it happens all the time.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah. We actually also looked up a statistic. In The United States, about sixty nine percent of divorces currently are initiated by women. That's a big number, and that is a significant difference from years and years ago. But that's the number today.
• 23:44
  Now this is a contested number, but one of the surveys that we looked at and obviously, like, you can't get a whole overview of things. But one of the surveys we looked at showed that of evangelical Christians who get divorced, eighty percent of those divorces are initiated by women. So eleven percent higher than the national average initiated by women. And you have to ask the question why? Not just let's villainize the women and say like, well, they're they're contributing to the male loneliness epidemic.
• 24:16
  And how dare they? And whatever. But to really look at that and say, why is this happening? What's going on? What have we done to women that this is this is what's going on.
• 24:30
  And what's crazy to
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: me about the male loneliness epidemic that's really hard to say. It is a weird word. Is that, again, it gets put on women.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: Mhmm.
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: Another thing that we can put on women. Why are why are you doing this to men? Why are you not what could the men be doing better? Or what are the men doing now that's causing this?
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: Why aren't women getting married? Why are women divorcing men at an unprecedented rate? Because also marriage is a lot better for men.
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: Think about all the things they get out of marriage in a traditional marriage. Right. What they expect out it.
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: The Christian marriage. Mhmm. We're using air quotes. You can't see them. I really gotta stop doing that.
• 25:14
  Alright. So then the next one we wanted to talk about and I'm gonna move us along because otherwise, we're never getting to anything else. Can talk
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: about this. Almost thirty minutes just talking about marriage
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: is good. I think that's good. So the next one, I think, is maybe more American for our international listeners than what you are experiencing, but it is absolutely what we're experiencing here in The US. Mhmm. And Bree did quite a bit of research on this for us.
• 25:36
  But this is using guns as an idol.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: Specifically in The United States, there's been a lot going on about gun violence and the free the second amendment, so the right to bear arms. People are terrified to lose their right, I guess, to bear arms. And so often we're not saying that. The people who are for gun reform are not saying, let's take away your guns. They're saying, hey, let's maybe put some more regulations on it.
• 26:10
  Let's think this through. Because gun violence is insane in The United States compared to any other, like, modern country, I would say. Like, first world country. Yeah. And, you know, some people have been said to say, it's worth the cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the second amendment.
• 26:35
  Mhmm. That's a quote from someone significant. Mhmm. But imagine looking in the eyes of the third grade classrooms that just were attacked, or any of the three thirty schools over the last year that experienced gun violence, and holding up your gun and saying, this is more important to me than your life. So statistically, here we go.
• 27:06
  This is from 2023. Total gun deaths from 2023 were nearly forty seven thousand. In The United States? In The United States. People died from gun related injuries.
• 27:17
  This is homicide and suicide. Firearm homicides in 2023 were roughly seventeen thousand nine hundred. In 2024, there were three thirty school shootings, and that's the second highest since 1966. And the really sad statistic is that the number one cause of deaths in The US for children ages one to 19 is firearm related deaths.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: That's so if you read one hundred and seven Days by Kamala Harris, she cites that. Mhmm. And I had never heard that before. Let that sink in. The
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: number one cause of children's deaths, ages one to 19, is firearms.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: And that's just us, guys.
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: Just in The United States. Completely preventable. Mhmm.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: As a parent who sends their child to school every day, I don't know how any parent supports the idolization of guns. We've had this conversation with many people in our lives because we come from a very conservative space. And the argument is regularly, well, it doesn't matter. If someone wants to get a gun illegally, they're gonna get it anyway. And that may be true.
• 28:38
  Mhmm. But the reality is that a huge percentage, like, a huge majority of these gun deaths are from people who got their guns legally. Mhmm. And the moment that you put even the slightest barrier in place, even the littlest thing to make somebody just stop for a second Mhmm. And think about it, it's gonna save so many lives.
• 29:02
  And even let's say it only saved two lives. Let's say it didn't make that big of a difference. It saves two lives. You're telling me those two lives weren't important enough? Mhmm.
• 29:12
  Because I believe that they are.
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: Well, you look at, like, The US compared to, like, Australia, The UK, Japan, Canada. Those are all countries that I would say we're kind of on par with. First world, modernized. Australia had one reported school shooting. One.
• 29:32
  Zero deaths, though. The UK had no confirmed injuries or fatalities. There was one plot for a school shooting, but it was never carried out. Japan had none. Canada had two to three confirmed cases, but zero deaths.
• 29:49
  So you can't This is 2024, so just last year.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: And you can't So you look at these places who have gun laws, who have laws in place that say, oh, hey. You need to go have a psych evaluation first. If you're a convicted felon, you can't buy a gun. You know, like, rules in place. Mhmm.
• 30:12
  And here's the difference.
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: And I think the issue here for me is if you're claiming to be a Christian, you're supposed to value human life. You're supposed to love God and love his people. And you cannot tell me that you love God's people without saying, we need gun reforms in The United States. We just do. And they're pretty simple.
• 30:38
  And I think if you have nothing to hide, you should not be too afraid of what other countries are doing. So other countries are doing universal background checks. Making sure we're keeping guns out of the hands of felons, domestic abusers, people with severe mental illness risks. Simple. Again, if you have nothing to hide, you should be fine.
• 31:03
  You can still get a gun. Safe storage laws, which just requires your firearms to be locked up and your ammunition to be stored separately. Red flag and extreme risk protection orders, which allows family members or law enforcement to temporarily remove your guns if you're at risk of harming someone else or some, like, or yourself. I like this. Mandatory waiting periods.
• 31:29
  Which just requires a little bit of a gap between when you purchase the gun and when you actually possess the gun. And this has been proven to They call it like a cooling off period. So you're not just buying a gun in the heat of the moment. Right. And it cuts down on all of those mass shootings or whatever it is.
• 31:48
  License and training requirements to possess a gun. Assault weapons, and high capacity magazine restrictions. So just saying like, you can't own a semiautomatic or high capacity magazines. Data collection and research funding, which says that the CDC and the NIH should be fully funded and recognize that gun violence is a public health issue. And then safe community and school programs to make sure that there's safety in the community and your What The US is currently doing is not much.
• 32:25
  Pretty solidly nothing. They do do background checks, but only if you're buying your gun from a licensed gun distributor. So all the gun shows and the private gun dealers online, you don't have to have a background check at all for, and there's no waiting periods either. So you can get that gun in your hands as soon as you want, and there's no background check if you buy it privately. There is a prohibited person.
• 32:51
  Like, federal law bans possession for felons, people convicted of domestic violence, misdemeanors, people under restricted orders of domestic violence, people with mental illness, there
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: is that. But that's only gonna come into play if you've done that background check.
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: Yes, again. And then there's age restrictions for handguns. You have to be 21. Or long gun rifles, you have to be 18. There are firearm accessory bans from 1934 and 1968.
• 33:23
  So like fully automatic weapons, short barreled rifle, shotguns, silencers, those are all banned. So we're okay with that. But our semiautomatics, we gotta keep Yes. And then concealed carry and open carry, they give that to the state. There's no federal regulations against it.
• 33:41
  And reporting requirements, they do require that any dealers maintain records, but they don't require that the gun owner register their firearms. So we have to register our car. If you're on a college campus, you have to register your bike, but not your weapon. Just to make this
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: a little bit more blood curdling. The Christian party line is often pro life. Right? Mhmm. That's what they like to say.
• 34:13
  Mhmm. Now I'm not saying that that should be the Christian party line. I'm saying that's what often is the Christian party line line, and that is being anti abortion. I don't know if that's what it is outside of The United States, but here, that's what it is. Now in theory, the concept is we value life.
• 34:32
  We value the life that God created. Right? Mhmm. And therefore, no abortions. And yet, let's talk about the hypocrisy.
• 34:41
  Mhmm. You value the life of an unborn child, but you don't value the life of all of these children at schools. We had today Mhmm. Not let's not even talk about children. Let's talk about people living their everyday lives.
• 34:59
  About ten, fifteen minutes away from us at a church that we drive past on a regular basis, today, at least four people were killed because a man drove his truck into a church like, into it Mhmm. And then started firing. At least four people are dead. That happened today, ten minutes from where I live. Mhmm.
• 35:22
  And you'll note that we don't sound horrified and shaken up. You wanna know why? Because the sheriff's department of our county said that this is the fifth shooting that they have responded to in the last couple of years. Fifth massive shooting in the last couple of years. This is not surprising or weird for us.
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: It's just really frustrating because you see other countries have it together.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: Mhmm.
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: Just putting a few more regulations I'm not even saying all of them, but a few more regulations, a few more barriers Mhmm. A waiting period between when you get your gun and when you actually possess it. Or just like storage laws. Simply, simple stuff. Mhmm.
• 36:05
  Dramatically and statistically limit gun related violence. I personally And we're just not willing to do it here.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: I think it is disgusting to walk around and call yourself pro life and also be pro gun. Mhmm. I don't think you get to have both.
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: Because until you value all life, you can't come up to me and say, I value some life. Not all of it. The life that I pick and choose.
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: I don't think you can be Hot take. I don't know that you can actually be a Christian if you're not for gun reform. And if you're okay with what's happening to the immigrants. And if you're okay with what's happening in Gaza. And you're not speaking out against these horrible things.
• 36:53
  Because you don't value Mhmm. God's creation. You don't value his Mhmm.
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: Like, the people. None of this is valuing life. In fact, it's idolizing your gun, your perceived freedom, and yourself.
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: At the end of the day, it's yourself. Mhmm. You think you're more important than anybody else in the world. Your right to carry that gun without any restrictions is more important than the lives of children, men, women. It doesn't matter.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: Mhmm. Alright. I'm not entirely sure that we have time to go into two more. I think think we do. A whole episode out of one of them.
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: American Idol part two. Yeah. Dreams come true?
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: Dreams come true, man. Except that they don't. Except that they're nightmares, and the nightmares are coming true. So the third one we wanted to go into was Christian nationalism. And I actually have heard that this is a thing other places as well.
• 37:57
  So maybe you guys are experiencing it wherever you're living. But in The United States, this is just it's gone wild. Mhmm. It's deeply horrifying, but I've got some stats for you. So Christian nationalism is essentially equating your faith with your patrioticness, with your love for your country.
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: For us, where we sit, it's with The United States in particular, and elevating that above anywhere else. The the country you live in is better than anywhere else just because, I guess. Mhmm.
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: So some of the stats that I
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: found are that 30% of Americans currently are either adherents, so they are Christian nationalists, or they are sympathizers of Christian nationalism. So, like, well, I get your point kind of vibes. 66% of white evangelical Protestants fall into this category. Across the nation, two thirds of the people of the white people, that you're walking into church and standing next to are Christian nationalists. Would tell you that they're Christian nationalists.
• 39:11
  Not just like, oh, well, I kinda am, but I gotta hide
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: it. And I think their excuse is probably like, well, I don't want anybody to go to hell. I want I truly believe that the only way into heaven is through Jesus Christ, and I want everybody to be there. Mhmm. But it's not okay to shove your religion down people's throats.
• 39:32
  Mhmm. Enforce it down people's throats. I heard a quote the other day that Christian nationalism is like calling for Barabbas and condemning Jesus to the cross. And that hit. Mhmm.
• 39:45
  Because, of course, those people were wanting to follow the law. Jesus was radical Mhmm. At the time. And look what we're doing now.
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: I've heard countless people say if Jesus showed up today, the Christians would hate him. Mhmm. The Christians would hate him because he flies in the face of everything. He tells us very distinctly not to be this way, not to value just our tiny circle, not to only look within the church for everything, but to meet people where they are.
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: And the Pharisees were constantly trying to catch him. The Pharisees are the people who were following the law to the tee. Right? They were always following the law and trying to catch Jesus breaking the law. And Jesus was always like, no, just
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: love. Mhmm.
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: And that's what we're doing here, too. Or you think, like, I saw this the other day online, too. It was the people who were hiding Anne Frank were breaking the law. Mhmm. The people who reported her were following the law.
• 40:54
  Mhmm. What would you do? Mhmm.
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: Well, one of the people I actually would love to do a whole episode on is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who if you're not familiar with him, major religious figure. But he was a pastor in World War two Germany. And the Christian church of Nazi Germany sided with Hitler. Mhmm. Why?
• 41:19
  Because the church always chases power. Mhmm. And you can see it today. The church is chasing power. The men in the church are chasing power.
• 41:29
  It's all about power. And so the church of Nazi Germany, the Christian church of Nazi Germany that said they were following Jesus, followed Hitler. And Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was a Christian pastor, said no. He said this is not what God would want. Mhmm.
• 41:48
  Now he has tons of writings. I really encourage you to do some research on him. I wanna do some more research on him. But he actually planned, I believe, and led an assassination attempt on Hitler. That did not follow the law.
• 42:04
  Mhmm. This was someone who flew in the face of nationalism. And we look at that person as an example of, like, he stood for his faith.
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: Well, it directly contradicts God's creation. He gave us free will. Mhmm. He gave every single person on this world the opportunity to choose him. Other people choose different things.
• 42:31
  We cannot force our religion down their throats, the same way that you wouldn't want another religion shoved on yours. Other people believe different things. Other people believe there's different ways to get to heaven. And you have to respect that God knew what he was doing when he gave us free will. He could have sent Jesus down as a king to lay down the law.
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: Mhmm. But he didn't. Christian nationalism is a very bizarre concept to me because you are opening up a lot of pathways. As you say, like, alright, well we're gonna force the 10 commandments to be in public schools. We're gonna force prayer time in the White House.
• 43:15
  We're gonna like, all of these, like, Christian things. I'm I I gotta stop using the air quotes.
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: Mhmm. I don't know how
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: to do that with my voice. Mhmm. I'll try and be more sarcastic for you. But all of these supposedly Christian things that we're doing and I'm sitting here and I'm thinking, okay, Christians. You're thrilled that there's prayer time in the White House.
• 43:37
  But let's assume that our next president is of a different faith. Mhmm. Let's assume that they are Muslim. Are you gonna be okay with that prayer time in the White House? Because you've opened up that door.
• 43:48
  You've said, forget separation of church and state. Mhmm. We're fine with the church and the state being the same.
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: So what happens when it's not your church? Mhmm. Maybe instead, we should keep those things separate as they were always intended to be. Mhmm. Some verses that I wanted to read, because obviously this one's very biblical.
• 44:09
  In John 18, it says, my kingdom is not of this world. That's what Jesus said.
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: My kingdom is not The United States. Yeah. Or not wherever you happen to find yourself. In Philippians, it says, our citizenship is in heaven. In Matthew, Jesus says, render unto Caesar's what is Caesar's and to God what is God's.
• 44:29
  Mhmm. Separating those things, separating the world from heaven Mhmm. From where we're supposed to be. Overall, these things over and over, the Bible says that our allegiance is to God.
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: It's to Christ. It's to his kingdom. It's not to The United States. It's not to wherever you find yourself on this earth. It's to God.
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: Love God and love people. Mhmm. There was a TikTok that was really popular right when Trump took office, and it was one of his rallies, I believe. And someone was going around interviewing people, Trump supporters specifically. And they said, if Jesus walked into The United States, what would you do?
• 45:13
  Would you send him back? And they were like, well, I'd be happy if he came here legally. You want Jesus Christ who came down from heaven to go through our legal system.
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: And get kicked right back out, let me tell you. That man was a hippie.
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Come on. Come on. No. Love God and love others.
• 45:37
  Right.
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: And that doesn't say love your nation.
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: I'm not saying you can't be happy for where you live or proud of the community that you've built.
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. You should be. But
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: when If it's you good.
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: But when you take that
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: and you turn it into an idol. Mhmm.
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: And that's the thing is, idols can be good things. Mhmm. Marriage can be a good thing. Gens.
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: Nah, I wouldn't go that far.
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: Okay. Marriage can be a good thing. Your community can be a good thing. But it can still be put in a higher place above God. Idolatry is when anything, even good things, gets the central place God alone should deserve Mhmm.
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: In your heart. And we can turn anything into that, which is what we're gonna
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: go into next. Now here's what I
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: kinda wanna do with this, because we don't have a ton of time, and I feel like this deserves a lot. I feel like this is a big one. So my vote would be to introduce the topic Okay. And then do our next episode on it. Okay.
• 46:42
  So I'm just gonna give you, like, some of the basics. Okay? Because this is kind of a weird one as Christians. It's a little weird to say. But the Bible being an idol.
• 46:53
  I know that's not a surprise because I introduced it at the beginning. But I I ruined my own mic drop moment. Mhmm. But here we are. Christians so often put the bible on a pedestal.
• 47:05
  The bible is the ultimate thing. You have to have memorized it. If any of you little Christian children went to Awana or Sparky's, you're with me on this. Like, you you had to learn your little verses every day. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that.
• 47:19
  However, the Bible itself is not God. Mhmm. It is some of the words of God. Mhmm. It is not God.
• 47:31
  It is not Jesus. When Jesus died and rose again, he said, and I leave you with my spirit. And I know we said this the last episode, but he did not say, and I leave you with these 66 books or however many there were at that time. And I leave you with the bible. He did not say that.
• 47:51
  He said, and I leave you with my spirit Mhmm. To guide you. Because Jesus, in living his life, wasn't constantly spouting bible verses. Now it's not that he never did. He absolutely did sometimes.
• 48:04
  But he also flew in the face of many of those bible verses. Mhmm. So if Jesus did that, then it stands to reason that when the Holy Spirit came and became part of us as Christians, that sometimes we were gonna fly in the face of what the Bible said. Mhmm. Sometimes we were gonna have to use our own reasoning skills.
• 48:28
  Because otherwise, why leave us with the Holy Spirit? Just leave us with the Bible and call it good.
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: Even the way that we handle the physical Bible. Mhmm. You can never throw it away.
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: Mhmm.
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: You can't burn it. You can't do all of these things to it. It's not God. Mhmm.
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: It is a book. Mhmm. A book that has been translated and retranslated, and people have selected what's gonna be in it and what's gonna be out of it.
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: Well, in, like, different countries and cultures, they had, like, fertility idols and, you know, financial idols. Mhmm. Christian people would look down on those, and even the way they were handled was differently. Think about that in relation to the Bible as we head into next week. One of the
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: stats that I'll read for you this time, and we can go into it more deeply next time, is that in 2021, the American Bible Society did a survey. And it says that only 11% of Americans actually read the Bible on a daily basis. Mhmm. And yet we assume universal knowledge.
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: And so we've taken this book that we didn't even read. And we assume that that book, not God, but that book, our ability to quote that book, our ability to spew those words at other people gives us this, like, religious hierarchy.
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: Well, even we pick it apart verse by verse. Right? You have the little calendars, like a verse a
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: day. Mhmm.
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: Or when you're in Iwana and Sparkies, you memorize these specific verses. But when you dive deeper, you read the whole story, but also read the historical context of it, that can change your view. Mhmm. And we've talked about this in some of our earlier episodes on Paul and stuff, but the way Paul would write, he would quote the Roman law first, and then directly contradict it in the next verse. So it sounds confusing.
• 50:29
  Mhmm. And if you pick it apart verse by verse, you can make it say whatever you want. Mhmm. Right? Or the fact that, like, these are letters to specific churches.
• 50:39
  Mhmm. Not for all of their churches, but this one specific church in Ephesus.
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: Right. It becomes a little bit difficult as humanity if there's a lot of gray area. We don't like gray area. Mhmm. We don't like to say the rule might be different for me than it is for you.
• 50:59
  Mhmm. Or that it's okay if my beliefs differ a little bit from yours. We don't like that.
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: And so we turn back to this bible that we've turned into an idol. And we quote scripture and we whatever. And we use scripture as a weapon against other people. And that's how you know it's an idol. Mhmm.
• 51:20
  Because Jesus would never Jesus would never take his words and use them to harm people. Mhmm. But you do, or Christians do. So that's how you know you've used it as an idol.
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: And we should want to be like Jesus. No, we're not Jesus. But we are the hands and feet of Jesus on this earth right now.
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: Mhmm.
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: And we should be living our lives in a way that reflects his goodness and his love Mhmm. In everything that we do. Mhmm.
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: And if you're picking out other character traits of Jesus, like Brie said, his goodness and love, because that's what the Bible talks about, us showing. But I encounter a lot of people that are like, well, but Jesus did flip some tables sometimes. Okay. Okay. I'm not saying never flip the table.
• 52:09
  We're flipping tables right now. I think we like to flip some tables. But what you should focus on in your day to day living is that Jesus showed goodness and love.
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: That's who he was. And also, you should know that Jesus did flip a table. But why did he flip a table? Mhmm. They were selling things in the church.
• 52:27
  Mhmm. That's why. Make a note, those
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: of you with bookstores in your churches. Just a little thought there. Alright. So next week, we will go more deeply into this because I just I really think that this needs its own devoted time. Because this is a hard one.
• 52:47
  Because if you really believe that and we do believe that the Bible is the word of God Mhmm. It does become difficult difficult to separate. Like, okay. I shouldn't idolize the Bible, and yet God should have the highest place in my heart. Those are two things that are hard to reconcile.
• 53:03
  So we'll talk a little bit about that next week. You've heard enough things from us today.
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: Have you? I mean, we've been very serious. Usually, we're a little
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: well We've been in a mood this week, though.
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: I've been on high alert.
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: We've also had COVID this week. We're pretty sure
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: announce that.
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: We're pretty sure. Well, they they don't care. This is the the podcast. You're right. The family doesn't listen to the sentence.
• 53:28
  Infect them. So we've been it's it's fine. We'll maybe be happier next week. I don't I don't know.
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: The world is going to crap. I'm just full of rage, and I need an attitude adjustment and a time out. You need a time out? Mhmm.
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: Alright. I'll leave. You can sit in with your nose in the corner. Okay. Until next week when I release Brie from the corner.
• 53:58
  We love you back. Love you. Bye.