Latest / We Are More: Sisters Talk Faith & Feminism / Ep. 93: We Asked Too Many Questions

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Ep. 93: We Asked Too Many Questions · We Are More: Sisters Talk Faith & Feminism

• 0:12
  Speaker 1: To the We Are More Pod cast. My name is Alyssa. And my name is Bree. We're two sisters passionate about all things faith and feminism. We believe
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: that Jesus trusted, respected, and encouraged women to teach and preach his word. And apparently, that's controversial. Get comfy. Good afternoon. Are you walking in a winter wonderland?
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: It's not what I would call a wonderland. It's truly the worst. You know in Alice in Wonderland, how, like, she takes too many drugs and then slips into a nightmare? Yeah. That I would call what Michigan is right now.
• 0:51
  So some kind of wonderland.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: Not a good Someone took too many drugs, and we are in a nightmare. I am a 100% convinced that hell is not warm. It's not like fire. It is this. Mhmm.
• 1:04
  It is unending snow. The roads are horrible.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: I would much rather be warm than cold. Or hot than cold, I guess.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: See, as a rule, I would rather be cold than hot. Like, I'm a winter baby. I like the winter. I like the cold. But this is different.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I like the fashion of winter more. I like the layers. I like that you can put on more clothes. In summer, you can only take off so much before you But have to take off your I would much rather be just baking in the sun right now.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: See, I'm totally content. If we're in the twenties or thirties or something, like, I'm fine. I don't care. But we are well into the negatives at this point.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: This like, the past couple of days, it's been negative, what, like, a million?
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: When we were driving home, it was negative 12 last night. And that's without the wind chill or anything. That's just that's just existing. Mhmm.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: I don't like it. And also, I think they forgot that roads need to be plowed.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't think they're doing that anymore.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: The roads by us, it looks like no one's touched them.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: So are you living like this, people, out there in the world?
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Must be nice if you're not.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: We had a meeting this week at work, and one of my coworkers lives in Florida. We're a remote company. And she was like, oh, yeah. Well, we're getting a lot of rain. And I was like That's so hard for now?
• 2:34
  So much rain. Now, I will grant you that they do have hurricanes.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So there's that. Each state deals with its own, you know, little hells. But ours is right now. And we're upset.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: And we're complaining about it. Yeah. But anyway, today we are talking about, I feel like a really big buzzword. Mhmm. Something that you're hearing all over the social medias.
• 2:58
  I tried to post today to our TikTok. I'm so irritated. So TikTok is having some kind of big internal problem. I don't know. They're collapsing or something.
• 3:09
  They didn't thank the president enough, I'm pretty sure, is what happened. But they are having some issue. And I tried to post this morning, like, just a quick little video being like, hey. What is your guys' experience with deconstruction? Me about it.
• 3:22
  I wanna read your quotes. I wanna talk about it. And absolutely not one person saw it.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Like, it had zero views. Social media.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: Yep. Love it. But so so we have no responses from you guys. I'm so sorry.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: No. It's just gonna be us and our responses.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: Yep. And some quotes and some stats that I found.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: Mhmm. But you're right. Deconstruction is kind of like a hot button topic right now. Is that what you call it? Doesn't that sound like I'm in the twenties?
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: Hot button topic. Hot off the prison.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: But it's so much more than just buzzword.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: Right? It's something real that people are going through. And I think if you want your faith to be really real Mhmm. And honest, you do have to pick it apart a little bit. As you get older, I think it's your responsibility as an adult to take maybe the faith that you had as a child and make it your own.
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: Mhmm. I kind of wanted to read before we get started, because maybe maybe this is more of a common word in The US. Maybe this is something you haven't heard a lot. But I wanted to read just a definition of it so that we're all on the same page. Deconstruction from a faith viewpoint specifically says a process of reexamining inherited beliefs, practices, and authority structures, often testing what's true, what's harmful, what's cultural, and what's worth keeping.
• 4:46
  It can lead to reconstruction, so staying in your current faith but maybe differently, disaffiliation, which would mean leaving your church or denomination, or deconversion, which would be leaving your faith entirely. So you'll see this hashtagged just everywhere. There's a lot of faith creators, like faith content creators that are using this word. But then there's a lot of, like, hey, I became an atheist that are also using the word deconstruction. So I feel like it's a little bit confused.
• 5:16
  You know?
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And everybody experiences this differently. And I think people are scared of it Mhmm. Because they think deconstruction equals crashing and burning. Right.
• 5:27
  So you have people who are very deep in their faith. Like, I'm thinking specifically, like, Southern Baptist, more conservative Christian Mhmm. Who don't want you to deconstruct. They don't want you to question. Even though they will say, no, we're open to questions.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: They don't want you to question your faith.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm thinking, like, even, you know, early Catholic church. When I say early, like, you know, think way, way back, not recently. And you were discouraged from reading your bible. They didn't want you to learn how to read. Right.
• 6:00
  Period. Because if you read the bible, then you might come up with your own conclusions and you might question the current structure of things. Mhmm. You might ask, gee, why is our structure so corrupt or have so many problems or whatever? So that was what was going on back then, and it's still going on today.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: Mhmm. But what I think is so beautiful about it is, like, a lot of times, if you still have your faith, you come out with a much stronger, more real, relatable faith.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: And you often come out a lot more Jesus like.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: Because you really realize who Jesus was, if you're from, you know, the Christian tradition. But you really see who Jesus was and how he lived his life and how he put people over religion Right. Every time. He put people over everything.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: And I think if you come out like, you know, we have these three options. Right? Reconstructing, disaffiliating, and deconverting completely. If you come out deconverting completely and completely stepping away from your faith, did you actually have that faith to begin with? Or were you just following rules to begin with?
• 7:11
  So there's really not a downside because maybe you never had that faith to begin with, and now you can start anew.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: Mhmm.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: And and figure out what you do really believe. But we wanna talk about each of our own journeys a little bit because it's a hard space to live in. It's painful. It's lonely. And we've been talking a lot about it on our TikTok and our Instagram the last couple of weeks because it it is a lonely space.
• 7:39
  Mhmm.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: Well, because you start questioning everything you ever knew. Mhmm. Like, if you're like, Alyssa and I, we grew up in the faith. Mhmm. We grew up ever since we were teeny tiny babies in church.
• 7:50
  Mhmm. And so to step away and start to say, well, why do I believe this? And why do they think this way? And why is this wrong? It is lonely because you're surrounded by other people around you, family members, friends, who are not questioning things.
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: One of the things that I found was kind of, like, the the framework. The Oh, very construction coded. Thank you. Framework. Let's put
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: let's go to Home Depot.
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: So it's almost like the stages of grief. Right? Like, stages of deconstruction. So not everyone is gonna go through them the same way. Maybe you start at different points.
• 8:30
  But I think this holds pretty true to at least my journey. And maybe Breez as well. We'll find out together. But the first thing is, like, the cracking moment. The cracking moment.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: The cracked foundation. We need to rebuild.
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: Anyway, so that moment where you kind of start to say something doesn't add up. Something's not quite right here. I'm starting to ask questions. You're gonna sing a song, aren't you? Something isn't right.
• 9:00
  Something is quite wrong. Something is not right. And so
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: Do you wanna finish it?
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: No. I'm good. Sing a song.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: That's from Madeline. Yes, it is. So then, step two
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: is usually a research phase. And again, this held true for me. I'll we'll tell our stories in a minute. But where you start to really read, research, and try to find out what what the Bible really says or what other historians are saying or what other biblical researchers are saying, things like that, where you just, like, dive in deep to find out the truth as opposed to what you've been told. The next step is often grief and fear, realizing that some of the things that you were taught that you held to that maybe even you pushed on other people were not biblical, were not true, and were maybe harmful to you or others.
• 9:58
  And then kind of that boundary and honesty era where you start to put up those walls where you say, I'm not gonna accept this. I'm not gonna take this anymore.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: And You start to flesh out the walls with mud and tape. Oh, yes. Put the drywall up. Right. Where is my insulation?
• 10:16
  You don't know anything about building. Yeah. I do. Do you know
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: when does the insulation go in? At what step? After the framework. Builders, I need you to chime in. Feel like We attract a lot of builders to our content.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: I feel like you put up half the wall like a sandwich. Right? It's one layer of bread. And then you need your electrical and your plumbing. And then we need to put your insulation in.
• 10:43
  Sometimes it's spray foam. Have you seen those videos?
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: I have. Those are fun.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: And then you put the other wall up and then you mud and tape.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: Good to know.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: That's at least in my head, I feel like I got it right.
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: Alright. Builders, I really need you to jump onto our socials and let us know. But anyway, so then the very last step is reconstruction, reorientation, stepping away. Whatever whatever your conclusion is, wherever you've landed, kind of landing there and accepting it and moving forward.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: When we started talking about talking about this topic, I think some people have like, oh, this big deconstruction moment. They can point to a time in their life where they were deconstructing. And I don't know that I specifically have a set time.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: I think it started out with, like, my feminist journey. And Alyssa and I just starting to talk about, hey, no, women are equal to men. And I believe this about women. And I think women are strong. And maybe that started with me just like opening my eyes and looking around at me like, no, I really appreciate strong women.
• 11:48
  Mhmm. And that's who I gravitate towards. That's who I want to
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: emulate. Mhmm.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: Who I want to emulate in my life after I want to be desperately, I wanna be a strong woman. Mhmm. So I think that's where it started. And then from there, looking into, okay, how does my faith align with this?
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: Because what I grew up learning was that women aren't strong. That women aren't as capable as men. That women are not treated the same in the Bible. And then I turned to people like Beth Allison Barr, and I specifically remember listening to The Making of Biblical Womanhood Mhmm. In the bathtub for some reason.
• 12:28
  Because I think the audio version of that book is really great. It is. Because it's a lot to take in. If you're just sitting there reading, the content is so good.
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: But if you're not used to reading research based content like that Yeah. It can be a lot. It's heavy. So the audiobook is so great. And then also going back through with your physical copy and highlighting the heck out of it.
• 12:51
  But her explaining, like, throughout history, women are strong. They are given authority. God gave them authority. Here's historical examples, not just in the Bible, but outside the Bible where women led, and women preached, and women teach, and I didn't think they were allowed to do that. And so that kinda opened my eyes to things that we were taught as children in the church specifically.
• 13:24
  Not that I want to go out and be like a pastor. But I remember going to school too, and I was in college. Mhmm. And my chaplain was a woman and feeling so weirded out by that. Yeah.
• 13:36
  And now I look back and I think I wish I would have appreciated it more. I wish I would have gone to hear her more because I did like her. But I was at a phase in my life where I was like, no, this is this is not right. This is not right. And I don't know that I went through, like, a ton of research.
• 13:54
  Like, obviously, now that Alyssa and I started this podcast, we're doing lots of research all the time. Alyssa more than me.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: My research is TikTok based. But I did go through like a grief period.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: But not about losing my faith, because I feel like my faith got stronger. The grief was towards who I was before. And maybe a little bit of shame. Mhmm. About how I treated people in the past, what I said in the past, how I acted.
• 14:28
  Mhmm. Irresponsible and uneducated and not how Jesus would have been. So I'm still dealing with that, I think.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: I know you had a couple of moments too in the church where it was, like, a really big breaking point for you. Because I we would be sitting in church services together, and I would react, but you would react much more strongly a lot of times.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: I think I am hot headed. What? No. Because I can't believe it. I can't believe the churches that are allowed to continue teaching and leading people and treating women the way that they're treating women.
• 15:06
  And you're right. There were several church services where I sat there, and I was I'm never coming back.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: There was one specifically not too terribly long ago, and I know we've talked about it on the podcast before, but the pastor yelled at his wife from the pulpit and said, woman, you need to submit more. And he thought he was joking. And Alyssa and I, if we weren't in the center of the row, trapped by people, we both would have gotten up and left. So I sat there for the rest of the service, typing out this giant letter to the church about how horrible they were, how I was never coming back. I never sent that letter because what good would that have done?
• 15:43
  Right.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: But it was therapeutic for me. I wish we had gotten up and left. If I Mhmm. If I was me today Yes.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: You know,
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: I would have gotten up. I would have made a scene and gotten up and left.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: Excuse me, ma'am. Can you move your body? I need to leave. I'm out. Thank you.
• 15:59
  And I do genuinely think that, like, that was my full breaking point with church. I was kind of, I don't wanna say, like, disillusioned by it. Mhmm. But that was my point where I was like, I'm not going to go to church until I find a place that represents God.
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: And unfortunately, all of the churches near me, I do not feel represent God. Yeah.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: I think our journeys have overlapped in certain ways and also been very different in certain ways. You know?
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: I feel like you did dive into research.
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: I did. I really did. When I was a kid, I bought in hard to certain things. Like, I remember our mom watching Joyce Meyer on the TV and being personally offended because I was like, how could god bless the ministry of a woman as a child? I remember thinking this Mhmm.
• 16:47
  When women aren't supposed to preach. And I was personally offended. You know?
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: I always thought, well, she's not preaching. She's just teaching. She's just not there.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: She's she's definitely a pastor, though. No. Not like a great pastor, pastor, but but a a pastor. Pastor. But I I did.
• 17:06
  I bought in to the whole thing. And as I grew up, I was very independent. I was very strong willed. And I remember and I've told you guys this before, having people tell me, you're going to need to be less strong willed because you're gonna have to obey your husband someday.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: You're going to have to be less. Hence the name of our founder. We are less. Did you guys catch that?
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: We changed it this week. Had a change of heart. You know? You know? But I like, even though as a child, I did buy in, I still had this discomfort, this constant discomfort as I was growing up.
• 17:45
  And I my plan was to never get married. Because I was like, well, that's it's a loophole. If I don't get married, I don't have to submit. Gotcha, god. But super conservative churches still want you to submit to either your father or your uncle or whatever man happens to be in the room.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: You know? Because your worth is defined by your connection to
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: any man. Exactly. And I I did end up getting married very young, and I still felt like I was supposed to submit. I was like, alright, god. This is clearly what you want from me.
• 18:15
  So I'm gonna be this submissive little wife, whatever. And I just I just can't. It's just not in me. I am a strong willed, independent woman. And at this point in my life, I'm very proud of that.
• 18:28
  Mhmm. But at that point in my life, I was trying to tamp it down. And it just it just always felt uncomfortable. But I was in church spaces that taught me that. And that's just it's who I was supposed to be, I thought.
• 18:43
  You know? And then we started we got very involved in church. And you guys have heard my story multiple times before, but we got very involved in a church. We were volunteering. I worked there.
• 18:52
  And then I was harassed by a man in leadership at that same church. And I went to church authorities, and I said, hey. Here's exactly what happened. This is a person that other people are having issues with too. I need you to step in.
• 19:12
  I need you to do something. And no one did anything. People that I really trusted. And it's then when you start to realize that church is a business Mhmm.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: Because that specific man donated a lot of money to the church. So that's when you start to realize they don't really care about you. Right. They care about the business. Mhmm.
• 19:35
  They don't want it to affect their business. Yep.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: And at the end of the day, the love of God was nowhere in any of those conversations. Mhmm. I was told to sit down and have a conversation with him because maybe this was a blind spot.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: Or maybe your husband should sit down and have a conversation
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: with him. Constantly, I was asked, well, how does Nathan feel about this? How does Nathan feel
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: about well, I don't really care
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: how Nathan feels about this, to be honest. Like, I'm the one that got hurt. I'm the one that is reeling here. You need you're supposed to be here for me. You're supposed to support me.
• 20:04
  You're supposed to love me. Mhmm. And none of that was present. And so that's where the cracks started for me. Like, the really big deep ones.
• 20:12
  And That was crack time. Yeah. Crack time. And over time, because I stopped attending the church, but I was working for the church. And over time, that came out that I was not attending the church.
• 20:28
  And I You came out at church? Yeah. And I was laid off from my job for they were like, oh, no. It's budgetary reasons. I was like, no.
• 20:37
  It's not. We all know why.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: Let's all just take a poll. Who believes that?
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: But then then the cracks started to form even more. You know, like, not only are you not supporting me, but you're willing to financially harm me because I'm a problem. And where was this community? I was supposed to have this loving, wonderful community. I did the thing.
• 21:01
  I went to church. I got involved. I volunteered. And yet when I needed them, they were not. And so I did start to research after that.
• 21:09
  I the first book I picked up was Jesus Feminist by Sarah Bessie because I was like, there's gotta be somebody else feeling this. Right? And it was so lovely. It's a great starter book if you haven't started this research journey. And then I moved on to to Beth Allison Bart, several other books, and Brie and I started talking about it.
• 21:26
  And I think that's a really important thing as you deconstruct because it is so lonely. You often will lose the community that you built at your church. Mhmm. And for adults, it's really hard to build community. It's so hard.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: Like, I am lucky that I have a couple of friends. Mhmm. And there are some people that just they hold on to people Mhmm. But they are few and far between. Like, I'm telling you, I have my work people, and I have my family, and I wanna go home, and I wanna read a book,
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: and I
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: wanna be by myself.
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: But church is an easy space Mhmm. For adults to meet other adults. There's social events. You see people every week at church.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: A ladies bible study But or a singles
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: when you when you deconstruct oftentimes, not all the time, but oftentimes, you will lose that. Like, all the people that I knew at that church that I knew well, like, I knew their secrets. Okay? Like, I knew them, all disappeared. They were all gone.
• 22:27
  And it hurts. It hurt really badly. So thankfully, I had Brie, and we went through this together. And Nathan did as well in a in a different timeline, but we all kind of were on that same path. But without that, it would have been really difficult.
• 22:45
  And I think one of the defining things I've noticed, like, as I've been thinking about this today, one of the defining things that I noticed on my own journey and my attitude between then and now that tells me I'm in a healthier spiritual space now, I'm very antisocial. Okay? Like, I am a major introvert. I don't I don't come off that way. If you meet me, I don't come off as an introvert.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: She's a liar. She's a liar and a cheat. But I really I am.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: I just don't particularly like social situations. I'm not good in them. I feel uncomfortable. You guys know what I'm talking about. I'm like, oh, I don't I don't know if I said the right thing, and then I think about it for seven days.
• 23:27
  But at the time, I would have and I people will tell you this. I would have told you I hate people. I just hate people. Like, I don't like to be around them. Not you as an individual.
• 23:37
  Just the whole group of them. I hate people. And yet I look at myself now, and I would tell you that I have a deep love for people.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: That's weird for you.
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: I know. It is. But I have this deep, empathetic love for people now where I want to care for them. I have a desire to to reach out to you guys, the people that talk to us on social media and message us, or the people that I see day to day, or the people that I see struggling in Minnesota right now. I I want to be there and to help and do whatever I can because I have a deep love for people.
• 24:17
  And the only way that I can explain that very drastic change is to say that now I know Jesus in a way that I never knew Jesus before.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: My faith went through waves, I would say. I went through not really caring about church to when I needed God in my life, I would dive in Mhmm. And be like, okay, I'm going through a rough patch. You know what I need to do? Just write down verses in a notebook.
• 24:40
  And that's how I thought I was, like, digging deeper into my faith was just writing down verses and praying. Writing down verses and praying. And I realize now that, at least for me, was not
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: faith. Mhmm.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: It was conditional. It was transactional. I was trying to get something out of God. And so I'll I'll do what I have to do to get closer. And then you'll realize that that's not a super strong faith.
• 25:11
  Right. Because when things inevitably don't go your way, then you lose your faith. And now, I would say, I don't spend a lot of time in quote unquote devotional. Mhmm. But I do spend a lot of time with God.
• 25:25
  Right. In that Alyssa and I do a lot of research for this podcast. We do a lot of research into the historical aspect of the Bible, the women of the Bible, the people who are around Jesus, Jesus himself, and listen to people much more educated than we are Mhmm. Who have done a lot more research. And that, I feel like, has gotten me to the point where I really know the character of Jesus, and I know the character of God.
• 25:52
  Mhmm. And that makes me have faith.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah. We've both been told by people we love a lot that not being in church means that we no longer have faith. And I if you are going through a deconstruction journey in a loud way, in a way that others can see, you may hear that same thing, or you'll hear a version of that same thing. And it hurts. It is really painful to hear that because you're sitting there and you're like, I'm not I'm not trying to walk away from God.
• 26:24
  That's not what I want. Because if I did want that, I would
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: have just gone. I think something to be said about people going through deconstruction is they take their faith very seriously. They're wanting to know more. You're wanting to know why we believe these things and make your faith stronger in that regard, not just throw a match at it and light it on fire. Right.
• 26:47
  You want to deconstruct it, take it apart, and build it back up. Mhmm.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: I think one of the things like an example of practical deconstruction, if you need, like, a here's how it works a little bit, is the idea of modesty. So we grew up with a very particular sense of what biblical modesty was. Brie and I are both pretty busty individuals. Okay? I've got boobs.
• 27:16
  And in a modesty culture, that's not so great.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: They want you to have boobs, but they don't want you to show up. No. Pretend they don't exist.
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: So I spent a lot of my, like, adolescent life with people like, my parents would I think we've talked about this before, but would, like, mock pull up a shirt.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: Like gesture. Pulling up a shirt.
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. And so our aunts caught on to that and would do the same thing to us when they thought that our shirts were too low. So things like that or not being allowed to wear certain bathing suits or shorts that are too short or, you know, any of that kind of stuff.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: Or we were around other members of our family that were a lot more conservative than we are, and going to schools that were much more legalistic, I would say. Yeah. Wearing skirts apparently is more modest for women And in I literally don't know why. Because it seems like one swift breeze,
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: and you're gonna not be modest anymore.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: But you'll see that in the more legalistic, more Southern Baptist, that kind of side of Christianity where
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: it's That like flavor.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that flavor of Christianity. It's like, you can't show past your elbow. Right. And there's certain swimsuit companies Mhmm. Cater towards No clavicles.
• 28:30
  Yes. No clavicle. And how dare you slip a nip? That might just be
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: like a societal thing, though. No. But when we started to deconstruct, that was one of the things that I landed on because I have a daughter. And what am I gonna teach her about her body as she grows up? Am I gonna teach her that she can't wear a bikini?
• 28:54
  Am I gonna teach her that her shorts are too short?
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: Because that is something that goes along with that flavor of Christianity Mhmm. Is making women feel ashamed of their bodies. Yes. And that leads to a whole host of problems. So much therapy.
• 29:08
  We could dive in. And we have. We have an episode on it. But I think for both of us, it created a lot of body image issues. Yep.
• 29:16
  And once we started to break out of that, and I was like, I'm a woman. I can show my boobs.
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: Mhmm. And I have. Well, that's the thing. They are yours.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: They're mine. And you get to decide. And realizing that it's not my job to control anybody else. Mhmm. It's my job to control myself.
• 29:34
  Right. And that, my dear friends, is the fruit of the spirit.
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: Right? Self control. And what modesty meant. Right. And that's the big thing that that deconstruction taught me was that the Bible didn't say modesty looks like girls wearing skirts instead of pants.
• 29:51
  Modesty looks like not showing your boobs. Modesty looks like never wearing a bikini. The bible does not say that. Mhmm. Now other Christians have along the way certainly said that.
• 30:02
  But what the bible says about modesty is, hey. Don't wear your best clothes and your jewels and your hair braided to church because it will make other people feel less than, and they won't feel comfortable coming into your church space. That's what the bible says about modesty. That's all the bible says about modesty. It actually says nothing about a woman's body.
• 30:22
  And so in deconstruction, to pull all of that apart and to say, what still makes sense? What does the bible say? Now god could be calling you to something different. Like, you may be uncomfortable showing your boobs. Yeah.
• 30:37
  And that is fine. Mhmm. The basis of it is self control. So whatever you feel comfortable with, not what your husband feels comfortable with, not what your pastor feels comfortable with, but what you feel comfortable with. But that was one of the things that I had to deconstruct that still is difficult for me today because it was so ingrained in us growing up that this is what faith looks like.
• 31:00
  But faith doesn't have to look like that. Now I did some research as well into some of the stats around deconstruction because it's actually got kind of a bad rap lately. There are a lot of people that are very supportive of people going through a deconstruction phase, but I think you'll see more of that legalistic flavor of Christianity. Really doesn't like it. And so I I did some research.
• 31:27
  And one report from Barna says that forty two percent of US adults say they've deconstructed the faith of their youth. Now that doesn't just mean Christianity. That means whatever faith you had. But that's significant. Now, obviously, they're they didn't pull a 100% of The United States.
• 31:45
  I didn't get a call. I don't know about you.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: I did. We got a call. And they said, we've been trying to reach you about your car's extended warranty. But also,
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: I have another question. Have you deconstructed your face? But that's really significance of of overall people. Now from that same poll, 30% of people that identified as Christians, self identified, would say the same. That's a that's over a third of your church.
• 32:18
  Mhmm. Over a third of the Christians you interact with.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: My our our mother, and I. We were talking about this the other day and how deconstruction God's not afraid of
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: it. Yes.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: Right? So God is gonna stand up to your questions.
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: He can hold his own. He's God. Mhmm. But the church will say, God can stand up to your questions. But when you start to question things, they say, well, don't worry about that.
• 32:52
  Or Just have faith. Just have faith. Just have faith. Or maybe you're struggling with your faith right now. Here's a biblical counselor you can talk to.
• 33:01
  Right. And that's the problem that I see right now is people saying that you don't have faith Mhmm. Because you're deconstructing or that your faith is too weak. And I just don't think that's true.
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's a weird idea to me that God is scared of your questions. Like, God is gonna hear you ask a question. He's gonna
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: be like, oh, they have no faith,
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: and turn around and leave you there.
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: Just as a reminder, God created the universe and everything in it. So I think he's good. I think he's good.
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: You will never ask God a question that confuses him, that he has not heard before, and that he doesn't have an answer for.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: Let you do you think any
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: of your thoughts are original? They're not. God made you. And let's just let's break it down from an Old Testament perspective. Are you ready?
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: Break it down for me, fella.
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: So the Old Testament talks about lusting after people. Right? Thank you for that. That was a horrifying sound. And that if you are lusting after someone, you've essentially already committed the sin of adultery.
• 34:11
  Right?
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: Mhmm.
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: So in theory then, if asking these questions is such a horrible thing, if it's such a sin, you tamping them down and, like, squishing them in your soul until you pretend they don't exist would still be the same sin. Right? Because you're still you've still got the questions. They're still, like, wriggling inside
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: of you. Like a baby.
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: Yes. I don't what?
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: No. You have to give birth to it.
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: A wriggling baby. Yeah. But your questions are there regardless of whether you tamp them down or not. Letting them out, giving light to them, allows you to ask them in a safe way, allows God to respond to them Mhmm. Allows others to respond to them.
• 35:00
  Maybe you find Beth Allison Barr, and she's got this incredible research.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: And you're like, I don't know, but she knows. And something that is so powerful that comes out of that is you realize you're not alone. Mhmm. You all of a sudden have a community of people around you that say, hey, I was wondering that too. Right.
• 35:18
  Think about, like, go back to put yourself in a classroom. Right? And you're having a question, and you're too scared to lift your hand up and ask the question. And then once you finally do or someone else does, you realize, oh, wait. Nobody got this.
• 35:30
  Mhmm. Everybody's confused. Yep. You're not alone. I think it's
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: a very immature faith that has to be sure of everything. Does that make sense? When you're a kid, everything is black and white. Everything is absolute. Yes.
• 35:46
  These are the rules, and they are strict rules and whatever, and there's no gray area. Whereas when you have a more mature faith, when you grow up and you create a relationship with god, you recognize that there's fluidity to faith. That that these rules are not so absolute, that they don't need to be interpreted the same way, things like that. And this idea that you can't ask any questions, that you must be certain of everything, is just a very immature way to look at God.
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: I think it's a very simple faith. Mhmm. Right? Here's your guardrails. Here's your checklist.
• 36:19
  All you have to do is follow follow this way, and you're good as gold. Mhmm. But that's not how life is. Life is messy. And things happen, and you wonder why Like, what's happening in Minneapolis right now?
• 36:33
  Why would a good God allow this to happen? Right. And we don't have all the answers. But we also know that God gave people free will, and unfortunately, some people are bad. Mhmm.
• 36:47
  And by that, I mean Go ahead. I will say one thing on it. I thought that we all would look back on World War II, and we were all on the same page. And we realized, oh, this was bad. What we did to humanity was bad.
• 37:05
  We're never going back. And I'm realizing now, not everybody thought that
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: way. Mhmm. But I think that's really the crux of what we're talking about here. When you deconstruct and you may maybe you leave your church I'm not gonna give you, like, a list of things you have to do. But, like, maybe you step away from your church or you step away from your faith community and you think, I've lost my community.
• 37:28
  Oftentimes, what you've lost is a fake community, is a community that's scared to ask questions, is a community that is willing to look at others and say, I hate people, a community who be told by authorities what to believe, who to believe, what videos to believe. And when you deconstruct and you ask those big questions, suddenly you start to find a community that is just like you, that will support you in your questions, that will support the love of god and not the hate of the church.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: In an unconditional way. Right. Something that reflects Jesus.
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: Because Alyssa and I, throughout our deconstruction journeys, will both tell you we've been part of several different churches where we thought we built a strong community with people. I was part and Alyssa too, we both had our own small groups. And we thought, these are my people. These are who I'm gonna live life with. These are who should fill my cup.
• 38:33
  Every time I leave this place, I should feel refreshed and anew. But when things started going wrong, and we did start deconstructing, and we did leave the church, those people didn't reach back out to us. Nope. It was a fake community. It was built on lies.
• 38:53
  Mhmm. God said, build your life on a firm foundation. Build your life on me. So what that means is you have to look and see who is God. And it's not what's happening out there in the world today.
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: And the funny thing to me is that community came to me somehow. Like and I'm not sitting here like, oh, you need to put no effort forth. But I started deconstructing. I became very public about my deconstruction. Hello, listeners.
• 39:22
  And people came to us, people that we never would have gone to ourselves and said, hey, you wanna be part of my community? Yeah. Let's link pinkies. I never would have thought that these people would be part of my important circle. And yet here they are, and they have the same questions that I do, and they're not afraid to ask them.
• 39:44
  And we're building something together. We're building something stronger together. We're building something that can last. What the church is doing right now, the people who are representing our faith right now in governments really around the world, but particularly here in The United States, in church leadership, in just all of the really public facing people that we've learned about over the last couple of weeks, they are not creating something that will last. They are building all their houses, not just on this like, in the water.
• 40:19
  Like, I don't know where they are.
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: And not those cute water huts.
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: No. No. No. I'm talking, like, they took some some bricks, and they were like, oh, the water would be a great place for these. And then they dumped them.
• 40:30
  Things are going poorly. These houses will not stand. If this is the church, the church will not survive. Now Jesus doesn't need us to to build his church at the end of the day. He could do it on his own if he wants to.
• 40:45
  But if we wanna be part of Jesus' church, his real true church, we have to ask the questions. We have to find out what the bible really actually says because that's the only way we move forward. That's the only way. There's another stat in here. It's from the research group PRRI, and they found that about 18 to 19% of Americans left a religious tradition to become unaffiliated with religion.
• 41:12
  So whether that's atheist, agnostic, whatever, just not religious. 18 to 19%. Almost no one went the opposite way, someone who was non religious moving into religion.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: That's a big difference.
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: 18% of people are like, peace out. See you, bye. And nobody's coming in. What does that tell you about who we are as a church? If god said, go be fishers of of men, but of people, and Jesus said, go be disciples to all nations, and no one knew is coming into the church.
• 41:56
  No one who didn't already grow up this way Mhmm. Is like, hey, I want some of that. We've done something drastically wrong.
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: Well, I think it's important to look back at Jesus. You know, read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Jesus, just by himself, created quite a stir. Right? All of a sudden, people are following him.
• 42:23
  And why? Mhmm. Why what possessed people to turn their eyes towards this this carpenter rabbi man? It was his love. Mhmm.
• 42:34
  It was his radical, unconditional love. Also his miracles, you know? But he was caring for people. He was blessing people. And that's what made people want to follow him.
• 42:47
  Right. But if we're showing radical hate and unconditional what's another word for hate? Just hate. Radical hate. We're not gonna draw anybody in.
• 42:59
  Mhmm. We're not nobody's gonna want a part of this.
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: I mean, honestly, I don't want a part of this. If I hadn't deconstructed prior to this and said, okay, this is not Jesus. Mhmm. This is not Jesus. I would have deconstructed and left the church at this point.
• 43:18
  I would have said I want nothing to do with any of that. Because if that's who you're telling me God is, then God sucks. Mhmm. God is evil. That God that you are worshiping, that you are telling me allows you to kick immigrants out of our country to Murder people.
• 43:36
  Yeah. In the streets. To hold a child outside of their home and threaten them and their family. To pull people out of their homes in their underwear in the freezing cold weather.
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: All of this defend it and lie about it.
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: Yes. If you were to tell me that is god, if that is the god that you worship, your god is evil. That is the end of all of it. It is the truth.
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: Well, because they're not worshiping god. Obviously, we know this. But they're worshiping the power that using god's name has.
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: And we've been doing this as humanity forever. But specifically, yeah, you can look back to World War two and say, the church was doing the same thing. Mhmm. The Protestant Christian church aligned in large part, not everyone, obviously, but in large part aligned themselves with the Nazi party and said, this is great. You wanna know why?
• 44:33
  Because it makes me have more money, more power. It makes me look better. It puts me in charge. That's what we're saying now.
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: All you have to do, again, is look at Jesus' life. And we've talked about this before, but Jesus could have had those things.
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: Mhmm. He said no. Yep. Jesus walked around and drew people to him. Just just walking down the streets.
• 44:57
  Every day when you're walking down the street. And I think we take that a little bit for granted because we lose like, the Bible doesn't tell us a lot of his growing up experience. Right? But you've gotta think that Jesus didn't always have people just, like, following around after him. You know?
• 45:13
  He wasn't just as a 12 year old kid walking down the streets, and people were like, woo. Let's all follow him. There's something about that boy. No. He had to build to that, and we don't get to see that building.
• 45:24
  And I I do wish we did, and maybe we can ask Jesus about this someday. But we don't get to see him grow into the kind of person that people who did not know him would follow after in the streets. Now I will grant you, they didn't have video games back then. So maybe they didn't have a lot to do. But still, they weren't following anybody.
• 45:46
  They were specifically following Jesus because he had a reputation of love and caring.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: Enough so that years and years and years and years years years later, we're still talking about him.
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: And I sincerely believe, I sincerely believe with all of my heart, that when we get to heaven, the only question that we're gonna be asked is, did
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: you love God, and did you love others? And then God might give us a couple of examples. Yeah.
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: I think that's it. And we the church talks a lot about, like, freedom in Jesus. There's a song about that. Right? It's an old one.
• 46:24
  But freedom in Jesus. There's freedom in god. And yet the moment that you walk into a church, it's like you're getting chained up with all of these rules. Right? Modesty.
• 46:34
  Don't swear. Don't watch that movie. Don't sing that song. Don't associate with those people. Don't vote Democrat.
• 46:41
  Like Just don't Yeah.
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: In general. Don't. Don't. Don't. Don't.
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: Don't. It's all of these rules. And yet we sit there and we're like, no. But there's freedom in Jesus. I think there is freedom in Jesus, but you have to deconstruct to get there.
• 46:57
  You have to pull it all apart to get to the freedom in Jesus because there were a lot of rules back in that church. And once you find that the only rule you have is to love god and love others in a radical way it's not easy. Don't get me wrong. But those are the rules. Love god.
• 47:16
  Love others. There's a lot of freedom in that. It's a lot less scary than what the church tells you.
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: Well, you see examples of how Jesus was putting people above everything. Mhmm. You look at the pharisees. They were following the letter of the law. Mhmm.
• 47:30
  But Jesus despised them
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: Because of the way that they treated his people.
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: Mhmm. You need to love people. And I can't follow all of the laws that the church puts on me. Because frankly, they change depending on which church you go to.
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: Well, it also depends on the culture. Right. Right? In Bible times, it was Roman law, and there were lots of different things happening. Like you said, no braiding your hair Mhmm.
• 47:57
  In church. I think they'd be fine with a braid now. Probably. In fact, I think they encourage it.
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: I think if you try and follow all those rules, you will always fail. And that's where you get a lot of that church guilt too. The church told me, you wake up the moment you wake up, you're sinning. I say, you wake up in the
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: morning and you feel like P. Diddy.
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: There have been so many song references in this episode.
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: Do you know she changed the lyrics of that song after the whole P. Diddy thing? Was
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: probably wise of her. But if you're trying to follow all of those, you will fail, and you will feel like you suck. And you will tell yourself over and over again that that Baptist guilt,
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: man. Mhmm.
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: I am awful. Yeah. Mhmm. It is a miracle that God wants anything to do with me. And yet God says, I chose you.
• 48:48
  I love you. I created you. I want you with me. You could never do anything to change that. So the Baptist guilt really, like it it doesn't function in that.
• 48:59
  And yet we put it upon ourselves. So if instead of trying to follow all the millions of laws, you just said, I'm gonna wake up today, and I'm gonna love God. I'm gonna love God's people. All of God's people. And they won't make it easy on me.
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: But I'm gonna try. Church and I think that's a big thing with deconstructing, is you'll realize the church tries to tell you who to love. Mhmm. You're not allowed to love the LGBTQ plus community.
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: You're not allowed to love people who are a different religion than you. You're not allowed to love people who think politically different than you. And you'll realize that that's just not true. Mhmm. There's a million examples in the Bible of how people were different and they were loved.
• 49:49
  And they were taken care of. And you're right. That's all we have to do. We don't get to pick and choose. Unless you're some of our current administration, I can choose not to love you.
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: I don't think love is an option there at this point. Alright. So next week, we are diving even deeper into controversy because why not? Well, I think in a world the
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: world that we have going on today, if you are one of Jesus' people Mhmm. One of Jesus' besties, we have to stand up and we need to shout that this is not Jesus. This is not love. We're not okay with this. And I can't go to Minneapolis right now.
• 50:33
  Otherwise, I would be out there walking the streets with all those people. What is the word? Protesting. Protesting against ICE and our government. But I can't be there.
• 50:46
  Right.
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: So we'll do it here. So we're gonna talk about immigration and why it is biblically mandated for us to love the immigrant, for us to care for them, and why what is going on in our world today is so very wrong. And for our non US based listeners, this may be a little bit less relevant to you, but I'm sure that you've seen what's going on here in The United States. And so I hope you'll continue to tune in and listen because this can happen anywhere. And it is critically important that we, as the people of Jesus, say not on my watch.
• 51:27
  And thank goodness that there are people in Minneapolis willing to do it. Mhmm. And unfortunately, some of them have lost their lives doing it. But we're gonna talk about that. It is gonna be a little bit heavier.
• 51:37
  We'll still try and have a a good amount of sarcasm and laughs and fun. But it's gonna be That might be Yeah. One of my New Year's resolutions was legitimately be more political. Because I really think, you know, we have have said a lot of things on the podcast, but we don't name a lot of names. We try not to be as direct, I think, sometimes.
• 52:04
  But the time for that is over, And we are where we are
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: now. Mhmm. We're bold. We're brilliant.
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: Yes. People say that about us all the time.
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: And we're gonna be loud.
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: We usually are. Alright. So tune in for that next week. Follow us on social media. If you don't, you can find us with at the hashtag we are more on TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram.
• 52:28
  Follow us. You're welcome. We will talk you guys next week.
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: Bye. Love you.