Latest / We Are More: Sisters Talk Faith & Feminism / Ep. 131: What Would Satan Do?

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Ep. 131: What Would Satan Do? · We Are More: Sisters Talk Faith & Feminism

• 0:12
  Speaker 1: To the We Are More Pod cast. My name is Alyssa. And my
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: 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.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: Hello, world. It's Satan. Oh, that's rude. Off, Satan.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: Actually, at the end of the last episode, you called me Satan, so that might be applicable.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: And I'm never wrong. I've never told a lie.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Never not once.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: Never not once not even thought one. Mhmm.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Brie has been really into... Speaking of Satan. Brie has been... I feel like the vibes are right. She's been listening to the Phantom of the Opera lately.
• 1:04
  And I feel like, you know, the Phantom of the Opera... Spooky Mhmm. Hidden, has half a face. I don't know. And she has been playing the music and singing the songs constantly.
• 1:18
  And they will never leave my head.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: Okay. What's interesting when you say this is, to me, you're saying constantly. Brie's been doing this constantly. I'm like I think it's only been today.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: It's been at least two days. Maybe. Prior to that, it was Christmas music because Yeah. Apparently, we've switched holidays already.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, I'm bilateral. I don't care what I'm listening to. It can be summertime, and I'm listening to Christmas music. You know? See, I
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: can only listen to Christmas music maybe two months before Christmas because... Not because I don't like it, but because I start to feel like, oh, I'm ready for Christmas time, and then I get sad.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: I like listening to it before Christmas because actual Christmas, I'm kinda bummed out. So listening to Christmas music before Christmas brings me a lot of joy.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: I'm telling you, it's the Christmas season
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Is the vibe. I... Like, Christmas day is what it is. It's kind of like, oh, we've all led up to this, but now you have to be sad because it's over and whatever. Please don't ask why.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: No one quite knows the reason. It could be perhaps that our hearts were too small. And it could be perhaps.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: I was trying to give you a long pause to see if anything would happen.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: Well, because I I know I switched it.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: You did. You messed the lineup.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So I... Hey. Hey.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: I apologize. Out there, world Out there in the lovers. Mhmm.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: Grinch
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: haters. I'm so sorry. We have watched every version of the Grinch, I swear. This topic, we've... We're only three minutes in.
• 2:59
  We've jumped from, like, four different topics at this point.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: Phantom to the Grinch. All kind of, like, bad guys. Sure. Ish. The bad guys with a twist.
• 3:08
  Yeah. If... Oh, honey. You wanna see a twist? Sympathetic bad guys.
• 3:14
  Unlike the devil. So true. No redeeming qualities.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: Other than his beauty? Well, sure. So because it's spooky season It's spooky season. We thought we'd talk about Wow. She's dancing too this time.
• 3:33
  Normally, doesn't dance.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: That's not even the right words.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: We thought we'd talk about the spookiest thing for Christians. Right? Yeah. The devil. The devil.
• 3:43
  And I'm gonna be honest with you. Both of us said after we were, like, had been researching for a while, we were like, I'm overwhelmed.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Because angels, that's also complicated. I'm shocked that we got through that. But now we're getting into like demons and devils and the devil. And also, I was looking up just the lower.
• 4:07
  Where do we get our information? Where do we get our imagery from? There is so much out there, you And turns out, people be obsessed with evil since the dawn of time.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Since the serpent, I think. The dawn of time. And also, like, culture, almost. I mean, not everyone, but almost every culture has some version of the devil. Some version of the bad guy that handles all the bad people.
• 4:38
  So you've even got that pulling in too. Mhmm.
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: It's a lot.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: There's a lot to it. So we are going to scratch the surface today. I mean, really Barely. Barely. There's so much out there.
• 4:51
  If this is something you're interested in, be cautious, I guess, as you research it because it gets a little creepy.
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: You know, sometimes when you're filing your nails and maybe you get your skin just a little bit Ew. But it's not like it's barely anything. Right? That's about what we're gonna get into.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: So I hope
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: you're excited. It's not a cheese grater. It's not a knife. Ugh. It's a a dull nail file on your skin.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: Well, if you stuck around after that imagery. Here we go. So let's do the same thing we did last week where we talk about when you picture the devil, what do you picture? Now if you come from a Christian tradition, obviously, there's a lot of things there. But sort of the stereo stereotypical, like red skin, horns, carrying, like,
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: a trident for some reason. A little tail
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: Mhmm.
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: With a little spike.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah. That representation of evil, as though everything about that creature has become evil. You know? Not, oh, it was a a beautiful angel that fell from heaven or whatever. And maybe you came from the Christian tradition, so you think of that also.
• 6:15
  But culturally, we often think of the pitchfork and the horns, and you'll see it on Halloween pretty soon, probably. Mhmm. You might also think about the serpent in Eden. So we know that it was... Well, we assume that it was a snake that weirdly still had legs.
• 6:34
  That part of the lore is very interesting to me.
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: So maybe like a kimono dragon. Yeah.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: But like longer and skinnier. Aren't those pretty deadly? Oh, super deadly.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I've read the book Sharkheart.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: And so we think of that as Lucifer, a fallen angel, who then tempted Jesus. So there's a lot of things in the Bible that we're pulling together when we think of this from a biblical perspective. Culturally red spooky. We actually have a restaurant near us called the Red Devil. Yeah.
• 7:06
  Yeah.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: I also think my idea of hell and Satan Satan? Satan. Satan echoes what you see in heaven. So like, you have one leader Mhmm. God, the Father Mhmm.
• 7:24
  Jesus. And then the angels, who are kind of God's little messengers. Mhmm. But then in hell, have one leader, and then the demons being all of the leaders' messengers. Mhmm.
• 7:40
  That's what I imagine.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But I think that's being very generous. I think it's a comfortable structure for us as humans. Hierarchy. We like somebody in charge.
• 7:51
  We like the underlings. You know? It makes sense to us. But, yeah, it's it's really not biblical in any way. And we talked a little bit about that last week too.
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: Well, I think it's being very generous with the devil. Mhmm. Why would God the creator allow that? Right.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: Well, I think we pull that concept from other faith traditions. Because if you think of the Greek and Roman mythology, Greek specifically because I know the gods' names there, you've got the brothers. So you've got Zeus and Hades and Poseidon. Poseidon. Yes.
• 8:26
  Thank you. And Hades isn't necessarily evil or any more so evil than the rest of them. He just happens to be the ruler of the underworld, whereas Zeus is the ruler of The heavens. Mount Olympus and etcetera. Yeah.
• 8:42
  And Poseidon's the ruler of the sea. So he's just sort of that's just his job. Like, it's not like he's necessarily inherently evil. It's just his job. Mhmm.
• 8:53
  And so I think we may have pulled that idea from there, made him evil, but said, like, well, but he's the ruler here, and that makes sense. Mhmm. And even even though we know that's not what the Bible necessarily says, I think that is still a comfortable structure that we settle back into.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: Well, it's also an easy blame. Mhmm. When you're uncomfortable with the world around you and the the things that happen in the world that we can't control Mhmm. It's easy to blame that rather than free will and humans. Yeah.
• 9:27
  Well,
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: if if we've got a bad guy that we can pin everything on, accountability kind of goes out the window in a way. Well, he just he just fell to the devil. You know? Oh, his baser instincts or whatever. You know?
• 9:41
  It's... It is easy to say, well, the devil tempts people in charge more than than others. You know? Mhmm. Or if I'm having a really hard day, oh, well, the devil really got me today.
• 9:52
  But the Bible has a kind of different description of the devil, and in fact, may not be necessarily one being. Yeah. So we both kind of looked this up, but the Hebrew word Satan, Satan, means adversary or accuser. So instead of it being a specific person's name, like Brie's name is Brie, it would be sort of a a job description almost.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: Well, kinda like how we talked about last week the original word word word for angels means messenger. Mhmm.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: So think of it kind of like, okay. My name is Alyssa. I am an editor. My name is not editor. But if someone were to describe me, they might use that word.
• 10:46
  Mhmm. So in describing an accuser or adversary, they may use the word Satan, but it's not that being's name. It's not their direct name. Now we do pull this from some other parts of the scripture where we'll talk about that in a little while. But it's just interesting that we we do like to do this with the Bible where we we take a bunch of verses, we throw them in a pot, and we mix them all together.
• 11:17
  And how radical would that be? Not that it's necessarily gonna change anything about your faith in and of itself, but how radical does it sound to say, what if there's not one Satan? It's uncomfortable. Mhmm.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: And in other historical traditions like the Mesopotamians, those type of 3,000 BCE people Mhmm. They had lots of different evil beings
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Mhmm.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: That they had names for, but they were doing bad things specifically. Like, they had a job almost. Okay. So there was like... Like, get ready.
• 11:57
  I'm ready. Lemashtu. Good. Lemashtu. That was great.
• 12:02
  Lemashtu. I'm gonna stick with that. Who was a terrifying supernatural being female, being associated with threatening pregnant women and mothers and infants.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: Oh, so really specific.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Okay. So that was like... Almost like the gods that they had, and they would pray to different gods for different Yep. They would blame bad things happening to people on certain, like, demons.
• 12:28
  Uh-huh. Or bad people. Or Pazuzu, who was a fearsome wind demon whose image was also used for protection, particularly against Lamashtu.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: These are fun names. Yeah. So I find that really interesting because it's just... It's exactly like our concept, like we said, of the devil where we want someone to blame. They just wanted really specific people to blame.
• 12:58
  Oh, yeah. And I think culture back then was so much more mystical.
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: Mhmm. Mystical. Magical. Thank you.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: And so it was totally acceptable to say, okay. Well, I'm gonna blame this very specific being because then that gives me someone to be mad at. It gives me someone to place the blame on. If nature takes its course as a pregnant woman and something horrible happens, well, now I can be mad at this specific god. And it is, in a way, what we do with the devil too.
• 13:32
  We just do it in a less specific way.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: Mhmm. Or I can try to ward off this very specific
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: Right. Right. Creature. It's kind of like with the Catholic faith in a way, and I don't say this as as a criticism in any way, but just that they are a little bit more mystical than we are as Protestants. Because I was watching...
• 13:50
  Or I saw on Facebook the other day someone had lost a wedding ring, and they posted a picture. You know, they were like, hey. This is the area that I was in. If anybody happens to find it, blah blah blah. And a bunch of people were saying...
• 14:01
  I think it was Saint Michael. They were saying, oh, pray to Saint Michael. Ask him to help you find it. Because that was, like, a specific saint, a specific being. The saint of lost jewelry?
• 14:14
  I don't know. But, like, a specific being that you can look to. And it's it's the flip side of this where you say, okay. A specific being that can give me hope. A specific being...
• 14:24
  So it's not just sort of general god where it feels a little bit more maybe generic. And I'm not saying that it should, but maybe it feels a little more generic. But no, I have this very specific saint to pray to, or I have this very specific evil demon to be mad at. Mhmm. Now, in Job, the word used there for Satan in this story is Satan, h a dash Satan.
• 14:53
  And that's the accuser. He appears among the heavenly beings and challenges Job's righteousness. We know the story, of course. Job loses everything. He loses his family.
• 15:03
  He loses his children, his livestock, everything. He becomes sick. His friends abandon him. And the accuser does this with God's permission. Because he wants to challenge Job's
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: faithfulness Mhmm. To God. Right. If he has... Because Job had it pretty good.
• 15:26
  Mhmm. He had money. He had his family. So if all of those things were taken away from him, would he still praise God?
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: Right. Now the interesting thing about this section, if we assume... Now this is a big if. This is a big theological question. But let's say for a moment that we assume the word Satan doesn't mean one single being.
• 15:47
  It simply means accuser. Now accuser doesn't come with evil connotations. It could just mean someone asking questions, someone asking hard questions. Devil's advocate. Yeah.
• 16:01
  Yeah. And that becomes even more relevant when you ask the question, why would Satan be hanging out with God? Why would Satan be up in heaven where God lives, chilling with God, and saying, hey, God, Job is really faithful, and that bugs me. Can I test him?
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: Well, also, why would God allow himself
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: to be baited? Right. Does that scenario make sense? If we're thinking the devil, one singular being, the devil was banished from heaven. So how is he communicating with God?
• 16:38
  How is he talking to God? Why are we playing these games? It starts to make a little bit more sense if you wonder, maybe this isn't the devil. Maybe this is just a being saying, hey, let's see if this human is as faithful as we think he is. Mhmm.
• 17:03
  It's interesting. It really changes a lot. And this is all theory. Okay? This is not biblical.
• 17:09
  This is just me and my interpretation and Brie and her interpretation of these stories. But it would start to make a little bit more sense in some contexts Mhmm. If it wasn't one Satan, one devil. And That's why it's so important to look at the original languages. Because our translation of translation of a translation doesn't get it right every time.
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: Because when you hear the word Satan growing up in the church, they're not digging into, like, what does that mean? What why do we have so many different names for this one being? We have Lucifer. We have the devil. We have Satan.
• 17:50
  He shall not be named. You know? But when I think Satan,
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: I think of, like, Tofu. Satan. Now, actually, let's talk about Lucifer, because that's an interesting one too. So the Bible doesn't really ever call Satan Lucifer. There are some contexts.
• 18:16
  So in Isaiah 14, it's... It refers to the fall of the morning star. And it's used as kind of a taunt against the king of Babylon.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: I've heard of morning star from the show Sabrina the Teenage Witch on Thank
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: you for that.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah. They call it morning star.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: And and that's where it comes from, is from Isaiah 14. But it wasn't actually referring to one all powerful devil. Right? It it was a taunt against a king. Okay?
• 18:46
  So then in Ezekiel 28, which is a passage that they usually connect with Satan's fall, it explicitly addresses another ruler, the ruler of Tyre. So it's not even really talking about the devil. It's talking to a ruler. So later Christian interpretations kind of pulled these two together, these two passages together, to talk about the fall of Satan. But that isn't necessarily exactly what they were talking about.
• 19:14
  No. It might have been sort of what they were referring to in a way, but it wasn't exactly what they were talking about. And the name Lucifer comes from a Latin rendering of that image because it meant light bearer. So it kind of, like, pulls from that. So it...
• 19:29
  It's not actually a name that the Bible gives the devil or God's adversary. That actually just blew my mind. It's interesting, and it's weird. Mhmm. Because you grow up in church, and you're told that things are so black and white.
• 19:48
  So definite. I actually was watching a TikTok the other day, and it was this woman who had gone through YWAM.
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: Have you ever heard of YWAM?
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: Mhmm. So if you haven't, it is a youth ministry. I actually don't know what it stands for. I did have a friend that went through it. But Youth.
• 20:08
  With a mission? Oh, it might be Youth with a Mission. Wow. I pulled that out of my butt. I figured why it was youth.
• 20:18
  I'm pretty sure that's right. So basically, what they do is they take kids that are fresh out of high school usually, sometimes out of college, and they send them into essentially the mission field for a short amount of time. They can be sent all over the world, And they do have to fundraise for this. It is not a free situation. And that was really all I knew about it until I looked at this girl's video and she was talking about how she went into this program thinking that she was so confident in her faith.
• 20:52
  Not confident because she knew everything about God, but she was just excited about her faith. She'd grown up in church. She was excited to share her faith. And she came out depressed. She came out hurting.
• 21:05
  She came out feeling like god didn't love her. And it was because... She said after lots and lots of therapy and and digging into this, in large part it was because the people in authority at YWAM could not be questioned. Now this is her story, so I guess you can say allegedly to all
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: of this.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: But the people in authority couldn't be questioned. So if someone was an authority over you and they interpreted something in a particular way, your interpretation didn't matter. There was no wiggle room. There was black and white, and it was what someone else believed. And you had to fall in line and believe that too and never question it.
• 21:44
  And I think that's how many of us grew up in the church.
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: I definitely heard a lot of sermons on, yes, God wants your questions. Yes, God wants your lamentations. But when you did start to ask those questions, those bigger questions, it was like, well... Mhmm. Not those questions.
• 22:07
  Like, let's calm down. Mhmm. Because there's not always clean, perfect answers that would make us comfortable.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: And having to sit in that uncomfort of not everything's black and white, maybe not everything that I learned growing up is a 100% true or we don't know
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: what the truth is. Mhmm.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: And then you start to dive into deconstruction. Then people say, I'm so sorry that your faith failed you. Mhmm. Your faith wasn't strong enough that now you feel like you have to deconstruct. And I'm like, no.
• 22:41
  It's that I'm taking my faith that seriously that I want to ask these questions.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: I think what they'll say is you can ask God all these questions, but good heavens keep them inside. Don't ask your pastor. Don't ever question the structure of the church because God can deal with it, but we can't. Yeah. And that's...
• 23:04
  It's sad because this is all interpretation. What we're talking about today is a lot of interpretation and theories and whatever. But it's okay to have that. Now I think there are some absolutes in believing, you know, Jesus came to Earth. He died for our sins, etcetera.
• 23:25
  But some of this stuff... Like, if Satan is one being or if Satan is a million beings, does it matter? No. Not really. Let's boil it down.
• 23:35
  It doesn't really matter to eternity. Maybe it it matters to eternal beings, but for us and our salvation it doesn't necessarily. That being said, it's interesting to talk about. It's engaging. It's something interesting about our faith.
• 23:52
  It's something that may draw us closer to God because we're saying, God, tell me more about what you created, about how sin entered the world. I wanna know. Being curious about our faith. Or like, why do
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: you allow demons to be around Right. And also fruit flies? Like, what is the benefit?
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: Could we get rid of those, perhaps? Mosquitoes.
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: I feel like we could find a
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: way to live without them. Maybe God has a suggestion jar. We can start throwing some things in there. Okay. What...
• 24:23
  God. God, are
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: you listening? God. There's things that I think we could work on.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: Okay. So some questions that I think we can ask all of us together. Brie and I do not have answers to these questions. But questions that I think we could ask are, did Satan evolve throughout biblical texts? Because we do see sort of a different version of Satan in the Old Testament sort of just being like...
• 24:55
  This, like, pops in and kind of is annoying sometimes being
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: like, hello. Time to be an irritation. Hey. Let's stir the pot.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, really, that... That's the vibe. Right? Especially with Job, you're like, okay. Okay, bud.
• 25:09
  Calm down.
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: Back off. Why are you so mean? Yeah.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: But then in the New Testament, we see a being, a distinct being, come to Jesus in as physical a form as one would assume and tempt Jesus. Right? So that's that's a different character or an evolving character. So that's an interesting thing to sit with. If one was just sort of a mischievous annoyance versus one being, like, a distinct being, that's interesting.
• 25:43
  That's an interesting difference. Another question is, why do we read passages about human kings as biographies of the devil? Why do we do that?
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: Well, I'll tell you one thing.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: The king we got now, not doing so good. I'd also compare him to the devil. But it's... We do this a lot with the Bible where we pull things in to make them mean something that they don't mean.
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: And that's a lot of
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: what we talk about on this podcast. But why? Why do we do that? Is it because it makes us more comfortable? Is it because the theologian before us decided to do it?
• 26:22
  Is it because we didn't have the historical context? Is it because we didn't understand the original language? And I understand that not everyone has the time to sit and study every verse like this. We don't have the time to sit and study every verse like this. No.
• 26:40
  So it does get hard to interpret the Bible. But I do think it's our responsibility to do our best to do that and to take the time
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: to learn about it. The great news with this topic is what you've probably heard in church a million times. God's already won.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: Mhmm.
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: So whatever the devil wants to do, whatever the demons want to do, whatever the devils want to do. At the end of the day, God's already won. Right. We're safe. Right.
• 27:12
  But what's going on in here? Yeah. What's going on with these bad boys? What are... Like...
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about that. Let's talk about demons and possessions and the the things that go bump. Okay. This is a sidebar, but did you ever pray for Satan? Oh, okay.
• 27:39
  No. But I did have a friend that was like, I... This is part of my my prayers every day is to pray for Satan.
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: I don't think that I prayed every day for Satan. But I also was like, okay, is Satan just all around kind of like Jesus?
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: Like, can you hear
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: my thoughts? If you can hear my thoughts, can you stop being such a bad guy? I'd be like, young. And I'd be laying there and I'd be like, hey, have you considered... Have you heard of our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ?
• 28:08
  Have you considered changing your ways? Because maybe there's a spot in heaven for you if you just stop being so mean.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's very valid. If we talk about praying for humans...
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: Pray for your enemies. Yeah.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: Think that's a very valid thing to do.
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: Thank you. You're so welcome. Thank you. I, you know, really... I wasn't praying just for myself.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: I was praying for world peace. The selflessness of you. And my youth. I also think that speaks to a lot of religious trauma as children. This is not on topic, but you'll see this all over the Internet.
• 28:49
  People talk about this all the time, about how Christian kids were raised talking about hell. We were raised talking about the devil. We were raised being told someday someone will threaten to kill you unless you deny Jesus, and you should never deny Jesus. That's what... That was what was in church.
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: Or like the trolley car thing. I remember in junior church... We're getting way off topic now. But I remember in junior church, they were basically going over that scenario.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: If if a train is going... Oh, the philosophy thing. Yeah. Like, do you turn the train?
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: My interpretation of that story, there was, like, a kid who was working with his parent, and he had to lower the bridge or raise the bridge or some... There was some kind of bridge. I think there was a bridge. Okay. And if he didn't lower the bridge, all these people were gonna die.
• 29:47
  Mhmm. Right? But the son got something caught. And for some reason, now the son was gonna die. And he had to choose between the son and all of these people.
• 29:58
  And he chose all of those people and killed his son. Wow. But I remember hearing about this in junior church, and it was just kind of like, we need to do good for
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: the many. Yeah. We can't...
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: We have to be selfless. But it was, like, young.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I I think that's so many of us. I don't think that is just an Us thing. I think that's how churches taught kids. It probably still is how they teach them.
• 30:23
  And I'm not saying that there's no value in saying, choose good. Choose the good of the many. But to teach children these very violent images
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: Or the escalator thing. Like, when you are going up to heaven, there's another escalator of people going down. And do you wanna see your friends Yeah. On that escalator going
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: down to be burned up in hell? Yes. Oh my gosh. No. I don't.
• 30:46
  It... It's very jarring and alarming. And I think adults sit there and they think, well, this is doing them good. I don't think they're doing it because they think, oh, I'm gonna scar these kids today. They think they're doing good.
• 31:00
  They think they're telling you about eternity. And we talked about this before about how Christian parents have this terror prior to their kids saying the sinner's prayer because they're like, oh, if Jesus comes back before they say the sinner's prayer, they're going straight to
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: hell. Mhmm.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: So they try to make it as serious as possible. This is a serious scenario. We don't joke about Jesus. We do not smile. We do not laugh.
• 31:25
  We do not have a good time. And I understand where it comes from because it comes from a fear that they also had put on them.
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: Well, it's the whole fear based theology. Like, the Great. Pastors... What were they called? Scary pastors.
• 31:43
  Would Doom and gloom.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: I don't remember. Hell and brimstone. Yes. Fire and brimstone. I was wrong the first time.
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: You could throw hell in there.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: Why not? Fire and hell and brimstone.
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: And that was their tactic to shepherd the people, I guess, was to scare the living tar out of them. So that they felt that their only option was to get saved. Mhmm. Whereas now, I think there's a little bit more of a gent... Gentler...
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: I would hope so. Yeah. Was a theologian back in the day. I... I'm certainly not gonna give you a year because I have no idea.
• 32:18
  But basically, he created, like, this this idea of, like, okay. Let's say you live a good life and Jesus exists and you believe in Jesus. Right? You go to heaven. Let's say you live a good life and Jesus doesn't exist.
• 32:38
  You still lived a good life. Not so bad. Let's say you lived a bad life and Jesus exists. Now you're gonna go to hell. Let's say you live a bad life and Jesus doesn't exist.
• 32:47
  Nothing really happens. So basically, he was saying, logically, believe in Jesus. But these things don't work. Fear based theology, this weird logic based theology.
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: What... I also think about it, like, positive and negative reinforcement Mhmm. And all of the research that's gone behind that. Negative reinforcement, you don't get great results
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: Because people are just doing it because they're scared. But once they get not scared
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: Mhmm.
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: Then what's the purpose of doing x y z? Positive reinforcement, I I think is a lot better because you're building your faith on a stronger foundation. Yeah. And you're living a good life because you know the benefits of living a good life, and you've made the choice.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: And you love a good God. Mhmm. I think that's a part of why you're seeing so many people in our age group deconstructing, because they did grow up in fear based theology, and they stopped being afraid at some point. They realized, this weird theological out there concept of faith doesn't scare me. And if it doesn't scare me, then what was the point?
• 34:03
  And I think the point is love and care and all of these other things that we talk about all the time. But they didn't have that base because they weren't given that base. If you give someone the base of love and you say, no. God is love. Jesus is love.
• 34:17
  And I'm gonna show you how to live that out. That's very different. Back to demons.
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: Back to demons. Did we ever really get away?
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: Well, we haven't in the world today. I'll tell you that much. So the Bible talks a lot about demons and possession. It's primarily, I would say, in the New Testament. And you see it a lot in the gospels because the disciples are dealing with demons.
• 34:43
  Jesus is dealing with demons.
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: They're exercising demons out of people. Right. Now
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: demons in the gospels often were associated with different kinds of afflictions, not just I'm being evil. So it would be like destructive behavior, some diseases, sometimes opposition
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: to Jesus. So maybe they just had ADD.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: Maybe. And so Jesus, a large part of his ministry is casting out demons. So we can assume that these beings exist.
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: Do you ever wonder if we've just scienced our way out of mysticism? Mhmm. Because things that we would just write off today as ADD, schizophrenic
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: Mhmm.
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: Sociopath. Yeah. They would say possession.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: I think that's a very valid point. Because I think we can certainly see that these are medical conditions, but they wouldn't have seen them as that back then. And I think when Jesus is looking at someone and saying, okay, you're demon possessed, we can probably assume they were demon possessed. But I also think that you could look at a lot of the people that priests went around to and cast demons out of and be like, yeah, maybe maybe they just had ADD. Yeah.
• 35:54
  Maybe not.
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: Maybe they just, like, had a hard time paying attention.
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Maybe they were a little destructive. They had a little too much energy. Like, I think that's very valid. Mhmm.
• 36:05
  I trust that Jesus knew what he was doing. I don't necessarily trust that everybody else knows
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: what they're doing. So true.
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: Now, Jesus... There is a demon called Legion in Mark five that enters a herd of pigs. This is one of those really weird parts of the Bible that you're like, okay. Why, though? So Jesus casts out the demon, and it enters a herd of pigs.
• 36:27
  Not just one, like a whole herd. So that also calls into question what possession looks like. And possessed pigs. And it causes all the pigs to run off a cliff or run into the sea, I think, and they all die. That's the story.
• 36:44
  For real.
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: That's actually a real horror story. Like, can you imagine? Demon possessed pigs.
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Also, couldn't it have done some more destruction? Like, I mean, a whole herd of pig... That's that's gonna kill some people. Right?
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: Well, it's definitely gonna upset the pig farmer. So true. Like, there goes so much money just ran into the sea. Into the sea. So when you
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: say you're running into the sea, this is what you're talking about.
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Like a demon possessed pig, I need to run-in the sea.
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: Please, from now on, say the whole sentence. Like a demon possessed pig. People will think you're insane and also so theological. Lately, I've been saying I need a run-in the road. You have been saying that.
• 37:29
  Yes.
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: We could switch it up. Sure.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: Well, now you got a whole phrase.
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: Now Mary Magdalene also was described as having had seven demons cast out of her. Side note, we've talked about this before, but early church tradition, the reason that Mary Magdalene has gotten this reputation as a prostitute, which is not biblically accurate in any way, But the reason that that came about was because they associated these seven demons with the seven deadly sins. So as though she had all of these sins, and one of them would be, like, lustfulness. So that would have... I don't know why we focused on that of all seven other than that she was a woman and close to Jesus, so we had to discredit her in some way.
• 38:14
  But that's not true. But the Bible does say that she had seven demons cast out of her. Imagine imagine that. No. Pass.
• 38:25
  I can't... Like, I I have no frame of reference for... Because there's... We talk about demon possession culturally, But I don't know I don't know of a accurate thing that says, okay. Yes.
• 38:42
  A real person experienced this exact thing.
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: You know? Have you ever seen The Exorcist?
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But is that accurate?
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: I have never seen The Exorcist,
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: so I don't know. I actually have never seen The Exorcist, but I did see the episode of Psych where they mimicked The Exorcist.
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I did see that too.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: So there... That's my reference.
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's because no way in heck were we allowed to watch The Exorcist, Heck, growing no. I will say I went through a phase in college where I was like, oh, I have free will now.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: Mhmm.
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: And I can watch the scary things. And I watched the... What is the possession one that... Insidious? No.
• 39:22
  Anyways, I watched some kind of scary demon possession movie. Mhmm. And I got so scared when the fire alarms went off.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah. That's bad timing for that.
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: I'm in the middle of watching this terrifying movie. The fire alarms are going off as a drill. Mhmm. And I said, the heck if I'm leaving. And I just put my blanket over my head, and I stayed.
• 39:46
  Allegedly. Allegedly.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: Just so that her college doesn't come after her later. But the question then becomes like, where did demons come from? Right? If we don't even really know what the devil is, it might not be one being to begin with. Where do demons come from?
• 40:05
  We like to believe that they're fallen angels also. That makes sense to us. If the devil fell from God, chose sin instead, maybe some other angels followed him because because we see that happening on Earth. We see a cult leader go off and start doing crazy things and attract others. And that certainly could be possible.
• 40:31
  But the bible doesn't actually say that. It doesn't say that demons are fallen angels. There isn't one universally agreed on origin story. The book of first Enoch. That's not something that we have in our Protestant Bibles, so that might sound odd to you.
• 40:48
  The Catholics also don't have that in their biblical canon. But you can find it in some Orthodox traditions. So this book describes... Alright. I'm gonna read this because it's an interesting description.
• 41:01
  Rebellious watchers and the evil evil spirits associated with their giant offspring, which is something that influenced ancient Jewish demonology. So I'm not really sure what exactly that means. But think more evil spirit than fallen angel. According to this tradition Mhmm.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: Heavenly beings called watchers descended to Earth. They take human women as their wives. Their offspring become destructive giants. The Watchers teach humanity forbidden knowledge, including certain forms of warfare, ornamentation, and magic. Magic.
• 41:43
  After the giants die, their spirits become evil spirits that afflict humanity. Oh, interesting. So that's where the demons came from.
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: Okay. So this comes from a book that is associated with Christianity. We haven't chosen it as part of our biblical canon. But that doesn't mean it doesn't have value or that... I mean, we've talked about how the Bible was put together.
• 42:07
  It doesn't mean that it couldn't have been included in the Bible in some way.
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: And some traditions do include it. It's just interesting to know what other religions, what other people
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: Mhmm.
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: People who helped build your religion thought about Mhmm.
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: Demons. Yeah. Well, it says that this influenced ancient Jewish demonology. So it it did influence what they thought. Now, this does sound very Greek to me.
• 42:33
  It sounds very much like like the lower gods having children with people on Earth and stuff like that. But while they may have pulled it from there, it was their belief system. It was part of their belief system. And why did we take it out? Why did we decide this wasn't what we believed anymore?
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: Because it freaked us out. There's giants.
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, it is freaky. I'm not saying, okay, change all your faiths and whatever. It's just... These are interesting questions to ask and to sit with and to maybe be uncomfortable with and to say we aren't as sure about the world, about the heavens, about eternal beings as we want to think we are. Because if we don't have it figured out, then we really have to rely on god.
• 43:20
  And as much as the pastor might preach that at you from the stage, we as people, as humanity, do not wanna have to rely on god. We only wanna have to rely on god as much as we absolutely have to. We want him to stay in the church, and we want that to be his domain. And everything else is ours. And if we have it figured out, then maybe that's okay.
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: It makes us a lot more comfortable to be able to explain away a lot of things. Mhmm. Explain away a lot of things that people in the early church would have called miracles
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: Mhmm.
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: Would have called not miracles. Mhmm.
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: You know? We've talked about how mystical the early church was. We've talked about casting lots and assuming that whatever the result was was God's will. And they they were. They were very mystical people, and we've pulled that out of our faith.
• 44:14
  We've taken that out, and we've said, okay. Logically, we understand the structure of one devil, a bunch of demon underlings following him. There's a a structure to hell, you know, whatever.
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: But I also find it hilarious because it's a really bold statement to be like, no, this is logical. Yeah. This is logical. A man died and came back to life. Logical.
• 44:37
  But we don't believe in zombies. Like, what we believe is crazy. Yeah. What we believe is crazy. I believe it.
• 44:46
  Uh-huh. But when you really start to sit down and think about it, you're like, woah.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It is. It's... We love to think of ourselves as scientific and logical and whatever. This is a mystical faith.
• 45:00
  Mhmm.
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: We cannot get away from that. We can't get away from... And our traditions, communion, baptism, like Mhmm. All of those ideas. We just like to...
• 45:11
  Especially if you grew up in the church like Alyssa and I, we've grown up seeing this our entire lives.
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: Mhmm. So it's just normal. But someone new stepping in would be like,
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: you believe... Wait. You believe what?
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah. That's real weird. And I think even Protestants take it yet a step further than maybe the Catholics do, maybe some of the Orthodox traditions do, because we so desperately want to seem like the normal logical Christians. Mhmm. Okay.
• 45:36
  We believe in God, but we're not weird. I hate to tell you guys, but this is a little weird. If you're looking at a scientific world, a world that so deeply believes in science, and I'm certainly not saying don't, but so deeply believes in science. And then you're saying, no. But I also believe...
• 45:55
  On top of believing in a lot of this science, I also believe in a magical being up in the sky who's gonna save me from my sins and take me to heaven. It's weird. It's weird. And I also believe that we're on the back of a giant turtle, and we're floating through space. Was that...
• 46:13
  That is, though Yes. Someone's belief. But I remember seeing it on Doctor Who. Yeah. But I also...
• 46:18
  I've been watching this show. I will recommend it with a lot of caveats. If you are sensitive to grossness or swearing or anything, don't watch it. But it's called What We Do in the Shadows. And he...
• 46:33
  One of the... They're vampires. And one of the vampires is from forever ago. And that was his belief about how the world floated around was that it was on
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: the back of a turtle. One big turtle. But I think something that I would like to mention too is when you start to understand that your faith is a little interesting Mhmm. You believe some interesting things. I hope that also leads you to respecting other people's faiths and their faith traditions and wanting to learn more about them and see our similarities, our differences, why they believe what they believe.
• 47:08
  And that's what we've tried to do on this podcast is kind of explore some different religions and different historical contexts to see what fits, what makes sense. Mhmm. And just generally a better respect for everybody out there.
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Now before we wrap this one up, I wanna talk a little bit about how we have taken demonic concepts and often put them on women. We're gonna pull it back to the feminism.
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: Which is so interesting because just last week, we were calling ourselves angels.
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: We were. But now we're being called demons. Oh, nothing new. Frankly, I think probably quite a few people on the Internet have called us that. But let's talk about witches and things like that, how women got associated with the demonic.
• 47:58
  So I think it starts with Eve. Right? I have been told more times in my life than I can count.
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: Well, we bit the apple first.
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: Yes. That that's why women are supposed to be subservient, submissive, whatever. So it starts all the way back there, all the way at the creation of Earth, where people assume that women are more associated with the demonic, Which is interesting because the story talks about Adam standing next to her, but, you know... Whatever.
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: Neither here nor there. There's also
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: the witch of Endor. We talked about her a few episodes ago in first Samuel and how she consulted with the dead, how she was involved in witchcraft. And so that's part of it as well. And then you see in Exodus 22, it says, you shall not permit a sorceress to live. So we've got a feminine add on to that word there.
• 48:57
  But also culturally, so there's a text called the malleus maleficarum. I'm certain that I said that wrong.
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: No. I think you said it right.
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: From the fourteen hundreds. And it was a witch hunting text because, of course, we know that there was lots of witch hunting. And it was... It basically promoted a lot of misogynistic ideas about how women were specifically vulnerable to witchcraft and demons. So you've got this pulling through the bible.
• 49:25
  You've got this pulling through the early church. You've got this pulling through even the fourteen hundreds.
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: I would just like to say, pick a lane. Pick a side. You can't have it both ways. You can't say women are the angel of the
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: home and spiritually superior to men, naturally and inherently good, but also say, but also, they're inherently bad. It's because women can't win. In faith traditions, we cannot win. Because if you're the angel of the home, well, then you have to be perfect. You have to be flawless.
• 50:02
  You have to be whatever. But then when you aren't, because of course, no one is You're human. Now... Well, you're more vulnerable to witchcraft. You're more vulnerable to demons.
• 50:16
  So we're gonna stick you in a psychiatric facility or whatever it is, you know? You can't win. You either have to be perfect or you fail.
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: Be quiet. Mhmm. Stay in the box that we put you
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: in. Mhmm.
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: And maybe you'll survive. Yep. But step one toe out of line. Forget it. You're either gonna be burned at the stake because we think you're a witch.
• 50:41
  We're gonna lobotomize you Mhmm. Because we think that you're just on your period. And now, well, everything's blown up.
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: I think part of it too, why women were associated with witchcraft, not only is it convenient, but anytime they do anything, if you call out authority, if you do something that might seem weird... Because women, back at this time, were practicing a lot of folk medicine, which is normal. Like, they had been doing it for a long time. It was in fact helpful. But now, anytime we see a woman who's stepping out of line, we can say, oh, look.
• 51:28
  Hey. She used a leaf. And it sort of healed something. We knew it healed it before. But now we can say it's witchcraft.
• 51:36
  Or if you behaved outside of societal expectations, let's say you didn't get married. Hey. I'm feeling called out.
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: You could say, it's witchcraft. Yeah.
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: Anyone inconvenient, any woman who was a bit of a bother, this is a way to keep her in line. Fear based faith. Fear based society. Well, also think it's a
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: fear of the men.
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: Mhmm.
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: In this situation too. They have a fear that if they give women any amount of power, that they are then going to lose their power. Right. And they're afraid of that loss. So they would rather call a woman a witch Mhmm.
• 52:26
  Even though she's not, than lose anything for themselves.
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: Mhmm. Whenever we say anything on the Internet, it's the dismissiveness of men that I note the most. If... I've had people... I had somebody on our page this last week, and they asked some questions, and we certainly didn't agree on a very extreme level.
• 52:49
  But the conversation was as respectful as I would expect it to be. They weren't calling me names. They were... You know, which is sad that that's the bar, but it is. And and so I was able to engage with them.
• 53:05
  But the notable thing is the dismissiveness. Because back then, you could call a woman a witch and you could burn her at the stake. You can't do that now. But you can dismiss us. You can say we're following the devil, we're not following Jesus.
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: So I'm reading the new Freedom McFadden book, The Witch. Mhmm. And there's a chapter where it's about, like, a split time period. So part of it's from the perspective of this woman who was accused of being a witch in the sixteen hundreds. And she's going over to help her friend who is super, super feverish, and she's about to die.
• 53:48
  And they call over the local doctor, and he's like, well, clearly her humors are just misaligned, so we need to bloodlet her. Mhmm. And so they... Trigger warning, I guess. They start bleeding her out of her elbow.
• 54:02
  And he's like, well, it's not enough. We need to cut her on her neck. Ugh. Because there's major arteries there. We can get more blood out faster.
• 54:13
  Real fast. And this girl knows that that's going to kill her.
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: Mhmm.
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: She's like, you can't do that. And he was like, well, I'm the doctor. You're not. Who are you to say that I shouldn't do this? I'm the doctor.
• 54:26
  So I just found that interesting.
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: From from as long as people have been people, men have tried to dismiss women. We see it in the Bible. We see it in society. We see it all over the place. And one of the ways that people of faith try to dismiss one another is to say, you're following the devil, or you're not following Jesus, alternatively.
• 54:54
  You're not a Christian.
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: He isn't
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: strong enough. Yes. And it's all a way of calling us a witch. It's all a way of dismissing us. You are not following the devil because you believe you have equality.
• 55:09
  You are not not following Jesus because you believe women should have a voice and a say. We're all here together, and we all have faith.
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: Mhmm. Love God and love others. And if your actions aren't leading to one of those two things Mhmm. Maybe your faith isn't that strong, buddy.
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: Now, next week, I think we've actually gone a little bit long today, which is shocking for us. Hey, demons. So next week, if you've been around for a while, last year, we did a haunted house episode right around Halloween, where Brie and I walked you through a haunted house. She did some rooms. I did some rooms.
• 55:46
  Frankly, I think it was one of our funniest episodes of all time.
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: Go back and listen to that.
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So we are going to do a... Another haunted house, a different haunted house.
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: Hear me out. Haunted corn maze. Alright.
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: A haunted corn maze. I feel like there's less exciting things than a corn maze. Okay? A haunted something. But we're gonna have a hard time because frankly, we both feel like all you have to do is sort of open your eyes and you're in a haunted house here in the world today.
• 56:12
  But we'll do our best.
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: We could call it the haunted church.
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: Oh, a haunted church. Kinda like how churches do Hell house. Yeah. Yeah. The hell house.
• 56:21
  Alright. Haunted church it is. Oh. Be here next week. We'll talk about how sirens are coming out of the the baptismal.
• 56:32
  It'll be exciting times. My gosh. Are you ready for it?
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: Taylor Swift. Yeah.
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: I'm sure Taylor Swift is listening. She's gonna be really upset. Alright. Well, we will talk to you all next week. Make sure you follow us on social media.
• 56:59
  And, yeah, that's all I have.
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: If I figure out how to add sound to next week's episode, get ready to get scared. Oh, boy. I'm so sorry, in advance. Bye. Love you.
• 57:11
  Bye.