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Ep. 101: God Didn't Start With Abraham · 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.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: 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: Bonjour. Peace be with you. Hello. Good morning. Good day.
• 0:39
  Good afternoon. When are you listening to this? I feel like
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: vibes were very different with that opening. People might think they're on the wrong podcast.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: Everybody close your eyes. Oh, boy. Let all the pressure go out through your middle big toe. You have a middle big toe? Sometimes they're bigger than you think they are.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Do you like that? So Brie and I, when we were younger, were in marching band because we're very cool. Yeah. We're the coolest. And I don't I think they did this every year where at band camp, because again, the coolest.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: One time at band camp.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: They would do on the very last day, like, this meditation thing. I don't know why why this tradition started. They did it all four years I was there, and they would have us lay on the ground and do a guided muscle relaxation kind
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: of thing. And keep in mind, it was, like, in an auditorium.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: So there's people laying on the stage. There's people laying in the aisles. There's people laying in between the chairs.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Mhmm. Everywhere you could find a spot, you're laying down. And they're going through this guided meditation. With teenagers. Yeah.
• 1:52
  I'm taking a nap. I actually loved it. I really enjoyed it because it was like the one moment where it was peaceful
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: Yes. In that entire week. And it was like you're laying on the ground, so it's a little bit cooler. Mhmm. You've been staying in old nasty dorm rooms Ugh.
• 2:09
  That don't have any air conditioning Mhmm. In your in band.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: So everyone smells bad. Yeah. Someone had taped our bra straps to our shirts.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: It was awful.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: It was a rough time. I feel like we've told
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: that story before. I actually had a good time.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: But it was traumatic. I enjoyed band camp. Band was a big part of my high school experience. And I enjoyed all of it. But looking back, I'm like, I would never put myself through that again.
• 2:40
  Not ever. Not once. I would have killed, like, 45 different people. I am not someone who wants to stand out in the sunshine or be active or deal with other people very often. So all of it's bad.
• 2:59
  But we did it. But we did. Good for us. Do you ever look back on things in your life and you're like, that doesn't fit my personality at all?
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: I'm not the same girl I once was.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: Oh, once was. Actually, I think that about when I look back on one of our last church experiences, and I got super involved in the kids department, women out there. Do you feel this pressure too? Like, it does not matter what your skill set is when you're in a church. They're like, you wanna help in the kids department.
• 3:32
  Right?
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: You must love children, and children must love you. Mhmm.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: And you must be so good with kids. And I got super involved. Okay? I ended up apprenticing with the leader of the, like, kids department. And yet at the same time, I never liked to be in the room with the kids.
• 3:52
  I always tried to be, like, out in the main area kinda, like, checking up on the adults and whatever. And I look back on that, I'm like, what was I doing? I love my kids. I am perfectly fine when children are around, but I'm not a kid person, you know? It was just it was a strange period in my life.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: And it seems like when you look at me, it seems like maybe I would be a kid person. Mhmm. Because I'm silly and goofy. And also, I'm not. Yeah.
• 4:20
  They scare
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: me. We have there's a lot of kids in our family. In our family, we have there's 11 cousins on our generational level. There are literally 20 on the next generational level. So there's a lot of kids.
• 4:33
  Mhmm. And when we get together, there's a lot of kids. And I love them all. I really sincerely do. But any other children?
• 4:43
  I'm like, meh. But you know who wasn't meh about children?
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: Oh, good transition.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: Thank you. Did you like that?
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I liked it.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: I don't even think we require a song this time.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: Can I do it anyway? Sure. I don't wanna. Thanks. You're welcome.
• 4:59
  So
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: today, we actually are talking a lot about children and about the women who bear them. The people that people come out of. Exactly. We used to do a lot of stories of women of the bible, and we've done some of them. We haven't done a lot recently.
• 5:17
  We've done more like modern Christian women lately. Mhmm. So we're jumping back into a woman of the bible that I didn't know a lot about other than kind of a side note in a story. Mhmm. And that is Hagar.
• 5:32
  Now her story is in Genesis. It's one of the earliest stories in the Bible. Hagar, kind of a basic background of her story, if you're not familiar with it. So she was a slave to Abraham and Sarah or Abram and Sarai at the beginning. God changes their names eventually.
• 5:52
  And she was likely Egyptian, which is interesting because the Israelites had been slaves in Egypt prior to this. And now we have Egyptian slaves in an Israelite household. So that's interesting and different, kind of like a role switch there. And she was kind of one of the personal slaves to Sarah. And I know that word's uncomfortable for a lot of people.
• 6:18
  It it was her role.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And what it was.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: It was horrible, but it was her truth. So she she got involved in a story that didn't need to be her own. So Abraham and Sarah were trying to conceive a child. Abraham had vast wealth but hadn't been able to have a child at this point.
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: Also, God had come to Abraham. And if you read the four chapters before the story, God came to Abraham and said, you're going to bring forth a great nation. I'm going to give this to you. But in order to have that great nation, you have to have people. Mhmm.
• 6:54
  And you have to have women to birth people.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: Right. And so time went on. Abraham and Sarah are getting old. Like, even by biblical standards, they're getting old. And no children have shown up.
• 7:07
  And so Sarah goes to Abraham and says, I'm gonna give you my slave girl to sleep with, and you can have a child with her. And this was you look at it through a modern lens and it is horrific. And it was horrific back then, too. But it actually was legal? Awful, horrifying, but legal?
• 7:30
  Because in a sense, these people were owned. Mhmm.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: Their bodies were not their own. Right. Unfortunately, this situation, Hagar belonged to Sarah. Mhmm. And so she could do with her what she want.
• 7:43
  And the problem here is that Sarah didn't trust what God said. Mhmm. God promised, I'm gonna give you a great nation. He promised that they were gonna have children. They just didn't practice their patience.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: Well, we were watching a sermon literally five minutes ago on this. And she was talking about how for Sarah, this was her one and only job in life, was to produce this child. If she couldn't produce a child, she was in a way, in her own eyes and in society's eyes, worthless.
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's often seen even still today. There's lots of women who don't wanna have kids. Mhmm. But if you do wanna have kids and you're unable to, you feel like, what is my purpose? Purpose?
• 8:28
  Mhmm. I'm a failure. This is the one thing that I'm supposed to be able to do, which is not true. It's not the one thing that you should be able to do. Mhmm.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: But in this case, Sarah, through understandable suffering, wanted to take things into her own hands. Now was it ever acceptable for her to then cause the situation that happened? No. But she did. She went to Abraham, and she said, alright.
• 8:52
  Sleep with her. Now I would define this as rape with no question because there's power dynamics there. There's no way for Hagar to have said okay and it to be a real yes, this is fine. She does become pregnant. And when she becomes pregnant, Sarah gets very jealous.
• 9:13
  Which, I mean, I would too. But also you kind of caused the situation. So what happens is Hagar becomes pregnant and Sarah starts to the Bible so there's a couple of different words here that are important. So in Genesis sixteen four, it says when she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. But that word despise is important because a lot of the Christian tradition we're gonna talk about Hagar from several different religious traditions.
• 9:45
  But the Christian tradition looks at that word and says, okay. Hagar got a little uppity. She thought, okay. Now I'm real important. And she started to kinda be
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: a jerk to Sarah. When I hear that, I think she's upset because she got raped, and now she's carrying this child that she didn't want to do.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: Well, that word that she uses, the Hebrew word in translation, often just means sort of like a role reversal. So it can mean simply treat lightly. So not quite treat her in as high regard. Because the roles had changed. Because this was common.
• 10:24
  And when the slave would get pregnant, the roles would change and her status would be elevated. So that's what that can mean. Mhmm. Pretty simply. Like, it doesn't have to mean she was abusive, she was horrible, etcetera.
• 10:37
  Now two verses later, it says in Genesis sixteen six, then Sarai mistreated Hagar, so she fled from her. Now that mistreated word is actually the same word in Hebrew that is used when it speaks about how the Egyptians treated the Israelites. So it means abuse. It means bad. It means that Sarah was abusing Hagar.
• 11:03
  And so Hagar fled. And when she goes into the wilderness this first time, the angel of the lord finds her near a spring. The angel tells her in Genesis sixteen eleven, you're going to have a son. So he gives her this comfort. And he says, you'll name him Ishmael, for the Lord has heard your misery.
• 11:24
  Now Hagar is the first person to have named God. When she sees this angel, she calls God Elroy. Not Elroy like from the Jetsons.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: Or Elroy Hubbard. No. What? El Ron Hubbard? That was a good try.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: No. It's e l space r o I, Elroy. And it means the one who sees me. Now Ishmael means god hears. So she named god the one who sees me, and God named her son I hear you.
• 12:02
  How beautiful is that? That's super beautiful. Oh, I got chills. And we've relegated her to, like, this secondary character. What do we lose in the bible when women aren't looked at as real people?
• 12:17
  Mhmm.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: Or when we forget. You're right that women are real people. Put yourself in this situation. Mhmm. She didn't have a choice.
• 12:25
  Mhmm. She was abused by people who have always abused her in some way. And God comes to her in the most miraculous way, the first time he ever did to someone and says, hey, I'm God. Mhmm.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: There's actually a theory. Now, this is just a theory in the Jewish faith. And this is why it's important to look at other faiths in their traditions because there's a theory that Hagar was an Egyptian princess. And when the Israelites left and obviously, like, Moses led them out, the Red Sea parted all the things. Right?
• 12:58
  That the king or the pharaoh of Egypt gave some of his children to the Israelites to be slaves, of to, like, pacify them. So there's a theory that that could be the case. No one really knows, but it's an interesting thought process that she would have then been abused by parents and by both of these people who she was sold to. Everyone in her life is abusing her. And she runs away because she's scared because she's like, what is left for me and this child that I'm now having?
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: The sermon that we were watching just before recording this episode is by a pastor named Jackie Hilperry. And she kind of harps on the beginning about how important it is to be seen. Mhmm. She gives an anecdote about a kid who was born blind and never being able to see his mother, but yet his mother still cared for him and loved him that whole time. And there was some device that they put over his eyes so that he could see digitally.
• 13:57
  The first time he saw his mother, he was like, oh, you're beautiful. And how important it is for that mother to actually be seen.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: Mhmm.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: And she compares it to Hagar, where this is a woman who is known by her usefulness, but never by her name. Mhmm. That's what she says, which I really felt was impactful. No one ever saw her. Mhmm.
• 14:17
  They saw her by what she could do for them. And then to have God come down and say, I see you. I see that you're suffering. And I'm not going to let that slide under the rug. Mhmm.
• 14:30
  I see that they hurt you, but I'm gonna bless you.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Now the angel also tells her in Genesis sixteen ten, I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count. Now this is the same promise that God gives Abraham. And God says, through this child, your legacy will go on forever. Your name will be known.
• 14:57
  You are important. And shows his love for her through that. Now eventually Hagar does come back because God says this is the situation unfortunately that I need you to be in and has her child. And I didn't understand the timeline of this, but Sarah eventually does have a child. If you know the story, Sarah eventually has Isaac.
• 15:22
  And I guess I kind of thought that these two things happened pretty close together because that's what the Bible timeline kinda looks like. Right? Mhmm. But most scholars believe that Ishmael would have been, like, 12 or 13 by the time Isaac is born. Now when Isaac is born, Sarah gets real pissy again.
• 15:40
  Now mind you, Ishmael, because of the structure of this agreement that they've all not really agreement. Because of the structure of what's happening in the law, Ishmael belonged to Sarah. Now would she have raised him? Probably no. She probably didn't raise Isaac either because her slaves would have done that.
• 15:58
  But technically, for these twelve to thirteen years, she was Ishmael's mother in the eyes of the law. Mhmm. So then she has Isaac, and she's like, uh-oh. Ishmael is going to try and take what's Isaac's. He's gonna try and take all of this stuff that god promised to me and my child.
• 16:23
  And so she goes to Abraham and she says, kick out the servant woman and her child. Get rid of them.
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: Never once probably did it cross her mind.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: Oops. Mhmm.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: I did it again. And
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: think this through. This child has been Abraham's child for twelve to thirteen years. Now fathers weren't, like, that involved in the raising of their children at this point, but he was an oldest son. So he would have gotten special attention. Twelve to thirteen years, this kid has been his child.
• 16:57
  And this is where the story actually gets a little bit uncomfortable. So Abraham asks God, what do I do? And God says, do what Sarah said. And I don't like that. Mm-mm.
• 17:09
  It's hard to sit with. And the only way that I can sit with some things like this is God knows better and what would have happened to Hagar and Ishmael if they had stayed. Because Sarah is maybe not the most stable individual right now.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: I don't know that she ever was. Right. Based on these stories, it sounds like she's cuckoo for cocoa butter.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: And so what would have happened to them? Right. God made promises to Hagar, which means that he needs to keep those promises to her, which means that they can't die. Right. So that's the only way that, like, I can be comfortable with it.
• 17:47
  And you guys you have to sit with it. It's an uncomfortable part of the Bible where God says, yeah, kick out this mother and her child. There's a
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: lot of parts of the Bible Mhmm. That are uncomfortable to sit with. And that's why it is important to recognize that God's way, God sees everything all at the same time. Mhmm. He's not on our timeline.
• 18:07
  So he can see what's going to happen. But also historical context. Mhmm. It's really important to understand that as well. Yeah.
• 18:16
  Like you said, I had no idea he was 13. Mhmm. I would have thought, baby.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, that's what it looks like when you're when you jump from one chapter of the Bible to the next. It feels just like, okay, super quick.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: Or you have the flannel graph, which is the way I learned the Bible.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: As did most of us in junior church. So Abraham does what Sarah and God have told him to do. And Hagar is given, like, a little bit of water and a little bit of bread and cast out into the wilderness. And when I say wilderness, think Middle Eastern wilderness, so deserts and things like, arid, difficult climates. This isn't like a lush, beautiful landscape.
• 19:00
  Yeah. Like, she can't just walk on over to the next town and be okay. And so she assumes her son is going to die. Once this water runs out, they're done for. And this, again, is a really a really difficult story to deal with because basically what happens is she gives her son the last of the water.
• 19:22
  And remember, this kid is 12 or 13, maybe even older. I don't know how long, you know, the timeline was after Isaac was born. But he's dying. She's taking care of him as much as she can, and he's dying. So she kind of, like, tucks him under a bush where there's some level of shade, and she walks away because she says, I can't watch him die.
• 19:46
  And as a parent, I can see from both sides where that's difficult because how can you possibly watch your child die? And yet how can you possibly walk away from your child when they're dying? Right. It's an impossible situation. And so she walks away.
• 20:03
  And God comes to her again. Because remember, God hears her. He is the God who sees her and hears her. And he comes to her and says, I'm gonna take care of you. This isn't the end.
• 20:22
  Keep going. And then we kind of lose the rest of her story, which is sad. The theory is that she eventually went to Egypt, which was where we think she was from, and raised Ishmael. And Ishmael did become the father of nations through her. And so from here, it's historical context.
• 20:42
  We we lose the Bible story out from here. But the Bible story in and of itself is so powerful. And you all should be angry that you're not hearing this story preached in church. Because this is an incredible story. Forget all the historical context we're about to go into.
• 20:59
  This all on its own is amazing. This is God showing up for someone.
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: I think in context of church, a lot of times, especially nondenominational churches, you think those bigger churches that put on those giant productions. Mhmm. Their goals are to send you with an uplifting message. Mhmm. Something that fills you with the spirit to last you throughout the week.
• 21:25
  These stories are uncomfortable. Mhmm. And it shows a different light, and it's hard to explain. Why did Sarah do this? Why did Abraham do this?
• 21:37
  Why did God allow it? But it's important Mhmm. To sit with the uncomfortableness sometimes and not always have all the answers because we're human.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: Well, how many sermons have you heard on Paul? How many sermons have you heard on Abraham? A lot. I've heard a lot. I've been in church my whole life.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: Do you want me to sing the song? Father Abraham had many sons.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: And I I even remember our mom's church at one point did, like, a let's go through the whole bible book by book. And even in that context, she's not being talked about other than a side character, an annoyance, a little fly on the wall that you have to flick away. But her story is beautiful. Her story is difficult. And through that impossible, horrible situation that she dealt with, God led her through it and made her life something that the world remembers.
• 22:43
  Made her name something that the world remembers. And I wanna talk about the different interpretations of her because, again, from just like a Protestant Christian perspective, there are a lot of misunderstandings, I think, and things that we were taught, whether directly or through, like, implication. The same way we were taught about Bathsheba. The same way that we were taught about so many of the women of the bible. We're like, oh, they're the problem.
• 23:10
  Mary Magdalene. Other Mary. The Mary after that. 45 additional Marys. Okay.
• 23:18
  So in the Jewish faith, there are a few different views of her. And they actually, I think, are kinder often than the Protestant Christian views of her, which is interesting because this is where the Jewish and Islamic faiths kind of split off. And you have literal millennia of conflict after this. So to see a very kind and loving interpretation of her is very cool. So the first kind of concept of her, and this, again, we've we talked about this a minute ago, was that Hagar was one of pharaoh's daughters.
• 23:57
  Some rabbis have suggested that the pharaoh gave her to the Israelites after they left Egypt. And a quote from one of the rabbis is from Midrash, which I'm not sure. I don't know the context of this. Okay? But it's better to be a servant in Abraham's house than a princess elsewhere.
• 24:17
  So I think in this context, he's saying God was making a way for her. God was making a path for her. If she had been a princess of Egypt, she might have had an easy life, but she might not have found God. I think is kind of the idea. Interesting.
• 24:34
  Yeah. And that's, again, hard theology. Because, okay, you have to be a slave who who is raped and forced to carry someone else's child in order to find God. Like, that's hard. That's it's uncomfortable, and I don't like it.
• 24:48
  Mhmm. That's how it is. Some rabbis, however, have criticized Hagar, where they will say that she became arrogant after pregnancy, which again comes from that one verse we talked about. And Which is so typical. Mhmm.
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: It's so typical of a way to view women. Mhmm. Oh, she's a problem. Oh, she got pregnant, so now she thinks she's better than Sarah. How dare she?
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: Mhmm. Well, I think we're putting a modern lens on it. Imagine a man who's with two different women. The one is his wife and the one is like a side hustle. Mhmm.
• 25:23
  And the side piece gets pregnant. But in the reality, she's still a slave. Right. It's not the same situation. No.
• 25:31
  She's not allowed to be arrogant. Right.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: She's being abused by Sarah. Mhmm. If she steps out of line, she's probably in fear of her life Mhmm. Of being abused again. She prob it's yes.
• 25:44
  She may have been elevated slightly because she did have Ishmael, but it's not the same. Mhmm.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: Well, I think we do that all the time with the Bible. Think of the concept of modesty, where we throw modern interpretations on it, and all the Bible actually meant was like, don't wear your fancy jewels to a church.
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: It's the same thing. You can't take 2026 context and throw it at the bible and expect to get good results.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: Right. Women and their squabbles.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: Mhmm. And I think Sarah in this situation too got screwed over. That doesn't excuse any of her behavior, but her entire worth was having a child.
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: And how much pressure was put on her by Abraham, by other people saying, you're the problem here. You're preventing God from completing his promises. When really, Abraham should have been like, it will happen in time. Mhmm. It will happen in time because I trust God.
• 26:37
  Mhmm. God has never not fulfilled his promises to That's in his character. That's his name. Mhmm.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: And we hear from Sarah and Hagar in these sections. But we don't you're right. We don't hear what Abraham was saying in the background. What the servants were saying in the background. What her friends were saying in the background.
• 26:56
  Pushing her to this when she already maybe was mentally a little on the edge. Yeah. Does it excuse her behavior? Absolutely not. But it does inform her behavior.
• 27:06
  Mhmm. So then some other Jewish interpretations do talk about how she is extremely important. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote, Hagar is the only person in the Hebrew Bible who names God. So that is acknowledged. And it like I said, I think there this is a kinder interpretation than a lot of Christians will give.
• 27:25
  Now next is the Christian interpretation. And I have be I have more content on this because this is the background that we come from. And so I have heard this more often. You know? I have three misconceptions that the Christians have had about Hagar.
• 27:40
  Now the first one is that she was just a minor side character. That she is a footnote in their story that we can cast aside and say, meh. She didn't really matter. Which is completely bizarre because she's in the Bible. Mhmm.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: Quite a lot. She's written down in the book of life for centuries and millennia, people to read and hear her story. She's important.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Actually, biblical scholar Phyllis Treibel. I could be saying her last name wrong. But she says, Hagar the slave becomes a theologian because of naming God in that way. Yeah.
• 28:16
  Because that's so significant. So rather than just being this minor side character, you have to ask what is her significance? She's there for a reason. And God promises her a lot of things. Why would God not only promise all of this to a minor side character, but fulfill it and put it in the Bible?
• 28:39
  And significantly to a woman Mhmm.
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: First. You're right. Before he promised those other things to Abraham, he came to her first. And said, I promise you,
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: I won't leave you. You see me. I see you. I hear you. And I think it's important, like, we just we signify men so much.
• 28:58
  Because we see Abraham as, like, the father of of the Israelites, the father of all nations, blood and many sons. Yeah. But we forget Hagar, and we often forget Sarah too. We forget the women's role in this story, and it's important. And it's important to say just like when we talked about king David many, many episodes ago when we talked about Bathsheba, Abraham doesn't come off the best in this story.
• 29:25
  Many things can be true at once. He can be the father of the Israelite nation and also kinda suck.
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah. That's accurate. Also, think about just way off track here. Mhmm. But Sarah, when she had Isaac, was how old?
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I can look it up.
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: Your body's not bouncing back after something like that. That is traumatic. She had to be like a billion years old. Because this is bible times. 90.
• 29:53
  She was 90. Nine zero.
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: Mhmm. Think about the male contribution to that too. Gross. Like but really, Abraham is 100 when Isaac is born. And he really just doesn't have to do anything.
• 30:09
  He doesn't really even have to raise the kid because they're wealthy. They have slaves that are going to raise this child. He's done. He's good to go. Think of what happened to her in an age with no medication.
• 30:22
  There was no epidural.
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: Big problems for all. Mm-mm. Even carrying that baby for nine months when you're 90. Woah.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: I had a baby when I was 23. And then I had another one when I was 29. And just the difference in my body between those two ages, not that far apart. And I was still in my twenties. I just can't even you're nothing's the same.
• 30:48
  Things have already sagged. You're in big trouble. How are you even like, can you breastfeed? Cause your breasts probably don't exist anymore. Right?
• 30:55
  They're shriveled up little prunes.
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: Sorry, dad.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: Okay. So the second misconception that Christians often have and preach is that Hagar was wrong or disrespectful towards Sarah. Now we talked about this before, but I think in Christian circles, this is the focus. We very rarely dig into the original texts in the Hebrew and the Aramaic in order to find out what was really being said. And so when it says she began to despise her mistress, I'm looking at it as a woman who was raped, who was forced to carry this child, who is now being severely abused, despises her mistress.
• 31:41
  Is that surprising to you? That's not surprising to me. That feels like a very reasonable response. In fact, an under response, if anything.
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: But that word because we want to treat women like they're petty, because we want to treat women like they're just squabbling silly little women, that word is used against her. Even though it didn't mean it. It didn't mean what we want to think it means. It meant treated her lightly, maybe dishonoring her in some way, or diminishing that person's status. All of which could have simply been the result of her being pregnant.
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: Could have been. It didn't have to
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: be her treating her in any particular way. It could have just been she's pregnant. But if it was despised, I think that's a reasonable response. That's justified. And when we see the verse that says Sarai mistreated Hagar, that's very different.
• 32:36
  That's oppress, afflict, or humiliate because that word comes from the Hebrew word Ana. And like I said, that's the word that was used in how the Egyptians treated the Israelites when they were slaves. So that's a big difference. And we can't let Sarah go with no consequences here. Like, she treated her really poorly.
• 32:59
  And maybe God made Sarah wait even longer.
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: Mhmm. Because he was like, you know what? You didn't trust me.
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: Mhmm.
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: And now you're gonna have to be 90.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: Good luck with that, actually. Good luck. The third misconception, and I think this is a really big one, is that Ishmael was rejected by God. I think we look at Ishmael as the bad guy in this story.
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: Which is insane because that's exactly not what it's Uh-huh.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: But we do. And there is a verse that talks about and I don't have it right in front of me, but there is a verse that talks about Sarah seeing Ishmael interact with Isaac. So he was around for a little bit. And she says something along the lines of he was, like, mistreating Isaac, basically. But if you look back into the words into the original Hebrew words, it could mean that he was just playing with him.
• 33:58
  He could have just been hanging out. Sarah could have been interpreting something onto the situation. Because this would have been his brother. And Ishmael was a kid. He didn't have any particular reason to hate this baby.
• 34:12
  So I think that's where a lot of that comes from. It's like, oh, he's the bad guy. He was gonna try and take because Sarah believed that Hagar and Ishmael were gonna try and take what she thought belongs to Isaac.
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: Which is interesting because they took from Hagar.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: Mhmm. And really they took from Ishmael too because he spent most of his childhood being raised to take over this land, people, all these things.
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: To fulfill this role asked for by Sarah. Mhmm.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: And being told that this was what God wanted. What how why God made him. Mhmm. So they took all of that from them, and yet we've put that on Hagar and Ishmael to be like, the bad guys. Because every every story needs a
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: bad guy. Right? Like Billie Eilish. I'm the bad guy. Wow.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: The whole face did a real weird thing just there. You have to. But in Genesis, we do see that God did not reject Ishmael in any tiny way. In Genesis twenty one eighteen, he says, I will make him into a great nation. In Genesis sixteen ten, he said, I will increase your descendants so much they will be too numerous to count.
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: And to me, that sounds like not a great time.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: No. I don't love that for her. That's many babies. But at
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: the
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: time, that was a big deal. That was the promise to get from God. You will be remembered forever. You will be a part of history. And I think that's still an important promise.
• 35:42
  I just would prefer not to have to birth anything else. Yeah. Hallelujah. So those are kind of the misconceptions that I have definitely heard as a Christian person when I've ever even heard her name. Because you're not hearing her name like a ton.
• 35:57
  Sparingly. Now another thing that the Bible does talk about, and this is kind of a side note, but she is mentioned again in the Bible. She's mentioned in Galatians. So way further down the line.
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians. Would you like to keep going? Nope. I forget what comes next.
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: So in Galatians four, Paul talks about Hagar and Sarah. And this is actually a really weird one and is part of why Christians interpret her the way that they do. So he basically talks about Hagar in context of staying in slavery and talks about Sarah in context of staying in freedom. He says they're two different covenants. Hagar is as though you're staying in your sin, and Sarah is as though you have freedom.
• 36:47
  It's a very strange one. I would encourage you to read it, and I don't have time to go into the whole thing, but I would encourage you to go into some of the interpretations of why he says it this way. But a lot of theologians think that this kind of overshadowed her humanity, forgot about who she was as a person. And I think it's important to remember that Paul was just a person. We forget that a lot.
• 37:10
  We take Paul's words as Jesus' words. We take Paul's words, and we say, oh, he said Hagar meant this. Therefore, she must have. But the reality is Paul was sitting there interpreting Old Testament scripture through a tiny, tiny lens and doing the best he could. He didn't know her whole story.
• 37:31
  He didn't have historical context. We don't actually know what he had.
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: And their view on women at the time was different than the view that we know now. Right. The value that God puts on women Mhmm. Is different. His lens was different.
• 37:46
  Mhmm.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: So I think it's important to say, like, okay, yes, that happened. That is in the Bible. But it doesn't actually say anything about who Hagar was. It doesn't actually say anything about who Sarah was. It's just someone taking some names out of context and being like, oh, here's an allegory.
• 38:03
  Have you ever forced an allegory before? Literally. I have. Have you heard any
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: modern day pastor? They can turn anything into an allegory. I stepped in dog poop outside. And let me tell you how this relates to the Lord.
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: And I do think that's kind of what Paul was doing. Like, let's be real. Paul wrote a lot of stuff. At some point, it wasn't all gonna be amazing. And it wasn't Jesus' words.
• 38:32
  It was Paul's words. And that is an important distinction. People don't like when I make that distinction. I have gotten so much crap online because people will respond to my verses where I'll say, and Jesus said this. And they'll say, well, Paul said this.
• 38:47
  Well, Proverbs said this. But Jesus Mhmm.
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: The son of God said this. Mhmm.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: If you're going to focus on any part of the Bible, it's the red text. It's Yeah. Jesus said this. That's like one of the basics Mhmm.
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: That you learn from a young child in junior church is the red text is the important stuff.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: But when you wanna pull verses out of context and when you wanna make the Bible say what you want it to say. I think I talked about this, but I got a comment on one of our TikToks where I was talking about some of the conflicts in The Middle East right now. And I said, Christians should never celebrate death. That was a surprisingly controversial post. I thought that was gonna be one where I was like, alright.
• 39:37
  Everyone's gonna agree with me.
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: Everybody can agree.
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Right? No. No. No.
• 39:40
  No. No. I had someone quote a verse from Proverbs at me that says something about, like, celebrating when the wicked die. And I was like, okay. But Jesus really specifically says, love God, love others, with no caveats.
• 40:03
  And I quoted a couple of other verses as well. And they were like, okay, but you can't just eliminate parts of the Bible. But here's the thing. And again, talking about cultural and historical context and understanding the Bible, the book of Proverbs is considered wisdom literature. This was something I researched while I was commenting back to them.
• 40:22
  And that means that it tells us how Israel understood law at the time. It wasn't like a mandate from God. It just tells us the culture that existed. And there's actually a verse where God says in the Old Testament that it makes him sad when people die because they are his children.
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: There's a female priest who wrote a book that's called God Didn't Make Us to Hate Us. And I feel like people are losing the plot.
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: God
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: loves us. He loves his children. We're his children. Mhmm. He sent Jesus to die on the cross for us.
• 41:02
  Even the people that you don't like. Mhmm. Even the people that you would disagree with in every country and all around the world. He loves them. Mhmm.
• 41:13
  And no. He does not celebrate their deaths because he's sad.
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: Mhmm. Because he made them. I always had this thought in my head when I was a kid because I have super curly hair. And I was like, oh, when I was up in heaven before god put me in my mom's tummy I was a small child at this point. That he took my hair and ran it around his finger so that it curled and then apparently stuck it back in my scalp.
• 41:39
  I don't know.
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah. His fingers were all curling irons. Yeah. Like permanent curling irons.
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: But I like to take that in this context and say, God took care in creating me. In creating me exactly as I am. My nose the way that it is and my eyes the way that they are. And he did that with every single person. Every single person.
• 42:01
  And that's how much he loves them.
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: We've talked about this before, but God saw a void in the world. And so he created exactly you to fill that void. Everything that you are, every little weird quirk that you have, if you can't write two fives in a row,
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: it's intentional. And so if someone dies and doesn't follow what God built for them, what God wanted for them, there is a loss. There is a loss to the world, and there's a loss to God, their creator.
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: Now before we wrap up, I do wanna talk about the Islamic tradition and how Hagar is presented there because this is really important and not something that I think we think about a lot in the Protestant Christian church. So according to the Islamic tradition, Hagar is like the matriarch. She is the major figure. She was the mother of Ishmael who started their nation. And so she's a big deal.
• 43:06
  To us, she's a side note. To them, she's a big deal. Now in Islam, it says that Abraham left Hagar and Ishmael near Mecca, which if you know much about their faith, is a place that a lot of people pilgrim to. And the story says that she runs seven times between two hills searching for water. And those hills are Safa and Marwa.
• 43:29
  And so the Muslims will reenact this during the Hajj. And millions of people do this every year. They run between two hills. And it's a beautiful part of their faith that came from their beliefs about her. Now, this story doesn't come from the Bible, but it does come from their historical tradition, and it's important.
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: I think it's interesting to hear about these different religions and remember that there's more out there. Mhmm. In our little Christian bubble, we forget that the Islamic tradition absolutely believes and recognizes Jesus. Mhmm. I saw a TikTok the other day from a woman, and she goes, the Islamic tradition believes in Jesus.
• 44:07
  Mhmm. We don't believe that he's the son of God, but we believe that he was a great prophet. Mhmm. And every time they say his name, they say, Jesus, peace be upon him. Mhmm.
• 44:16
  So we forget that. Yeah. We forget that. Like, we share a lot of the same stories.
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: And we all came from the same first story.
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: The bible shows us where we all branched off. It's like how the Christians like to forget that they were Catholic first.
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: We all came from the same place. And so what do we have in common? And what can we learn from these other faiths that are doing things maybe better than we are? Mhmm. They also teach that God provided water miraculously to Hagar, and that became the Zam Zam well, which is still in Mecca today Oh.
• 44:52
  Which is very cool. They also have traditions about Abraham and Ishmael. So I'm not sure what the story is where they came together again. But she's basically like a foundational part of their story, as is Ishmael, obviously. And
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: She's kind of a throwaway partner. Yeah.
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: It's just so interesting to me as I look at this stuff. Because you just you live in a bubble, and you don't realize how much you live in a bubble.
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: Here's an allegory, kind of. You can do it. Take from other religions Mhmm. Like you would making a soup. Add some flavor to your life.
• 45:32
  Because maybe they have other historical contexts Mhmm. That we are missing. Mhmm. Maybe there's other pieces of different faiths that you can add to yours to make your faith stronger, to make your faith make sense. Don't be scared.
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: I think we are, though. I think Christians are terrified of other faiths. And not even just the Muslim people or the Buddhist people or, like, things that are much further from our core faith. I think we're scared of Catholics, too. Like, We're just scared that anything that we even glance at that isn't just the 66 books of the Bible will introduce Satan into our faith or something.
• 46:18
  I don't know.
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: Or threaten our faith in some way. But I think it can only make it
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: stronger. Mhmm. There is incredible beauty in other faiths in the world. And I think the core of Protestant Christian faith is Jesus died for my sins. Jesus is the son of god.
• 46:37
  Love god. Love others. I think those are, like, the tenets. Right? Those are the main things.
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: So you have those. Keep those.
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: Mhmm. And the rest of it can kind of float around. Like, pull some different things, you know, and and see where that all gets you and pray through it. Assume that your faith is strong enough that you're not gonna pull in something that's gonna make you say like, oh, well, God sucks.
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: Right. And allow God to lead you Mhmm. To those answers, to show you his promises, show you that he sees you, but he also sees everybody else. Right.
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: In your Jesus' to American that we reviewed many a moon ago Mhmm. He talked about he was pastor, the author, and he talked about bringing in other faith leaders into his church and talking to them and creating relationships with them and learning from their faiths. And when I read that, I thought how distinct that was and how different it would be from any church I've ever attended. That would never happen in any church I've ever stepped foot into.
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Like, he had a good relationship with the temple next door, and they would help each other out if they needed to. Like, it doesn't have to be so rigid. Mhmm.
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: And what kind of influence can you have on the world if you see the rest of the world as human? Human. As as valuable as you, as loved as you by God, as understood by you as God. What kind of impact can you have when you look like that to the world as opposed to when you look like someone who stands on a pedestal and thinks they're the best?
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: Well, I think there's a good example in The United States today. Just take open your eyes and take a look
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: around Just turn on the news for like only for like ten seconds. Okay. So next week, we are gonna keep talking about women. Are you shocked?
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: Especially because this is Women's History Month. Happy March. Happy March. March has a lot. We are reading.
• 48:42
  We're celebrating dental. Dental? Yeah. Who knew? Dental assistants specifically.
• 48:48
  And then dentists on March 8 or sixth. But next month is the hygienist and the admin team.
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: I feel like this you're the only person in the world that knows this. Oh. No one else. Anyway, so next week, we're gonna talk about biblical women that the church kind of avoids talking about because they are difficult stories. So we're gonna keep talking about this type of thing.
• 49:10
  Some of those people include Tamar and the concubine in Judges 19 and the woman who touched Jesus's garment.
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: I love that story. It's a
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: great story. So we're gonna talk about some of them. Some of them you may have heard of. Some of them you may not have heard of. We'll see how many we get through.
• 49:26
  Yeah. We'll see how long we can yap. Maybe it'll be a special two hour episode. Oh, boy. Just kidding.
• 49:32
  Nobody wants to listen to us for two straight hours. I don't wanna talk for two straight hours.
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I wanna go to bed Yeah. Generally.
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: Okay. Well, I need to go get a coffee, and Brie needs to officially abandon me for the week. So we will talk to you guys next week.
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: Love you. Bye. Love you. Bye.