Sheila
Welcome to the Bare Marriage podcast. I’m Sheila Wray Gregoire from baremarriage.com, where we like to talk about healthy, evidence based biblical advice for your sex life in your marriage. And today we are going to share with you the opposite. That’s right. I have my husband, Keith, with me

Keith
Hi Everyone.

Sheila
and today is actually the last episode of this season. I don’t even know how we decide seasons.
I mean, I think we kind of say it’s a season until we take a break. So we are going to be taking a six week break after this and coming back kind of mid-July, I believe. I have a lot of gardens to plant and lots of things to do, and a book to finish. The final edits on our book, Fawn, are coming out next year. How a Trauma Response Became Biblical Womanhood. So super fun. And what we did last December in the last episode of that season was that we had a bunch of clips and we just reacted to them and people really liked that one. So I thought, let’s do it again. But today we’re going to do it with a little bit of a twist, which is you pick some that I haven’t seen.

Keith
That’s right.

Sheila
So we’re going to we’re going to like cold react to it. I haven’t. Yeah. Yeah.

Keith
And be super fast for the same kind of concepts right.

Sheila
And the reason and the reason that we do this is because the kind of clips we’re showing are everywhere on social media. Like they just blow up and we want to teach you how to think critically about them and how to see where they are spreading harmful messages and, and and then remember, what do we do when we know that an account is spreading harmful messages?

We block it, we mute it. We don’t engage because we don’t want to drive the algorithm. Right? Like, yes, let’s not follow stuff just to hate rage bait stuff. Yes, yes.

Keith
Sounds good.

Sheila
Okay. Before we get started, just I also want to say, if you want to keep up with us in the next six weeks, there’s something that you can do that would really help, which is because of algorithms. It’s always hard to make sure that we’re going to keep people who love us. And so if you can make sure that you have several different touchpoints. So maybe you follow us on YouTube, but you also follow us on Facebook, or you also follow us on Instagram or on Substack, or you get our Friday email, which is awesome, and we want as many people as possible on our email list.
When you’re on our email list, you’re going to find out about cool things like new courses that we’re launching, sales that we have on our courses or on our products, whatever publishers put one of our books on for like $1.99 for two days, you’ll hear about it. And we have a simulcast coming up in October where we’re doing a marriage conference, an all day marriage conference, and I’m doing sex talk on a Friday night and your church can join, it’s really inexpensive, and it’s hard to get us to come speak because we don’t do a lot of traveling right now. But this is a way to bring us into your church and host an amazing event for not very much money. So get on our email list and you’ll hear all about that stuff. We will put a link to the simulcast in the podcast notes, a link to my social media channels and how to join our email list.
All that stuff..

Keith
Follow everywhere and.

Sheila
Follow everywhere. It helps us incredibly, even if you can’t follow everywhere, follow one more place that you’re not currently following.

Keith
That helps.

Sheila
Okay. Speaking of social media, yeah, I would love to see some of your clips. Let’s start with yours because as I was writing mine up yesterday, I realized mine will have a theme. So. So let’s do yours. They might be actually more interesting I don’t know, we’ll see

Keith
We’ll see. I think people would be familiar with this person and they’ll understand the concept.
But this is a fellow named Robert Morris.

Sheila
Okay.

Keith
Which you may have heard about before. Yes.

Sheila
Yes, just out of prison.

Keith
Yes. This is what he had to say about, you know, what men are like and why marriage needs to be a certain way.

Sheila
Okay. And we will give the context of who he is after the clip. Maybe. Yep. Okay.

Robert Morris
But once you get married, you don’t have to sneak around anymore. But you’ve developed an appetite for sneaking around sex, that sex in marriage can never satisfy that appetite because you don’t have to sneak around. And this is why a man will begin to talk to someone at the office and begin to flirt. And he is satisfied. And I’m going to say this in a very strong way, but he’s satisfying an appetite that you created in him. And I’m not saying that it’s right, but I’m trying to get you to understand how important it is not to create an appetite in someone before your marriage.

Sheila
Oh. Oh, yuck. Oh, yuck.

Keith
Yes, isn’t that amazing.

Sheila
Okay, so let’s explain.

Keith
So many things wrong with that.

Sheila
Let’s explain who Robert Morris is. Yes. Okay, so he is a Texas. He was a Texas megachurch pastor. He had a very large church. Was it like Gateway? I think it’s gateway, but I may have it wrong, but it came out a very brave woman named Cindy Clemmer came forward probably about two years ago. Now, I don’t know, and I believe it was the Wartburg watch that dropped this, that broke her story.

But when she was 12 years old, he started grooming her and sexually abusing her and did it until she was 16. And she told her father, her father went to him and it blew up. He. So Robert Morris took a year sabbatical so that he could figure out, you know, his walk with Jesus. And then he came back and he continued to pastor, even though he had sexually abused a 12 year old girl.

And his wife, Debbie called Cindy at the time like when she was 16 and said that, you know, she had to apologize for what she had done with her husband. And it’s like this man was a pastor. Anyway, it did go to trial, and he did serve several months in jail. Just months. You know this anyway, it’s just disgusting. And this all blew up because it turned out and I think there’s still several lawsuits going on that it looks like several of the elders knew about this and did nothing, or at least. Yeah.

Keith
And when it came out, the thing that was interesting was things started to leak, and he came forward and confessed to having an inappropriate relationship with a young lady.

Sheila
Yeah.

Keith
So again, there was no true confession. There was just spin and trying to make it sound like it wasn’t his fault. Right. So the reason I picked this clip was because I think it’s very indicative of a lot of stuff we see in evangelical marital teaching about what men are like and what women need to do in response, where men are painted as these horrible creatures.
Right. Like he’s saying, he’s got an appetite for sneaking around about sex. Yeah, right. And that’s just put out there that that’s what men are like. And there’s no challenge to that. Like people just. That’s what men are like. And then it’s her fault because she fed into that. Yeah, right. And the concept we’ve seen before we talked about in the podcast makes sex so amazing for him that he doesn’t go elsewhere. Yeah. So it comes on to the woman to make the sex life so enticing that he won’t be tempted to stray because men are just like that.

Sheila
And then the women in the workplace or wherever have to also be super modest so that they don’t incite anything in the guy that he likes, so that you don’t awaken anything in the guy. Yeah. It’s like it’s like, so wives have to be whores, essentially. And single women have to.

Keith
Be Madonnas.

Sheila
Be Madonnas. Yeah. So that.

Keith
You don’t know what the Madonna whore complex is, look it up.

Sheila
Yeah. So that we can keep men sexual appetites under control.

Keith
Yeah. And it’s just. That’s the way that men are. Yeah. And women have to adjust because that’s the way men are.

Sheila
And I think what’s so interesting about this clip, too, is seeing it in context now, because at the point where he said.

Keith
I’m going to come to that, I want.

Sheila
To say.

Keith
It’s because I have two more things I want to say about that. Okay. So the first thing is, is that they just what I get really incensed at is no one pushes back and says, wait a minute. That’s not what Christian men should be like. Yeah. Like, how does that not happen? Like, even before, you know, the guys like a pedophile?

Yeah. Like, how do people not push back and go, wait a minute. That’s not what men are like. That’s not what a good Christian man is like. Like, why is there no pushback on that? Right? It just drives me crazy because he goes. And I’m not saying it’s right. Yeah. Okay. And that is the only negative. Okay. So men are all have these horrible proclivities. They want to sneak around for sex. They’re just these horrible, animalistic beings who can’t control their sex drives unless you women cope with it. Right. And I’m not saying it’s right. And that’s the only, you know, admonishment. Yeah. Like, where is the, you know, men have an appetite for sneaking around about sex, and you need to kill that because Paul says, put lust to death. Yeah. You know, where is where is the call to men to not be like that? Like, if you honestly believe that’s what men are like and you honestly believe the scriptures. Why is the next thing out of your mouth not like admonishment to men? I mean, Jesus said, if a man looks at a woman with lust in his heart, he’s committed adultery with her. Like Jesus’, focus was entirely on the man. Yeah. Jesus didn’t say, if he looks at her with his heart, he’s committed adultery with her unless she was dressed like she was asking for it, because then it’s her fault.

Sheila
Yeah.

Keith
Like that never happens. Yeah. Right. So. But there’s nothing for the men. And so. And this drives me crazy because again, it’s like they say we’re just trying to follow God’s plan for marriage. Apparently, God’s plan for marriage is that men are irredeemable without women. Yeah. Doing things. Yeah. And that, to me, is heresy. That’s disgusting.

Sheila
Yeah.

Keith
Yeah. Okay. That was the point I want to make now. But the whole thing. So first of all, he does these horrible things. Right. And then when it starts to come out, he doesn’t confess. He spins it. Yeah. He uses language to make himself still look like he’s fine. Right. Right. So. And it all makes sense when you see this clip now because he has these proclivities.

Sheila
Yes.

Keith
Right.

Sheila
They are telling on themselves. Yes. Yes.

Keith
So he sees this, and he thinks that all men are like that because he’s like that.

Sheila
Yeah.

Keith
Right. And he is unwilling to do the work in his own heart to become a better person. And so therefore, he creates a theology about how men are just like that. And women need to do something different so that men won’t go to hell for their bad behavior.

Sheila
Right.

Keith
Right. I get that. I mean, it’s disgusting, but I can see how in his psyche he has to come around to that theology because it justifies himself.

Sheila
Yeah.

Keith
What I don’t get is how he can preach that from the pulpit. And everybody else seems to say, oh, yeah, that’s the way men are. Like, that’s the challenge that I have. Like, what is wrong with our hearts as men in the church that we hear that and because it excuses sin, because it makes it women’s problem, because it offloads it from us as men. We don’t revile that and say, no, like that’s that’s not right. Like, why do we let that happen? And I think it’s because the church has been teaching men entitlement and and you’re this is just the way you are and you’re allowed to do these things and just try not to. But it’s really the women’s fault. Yeah. Right. Because that whole mentality just breeds this.

Sheila
Yeah.

Keith
And if we were a healthier church where men really felt a need to be accountable for themselves in their own actions and to be Christ-like, right? Because everyone talks about biblical manhood, but nobody has a Christ-like manhood.

Sheila
Which we did last week on the podcast with Zachary Wagner. Men of Virtue, an amazing book on. Yes, how to how to be Christlike. Yeah.

Keith
Yeah. Because if you’re Christ like, this stuff is crazy.

Sheila
Yeah. I am going to put a link

Keith
And would Jesus say men want to sneak around? I’m not saying it’s right.

Sheila
Like.

Keith
Yeah. No.

Sheila
That’s just. I’m going to put a link to Zach’s book, Men of Virtue, in the podcast notes.

Keith
So let’s create a culture in the church where this kind of stuff is immediately seen as wrong.

Sheila
Yeah. And let’s remember. Okay. Just just to hear here’s a little Sheila test that I always do. Or Sheila, check whatever you want to call it. Whenever a pastor, an author, or whatever says all men struggle with lust, what they are saying is, I struggle with lust. Because if he is a man and he says all men, he’s including himself in that. And so if he says, you know, teenage girls need to watch what they wear. What that says to me is I can’t be around teenage girls. And so you need to tell every girl in your congregation never, ever, ever to babysit for that pastor because that is dangerous. And remember, Robert Morris abused a 12 year old girl. Yeah. You know.

Keith
Yeah. And then they say we don’t want to shame men, right? We don’t want to shame men. So therefore, we will allow pedophiles to preach this kind of crap from the front. Yeah. But we we do want to shame women about how they dress. If they wear yoga pants, they need to feel shame. Yeah. Like, it’s like the double standard is just ridiculous.

Sheila
Yeah

Keith
Drives me crazy.

Sheila
Okay.

Keith
Yeah. That was that was one. So that was. That was pretty heavy. That was a heavy one. Let’s let’s do it a little later on. Okay.

Alex Falcone
Marriages do not end in divorce. It’s the most often cited and most made up statistic of all time. It’s usually used to suggest that the world is falling apart, but it doesn’t mean that. And anyway, isn’t real. I’ll tell you the real number in a second. But first, you should not care about this number. Bad relationships ending is good, actually, the only way the divorce rate would go away is if people were trapped in relationships that they wanted to leave because of the law or, I don’t know, women weren’t allowed to have checking accounts. But also it’s dumb statistically, because it has no consideration for length. So that couple who died holding hands in the Titanic, they count exactly the same as someone who gets hit by a bus on their honeymoon.

Either way, that’s a non-divorced couple and ostensibly a win. Also, there’s the frequent flier problem. This guy was married 30 times, and when he died, none of his ex-wives or his 19 children attended his funeral. And so if you stay married forever, you count 1/30 as much as that guy. Also, no one’s really measuring. They’re just counting up the weddings and the divorces and comparing them.

They’re not tracking the actual death to us parts of each relationship, they’re just tracking the relative popularity of each activity. So they’re saying that 50% of apples end in oranges. With all that said, the number is 37. If you just compare the number of divorces to weddings, it’s 37%. You still don’t get to 50, even when you’re doing a made up number that people shouldn’t care about anyway. So when you say that statistic, you are just as reliable as when this guy says he’ll love you forever.

Sheila
That’s so good. I’m glad you got, like, a happy clip. Yeah. That’s great. Yeah.

Keith
Well, and we’ve debunked this before as well. Yeah, right. So, so. And the thing I wanted to say is like, why is this the talking point we see so much like we hear this a lot. 50% of marriages end in divorce. And it’s usually in the sense of, you know, the world doesn’t value marriage. We value marriage in the church.

Sheila
Right.

Keith
50% of marriages end in divorce. We don’t want to be like that. We want to make our marriages last. That’s the concept. Why is the 50% of marriages and divorce such a big talking point, do you think, in the church?

Sheila
I think because they want to scare people, that divorce is the worst thing that can happen, and so they’re exaggerating the problem.

Keith
Yeah. And I also think it’s like we want it to be like we’re doing better than the world.

Sheila
Yes, absolutely.

Keith
I think there’s very much that kind of element of it as well too.

Sheila
Yeah. But even though in a lot of cases we’re not in some churches, you definitely are. Yeah. Like there’s pockets. Yeah. Yeah.

Keith
Yeah. So if, if the talking point is that 50% of marriages end in divorce, then what are sort of the things that people naturally assume are going to happen naturally. You don’t have to tell them. They’re going to naturally start thinking as soon as you say 50% of marriages end in divorce. So it’s very common. Right. So what kind of things do you think are going to go through people’s heads?

Sheila
The people don’t take marriage seriously. Yes.

Keith
The assumption is going to be that a lot of divorces are frivolous. Yeah. Right. That’s sort of the mentality. And then what happens is you now have an argument that you haven’t even made. Right. Right. And those are the most powerful arguments. Right. When you can get someone to think a certain way without ever having to tell them that, okay, to put it out, because then you’ve got so like then when the person puts the thing as 80% of divorces are initiated by women, that’s another type of right.

Right. So again, so now there’s this whole mindset of like, okay, so women are just getting frivolously divorced. Yeah. Right. So I think that’s the thing too, is there just trying to make this concept that people are just getting divorced willy nilly because they don’t really care about marriage. And so therefore and the other flip side of that is if you stay in your marriage, it means you’re one of the good ones. You care about your marriage, you’re you’re virtuous. You’re good. Right. So which marriages does that messaging help stay together?

Sheila
Bad ones. Yeah.

Keith
So our marriage is good. We’re happy. We both want to be in this marriage. We both love each other.

Sheila
Yeah. We’re not going to get divorced.

Keith
The 50% of marriage and divorce, we’re like, oh, that’s so bad for those people. That’s too bad. And then you move on and you flip the channel and go to the next thing. Right? Right. The people who are stuck in the marriage, where their spouse is abusive or doesn’t care about them, or that sort of thing, they’re going to see that and go, okay, I don’t want to be one of that 50%. I don’t want to be a statistic. I’m going to stick it out. Yeah. So if that is your talking point, right. It means you’re trying to scare, cajole, shame, force people to stay in marriage.

Sheila
Yes.

Keith
Otherwise you wouldn’t use that statistic. Yes. I cannot see another reason to present that statistic, other than you’re trying to force people to stay in marriages they don’t want to.

Sheila
Yeah. Absolutely

Keith
Yeah. Because if if your point is to make marriages better, right? Why would you start with that?

Sheila
Yeah.

Keith
Right. And so then the question is so yeah, let’s say you want to start from the beginning that really what I want is I just want marriages to be healthy because I do disagree with him that like marriage is ending is a good thing, right? Like he said, I think that was that was a bit flippant.

Sheila
Well, I mean, I think it’s good if you are being abused.

Keith
I think you’re being abused.

Sheila
Yeah, yeah.

Keith
But like, if, you know, like, I think I shouldn’t, we shouldn’t be totally flippant like, you know, but at the same time, if your goal is I don’t want to so many divorces because I want marriages to be healthy and happy and people want to stay in them. Right? Then why don’t you lead with the positive, right? Like, let’s make marriages like, this is how making marriage is great.

And that’s what we did in our book, The Marriage You Want. Yeah. Right. And that was one of the lines in our book, is we’re not here to convince you to stay in a marriage. You. Hey, we want to help you create the marriage you love.

Sheila
Yes. Right. Yes.

Keith
Like, that’s the whole point. That’s if you really care about marriages and want to see fewer divorces. That’s the road to use. Right. When you say 50% of divorce. And don’t be one of those, to me, it shows you chose to go there instead of here’s how to make your marriage great.

Sheila
Yeah.

Keith
Why?

Sheila
I think it is because they want women. Because. Because the people who are the most likely to be upset in marriage are women. We know that men have way higher marital satisfaction than women, especially in the church. And they don’t want women leaving destructive marriages, and they don’t want it. They don’t want to deal with the reason those marriages are destructive, because it would mean calling him into account.

Keith
That’s right. Yeah. Because they value the institution of marriage over the people within that marriage. Yeah. Right. Because it’s like like they they are, they would say they disagree with abuse and abuse as badness shouldn’t happen. Right. But then this kind of rhetoric promotes those relationships going on and allowing women to stay in dangerous situations. Yeah. And they don’t address that.

Yeah. Other than to say, well, of course we don’t want that. Yeah. Like it’s just it’s crazy. It doesn’t make any sense to me. I think the other thing is, is that if there’s two options, you can approach a problem two different ways. And and you choose the one way that’s not as effective. Maybe you’re not not as good as the one that would be effective.

You know, and I just think this is the thing is that there’s the mentality of more submission, the mentality of men taking leadership, like all these things that they’ve been saying to make marriages strong. They’ve been saying the same stuff for 50 years.

Sheila
And it doesn’t work.

Keith
And it hasn’t helped and it still doesn’t help. Yeah. And people get sucked into it because they’re in a desperate situation and then it doesn’t work. And they keep coming back to the same well, and getting the same poison water. Yeah. And then they either leave, in which case they say, well, they never really believed anyway, right. You know, or they go into healthier spots where they’re like, oh, darn it, they went egalitarian. They started following Sheila. And it’s a slippery slope, you know, and they never come around to saying, well, maybe what we’re offering is not healthy. And it’s not helping people. And people do feel trapped like and the lack of accountability. It really bothers me. Yeah. Anyway, so 50% of marriages don’t end in divorce.

Sheila
And that’s the reason that that stat came so in the 1960s and early 1970s, pretty much all states, one at a time in the United States, brought in no fault divorce. And it also happened around the world, in other countries. And as soon as no fault divorce came in, the rates of divorce skyrocketed because there was this pent up demand. Right. And so we saw really, really, really high divorce rates in the early 1970s, higher than we’ve ever seen since. So this idea, like every time you hear divorces skyrocketing, divorce is increasing. No it isn’t. It has been decreasing ever since the 1970s. There was a slight uptick at Covid, but that was it. Like it’s been going down.

And and you know Emerson Eggerich in Love and Respect says that’s the reason for the skyrocketing divorce rates today. They’re not skyrocketing. They’ve been steadily going down. And but they keep making these claims anyway. At that time there were some newspaper articles that said if it continues like this, we’re going to see divorce rates of 50%. And that’s where it came from. Right. But it never continued like that. Yeah. You know, and so yeah, it’s just it’s just really crazy.

Keith
And the thing for me is this again, it’s just it’s all fear based. Yeah. It’s it’s, you know, Jesus came. He said, I’ve come that they may have life and they may have it to the full. Yeah, right. That’s what Jesus brings. Jesus brings life and health and healing. If you’ve got the gospel of Jesus Christ. That should be good news for marriage.

Sheila
Yes,

Keith
It should be good news for single people. It should be good news for families. It should be good news for the world. It’s good news. Jesus brings good news if you have to bring fear and condemnation and shame and anger and rage baiting to keep your way of doing things working. I don’t see how that jives with the gospel of Jesus.

Sheila
Remember that. Put a pin in that, because we’re going to come back to that with one of my with one of my clips in a minute. Okay. Look at your last one.

Keith
Good. Yeah. Lastly, this last one.

Sheila
I can see I can see who you’ve got here. We’ve got your face, Marky Mark.

Keith
Mark.

Mark Driscoll
If your wife won’t take your last name, you’re not one. And you’re not the head. You’ve got two heads, and two heads is a monster. If at the beginning you’re negotiating the last name, it automatically means you’re not one and you’re not the head and you’re not the leader. We have one last name. We sleep in one bed. We worship one God. We attend one church. We submit to one authority. The Word of God. We’re one.

Keith
There you go.

Sheila
Okay.

Keith
So before I ask my questions. Initial thoughts.

Sheila
Man. He’s insecure.

Keith
Yeah. What a train wreck.

Sheila
What, like I’ve never seen such an example of a really insecure guy. You know, I did take your name. The reason? And people have often asked me why. It’s like I want to take the name of the man that I chose. Not the man that that abandoned me, you know, like, why? Why do I have the name of a man that abandoned me, you know, and I think that there are lots of good reasons for taking last names. I think there are lots of good reasons for not. And I think it’s up to everybody I know some

Keith
I have a friend and he took her last name.

Sheila
Yeah. Because. Yeah, yeah. And it worked out for them because of the nature of their names. Like it just worked out better. Yeah like.
Keith
Like so, the first quick thing kind of throws away is he goes, if you have two heads you’re a monster.

Sheila
Yeah. And that’s a direct quote from Emerson Eggerich’s. Love and Respect by the way.

Keith
That is a recurring talking point. And the reason it keeps coming up is because it sounds so good. Yes. Right. And it’s complete crap.

Sheila
It is completely crap.

Keith
It is garbage.

Sheila
It is.

Keith
Great because it’s like like so what they’re saying is if you don’t do God’s way and you both come as equals, it’s a it’s a monster. So Marky Mark. Yeah, that’s that’s that’s just not fair to Mark Wahlberg. Yeah, but, Driscoll, tell me, in what way are two equal people following Jesus, trying to make a marriage work as a union of equals?

What way does that become a monster? Like, what’s the monstrous nature of that other than it doesn’t? You don’t like it? Yeah, that’s all it is. Now, I know monstrous marriages. We know of monstrous marriages, right? They were not equals. No. You know, like abusive marriages, like, are men in charge of women. And they need to know their place.

Now, I’m not saying all complementarians’ are like that, but complementarianism can become a monster. You have to agree with that even. You know, I’m not saying all commentarian marriages like that, but you can take it too far and it can become a monster, but you don’t ever hear them say that. No, they are saying that two heads are monsters. Well, like it can not become. But it is.

Sheila
What I what I find.

Keith
So doesn’t make.

Sheila
Any sense. What I find so interesting about that too, is that they’re denying reality, because the reality is that 78.9% of evangelical couples work as a partnership where there isn’t someone with a final authority, they make decisions together, and the fact that they can so flippantly say that that simply cannot work means that they’re denying reality, which means that they have never experienced egalitarianism working.

Which makes me feel really sorry for them, because it means they can’t even picture a situation where a husband and wife could could be married for 35 years like we are, and we’ve never had to have you make the final decision because we just figure things out, you know, because we’re normal people.

Keith
Yeah. And that’s the thing that I thought was really interesting is, like every time we talk about, you know, complementarianism. Oh, you’re distorting it. That’s not complementarianism really. It is. Right. Okay. But this guy is preaching and he’s saying, if you’re negotiating the last name, you’re already not one. So what’s the message there? The message there is like, even if you are disagreeing, you’re no longer one.

Yes. Right. So so here I am, a good complementarian and I’m one of the nice ones. I’m not going to abuse my wife. Okay? Right. But I’m a good complementarian and my wife’s a good complementarian wife. And she hears from Mark Driscoll, if you’re even negotiating about something, you’re no longer one. So as a woman, if I’m the wife, I’m going to be like, oh, if my husband and I are fighting, I will just give in right away.

Yeah, because I got to preserve unity. I’ll give it right away. Right. That’s that’s the natural tendency of that kind of teaching, is that even if you don’t mean to do harm, you’re going to teach women to give in immediately, because otherwise, you know, because the whole thing is you and I fight all the time, like we fight it we work things out. Right? That’s healthy. Yeah, like like.

Sheila
Yelling at each other. When we say fight, we mean disagreement where we’re trying to come together. We don’t mean, like, yelling at each other.

Keith
Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Thanks. Yes. I appreciate that. But like the concept that if you have any disagreement at all, you’re no longer one like that is not going to create a happy marriage. The only way that that works is if both of you internalize that and she gets smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller. So in my view, what Mark Driscoll is preaching is not two becoming one.

It’s one getting sucked into another and used up by another. Right? Like the view of marriage that he holds is the man is what where it counts and she is there just to support and encourage and help him. And I think that is fundamentally unhealthy. And I think it is a tremendous disservice to our sisters in Christ when we men don’t challenge that nonsense.

I mean, like, God has a plan for our wives just as much as us, right? Like we need to listen to the calling of God on our wives, and we need to be supporting our wives in those areas. And to become one means you’re both bringing everything you have. That’s the one that Paul is talking about. Yeah, in Ephesians and stuff. He’s not talking about someone knuckling under and never disagreeing because otherwise you’re not one anymore. Right. And it makes sense again that this guy sees things that way, because this guy has been shown to be a person who is not willing to work with others. He doesn’t play well with others, right? He is an authoritarian. He wants people to knuckle under and do what he says.

He was called to account by the elders in his church for his, you know. Abusive behavior,

Sheila
spiritual abusive behavior,

Keith
Spiritually abusive behavior, telling people to knuckle under. So I can see why he sees that marriage is another place where people need to knuckle under him. What I don’t see is why Christian men in the pews don’t say that they don’t look like Jesus.

Sheila
Yeah.

Keith
Like I don’t see Jesus in that. Why? You know, and I think it’s because men have had the wool pulled over their eyes. They’ve had the they’ve had all the kingdoms of the world laid out before them. And they’re taking them as opposed to saying, that’s not the way of Jesus. The way of Jesus is self-denial, not making sure I’m the head.

Sheila
Yeah, right.

Keith
And I think that would be much healthier Christians and healthier Christian men if we got our heads wrapped around that. And that’s what I thought.

Sheila
All right. Those are good. Okay. I’ve got a bunch. You want to.

Keith
Can I say one more thing about that too.

Sheila
Yeah.

Keith
Again, he says that these are timeless truths, right? God has always wanted marriage. These are timeless truths. But his point is, you should. If you don’t take your last name, you’re not one. But like, you know, last names are really, like 500 or 600 years old.

Sheila
Well, yeah. Also also in certain countries, like in Quebec, in Canada, you’re not even allowed a female isn’t even allowed to take your husband’s name.

Keith
So he’s nullified every marriage in Quebec. Yeah, they’re not one.

Sheila
But you’re not. You’re not allowed to. And that’s been like. That’s the French way that the woman keeps her last name.

Keith
When we were doing my genealogy, for my research, for my family, it was good because we could find.

Sheila
It was actually really easier to genealogy when your ancestors are French. Because the women didn’t change their names. Yeah.

Keith
And even in European societies, like it’s only hundreds of years old, like maybe a thousand years old the most. Right. So again, these are not timeless truths. These are people using the Bible to say the way that I want to do things is God’s way. Yeah, right. They are not faithfully interpreting the scriptures. They are interpreting the scriptures the way they want to make them speak, so that it supports what they already believe.

Sheila
Yeah, yeah. Very true. Okay. Let’s start with another person who comes up frequently okay. On this channel, let’s do it. Joshy. Josh. Oh, yes. Now there is a common theme.

Keith
Should I just should I just perform the thing and then say it was my clip?

Sheila
Because here we go. A number of people sent me this one. It’s kind of long. So it’s two minutes. It’s two minutes, 14 seconds. I think we’ll just listen to parts of it. So because I don’t want people to have to listen to the whole thing. But here we go.

Josh Howerton
Out to you real quick. I need to be gentle but clear. Your temptation at times will be to prioritize your children over your husband. You must never do that. You are not one flesh with your children. Even though your children came from your flesh. You are one flesh with your husband and your husband alone. Listen, ladies, a lot of you just need to get this.

The best way to be a good parent is to be a great spouse. That creates an amazing marriage. And the blessing from the marriage falls down on the children and ladies. If you’ve ever done any of the things I’m about to say, listen, there’s much grace I’m failing my way forward to. We’re all in this thing together, not trying to embarrass you, but I need to be specific.

Every now and then I’ll be out there in that lobby right after a service, and a couple will come up to me, and the wife will be there with her husband. I’ll reach forward to grab the husband’s hand. Go, go in for the handshake. Something happens or I don’t know whatever is going on. And a wife sometimes will say something like this.

Oh, he knows his place. Or maybe the little babies are there and there’s a little commotion with the babies, and she starts focusing on this or something like that. And a wife will say something like this. Oh, he knows my babies come first. Hey, listen. No they don’t. Do you know why a ton of divorces don’t happen three years into a marriage? They happen at age 60. I’m a pastor. See us all the time.

Sheila
Okay? I want to focus just on that last bit. Sure. Okay. Because we hear this a lot. This advice is a lot, right? Like, it was all throughout Marriage on the Rock. When we looked up at Jimmy Evans, we talked about a lot in that podcast, and I’ll put a link in the podcast notes to that. But this idea that women, your biggest problem is that you are going to bond too much with your kids and you’re going to end up ignoring your husband and he.

Josh gives us an example of the babies fussing, and she pays attention to the babies instead of her husband. What does he want her to do when the babies are fussing? Like? It reminds me to remember the Gary Thomas quote that we talked about. So Gary Thomas and I think this is from the book Lifelong Love, but he talks about how when children come, there’s a power shift and the power shifts back to the wife because he says that in a marriage, the person who is most serious about the relationship has the least amount of power.

So the person who’s the least serious about the relationship, the least focused, always has the most amount of power in a relationship at any given time. And so he says, when children come, the wife now has the power because she’s the least invested in the marriage. And so the husband ceases to exist because now there are babies. And and he literally says that if a baby cries when they’re making love, you know, he ceases to exist. And she goes and gets the baby and it’s like, Gary, what do you want her to do? Yeah. Do you want to keep having sex while your baby is crying? What is wrong with you? Like, what is wrong with Josh?

Keith
Well, this is the mentality of the whole, the whole group. Like, I think that it’s like. Yeah.

Sheila
And the idea that a child’s needs cannot come before husband’s needs. Yeah. Have you ever had a baby? Because you know what? When a baby is born, that baby is completely and utterly helpless. Yeah, completely. That baby cannot do anything on their own. Nothing at all. They rely on adults to survive. And specifically on the mother if they’re breastfeeding.

Yeah, right. So the baby needs to be the main priority. The next main priority is any other children in the relationship who are also completely reliant on the parents. The next main priority is the woman who has just got a baby out of her body and who is her hormones all over the place. She is healing, she is bleeding, she is leaking milk, you know?

And he goes on to talk about how important it is that you still have sex. Yeah, yeah. And it’s like, you know what? At that moment when you have babies and toddlers, the husband is so far down the priority list of the family because he needs to be. And that is the whole point. That is how God made us, is that somebody is okay in all of this chaos.

There is one person who doesn’t have major needs from everyone else so that he can take care of people. That’s the whole point. And yet, what is the message that’s given, Women you need to take care of your husband when he’s the only one who actually doesn’t need to be taken care of.

Keith
Right then? Yes. Yeah, well, they preach servant leadership, right? Here’s a great opportunity then. Like. Like here you are. Like your wife has just had a baby. She’s tired. She’s breastfeeding your kids up at night. Here’s a great opportunity to be a servant leader. Put your own needs on the back burner and show how much you love your family.

Yeah, that’s the message. Nope, nope. Don’t forget your husband needs sex. Women. Yeah. It’s like. And then they have the gall to say they preach servant leadership.

Sheila
Yeah.

Keith
They don’t. They preach men and male entitlement. It’s crazy. Yeah. It’s crazy. Yeah. I don’t I don’t understand why more men don’t see that.

Sheila
No I know it absolutely is crazy. And this whole idea, this whole warning to women that, you know, you’re, you know, kids take up so much of your energy, but you need to give your best energy to your husband, okay? Your best energy is in the middle of the day when your kids need you. How are you? So so what he’s saying is, when your kids need you in the middle of the day, you need to go take a nap so that at night when you’re going to have sex, you have energy. So what happens to those kids then? Yeah. What exactly? Now, I am not saying that there aren’t things that we can do to make ourselves less tired. Yeah. Like. Yes. Let’s get organized.

Keith
Well, one of the things we can do is the guy to not assume the kids are the wife’s purview.

Sheila
And that’s what I.

Keith
Want, because this is the thing, is that they just they just assume, like she’s supposed to take care of the kids. It’s not like you need to prioritize your husband, and he needs to prioritize you, and you need to split up how you look after the kids. It’s a no no. You take care of all the kids and you take care of all that stuff.

Keith
But then don’t forget me. Yeah, right. Yeah. It’s like, how is that like, that doesn’t make any sense to me

Sheila
I know, and if the big problem is that marriages start to fall more distant when kids come because she’s so busy with the kids, why is that? Why is the advice given? Women, don’t be so busy with the kids. Pay attention to your husband instead, husbands pay attention to your kids so that she doesn’t have so much on her plate.

Sheila
Because if she’s not going to pay it like like there is no way for her to pay more attention to the husband unless she also pays less attention to babies and toddlers.

Keith
Yeah, well, here’s what I say. So you’re chugging along, you’re married, you’re chugging along, and you each are doing stuff. You’ve each got a certain amount of work that you have to do to make this marriage work, and you’re chugging along, and then kids get thrown in. Right? Okay. So one approach is to say, okay, we now have kids. We both are going to have to work harder because we both have kids. Yep. Is that what Josh is preaching? No, no. I mean the assumption is the woman’s going to take care of the kids. So now you’re chugging along and she’s got a kid on her back working harder than you. Yeah. How dare you say she needs to make sure you don’t get neglected?

Keith
Yeah, like, what the heck?

Sheila
Yeah. Okay.

Keith
Like, you know, you have kids. Things are going to be harder now, guys. Like. But it’s a beautiful blessing to have kids throw yourself into it, man. Be involved. Dad. Right. Like your wife doesn’t say. He knows. My kids come first. Because she doesn’t have to say that. Because for both of you, the kids come first. Because you love your children and you want to look after them.

Sheila
Yeah. And any man who could ever say who could ever be upset that when a baby cries, the woman goes and gets the baby? Yeah, there’s something seriously wrong there.

Keith
They’re immature. They haven’t been taught to be capable, self realized. You know, people who can actually regulate themselves and look out for the needs of others, like Zach was talking about last week. That’s what men need to do. Men are stuck in this emotionally taught emotional toddlerhood, because we don’t get any good teaching about growing and developing out of that.
We just don’t. It’s all enabling.

Sheila
Yeah.

Keith
And it all gets put on the women and it’s crazy. And I don’t understand why men aren’t insulted that they’re being talked down to constantly from the pulpit.

Sheila
And by the way, babies and toddlers need you. They just do. And don’t ever, ever, ever believe that a man needs you more than a newborn does. Okay, just say that.

Keith
And men look after your kids.

Sheila
And any man, any man thinks that he comes before a newborn is not a safe person. Okay?

Keith
And men look after your kids. Yes. Your kids’ life. It’s not just your wife’s children. It’s.

Sheila
It’s okay.

Keith
I have. Sorry.

Sheila
Next clips. I have two clips. And the reason that I want to show these ones is they’re from an influencer couple that is trying to get big online to sell courses, and I’m constantly getting sent their videos. It’s Tommy McCollister and I think his wife’s name is Diane. But I could have that wrong, okay. And I want to use them as an example of why we need to stop listening to marriage influencers online, because there’s a whole lot of people who are trying to sell courses who have no credentials. They are not licensed counselors, they are not licensed therapists. They have not done any research. They don’t teach from peer reviewed research. They tend to teach from their own story. And their story, like so many others, is he had an affair. She forgave him. And now they want to teach you how you can have a strong marriage, even with this stuff in the background.

Okay, so here’s how he portrays why their marriage works, right? And we’re only going to listen to the first part of it again, it’s a long clip. The podcast is going to be too long if we listen to it, but I’ll summarize the rest of it. Okay?

Keith
Okay.

Tommy McCollister
Years ago when we were dating, I had cheated on Diane. Obviously not a good thing, but one of the cool things about Diane. But I also want to mention for social media there is one thing that she did that was awesome, that she just never brought it up again to me in a in a defensive, weaponized manner. She always encouraged me. She loved me. She understood I was a broken man. And because of that, she encouraged me to become a better man. But she never threw it in my face. Not one time, literally not one time in 22 years or how long it’s ever been. Did you ever throw it in my face?

Diane McCollister
No. We can’t hang on to those things and keep bringing them up and keep bringing them up if we’re ever going to try to heal from them.

Sheila
Okay. And so he goes on to say that the reason that he’s talking about this is because people on social media will say, why should we listen to you, you had an affair. And so he’s defending it. They do mention later that he repented and her his and she noticed how much he had changed. Okay, okay. But they never explained what that was and they didn’t lead with that.
What they led with was yeah, I cheated. She never brought it up again.

Keith
Yeah, yeah. Well again to the same thing, which is obviously not good. I figured out what he said. Yeah. Like again this is the thing we hear. We hear men’s sin like literal Ten commandments sin. Yeah. Brush under the rug. Obviously. Like I’m not saying it’s right. Yeah. You know that kind of mentality happens all the time. So it’s crazy.

Sheila
Who does this advice benefit? Yeah yeah. Does it benefit a woman who is married to someone who’s had an affair?

Keith
Yeah.

Sheila
No, no, because it tells her if you keep bringing it up, you are never going to heal. But it doesn’t lay out. And this is the big problem. It never lays out what healing from an affair looks like.

Keith
Yeah, well, that’s my thing is, this is if he is trying to say that the thing that gives us the ability to teach is I learned about why I did this horrible thing, and I learned to change my mentality about my wife, about sex, about myself and all that kind of stuff. I could see that, right? But but I’ve seen a few other clips, and it’s all just about how, like, you need to make sure that he’s in charge and she supports him.

Sheila
Yeah, we’ll watch one of those in a minute.

Keith
Watch one of those same mentality.

Sheila
The other thing, if you if you’re watching on YouTube and you saw this, this clip in almost every video, he is holding her in a very strange way. Like in this one, he has his arm around her shoulders like she can’t escape. And so much of their body language is that, like, that’s what a lot of people notice about them is.

Sheila
It’s kind of freaky.

Keith
I don’t think we can really read too much into things, but but people comment on it.

Sheila
Yeah, people comment on it a lot. And so, you know, if you see couples like this again, you don’t need to listen to them. You can just block and mute. So let’s hear another let’s hear another bit

Diane McCollister
Wives must stop according to the Bible. One, stop tearing your husband down with your words.

Tommy McCollister
You absolutely have the power to build him up into something incredible with the words that you speak. Proverbs 14:1 says, the wise woman builds her house, but with her own hands. The foolish one tears hers down.

Diane McCollister
Two ,stop trying to control everything.

Tommy McCollister
Nobody becomes a great leader by being micromanaged. Trust your husband and lift him up even when he fails. First Peter 3:1 says, wives in the same way, submit yourselves to your own husbands, so that if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without the words by the behavior of their wives.

Diane McCollister
Three. Stop comparing your life to others.

Tommy McCollister
Your marriage, your family, your story. It’s uniquely yours and your testimony will drastically impact the world if you allow it. Galatians 6:4 says each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone without comparing themselves to anyone else.

Diane McCollister
Four, stop putting anything before God.

Tommy McCollister
When he is first, everything else starts to fall into place. As hard as it is, your kids are not God. God is God. Let him be that. Matthew 6:33 says, but seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all of these things will be given to you as well.

Sheila
Okay. Again, kids, you know, if you’re paying attention to kids, then you’re not putting God first. Before we get into the meat of what they said for those watching on YouTube, did you notice anything about the body language there?

Keith
Oh, what do you mean? I’m not sure.

Sheila
He is always. He’s he’s in front of her.

Keith
Yeah, well, what I noticed was she would say the thing and then he would do all the, all the.

Sheila
All the talking

Keith
The exposition on. Yeah. Right. Like she just did the list and he’s on this journey. So it’s like telling women how they should be. So it’s like, okay, here’s a clip. I’m a guy who committed adultery on my wife. Yeah, right. And I’m going to read you a bunch of Bible verses about how you’re not as good a wife as you should be. Yeah, but one verse I’m not gonna read as thou shalt not commit adultery. Yeah.

Sheila
Yeah, yeah.

Keith
Or that or that. Each person you know is carried off by their own desires and their sins, you know, like like I’m not I’m not going to talk about what I’m going to tell you women how you need to behave. The hypocrisy just blows me away.

Sheila
And you see this a lot. Pastors do this, authors do this, influencers do this. Where if you can find a Bible verse that fits with what you’re saying, then how can anyone argue it? Because I’m talking. I’m talking from God. They’re not actually looking to the Bible to inform their whole perspective on marriage. What they’re doing is they have a perspective on the kind of marriage they want, and then they go and they pick and choose Bible verses that seem to support that. That is an entirely different way of handling the Bible.

Keith
Absolutely. So I think that last week with Zach Wagner, too, that one point was really good was that he said the Bible never commands husbands to lead their wives. Yes. And here he is talking about how like the assumption he goes, good leaders don’t come from being micromanaged. Right. So the assumption there is that that is the role of the husband is to be the leader. Yeah. And you need to get out of the way and let him be the leader, because that’s God’s plan. Yeah, but nowhere in Scripture does it say he leads. Right. And we’ve got I’ve got pushed back on Facebook when I’ve talked about this and a person said, and I said, show me where it says he leads and the person who’s, well, he leads by. And then it lists all the things that it says serving, caring for, nurturing all those things. He leads by that. I’m like, so you are reading the word lead literally into those words, and you’re telling me I’m reading into the Bible. Yeah. Like the word lead is not there. And you’re saying, but but it all means lead because you want to see lead like they have. They they will push the Bibles through whatever shaped hole they need to push it, to get it, to say what they want it to say. Because like, here’s the deal. Like there are certain things that are really, really full, like don’t commit adultery. That’s top ten dudes.

Sheila
Yeah.

Keith
Like that’s up there. Right? Okay. Like like like men and women are both in the image of God. God loves his daughters as much as his sons, right? Like, so why are we not talking about how, like, I need to be different so that my wife feels safe? Yeah, it’s. Why is it that she knew she knew to not bring it up anymore? Because, you know, like, look like that just drives me crazy.

Sheila
And what is the assumption of women in this video?

Keith
Oh, yeah, they’re all naggy. They’re all they’re all they’re all they’re all going to like railroad men. And they’re going to make it so hard for men and men. It’s just so difficult for them. And they need to back it down a little bit.

Sheila
Right. So this is what they’re trying to show: the ideal marriage is a marriage where a woman doesn’t say anything.

Keith
Yeah. Get as little as possible.

Sheila
Yeah. So she isn’t trying to control him. She is going to win him.

Keith
With that. That’s a good word. Control. Right. What is control? Yeah. Because he gets to define what’s control. Yeah. Right. If she just says, you know, maybe we shouldn’t let the kids play with like, a chainsaw. Yeah. Yeah, that’s an extreme example. But like, like if she tries to give him advice, even in areas where she’s more of an expert we’ve seen this. Right. Like the lighter example. The father was a man. Only the husband was letting it, leaving, letting, leaving a lighter in a room with kids. Yeah. And she tried to say maybe that’s not safe. And she had to learn the lesson to shut up and let him do what he wanted to do because he was the man.

Sheila
Right?

Keith
As opposed to, like, dude, like that is not safe.

Sheila
Yeah.

Keith
Like you need to learn.

Sheila
Because the overarching theme that we’re seeing in this is that she doesn’t get to say anything, so she doesn’t say anything about his affair in the first video. And here she doesn’t say anything about marriage at all. So if she has an issue. Yeah. And this is what we keep seeing in marriage advice that’s given over and over again to women is if you have an issue, the godly thing to do is to swallow it.

Keith
If you’re a woman,

Sheila
And do absolutely nothing about it.

Keith
If you’re if you’re a man, the godly thing is to step up and make sure things go the way God wants them to in your marriage, which just happens to align with the way you want them to marry, seems to line up.

Sheila
Exactly. Okay, so now we’ve got we’ve got another influencer couple that I want to talk about. Okay, okay. And we’re going to listen to another list. And I want to give some context for this. So this is from an interview on Daystar TV. Daystar, a very big TV network in the United States, got embroiled in a huge scandal because the founder, Joni Lamb, her one of her sons, Jonathan Lamb, said that a member of the family had sexually abused their child and they just got ostracized, pushed out. He was fired. His wife was fired. They were pushed off the board for for revealing that a family member had sexually abused their child, and that family member was never disciplined. Joni Lamb recently passed away. It’s all just a big mess. But anyway, they were doing this interview on Daystar. This is an Australian couple and I just want to say, Aussies, are you okay?

Because because like this is scary that this is coming up in Australia because Australia, you’re supposed to be one of the good ones. Like, you know, in our survey of Great Sex Rescue, you’re kind of up there with Canada like this. New Zealand, New Zealand’s the healthiest, New Zealand’s the healthiest, and the UK then Canada and Australia are pretty, pretty good, then the United States, then South Africa.

Keith
Well, I’m surprised because Aussies don’t take anything from anybody. Like I can’t imagine their submissive wife message goes over that well in Australia.

Sheila
Just wait. Okay, so this is Melissa and I forget what her husband’s name is. Martin. Sedra. Sedra. And they’re on Daystar. Okay. Ready?

Martin Sedra
Men need three things, sexual intimacy, food on the table and they need honor. Yeah, it’s really that simple. But honor is a big one. When you talk to your husband, don’t talk to him like he’s your girlfriend. He’s not your girlfriend. Millie doesn’t even call me babe because I’m like, I’m not your baby into the Bible. I’m your head. Yes, but when you speak to your husband, speak with honor. Speak with respect. He’s not a mate. Give him some honor and you’ll see your marriage really, really flourish.

Millicent Sedra
It’s like a lot of women understand that. Like in the workplace, there is a way that you speak to your superior authority. And if you want to get things done in the company, you have to talk upwards with wait and honor. And they’ll do that in the workplace, and then they’ll come home and talk to their husbands like trash talk to them like they’re below them. Beneath them. You’re nothing. It’s like if you want things to function well in the house, you want a healthy marriage, you have to do it God’s way.

Keith
Yeah, I have seen her. I don’t think she represents Australia.

Sheila
No, but like Australia, no, she doesn’t represent Australia. And I’m not saying that, but Australia has an issue with stuff coming into the church. And I’ve gotten a lot of emails from Aussies saying it’s getting worse down here. There’s getting there’s there’s some really weird churches that are getting really big. So Aussies, we are with you and yeah, we want to help.

But you know again we’re seeing a false dichotomy. Right. So either she talks to him like he’s her superior authority, as if she is an employee and he is an employer.

Keith
Yeah, yeah.

Sheila
Or she’s talking to him like trash. Yes. And they say you’re not supposed to talk to him like he’s your friend.

Keith
Yeah, yeah crazy.

Sheila
Why?

Keith
Yeah.

Sheila
Why?

Keith
Oh, because he’s he’s he’s the head. He’s in charge.

Sheila
Yeah. Because I’ll tell you, in marriages where they talk to each other like they’re friends. And we measured this in The Marriage You Want, those marriages are awesome. Yes. In marriages, will you treat him like he’s your authority? Those marriages tank.

Keith
Yeah, well. And they will say you should marry your best friend. But then don’t treat him like your best friend because he’s now your boss. Yeah, it’s like crazy.

Sheila
It is. Okay, so.

Keith
And I got a question here, and I’m kind of flying by the seat of my pants on this one. Okay, but he says that God’s will is to honor your husband. And I’m trying to think of a Bible verse that says to honor your husband. I mean, there’s respect.

Sheila
There’s respect. Yeah, there’s actually.

Keith
There’s a Bible verse that says honor your wife as the weaker vessel. Like the only time I can think of only Bible verse I can think of that specifically says to honor a spouse. Now again, I’m flying by the seat of my pants here.

Sheila
Yes.

Keith
But the. First Peter three, yeah, is on.

Sheila
First Peter 3:7.

Keith
Husbands, honor your wives, right? Like so. So again, they will pick the verses that suit the agenda, and they will completely ignore the verses that go against the agenda, because it’s not about interpreting Scripture faithfully. It’s about pushing what we want to push and making the Bible say what we want to make it say. Yeah, and it’s just sad and it’s not appropriate.

Sheila
Okay, I want to.

Keith
because because you got you got people saying recently on some of this stuff going on with these podcasts and stuff. She doesn’t have a high view of the Bible. We have a very high view of the Bible, we think. But we have a high view of the whole Bible. Yeah, like not just the parts of the Bible you like. Yeah, right.

Sheila
Yeah, yeah. And people making things up, like talking like the Bible says that men are supposed to be in charge when it doesn’t really bother us.

Keith
Yeah, and I take the Bible seriously enough to see that when there’s things that, like, are confusing, I maybe stop and go, hey, maybe instead of me creating this really weird psycho relationship where I’m in charge of everything and Jesus said to be a servant, maybe I need to rethink that.

Sheila
Yeah.

Keith
You know, like, maybe I need to. Actually, it’s just crazy.

Sheila
Anyway, I get I get sent a lot of this woman’s clips. She seems to do a lot of speaking engagements. She’s very active on social media and a lot of Aussie. So I don’t understand exactly who she is or what she’s affiliated with Millicentnt Sedra etc. so any Aussies who can fill me in just hit me up. If you’re watching on YouTube, leave a comment and explain it to me because I would love to get the context better.

If you are watching this, you’ll see she looks very young, like this couple looks. I mean, I could be wrong, but I’m looking. I’m thinking late 20s. You know, she might be in her 30s, I don’t know, but she looks very young and I just want to. There’s, there’s a reason I want to listen to this next one. Okay? Okay, everyone, take a deep breath first because you’re going to need it.

Millicent Sedra
You. He’s the head but I’m the neck. My husband’s the head. He makes the decisions, but really, I’m the neck that drives his decision. Do you know what you are doing when you say that, you are literally introducing yourself? Hey, this is my husband, Ahab, and my name is Jezebel. Nice to meet you. We have been unknowingly promoting a Jezebel spirit. What do I mean by Jezebel spirit?

In one Kings there was a queen called Jezebel and she is defined and depicted as a very evil, wicked, manipulative queen. She had a passive husband called Ahab, and she would control him so that no one else so completely sold himself to what was evil in the Lord’s sight, as Ahab did under the influence of his wife, she had an affair. She was the one that wears the pants. He did what was evil, but he was under the influence, and it was his fault. He was a passive man that gave in, just like Adam in the garden. Instead of saying, you should not do this, God told us, no, we will not bring the prophets of Baal. We will not bring the Asherah Poles into Israel. Instead of doing that, he let her bring this in. Will you believe that feminist lie of the Jezebel spirit and have a legacy of tearing down, of destroying, of dishonoring your husband? Or will you have a legacy that you are not ashamed of? Choose Submission. Choose honor, choose to be the godly virtuous wife. What does the Bible say? Who can find an excellent one? She is more precious than rubies. One who fears the Lord.

Sheila
Okay.

Keith
Wow.

Sheila
I feel like everyone’s cortisol levels have just gone way up. Like, this is such a manipulative tactic.

Keith
Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

Sheila
The way that she’s speaking, she’s yelling at the audience. She’s got this creepy music going. For those of you watching, she’s got weird images going on the screen, like, this is meant to get you in a fight or flight response. This is meant to activate your nervous system, to feel immense fear, which is what you were talking about earlier.

Keith
Right. And it’s it’s used specifically to manipulate you.

Sheila
Yes. This this. When churches do this kind of emotional manipulation, know that this has nothing to do with Jesus because they are trying to push your buttons so that you feel a certain emotion so that you are easier to manipulate. And everything about this is about manipulation. If we could talk about the content for a minute. It’s funny because the last time we did this in December, we talked about the Jezebel spirit.

Keith
Yeah. Yeah

Sheila
And I might I maybe we should even play part of the clip again because we already dealt with it there. But there is no such thing as the Jezebel spirit in scripture. I know that Pentecostals will get mad at me on this, but. But the Jezebel spirit does not appear in Scripture. Jezebel is a real person. Yeah.

Keith
In in in Kings. Right? Right. And she messes the story up completely, which we can come back to later. Okay. But it was a real person. Yes, married to Abe, like she said. But that was only the only part that was right.

Sheila
And then Jezebel was mentioned again in Revelation. And Jezebel does several different things. She lures people into sexual. Yeah, sexual sin. She teaches things that are wrong and leads people astray, etc..

Keith
To sacrifice idols.

Sheila
Idols and sacrifice titles. And immediately before the Tacoma Jezebel, they talk about Balaam, who does all of the same things, but we never hear talk of the Balaam spirit. We only hear talk about the Jezebel spirit, because when people use Jezebel spirit, it is a way to paint all women as bad because there isn’t an equivalent for men.

Keith
So. So I’m a woman and I want to be treated equally, and I want to be treated with respect by my husband. Yeah. And you know, but the church, these people in the church want her to shut up and do what her husband tells her, and she will react against that. Right, right. So therefore you say, well, then you have a Jezebel spirit, right? Like, because they can’t make an argument for why. Yeah. Just being equals in a relationship is bad. The Bible says so. Well, I read the Bible differently. Well, then you’re wrong. You have a Jezebel spirit.

Sheila
Yes.

Keith
Right. So it is. It is a way of changing the argument from actually talking about the issues and making an appeal to logic to you are from the devil. I don’t need to listen to you. And if I can convince you you’re from the devil and make you repent and be like me, then all the all that much the better. Yeah, but this is not a serious engagement with the Bible or the Scripture or God’s plans for marriage. It is all a manipulative agenda to drive people to be a certain way. Yeah. It’s terrible. Yeah. It’s horrific.

Sheila
Yeah. Very.

Keith
Very, very. And she lies about the Bible. I mean, it was Ahab. Sin, according to her, is that he was passive and they keep coming back to this. Adam’s sin was that he was passive. Adam’s sin was that he was passive. Ahab’s sin was that he was passive. Okay. This is nonsense. They haven’t read these books. Yeah, right. Ahab was not passive. Ahab was an evil king and she was evil too. But they were both evil together. Yes, like it was. His sin was not passivity. It wasn’t like he was like, oh, I want to be nice to the people. And Jezebel like, be mean to them, okay? I’ll be mean to them. Like, that’s not the story they have in Jezebel in the Old Testament.

Yeah, that’s not there. She’s just lying because she wants to see men’s sin being passivity as the sin. Okay. Adam sinned by passivity. That’s Adam sin. He’s passive. Okay, Paul. Although Paul says the the woman was deceived. And that’s a whole other thing. The thing Paul says is that Adam took the fruit and that’s what caused sin into the world.

Like he doesn’t talk about paint, Paul. Paint. Adam is passive. He paints Adam as actively putting us in this situation. Right? Right. Like Paul’s version of Adam is not passive, right? Like she was deceived. He acted. Yeah, right. Like his sin was to act. Yeah. You know, too quickly and do the wrong thing.

Sheila
Yeah, she.

Keith
But that doesn’t fit with a narrative.

Sheila
Yes, she was deceived and she ate the fruit, but he knew what he was doing and he ate the fruit. Yeah.

Keith
So. So the lesson is men.

Sheila
Yeah.

Keith
Be careful of people putting you in charge. Because when you’re in charge, you might do things that will hurt other people because you have strength and power that can harm them. Yeah. That to me is the story from Adam.

Sheila
Yeah.

Keith
But that doesn’t fit their agenda. It’s the opposite of their agenda. So they have to make Adam passive because passivity is the worst sin. Yeah, right. So again, they want to find something in the Bible. They will make the Bible say even when the Bible says the exact opposite, and then they will turn around and accuse you of reading the Bible. Yeah, it is ridiculous. It drives me crazy.

Sheila
Yeah, absolutely.

Keith
And this is this is this is not good biblical exegesis. This is just totally smoke and mirrors. And it’s it’s the broad way. It’s the broad way to follow along chant. Grab your pitchforks. Let’s go torch everybody who doesn’t think like us. Yeah, like that is not the way of Jesus.

Sheila
No. And it looks like she’s doing this at a marriage conference or something because of the stuff that’s on the screen behind her. So if she’s actually getting known as a marriage speaker at this age, which is so crazy when she’s.

Keith
Well, she’s on the stage by herself. So maybe it’s just a rally.

Sheila
Or something, I don’t know, but yeah, kind of scary stuff. Okay. Last one, super short. Guess what it is. Guess who it is.

Keith
Oh, who have we not seen yet?

Sheila
Well, we’re going to end with. Marky Mark. Here we go.

Keith
Oh.

Mark Driscoll
Your family or Satan does. This is always the problem when men say and do nothing. The result is who becomes the leader? Well, the woman thought she was the leader and she wasn’t. Who became the leader? Satan. The moral of the story is that you lead your family or Satan does. Your wife’s like, I got this. That’s what Eve thought and it’s deception.

Keith
You’ve got to pause. There should have been a pause there. Who became the leader? Satan?

Sheila
For all eugenics you need to watch Saturday Night Live in the 80s.

01;03;20;19 – 01;03;21;23
Keith
Who could be? Who could it be? Maybe.

Sheila
Maybe Satan church.
Keith
The church lady. Oh my gosh. So again, the answer to your question is always Satan.

Sheila
Yes. But again, we have a false dichotomy here where you know, either the man is in charge or Satan is in charge. Yeah, there’s never an idea that we don’t need anyone in charge because we could just serve one another and run after Jesus together.

Keith
Yeah, well, Jesus is the head of our home. Yes. Like that’s the way it is. Jesus is the head of our home. We follow him.

Sheila
And actually, what he’s quoting is the Gothard umbrella idea, because that’s what Bill Gothard said. The disgraced homeschool leader, who was accused of sexually harassing and assaulting many young girls. And, you know, he he had those umbrellas of authority, which make no sense because you have, like Jesus with this big umbrella. And then below him you have a husband.

And then below that you have a wife, and then below that you have the kids. And his whole point is that if you come outside of your umbrella of authority, then you open yourself up to Satan, right? Okay. Which is basically what Mark is saying here. You know, if Jesus’ umbrella is over everybody. Why do you need any other umbrellas?

Like the whole the whole concept makes no sense. The image made no sense, right? But that was the idea that if a woman comes out from under the authority of her husband, then Satan is now reigning. And that is what Mark Driscoll is saying here. And again, no biblical basis for this, no biblical anything and setting up a false dichotomy.

Keith
Well, and there’s so many scriptural examples of wives, you know, like Abigail, right? She, her husband, she called him a fool and she left him and went to to, you know, helped David overthrow him. Yeah, right. Like there’s so many examples of women who are praised for recognizing their husband was doing something wrong and getting out of there.

Sheila
And then when they didn’t like Sapphira. Right. Like.

Keith
Yeah, she went along.

Sheila
She went along. She submitted to what Ananias said, and she was struck down by the Holy Spirit. She was struck down dead. Yeah. Because she went along with him like it’s just it again. It is what the Bible says.

Keith
And if she here’s the thing too, is that so? If she steps out from under her husband’s umbrella, she is exposed to Satan. And that’s that’s dangerous, right? But they also say if the husband is leading her into sin, she’s not supposed to follow him, right? Right. So it’s like, so these poor women are really in a, in a catch 22 because, because if you if you follow him and it’s sin, you’re, you’re in trouble if you don’t follow him and it wasn’t sin like, like it’s like she. And meanwhile she’s supposed to be easily deceived. So she can’t lead the league because she’s easily deceived. But we hold her to account for deciding when she should and shouldn’t listen to her husband, which is always because he’s the head. Except for when he’s sinning.

Like it’s just this. This like as opposed to what does the Scripture say? The Scripture says, you know, like you are responsible for what you do, right? Like, you make choices. You have desires. You need to bring them before God. You need to take every thought captive. You are responsible for what you do and say before other people, husband, wife, single person, whatever.

Sheila
And in John 10 says that all of us who follow Jesus, all of us who know Jesus, recognize his voice like that, the sheep will know his voice. So why do women know the voice of Jesus just as much as men do? So this idea that, you know, women can’t follow Jesus directly, they have to follow their husbands is idolatry. And it’s putting the husband as mediator between women and God. And we are told that there is no mediator except for Jesus. And so we are setting up a false gospel.

Keith
Yeah, absolutely.

Sheila
You know.

Keith
So and if you if you see this and someone’s preaching this thing where women, you know, you know, they can’t, they have to follow their husband, right? But it’s like, well then what if he’s wrong? Yeah. Well then she just has to follow him anyway. It’s like like, how does that mesh with the rest of Scripture? It just doesn’t feel like you have to go. Well, they must have got something wrong somewhere. So maybe this is not true, but they will just ignore those verses that make their way look untrue because they want to keep pushing it. And it’s just it’s bad biblical exegesis. It’s bad Christianity, it’s bad everything.

Sheila
Yeah. It absolutely is. Yes. So listen, when you see something terrible on social media, it’s okay to block that account so that you never see it again. And we need and if your pastor is saying anything like this, that is a sign that you’re in a dangerous church and that church is not a safe one. If your small group leader is saying stuff like this, go talk to the pastor or go talk to the person above the small group leader. And if they agree with the small group leader, that means your church is not a safe place. But we need to get out of places that are teaching this crap. Yep. And because it is crap.

Keith
This is not the way of Jesus. It’s not.

Sheila
The way.

Keith
Of Prince of Peace.

Sheila
It doesn’t lead to flourishing. And if you want to know what flourishing looks like, hey. Well, we are taking a break for these six weeks. This is a great time to read The Marriage You Want because yeah, we show you a picture of what, what actually works for marriage, what reflects Jesus. And it doesn’t look anything like what any of these people said. And when people are trying to scare you like that, because all of these messages were very scary tactics, then know, they’re trying to manipulate you.

Keith
If you don’t believe exactly like us, your marriage will fail. You will be your. If you try to be equal, you’ll be a monster like it’s all you know. You are the Jezebel spirit, you know? Yeah. All that stuff.

Sheila
Yeah. It’s really it’s it isn’t of Jesus. And it scares me that this is what the church is becoming. So we need to create healthier churches. And that means leaving these spaces behind, not going to these rallies, not going to these huge conferences and finding healthy Christian spaces. They are out there. They just may be in a different denomination. They may be in the small church down the road. It might be in small groups that you meet with neighbors, you know, because you don’t have a safe church to go to right now. But maybe you can create one like we need. We need to start having these conversations about what Jesus really looks like. One of the things that people often say to me is, oh, you just hate everybody.

You’re just always criticizing all, all, all books, which I find really funny because if you look at it like the past few weeks, we’ve had different authors on with their new books, Zach, Zachary Wagner’s book Men of Virtue. Please pick it up. But if you look at the books that we’ve had in this last season or this last year, they’ve been so many that have talked about the justice of Jesus and what the gospel really looks like.

I think about The Justice of Jesus by Joash Thomas, Better Ways to Read the Bible by Zach Lambert. You know, there’s so many amazing books out right now. They give us a different sense of who Jesus is and it’s freeing. And it isn’t scary and it isn’t trying to manipulate you. It’s trying to call you to something which is peaceful and lovely and joyful. And I hope you find that. And I hope you find a religious space that looks like that.

Keith
Yeah, we were talking about that a little while ago, saying that, you know, the the Christianity took over the world, right? Like Jesus was this traveling preacher in Palestine, in the Roman Empire. And he preached this way. That was so, you know, counterintuitive, like, love your enemies, you know, like, like all these things, like they’re so counter-intuitive, the way that we act as humans.

Yeah. And yet that message spread like wildfire, you know, and it’s gone. And because it’s captivating, it’s it’s the idea of love. You know, the idea of of goodness, the idea of virtue, of, like, all these things, they’re so good and it’s so captivating and compelling. Right? You don’t need to force it on people. Yeah. Like if you have to generate hatred and anger and fear and shame and, and rev people up and get them all so that they will, you know, believe like you like like that.

How how is that like Jesus? Yeah. I mean, the way of Jesus. Just just live the way of Jesus and you’ll inspire people by your life and they’ll see it and they’ll want it and they’ll they’ll want to be like. And you’ll convince people, convincing people like that. To me, it’s it’s it’s I just don’t see how that follows the way of the Lord that I follow.

Sheila
Yeah, yeah.

Keith
I don’t get it.

Sheila
Yeah, yeah. And there is a better way. And we hope, we hope that you find it. So we are going to be back in mid-July. I don’t know exactly what date yet. We haven’t quite figured that out, but we will be putting some things up on our YouTube channel. We’ll probably be doing our Friday roundup still, at least sometimes we will be posting on social media, I’ll be on my Substack, and so I’m going to put links to all those things.

Please follow me in those places to to catch up with what we’re doing. And especially please take a look at our simulcast event, because that is coming in October and now is a great time before everyone leaves for the summer to talk to your church about it and see if this is something that you might want to host.

We’ve kept the price really low. We’re going to adjust it for time zones. We’re going to make it super easy for you, but you can host a marriage conference that can really change people’s lives. That doesn’t scare them. That isn’t about manipulation, but it’s just laying out the facts. Say, here’s here’s what goes into a great marriage. Here’s how you can build it.

And then, of course, we also have my sex talk that I, that I’m going to give to you on Friday night, where it’s just a great event for women. Bring in the women in your community. People love talking about sex and it’s a super fun event. So check those things out because maybe you can bring me or us to your church in October.

So I’m going to put the link to that simulcast in the podcast notes. And yeah, we hope you have a wonderful June and early July. We will see you back here for so that we will be here in July and August for your podcast stuff as you’re taking vacations. And yeah, have a great break

Keith
Bye everyone

Sheila
Bye