Liberate Your Story Podcast

Submission is a dirty word. I absolutely hate what this belief has done to both women and men. And I’ve been responsible for perpetuating its hurtful agenda.

Every pastor has 3 parts of scripture that they wrestle with teaching from the pulpit.
The first is Leviticus. It’s full of bizarre rules and laws that they jump hoops to make sense of for their congregations. It’s misogynistic and likely one of the most politically incorrect books of the bible. It gives laws for how to “deal with” “dwarfs”, when and wear men can spill their seed and who owns the widows.

The second is Revelation. I actually found this book one of the most fascinating due to its “secret code” written for liberation from Rome. But most don’t see the book this way and try to find its meaning as an End Times prophecy. Maybe its both, but Pastors are very careful how to take this piece of literature into the common setting of church pews.

The third is Paul's teaching on the Submission of women to their husbands and to men in the church. A woke pastor will try to emphasize the idea of “mutual” submission and submission to Christ. A Fundamentalist will make sure the hierarchy of roles is outlined and that we are inspired to fall in line with it as our desire to be a godly woman.

I’ve experienced hurtful teachings from all three of these particular parts of the Bible, but the last one is truly the most hurtful to all of us. It fit well with Purity Culture, which I discussed in the last episode.

I did not know my world outside of the idea of a wife being submissive to her husband and to the male leadership of the church. Sometimes it was more blatant than others and, if I’m honest, I think that was easier to wrap my head around. It was the subtlety of a woman not being trustworthy enough to engage God in the same way men could that really damaged me at my core.

My own dad made sure there was always clarity in these roles. Women could not teach over men and the final decisions were up to the man to determine. Without the full story, because its not relevant to this, I truly believe now, that he was afraid. He was insecure and needed to step deeply into his masculinity for his confidence and worth. So…wives submit to your husband suited him very well.

But as a child, your home culture dosn’t always feel “right or wrong”. It just feels normal. And I had a mom who lived a mission of peace and love to all. She took up the mantel of the being a Titus 2 Woman. Titus 2 women were those “older women teaching the younger women”. This mission gave many of us women purpose within the church as homemakers, mothers, wives and honorable women of the church. But my mom was like me. She asked a lot of questions. And Together we asked many questions were weren’t supposed to be asking. It has actually been a beautiful bond between us.

As a teen I remember being so curious about the Bible, what it taught and how it was meant to be lived out that I spent all, literally all, of my extra time in intensive bible studies, at the kitchen table with my dad deciphering the greek and in any circle I could find that was deep and analytical thinking about our belief system. I didn’t know this then, but this was the beauty of my HSP in play.

There was also this calm but fierce lioness inside me beginning a rise out of a very small box. I was learning, learning, learning.I learned all the things I could. But There was this one passage in Proverbs 31, The Good wife portion of scripture, that was particularly bothersome to me..

After a lengthy description of the conduct of an honorable wife, 12 verses prior and then 8 versus after, there is this little verse, verse 23, that stuck out like a sore thumb to me.

“Her husband is respected at the city gate, where he takes his seat among the elders of the land.”

I wanted to know…deeply know… why the list for an honorable woman included everything from her sewing skills to her work ethic, but the husband got to sit at the gate with elders and be respected.
It brought up so many rabbit holes for me.

First, I wanted to know what they were discussing at the gate. Because I think I might like to be part of that discussion.
I also wanted to know why he received this public respect while the wife was doing so much FOR him. I actually, at that time, didn’t mind the idea of her list of honorable wife things, but I wondered what he was doing if she was the entrepreneur, homemaker, child raiser and wisdom keeper..
Like I said…many rabbit holes. There were so many questions I had on just this one little chapter.

The bottom line was that I had thoughts.
So many thoughts and questions that I found whatever space I could to satisfy the curiosities my soul and mind had.
Once I was no longer a teen going to our Tuesday night inductive bible studies,, the mixed group conversation started to change.

The men and women started to meet separately.

So, I went to the spaces that women were aloud to discuss while still finding my way to any of the mix group conversations that I could.

But, most, not all… but most of the women’s circles were homemaking focused. This was just not stimulating enough for me. It was only filled with comparison and inadequacies. You see, I wasn’t crafty. I was a thinker.
The closest I could get to what I was seeking was a large Titus 2 ministry in phoenix of over 300 women on a weekly basis.

My mom taught child training classes there and I even helped her out a bit once I had my own kids. But the purpose of this gathering was that us younger women were there to be taught by the older, wiser women. Maybe one day, I could be the older woman and take all that I was learning into my older years. I mean that was the goal…to be the Older Woman.

It was Biblical Womanhood. In fact the main teacher, Naomi Wright, was an author of several Christian books and the wife of a successful Christian author. together they did many ministries regarding biblical marriage.

Some of these topics included: Behind The Bedroom Door. A Willing Wife Is A Winner. 14 Ways to Prevent Affairs. Fitting Into Our Husband's Plan. How to Crown Your Husband. Under The Umbrella: God’s Divine Order.

Christown Bible Study is still running today and these ideologies are still being encouraged. In fact, as I went back through Naomi’s teachings I realized that she had titled one of her talks “Submission is not a dirty word”. But as I said at the beginning of this episode, when taught in as biblical standard for marriage, it is nothing BUT dirty.

Submission according to Webster means “ an act of submitting to the authority or control of another”.

Naomi would teach us that God had set up in His plan an order in our marriages. That order is for the man to lead and the wife to submit to that leadership.

She would teach us that our problem with our willingness to submit to our husbands was because we believed we were right thus believing that is what God wanted, but….that the bible teaches us that God tells the husband what is right and is to lead us in what is right. …You can find this clearly laid out in her teaching episode “ Core Teaching Part 2: Submission Is Not A Dirty Word”...approx 3 minutes in.

The fear we were instilled with was that women are “feelers” and leading with our feelings would not be wise, not what God wanted and ultimately cause destruction in some way. We were allowed to advise our husbands from our feelings but he would be the one ultimately making the decision.

He was the head and we are the neck…and “God didn’t make two heads in a family because two heads are a monster.”

She also taught that if our children are showing disobedience to us then it is because we are modeling disobedience to our husband.

As I go back listening to these teachings as I write this podcast episode, I realize how many hoops she was asking us to jump through and how much redefining of words like dependence and independence she had done.

She wasn’t the only though. This teaching was spread through the evangelical christian church throughout Arizona…and beyond. My own church in Tempe had picked up this teaching as an extension of this Titus 2 Ministry.

The longer I listen to her episodes, the more angry I get to hear the depth of gaslighting and cultic attributes this type of teaching carried. Essentially what we had done as women of Biblical Womanhood, is we took up the mantel WITH the oppressors and passed it on. We became oppressors with them.

These teachings are still available on their website and podcast. Naomi passed away in 2017 but her teachings are preserved online.
There are new voices but the message is the same as when I was attending over 20 years ago. You may even find my 20 year old evangelical voice speaking on a teen day leading the teenage sheep to purity culture. YIKES!

I really thought I was doing the right thing being in this space. I was a stay-at-home mom and it felt honorable of me to “work on myself” in exchange for this privilege.

I had accepted this belief as the way I viewed myself and the world around me. That view was that I was not worthy of leading anything but other women and children and I could not be trusted because I operated from feelings and not logic. These are incredibly powerful beliefs…especially when layered with acceptance by God.

Remember beliefs sit at the deep trance space of our unconscious mind, our Operating System. Unless we change a belief, we will use the belief as the baseline for who we are and how we see ourselves fitting into the world around us.

This is a dangerous space if we aren’t careful. If we aren’t willing to challenge the belief, then everything ELSE is challenged AGAINST the belief. The belief wins.

The thing is, I would come home and discuss it all with my husband and neither of us were liking what was being taught. It was grating on us in ways we couldn’t let pass and sometimes didn’t have words for yet. I was testing my belief against something equally as integrated in my unconscious mind…my intuition, my Knowing.

I remember a few particular statements taught to us that really stuck with me. Again…rabbit holes I dove headfirst into. And can I just say…Thank goodness for not being afraid of rabbit holes.

One of these statements was a good homemaker tip: Before your husband comes home, throw some garlic in a fry pan to make the house smell welcoming to show that you care about preparing a nice dinner for him.

So…this one just felt utterly manipulative. Why not actually make something, for starters? I even did this once to make a ridiculous point that my husband and I got a good laugh over. He saw the ridiculousness of it too. He didn’t want a garlic-smelling home. He just wanted us doing life TOGETHER.

The other thing was far more damaging.
It was taught by our leader that if we wanted to protect our children from the sexual desires of our husbands, we would protect our marriage by regularly making love to him.

I remember the exact moment this was said, because I was sitting at a round table with my mom and my grandmother, two of the most beautiful souls I’ve known. And we all looked at each other and watched the color drain from each other’s faces.

This was not what we signed up for. I did not want to married to man that I was protecting my children from and I definitely didn’t want to be having sex with such a man.
I also didn’t want to be using sex as a tool. This was the ultimate extension of purity culture.

This was also the last day I attended that Bible Study.

Friends, I found that in writing this, I had to make sure my memories were not tainted by my deconstruction. By this I mean, I didn’t want to remember something incorrectly. But this one I could feel in my body. It was a moment of trauma, I believe. So, I went back to find it….and I did. In Naomi’s teaching Behind The Bedroom Door, Pt 1, she discusses the ways we protect our marriages and the sexual purity of our relationship. The time stamp on “pushing him into our daughter’s arms” is 30:06. I don’t make this shit up.

Let me say right now, there is no ONE responsible for abuse except for the abuser. This is what purtity culture after marriage looks like. It holds women responsible sexually for all of the savage activities our husbands may be tempted to engage in.

As you can imagine, this was destroying me from the inside out. This was asking me to die to all the beauty I used to see in myself…my thinking, my curiosity, my insight, my voice. It was reducing me to a sexual act and an obedient companion.

Friends, this is the truest story I can tell you.

I saw so many women crumble under this pressure and expectation.
We all wanted to be the godliest women we could be and we were finding ourselves aligning with destructive and crushing programming that has, for me, taken years to heal from.

You see, it's not like throwing vegetables into a boiling pot of water. It’s like throwing the lobster in lukewarm water and just turning up the temperature little by little.
We didn’t know we were being burned to death and we didn’t really try to jump out of the pot.
I know this is a morbid analogy but it's the most accurate one I have. We are women now trying to heal from deep 3rd degree burns. The healing is long and requires much care.

Biblical submission as its taught in fundamentalist and evangelical Christian systems silences the wisdom, beauty, and love of women.
It IS oppression.
Nothing good comes of it except for men in power and control. Men were making decisions for us, about us, and in spite of us. Our voice was only worthy when it fulfilled the ongoing position of the male leadership.
This is Patriarchy.

Today, I celebrate my 20-year-old self who chose the man I did to be my life partner.

In the early years of our marriage, He often had more problems with this theology than I did and when he tried to conform at varying levels or within certain leadership circles, he became lost and deeply internally conflicted.

When he later became a pastor, this teaching of submission from Paul’s book of Ephesians was the one he would never teach on. I think there was one Sunday where his rotation landed on this exact passage and he dove in all kinds of directions to avoid teaching the mandate that many believe this passage speaks to.

Casey loved my voice in the world. In fact, he’s my biggest fan of what I write and speak about in the world now. And…he’s not the savage I was taught he was. We are both more than an interchange of sex and submission.

You see, it's not just women who need to be liberated from this toxic masculinity, patriarchy, and misogyny. Many men want to be liberated too. They are not whole beings living inside this inequality.

Liberate your roles and you liberate your story.