123. Postmillennial Womanhood (Rebekah Merkle Interview)

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God could have given us a whole race of nothing but men. He had the technology, I'm sure.

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It wasn't like, woman is this regrettable necessity because that's the only way that we can get a bunch more men.

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It's like, this is something that he needed a helper for. He couldn't do it alone.

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She's integral to this whole project. Hello everyone and welcome back to the podcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf.

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This is episode 123, Post -Millennial Womanhood with Rebecca Merkel. Now, if you've been with us for any amount of time, you know that we've been in a series called

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A Practical Post -Millennialism, where we're trying to prove from the Bible, the post -millennial view.

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And if you haven't been here and this is your first time watching, post -millennialism is simply optimism in Jesus's kingdom, that Jesus will have dominion over all the world, that he will win, that he will not, his kingdom, his church will not collapse in failure, that he's going to win.

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He's going to win over every sphere of life, which brings us to today's episode. I'm so excited to talk about this because I've never seen any book written on the topic.

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I've not really even seen any blogs or podcasts written on the topic. And what is that topic?

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It's post -millennial womanhood. How does our view of the end of Jesus's victory, of his total and complete victory intersect with something so important and so critical as biblical womanhood?

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Well, today we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about that with my new friend, Rebecca Merkel. So thank you so much for watching.

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Click the like button, click the share button and the subscribe button and the bell icon. Make sure you don't miss any of these good episodes because we have them coming every single week.

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And without further ado, here's my interview with Rebecca Merkel. Well, hello everyone. And welcome back to the podcast for a very special episode today.

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Today we're joined by Rebecca Merkel, who is wife of Ben Merkel, who is daughter of Douglas Wilson, who has done some great things on the

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Canon Plus app. By the way, if you don't have the Canon Plus app, you ought to have the Canon Plus app. It's fantastic.

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Especially one of my favorite things that she has done is Eve in Exile. It's a great documentary talking about how feminism has basically ruined everything and how as Christians we need to reclaim a view of godly womanhood.

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So with that, Rebecca, thank you so much for being on the show. Thanks so much for having me. It's great. Absolutely.

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Well, I want to jump in, but I also do want to find out where you've been working.

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What are some projects that you've been working on so that I can point people to good resources that you're producing?

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Well, actually, I am literally in the very dead middle of a huge project that I'm doing with Canon Press right now.

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The first video thing I did with Canon was Eve in Exile, the first project.

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I mean, they filmed talks and stuff like that. Eve in Exile. So I wrote the book Eve in Exile, I don't know, eight years ago or something like that.

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And then they turned it into sort of a documentary. There have been a couple other little projects. And then last year, we did something called

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Read the Room where I was talking about more like worldview of aesthetics and decorating and stuff.

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And then now it's kind of a follow up to that, which is a hands on project.

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So we're redoing a room and filming every bit of it. So that's been hilarious.

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But that's all through Canon Press. And so the book there, I have a podcast with my sister called

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What Have You that is completely rogue. And who knows what we're going to talk about?

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And yeah, what else? Oh, I have a design, sort of kitchen linens, that is just Rebecca Merkel .com,

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tea towels and potholders and table runners, and so forth. So anyway, I don't know a little bit of everything here and there.

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Yeah. That's awesome. I remember when my wife and I, I was a seminary student, had no money.

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And she wanted to make our house look nice. And it freaked me out because I'm like, we don't make anything.

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And I had to wrestle with the idea of the theology of beauty, and a theology of decorating and how that appears in the

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Garden of Eden. And it's made full in Revelation. And I had to repent of some of my stinginess. And actually encouraged my wife, who now is thriving in that area.

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So I appreciate all that you do in that area as well. It is a delicate balance some of the time.

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Yeah. And you can find so much good stuff for cheap. That's one thing we've learned. Facebook Marketplace, you can find some really incredible things.

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Oh, I know. I know. A little elbow grease goes a long way. Right. And that's not quite our purpose today, but it is cool.

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It is fun. And my house is now homier than ever. But what

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I wanted to talk to you about today, Rebecca, is post -millennialism. We've been in this series on my channel called

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A Practical Post -Millennialism. And my goal in that is that I was really tired of hearing people say, well, eschatology really doesn't matter.

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I'm a pan -millennialist. It's all going to pan out in the end. So that was one aspect of why we did this series.

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Another one was just the defeatism and the discouragement that I see in evangelicalism because of distensational thinking and doom and gloom eschatology.

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And I really wanted to smash that and give people an opportunity to just be free to hope and be free to find their joy in a kingdom that's not going to end.

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So we started that series. And one of the things I really wanted to do and do well is to show how eschatology actually trickles down into the everyday bits of our life.

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So that's why I wanted to talk to you. What does it mean to be a post -millennial woman? And maybe

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I guess the best way to start is what does it mean to be post -millennial? Right. Right. So I remember the transition in thinking to post -millennialism, but I was not old.

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I was like sixth grade. So just old enough to follow the arguments and everything.

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But I do remember it was my dad had sort of been basically like,

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I don't know. He wasn't a hardcore pre -mill, but he was just in the what you described.

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I don't know. It will pan out in the end sort of thing when I was little. And so we had not been raised dispensational at all.

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And I remember one time at the dinner table, I think I was probably fifth grade when dad was first kind of going through this.

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And he asked the three of us kids, I was the oldest, so we would have been like fifth, third and first grade basically.

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And he said, so kids, do you think the world is going to get better and better until Jesus comes again or worse and worse?

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And all of us were like worse and worse. I mean, obviously. And he was like, that is the weirdest thing is he had not taught us that, right?

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That is just, we were little, like who did teach us that? I don't know. The Sunday school teachers, it's just something that you just pick up.

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It's like, that's what Christians assume. And we had taken that on board in our little elementary school way.

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And I was like, well, obviously dad, what are you talking about? Clearly it's going to get worse and worse. And so I do remember the discussions at the dinner table then of like, you know, over the next year or whatever it was as he was doing the reading and teaching us about it.

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And it really was like, so I remember switching, you know, in terms of, but also

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I was elementary school. It's not like I was digging through the books myself. So, but it does absolutely change your outlook on everything in the present, depending on what you think is going to happen in the future.

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I know my grandparents talked about, they had friends who were missionaries back in like World War II, maybe just after World War II.

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And dispensational, Jesus is coming again any minute. They've never had children because it was like, you know, why would you do that right now?

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It's sort of like, pray you're not pregnant, you know, so we're not going to do this. Jesus is coming. I mean, I just think about how huge of a decision that was based on their theology of the end times.

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And then they grew old without ever having had children, you know, and obviously they did not live to see the second coming, like they were so convinced that they would.

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And so I do think it absolutely affects mundane decisions that don't seem connected.

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But if the world is about to end in a ball of flame tomorrow, why bother with a lot of things, you know?

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So, no, that's an excellent point that you bring up there. And it is funny to me that naturally, fear is sort of the air that we breathe.

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It's the default mode of the heart. This past week in church, my law homily, where we're going through the 10 commandments, we're on commandment number one, have no other gods before God.

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And I talked about how fear is one of the gods that's so common that just grips our heart and sticks to us like this cancery residue.

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And we have to cultivate hope by killing fear. And it's so interesting to me that as kids, you guys just kind of picked that up naturally.

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Yeah. I mean, and who knows? It's just the sort of thing that like, once you have this sort of trajectory in mind, it's not like you have to be thinking about it all the time.

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It's just always there running in the background. And I remember when we were first married and we were in a series of rentals, right?

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And it was like, we'd outgrown. I was due with baby number two. It was time to move.

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We were looking around for something. And I remember there was a closet that was just, it needed to be cleaned out and purged and redone.

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It was just, it was a big mess, but I kept thinking we're going to move. So I'm not going to bother. You know what

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I mean? It's like, we're going to finally, it was like, we hadn't found anything. It was like, it's time

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I have to just deal with the stupid closet. So I went and bought whatever I needed to buy and redid the closet.

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And of course it was like the next day we find a new place to move. And I felt like God just needed me to deal with the closet before he was going to provide the next house.

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But I think that that notion of like, we're going to be out of here in a minute anyway, you know, like, so why bother with this thing on a macro scale?

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That's absolutely true. You know, like if we think that it's all going to hell in a hand basket, why bother with all the details of life, you know?

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Oh, that is such a good point. That is, that's a really good visual to, you're right, we wouldn't.

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We would just kind of have our bags packed and ready to go. Like, we're always living in a hotel and never home. Yeah, exactly.

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It's like, why dig in and try to take dominion, really? Like, why do that if we're about to be helicoptered out?

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Right. So sixth grade, fifth grade, somewhere around in there, your dad started coming to these conclusions and convictions, and he started teaching you guys at the table.

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What would you say was sort of the more meaningful verses, the points that he was sharing that was helpful for you in coming to this optimistic view?

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Well, I remember, so it must have been shortly after that. It was probably, yeah, fifth, sixth grade is when he was working through it,

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I imagine. But we did have a junior high Bible study for our church that was, it was junior high, high school.

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We didn't have that many kids that age in our church at the time. And so instead of youth group, we had

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Bible study. And then once a month, we would have game night. So it was like, not youth group, but you know, and I remember dad, he led it, of course.

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He's actually surprisingly good at game night. He thinks of really crazy games. Anyways, those were awesome.

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It's like he invented random games for game night. But the

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Bible study, I remember us going through eschatology, which

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I know is different than, you know, post -millennialism. It's distinct, but interdependent.

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But those were big questions. Like, well, what about revelation? What about, you know,

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Matthew 24? What about all that stuff? So I remember him walking through those things really specifically. And that's,

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I think those are really helpful things to have had those questions, have those answered, because those are kind of a big sticking point for post -millennialism.

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But obviously the rest of it is just the promises of God. I mean, did he or did he not say that the earth would be as full of the knowledge of the

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Lord as the waters cover the sea? And we can look around and see that has not occurred yet, but we do know he's promised it.

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And you know, I didn't come into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved.

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So I think maybe we put too much emphasis on might. Like we just said, it might be safe, which is obviously a different usage, but you know what

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I mean? Like he came to save the world. The world is not yet saved. It's going to be like leaven in a lump.

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I mean, so there's so many things that I think once you have this framework in mind, you see it everywhere in the scripture.

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But I do think the eschatology questions are important because it does, like those are hangups in making this whole thing work.

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So anyway. I remember listening to your dad talk about when he became a

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Calvinist. So I'm not sure if I remember the timeline. Like if it was he became Postmill first, then

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Calvinist or Calvinist first then Postmill, I can't remember. But he was talking about the problem passages that his dad had told him not to have any problem passages in the

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Bible. And John 3, 16 was a problem passage. And then he realized that, wait a minute, the way that this makes sense is that God loves the whole world and that he gave his son for the whole world.

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So eventually when the whole world has come to Christ, that promise actually, it adds a different spin on John 3, 16.

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Yeah. You hadn't really maybe thought about before. Yeah, absolutely. And John 3, 16,

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I think is tricky. If you're a Calvinist, but not Postmill, that's where you really have a hard time.

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It's like when he said world, what he meant was three to seven people. But if you're

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Postmill and Calvinist, then that one isn't a problem passage. But yeah, he became

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Postmill first, which is funny. And I was young enough that dad tells you that that's how it is.

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And you're like, oh, okay, that's how it is. Then he became Calvinist. And I was like, junior high, I fought that one way harder.

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So that was really funny. So that was definitely those junior high

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Bible study years, that was the thing through about like ninth grade, lots of dinner table discussions. And then the

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Pedobaptism one was last, that was when I was a senior. And so that one was like, oh my gosh.

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So yeah, that's how it unrolled for us. Postmill one was one where it was like, oh, okay, that makes sense.

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And then, yeah. But it's kind of funny that you said that, but in retrospect, we think these things, not in the moment.

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In the moment, they're crises, but yes, God is going to have the victory over the entire world, but with my free will.

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It's a concert. No, that's great. The verse for me that really started me down this journey a long time ago at this point, but 1

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Corinthians 15, 25, he must reign until he's put all of his enemies under his feet. I can't imagine that that means exactly nothing more than, or nothing less than what it means.

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Like he must reign until he's put all his enemies under his feet. You can't really get away from that. So now let's come down the ladder a little bit.

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We've talked about now eschatology and how the Bible is this unified story of the victory of Christ, which

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I believe you believe, but how does that impact you in your day -to -day life?

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And despite what our secular culture and the feministic culture has told us, your womanhood is a critical part of who you are.

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True, true. Yeah. Down in your bones. I know. I know for reals.

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I'm not just a moose, but I'm in sometimes. Yeah, absolutely.

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So how does it come down into your view of what a woman is?

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Well, if you're talking purely about feminism,

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I think that seeing yourself, I mean, this is connected to womanhood,

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I suppose, but seeing yourself as part of a mission rather than the mission being all about self -fulfillment, which is really kind of that sort of discontent envy is what drives feminism.

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That's what gives it grip on people. Is it like they get their hooks in on your discontent with your circumstances, envy for what you could have, envy over what they have.

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So that's kind of what I think keeps feminism going, is that they feed off of those kind of simple impulses.

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But if all it is is self -fulfillment, then yeah, it's unfair that he gets paid more than me, or it's unfair that I should have to sacrifice this and stay at home or whatever.

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So self -fulfillment, which is bigger than feminism, obviously, that's just sort of the disease of our current moment.

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But if self -fulfillment is the goal, then feminism makes sense. It actually really does make sense.

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But if I'm called to something else, something bigger, if the mission is way outside of me, then

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I'm oriented to that in a completely different way.

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And so I see all of my duties and my role and what I'm supposed to do to fulfill this mission is all going to be oriented in that direction, rather than what can

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I do that will make me happy, that will make me money, that will give me accolades or whatever.

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Right. Yeah, that's such a good point because the jealousy that is embedded in feminism is based on a lie that men's role or a traditional men's role is better and more advantageous than a woman's role.

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And that has seeped into the church. Well, I can't.

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Yeah. And I think it's interesting to me because it's also seeped into the church on the right where a lot of men do believe, yeah, a woman's place is way back there.

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They're sort of reacting out of feminism and they don't see that they have actually swallowed the fundamental lie of feminism.

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So I do think that it's really interesting to me how you can have sort of a super left -wing feminist and what she believes about homemaking, how it's demeaning and doesn't take a brain and you know, whatever, you're subservient and all this stuff.

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And then you take the sort of reactionary thing. So the people who have flung out the other side, anything the feminists say, we say the opposite sort of like, they're not thinking about it in a principled way.

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They're just reacting to it. And a lot of them have adopted the same exact thing. Like a woman being a homemaker, doesn't really take a brain.

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We don't really need to educate our daughters. We don't really need to give them that much. They're just going to have babies and cook. And weirdly, they have the exact same view of women's roles as the feminists.

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It's just that they react to it differently on an emotional level. So the feminist says, I hate that.

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And then the super right -wing person says, I love that. And then they act accordingly, but they actually are in fundamental agreement that the traditional men's roles are more important and the female role is less important.

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And weirdly, some people who are supposed to be on our side have embraced the feminist lie, but they don't know that they have.

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Yeah, that's such a good point too. Because I hadn't thought about it in that way, but that's exactly what has happened.

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I mean, it's the same way that you could say charismatics have embraced Roman Catholicism in some of their tendencies.

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Interesting. Yeah, that's funny. I know. And it's funny to me because it's not a principled stand as much as it is an emotional one.

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Right. The reaction. And I feel like we've kind of come full circle again, because in the 90s was the sort of first wave of the sort of reaction out of feminism and everything.

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So I remember when homeschooling was kind of like just becoming a thing. So like in the 80s,

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I remember there was a couple in Idaho that went to jail for homeschooling. So it was a thing.

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But in the 90s, like late 80s, early 90s, it started to pick up speed. And then when

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I was in upper high school, there were some other people who they came to town.

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They weren't here very long. They were here for a couple of years. I think they came from somewhere else and then moved away. But I remember they had kids kind of our age.

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And they had really super embraced this very, it was like the first round of homesteading, you know, we're back to homesteading being all trendy again.

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But this was the 90s version of homesteading. And it was like home, everything home birthing, homeschooling, home medicine, home, you know, you have your own chickens, and you make your own soap, and you do, you know, like all this stuff.

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And they were not giving their daughters an education because they didn't need it.

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They were going to be homemakers. That's what they were going to do. And it was weird. It was actually probably my friendship with them that eventually led to even exile and everything because I ended up doing in college,

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I ended up doing my senior thesis at UC San Andrews on the relationship between a culture's theology and its treatment of women, which is a super fascinating subject, actually.

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Because if you think about the relationship between God and man on a sort of macro level, is always reflected in the day to day life in the relationship between men and women.

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So if you think about Islam, Allah is out there is remote. There's no, you know, you don't have the sun.

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He's just to be obeyed. There's not love, there's only obedience, you know, like, that's

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Islam. And then, oh, shock, look at how the women are treated in that culture, you know, like, it is the same thing.

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And so if you have a polytheistic culture, what does that look like in turns out you have a lot of polygamy, you know, it's there's just some really interesting correlations between those two things.

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But so I ended up doing that. And it was because it was such a practical question for me, because you have all these people, it's like, yes, feminism is a lie.

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That's true. It's toxic. It's terrible. It's done all these bad things. Then you have people reacting out of it.

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And actually, they aren't, they're just, they're just believing the fundamental lie.

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And then they think they're doing something countercultural. And it's not, it really is just becoming the caricature that gives feminism more power.

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You know, because they can just point to you. No, it's so good. It reminds me of Matthew Henry's great quote from Genesis chapter two, in his little commentary, little commentary, the one on the whole

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Bible. But he said that woman is not to be the head of man or the foot at the foot of man, but God has appointed her to be side by side, heart to heart, at the rib of man.

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And I was just, it's such an antidote for what you're saying, like, we don't need to react to the sinfulness of the culture and end up becoming their caricature, like you said, that we can actually have a view of woman that is wholly good and biblical and, and, and God honoring.

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Which may be a good place for us to go. Like, if we're talking about what is the mission, and you being a post -millennial woman want to accomplish the mission in your life, well, what does it mean to be a woman?

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So maybe we start there. Right. Well, is it, what does it mean to be a woman or what does it mean to be a post -millennial woman?

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Sorry. Maybe let's start with what does it mean to be a woman? And then out on top of that, the post -millennial call to duty action?

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Well, I mean, I think that there's obviously a lot that scripture has to say about what does it mean to be a woman?

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And a lot of it is so unpopular that we mostly figure out how to just skirt around the question.

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Actually, I was talking to somebody not long ago, and this one I got so cracked up about, because she wanted to say it was fine for women to be in the pulpit.

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Right. So, and I was like, okay, so, so how are you going to handle

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Paul's, you know, teaching on that? And she goes,

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Oh, I think he was just exaggerating for effect. I love that.

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I've not heard that one before. That was great. That was a good one. Exaggerating for effect, because the whole thing, you have to figure out how to explain away a lot of things that are just sort of right there in the text.

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Right. So I think you have to be willing at the very front end to say, whatever scripture says,

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I'm going to honestly read scripture. I'm not going to read it looking for loopholes, or like the way you would read the tax code, you know, looking for ways out, looking for ways that like, technically, you can't fault me for this.

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You want to like, actually read it honestly. And, and then whatever it says, you submit yourself to it, like you are going to be ready to obey.

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And so I think that, yeah, like, what is a woman called to she's definitely not like, we don't see throughout scripture that she's called to her own career, her own self fulfillment, her own wellness, her own, you know, self care, self care is not hugely present in scriptural teaching.

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But you would think it is if you if you read it, most Christian women ministry stuff, it is all about like, self care and putting yourself first and you have to put on your own oxygen mask before you can help others.

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And you know, like, there's a lot that we are bringing to the question that is not from scripture, it is, we're tacking a lot of extra things on.

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So I do think we have to start with scripture and unpack from there. But I also don't think it is as simple as, again, some of the sort of more fringe, right wing people want to make it which is like men are here, women are here.

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Right. And that's also not biblical. That's like also a pretty superficial read, and making it say what you want it to say.

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So I would say women are called, you know, to be wives and mothers, but not every single woman, it's like, you can generalize and say, women are called to this, primarily.

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But as soon as you say that, there's a lot of people who will jump into what about single women? What about the women who want to get married, and they can't?

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And sure, those are hard situations and their exceptions. But if you're just speaking generally, yeah, women are called to be wives to be mothers to help their husbands, they're not there to, you know, let their husband have his career, and she's going to go her way and do something completely else.

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And, you know, to be oriented towards their husband, you've got, what are widows called to, you know, in scripture, like, giving themselves the work of the church, and we're told what a faithful woman looks like in various stages of her life, you know, like, if you're a faithful widow, to be put on the church rolls later, it's like, here's what she has to have done.

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You know, it's not like, oh, she has to have made CEO. If she made CEO, then you can put her on the on the church rolls.

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You know what I mean? So I think there's just a lot of things that you can that you can glean from all throughout scripture.

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I love what you said there, because there is an attitude of being ashamed of what the

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Bible says about womanhood. So for instance, even it goes down into the translation committees, decisions on how they translate things.

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Like, one of my biggest pet peeves on the topic of womanhood is Titus 2 .4 and 5.

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The older woman teaches the younger women in the congregation or the church how to love their husbands.

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That word there is philandros. It's a friendly kind of love, because women sacrificially love, but sometimes we, you know, as men, we need to be told to sacrifice because we're selfish.

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But women can be reminded about the friendliness aspect of love, that philandrous word, you know, because we're, they have to deal with us.

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And that's a burden. I get it. And they could be super prickly bushes. But the biggest one in that passage,

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Rebecca, is that the word of God may not be, it's the English translations are slandered, reviled, but the word there's blaspheme.

31:21

Yeah. Yeah. So it's like really important to God that we get womanhood right. And yet we feel like that we need to soften that or we're embarrassed by that.

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That's not right. You know what I love about that passage too, that I think is super funny, is that there are so many times in scripture where I think you can tell it was inspired by God, because if a human had written it, we would have immediately gone to checklists, right?

31:44

We would I think it's interesting that women are to be modest.

31:51

But the fact that it's left there means actually it transcends culture and time and century, because it's always applicable.

32:00

If a human had written that we would have had a toga code, it would have been, how long does the toga need to be?

32:07

And then it would not be applicable to 21st century America, because we don't have togas.

32:12

It just wouldn't, it would turn into this super like checklist. And I love the thing where he says, older women teach the younger women how to do that.

32:22

And he doesn't say, and here's what it looks like. Because that's absolutely what we would tend to do is we would start to have lots of little regimens and schedules and regimes and things that would be outdated by the next decade, much less across the world in another century.

32:41

And the truth is, is that the older women actually can probably handle it. Tell them, point them towards this is what you need to teach them.

32:51

And then he's not getting into the details. It's like older women do that. And you can obey that no matter what.

32:58

You could be living in Morocco in the 1400s. And you could obey that command, just like you could if you were living in Seattle right now.

33:07

It actually is a very relevant command. And it will look different in each one of those cultures, but it will still be obedient.

33:17

So I think that's funny. And even some of our little, our people, the right -wing people, they can't stop themselves even in a

33:29

Facebook post from like, and here's what you have to do. You just know that Paul was inspired by God in that part.

33:40

Well, it's funny. We would have totally done what you just said. We would have absolutized the old standard of beauty.

33:50

And we would have said that that's locked in time and everyone now must look like a first century Jewish woman.

33:55

Or we would have said that's cultural and it doesn't apply and you can wear whatever you want. So we would have found a way to ruin that text if it weren't for God being so gracious to us.

34:04

All those commands that are, they hit at a level that's a principle and then you have to work out the method.

34:11

And I think that that is just a really, um, it's a really interesting piece.

34:18

I think that scripture is full of those sorts of things. And it is always true that our tendency is to obsess about the method, which means that like that, what

34:26

I was talking about the first round of homesteading in the nineties and I'm, you know, and we're seeing it again on this kind of reboot homesteading thing.

34:34

There's some similarities, but I remember in the nineties, it was like, if you don't make your own soap, you're not a

34:40

Christian. It was sort of like real Christians. I remember there was this magazine, I can't remember what it was called, but it was, um, a homeschooler magazine with this massive family, um, 13 kids or something that this woman had.

34:54

And I was looking through it one time at a, we were staying at somebody's house in another part of the country and they had a stack of these magazines and I was being dumbstruck by them.

35:04

And, uh, she, there was a pattern in it that was literally for the godly jumper.

35:11

This is the godly jumper that you wear. And it had a pattern that you were supposed to like blow up, you know, and make a pattern.

35:17

It was basically square. That was the shape of it. And some holes for the arms, but it was called the godly jumper.

35:26

It was like, this is what it means to be a Christian. You will have an acre of property or more.

35:31

You will have goats. You will make your own soap. You will be growing vegetables. You will not be using genetically modified.

35:38

You know, we immediately go to all of our little pet hobby horses and then we make that what, um, you know, scriptural womanhood looks like or the scriptural family or whatever, when it's like, what if you're a

35:51

Roman soldier in, you know, stationed in Gaul in the first century, what would, what did it look like to be faithful there?

36:00

What would it look like to be faithful if you were, you know, a sailor on Columbus's ship?

36:05

I don't know. There's just so many things that are like, the world is so much bigger than we like to pretend it is, but the commands of scripture really encompass that.

36:15

And, and I, I don't know. I love it that they are left where obedience is quite clear.

36:22

It's not vague, but it's also not so hyper -specific that it's immediately obsolete.

36:28

Right. And how often does the enemy use that hyper -specificity to shame women and to make women feel like they're not enough?

36:36

Yeah, that's true. In every single direction. I mean, you could, you would just make that go anywhere you want it to go.

36:43

Yeah. Right. The other side of this now, so I think we've been ashamed of talking about what womanhood actually is in the

36:49

Bible. The other, the more positive side of this is I believe that we must talk about womanhood glowingly.

36:56

For instance, in my home, I want my girls to speak about masculinity with glowing terms.

37:03

And I want, as a man, to speak about femininity and womanhood with glowing terms. And so that there's this sort of praise and thankfulness going in both directions.

37:13

And I loved what you did in Eve and Exile, where you talked about woman is the glory of man. You took something that most people would object to and say, that's awful, that's abhorrent, and you spoke about it in the most glowing and beautiful ways.

37:25

Could you describe that for us? Yeah, I do think that the, that passage where the woman, you know, like man is the glory of, how does that go?

37:36

Okay, I'm going to get it mixed up. Man is the glory of God and woman is the glory of man. Woman is the glory of man. But Christ is in there as the head.

37:43

Christ is the head of man. Yeah, like that. And we do, I think, try to read that as a totem pole of importance, because obviously you have

37:51

God at one end. So clearly, you know, it seems obvious that it's going to go down from there.

37:57

And then you're going to have women out there, the caboose, the ones we're most embarrassed about.

38:04

This is where it's kind of like a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy. And now it's just a blur.

38:11

Or, you know, like the furthest out ripple is the most fiddly and tiny and pathetic.

38:17

And so we sort of read it like that. And then we get all offended at Paul. And which is everybody's favorite pastime is to be offended at Paul.

38:28

And actually, same woman who told me he was just exaggerating for effect.

38:35

I love her. She's wonderful, but hilarious. She was telling me a different time that Calvinism was just terrible.

38:43

And she didn't like it at all. And I was like, I mean, here, let's look at Romans. And we read that.

38:49

And she goes, Oh, I don't care for that at all. I'm like, well, at least it's honest, you know, at least you're honest.

38:59

Everybody's offended at Paul about something. Anyway, we tend to think of it as this like totem pole of importance.

39:05

And, you know, here are women at the bottom. But I think it's just really interesting.

39:11

If you look at the language you have, man is the glory of God, and then women are the glory of man.

39:19

So it's like, actually, if you think about that, it's the glory of the glory. And in Hebrew, that's how you form a superlative, right?

39:28

Like, the glory of the glory, the bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, holy of holies, the song of songs.

39:37

It's not like when you get to the song of songs, you've come to the silliest of the songs, you know, the most embarrassing of all the songs, or the holy of holies is where it's all just faded out by now, you know, it's like a holy of holies is where it's like concentrated, it's the center sort of.

39:55

So when you hear that woman is the glory of the glory, like, that's where it's concentrated and potent.

40:01

And so, yeah, I've said if men are the beer, women are the whiskey. The concentrated form right there.

40:12

And I think it's all tied into the fact that actually, we also submit, right? It's like, you can't separate that.

40:20

I'm not trying to now turn it into like, surprise, women are the most important of all, because I think that's not the point of the passage.

40:28

And in fact, he goes on to clarify, this is not so we can get into a competition, like, woman is not independent of man or man of the woman, you know, like, this isn't this isn't a competition.

40:40

And I think that we always, when we look at two things being compared, we do tend to ask ourselves, so which one's winning?

40:49

And I think it's wrong to look at it and say, see, the men are clearly winning. But it would be equally wrong to then look at it and say, women are winning.

40:58

Because I don't think that's the point. Like it's telling us about creation. It's not telling us who's got more points on the scoreboard.

41:05

It would be like comparing a hammer and a tea kettle. There's no way to meaningfully compare them.

41:12

Because what's the job? If the job is hammering a nail, well, then I would go with the hammer. But if the job is building culture,

41:19

I'd go with the tea kettle. I mean, and Chesterton has that wonderful little line, if I were to set the sun beside the moon, and I'm going to get it all out of order, sun beside the moon and the land beside the sea and whatever, and the man beside the woman, some fool would talk about one being better.

41:37

I mean, it's just like, that's not the point. But we are very quick.

41:44

And again, I think it's that sidelong glance. It's the envious, who's winning? Why does he get more than me?

41:50

That's not fair. And it's just the wrong way of looking at it. That's not the point.

41:56

And if you are grabbing Paul in order to prove that you yourself are the most important, or he thinks he's the most important, but he isn't, it's just not the point.

42:09

That's right. So with that, there's a glory to being a woman that now as post -millennialists, you're a member, a distinct member of Jesus's kingdom that will continue to flourish and grow.

42:26

And you have a very unique role in that flourishing and growth of the kingdom that is not masculine.

42:31

You have a unique role to play that's going to make this kingdom a success. What does that look like? Yeah. I mean, you have a creation mandate at the very beginning, one man, one woman, there you go.

42:45

There's an empty world. That is a huge job. I mean, if you think about just the overwhelming nature of that,

42:52

I actually love the final scene in Paradise Lost. I don't love Paradise Lost, but I love the final scene where they're walking out of the garden.

43:02

I mean, it's like they're kicked out and it's an empty world that is now going to fight back and they have to fill it and subdue it.

43:11

I mean, that's just monstrous. I can't even subdue my own yard. It's ridiculous. And so it's like, it's a massive globe and it was two people who were supposed to do that.

43:25

I just can't even imagine the overwhelming nature of that. So you've got the creation mandate beginning, but then you have the great commission, which is obviously a sort of a new covenant version of the same thing.

43:40

It's like, go disciple the nations. And that's a pretty massive job, especially 12 guys standing, well, 11 standing there.

43:49

I do that all the time with Judas. Oh wait, nevermind. Yeah, no, he was gone by then.

43:57

Had they replaced him yet? No, they hadn't. Anyway, so like, there you go. It's an empty pagan world.

44:04

Go out and essentially subdue it, right? Like go out and disciple. I mean, it's not subdue in the sense of don't go kill everyone, but you know what

44:12

I mean? Like go take this world for Christ. And at first it was like, take this world, and then it was take this world for Christ.

44:20

And I think that when we look at the first iteration of this in Genesis, I mean,

44:28

Adam could no more have done that by himself. Because look at all the billions of people now, and that's only because we got

44:36

Eve, because Adam would have lived and died and he couldn't have filled the world, nor could he have subdued it.

44:44

He needed woman next to him for that. And it's not just so that she can have babies.

44:50

It's not so that like we needed a woman so that we could figure out a way to have more men. God could have given us a whole race of nothing but men.

44:58

He had the technology, I'm sure. It wasn't like woman is this like regrettable necessity, because that's the only way that we can get a bunch more men.

45:10

It's like, this is something that he needed a helper for. He couldn't do it alone.

45:16

She's integral to this whole project. And I think that when we then look at how scripture points women towards the home, we feel like they're being left out of the big work.

45:28

Like here's this big job. There's this big mission. There's this big thing. And the women are to stay at home.

45:35

How rude is that? Rather than thinking like, okay, if we're supposed to take this planet, and if the

45:43

Bible says women, like half the human race, this is where you stand is the home.

45:49

Rather than thinking, well, how silly and unimportant is that? Maybe we ought to think that must mean the home is pretty important, actually.

45:58

Right? It's not just like something for the women to do to keep them busy, while the men go out and do stuff.

46:04

It's like, what if we were to actually trust God, and think that like, okay, when he got to the final act of creation, which is woman, and we're told she's the glory of the glory, etc.

46:15

Why would he have capped everything off with like, the really silly, unimportant fiddly one who's never going to really be able to fulfill her potential or, or, you know, we'll just keep her in the corner.

46:29

That's just deciding to view God suspiciously, right? Rather than like, what do we know of God, actually?

46:37

Is that what he is like? And would he actually call us to that?

46:43

I think obviously not, like we rather should see like, okay, God has told me to stand here.

46:49

So I'm going to do it, important or unimportant. He told me to do it. So I'm going to do it like that should be our first inclination.

46:56

But also, like, he's told women to do this. And we also know what he has in mind for the future of this planet.

47:04

So it must mean that probably a pretty important job, actually. And so if we treat it like it's a time waster, then we'll probably only achieve at that level.

47:15

You know, if we believe it's this really high calling that's integral to the fulfillment of both the creation mandate and the

47:24

Great Commission, and then it must mean that actually getting good at this might make a difference.

47:31

Yeah, amen. I think about too, post -millennialism is uniquely positioned to help with this, because other eschatological systems are based off of imminency.

47:42

What's happening right now, right in front of my face, and it really makes us myopic. And that's

47:48

American culture in a nutshell. So dispensationalism is like the quintessential American eschatology, because we're all about what's the news ticker right now?

47:56

What's impacting me this week? Like, oh, I can go out in the world and get a paycheck, or I can homeschool or send my or raise my children.

48:06

And I don't really see that they've made any changes whatsoever. So we've got this very narrow, imminent view, when actually these things have to be viewed over time.

48:18

Like, if we think about a family that chooses not to have children and to both work and just make as much money as they can, think about what they're going to look like when they're in their 80s, when they're by themselves and alone.

48:31

And then think about the family that struggles to make ends meet. They don't really make a ton of money, but they've got four or five children, they've really poured into those children.

48:41

What are they going to look like when they're 80? They're going to have grandchildren and great -grandchildren and family meals, and you're going to have a burgeoning little culture that's full of life.

48:50

We have to widen our vantage point, I believe. Oh, yeah. And it's all about wise investments, really.

48:56

I mean, because, yeah, where are you putting your time, your energy, your focus?

49:03

And if all of it is, yeah, to your bank account. Actually, we were staying in this hotel a while ago, and we'd gotten this really good deal.

49:14

And then it turned out it was like we had to sit through a presentation. They wanted us to -

49:19

The timeshare thing. Yeah, yeah. And we didn't know that that's what we were signing up for. It was like, oh, it's a hotel and it's a good deal.

49:25

So we're sitting there and listening to this thing. And the lady is giving her big spiel, and it's all about vacation as that is what matters the most to all of us, clearly.

49:40

All of us, vacation is the pinnacle. And she says, because when you are old and what -

49:49

It was sort of like, fast forward to the end of your life when you're old and looking back on everything, what are you going to have to hand off your photos of vacation?

50:02

It was like, that's it. That is our hope for the future is that I will have gotten enough good vacation photos that I'll be able to look at that and think, yeah,

50:12

I had a good life. It's so bad.

50:17

I was like, how is that a spiel? But anyway, it was just kind of like, because that is where we are truly happiest.

50:25

It's where we truly feel like we are most ourselves is when we're not working, right?

50:31

We're relaxing and we're being pampered and not having any pressures.

50:36

And if we could just capture that and freeze it in our Instagram feed, then we would have won.

50:42

And it's just so sad and tragic, where it's like, actually, that we shouldn't be looking at work as this thing we resent, but it's necessary to get us that week on the beach.

50:56

But actually, that work is this hugely fulfilling gift that God gives us, right?

51:03

I mean, it's actually something that we are doing, we're invested in, and we love.

51:09

And we're doing it out of love for God, but also, it turns out, it's a wonderful blessing to be able to work.

51:18

It's like a farmer, right? Parenting, especially, but I would think motherhood's a great metaphor for this, and being a wife and a woman.

51:26

It's like a farmer. 99 % of the effort is front -loaded, and the cultivation of the harvest, which you're building towards, comes at the end.

51:35

I mean, there's a lot of work that happens before that faithfulness and all. Yeah, absolutely.

51:41

And I do think, especially if you're a mom with kids, all of the work that you are doing every day, there's one piece of it that is immortal, and that is those children, right?

51:55

They're going to live forever, and they have immortal souls. And whether or not the dishes got done on time is really neither here nor there.

52:05

And a lot of times, we can get so wound up about the logistics of life, and being angry and snapping at everybody because they tracked mud in and whatever.

52:16

And it's like, actually, between these two things, what's the most important? And where should I be focusing?

52:22

And so, obviously, the work that you're doing during the day, sure, it's going to be forgotten, but it all goes into shaping these little people.

52:33

And so, are you using all the logistics of your daily life to pour into them and shape them into obedient servants of God who also love you?

52:48

Or are you creating these little resentful, bitter, can't wait to get out of here.

52:53

The minute I'm 18, I'm leaving her behind. Because you really can be using all the work of your home to choke those little souls or to feed them.

53:04

And I think that it's the logistics of the day matter in as much as they are creating a finished product.

53:13

But I think we just have to look at those people are the product, and the house isn't the product.

53:19

It can be used to aid the product in the formation of this product, but the house is going to be gone.

53:26

But those souls are going to live forever. That is so good. And it's so timely,

53:32

I think, for so many people who are listening. That's going to be just a fantastic encouragement.

53:37

And maybe we're at 52 minutes. I want to honor you and honor your time. Let's jump into this final segment of what does it look like for a woman to be faithful?

53:48

We know and we've proved that 50 % of the population is woman.

53:54

And in order to accomplish this great, glorious mission that Christ has given us, we need robust, feminine, godly women.

54:01

So what does that look like? And maybe, if you will, let's look at that as girls who are growing up in homes.

54:08

What does that look like for you? Young women who have young families, what does that look like for you? And then older women, what does that look like for you?

54:15

So maybe we look at it from different stages. Yeah, I think that that is one of the things that that Paul passage we were talking about recognizes women in different phases of life, right?

54:27

They're going to be good at different things, have different opportunities. But I do think that no matter what, having a biblically oriented view of your calling is really important from the time you're little.

54:40

But I think that it can go off the rails in multiple different directions, because I think little girls should be little girls.

54:51

They shouldn't be mothers yet. You know, like if you're the mother, I know it can be tempting to like, foist off a lot of the work of the home onto the little flock that you have around you.

55:04

But again, like, you don't have children so that you have a lot of unpaid labor in the home.

55:12

You know what I mean? Like, it really can be, I think we should always be thinking, how am I giving to them?

55:17

Not what can they give to me? And so I think we can, we can be trying to turn little, you know, like eight year olds into a little mom.

55:26

And we want her to become that. But that's in the future, you know, like, that's a ways out.

55:33

And so it's just, you want to be cultivating the sorts of skills, the sorts of virtues that will end up with that, without trying to immunitize the eschaton.

55:46

You know what I mean? Like it's trying to have them be it now. So obviously you want to be teaching them and giving them skills and everything.

55:53

But I really think it's for our young girls. I think they, we need to have a high enough view of being a homemaker and being a true help to a man who's called to a particular thing that I think it matters that we educate our daughters.

56:11

I think it matters that they be well -rounded, that they be well read, that they be broad and that we don't just, you know, like they know how to clean a toilet.

56:21

They know how to make seven recipes. They know how to, you know, I think that that's to make it much too narrow.

56:28

So we want to be giving them those skills, those practical skills, but we also want to be turning them into the kind of women who are problem solvers, who are creative, who, you know, know how to chase down a project and figure it out and do the research and know how to think about it critically from a worldview perspective.

56:46

And that takes education that is outside of just learn how to make the soap, you know, learn how to make the sandwich or whatever.

56:57

So I do think that - The godly jumper. Yeah, the godly jumper. So I do think that the young girls should be aiming towards that, but, and that's just tricky because you start giving them an education and we

57:10

Americans are trained to think that's for one specific paycheck that you're going to get, rather than turning them into the kind of person who can be broadly productive and creative.

57:23

We want to know like, well, what's the point of sending her to college if she's not going to be an engineer? And then we treat it like, well, it'll be her fallback plan.

57:31

Like if she never gets married or if her husband dies or something, well, then at least she'll have a skill, which is kind of like, if the man falls through, she might have to have a brain, but you know what

57:45

I mean? I think that that's a really bad way of raising our girls. But then you get the sort of college age single women who are like,

57:54

I don't know what I'm supposed to do. That can be a really confusing moment where it's like, I'd like to be married, but I'm not married.

58:00

So what am I going to do in the meantime? And for like that sort of phase,

58:07

I do tell girls like, okay, imagine you wanted to be a lawyer and that was your plan and what you were praying for and hoping for.

58:16

Well, there would be certain steps you would take. Like you would go to law school, you know, first you'd get your undergrad, and then you would go to law school.

58:24

You know, like there's a trajectory there. You wouldn't think, well, I guess I'll just sit around here.

58:30

And when somebody hires me to argue a case in court, then I will start learning about the law.

58:37

It's like, well, you know, if that's where you want to go, get good at it now. Like you're single.

58:42

This is actually a really, it's a time you're not going to have again, where you have sort of the luxury of time.

58:51

What do you want to be like then? Well, get good at it now. Learn to host, learn to cook, learn to decorate, learn to, don't just kind of like think, well,

59:00

I guess I'll just kind of sit around here until a guy shows up and asks me, you know, it's like, well, take the opportunity to pursue excellence in all of these places.

59:10

And then, yeah, young moms who are deep in the trenches, I would just say, like, keep your eye on the ball.

59:18

Like, don't get bogged down in all of the details of life, such that you forget the important thing that is right in front of you, which is you're called to this man and you're called to these children.

59:33

And whether or not, you know, you got the dust out of all of the cracks in the window, that's kind of, you know, secondary.

59:43

And I do think we can use like obsession with a clean home or obsession with the meal plan or obsession with all, we can get so like tangled up in those things that we are not being hospitable to the people that are around us.

59:57

So I would just say that is the first thing is that if we're called to hospitality and everyone is sort of a, who is my neighbor situation, these people, the ones that live in my house, be hospitable to them.

01:00:10

Have this be your primary group that you're pouring into. Right.

01:00:16

Yeah. And that's a, that's a great place to start. I love, I love that you are pointing out that part of it, especially because that can be so much pressure on a, on a wife and on a mom, especially in the early years when you feel like you're kind of just drowning and you're trying to keep your head above water and all of that.

01:00:36

But there also is this idea of as we grow and as we mature in those things and we become more capable that we build upon, we don't remain stagnant.

01:00:49

I think about that scene. I don't remember if it's even exile or if it's the other one that you did about read the room.

01:00:57

Oh yeah. But, but taking what the vision of the husband and, and making it living, you know, like having your husband been speaking to what this room ought to feel like and then you accomplishing it.

01:01:15

So I know you're talking about more of the beginning stages, but there is this reformational growth that happens as well.

01:01:22

Absolutely. Yeah, totally. And, and I do think that that's another thing women can, can kind of go off the rails with a little bit is they start, they decorate their home for their girlfriends to admire rather than for the man who actually lives there, you know, and it doesn't mean it has to be a terrible man cave, you know, like it shouldn't look like he still lives in his college apartment, you know, like it doesn't, it should look like a woman lives in this home too.

01:01:51

But I think very often women create this, it's almost like, this is my doll house that I've put together.

01:01:58

And the guy like doesn't belong in it. You know, it's sort of like, he would sort of mess up the rose gold muted tones, you know, neutral palette that I have going.

01:02:09

And so it's like, you have to figure out like, who is this guy? And how can I glorify that and turn that into something?

01:02:17

Because we're all married to very different men. I mean, you know, it's like, you really shouldn't be the one size fits all.

01:02:25

This is what, this is what it looks like to be an obedient wife. It's gonna look different depending on who, who the guy is.

01:02:35

Yeah, maybe as we close, one of my favorite verses, I think it's just so applicable to everything.

01:02:42

And that's the way Paul meant it to your point earlier, not getting down into the granular, but giving us just basic principles is whatever you do, whether you eat or whether you drink or whatever you do, do it all the glory of God.

01:02:55

I think from my perspective, how am I supposed to be a post -millennial man? Why I act like a man to the glory of Christ.

01:03:02

And I obey what the scripture says about that. How do you do that as a woman? Be a woman to the glory of Christ and everything that you'd be faithful where you're at.

01:03:11

Yeah, absolutely. Amen. Well, Rebecca, thank you so much for being here today and for talking with me and for the laughs and for the stories.

01:03:20

It was great. I hope that it's encouraged to many people. Fantastic. Thank you.

01:03:26

Well, God bless you sister. And we will talk to you again, maybe one day soon. Go fight win.

01:03:33

Amen. Thank you so much for watching another episode of the podcast. We could not do this show without you.

01:03:39

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01:03:49

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01:04:02

So give us a subscribe. We'd really appreciate that. Also go and check out Canon plus.

01:04:08

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01:04:20

So do that. I commend that to you. And until next time, God richly bless you.