All at Once

Laura Seifert joins us today! Christian culture has created a rigid way of thinking forcing us to choose one ideology and reject the other: Complementarianism or Egalitarianism. This is simply not true.  It is okay to exist outside of either of the two camps, to take what we see as good and beneficial from each, and to form our own views.  

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Our guest on this episode, Laura Seifert, believes that women are equally called by God to teach, speak, lead, be elders, and more.  Laura shares with us the story of her journey to where she is now as a pastor who teaches both men and women.

In this episode, we talk about the message that we often receive as women, to stay in our lane, and our lane is to teach women.  We often hear explicitly or implicitly that we are unqualified to teach men.  But we need to start asking the question, “What is cultural and what is scriptural?”  

Laura shares with us that the story of Mary Magdalene at the tomb after Jesus’ resurrection was significantly impactful for her as she considered her calling to teach and preach.  Jesus told Mary to “go and tell,”  and she obeyed. Laura knew that God had given her the gift of teaching, and she wanted to use it for His glory.  She knew she didn’t have to change the minds of those who disagreed, but she felt called to teach. She knew she had to be obedient to Christ.

So what do we do with contradictions around gender roles that we see in scripture?  Laura talks about how we need to take into account the whole counsel of scripture when we interpret specific passages so that we can avoid taking any part of scripture out of context.  We explore how focusing solely on small, isolated passages that deal with controversial issues causes us to miss the more complete picture of what scripture tells us.

We talk about how we do not need to be afraid of the tension we may feel in our soul on these issues.  It is good to wrestle.  In fact, it’s dangerous not to wrestle.  When we wrestle, we draw near to God.  We may not always get answers, but we get God’s presence. 

Laura’s advice to women is to ask yourself, “What does Jesus say to you?”  It can be hard to wade through all the messages we receive about who we ought to be and what we ought to do as women.  Laura challenges us to care about what God says about us more than what anyone else says about us.  At the end of the day, our calling is to make Him known.  

We discuss how Jesus treated women as people created in the image of God. He didn’t coddle them, and He didn’t reject them.  When we seek equality, we don’t try to become the same as men.  We are created differently but equally.  It is the same with race; people are all created differently, and it is beautiful. As Christians, we need to acknowledge our differences, while upholding each other’s worth as equal image bearers. We hear from Laura that when we have men and women working together equally, we see a fuller picture of the character of God.  God is not just male.  The image of God encompasses all people, male and female.  

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Guest: Laura Seifert, Yes. Ministries

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Music: “A New Day” by Michelle Raybourn

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Cindy Dawson chats about her journey to preaching, trusting yourself, and racism.

Presenting sponsor: Alan and Beth Stanfield of Stanfield Properties

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This episode is a continuation of our conversation with Cindy Dawson, instructor and PhD student in Religion with an emphasis in Judaism and a certification in the Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Rice University. 

Cindy tells us about her journey getting into teaching and preaching in church, and what an exciting journey that has been.  She explains how important it was for her to have a male in leadership, the head pastor of her church, supporting her when she initially started preaching in church.  

We hear about how it felt for her to enter into an arena where women have not often been welcome.  She explains how there is a lot of pressure to do well and to do well right away, to prove stereotypes wrong and to be respected.  

Cindy offers this advice to women: Trust yourself. If you are passionate about something, follow it. Push through the doubt, and listen to yourself.

We discuss recent events that have exposed racial disparities.  Cindy challenges white women to check the lenses we are using to interpret situations with people of color.  We need to be willing to do the hard work on ourselves, to acknowledge our implicit biases, and to be mindful of how we perceive danger. Cindy reminds us that although it is important to trust oneself, it is also necessary to improve oneself, especially when the lives and wellbeing of people of color are at stake.

We hope you find inspiration, encouragement, and empowerment in our discussion with Cindy.  We also hope that you find you have been challenged in new and healthy ways to grow as a strong, capable, and compassionate image bearer of God.

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Cindy Dawson, an instructor and PhD student in Religion with an emphasis in Judaism and a certification in the studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Rice University, talks about how it is important to acknowledge the difference between one’s interpretation of the Bible, and the Bible itself.

Follow us on Instagram! @allatonce.podcast Please consider giving monthly through Patreon to support our work.

Presenting sponsor: Alan and Beth Stanfield of Stanfield Properties

We learn from Cindy about hermeneutics, which is the interpretive lens with which we read a text.  We talk about how every person has a different lens depending on many different factors that influence where they are as a person.  We learn that step one in interpreting scripture is to know where we are, because that is going to inform our interpretive lens.  

Cindy teaches us that the Bible is not a free-for-all, but that we need to take into account different interpretive lenses before determining what is right and what is wrong.  Rather than beginning our conversations by stating what is right and what is wrong, we ought to be ending our conversations that way after a thorough investigation through different lenses of interpretation.  We need each other, in community, for our different interpretive lenses.  

We discuss how the idea that a text can only mean one thing is a very dangerous idea.  The way we interpret texts has consequences, and when we don’t take into account different interpretive lenses, we can end up with an interpretation that is problematic.

Next we explore how hermeneutics influence how we interpret what the Bible says about women.  We discuss how God created women as equal image bearers.  The image of God is equally in men and women. That is what makes us human.  

We learn the meaning of the word “helper,” translated from the Hebrew word “Ezer.”  The word Ezer is used to describe God as our helper in a fierce, rescuing sense.  “Ezer Kenegdo,” the words used to describe woman, means “one corresponding to.” We hear that there is equality embedded in the Hebrew that describes the relationship between man and woman. 

We talk about some largely overlooked women in the Bible, including Deborah the Judge, Junia, who was prominent among the apostles, Phoebe the deacon, and Mary Magdalene, who became a missionary.

Cindy unpacks for us one of the most widely used “clobber texts” used to silence women in Christian culture, 1 Timothy 2.  We discuss how the only part of the passage that many people insist on interpreting literally today is the part about keeping women silent, while the rest is easily dismissed as situational.  We talk about the many Biblical contradictions in making this a universal mandate.

We talk about the implications of holding so tightly to a view that disempowers half of the population.  We also touch on the problem of saying that the primary role of a woman is childbearing, and how much pain that causes.

Join us for the continuation of this conversation in episode 5.

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Music: “A New Day” by Michelle Raybourn

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