037 April Coffee Chat Bible Questions!

What do you do when someone’s theology has walls built around it, especially on women preaching and women in church leadership? I’m trying a looser “coffee chat” format and taking your real questions from Instagram DMs and my weekly AMA, answering candidly with the research background I already have and pointing you to better sources when I can. 

We start by naming the spectrum of complementarianism (hard, middle, soft) and why hard complementarians often won’t hear egalitarian arguments head-on. My angle is to back up and talk hermeneutics: how we interpret Scripture, how much historical context matters, and how we weigh commands against patterns like women prophets and teachers. I also share a conversation starter that tends to expose hidden assumptions: Scripture tells wives to submit, but where does it explicitly command husbands to lead? 

From there, we jump into questions on Mary’s genealogy and why Joseph’s genealogy shows up in the Gospels, including a fascinating scholarly proposal about how first-century people may have understood Joseph’s fatherhood. We also tackle parental estrangement and abuse dynamics, what “honor your father and mother” can mean when contact is unsafe, whether “care for widows and orphans” should include single women today (especially given ancient household economics), the ethical tension in Psalm 51 with Bathsheba, and why “biblical marriage” is not a plug-and-play template for modern romantic choice. 

Subscribe so you don’t miss what’s next, share this with a friend who loves Bible interpretation and real-life application, and leave a review telling me which question you want me to tackle next.

Transcript

Coffee Chat Format And Updates

Jessica LM Jenkins 0:24

Hello, I am so thankful for you coming into the podcast today. This episode will be a little bit of a different format. We are doing today what I call a coffee chat. Still workshopping the name a little bit, especially since I do not drink coffee. I cannot handle caffeine of any kind and just don't love the flavor. But tea chat sounds a little weird. So I think we're gonna go with coffee chat, even though though no actual coffee is involved. But on these coffee chat podcast episodes, they are a very loosely formatted show. I collect questions. Um, the questions today are from my Instagram DMs and the weekly Ask Me Anything questions that I do on Instagram and my stories. So if that sounds fun to you, be sure to come on over to Instagram and join that. I try to do that weekly. But there are some questions I got the last couple weeks that I was like, I need to go into more depth on these questions than I can in just a couple slides in my Instagram story. So I'm going to do an episode where I talk through these. And I have done a similar episode to this before. You can go back to episode 22, What's Up with That, part one, understanding biblical law and family dynamics across time. Um, I'm taking the what's up with that format and kind of turning it into just coffee chat format. Um, so that I'm gonna take questions that people have asked, kind of like we went out to coffee together, and you're asking me, Jessica, what do you think of this? And I'm just gonna answer off the cuff without any particular research on that particular question beforehand. Now, obviously, I have been doing a ton of research in a ton of different areas, so I have a lot of background, um, but I'm not going to be looking up specific research for these questions individually. This is my off-the-cuff answers, so don't cite this episode. Um, I'll give you better sources if I can think of them as we talk through the questions, just like I would if we were at coffee. I'd be like, oh, if you want to learn more about that, go read this book. So that's kind of the format of today's episode. And if this is a format you enjoy, you like just hearing my off-the-cuff answers to questions, and you want your question answered, you can send it to me in a DM on Instagram, or you can email me Jessica at wehoothirst.com and just be like, hey, future coffee chat question. And depending on the questions I get and how much feedback I get on the enjoyment of this episode, we can do this more often. I also appreciate your patience in me getting this episode out. I try to do an episode about every other week, but my personal life has been absolutely chaotic. Um, those who listen from Instagram know that I have a child with a chronic illness that we've been trying to figure out for about six to eight months now, and we're not figuring out exactly what's going on. Um, and so we just got them into a specialized study to look at pain and stuff. And so all of those appointments and tests and all of that, I've been tracking down the last couple weeks, and I've just had very little extra bandwidth for the podcast. Besides that, I am also, if you haven't heard from either my email list, which you should definitely get on, or on social media. Um, if you don't follow me in either of those places, I am writing a book for IVP. So Interverse City Press, I have a contract with them to write a book tentatively titled A Woman's World, How God Champions Women Through the Mosaic Law. So I am up to my eyeballs in research and writing for that project, which I absolutely love. And Lord willing, that book will be coming out sometime in 2028. So my manuscript is due the beginning of 2027. So I have a lot of writing to do between now and then, a lot of research, but that also gives me a lot of great information for coffee chats where I can answer your questions. So I'm just gonna go through the questions, um, basically in the order they came in. So I haven't arranged these, and I'm just gonna go through, read the question, and then start talking about it. And I'd love to hear thoughts from you. You can email me, you can send me DMs after the episode airs, and I look forward to discussing some of these topics with you further. The first question is how can we start to introduce the idea of women speaking or preaching, or even egalitarian interpretations of the Bible to hard complementarians? Now, often when I talk about complementarianism, I talk about three different types of complementarian: hard, medium, and soft. So a very brief overview on the different types of complementarianism. Hard complementarians try to look at the whole Bible and create a system that fits together. Hard complementarians believe that women ontologically, as in the essence of their being, are supposed to submit to men. Ontologically, this is pre-fall as part of creation and will continue into the new creation, the new heaven, the new earth. This is just an essential aspect of womanhood that women are to be submissive to men, specifically husbands and pastors. But generally, um, as John Piper would say, they're to have a submissive um disposition that's encouraging the leadership of all men around them all the time. And conversely, men are ontologically at the very essence of who they are supposed to lead. They are supposed to be in charge. So you that instantly, um, whether or not they want to admit it, they often don't want to admit it, but whether or not they want to admit it, that instantly creates a hierarchy, a gender-based hierarchy that is, they believe grounded in the creation order. Um, I did a lot of work on my Patreon going through the seven reasons hard complementarians believe in hierarchy before the fall. So you could go to my Patreon, patreon.com backslash or forward slash we who thirst, um, and look at all of those episodes as I break down each of Wayne Grudom's seven reasons for hierarchy pre-fall. I also did a very brief Instagram series. You can find it there. I probably should put an article up on my website when I have time and capacity, which I don't at the moment. So hard complementarians believe all of these things are pre-fall, and they have an entire system that kind of upholds this. Um, it involves taking the New Testament passages, Ephesians 5, 1 Corinthians 11, etc., and reading those into the Old Testament. They see Genesis through the lens of the New Testament. They refuse to take Genesis on its own. Now, middle complimentarians, um, oh, obviously, hard complementarians believe in wife-only submission. Husbands do not submit to wives. Um, they believe that women should not be pastors. Most of them believe women should not ever teach men in any capacity the Bible. They might say you could teach like English or something, but not the Bible ever. There's no wiggle room on that. So wife-only submission, um, no female pastors, leadership of the church. Some hard complementarians won't, uh, I believe Kevin DeYoung, his church, won't even allow women to do scripture reading in their churches because reading the Bible out loud is a teaching function, therefore, not for women. So women can't even do scripture reading at church. Middle complementarians, um, and this is more what my family of origin was, um, these people I would describe as they just want to take the quotes plain reading of the English Bible and follow that. So Ephesians 5.22 says wives submit to your husbands, therefore, women, wives have to submit. Um, 1 Timothy 2.11 says that women learn in silence with the myth of submissiveness. Verse 12 says Paul permits no woman to teach or have authority over men, and she's to keep silent. Um, so therefore, they just want to take that straight up and say women should not ever teach or have authority over men. And they just they don't they they say they look into some of the Greek words, but they don't look into they they do look into the Greek words, but they don't look into any of the historical context around Ephesus. They will look at the Greek and they'll look at the plain reading and then they just go with that. They don't want to typically use a whole lot of historical context to inform their interpretation. Um then soft complementarians start using a lot more historical context. They often even allow women to preach and teach um mixed groups, which middle and hard comps don't usually. Soft comps often do allow women to preach and teach, and even have some maybe secondary pastor roles. Like they can't be the head pastor or a bishop, but they could be like the associate pastor. Sometimes soft comps will do that. Um and so the soft comps um use more historical context. They'll often focus a little bit more on things like the male-only priesthood in the Old Testament and the uh apostles during the gospels were all men, and so they use that as men should be the spiritual leaders in the church as their foundation. So that's kind of an overview of complementarianism as briefly as I can manage. So the question again was how do we start to introduce the idea of women speaking and preaching to hard complementarians uh to talk about egalitarian interpretations of the Bible to hard comps? Um, if you're sitting across from me having coffee, you ask me this. I'm gonna first off say kind of you can't just go there with hard comps. Soft comps, you could probably could, maybe a middle comp. Hard comps, you're gonna have to come in, in my personal opinion, through the back door. You need to start whittling away some of their defensive boundaries they have around that theology. Because if you just start with egalitarian talking points, they're not gonna hear it. They're not gonna listen. They're not interested in those thoughts at all. So you need to come um more from the angle of, hey, let's consider this woman of the Bible. Let's look at themes of how God is using women in scripture. Um, maybe something like Ingrid Faro's most recent book, um, Redeeming Eden, might might be helpful. She's an egalitarian, so they might not even read her, and she's a woman. Um, maybe I haven't read it yet, but maybe something like Preston Sprinkle's most recent book might be helpful. But a lot of hard comps, they they really focus on like sola scriptura. They really want to just focus on the Bible. Um, and so getting them to see the necessity of historical context, getting them to see their own cultural blinders that impacts the reading of the text. I think personally, personal opinion, a lot of the complementarian, egalitarian issue is actually about hermeneutics, how we study and interpret the Bible, not the actual passages. We get caught up um arguing about what the Greek word behind shall not have authority in 1 Timothy 2.12 says. What does that Greek word mean? We don't know. It means this, it means that. Or what head in Ephesians means. Um, it's easy to get caught up in like Greek arguments. I think if we're gonna have these complementary and egalitarian discussions and try to come to a place of agreement, you have to walk back and you have to get them to start agreeing with you on a hermeneutical basis. What role does historical context have to play in our interpretation of scripture? Um, what at what point do does the example of scripture utilizing women's voices, how do we interpret that against one prohibition? Because a lot of middle-hard comps, especially, um really say, you know, we take the commands as the most important, the heaviest weighted thing in scripture. Stories, not heavy-weighted at all. So the fact that women were were prophets and teachers in the Bible, that doesn't mean a whole lot. What matters is the commands of Paul and Jesus, the the imperatives, if I'm gonna get to like nerdy English grammar. What is an imperative? What is a command? Um and so you needed them to start being able to balance commands and the patterns they see in scripture. You need them to shift on the hermeneutics a little bit. Um, and if you really just want to get feisty with them, like you're picking a fight on purpose, you can throw out something. I've done this on threads, and oh, they came out of the wool woodwork just trying to eat me alive. But you could point out that the Bible, nowhere in scripture does God command, that's the operative word, command, nowhere does God command men to have authority or lead their wives. Nowhere. Um, it does not exist in scripture. Um, it is a an assumption created that entire doctrines are placed around, but it is not a command of scripture. And people will be immediately go, yes, but wives have to submit to husbands. In Ephesians 5 22. You're right. That is not a command for a husband to leave. A command says husbands leave, not wives submit. Yes, wives are to submit, they're to work with their husbands. Even egalitarians say that because they believe in mutual submission, where both wives and husbands submit. Complimentarians believe in wife-only submission, and they think the wives submitting means the husband leads. They are making an inference. And so you can start pegging them on some of those logical inaccuracies. Be prepared for them to completely flip their lids, um, because that's a logical loop they're not used to tracking down. But if I was to try to introduce more egalitarian interpretations of the Bible to hard comps, I would start with hermeneutics. And then I would start at helping them see patterns of God's value throughout scripture. And if they're open to historical context, I would start unpacking historical context things. Like with my parents who were just in town a couple weeks ago, we were talking about the household codes, Paul's household codes. So I was talking about how in the Greco-Roman world, um, the Greco-Romans, Katie McCoy um wrote a fantastic article on this. Um, in the Greco-Roman world, the misogynistic Greco-Roman philosophy believed that women are basically deformed, disabled men. They're literally less than women are literally less than men, and that a man cannot phile or agape love. Those are Greek terms for love. They have three Greek terms for love: phileo, agape, and eros. Um, phileo is like Philadelphia, city of brotherly love, so uh friendship, brotherly love, agape is kind of a general holistic love. It's a very horrible definition, coffee shop. Um, and then eros, where we could get erotic kind of a sexual love. And so the Greco-Roman philosophy is that a man cannot agape or philet o a woman, he can obviously eros a woman, sexual love they have no problem with. Um and and so they cannot eros, they can eros a woman, they cannot agape or phallet a woman. So when Paul in Ephesians 5 tells husbands, you must agape your wives and love her as your own body, Paul is is shifting that dynamic entirely. So start helping them see what's actually going in the text. You don't have you're planting seeds that can explode later on. Um, I would talk about women as priests. Some hard complimentarians get really big into, you know, the husband is a prophet, priest, and king of the home. Well, actually, women are prophets too. Um women uh are priests, priesthood of all the believers, not just them, all male believers. Um, and women were both designed to rule creation in Genesis and will reign with Christ to the end as part of the church. So you you can just start dismantling some of those ideas. I could probably make a whole episode just on this, but we'll um stop with that question and move on to the next. The next question is do we know anything about Mary, Jesus Mother Genealogy? Elizabeth is a descendant of Aaron, um, is Mary too. Secondarily, why do we get Joseph's genealogy if he's not the biological father of Jesus? A lot is going on here. Um, if you're interested in why we get Joseph's genealogy, I definitely recommend Joan Taylor's book, Boy Jesus. She has some really interesting historical insight into how first century people would have viewed the virgin birth and Joseph's fathering of Jesus. Um we're in a coffee shop, theoretically. So to not get graphic, but they basically believed somehow God got DNA from Joseph into Mary without the actual act. Um, and so Joseph is actually the biological father, um, according to Joan Taylor's theory. So you'd need to look into that, and that could be why Joseph's genealogy is um included. That's why there's also two: there's the Matthew one and then the Luke genealogies. And Joan Taylor and some scholars believe they're both referencing back to Joseph. Some people think the Luke genealogy is actually Mary's. Um, I don't know how much, again, this is a coffee shop chat, so I haven't sat and tracked it down. I don't know how much validity there is to that the Luke genealogy is actually Mary's. So we don't, if we take scripture at face value and do not say that Luke is um, the Luke genealogy is about Mary, we don't actually have really hardly any information about Mary and her genealogy. We do know she's cousins with Elizabeth, and Elizabeth is the descendant of Aaron. Now, that could be maybe cousins through mom's side. We don't know which side is she a paternal or a maternal cousin. We don't know which side of the family they're cousins on. Again, in the in the Bible, um, lineage is traced through the men. Today we trace through both sides of the family. Like my ancestors before we came to the United States of America on my mom's side, um, at least through my mom's maternal side, um, came from like England, Great British Isles kind of area. And then my dad's, I think on the paternal side, um, so my dad's dad's side, um, they came, they came from like France, Germany, like there's a valley right in between that got fought over over the years. So whether it's France or Germany, we're not really sure. But anyway, we kind of trace both if we're doing genealogical work today. In the Bible times, they didn't trace the mother's genealogy side at all. So could Mary's mother have been from the tribe of Levi, potentially, um, or her grandmother could have, and then cousins. Um, I haven't like tried to write out a family tree to see how it could be related. But if Elizabeth and Mary are cousins on mom's side, um, that could be why Elizabeth is counted as a descendant of Aaron. And Mary, I feel like if she was a descendant of Aaron, we would have been told that. That's kind of significant. Um, maybe not. Um, so we don't really know that much about Mary. We know Elizabeth's a descendant of Aaron, so tribe of Levi. We don't know about Mary. She could be, um, at least maternally, um, but we don't know exactly what that cousin relationship looks like. And we don't know whether it's first cousin, second cousin, third cousin, all of those family relationships. Cousin back then was a little more broad. Typically, if we say cousin today, we're thinking like first cousin. Um, back then it could be probably, I'm guessing, a little bit broader than that. Um, so we don't really know. As for why we get Joseph's genealogy, it's because likely um the ancient world considered Joseph to be Jesus' father. And we even see that the Pharisees um are throwing it in Jesus' face. Your dad's just a carpenter. Like they did not see Jesus' birth as illegitimate, they did not see Mary as um having a baby out of wedlock that Joseph then adopted. They see Joseph as the dad. And essentially, um, the way I've worked this out is that when she finds out she's pregnant by the Holy Spirit, whatever that means, um Joseph decides to basically take ownership of the pregnancy. To even though she was a virgin and they had no sexual act, he is basically claiming that he's the dad. And everybody from then on assumes he's the dad, um, and that they were fooling around before their wedding, which they were engaged, so no big deal. Um, and life. Just kind of goes on as normal. Because if the Pharisees had any, any idea that Jesus was illegitimate, that would have been like the first thing they threw in his face all the time. Why should we listen to you? You're an ill ill illegitimate child. Your mother is unfaithful, and we don't even know who your dad is. Um, they but they don't throw that at him. They throw at him, your dad's a carpenter, your dad's an artisan. Um so that's probably why we get Joseph's genealogy, because he claimed Jesus and everybody considered him Joseph's, even if Joseph's actual DNA was not part of Jesus. But again, Joan Taylor in Boy Jesus talks about that. Um, and it's really her conversation is really fascinating. Um, I don't have a huge like, is this absolutely I think she's 100% correct? I don't know, but it's interesting to ponder. So the next question was what is your take on family parental estrangement? Was there any in the Bible? My take on family parental estrangement. I think um this is hard because there's so many different sides, and families are so messy. I think any sort of estrangement is not God's design and desire for the family. And hold on, we're gonna hold on. Um, I don't think that's like in creation, Genesis pre-fall. Obviously, God does not want this for our families. He wants unity, he wants wholeness. Um, and so that is the original design of the family to be unified and whole and working together well. Obviously, we live in a sinful, broken world. So we have parents that are horribly abusive. We have children that go off the rails, we have all sorts of sad, terrible, sinful, heartbreaking things that happen in families. So I think there are absolutely times where family parental estrangement is needed and necessary. Abusive parents walking away from that might be the best thing for your family. And then how do you manage layering honor your father and mother with that estrangement? That's something that has to be very prayerfully walked through, walked through um by the Holy Spirit. Um and how would God have the individual situation work out? Because there's a point where saying, if I stay in contact with my abusive parents, I am then enabling my parents' abuse of their grandchildren, which means I would be enabling sin and I would be participating in the abuse against my children by enabling it. And so there are times as parents, as parents, we have to say, um, not in my personal family, I'm aligning myself with those who are abused, because my parents and my in-laws are great people. I want to make sure that's put out there. But um there are times that those in abusive situations have to say, to protect my children, which is my primary God-given responsibility, I have to say, I have to go no contact with my parents. You are not allowed to see your grandchildren until you are willing to get therapy and change how like it's not a closed door forever. It's a closed door until you change your behavior. Often they don't. But if they did, that door could come flying open once they re-earned trust. Now, uh the command honor your father and mother in the Bible often had financial uh it was as much a financial command as a giving of honor. Obviously, you give honor to your parents, which does not necessarily mean obedience today, um, but it did mean watch out for your parents in their old age, make sure they have what they need. And so figuring out how to manage that with an estranged parent that you've had to go no contact is something the Holy Spirit really has to guide through because especially with like dementia or other things, sometimes their abuse could get even worse. And how do you manage that? Maybe you pay for a care facility, maybe you do just go completely hands-off and they made their bed, they need to lie in it. Um, but it's something that has to be walked through very carefully, but abuse dynamics, I think, require some level of no contact at certain situations. Um, there are also people who are just like, you disagree with my stance on XYZ, therefore I'm going to cut you off. Um I don't think that, like over basic disagreements, I don't necessarily think that's the best. Though there may be times where it's like, hey, you parents, you've taken such a damaging stance on these issues that we need a break from talking with you. And I'm hoping us putting in a short-term no contact will shake you up enough to reconsider your damaging beliefs. Um, I do think that is an avenue adult children may have to try to get their parents to wake up and listen and see foolish behavior. Um, and again, hopefully it's not long term. We always want the door open for reconc reconciliation. Now, was there any family parental estrangement in the Bible? I cannot think of any stories directly that feature that um directly. Um, so some of you may be like, oh yes, right, here's one right here. Um again, I haven't done research on this ahead of time. So nothing's popping off the top of my head. But um, when you have, when you don't have airplanes or cars or trains or any sort of mass transit, um it's not necessarily estrangement as in we don't like you anymore. But like take the story of Rebecca who moves away from Haran to go hundreds of miles to go marry Isaac. She probably never saw her parents again. So is she estranged? Like, I'm not talking to you, I'm breaking off the relationship because of something negative. No. But she's never gonna see them again because they live hundreds of miles away and they just don't travel like that. Um and so, but she's also a daughter, so she does not have the familial responsibility to care for her aged parents like her brother did. And so it's a different kind of relationship they expected she would marry. Hopefully, they probably dreamed as she was growing up, she would marry somebody nearby, so they could keep seeing her. She ends up marrying someone far away. Um, but travel definitely limited familial contact. And I think, like I see in lots of articles about parental estrangement nowadays, and like it's like this huge thing that's on a on the rise. But I think it's something that's always happened. People just did it differently. Now we might have a conversation and be like, okay, um, until behavior changes, we're not calling, texting, face timing, visiting, whatever, you know, and we have to have that conversation. Before people could just be like, oh, sorry, I got a job in California, and I know you live in South Carolina, so I guess I'll see you never. And you just use like a job or something else, and you purposely go, you join the military. I mean, people have always escaped bad parents through job and military service without having to say, you're a horrible person, I'm not gonna talk to you until you shape up. Um, so, but now with technology the way it is, and travel the way it is, people are having to have more direct conversations than they used to. So parental estrangement has happened all throughout human history because if your parents are horrible, most people want to get away from that. And the way to get away from that is to move, to leave, to do something. Um and so people have done that throughout all of history. They've just gotten up and left. Um, and and so that has always happened. Now we're having to have the conversations. But having the conversations hopefully would open doors to reconciliation and people considering if they are mature enough, okay, why are my children doing this? What have I done? What do I believe that I might want to reconsider? Um, or at least look into reconsidering. Maybe they you're, you know, parents will they won't reconsider, but or they do all the study and come to the same conclusions. But hopefully the conversations will at least get them to think about behaviors, beliefs, etc. The next question is really good. I really like this one. Do you think caring for the orphan widow in the Bible includes single woman women in today's context? This is a really interesting question because I'm trying to figure out how far back to go. Household structure in the Bible and household structure today and community structures are very different. So, on the surface, single women today look a lot like orphan widows in the Bible because they don't have families. But at the same time, they're in a completely different situation. So let's break this down a little bit. In the ancient world, and I'll have a chapter on this in my forthcoming book. Um, in the ancient world, the smallest unit of society is not the individual. Today we think of society as made up of individuals that individuals then make up families, which make up communities, which then make up, or I should say households, because a single person could be a household. But individual people make up households, make up communities, neighborhoods, cities, states, you know, countries. But the smallest unit in society is the individual. You know, my finger, you can't get smaller than the individual until you start breaking up my body parts. My nose is, you know, no, it's not gonna work. Um, so this today we view the individual as the smallest unit of society. In the ancient world, a lot of scholars say that it's not the individual that it was the smallest legal and economic unit, it was the household. So, whereas today, an individual person is a legal economic unit. In the ancient world, the household is the legal economic unit. And the household could have two to 15 or more um individuals in it. When we're talking about the story of Abraham and he goes and rescues Lot, it says that he had 300 men who were born in his household, soldiers, armed men. Abraham's household could have been like a thousand people, considered a household. How they structured all of that, I don't know, that's practically a tribe. But the the words used in Genesis are in his house, in his household. He is the patriarch over all of these, even though they're not biological relations. He's in charge of them all. And so that's obviously an extreme um example. But a household in the Old Testament and New Testament could be anywhere from two husband, wife to 15-ish, 10-15 people. And that could include grandparents, children, unmarried daughters, sons, sojourners staying with you, hired hands, etc. Um, and so when you have, so the difference here is that today, again, individual is a uh one person can be a legal economic unit. In the ancient world, the household's the legal economic unit. And no one in the household, male or female, can really survive without a household. Men have the advantage that it's a lot easier for them to create a new household if they find themselves without a household. Um, if everybody in the family dies except a guy, he's gonna be able a lot easier to find a wife and rebuild a household than a widow or an orphan would have. And so part of the context in the Bible of caring for widows and orphans is that you have individual people who are disenfranchised from households, which are the smallest economic legal unit of society. And so they have no legal standing, they have no legal advocate, and they have no way of making money. And so they are destitute and they are outside the legal system. Um, and so caring for those people is especially important because they cannot stand on their own two feet. Today, single women are not in that same destitute kind of way. They are by themselves, they don't have the family relationships, and that can be very, that can be a trial. That can be really hard. But most often, um, single women are able to get an education, they're able to get a job, they're able to get a 401k for retirement. That's part of why the household's important because when you get old, you have to have someone to take care of you, and it's the household that does that. Today, a single woman can have her own 401k, which is her own financial future, and she can do financial planning on her own. She can own her own property, she can own her own house. So, on a legal economic place, a single woman today does not at all line up with the orphan widow in the Bible, because a single woman today can be her own legal economic entity and do quite well for herself legally and economically. A widow orphan in the Bible did not have that ability. They had to have a household to be a part of, preferably with male representation, though that was not always needed. Um, now, socially, single women today are kind of on the fringes. Our churches don't know what to do with them except, hey, you want to go to the singles class so you can find a guy? Not helpful. And so I think, though, economically and legally, single women don't match up to widows and orphans. I think because we're a little more aware of widows' orphans because of the commands in the Bible, we we do often ignore single women. And so I very much want to talk about that because single women deserve care and attention. They need relationships, they should not be sidelined and ignored like they often are. They need relationships, they need care. And often our churches focus most of the energy on families first, and then maybe um parents or single moms, maybe, but especially unmarried, childless single women are expected to just completely fend for themselves. And whereas they might be able to do that legally and financially, they need more care from their spiritual communities. So I don't know if that answer is helpful. That shows some of the differences and similarities, but I think we the church often does very poorly buy single people in general, except trying to get them hitched, which the New Testament uplifts single people so high. Paul in the New Testament says, I wish everyone was like I am, i.e., single. The the church should not be pressuring towards marriage, it should be a community of people all working together, where I'm met, whether married or single, towards unity in the purposes of the kingdom of God, bringing in the household of God. That is key language in the um New Testament. I'm sorry if you hear some bumps that I can't edit out. I keep talking with my hands and hitting my microphone. I apologize. But the the church should be working together to forward the kingdom of God. The next question I have is um David's words, against you only have I sinned. Wasn't Bathsheba sinned against two? This is a great question. Bathsheba absolutely was. I've heard theologians say that in Psalm 51, David's words, against you only I have sinned, um, are just a recognition that all of our sin is primarily against God. I don't know. It's he did sin against Bathsheba and Uriah and the wives of the other men who were killed when Uriah was killed. Like his sin was catastrophic. The the um royal concubines who got attacked by his son when David fled. Um, lots of people his sin was against. So absolutely he was sitting against other people. And um I recommend Liz Day's forthcoming book. She's writing a book um called Decentering David. I think it's coming out in 27. I'm not exactly sure. Um, I did a podcast with her a while back. It's one of the Bathsheba, it's part of the Bathsheba series. So check out my conversation with Liz Day. Um, I can't remember if we talked about Psalm 51 in that podcast, but we did talk about Bathsheba being sinned against by David, and I'm sure she talks about it in her forthcoming book, Decentry David. So definitely go there for more on that whole question. Liz, she's been doing the research. It's gonna be good. Next question: somebody sent me a post um by the Bible for Normal People where they uh their podcast. I have not listened to the podcast, I only read the post. So this is the podcast was what is biblical marriage? Should we use the Bible as a template for healthy marriage? Um, and the post said, and I'm reading the text of what the post said, it said, We don't have an example of a married couple in the Bible in which two people enter into marriage, both choosing it as equals based on love. I love that that's an ideal many people try to live up to, and that's how they see their commitment, but that's not biblical. And so somebody sent this to me wanting um, in my Ask Me Anything, my feedback on this idea of biblical marriage and the Bible as template for biblical marriage. So a lot of this goes back to some of our conversations about view of men and women in Greco-Roman culture, but also um households. And the way the entire ancient world viewed marriage is very differently than we view marriage. We do often view marriage as two equals, choosing it based on love, regardless of families. But in the ancient world, it was a legal economic decision made by parents much more than the actual husband and wife. Men oftentimes didn't have a whole lot more say in their marriage partner than women did. Sometimes we think, oh, the men in the Bible had all the power and they could just make whatever decisions they want, and women were just traded around like cattle. That's not the case. The parents, husband and wife, um, matriarch and patriarch, would often choose spouses for their sons and daughters. Um, Abram, Abraham sent his servant to find a wife for Isaac. Whoever that servant brought back, Isaac has to marry. He doesn't get a choice. She shows, and fortunately, he's she shows up and he's like, whoa, this is amazing. But he doesn't, and he's a 40-year-old man. Like, don't, he's not like a teenage boy. He's a 40-year-old man, I think. When Rebecca shows up and he's like, Great, thanks, dad. She's gorgeous. And it works out really well. But I mean, we the patriarch and the matriarch are the ones who make these decisions if their children are honoring them. Now, like Esau went out and got his own wives, and um Rebecca's like, hey now, this sucks. I don't like this. These women are awful. And it caused a huge controversy. But typically, patriarch and matriarch get spouses for their kids. And these are not based on love. Um, and and so marriage in the Bible is going to be fundamentally different than the way we view marriage today. Today, it is two people who are equal based on love, that is and consent. That is our basis today. Um, whereas the bride and groom did have at least a token ability to say, yes, I agree to this match. Um, often a household would work together. My research has been showing, as I've been working on sud chapters in my book, um, that the household kind of worked together on this and the matriarch did have a lot of say, but not for herself, for her marriage. She has say for her children's marriage. But the household, again, we're viewing households making decisions for the individual members. Um, it's not just men making decisions for women, it's households making decisions for the individual members in the household. And this plays out in a lot of different ways. Um, but it is a very different dynamic. And so it just doesn't straight match up. Um, I've also gotten questions, and this is not one for this AMA, but it's a separate conversation that I think relates, of people wondering. Oh, of people wondering from an egalitarian perspective, what does it mean to be a biblical husband or a biblical wife? And I looked at them and I was like, egalitarians don't often talk about that as much because we're focused on being a godly person. And if you're a godly person, then you'll obviously be a biblical husband or a biblical wife. All right, I am gonna wrap up our coffee chat for today. Um, the day of recording, I have a doctor's appointment to get my son to, and life just keeps going. But I've really enjoyed just kind of off the cuff answering these questions. None of these answers are in as in depth as we could go, but hey, this is a coffee shop conversation where we're just flitting through topics together. If there's anything you want me to talk about in more detail, Detail and actually research out and be like, Jessica, you need to just camp out on that. And I want a whole episode on that. Email me. If you have any other questions you want me to answer off the cuff for another coffee chat, email me those as well. And I can make another episode with all of those questions compiled. Thank you so much for hanging out with me today. It was a joy to have you here. And I really do look forward to discussing these questions and others with you more in general. I love feedback. I love interacting. So let's keep that vibe going. I hope you have a great week. And I hope whenever this lands, your weekend coming up is wonderful. Our next episode, Lord willing, will be on the daughters of Zalelo Fehad. So that is going to be fun. We're going to talk about Old Testament property law. We're going to be talking about these women who may who the Lord granted some amazing things to. So that's going to be one of our next episodes coming up. You will definitely want to get that episode. Have a great day.