ANN MAREE: 

Hello, and welcome to the Safe to Hope podcast. 

Safe to Hope: Hope Renewed in Light of Eternity exists to offer women space to tell their stories of suffering and loss with care, dignity, and honesty. Though all suffering is loss, we ground that belief in a God who cares and remains present. This is our hope. 

My name is Ann Maree, and I am the executive director of Help[H]er and the host of this week’s podcast. This podcast is made possible by donors who believe faithfulness means protecting the dignity of women’s stories and creating a space for truth-telling without pressure or performance. Together, we listen for God’s redemptive thread and look for ways to join Him in His transforming work. 

Before we begin, we want to take a moment and care for our listeners. 

The Safe to Hope podcast typically includes discussions of abuse, and this season will as well. In particular, we’ll be talking about spiritual abuse. However, our conversations may include other abuses. Please listen at your own pace and take breaks as needed. 

If at any point you need to pause or step away, that’s okay. Your well-being matters. 

Well, welcome back to our summer book review series. We’re taking a little break from our storyteller and our expert contributors, although I would consider this an expert contributor as well, just not specific to any of our stories this season. 

I was thrilled to hear her say yes, that she would come and be on our podcast, because of the richness of her writing, her book, and just how much it’s impacted me—and I know others as well who recommended it to me. We have just been in awe of all of the rich resources and research that this author has done. 

Her name is Lydia. It’s Lydia Grace Kaiser, and the book name is Bible Truth About Women: What They Don’t Tell You. 

Lydia is—or was, I should say—a homeschool mom and an entrepreneur. She started a camp ministry that serves about 1,000 people a year—that’s crazy—with various evangelistic and discipling programs. 

Lydia has also launched a newspaper and managed a magazine. She launched a radio show, and it grew to 1,000-plus Christian stations. She has also developed various campaigns and trainings for an international ministry. 

Lydia is seminary-trained, and I’ll let her speak more about that in a minute. Right now, she’s an Airbnb Superhost. 

LYDIA GRACE: 

Right. 

 

ANN MAREE: 

She’s doing that so that she can write this book and be available for podcasts like ours, so we appreciate that. 

Welcome to you, Lydia. We’re glad to have you. 

LYDIA: 

Thank you, Ann Maree. It’s just a real privilege to be here. 

ANN MAREE: 

Yep, same. It’s a privilege for us too. 

I like to first get to know you just a little bit. Is there anything else, besides what I just told our audience, that maybe you could share that would give them a little bit more insight into who you are? 

LYDIA: 

Most of the things you mentioned were more on the admin side of ministry. As I got older, I just felt God calling me to do more one-on-one ministry. 

I’m very excited at this point in my life to be more of a mentor for a small group of ladies and just walk alongside individuals. And, yeah, just be able to give my own personal testimony more—the real, raw one, you know—in private. 

ANN MAREE: 

Mm-hmm. 

LYDIA: 

And be able to walk alongside others. 

ANN MAREE: 

Yeah. 

LYDIA: 

But we live in a rural area, and we’re an hour west of St. Louis. I enjoy being outdoors, and we have chickens. We do beekeeping, and I love my flowers and my plants. And, yeah. 

ANN MAREE: 

 

It sounds fun. 

LYDIA: 

Yeah. 

ANN MAREE: 

We also live on property, but I let my mother do all that work. 

LYDIA: 

My mother did it too. Yeah. And I’m finally doing it in honor of her. I decided I need to follow in her footsteps on that. 

ANN MAREE: 

Yeah. My day may be coming as well. 

I don’t know about the chickens. I’m not sure about the chickens. If nobody came along—like, no other predators came along and killed them—I’d be okay with chickens. But I’m a little afraid of losing my pets. 

So, thank you for just a little snapshot picture of you and your life. 

Now, maybe if we could just shift over to the book. How was this book conceived? What was the impetus for the book? 

LYDIA: 

I appreciate your including the subtitle, What They Don’t Tell You. 

The impetus was shock in learning that there’s another side to the story that is well-researched. 

So, yeah, I have personally dealt with a lot of hindrance as a female, but I just thought, “That’s what the Bible says. You just have to deal with it,” you know? 

Then, oh, maybe eight years ago now, I read an explanation for 1 Corinthians 14:34–36 that pointed out that if we take this passage that says women are to be silent in the church at face value, it contradicts other Scripture. And, you know, we believe that Scripture doesn’t contradict itself, right? 

We have to find a way to reconcile that, and so it gave a really good explanation. 

I thought, “Wait a minute. If we did that with this passage—just taking it at face value and not considering all these factors—what have we done with the other passages that deal with women?” 

 

I began to read more widely and research, and I didn’t know what to believe. This author says this, and this one says that. They say, “Well, this Greek word says this.” And I’m like, “How do I know who’s right?” 

Finally, I’m like, “Well, even though I’m in my 50s, I guess I’m going to seminary.” 

ANN MAREE: 

Mm-hmm. 

LYDIA: 

You know? I wanted to be able to have the resources and have access to professors and people. 

I mean, I could never just take a couple of language classes and be on the level that I would need to be in order to discern these things. But I would have access to people who have had decades of training in these areas and access to a much wider library. 

That’s what I did, and the more I learned, the more shocked I became. 

ANN MAREE: 

Mm. 

LYDIA: 

Shocked and horrified. 

I decided that there are a lot of books out there on this topic, but mine comes from the unique angle of What They Don’t Tell You, in that I compile 20 categories of misleading tactics used by translators and interpreters around these passages dealing with women. 

Then, as I go through the passages, I point out which of those tactics are being used with each passage. I say, “Misleading tactic number four is used here, and number six is used here,” you know? I summarize those in sidebars. 

I hope that makes the theology more accessible to people and also helps people understand, “How in the world did this happen?” Because I was just so aghast that we could be where we are today, and so I needed to have that question answered for myself as well. 

This is the book that I would have wanted 20 or 30 years ago, that I may have been more likely to pick up than maybe another one. 

ANN MAREE: 

Hmm. No, that’s good. 

 

Actually, I was reading your book side by side with a male author—actually, somebody we just had on the podcast in June. I believe it was June. Maybe it was July. Dr. Steve Tracy and his book. 

It was a similar topic, a very similar topic, in that you’re looking at Scripture. You were both looking at Scripture and, you know, reinterpreting, if you will. Both books were making me angry, but in a good way. 

I do appreciate—I want to just make sure to emphasize—that I want to read women who are writing on these topics as much as I want to read men who are writing about these topics. I think that something is missed if we only read one gender when it comes to theology and even when it comes to talking about translation and interpretation. 

LYDIA: 

When God tells Eve that she is going to have great sorrow—not just physical pain, but great sorrow—in childbearing, which I believe is supposed to be child-rearing, because that’s conception and then child—but anyway, when I saw what God was telling Eve, I just burst into tears. 

Because, as a mother, you know how difficult it is. I just felt so seen by God when I read that. 

And then, just the connection between this bad theology and abuse in the church and home is missed by many men because they have not experienced it firsthand. 

In fact, one very well-known author who came out with a book recently just dismissed the idea that there is a connection. I was horrified because I lived it. 

I had those verses yelled at me—literally yelled at me—and was told to shut my sassy mouth because women may not have an opinion next to a man’s opinion in these areas. I saw a lot of very clear connections. 

ANN MAREE: 

Hmm. Yeah. 

I think that when we realize this has to do with the heart of God, we can’t just make this a theological discussion. It has to be about human beings who are also made in the image of God, how we are reducing them in all of the ways, and all of the ramifications that has. 

LYDIA: 

And the studies, you know, that show that men interrupt women many times more than women interrupt men and things like that—it’s all a feeling of entitlement that causes the perception to not be accurate. 

If you have a group of men and women in a room, and the study shows that the men spoke 60 percent of the time, and then they come out and are asked what the percentage was, and they say, “Well, the women spoke 60 percent of the time,” it’s because they have this sense of entitlement that they should be speaking more, and so they’re more irritated to hear. 

If that sense of entitlement weren’t there, I think the perception wouldn’t be off. 

ANN MAREE: 

Hmm. And not only a feeling of entitlement that men often get with this bad theology, but even in the other direction, perhaps shame, because they’re supposed to be the be-all and end-all—the man with all the answers, the leader, the smartest person in the room, and know everything. 

If they can’t be that, which of course they can’t be—it’s impossible; no one can be all that, all that and a bag of chips, you know—they can internalize a sense of shame and then react badly because of that defensiveness and so on. 

LYDIA: 

The amount of dysfunction from this bad theology really cannot be measured, even, I don’t think—much less experienced by people who have not been on the short end of the stick. 

ANN MAREE: 

I kept thinking in the beginning, when I first started doing my own research, about the frog in the boiling pot. It doesn’t know what’s happening, and this theology is invisibly shaping all of us. 

That’s another reason I’m so excited about this book and what you’ve written. It starts poking holes in that theology, which feels like a breath of fresh air each time I can breathe after I read it. 

I think you are one of many people who wrote or have said that it is not good for man to be alone, and that includes in theology, for one. 

LYDIA: 

In any place. 

ANN MAREE: 

In any place. Right. Yeah. 

One other thing I was thinking as you were talking—and you bring this up a lot, and I hear this a lot in my circles—and that’s the “plain reading” of the Word. Do you want to tackle that right away? 

LYDIA: 

Oh, sure. 

I’ve always heard all my life, even though I come from a very strong—I’ll say “complementarian” with quote marks around it, but patriarchal—background, that our Bible, that God’s Word, is inerrant in the original languages. 

 

However, in practicality, I think my tribe still comes away with the impression that we have a perfect English translation and that we can put a lot of weight and stock in those English words. 

My first class in seminary was hermeneutics, and it really opened my eyes to all the challenges of translation and all of the decisions that translators make. They make a lot of decisions, and those decisions are going to be influenced by their ideology. 

Until people realize that, we are going to put too much weight on those English words. 

Some people might think, “Well, does that kind of ruin your trust in the Bible? Do you have a hard time reading the Bible now? Are you distrusting everything you read?” 

Well, no. 

There are many things theologians have spent a lot of time dissecting, comparing passages, dissecting the original-language words, and researching. But this is not one of them because there hasn’t been the motivation to do so. 

Why would those who were highly respected theologians shoot themselves in the foot and spend time on this? 

It does not affect understanding how the English translation is—I mean, it has opened my eyes enough that I’m far more interested in reading my Bible now than I used to be. 

I’ve been a believer since I was seven years old, okay? I’m about to turn 60, and so those words can just become too familiar at some point. 

When I was in high school, I’d memorize entire books of the Bible. I love God’s Word. I always have, and I’ve always studied it and taught it. But it does become kind of old hat at some point, you know, just different passages. 

When you realize that you can lower the bucket deeper into the well by understanding that there is so much more nuance to the language, it has made my Bible study far more interesting, and my curiosity level has gone way up. 

ANN MAREE: 

Mm-hmm. 

LYDIA: 

I believe that what we’ve been given in English is accurate, but in these passages, I can’t believe the sleight of hand that has been used over and over—obfuscating the translation in different ways and not being consistent. 

 

When the translator knows there are women involved in this passage, we’re going to translate it into a different English word than if this Greek word is used over here in this passage where we think there are men involved. 

Once you start seeing those inconsistencies—that’s one of the 20 misleading categories, inconsistent translation. 

Even in the newer philosophy of masculine generics, getting rid of the masculine default, we have some problems because there are places where they’ll do it over here, but in the exact same situation, in a passage that is important to us for equality, they won’t do it, even though there are just as many reasons to believe that is a masculine default in the Greek. 

Or there was no pronoun in the Greek, and English just needs a pronoun, so they throw in a masculine one instead of a gender-neutral one. 

They’re still not fixing those. So then, now, we have a whole new problem in that people are saying, “Oh, this Bible has been fixed in those ways. You know, they’ve gotten rid of the masculine generic defaults, and so I can trust reading this one.” 

They don’t realize, “Oh, but they didn’t over here, and over here, and over here,” you know? ANN MAREE: 

Mm-hmm. 

LYDIA: 

So I might have gotten a little off track there. 

ANN MAREE: 

No, no, no. It’s okay. 

LYDIA: 

I don’t know what we were talking about. 

ANN MAREE: 

I want you to go wherever you go. 

I’m not going to ask you, either—I get this question a lot—“What translation do you prefer?” I think you did a really balanced job in your book of highlighting, “Well, this translation says this on this verse, and this translation says this.” 

 

I know our audience will recognize that there is one particular translation that leans heavily one way. We don’t have to talk about it, but I did appreciate the differences. 

It made me look at the translation that I’ve been stuck to for so long and think, “Oh, you know what? I just really need to keep comparing and keep looking.” 

It has even drawn me back to the Hebrew and the Greek to see what it says in the original languages. 

Now, I know not everybody will want to do that, but there are some really great internet tools you can use to do that. 

LYDIA: 

Right. We all have access now. 

In fact, I was having a little debate—a friendly debate. Not all of them are friendly, but this one was, thankfully—on Facebook because of a post that I made. 

A man was telling me that when Priscilla taught Apollos, the word that was used for her teaching is not the authoritative teaching word. I’m like, “Oh, interesting.” 

So I did something that any person can do. I just got on my Bible Hub and looked at that word. 

The argument was that the authoritative word is used in surrounding chapters, so that’s the word Luke would have used if he meant that she was teaching with authority. 

I found that so-called authoritative word, and then I just looked at where else it is in the New Testament. Lo and behold, there it is at least twice where Paul is exhorting the entire church, with, you know, no gender specifics. 

ANN MAREE: 

Mm-hmm. 

LYDIA: 

You know, this whole debate is all on their side. They’re obsessed with authority. 

ANN MAREE: 

Mm-hmm. 

LYDIA: 

The most important thing for all of us to remember is that authority is not in the vessel God is using. It’s not in the person. 

 

ANN MAREE: 

Mm-hmm. 

LYDIA: 

The authority is in the Word of God itself and is in the Holy Spirit. God can use anyone, anything— ANN MAREE: 

Mm-hmm. 

LYDIA: 

—that He wants to use— 

ANN MAREE: 

Mm-hmm. 

LYDIA: 

—to communicate His message. We need to get away from this idea of who’s authorized to do what. ANN MAREE: 

Mm-hmm. Oh, from your lips to God’s ears. If only we can. 

Thank you for sharing that you do have some positive interactions about this topic. That’s encouraging. 

So, let’s go, if you will, through—you’re broken down into four parts. Part one—well, let’s just start with part one, which is God’s original design. 

We’re talking about creation issues and passages. What do we get wrong in this creation account? LYDIA: 

There’s a lot of inferred doctrine taken from this. 

We’re taught that we’re supposed to do exegesis, not eisegesis, and yet an awful lot of eisegesis takes place with Genesis. 

Probably the biggest assumption is just that Adam was created first; therefore, he has more authority.

Even that’s up for debate, in that, you know, God says that He created them and called them Adam. And so it’s dirt. It’s the human. It’s anthropos—well, that’s the Greek word. 

But anyway, even if we assume that Adam was indeed created first and that Eve was not in the picture until later, this assumption that somehow he had more authority because he was first is just that: an assumption. 

An awful lot hangs on that. 

It could just be that God had His own reasons for doing it that way. One could just be that He needed to teach Adam a lesson—that he needed another human being so that he wouldn’t look at this human being and consider them maybe a competitor, you know? He needed that longing. 

But 1 Corinthians 11—and I’ve never seen anyone else make this point, but to me, Paul is saying, “Hey, yes, woman came from man. Woman came from man’s rib. But man came from woman also, and all things come from God.” 

It’s as if he’s saying, “Quit making this a big deal.” 

We tend to read some of those things and then make a big deal out of them. I think Paul was refuting others in 1 Corinthians 11 who were trying to say that man is God’s glory and that woman is the glory of man. 

Paul was refuting them, actually. He was saying, “No, no, she’s not the glory of man. She was also made in the image of God.” 

But it’s amazing how, all throughout history, so many theological fathers—again, in quotes—have actually even stated that they believe man was created in the image of God and then woman in the image of man, or that only man was in God’s glory and then woman. 

So, yeah, there’s just an awful lot. These are huge, huge things to believe on such slim evidence. ANN MAREE: 

Mm-hmm. 

LYDIA: 

On no evidence, really. 

ANN MAREE: 

Mm. 

LYDIA: 

You know, God had plenty of opportunity to make those things clear, and He did not. 

ANN MAREE: 

I think this is another reason I have to say I loved your book so much. I felt many times that you had been living in my head, and you took the things out of my head and put them on paper. 

We have similar wonderings, if you will. We are both similarly curious about certain things. 

First of all, the Corinthians passage is such a highly contested passage. It is so hard, since the beginning of Bible translation, for anyone to come down on, you know, what that passage actually means. 

You also talk about this—interpreting Scripture using the clearer passages. 

But this thing about firsts—and I do, I actually wrote about it in my dissertation, and someday maybe I’ll make a book out of it—but I think somebody on Substack did this once. He said—I can’t remember who it was—but if firsts were a thing, then we would be bowing down to the animals. 

The animals would have authority. 

Which is just a silly way of saying— 

LYDIA: 

Right. 

ANN MAREE: 

—if God created the animals before Adam, then, yeah, the animals would be over humans if that were true. LYDIA: 

Selective interpretation is another one of my— 

ANN MAREE: 

Mm-hmm. 

LYDIA: 

—misleading tactic categories. Because if you allow yourself to think critically, you actually find a lot of these discrepancies where you’re like, “Wait a minute. That’s not really logical.” 

ANN MAREE: 

Right. 

 

I mean, throughout Scripture, the firsts get flipped on their head. You know— 

LYDIA: 

Right. 

ANN MAREE: 

—just even thinking about the disciples who wanted to sit at Jesus’ right hand, you know. And even the Scripture, “The first shall be last, and the last shall be first.” 

LYDIA: 

Right. 

ANN MAREE: 

I think what you’re saying—and I can’t say it as well as you have—is that it’s just a lot of emphasis, a lot of weight, on an assumption, on something that— 

LYDIA: 

Right. 

ANN MAREE: 

—doesn’t have a lot of clarity to it. 

LYDIA: 

And every time God turns around, He is flipping that, like you said, the first thing. He is choosing the youngest son or the less strong. 

ANN MAREE: 

Mm-hmm. 

LYDIA: 

Because He loves to use the weak to confound the strong. 

God Himself is so humble in so many ways, and this whole study just changed my view of God so much. ANN MAREE: 

Yeah. 

LYDIA: 

I had this view that He sat on the throne and was just ruling with an iron fist. Now I view God as someone who created this amazing, beautiful world and handed it over to humans and said, “Here, you can run it.” 

I mean, He reserved some things for Himself, but He, in some ways, stepped back and gave us dominion over the earth, knowing that we would mess it up. 

ANN MAREE: 

Mm. 

LYDIA: 

And that’s okay. He still gave us autonomy. 

So why would we not give women autonomy? If men think that they have more power—which they do, in that they are physically stronger—why would they not look at God’s example and say, “Oh, what I’m supposed to do with this strength is elevate and support others, if I’m to look at God’s example”? 

Jesus did the same thing. He could have come and seated Himself on an earthly throne right away, but instead He served others. He commended those who were serving humbly, and He gave Himself. 

Once again, He took off and left it in our hands to be His hands and feet and then ultimately calls us to sit on the throne with Him. 

It’s just mind-boggling how truly humble our God is. 

ANN MAREE: 

Mm. Mm-hmm. 

And then you look around the world and the church, and you just see these people—I’m guilty of it at times myself too—just grasping for any kind of power or authority. It’s just so wrong. It must grieve God so much. 

LYDIA: 

Mm-hmm. 

ANN MAREE: 

You mentioned this now, so let’s kind of transition to part two, because that’s the topic: the heart and example of Jesus. 

 

Using some of the passages and accurate translations you share in this section, demonstrate how they draw you and me, but also our audience, closer to Christ. When they’re accurately translated, how does it work to draw us even closer to Christ? 

LYDIA: 

I thought you were going to ask about, you know, naming some of the times when Jesus interacted with women that we get wrong. So I’m going to do that also, as well as— 

ANN MAREE: 

Go ahead. Yeah. 

LYDIA: 

—and finish with how this draws us closer. 

I’ll use the Samaritan woman. 

Probably still twice a year, I hear some preacher maligning the Samaritan woman as a prostitute, someone who sleeps around, or an immoral woman. Again, that’s not even in the Bible. That’s not there at all. 

We make assumptions. Past theologians who are highly respected have made these assumptions, and so then people today just follow that. It’s tradition. 

We claim to care about what the Bible says, not tradition, and yet we don’t realize how much tradition we have accepted. 

Anyway, yeah, they assume that five husbands meant she married and divorced five times, when women couldn’t even divorce. 

We completely miss what a broken person she would be. 

She was probably discarded like so much trash several times. Or maybe she was married off to a much older man who died first, or had the horrible tragedy of her young husband being killed on a construction site or something. You know, who knows? 

But every one of those lost marriages would have been a terrible heartbreak. 

Yet today, we look at her and call her this slut, all because she was getting water at noon. 

Like anything else that happens that is unusual in our timeframe, you know, we’ll say, “Oh, God gave me a divine appointment. I was there at just the right time.” 

ANN MAREE: 

 

Mm-hmm. 

LYDIA: 

You know? Why could that not be the reason? Her child tipped over their water or something, so she had to go at noon and get some more. 

But at any rate, how does this draw me closer to Jesus? 

I believe that, out of that entire region, she was the one. God knew her heart—that she was deeply concerned that she could not worship God appropriately and be accepted by God because she couldn’t go to worship in Jerusalem. 

When she discovered that she was talking to a prophet, a man of God who had answers, that was her first question: “How can I worship in a way that would be accepted by God?” 

His answer to her must have been the greatest joy of her life. And I’ll tell you what, she must have preached that— 

ANN MAREE: 

Mm-hmm. 

LYDIA: 

—for the rest of her life: that God just accepts all of us who worship Him in spirit and in truth. It doesn’t matter where we are. 

I’d always heard this story told with kind of a mic-drop moment where Jesus says, “Yes, you have told the truth. You do not have a husband. You’ve had five husbands, and the one you’re living with now is not even your husband.” 

I’ve always wondered, “Why did she not burst into tears and run away in shame?” Because that couldn’t have been the tone in which Jesus said it. 

Jesus was looking at her tragic life and saying, with great compassion— 

ANN MAREE: 

That’s right. 

LYDIA: 

—“You don’t have a husband. You’ve had five, and now the man you’re living with won’t even dignify you with marriage.” 

 

She felt seen, perhaps for the first time in her life—seen by God. 

There were plenty of people who knew that she’d had all of this happen in her life. 

The way I put it in my book is, pretend you’re on a trip. You’re in a foreign country, maybe even. You have to be in a foreign country because of all the social media we have now. 

But you meet a stranger, and they ask, “Oh, do you have children?” You say, “No, I don’t have children.” 

The stranger says, “Well, actually, you have adopted children, you have foster children, and the child that you have living with you right now is not your biological child,” but sees you. 

You know, let’s say this person said all of this to you. You’d say, “Wow, you’re some kind of psychic or prophet or something.” 

You know that this person has special powers and qualities if they know this about you, and they have no way of knowing this. 

She had to realize that this man truly was a prophet and was from God, and that God knows her intimate life circumstances. 

Imagine how thrilling that would be for someone who thinks, “I can’t even come close to God unless I travel down to Jerusalem and have just the right sacrifice.” 

I don’t think we can appreciate how close we can be to God and how we can experience God knowing every detail of our lives and caring about it. 

Maybe some of us take that for granted. 

But one of the things that I’ve become really interested in is prophecy and the fact that there were so many women prophets in the Bible. 

Modern-day prophecy is not always—it can be, but it’s not always—future-telling. It’s speaking a word from God that someone needs spoken over their life, that you hear from God because you are in tune with the Holy Spirit. 

I have come to believe that cessationists, who believe that the gifts are no longer active—one reason they have to believe that and downplay prophecy is because there are so many women prophets in the Bible. 

One of the amazing things we can do for each other today is help people understand that God sees and knows them. 

When I sit with women who are hurting—just last week, I was sitting with someone who we were praying for, a young woman who is suicidal and cuts herself, and we had a three-hour session with her. 

17

She wears black all the time and is drawn toward the demonic. We’ve done deliverance things with her, and she’s been baptized and everything, but she’s still, you know, struggling. 

My friend said, “I see you in a yellow dress.” 

This girl says, “There’s only one thing with color in my closet, and it’s stuffed in the back and buried. It’s a yellow dress.” 

She has to know from things like that—and two other things happened in that same session—but details that only God would know, spoken through us, so that this girl knows that God sees her. 

God knows her. God knows that her secret favorite color is yellow. 

It’s not a huge revelation or, you know, an earth-shattering thing, but enough to say, “This is personal. This is detailed. This is intimate.” 

So, I hope that answers your question. 

ANN MAREE: 

It answers it beautifully. Yeah. 

I mean, we hear this kind of thing so often, I think, that we might not take it in well enough—about being seen and known and heard and loved. 

I think what you just did with the Samaritan woman is demonstrate that, which I asked you to do. Thank you. 

With you, I can remember many times hearing when she said, “Oh, you worship on that mountain,” and it was like a look-the-other-way kind of statement. 

LYDIA: 

Oh, yes. Now she’s changing the subject. 

ANN MAREE: 

She’s changing the subject. 

LYDIA: 

Right. 

ANN MAREE: 

 

Yeah. It’s amazing how people 2,000 years later can judge her heart accurately. 

LYDIA: 

Isn’t that the truth? 

ANN MAREE: 

I think it was closer to the end of the book, because I can remember finishing the book and going, “Oh, my gosh. I have to go back, and I have to read that last Revelation 21,” where the cessationists bank everything on the idea that we can’t add anything to this book or take anything away. 

I thought, “Oh. Oh, wow. This may even change my thinking about prophecy.” 

And you’re right. It takes away our voice. There is no more prophecy. That’s another—I don’t know—peg in whatever keeps the female voice quiet. We can’t even speak Scripture. 

LYDIA: 

Right. Scripture is the ultimate. It’s our top thing. 

But why did God give us the Holy Spirit if this written Bible is the only thing we need? ANN MAREE: 

Mm. Yeah, that’s another book. 

LYDIA: 

The Holy Spirit is way, way undervalued. We are undereducated about the Holy Spirit, what He does, and that He is the authority. You know? 

ANN MAREE: 

Right. 

LYDIA: 

He speaks what God told Him, and He is the authority. 

ANN MAREE: 

Write that book next, okay? 

So, part three is women in the church, and you talk about some of the passages as, like, a house of cards.

Draw the connections between beliefs and abuse in those house-of-cards passages that are now currently being used to bolster the complementarian—or what you and I would call patriarchal—interpretation. 

LYDIA: 

Okay, so I should probably address the house-of-cards idea first, and then go to— ANN MAREE: 

Sure. Yep. 

LYDIA: 

—and that might help me keep my mind clearer. 

The house of cards has to do with using, for example, 1 Timothy 3:1, which talks about there being the office of elder. 

Then you learn that the word “office” is not even in the Greek. 

The verse actually says, “If anyone desires to oversee others.” It doesn’t say, “If any man desires the office of an elder.” You know? It says, “If anyone would like to oversee other people.” 

How many of us oversee other people? Every mother does. But we women especially are good at shepherding, you know. 

So, “If anyone desires to oversee others.” 

When you start building this house of cards with, say, the office of elder and the office of deacon, and you build everything else on top of that, once you pull those cards out from underneath, everything collapses. 

Even deacon—I mean, I love to say, “Hey, Phoebe in Romans 16:1 was named deacon.” 

So, if you go back to 1 Timothy 3, where it says deacons, as well as elders, should be the husband of one wife, well, clearly it can’t mean that if we’re going to be super literal about everything, you know, and the plain reading. 

Well, then, that phrase can’t be gender-exclusive. It’s just, in general, about moral conduct because, over here, Phoebe is called a deacon. 

But, on the other hand, I don’t believe we should be making so much of these words. 

Paul used all these servant-type words because he was trying not to have a hierarchy or offices. He understood that Jesus said, “This is how the Gentiles do it. They lord over each other. They exercise authority over each other. But not so among you. Not in My kingdom.” 

 

Paul calls himself a servant, a diakonos, or a deacon, in that same book of Romans. And so, we put everything on this idea of authority. 

Where the abuse comes in is that, now that you’ve created these offices, we’re going to exclude people. 

Not just exclude women, but exclude men who have been married before, or men who are not married. Exclude single men, or exclude men who don’t have children because, after all, how is he going to rule his house well if he doesn’t have children to rule? 

That word “rule” is a whole other can of worms. 

But, yeah, that’s how I’d answer that—is basing everything on those so-called offices. ANN MAREE: 

Mm-hmm. Yeah, it was a really good section. 

I mentored a young woman right out of seminary who went to seminary with me, and that was her first question she wanted to know. She said she asked it when she was in seminary, and, oh boy, did she get in trouble. 

But she wanted to know, “Where does it talk about offices in the New Testament?” LYDIA: 

Right. 

I just recently carefully read the transcript where Alisa Childers interviewed Denny Burk and was just amazed at the assumptions, time and time again, that these things exist. There really is not a good answer to that question. 

It’s just not in there. 

ANN MAREE: 

Mm-hmm. But you’re right. We just keep parroting it, believing it, and organizing our lives around it. 

Which, again, is just why it’s so important, and I appreciate you so much for doing the work for us of looking into it and doing some discovery. 

So, part four: women in the home. It’s an incredible chapter. 

Please, listeners, if you don’t read any other part of this book, please pick it up for the submission and obedience chapter. It is so, so helpful for married women. 

 

Talk a little bit about this section on women in the home, but I also want you to give us some hope. What might be a way forward for us? 

LYDIA: 

So, the section that you’re referencing—obedience versus submission—again, tradition has dictated that we kind of assume submission means blind obedience. They’re not actually the same words. 

But definitely, in my upbringing, when we women were told to submit, it was just the nice way of saying, “Hey, obey.” There was never a mutualist type of submission happening. 

Ephesians 5, you know, is the big chapter that is used. Again, there are just so many sleight-of-hand tactics used in that passage, with repeating the word “submit” when it talks about wives, as if that’s a whole different type of submission than the verse before, when it says, “Everyone submit to each other.” 

It should not be repeated. 

But you had a two-part question here. It was— 

ANN MAREE: 

Talking about women in the— 

LYDIA: 

Obedience and submission, and then what was the second part of your question? ANN MAREE: 

Women in the home, but also a way forward, if you want to answer that question. LYDIA: 

A way forward. A way forward—that’s a good question. 

At the end of my book, I have 11 bullet points on things that we should do next. 

Once you understand this truth, I’d say, first of all, we need to just act in the freedom that God has given us. 

We don’t want to do it in a way that comes off as rebellious, but we need to follow the Spirit, not people, not man. 

During COVID, there was a couple who got trapped in my Airbnb with us for nine months. She had filed for divorce, but they came to know Jesus, and we discipled them. 

 

Then we were like, “Oh,” you know, a few months in, we were like, “We should tell you about baptism.” They’re like, “Oh, we’ve heard about that. That’s weird. Not doing it,” you know? 

But eventually, we helped them understand what they needed to do. And, you know, as I said, we live out in the country, so they said, “Okay, we’ll let you baptize us in the lake over there.” 

We were like, “Okay, but you do need—this is about a profession of faith in front of others, so you need an audience. Call your kids in Chicago and have them come down and be your audience.” 

When we went to baptize this couple, my husband and I, I’m like, “They’re my converts too. In fact, I led them to the Lord,” you know? I discipled them alongside him. 

I’m like, “You’re going to baptize him, and I’m going to baptize her.” 

So we did it like that, as a couple and them as a couple. I believe that’s how it was done in the New Testament anyway, for modesty reasons, you know, because you’re handling a wet woman. 

But anyway, you know, when God leads you to minister in people’s lives, you just be free. 

Don’t look around and say, “Wait, is this appropriate? Who’s going to be worried about whether my voice is filling this room inappropriately?” 

If you feel passionate about something you know is truth from God’s Word, you need to speak up, or you’re in disobedience to God. 

I know it’s a tightrope to walk when you’re present with other people who do not believe the same way, and yet that’s what God means when He says, “Obey God rather than men.” 

All of us, at some point, have to figure out what that means in our own lives. 

But I’d say, keep learning so that you can defend beliefs, and emphasize unity—that we’re not trying to cause division. We’re actually advocating for more unity and more support for men, rather than them thinking that it’s all on their shoulders and, if they make a mistake, we’re just like, “Well, that’s all on you, buddy.” 

Show willingness to take equal responsibility in the hard things too. 

ANN MAREE: 

Mm-hmm. Those are good ideas too. 

I know there were several of us when I went to seminary who heard that we couldn’t fulfill the Great Commission because we couldn’t baptize. So you’ve given us a beautiful picture of what that might look like instead. 

 

Wow. Yeah. 

So, you’ve touched on this briefly, and I know this is something on your heart. 

Let’s wrap this up with leaning back into who God is and just the wonderfulness of who He is, but also His heart for mutuality. 

LYDIA: 

I have a blog post on my website, lydiakaiser.com, and it’s kind of my tagline: “Bearing witness to God’s heart for mutuality.” 

I appreciate you bringing it back around to that, because our focus always needs to be Jesus and the big picture. 

The big picture of the Bible is unity, cooperation, and collaboration. Paul called so many others his co laborers. 

If we are to win the world for Jesus, it has to be with the testimony that we are able to do that. 

I think it’s a very poor testimony when the world sees us Christians—even when we have any kind of organization, even down to the very tiniest organization there is, two people in a marriage—we think there has to be hierarchy. 

So, just us being able to work beautifully together is the heart of God, and I believe He’s most pleased with that. It’s definitely His image—the two of us working together with Him. 

ANN MAREE: 

Yeah. Again, if only we could be moving toward that goal. That would be such a blessing and such a refreshment for women. 

LYDIA: 

I’m going to take hope because, you know, here we are in this day and age where we can put the truth out there much easier than— 

ANN MAREE: 

True. 

LYDIA: 

—we used to be able to. 

ANN MAREE: 

 

One hundred percent. Yep. 

LYDIA: 

We’re, you know, publishing books and podcasts and speaking, and, you know, there are more creative ideas for church now. 

This megachurch model that has forced the business model into the church has basically put the person with the most power on top. 

I personally belong to a microchurch and enjoy the mutuality there. I see people’s lives changed because they can sit in a circle, and we listen to anyone who feels a need to talk, and we work it out together, instead of everybody sitting in a dark room facing forward and listening to one man. 

So I have hope that things are changing. 

I see changes in missions where agencies are realizing that Indigenous people and nationals need to run their own ministries. 

I’m still seeing where American missionaries take the complementarian view overseas and say, “This is God’s way of doing things,” and they cause even more harm for these women who are already in situations where there’s a lot of discrimination. 

I’m hoping that, as our mission model changes, it will involve looking more like the first century, where women were so important in spreading the gospel. 

ANN MAREE: 

Mm-hmm. Yeah. 

I appreciated the information you briefly shared just now about microchurches and that movement. I’ve been listening to some podcasts about that recently also, because we’re transitioning from a megachurch and are not sure where to go from here still. 

So, that was—I will put some of those notes—we’ll put those in our show notes, some of those links. But you can also pick up the book and find more information there. 

What’s next for you? Where are you going from here? Do you have another writing project, or what can we look forward to? 

LYDIA: 

Yes. So, one of the fun things about this journey is that I’m meeting other like-minded people, and we’re collaborating on ideas. 

 

Yeah, there are some things stirring in the pot, and we’ll see what God does with them. I’m not quite ready to announce anything yet. 

ANN MAREE: 

Mm-hmm. Well, where will you announce it? Your website? 

LYDIA: 

Yes. 

ANN MAREE: 

Okay. 

LYDIA: 

We’ll be looking for sponsors and other partners to announce it at the same time with us, to make sure that when we launch, it will get as far as possible out there in the media world. 

So, yeah, I’ll let everybody like yourself— 

ANN MAREE: 

Mm-hmm. 

LYDIA: 

—who has interviewed me know. 

ANN MAREE: 

Mm-hmm. Happy to help. 

Thank you. Thanks again. 

I do look forward to more work, whatever it is that it looks like you might do, because I just love spending time in your head with the book. 

Also, I wrote and told you this: I bought the book in May, and my husband confiscated it. I think it was April or May. 

LYDIA: 

Mm-hmm. 

 

ANN MAREE: 

I didn’t get it back until he was finished, and he finished it within three days. 

LYDIA: 

Oh, my. 

ANN MAREE: 

Yeah, pretty impressive for my husband. 

But he was intrigued. He was interested in it just from the title and, like I said, he didn’t put it down. 

So, I recommend it to our audience. Go pick up or order from your favorite bookstore Bible Truth About Women: What They Don’t Tell You by Lydia Grace Kaiser. 

Again, thank you for being with us. 

LYDIA: 

Thank you for having me, Ann Maree. 

ANN MAREE: 

Absolutely. 

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