Is it Good to Be a Woman? Exploring What the Bible Says About Women with Jen Oshman

00:00:02
Speaker 1: Life audio.

00:00:04
Speaker 2: Hey, they're head their creakmar here. Serious question for you today. Have you ever kind of wished you weren't a woman? Have you ever thought, man, it would be so much easier if I wasn't born female, Or life would be better if I wasn't a woman. These are things that maybe stir around in our hearts and heads. Maybe we say I'm out loud, maybe we don't. But today my guest is Jhen Oshman. She is a women's director at her church where her husband's a pastor. But she's written several books. Oh. I had her on the show years ago to talk about one of them, called Enough About Me. And today we're going to have a serious conversation about why we have that struggle, Why do we feel inherent shame for being born female? And what does scripture say? I mean, surely the Bible has some good news for us on that front. And it does, and it goes deeper than maybe just the cliches you've heard or the sound bites you've heard about why it's good to be a woman. Today, we're going to go deep, so I'm glad you're here for it. We've got to set this foundation that it's Okay that God made us female and we don't have to be ashamed of that or our bodies. And listen, Fron, if you're struggling, you don't have to struggle alone. We've got an online community called Waiting for Weight Loss that you can join, or you can join us on our forty day journey that just began last week. Okay, you missed a couple of sessions, but jump in, don't struggle alone. You can learn more at improvebody image dot com. Now let's get to finish. Jenn Ashman, welcome back to the Compared to his show, it's been.

00:01:47
Speaker 3: A little while, it's been a while. Thank you so much, so I'm excited to be back with you today.

00:01:53
Speaker 2: Well, I'm excited to have you join me for this conversation that I think is going to touch a nerd, a place for a lot of women that maybe they didn't even recognize needed to be touched. Yeah, and the topic is is it even good that I was born a woman? You know, I think women with body of MAAG issues especially, there's so much shame around the body in general that sometimes that can spill over into like, man, it would just be better if I'd been.

00:02:27
Speaker 1: Born a man.

00:02:29
Speaker 2: You know, I hate all of this woman's stuff.

00:02:32
Speaker 1: I hate the pressure.

00:02:35
Speaker 2: I hate, you know, the feeling of like having to compete as a woman in this world, all of those things that swirl around what it means to be a woman, especially here in the West. And you've been studying this, I know, and so I thought you'd be the perfect person for a conversation. Just tell us, Jen, like, is it good to be a woman? Yeah?

00:03:01
Speaker 3: It is a fair question, and you're right. It's something I think about all the time for a number of reasons. One, I have four daughters who are now eighteen and older, and we raise them all over the world. So we were missionaries in multiple different countries, and so I kept coming up against this idea of what does it mean to be a woman in this culture or in this culture? How are women treated in the church over here.

00:03:24
Speaker 1: Or over here?

00:03:26
Speaker 3: Of course, everywhere we go when we have four girls in tow people make comments and I know that they mean well, I know that it's small talk. I know they mean to be funny. But the reality is the root of their comments is a sinister belief that I think we've ingested as a people.

00:03:45
Speaker 1: And I would argue globally.

00:03:48
Speaker 3: I mean, for sure, body image is an issue, especially in the West, but when we leave the West, we actually confront this whole global idea that girls are less desirable. In fact, a female genocide, You're infanticide is not a history. You know, there's sex selective abortion remains prominent throughout the world and is not something that's protected everywhere in the United States. So this is it's a heavy topic. And so, like I said, when we leave the house with four girls, you know, we get funny comments, and my girls and I have actually come up with a number of very sort of pithy, kind but firm responses to stop people in their tracks. But the truth is, it can be dangerous to be a girl. It can be very vulnerable to be a woman, and there are lots of good reasons that some women wonder if it wouldn't be better to be a man.

00:04:50
Speaker 2: Right right, Well, you know, I didn't know we were going to go here necessarily, But just as as you're sharing that, I'm thinking back to my twenties. I was single until I was in my early thirties, and all those years I spent as a young professional traveling alone, going to my car at night alone, you know, all of those things, and remembering feeling like resentment that I had to be scared. If I was a man, I wouldn't have to worry about it. If I was a man, you know, I could, you know, I'd have more freedom those sorts of things. And so, yeah, it is an interesting maybe setup that we have.

00:05:39
Speaker 1: For shame. Yeah right, I mean, is that what you call it? I think so that's definitely part of it.

00:05:44
Speaker 3: You know, the reality is that in general, women are going to be physically weaker and physically more vulnerable.

00:05:52
Speaker 1: The reality is also.

00:05:54
Speaker 3: In most countries and in the US, there's going to be an increased vulnerability when it comes to things like pay and benefit and making space for our biological functions of being pregnant and our monthly menstruation and going through menopause. I mean, all of these burdens that are unique to being female. And the reality is our culture and our practices, the workplace, compensation, promotion, these things are really set up around a sort of normal male biology and make it hard to be female in these places. And so you're right, I still think about my safety when I walk around, you know, when I'm anywhere, I travel alone all the time. I have trained my girls very specifically to have their shoulders back and their heads up and to look people in the eye and to not you know. So I think, yeah, shame is part of it. I think part of it is our lived experience being fearful or being abused. One in three women is abused. All of us know at least one or moultiple women who've been abused.

00:07:02
Speaker 1: So it's shame.

00:07:03
Speaker 3: I think it's fear. It's just the lived reality that it's harder to do a lot of things in the world, even in the church, even in our amongst our friends and family as a female. And so the question is what do we do with that?

00:07:18
Speaker 1: You know? Right, what's the good news?

00:07:20
Speaker 2: Jen? I mean, you know, the scripture has something to say to us.

00:07:26
Speaker 1: What's the encouragement here? Yeah, it's true.

00:07:30
Speaker 3: It can feel heavy, and I you know, I wrote a children's book a few years ago called It's Good to Be a Girl. And so there have been endless jokes, of course amongst my own daughters and friends and family, who will say things like, oh, it's good to be a girl, right.

00:07:44
Speaker 1: You know, or like what about when it's not good to be.

00:07:46
Speaker 3: A girl, and so as someone who loves God and loves his word and loves his people, I do want to know what is the good news? Like why do I think that it is good to be a girl? And I think we have to just come back to a biblical perspective and an understanding of who our creator is, our creation story, how he created us. There's a lot in there that I think as a culture we have glossed over. We're like, yeah, God created the heavens, so there is blah blah, blah blah. Let me move on, let me go to these harder texts. And there's so much that we miss, even in that fundamental reality of how we were made very good. So I keep wanting to bring my conversations back to that, Like, Okay, culture has told you this, your lived experience is this, that's all valid, But what is the word of God say? What does God say? What is fundamentally true about you as an image bearer?

00:08:45
Speaker 1: Who is female?

00:08:46
Speaker 3: True, regardless of what culture says true, regardless of what your experience is.

00:08:50
Speaker 1: What is the foundation of this conversation?

00:08:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that because femininity is defined for us. Yeah, I countless ways right to be feminine. Is to look like this, or to be feminine is to stand up for this cause, or to be feminine is you know, there's accounts that call themselves biblical women had accounts have so many things, and I'm like, oh my goodness, like no, so, yeah, what does it mean to be feminine? Yeah?

00:09:25
Speaker 1: According to scripture.

00:09:26
Speaker 3: I love this question, and I'm with you, hoether I am exhausted by the takes on this, absolutely exhausted because everybody's got a loud agenda, and I can't tell you. Being someone who writes a lot about what it means to be female, I get dms and questions all the time. Women want to know what is biblical femininity and how do I do it? Like give me the checklist. Everybody's dying for the checklist, and they're very disappointed when I write back and say, you know what, the scriptures actually have very few gendered instructions. There's not a lots. If you look at the wh the whole story of the Bible and interpret the Old Testament in light of the New Testament and sort of take it as one package in light of Christ and in light of the you know, the light of the creation account.

00:10:11
Speaker 1: Put it all together.

00:10:12
Speaker 3: What we find is there are a very few gendered instructions in the Bible. And so what I want to do is constantly take people back to Genesis. And I know that it might feel elementary, and it is, but it's something we're missing, and it is that the Creation account, specifically Genesis too, where God, you know, we get sort of a zoomed in version of the story where God creates Adam from the dust of the earth and his breath, and then he says, he puts Adam in the garden, gives him these instructions, and then says, wait, Adam, it is not good that you are alone. We have this refrain over and over in Creation, and it was good, and it was good, and it was good and ultimately and it was very good. But then Adam's alone, and God is like, Adam, it's not good that you're alone. And so let's just pause right there, because what that tells us is that the image of God requires an expression in male and females. That there's more that God wants to say about his image and his character and what he's like than can be expressed in men alone. Not only that, but the tasks God gave to Adam, to cultivate the earth, to rule and subduecreation, to create culture was a task that was given to both Adam and Eve. It was something that couldn't be accomplished by Adam alone. That was what was not good about it. It couldn't be done without a helper. And I'll just briefly say this, and then we can go in a different direction if you want, but don't.

00:11:40
Speaker 1: You've probably talked about.

00:11:41
Speaker 3: This before, but I think it's never boring to repeat that. That Hebrew word for helper is a very strong word. It's azer, and it has connotations of protection and being a shield and being an ally. It's even a word that's used of God more than anything else in the Old Testament scripture. So we know if God is called an azer when he calls even as aer. This is dignified. This is powerful, This is strong. This is not secondary. It's not an afterthought. It's not an assistant or an intern who.

00:12:13
Speaker 1: Gets the coffee.

00:12:14
Speaker 3: It is somebody who is necessary, or the task cannot be accomplished, or the war cannot be won, or the victory cannot be attained unless the helper comes on the scene. So right there, if we just slow down in the creation story, we're already seeing some significant truths about what it means to be female.

00:12:35
Speaker 2: One of the things that I talked to him about in terms of finding some level of freedom with body magsues right, is knowing your purpose right. And I don't mean that in a specific like you know, I'm supposed to have this job kind of way, But really, what were we created for? And of course some of that is gender neutral, if you will, right to worship God, bring glory to God, to know him, make him known. But in and of itself, being born female does give us more hands about our purpose, doesn't it. Yes?

00:13:08
Speaker 3: I love that, So what we The reality that Eve was needed shows us that the genders are not interchangeable. That it's just to be male and to be female is distinct and both are necessary. So right off the bat, we know it's very good to be male and it's very good to be female. What I love as you study the scriptures with this sort of lens on of like, Okay, what does the Bible tell me about being a woman? What are the women in scripture doing? Let's just put those lenses on and it will radically change the way you read the Bible. But one thing I love to see is how incredibly diverse the women in scripture are.

00:13:46
Speaker 1: There is just no cookie cutter.

00:13:49
Speaker 3: But what you also see is oftentimes because of their gender, they are allowed to do certain things or they can leverage role in society specifically because they're women, which I think is so powerful. Like one of the first stories that I think of is the Hebrew midwives Shiffra and Pua, who you know, Pharaoh said, I want you to do away with murder all the israel boys that are born, and Shiffra and Pua refused to disobey the Lord, their God, and these women literally deliver Israel.

00:14:26
Speaker 1: You know, that's amazing.

00:14:27
Speaker 3: They protect these the baby boys and they deliver up another generation of Israel. And they can do that because they're women. And you just start to see that time and time again throughout the scriptures.

00:14:40
Speaker 1: Is well, God made.

00:14:40
Speaker 3: Her female, therefore she could work in this space and do this thing. And I think that that's pretty mind blowing when you start to see the stories through that lens.

00:14:50
Speaker 1: Yes, I love that. I love that.

00:14:52
Speaker 2: Well, you just wrote a book on this, so that's why you've been studying it. I want you to tell us more about that book. But there's a woman listening today, I am sure that's thinking, Okay, yeah, that's nice. I know about I know there's women in the Bible. I know I'm made in God's image, but I still just really hate being a woman. I hate all that's entailed there.

00:15:16
Speaker 1: I just how about you encourage her? Jen, Yeah.

00:15:21
Speaker 3: I actually run into women who feel this way quite a bit, and it's kind of the thing, Well, here's what I see a lot of times women don't know that they feel that way, and it bubbles up, you know, once you start to talk about it. They go, actually, I think this is what I feel. And there's women who are very aware that they feel that way and it's been a fight to be content or they even haven't found contentment yet.

00:15:47
Speaker 1: So I do think it's.

00:15:47
Speaker 3: Something that we should go ahead and name, like this is here because a lot of us grew up with fathers or in households, or maybe teachers or coaches or pastors or church leaders who said it outright or said it in some other way that I kind of wish I had had a son. It's too bad you have those strong gifts because they go better on men, you know, We've just received them, like this is kind of the cultural waters that we're swimming in. We have either heard it from a loved one or a leader, or we've ingested it from social media or movies or music. Like, let's just be honest, as girls, we have heard that. So I think it's good to name it, and it's good to go that's actually just not true. That is something the enemy has used, the enemy who hates the image of God, who hates women, who hates to see women free and thriving and flourishing. This is something he's actually whispered in my ear. And I'm going to go ahead and identify it, and I'm going to reject it because this is not from the Lord. So I think we have to work hard to take every thought captive and those things that play over and over, unquestioned, rent free in our heads. No time is up on that.

00:16:59
Speaker 1: We're done. That that's good. And then what if we.

00:17:02
Speaker 3: Started to study the scriptures, like what if we really dove in with a new lens of like why why is it good to be a woman? What are the what's the good news I see in here? When I teach stories at conferences and out retreats that highlight the stories of women. It is crazy how many women who are older in the faith who are like man, we just studied that entire book, and I never heard these stories of the women and their pastors aren't sexist, and they're not out to be mean or whatever.

00:17:31
Speaker 1: They've just missed it.

00:17:33
Speaker 3: Like they've made the heroes of the story a lot of the time just the men in the story. Yeah, and so I have I have compassion for that, and I reserve judgment. I'm not saying that they're on a mission to degrade women, but women who've been walking with the Lord and reading the Bible for decades say to me all the time, I just never saw that. I never heard that, And I'm like, well, it's right there. It's as black and white as the story about the men that you've heard. So let's start elevating these stories and really seeing them because they're there.

00:18:00
Speaker 1: I love that. I love that well.

00:18:01
Speaker 2: And I guess one tool we could use to study the women is this new Bible study you have, right, Can you tell it's a book and a Bible study or are they all together in one? It's just a Bible study, just a Bible city Okay, tell us more.

00:18:13
Speaker 3: Yeah. Ah man, this is like I feel like this is my most important, like the work of my life, and I'm so excited that it's out. It is seven teaching sessions that are all digital and online where I teach from God's word, and then six weeks of personal study five days a week, and it's basically a biblical theology of being female. I go from Genesis to Revelation and study what the Bible says about being a woman.

00:18:37
Speaker 1: Wow.

00:18:37
Speaker 3: And the study is called very good because honestly, I know, listen, I do not shrink back from those hard passages, the hard old Testament law about women where you're like, I'm sorry, what is that telling me? To some Appall's words about women that were like this is not sitting well with me. Like, I don't shrink back from any of that, but I help you study it in light of the whole story of Scripture. And what I'm thrilled to report back is that as we use scripture to interpret Scripture, as we understand God's heart for women, as we understand Jesus's relationship with women, the bottom line is what the Bible says about being a woman is truly very good.

00:19:17
Speaker 1: I love that.

00:19:18
Speaker 2: Okay, without giving away too much of the book, what was like your favorite thing, like what surprised you the most or you were like, whoa, this this is?

00:19:28
Speaker 1: This is good?

00:19:29
Speaker 3: Okay, Oh my gosh, that's really hard to pick. I think I'm I'm gonna tell you the one that feels most pertinent to this conversation.

00:19:38
Speaker 1: Okay.

00:19:39
Speaker 3: But I'm just also going to say that I really love studying Jesus and Women, Okay, and also Paul and his co laboring women. It like blew my framework of Paul. I think it would blow yours too if you studied it. So Jesus and Women is like chicken soup for the soul. Yeah, Paul and Women is like, oh my gosh, this is blowing my mind.

00:19:58
Speaker 1: Okay, So here comes my real answer.

00:20:00
Speaker 2: Okay, Okay, that's a good teasers.

00:20:04
Speaker 3: So back to the law, studying the ancient the law that it's given to ancient Israel in the Old Testament, and there's I mean, people have PhDs on this, so we can go. We can't talk about it all right here, we can't talk about it all in my Bible study. But I was especially curious about the menstruation laws, Like what is going on with the fact that women are supposed to be secluded for seven days of their period and then seven days after their period as a woman in twenty twenty six. When I read that, it feels unfair. It feels like I'm being sent to time out for having a period that I don't really want to have. And the you know, like, Lord, you gave us our periods, so why are we.

00:20:46
Speaker 1: Doing this right?

00:20:48
Speaker 2: And I'm thinking, Jen, before you continue, I'm thinking, it would have been better for me to be secluded seven days before my period.

00:20:56
Speaker 1: That's probably fair.

00:20:57
Speaker 2: That week after is great for.

00:20:58
Speaker 1: Me, that's probably fair. That's probably fair.

00:21:02
Speaker 3: So to get to the bottom of this requires so much work, and we cannot do it in this particular conversation all the way. But I want to tell you this, as I studied the Old Testament culture, that made a big difference, like the representation and the protection that fathers and oldest brothers were supposed to offer the women in their family. And I want to really, I really want to highlight the representation the responsibility, not the authority. We do not see authoritarian rule in the Old Testament, but we see a representation and responsibility. So that was big men were sort of out there representing the women in their household, in the public sphere, in every way.

00:21:43
Speaker 1: So there's that.

00:21:45
Speaker 3: Then there's this whole issue of blood and Israel believing rightly so that life is in the blood, and blood under a sacrificial system is a really big deal. So they're wanting to bet when blood is present, Israel is life.

00:22:00
Speaker 1: Hang on, we got take note. We need to be very careful here.

00:22:05
Speaker 3: It's also a system, a sacrificial system, where there there is ritual cleanliness, ritual uncleanliness, moral cleanliness, moral uncleanliness. And so there's this idea that when a woman is bleeding, she's ritually unclean, not morally unclean. But again, because there's blood, Israel's you know, has this heightened awareness and is like, we need to be careful, she's bleeding. So this law that said women need to go basically have a rest, take a rest, You get your own bed, you get your own stool, you get your own chair. You don't do any household chores, you don't do any cooking. Taking care of the children is needs to be done by the rest of the household. It's essentially the week of your period and the week after is meant to be spent resting and recovering for the protection and the care of the women.

00:22:59
Speaker 1: That's amazing.

00:23:00
Speaker 2: I'm sure I'm going to mention this to my husband later.

00:23:03
Speaker 1: Yes, it's biblical. I need two weeks. I want to need you to quick dinner for the next two weeks. Right, anyway, I didn't do it justice.

00:23:13
Speaker 3: But if you spend time understanding the history of the context and the care and the law and the presence of blood, what unfolds actually is that God's heart is to go to an extreme to protect women and girls. And I love that and I see that all over the scriptures.

00:23:29
Speaker 2: Yes that's not I mean what you just described is a sentiment of care, not a sentiment of ew stay away, let me punish you. And I just don't think we've read it.

00:23:41
Speaker 1: That way right right.

00:23:43
Speaker 3: It requires work, Like if we want to know really what God is saying, we're going to have to do some work. Pulling out these sound bites and running with a little clip is not doing us any favors, and it's actually attributing to God things that aren't true about him. So I want to invite women to do that hard work of really understanding what the scriptures say.

00:24:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so good, And in a culture that has a million clips a minute, is probably not even overstating a million clips a minute of how to be a woman, what it looks like to be a woman, how you can be a better woman, how do you can be the best woman? To tune that out and to tune in to what is God really saying here? Yeah, what is God's heart for women? He sees us as very good? Like Jen perfect title, and I just love that. I'm wondering if as we close today, would you be willing just to pray for women who are really struggling with this. I mean you mentioned a minute ago that you know not everyone knows this is the heart of her struggle. And before we start recording, I kind of shared with you like the same here as I talk to women, as I coach women, no one comes in with that as the lead. But the more we dig, we often find that maybe what's beneath my body Magicius is I'm just frustrated I.

00:25:08
Speaker 1: Was born female.

00:25:10
Speaker 2: So would you be willing to pray for the woman who's struggling with that today?

00:25:14
Speaker 1: As we close? I would love to do that.

00:25:16
Speaker 3: And I also want to invite that sister to open up the Bible in the Gospel of Luke and go through with pen and paper and take notes on every interaction that Jesus has with women. I was so ministered to as I saw how Jesus never was ashamed of women or embarrassed to be with women, like he received the embrace of women. He embraced women the way Jesus treats women. I want that to saturate our thought life because that's God's heart for women. So do that, And then in line with that, let me pray for us. Thank you, Jun I love that Jesus. We are so thankful that you love us so well, that you are not inconvenienced by women, annoyed by women, that you don't look at any girl ever created in your image and say, man, she should have been a boy like you made us girls and women on purpose, for a very good purpose.

00:26:09
Speaker 1: Lord.

00:26:10
Speaker 3: So we thank you that you made us this way God. And on behalf of my sisters who don't feel thankful, Lord, I pray that they could borrow my faith and borrow my gratitude and trust by faith that they will eventually see through your scriptures and by the help of your spirit that it is good to be female. Lord, would you renew our thoughts? Would you just capture our imaginations the things that we sort of wake up thinking about or dwell on when we're at a traffic light or cooking dinner or walking the dog. Lord, bring us back to the truth, and that is that you made us just like this on purpose, for a very good purpose. Lord, Help us to believe you. Help us to walk in that strength and that truth. Jesus, for your glory, for our good, for the good of our daughters and our sisters, and our mothers and our grandmothers.

00:26:59
Speaker 1: In Jesus' name.

00:27:00
Speaker 3: Amen.

00:27:00
Speaker 2: Amen.

00:27:01
Speaker 1: Oh, I love it. Thank you so much, John, appreciating that.

00:27:04
Speaker 2: Okay, tell us all the things, like where we can connect with you.

00:27:08
Speaker 1: You've got the New Bible.

00:27:09
Speaker 2: Study out, but you had a book that that was the reason you were on my show years and years ago, called Enough About Me, which was a fantastic book.

00:27:17
Speaker 1: I would highly recommend it.

00:27:18
Speaker 2: Tell you've done a lot of things in between the last time we talked, So just tell us all the things and where to connect with you.

00:27:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, I.

00:27:24
Speaker 3: Have a website, John Ashman dot com where you can find my books and some other writings and podcasts and things like that.

00:27:30
Speaker 1: And yeah, very good.

00:27:31
Speaker 3: It's a Life Way Women Bible study. You can find it on Amazon or at LifeWay. Yeah, and I would love to keep up with anybody on social media. This is a passion of mine and I love to connect with women and just be an encouragement and a voice.

00:27:44
Speaker 1: So thank you all for listening.

00:27:46
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, and I'll put those links in the show notes. Well, Jen, thanks again for being with us today and encouraging us around this really important topic. This is this is foundational, So thank you. This conversation is long overdue. I appreciate you being here for it. Thank you, Heather, and thank you for watching or listening today. I hope something today has helped you stop comparing and start living.

00:28:07
Speaker 1: Bank Bye Bade.

00:28:10
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