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- [00:00]
Tim
Hey everyone. If you're looking for a meaningful gift to give for Mother's Day this year, a subscription to Wayfair could be the perfect thing. Subscribe this week and we'll send issue seven, which is all about trust, women's voices and women's experiences right away. You'll also get issue number eight, which we're working on right now this fall. These are beautiful, high quality, full color magazines packed with incredible art, wisdom and thoughtful writing. These there are links to get a look inside issue 7 and to subscribe for 20% off in the show notes. Thank you so much for your support.
- [00:39]
Aubrey Chavez
Hey everybody, this is Aubrey Chavez from Faith Matters. Today's episode is a personal one for me and probably for many of you, especially if you often find yourself deferring to somebody else's inspiration or noticing a tendency to believe that somebody else's knowing is more trustworthy than your own. Our guest today is Deidre Nicole Greene. She's a professor at Graduate Theological Union, a theologian and scholar whose work explores gender, faith and the Christian life. The starting place for this conversation was Deidre's just released Wayfair magazine article called Envying Hannah. And at the center of this discussion is a concept called epistemic confidence, which is really just trust in our capacity to receive and recognize truth for ourselves. And while this shows up differently for each of us, research suggests that it doesn't fall evenly. Women in particular are often more likely to feel that their knowing needs to be confronted, confirmed, or mediated by someone with more authority before it really counts. Deidre helps us see how quickly this gets complicated, especially at church, where the line between agency and people pleasing can blur without even realizing it. She invites us to ask harder questions like when does deference begin to erode our connection to the divine? And when are we silencing something sacred within ourselves? And maybe most importantly, what becomes possible when we show up differently, when we act with courage, claim our spiritual authority and sacred agency, and allow ourselves to be fully seen and known, even if it means risking being wrong. This conversation was so stretching and empowering and we are so excited to share it with you. Now to read Didri's piece or subscribe to Wayfair, just head to wayfairmagazine.org thanks so much for listening. And now here's Deidre Green. All right, well Deidre, welcome to the podcast. We've been so looking forward to this conversation and to finally meeting you. We've had you on our list for literally years and we're just so excited to finally get to talk to you. Thank you so much for being here.
- [02:32]
Deidre Nicole Greene
Thank you. It's great to be with you both.
- [02:35]
Aubrey Chavez
I will just tell you this piece that you have in Wayfair just. It articulated something so particular to my life story that it kind of like took my breath away, actually, when I read it for the first time. And I immediately sent it to both of my sisters because we have just. We've spent so many hours and hours over the years talking about this idea of epistemic confidence, which I didn't know had a name. And it was such a gift to just have language, to not only, like, be able to describe my own experience better, but to really understand the problem. It just felt like such a relief, really, I think, is the feeling. So I'm just so excited to get to talk to you about this topic. I think I'd love for you to just start with your own story. You tell a couple of really personal stories about preparing to leave on a mission and being on your mission where you really start to recognize some tension or around confidence in knowing what you know. So if you. If you're open to it, I would love for you to just start there in these experiences that you had as a young adult.
- [03:39]
Deidre Nicole Greene
Sure, Absolutely. So the two experiences that you're referring to. The first one was as I was preparing to go on a mission. I was in my last semester as a BYU student and, you know, was taking this final step of meeting with my stake president, who I had never met before, and he asked me to basically give him reasons why I wanted to go on a mission. Of course, this is the early 2000s, where women kind of had to make a case to go on a mission. So I told him my reasons, and he responded with, you're right. The Lord wants you to go on a mission. And I remember just being really struck by that. You know, there's nothing, like, inherently negative about that. But I was just surprised I hadn't come in seeking answers about whether I was supposed to go on a mission. I was literally taking the final step to submit my papers. And so that always just struck me as a little bit funny. But at any rate, as I talk about in the article then on my mission, there was this kind of wrestle for. For much of my mission around when I would go home, and I had come out with a couple of other sisters, and they were scheduled to go home on this earlier transfer, which was the same time I expected or felt like I should go, but I was scheduled to go much later. And so there was, you Know, back and forth over a long period. But my mission president finally told me that I was receiving revelation from the wrong source and that this was coming from the adversary. Which, as you can imagine was a really tough thing to hear, especially as a 22 year old who is just really trying to do my best to learn how to follow inspiration and revelation and act faithfully on it. It was also hard because I loved my mission president. You know, I, he's passed away now, but I still think the world of him. You know, he was a really important mentor for me. Yeah. So his wife actually intervened at one point. We were very close and she knew that I was having this wrestle in this struggle and she actually called me on the phone and said, you know, I love my husband and I think he's thinking about what's best for his mission and not what's best for you and you need to trust yourself. And so there was like this little period where I took that step forward of, you know, saying I am going to go home on this earlier transfer. But I just, I couldn't stick with it. There was just too much anxiety, too much guilt, too much worry that I was, you know, going to make this bad decision with eternal consequences and that my mission president knew better than I did.
- [06:27]
Tim
So I'm curious what, in that very first experience, what did you say is your stake? Your stake, President, when you're first deciding to go on a mission?
- [06:35]
Deidre Nicole Greene
Yeah.
- [06:35]
Tim
What do you remember how you actually processed that at the time? Like did you recognize that there was an imbalance in terms of the epistemic confidence between you or was it just. I'm sensing something feels a little bit off here.
- [06:50]
Deidre Nicole Greene
I mean Definitely at 20, I didn't have the language of gendered epistemic confidence, so I wasn't thinking about it in those terms but, but definitely it felt off and a little jarring and just surprising. Like, oh, the assumption here is that I need someone, a male priesthood authority to tell me whether I'm right or wrong. Even if it's not really a question for me. I think that's probably as, as, you know, as far as I can take it from my 20 year old perspective, it was just striking more than anything.
- [07:25]
Aubrey Chavez
Yeah, I, that felt like such a familiar story and it kind of opened my eyes because I realized like this, this happens with such good intentions, like leaders who are genuine and they're, and they and are genuinely trying to support us. And it made me realize how it's just so subtle. Like it's, there are explicit ways that I think we teach this confidence. And then there are these other ways that are just, it's almost just so unconscious, you don't even realize that you're. This is sort of being reiterated to you. And that was such a good example that even just having a priesthood leader validate that, yes, this was a revelation. You may not, you may not be processing that he could have said this isn't a revelation, but it's just really feeding this narrative that someone needed to confirm or disconfirm something that you thought you, you had received from God. But I'd love for you to expand on this idea of gendered confidence. Like, how else do you see this playing out or being either nourished or diminished in the church between men and women?
- [08:30]
Deidre Nicole Greene
Yes, I will answer that question. I just want to rewind for a second and just reiterate what you just said about how well meaning it is. And I really do believe that certainly in these circumstances that I'm describing, like, there's no sense in which I think this was about trying to do anything other than the right thing. But I think we, we have to really grapple with the way in which the structure of our institution lends itself to these kinds of imbalances that can get really exaggerated. Right. And that we need to do things to offset it. In terms of the gendered confidence, this comes from the philosopher of religion, Pamela Sue Anders, and she basically talks about to have epistemic confidence is to have confidence that I can know things, that I'm capable of knowing things, that I have authority as a knower. Right. And to kind of unpack that a little bit, just to say there are people embodied in certain kinds of ways whose authority to make knowledge claims goes rather unquestioned. A lot of other people's whose claims to knowledge or claims to their own experience are much more questioned. We can see examples of that all over in society. But, but her point is that because of the way that women show up in the world, the way that they're socialized in terms of gender, the way that they're perceived because of their embodiment, etc. Means that they tend to have less confidence in their own authority to know, and that they need that knowledge to be mediated by other people and people with more privileged positions. And so, so the idea is that we want to create a situation in which women claim that authority and that ability to know that I can know. I can know the truth for myself. I can know the truth, period. And I can act ethically with integrity according to that Truth. So, yeah, I think we can see how we've have a culture where that's difficult. Right. For one thing, because the people we've talked about, mission presidents, stake presidents, those are positions that can only be held by men. And so there is this sense, even though we believe in women's power of revelation and inspiration, we believe that women have certain kinds of stewardships. There really are no spaces in which a woman's personal revelation could not be trumped by a priesthood leader who's embodied as male. And so I think, whether consciously or subconsciously, that structure is operating on both of these particular genders to give a certain sense. One may be prone to having an overly developed sense of confidence in their own knowing and moving away from the interdependence that I believe is at the heart of our faith and our theology. And then women feeling overly dependent and having a lack of confidence. And so what I see is that we need to take a really conscious, intentional approach to offsetting those two tendencies and figuring out ways that we can help women cultivate a sense of confidence in their authority, to know their authority of personal revelation. And men may be sometimes questioning their own sense a little bit more and being more open and receptive to what others have to say.
- [12:12]
Tim
I think this gets into, for me as well, some issues that are not purely cultural, but even some explicit theology, or at least, you know, things that we're taught in a pretty specific way at church. This concept of stewardship, for example, where, you know, parents have specific stewardship over their children, for instance, therefore can receive revelation on behalf of those children. And then it's sort of like, you know, bishops being able to receive revelation on behalf of their ward members, stake presidents, et cetera, et cetera. And so I think what people might grapple with is the explicit nature of that teaching. Meaning, I. There is this person, a priesthood leader, you know, always, you know, in our case, a man who can receive revelation on my behalf. So how do you. How do you think about that concept?
- [12:56]
Deidre Nicole Greene
Yeah, so, I mean, I. I think that there's something really beautiful within that teaching around stewardship and being able to be in tune with the needs of people that we care for. Right. Whatever that looks like. And I think that at the heart of our theology, and certainly at the heart of the Book of Mormon, to my mind, is this idea of interdependence and dialogue. Right. So, like in my brief theological introduction to the Book of Jacob, I try to illustrate in a number of different ways how truth, salvation, right, human flourishing, all of these things are dependent on dialogical relation relationships. And so I think that's maybe where I would want the emphasis to be on less the sort of top down. Yes, we have a hierarchical structure. And it's not to say that we can't work within that, but to say that within that hierarchical structure we could certainly be more open to dialogue. Right. That even people who are in positions of stewardship need to be more receptive to what the people within that stewardship have to say and what their inspiration, what their truth, what their experience is about. And so I think we have just, you know, kind of problematically made it more top down than it needs to be. And I don't think that that is the nature of revelation or the nature of truth or how we'll evolve as a community even within the existing structures. We need to have a clear sense that we are all interdependent and that people with more authority need to be equally receptive to what others have to say as the people under their authority.
- [14:51]
Tim
Yeah. If I can just call out like one positive example that we've had recently, our, our bishopric, the way that they've done callings in our ward, the war that we've been in for the past couple of years, is to set up an appointment and start a dialogue literally with that, with the. The member of the ward and the questions, for me, at least. And I think, Aubrey, you can say, obviously, but I think your experience was pretty similar where it was like, so what interests you? Like, what kinds of things do you think you'd be good at? Like, what callings have been on your mind? And it is really this back and forth. And not only is it somewhat empowering, you know, as a member of the ward, and it feels. It just feels better and more honest. But the end result too is now we have a ward full of people who are serving callings that they like and that they feel naturally suited to or, or called to in a genuine. In a genuine way. So it's just been positive all around, I think, for, For. For us.
- [15:43]
Aubrey Chavez
I'll just add, I think that that whole experience, that was actually really healing for me in a lot of ways because. Paul. Sorry, I actually wasn't even thinking about this, but I think it sort of returned some of that. It felt like. It felt like they gave something back that the question was like, I think this is a calling. Do you think this is your calling? And yeah, I think because I've been in a lot of rooms where the feeling was more like, God told me this is your calling. And you can either understand that and be aligned or you can make a different choice. And of course you have agency to do that.
- [16:23]
Deidre Nicole Greene
But.
- [16:23]
Aubrey Chavez
But it's not the right choice because I've already spoken with God.
- [16:26]
Deidre Nicole Greene
That's right. That's right.
- [16:27]
Aubrey Chavez
And I realized. I think there's a wound there. And it really was a gift to just feel like someone in authority was saying, I also trust that you have a connection. I'm pretty sure this is what I'm getting. And can you validate my. My revelation? And it really was a gift to feel that coming from someone who has authority right now. But I want. I wanted to ask you, though, I. I love this idea that you were just getting at that. Like it sometimes, you know, that phrase that it's our weaknesses, our. Our strengths overused. And it feels like maybe this is a case of that, that. That maybe we're socialized to sort of have these different strengths or maybe we come with these different strengths or there's different strengths that come with masculine and feminine energy. And, And. And you talk about. You write about Mosiah 4. 9 and King Benjamin sort of addressing this idea of understanding the will of God. And I really appreciated the way you offered for us to understand this so that it would fit whatever your particular weakness is. So I'd love for you to talk about that, if you would.
- [17:28]
Deidre Nicole Greene
Yeah. Yeah. Well, just as you're thinking about this concept of weakness, I mean, one way to understand, you know, I think the situation we're in is that we ask certain people to overuse. Right. Certain muscles in this. In this trajectory and dynamic that we have, and we actually kind of encourage certain people to let their muscles atrophy. So in Mosiah 4. 9, Benjamin says, Look, you don't understand everything that the Lord understands. Right? And the idea is that we have this epistemic humility before God, that we surrender our will to God. And I love that meaning of this, the scripture. That actually is what got me on a mission in the first place. But I. I'm inviting people in this article to actually take it in the gendered sense, even though that doesn't seem to be what Benjamin's getting at, which is to empower people to think about the fact that their priesthood leaders are not infallible, they're not omniscient. Right. And we can respect priesthood authority and we can respect stewardship without taking such an extreme stance that there could be no mistakes or no misinterpretation. All human beings are subject to misinterpreting revelation, right? Or taking our own thoughts or impulses or ideas or desires as revelation. So we all need to put ourselves in check. And I think it could just be an empowering way to read this Scripture, to think about the fact that I don't have to take everything as God's direct revelation. There might be things this person doesn't know that they need to know. There might be context and. And maybe this is just a situation in which God wants me to grow my own muscles, right? And strengthen my own muscles and my own ability to show my faithfulness. And I just want to bring in a central concept of our theology, which is becoming a Zion people, right? An emphasis on the becoming. We are not there, and it's an ongoing process, and it's part of our covenant keeping to establish this kind of just, equal, interdependent community. And I think any. Anything we can do to create that is something we're obligated to do. And I just want to be clear, this isn't about exploding a certain structure necessarily. It's about appreciating that there are ways we can navigate the structure that we have that are more empowering to people who are disempowered and that invite people who maybe are prone to overstepping and overusing power to actually exercise a little more humility and a little clearer sense that they're dependent on others and other information as well.
- [20:19]
Tim
So one interesting thing this is making me think of is that I think, well, a lot of the place that the rubber actually meets the road in this conversation is between conversations that happen somewhat locally and with priesthood authorities in local congregations. But I wonder, too, and this is not something we teach explicitly, but I think implicitly, at least in an earlier version of my life, I kind of imagined, you know, bishops get it right a lot. You know, maybe call it 70% of the time. And then stake presidents probably like 80%. And it kind of goes up all the way until, like, you get to the president of the church and they're just right all the time because they're literally face to face with. With God. You know, I don't know if that resonates, but that was kind of, I think, how I thought about it. So in your mind, Deidre, is it true that this kind of, like, epistemic humility is required all the way through the value chain? And also, if you don't want to answer that or you want to cut.
- [21:14]
Deidre Nicole Greene
You're not pulling any punches today, Tim.
- [21:18]
Tim
Originally, the question was going to be framed in this Softer way. And then it came out the way it came out.
- [21:22]
Deidre Nicole Greene
That's okay.
- [21:23]
Tim
But I guess. I guess what I'm really asking is, does this fallibility exist throughout the church? Yeah.
- [21:31]
Deidre Nicole Greene
So coming back to the article, right, I use Hannah and the priest Eli as examples. The Scriptures give us tons of examples. The Book of Mormon, what an incredible book, right? That the authors of the book, the prophetic writers, name the texts fallibility and their own fallibility. I'm a theology professor. I love kind of bragging to my colleagues and my students that I have a book of script that, like, explicitly names, that it's informed by flaws and weakness. But coming back to this example of Hannah and Eli, Eli is the priest, right? And he's the priest of the. Of the temple, of the sanctuary. He has this religious authority, and she is coming into his space, this holy space, to seek divine revelation, to plead her case before the Lord. And I just don't think it's coincidental that the biblical authors included this part of her story, that when Eli assumes that she's drunk because she's praying with her lips and accusing her of, like, desecrating the sanctuary, that she responds by defending herself and absolving herself and standing her ground. And it's after that experience that she receives the blessings that she's seeking. This can't be coincidental to my mind. Hannah is such a pivotal and influential figure. She becomes the mother of the prophet. That is incredibly important for both Jewish and Christian history. And we often don't pay enough attention to the women and the mothers in Scripture. But it is not arbitrary that this particular woman is having this particular son. Think about what this son will go on to do. He will challenge kings.
- [23:25]
Aubrey Chavez
She.
- [23:26]
Deidre Nicole Greene
She precedes him in that by being able to stand her own ground. This is in scripture because we need that story. We need to know that there are times where we might need to correct people with a whole lot of authority over us, where they might have misinformation or a misperception of the situation, and we might need to push back. And understanding that that's a part of faithfulness. To be able to do that I think is absolutely critical. So I'm going to stick with scripture. I'm going to stay in my lane. But our scripture is explicit that human beings, including leaders, are fallible. And there's a reason that we are a community, and it's so that we can strengthen each other and help each other.
- [24:17]
Aubrey Chavez
So how do you. I be really curious to understand how you think about obedience, because it's one thing to strengthen this muscle and recognize what you really feel is right and what you feel is true. But as soon as you're in conflict with someone who has a different answer, I think that's when things get really dicey and it can start to feel like a moral dilemma. If you're framing it like the question is spiritual fidelity, which is a term I really, really love that you bring up versus obedience. And I think we probably have some cultural assumptions that need to be re examined. But how do you like, what is the place for obedience? Is it, is it of value?
- [24:56]
Deidre Nicole Greene
Yeah. Thanks. So definitely in this article I don't ever use the word obedience negatively. And I would say in general I wouldn't use the word obedience negatively, but I would make some distinctions. So what I do describe negatively are things like compliance or people pleasing. There's a difference between being obedient to eternal principles and compliance and people pleasing are more interpersonal kind of issues. Right. And so I think it's important to tease out doing the right thing for the right reason and doing what someone else tells me to do, even when there's dissonance and it doesn't actually feel right. And it's really distinguishing for me between what does God actually want and what does this human being understand God to want. Right.
- [25:47]
Aubrey Chavez
Yeah.
- [25:49]
Deidre Nicole Greene
And that's really tricky territory for all of us. And I absolutely believe that God wants us to grow through those kinds of situations. There's a reason that there's dissonance and that's where we grow and that's how we become Godly. That's how we become divine, is by those kind of. Of collisions is what I would call them, where things kind of clash. And so I think it's really a matter of why am I doing what I'm doing? Am I doing it because it's in line with what I believe about God and how I understand eternal truth? Or am I doing it just to kind of like check the box or stay on the safe side, not step out of line of kind of human expectations or institutional expectations. And at the end of the day that's a really personal thing that we each need to wrestle with and determine for ourselves. But I would say absolutely have like a strong testimony of obedience and its value. And I see that as distinct from things like compliance and people pleasing or just conforming to institutional expectations. So it's just a lot of internal work to discern that.
- [27:00]
Aubrey Chavez
Yeah, this. I'll just add one more thing. I. This is really. This is so interesting to Me, because that's definitely my reflex, like to just stay in line, don't make waves, just, you know, make it work. And I can see how there's a cost either way. Like other, you know, I imagine someone who has a lot of confidence chooses wrong sometimes. And of course there's a cost, but it feels like when you consistently or reflexively deferred, the, the cost is that you just more and more lose touch with that connection to your own, to your own inspiration. And like, that's a, that's a steep cost. And it feels like, wow, I would love to mess up the other way.
- [27:41]
Deidre Nicole Greene
Yeah. And my, my understanding, right, of what Latter Day Saints believe about revelation is that when we prove that God can trust us with revelation, we'll receive more and greater revelation. If we, we show repeatedly that we can't quite live up to it out of God's love and mercy, we'll probably receive less because God doesn't want to make us accountable for things we won't do. And so that's part of being a good Latter Day Saint. And, and being the kind of Latter Day Saint who can really contribute to the community is proving that kind of trustworthiness to God.
- [28:18]
Tim
I think for the past last, I don't know, 10 years at least, I've been curious about this sort of high level of epistemic confidence that we seem to have when expressing even our beliefs. You know, you go into the MTC and you're learning another language. The way you learn your testimony is by learning the verb I know. You know, that's how you, that's how you bear a testimony in our, in our church. And I guess as I've examined my own faith more deeply, I have started to question what I know and why I know it. And I think I'm much more comfortable bringing evidence to the table and beliefs to the table and saying, this is why I believe this thing, and, you know, having some level of, you know, some level of confidence, but maybe not, maybe not that, that certain level. And so have you thought about this at all?
- [29:04]
Deidre Nicole Greene
I mean, I think most societies, institutions, groups, individuals, right. Could definitely take on more epistemic humility in lots of instances. I think that would be great. And I think, I mean, I think part of what you're getting at, Tim, is that we use the language around knowledge a lot, and we don't necessarily mean what most people mean when they say, I know it's not, it's not to say it's not an appropriate use of the term, but I think this could be a sort of complicating factor in some of what we're talking about, that. That we put a high sort of capital on knowledge, but we're also talking about it in a very particular way. I personally am really open to us adopting different language around testimony. Like, I love God, I love the Savior, I love the Book of Mormon. Right. Or I believe or I'm grateful for, or maybe just I hope, right? I hope that God exists. I hope the atonement is real. I think that those are such beautiful confessions of faith and in some ways might actually feel more powerful because. Because there's less certainty. I can't imagine that God wouldn't be really pleased with people who just hope. Hope that. Just hope the gospel is true. Hoping that this good life they're trying to live matters. Right. So I think there is some relationship there. Maybe if we made fewer knowledge claims, there would be a reflection in how our community functions together in terms of, again, being more receptive to what other people have to say, being less certain about everything all the time. Right. Again, speaks to that need for interdependence and recognizing that we are a community and we need to be open to each other.
- [31:09]
Tim
As you were speaking, I just Googled this because what you were saying reminded me so much of it. But it's a prayer by Thomas Merton that's resonated with me. It says, my Lord God, I have no idea where I'm going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end, nor do I really know myself. And the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does, in fact, please you.
- [31:36]
Deidre Nicole Greene
Yeah, I love it.
- [31:37]
Tim
I find that incredibly resonant and powerful. And like you said, it's not. It's not. It's not an expression of certainty. But the fact that this sort of uncertainty is paired with such a dedicated Christian life in this case, you know, is. Is really, really powerful.
- [31:55]
Deidre Nicole Greene
I believe the desire to please you pleases you. And thank you for bringing that in. I love that prayer. I have never thought about that in terms of this topic and conversation, but this actually speaks back to this issue of how we think about obedience versus compliance or how we think about the possibility of saying, I actually don't agree. Right. And here's the inspiration I'm receiving and the revelation I'm receiving. Part of having that sense of integrity that I believe that I am trying to please God with Doing that. Right. This isn't about ego, this isn't about control, but it's about the sincere desire to please God. And I think if we can be more in touch with that and cultivate that sense. As I talk about in the essay with Hannah, right. Hannah had to have a sense of her own goodness so that when she was accused of something that wasn't true, she could stand her ground. She knew she was good, she knew she was seeking God, she knew she was trying to magnify her God given calling. And yes, I love that prayer by Martin and staying in touch with the desire to please God, pleases God and holding on to that.
- [33:10]
Aubrey Chavez
I love the way you frame these experiences when there's conflict as fidelity to something or betrayal to something that you know and, or having integrity. That's just not how I saw what was happening. I think I was calling people pleasing, obedience and feeling like that meant the right thing to do was just let it go. And, and so you talk about how we need to start ranking integrity above nicest and people pleasing when they're at odds with each other. And that's so very uncomfortable. If you were Talking to your 20 year old self on a mission who felt like you were really receiving some inspiration that you knew when you needed to go home, like how, how would you do that now? And like what do you hope the approach is if this ever comes up for you, like, what next?
- [33:57]
Deidre Nicole Greene
Yeah, so let me just say, I mean I believe that this is all of, all of this sort of dissonance and collision that comes up. I mean, absolutely it's going to come up for me again. It comes up all the time. It's, it's part of the life of faith. Faith, right. I absolutely believe that. And I believe we look at Adam and Eve, we look at situations like Abraham's near sacrifice of Isaac and I absolutely believe that God gives us conflicting commands, conflicting situations to make us divine. That's how we show who we are as agents. That's how we really wrestle and dig deep to get in touch with that sense of wanting to please God, whatever that looks like. And even amid a ton of confusion about how to do that. So to my mind that's just like an eternal principle that we have within the gospel of Jesus Christ that we're just going to face these difficult situations and that's, that's how we become more godly. So it's going to happen. What would I say to my 20 year old self? I mean, I don't know. I, I, I wrote this article, because this is such a wrestle. You know, I'm not on the other side of this, but let me say this. Part of what I talk about and what I think as a. As a feminist theologian is that among a number of things, part of what a sexist, misogynist society as a whole teaches women is to not take themselves seriously. And we could, you know, extrapolate that to lots of people who don't have the most privileged sort of social position. And that's. I think, what's most important to me in all of this is to recognize that if we are receiving personal revelation, if we have real clarity about something that God is calling us to do, as Hannah does in this example, it's because God takes us seriously. Right? And God has something for us to do. And I think if we're living within this structure, that might not always support that sense of taking myself seriously as someone who knows, as someone who receives divine revelation, as someone who God expects to act in certain ways, that that's what I would love to cultivate more of in myself. What I would love to see us as an institution and in a culture engender more specifically in women and girls, that they really have a divine calling. And that doesn't always look like compliance and people pleasing. In fact, it probably rarely looks like that. It definitely can look like obedience, and it can also look like needing to challenge and needing to question and needing to stand ground and correct.
- [36:48]
Tim
I wonder, too, if, Deidre, you might be open to giving some gentle recommendations to people like. Like me. You know, at least for the first many years, I would say of our marriage, I was sort of like, I'm trying to be fair to myself here too, but unknowingly stepping into a position where I think Aubry sort of at least implicitly saw me as a priesthood, you know, a priesthood authority. And I didn't even realize in some cases that what I was. What I was saying might have seemed like a. A mandate or that. Like, it might have seemed like I was sort of channeling revelation for, you know, for us or for her, And I feel really bad about that. But also, you know, bishops and stake presidents who are listening or whoever, like what. What can men in particular do who want to be who. Who are believe, who believe what you're saying here and who want to be supportive.
- [37:40]
Deidre Nicole Greene
Yeah, thanks so much for bringing it close to home. Because I want to say from my own perspective, going overboard on this sense of deferring to others knowledge in my life, it hasn't just applied to priesthood leaders. It's applied to lots of situations where it actually makes no sense. And that's part of what heightens my concern about it and why I think it's something we need to address because in a way, we make ourselves very vulnerable to lots of exploitation that happens with people who are way less well meaning if we haven't been taught to cultivate that strong sense of self. So Philippians 2 is a go to for me, this idea of kenosis or self emptying. And in Philippians 2, Paul describes Jesus as giving up his glory, literally condescending, in order to become human. And both in the incarnation and in the atonement, Jesus is emptying himself of glory, power, his will, all kinds of things in order to be one of us and in order to make salvation and redemption possible for all of us. And when Paul says that the whole framing of that discussion of Jesus is around what the Christian community should do, right, he's saying this is what true Christians do. They empty themselves, they consider themselves less than others so that this sort of equality can, can abound. And in some translations, the, the text literally says Jesus didn't think his equality with God was something that should be exploited. Instead he gave it up. He gives up his glory to come and be human so that he can empower others. And because Paul himself makes it prescriptive for human beings, for Christians, people who have taken on the name of Christ to mimic this way of being, I think it's a beautiful invitation. If we think about, you know, this idea of epistemic privilege, then that could be something where we mirror what Jesus does. How do we give up epistemic privilege to empower other people? Which is exactly what Jesus does. Jesus gives up privilege to empower all of humanity to receive the glory he will have. And so that's something that I see as an absolute pattern in our Gospel that we're being asked to live, that those of us who have more power and more privilege are willing to give some of that up. So those with less privilege can come up to this, to this place of equality. And I see that as the most Christlike thing we can do. And part of that means that those who are in this abased position allow themselves to become exalted, which is language that we have in the New Testament. It's language that we have in the doctrine and covenants that the lowly will be exalted and the exalted will be abased. And that's a pattern that allows Zion to be created.
- [40:54]
Aubrey Chavez
I love that I Feel like so much of the journey is recognizing the way this is totally a dance. And I, more so than Tim, like, I was putting him in this position, and I totally had the power to do that, like, to make his word the last word. Like, if you don't say anything else, the conversation's over. And it was. It was totally a dance that I had to be a part of changing. And I. I think that what I have learned is that I felt. It was like, I felt more comfortable in what I thought was a vulnerable place. I think the truer thing is that it's really vulnerable to say what you really think and to say what you think. God is speaking into your heart. And there is something protective about always letting it be somebody else's call. And. And so it. It's stretching, and it's way more vulnerable, I think, to say I disagree or this feels. I feel unsettled about this. Like, that's how. That's it. That's why it feels like a muscle. Like, it's hard.
- [41:57]
Deidre Nicole Greene
It's hard. And it's hard for a number of reasons. Right. One, because then you have to take responsibility and accountability. Wrong. It's on you. Right.
- [42:06]
Aubrey Chavez
Right.
- [42:06]
Deidre Nicole Greene
There's a certain sense of safety within. Well, I just always defer to other people. And if things go badly, it's. It's on the person with this, you know, certain kind of authority. You know, as a feminist theologian, a lot of my work focuses on selflessness and self sacrifice and especially how within religious cultures, there can be a real gender imbalance in the way we think about that and live that out. But one feminist theologian whose work I love talks about how women are often guilty of the sin of hiding. Right. And that has a lot of implications. But in terms of what you just talked about, Right. There's this sense in which we don't really have to show who we are. We don't really have to say who we are and what we want or what we believe if we can defer to someone else. And coming back to this. This point I was making about, like, Adam and Eve and Abraham and these other figures is part of what they're doing in that wrestle and having to navigate this seemingly impossible situation is they show who they are, they disclose themselves. They make themselves transparent to God. And I think that's. At the end of the day, what spiritual fidelity or integrity is, is that I show who I am. And I'm willing to take the risk of being wrong because I'm willing to take accountability, accountability for my decisions. That's part of taking ourselves seriously as actors. Right. As agents. And. And it's really scary to think that so many of us live out so much of our lives where at the end of the day, what we're doing is really not taking ourselves seriously, but always deferring to others.
- [43:47]
Aubrey Chavez
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Any thoughts that come to mind? I. We have two. Well, one teenage daughter and one on almost teenage daughter. And I. This feels like the lesson of my 30s and now 40s. What do you tell young women? It feels like an opportunity to start. To start really building this muscle. But they're in, like, in a very tender place. And I. I would love to know how you would teach this. Yeah.
- [44:19]
Deidre Nicole Greene
So I think about my own self when I was a teenager, when I was in college and looking back, I think there were lots of times where I was receiving revelation or inspiration for my life. And I discounted it because I just assumed that God couldn't care that much about, like, these little details of my life. Like, it just couldn't be that important, you know? Now with many years of retrospect, I can see why those particular decisions really mattered. And so I think it comes back to really helping young women have a sense that God is really invested in their lives and they really matter and that they should take themselves seriously. I think the other piece of all this is we're all human and we're all fallible. So we all need to put ourselves in check and be put in check. This isn't about. Women should now believe that they're omniscient. Right. And everything they think is right, that's its own problem, you know? And so I think, like, just giving our. Our youth of any gender more balanced, clear sense of self, that we're all fallible and we're gonna learn by making mistakes. But God actually really cares about each one of us. And God might really care about some aspects of your life that you wouldn't expect. Expect God to care about and be open and receptive to that. And an experiment, it's safe to make a mistake, and you'll learn from it. And I often believe God gives us chances to make mistakes so that when the stakes are higher, later on, you know, we will have learned from that lesson. So I think having a balanced sense of self as, like, the kind of being that Christ died for. Right? That means I really matter. Christ died for me individually. Christ died for every individual individually. And I'm human, and I'm less than the dust of the earth. And I'm gonna do dumb things and misinterpret sometimes, but I have something to contribute to the church. I have something to contribute to the world, and I want to honor that and be true to that.
- [46:37]
Aubrey Chavez
Beautiful. Thank you so much. It feels like probably in different seasons of our life, lives, different muscles will need to be strengthened, and. And this just feels like a really powerful way to understand all of these dynamics, however they're changing. So thank you so much for agreeing.
- [46:54]
Tim
I agree. Yeah. Not that you need my agreement, obviously, but this is. I. In my opinion, that's the last word.
- [47:00]
Deidre Nicole Greene
Tim, come on.
- [47:00]
Tim
Yes. I'm so sorry, all of this, but I truly do think this is. This is so important in. So. In so many relationships. Relationships in the church, inside of families, outside of families, all of that. So thank you. Thank you so much for being here.
- [47:16]
Aubrey Chavez
Yeah.
- [47:16]
Deidre Nicole Greene
Thank you. Thanks. It was lovely to chat with you all.
- [47:21]
Aubrey Chavez
All right. Thanks so much for listening. We really hope that you enjoyed this conversation with Deidre Green, and we hope that you'll check out her Wayfair article@wayfair magazine.org and if faith matters content is resonating with you and you get the chance, we'd love for you to rate and review the podcast wherever you listen.