‘The Kylee Cast’ feat. Emma Waters, Ep. 36: A Biblical Alternative To Tradwifing

Summary

Podcast Summary

Federalist Radio Hour, ‘The Kylee Cast’ feat. Emma Waters, Ep. 36: A Biblical Alternative To Tradwifing
Date: April 9, 2026
Host: Kylie Griswold
Guest: Emma Waters (Heritage Foundation Policy Analyst; author of Lead Like Jael: 7 Timeless Principles for Today's Women of Faith)

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Episode Theme

This episode centers around Lead Like Jael: 7 Timeless Principles for Today's Women of Faith, discussing what biblical femininity looks like, engaging with contemporary cultural movements (from feminism to “tradwife” trends), and exploring how scriptural women—particularly Jael—provide principles for faithful modern womanhood. The conversation delves into discernment, shrewdness, marriage, motherhood, wisdom, and how to live out one’s calling as a woman of faith in a complex culture.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Introduction and Guest Background ([00:30]-[02:46])

• Kylie Griswold introduces Emma Waters, highlighting her expertise in policy (IVF, surrogacy, family policy) and her new book.
• Emma Waters offers personal context:
  • Policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation.
  • Writes and speaks in Christian and policy venues.
  • Married with two daughters and a third on the way.
  • Lives in Pittsburgh; husband is in seminary.

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Who is Jael? And Why Her? ([02:49]-[04:46])

• Emma retells Jael’s story (Judges 4-5): Jael kills the Canaanite general, thus fulfilling Deborah's prophecy that victory would come from a woman.

  • "Jael, is entering into the long line of female head-crushers in the Bible." (Emma, [05:20])

• Not promoting violence, but extracting spiritual lessons:

  • Jael represents biblical femininity’s strength, resourcefulness, and faithfulness.
  • She uses distinctly feminine tools (domestic tent peg, mallet) to fulfill her calling, showing how ordinary, “mundane” domestic faithfulness can enable extraordinary acts.
  • Jael isn’t disengaged ("not just a man’s job") nor radical (“not a social justice warrior”), but embodies engagement, wisdom, and preparedness in the home.

Quote:
"She neither took on the feminist line of, 'I'm going to be just like a man, pick up a sword and run into battle,' ... but on the other hand, she doesn't fulfill some of the tradwife motifs that we see today..." (Emma, [07:21])

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Seven Timeless Principles ([10:02]-[11:12])

• Emma’s book explores:

  1. Discernment
  2. Shrewdness
  3. Resourcefulness
  4. Hospitality
  5. Marriage as a battlemate
  6. Motherhood as warfare
  7. The role of older/wiser women

• Each chapter highlights a different biblical woman.

• Jael chosen for the cover because she’s “an unconventional and unexpected vision of biblical femininity” and counters both shallow church “girly” stereotypes and feminist misreadings.

Quote:
"I want to find a way that’s truly feminine and yet fight a very real, very powerful, very hard battle. And Jael was just such an incredible embodiment..." (Emma, [11:53])

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The Importance of Discernment ([13:04]-[15:52])

• Toxic empathy and emotional manipulation are key issues used to sway women from biblical truth.
• Discernment is foundational: it protects against substituting emotion for truth (as Eve did in Eden) and the perversion of sympathy or nurturing.
• Lack of discernment leads to “winsome”/“Third Way” Christianity: a faith reshaped by culture, not gospel.
• “The enemy is not someone to play footsie with...we mortify that sin…” (Kylie, [16:26])

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The Maiden, Mother, Matriarch Trifecta ([17:38]-[22:33])

• Historic/Scriptural model of female development:

  • Maiden (youthful, open to possibility)
  • Mother (in authority, applying lessons in new contexts)
  • Matriarch (mentor, wise leadership)

• It’s about wisdom and orientation—not strictly life stage or biological status.

• Modern culture idolizes perpetual “maidenhood” (arrested development), rejects motherhood as fruitful, and undervalues matriarchal wisdom.

• Practical implication: "You want to faithfully give your best to each season so that one day you can look back and say...I have fought the race faithfully..." (Emma, [22:19])

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Lady Wisdom vs. Lady Folly ([23:06]-[27:01])

• Proverbs offers two archetypes: Lady Wisdom (prepares, invests, calls to virtue) vs. Lady Folly (lazy, seductive, offers shortcuts like "water and stolen bread").
• Lady Folly persuades women to forsake biblical stages for perpetual youth, or to avoid fruitful roles.
• Practical example: Media mocks prioritizing marriage/motherhood early, preferring career ("feminism for thee, but not for me").
• "Young women...hear it and...it's deeply confusing...a complete inversion of who a matriarch should be." (Emma, [26:47])

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Information vs. Wisdom ([27:36]-[30:29])

• Culture is saturated with information but lacks wisdom and discernment—confusing data with depth.
• Women especially susceptible to this via social media sound bites and regurgitated content.
• “You can know every fact about the apple, but it actually takes wisdom and discernment to know how to use the apple in a given situation.” (Emma, [29:50])

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Shrewdness—Scriptural & Modern Application ([33:06]-[41:56])

• Shrewdness: “as innocent as a dove and shrewd as a serpent” ([33:28]).

  • Not license for manipulation or deceit, but wise, godly navigation under evil structures.

• Examples:

  • Amy Carmichael: Used strategic disguise and negotiation to rescue girls from temple slavery.
  • Biblical: Egyptian midwives (“feared God more than man”), Miriam, Rebecca, Esther—all act shrewdly in dire situations.

• Modern:

  • Pro-life activists going undercover.
  • Sex trafficking investigations.

• Shrewdness is for protecting the innocent, revealing evil—especially when other avenues are closed.

Quote:
“Oftentimes women who legitimately at that point then had no other means of recourse...[had] to fight within the means given to her." (Emma, [42:04])

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Shrewdness vs. Feminist Rage ([42:39]-[45:14])

• Feminist discourse often valorizes “rage” as women's power—but neuroscientifically, rage is unsustainable, clouds judgment, and is antithetical to wisdom ("You can be shrill or you can be shrewd," [42:49]).
• Wisdom is learned, measured, sustainable, and impactful; rage is fleeting, leaves women exhausted, and doesn't effect lasting change.

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Marriage: Girl Boss vs. Tradwife & Biblical Alternative ([45:14]-[48:32])

• Tradwife ideology (#tradwife) is a reaction to “girl boss” feminism. Both, however, offer rigid definitions of woman's worth—careerist or domestic.
• Emma sees the polarized dichotomy itself as unhealthy; instead, scripture champions integration:
  • “First things first,” but “honoring first things doesn’t mean you can’t do anything else.”
• Most women fall between “girl boss” and “tradwife” extremes—seeking purposeful lives, enriched homes, and fruitful work.

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Practicals for Women Wanting Change ([48:32]-[52:27])

• Assess your season: Married or single? Children? Age? What first things require your energy now?
• Be honest: Are you shunning marriage/kids for career? Or vice versa?
• For mothers: Presence in the home during early years is vital; working to pay for daycare often defeats the relational benefit.
• Marriage: See husband as “battle mate,” not adversary ("How are you as a wife...working to build up and empower your husband to be the most effective he can be at the thing God has called him to?" — Emma, [52:02]).

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Memorable Quotes and Timestamps

• On Jael & Biblical Femininity:
  “She neither took on the feminist line of, 'I'm going to be just like a man, pick up a sword and run into battle,' ... but on the other hand, she doesn't fulfill some of the tradwife motifs that we see today…” (Emma, [07:21])

• On Discernment:
  “If truth is not grounded in the word of God, then it will always be susceptible to the cultural whims and norms.” (Emma, [15:43])

• On Information vs. Wisdom:
  "You can know every fact about the apple, but it actually takes wisdom and discernment to know how to use the apple in a given situation." (Emma, [29:50])

• On Shrewdness:
  “You want to be as innocent as a dove and shrewd as a serpent.” (Emma, [33:28])

• On Marriage & Tradwife Culture:
  “Both [girl boss feminism and tradwife movement] tend to present this very rigid depiction...and yet, in pursuing those first things first...it doesn't mean you can't work flexible...jobs...It’s just a question of what comes first in your life and what fuels the rest…” (Emma, [47:44])

• On Mentor Role:
  “You want to faithfully give your best to each season so that one day you can look back and say with great satisfaction and contentment...I have fought the race faithfully...” (Emma, [22:19])

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Notable Segment Timestamps

• [03:12] – Jael’s story in Judges and its spiritual implications
• [05:20] – The biblical lineage of “female head-crushers”
• [10:02] – Seven timeless principles overview
• [13:04] – Why discernment is first and foundational for women
• [17:38] – Maiden, Mother, Matriarch trifecta explained
• [23:06] – Lady Wisdom vs. Lady Folly and cultural counterfeits
• [27:36] – Information overload vs. true wisdom
• [33:06] – Shrewdness in scripture and modern activism
• [42:39] – Why shrewdness, not rage, is biblical power
• [45:14] – Tradwife trends, girl boss culture, and the biblical “third way”
• [48:32] – Practical steps for women reevaluating their priorities and roles
• [52:02] – The “battle mate” vision of marriage

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Conclusion

Emma Waters provides a rich, biblically grounded perspective on womanhood, rejecting both cultural feminism and simplistic tradwife labels. Instead, she advocates for a nuanced, Scripture-rooted approach that champions discernment, shrewdness, and faithfulness to one’s season in life—whether as a maiden, mother, or matriarch. The episode is filled with practical insights for modern women navigating an often confusing cultural landscape.

Find Emma’s book at major retailers (Barnes & Noble, Walmart, Target), and her writing at the Heritage Foundation, X (@emlwaters), and The Federalist.

Transcript

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[Kylie Griswold]

Hi everybody and welcome to the Kylie Cast. I'm Kylie Griswold, Managing Editor at the Federalist. Please like and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Leave us a five star review. It's one of the easiest and best ways you can help out the show. And even better yet, if you're just listening to the show, go check out the full video version on my personal YouTube channel or the Federalist channel on Rumble and and then of course like and subscribe there too. If you'd like to email the show, you can do [e-mail] I would love to hear from you as always. Today I'm so excited to be interviewing Emma Waters. She is a policy analyst at the Heritage foundation and most recently the author of the brand new book lead like JL 7 Timeless Principles for Today's Women of Faith. It's a super awesome book and today Emma and I dive into some great themes from it about feminism, womanhood, motherhood, wisdom and discernment and so much more. You won't want to miss it and you will want to pick up a copy of Emma's book lead like J.L. without further ado, please welcome to the show Emma Waters. Emma Waters, it is so great to have you on the Kylie cast. Thank you so much for joining me today.

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

Of course.

[Emma Waters]

It's so great to be with you.

[Kylie Griswold]

You recently released a brand new book. But before we dive into the specifics of the book, why don't you just share with the members of my audience who maybe aren't familiar with your work, who who you are, where you're from, and how you got to be where you are now.

[Emma Waters]

So I am a policy analyst with the Heritage Foundation. I cover issues related to ivf, surrogacy, infertility, women's health, family family policy, and

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

all of the very non controversial issues

[Emma Waters]

in that area that you can imagine. And outside of that, I have been blessed to get to write and read

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

and research and Speak at a number of venues, both in the Christian space

[Emma Waters]

as well as in the policy space and outside of work. I am the wife of my husband, Jack.

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

He's in seminary in Pittsburgh.

[Emma Waters]

And we have two little girls and

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

a third one on the way.

[Emma Waters]

So it's a very happy and full

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

household every day here.

[Emma Waters]

But, yeah, so that's. Those are the. Those are the main things about me.

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

Yeah.

[Kylie Griswold]

Such an exciting time. And also topics that are very familiar to our Kylie Cast listeners who listen regularly because they're things we cover here all of the time. So. So you just came out with this new book lead like jl and I think that's how you say her name. It's one of those names that I've read in Scripture, but I don't hear it as often, so I assume that's how you pronounce it. But can you just give us an overview? Who. Who was she?

[Emma Waters]

Yes. Okay. So you find Jael's story in Judges, chapter four and five in the Old Testament. So Israel is at war once again with the Canaanites, and Israel is actually beating the Canaanites. So the Canaanite general comes stumbling out of battle and to the tent of Jael. And so right off the bat, the

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

story tells us that Jael looks out from her tent and she sees this Canaanite general stumbling towards her, and she recognizes who he is. So immediately we know that she is a woman who is politically engaged and what is going on around her. He comes to her tent flap door

[Emma Waters]

and says, I'm just so exhausted.

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

Can you please give me some water and a place to rest? And instead, she gives him a warm glass of milk and a soft place to lie down. And the moment he falls asleep, she very infamously takes a wooden tent peg

[Emma Waters]

and mallet and drives it through his

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

skull, thus soundly defeating Israel's enemy.

[Emma Waters]

And what makes this story so wild is this is exactly what was prophesied

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

by Deborah the previous chapter, that the

[Emma Waters]

victory would go to a woman. And that on top of that, this is a woman that with all of the very, you know, chaotic things that

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

one could draw from, this is a

[Emma Waters]

woman who is in many ways actually embodying the very vision of biblical femininity that I think our world is so desperate for today. And it's not because the takeaway is that we need violence or promoting violence

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

in any regard whatsoever, but that there are many spiritual lessons from Jael's story that I think are particularly useful for women who are wrestling with questions about calling work and what it means to be a faithful woman.

[Kylie Griswold]

Yeah, you write in the book. I. I got a kick out of this quote that jail used distinctly feminine means to defeat God's enemy. And that's just kind of a stark claim or, you know, like a startling claim because it's. It is such a violent story. So what are the lessons that we can learn from her? In your. Your subhead, you have seven. Seven lessons. So. So what are those lessons?

[Emma Waters]

Yes.

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

Okay.

[Emma Waters]

So the seven lessons are actually seven principles overall that I'm diving into, but

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

particularly to the story of Jael, there's three or four takeaways that I think are really important for us today.

[Emma Waters]

So the first, as you just read, Jael, is entering into the long line

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

of female head crushers in the Bible.

[Emma Waters]

So you have eve in Genesis 3,

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

sin has entered the world. And the very first gospel proclamation pointing to Jesus Christ actually comes from God's own mouth, where he says that the seed of the woman and the seed

[Emma Waters]

of the serpent will constantly be at

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

war with each other until eventually the seed of the woman will have victory over the devil. And so that's, of course, fulfilled ultimately in Jesus Christ.

[Emma Waters]

But throughout the Old Testament, there are

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

these fascinating stories where women, acting faithfully in obedience to God, actually crush the head of God's enemy.

[Emma Waters]

And so you have Esther, who, using foresight and shrewdness and hospitality, is able to catch Haman in his evil schemes.

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

And ultimately Haman's head comes off.

[Emma Waters]

You have later in the book of. Of Judges, the woman of Thebes who

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

uses a millstone, which was a domestic tool, to grind wheat, and she uses

[Emma Waters]

it to crush Abimelech's head as he's

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

threatening to destroy God's people.

[Emma Waters]

And then, of course, you have Mary,

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

who uses one of the greatest, most feminine acts of all, the act of

[Emma Waters]

childbirth and bringing new life into world

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

to bring forth the Savior.

[Emma Waters]

And so when we see Jael's story, her story is just one of many. And so what makes jail story, I think, so important for us today in the lessons that she has is that for first, the tent peg, the wooden tent peg in mallet was actually a feminine domestic tool. She would have used that wooden tent peg and mallet hundreds, if not thousands of times to set up or take down her tent. And that was her way of that. That was what one of the main

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

homemaker roles looked like.

[Emma Waters]

And so it was actually only because

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

she was present in her home and faithful to the ordinary, mundane duties of

[Emma Waters]

running an effective household that she was

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

actually equipped for this extraordinary act of faithfulness.

[Emma Waters]

And there's a few other things we see, too. Like I said earlier, she was politically

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

engaged in what was happening around her in.

[Emma Waters]

In her case, a very literal war,

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

in our case, many times the culture war.

[Emma Waters]

And she neither took on the feminist line of, I'm going to be just

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

like a man, pick up a sword and run into battle.

[Emma Waters]

And interestingly, we never see a woman

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

in the canonical scriptures ever pick up a sword to fight.

[Emma Waters]

And yet there are these incredibly distinctive and important ways that women do fight and are essential for the victory that God has. So she doesn't pick up the sword.

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

She doesn't stand outside as a social

[Emma Waters]

justice warrior, just protesting, saying, hey, hey,

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

ho, ho, the Canaanites have got to go.

[Kylie Griswold]

Right.

[Emma Waters]

More shrewd than that.

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

Right.

[Emma Waters]

But on the other hand, she doesn't

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

fulfill some of the trad wife motifs

[Emma Waters]

that we see today, which is. Well, that's for my husband to figure out, like, politics is the men's game. I'm not going to bother myself with what's going on in the world. I mean, you know, euphemistically put my head in the sand. Right.

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

Because she knows what's going on, knows

[Emma Waters]

who the enemy is, and yet she relies on this very feminine way that's

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

very natural and overflow of her primary

[Emma Waters]

duties and responsibilities to actually fight evil in her day. And I think one of the just

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

really important lessons this brings to mind

[Emma Waters]

is that the enemy will always target the home. It's just a question of when he does. And whether that's sin, deception, or the

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

evil that we see in the culture

[Emma Waters]

war attacking our children, their innocence and

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

the spaces that we have uniquely for the enemy, will always target the home. And so the question is, are you,

[Emma Waters]

as a woman, and particularly a woman

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

who is married and has kids faithfully present in your home to defend it when evil comes? Or are you not? And jail story shows us very powerfully

[Emma Waters]

what happens when women are well positioned

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

in that place, faithfully fulfilling what God has given them to do.

[Emma Waters]

And the incredible fruit and rather wild stories that can come from that.

[Kylie Griswold]

Right, right. Well, and I think bringing it into more of our modern context, some of the most influential women who are contending for the faith right now sort of launched into the fray because of the enemy coming knocking at the doors of their home, metaphorically, you know, either whether it's through curriculum at their children's school, I mean, that's directly affecting your home or, you know, attacking marriage, the institution, or weaseling its way into the Church. I mean, these are. We don't need to go out seeking monsters to destroy. It's all going to come, come straight for you and the institutions and the home that you hold so dear. So jail is such a good, good example that, you know, you talk about a lot of women of faith who, who crushed the heads of their enemies or God's enemies, I should say. But also lots of plenty of other women in scripture who are such models for us today. So why specifically did you choose JL to write this book about and not somebody else?

[Emma Waters]

Yes. Okay. And so I have seven timeless principles for today's women of faith in the subtitle. And so those seven timeless principles include things like discernment, shrewdness, resourcefulness, hospitality, marriage as a battlemate rather than a battle of the sexes, the importance of motherhood as warfare, and then number seven, the

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

role of older, wiser women as counselors and negotiators today.

[Emma Waters]

And so in each of those seven chapters, I'm highlighting different women in the Bible that I think uniquely embody that

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

principle or that virtue.

[Emma Waters]

It's of course, not meant to be

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

a comprehensive list of all the virtues

[Emma Waters]

that one can have, but those are seven that I think are particularly lacking for women today. And so, so in that we dive into almost every story of a woman

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

in the Bible to really explore these

[Emma Waters]

different depictions of in. In given seasons of life.

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

What has this looked like?

[Emma Waters]

But the reason that I chose JL for the COVID instead of someone like

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

Esther or Deborah or Mary or Hannah

[Emma Waters]

or all these other incredible women that we see is for two reasons.

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

The first is that she is such an unconventional and unexpected vision of biblical femininity.

[Emma Waters]

And so I don't know about you

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

or some of your listeners, but there

[Emma Waters]

have been the biblical femininity discourse that

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

you often hear in the church can

[Emma Waters]

feel very, just very girly. And it's like pink and it's flowery, and we talk about our emotions and, like, we want to be godly women and all of these things. And those are all, like, very good and true things. And I'm not hitting on them in the slightest, but I think sometimes I just felt like they. They weren't reaching the depth and the gravity that I desired of. Like, I am a very passionate woman

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

who feels called to these very important

[Emma Waters]

causes, but I don't want to have to feel like I have to take

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

on the feminist line that I must

[Emma Waters]

become like a man to fight. Like, I want to find a way that's truly feminine and yet fight a

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

very Real, very powerful, very hard battle. And jail was just such an incredible

[Emma Waters]

embodiment of, like, a good, A godly

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

woman doing truly hard things for his

[Emma Waters]

kingdom and using, like, the fullness of

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

her strength and her wit to do so.

[Emma Waters]

And so it was just a very unconventional, unexpected one. And I hope to really bypass maybe women who feel burnt out on the biblical femininity discourse, a way of, like, reengaging them in the conversation. And then. Yeah, and then the second along with that is just that there is connected to this.

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

There are so many times where feminists

[Emma Waters]

will use Jael as the embodiment of the feminist ideal in the Bible, where

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

she subverts the patriarchy, she throws off

[Emma Waters]

the expectations of her time, she rejects her femininity to really exert her power over a man. And in reading the story, I was

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

like, we're not seeing any of these themes. Like, if you actually read the Bible

[Emma Waters]

for what it is, this is actually the ultimate act of, like, true feminine submission to God and a woman who fears God more than man, not just

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

this other feminist caricature.

[Emma Waters]

And so I wanted to sort of rescue her out of that discourse and

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

really present her as the Bible has presented her.

[Kylie Griswold]

Yeah, that's such a great point. You bring up these seven. These seven principles, but in the book, you. You go through discernment first. Can you explain why it's so important that discernment is the first of these principles that we. That we address?

[Emma Waters]

Yes, absolutely. So who amongst us hasn't heard about toxic empathy and the attacks from the

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

left to use emotional language, just try to subvert people to agreeing with them? And more than anything else, we see this language really pushed on women in particular. Now, what is the strength of women? A strength of women is their sympathy, their compassion, and their nurturing spirit. That's something.

[Emma Waters]

That's just something very beautiful that women

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

embody in a way that they create space for you to mourn, to rejoice,

[Emma Waters]

and to feel the fullness of. Yeah. Emotions that come with the human person. Well, when that's subverted, then that can

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

actually be used against women to try

[Emma Waters]

to tell them that their emotions or what their heart says contra their mind

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

or the word of God is actually true.

[Emma Waters]

And I think it's one of the ways that we see women under attack the most today. But of course, it's not unique to our time, because that's also what happened

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

in the Garden of Eden between the

[Emma Waters]

serpent and Eve, where the serpent comes to Eve and he is able to

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

use God, God's word.

[Emma Waters]

To utterly subvert God's Word itself.

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

Right.

[Emma Waters]

And actually cause her to doubt the goodness of God and, and think that

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

there's something that she's missing out on and that only if she were to

[Emma Waters]

set aside God's Word, that there's actually maybe this deeper wisdom and knowledge that

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

was waiting for her.

[Emma Waters]

And I think we see that temptation play out in so many different areas

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

of our life where women are being tempted away from what God's word says

[Emma Waters]

to be true, what common sense maybe says to be true in order to be loving or accepting or kind of other. And ultimately it's actually doing the very opposite of that because you're affirming things

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

that are not true, you're endorsing sin, or you're turning a blind eye to it. And then on the other hand, you also see the role of manipulation where. What's the worst side of discernment, it's when you're actively using it then to manipulate other people. And whether you're intentionally doing that or

[Emma Waters]

unintentionally doing that is beside the point. But in. In seeing how so much of, yeah, just the beauty of what it means to be a woman is oftentimes attacked

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

and used against women.

[Emma Waters]

I really wanted to start there and say if we're going to have an

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

honest and fruitful conversation about what it means to be a woman today, when it comes to work and motherhood and all of these other areas, we first and foremost need to be very clear about where we're grounding truth. And if truth is not grounded in the word of God, then it will always be susceptible to the cultural whims

[Emma Waters]

and norms as they change from one

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

generation to the next. And we'll never find the, like, the. The lasting peace and wisdom that we're looking for.

[Kylie Griswold]

Right, right. I really appreciated in the book how you brought up Third Way Christianity and just kind of the way that. That has become, you know, the winsome gospel and how that's invaded so many evangelical churches and has been so appealing to women in particular. And I think that really gets to this discernment point as well, where, you know, we. We sort of morph the lessons of scripture and the gospel itself to fit the cultural moment. And how if we lack discernment, we begin to mirror our Christianity after the culture instead of the other way around, which can be so, so damaging and so to bring it back to jail. I love just this idea of being ruthless with sin, too, that the enemy is not. Not somebody to play footsie with. And just when. When he comes into your tent, whether it's in the form of a Canaanite general or, or, you know, spiritual forces in other ways. We don't, we don't try to appease. We murder. We mortify that sin because otherwise, you know, we are not being discerning. And so I loved your explanation of why that had to come first, but also just tying it into what we're seeing happen in evangelicalism broadly and, and not just evangelicalism. I mean, it's happening in Catholic churches and others as well, but of just this third way of appeasing, you know, social movements instead of preaching the firm gospel and standing firm to what is true. So, so let's talk a little bit about this trifecta. You talk about maiden mother and matriarch in the book, and I would love to have you just explain what those three things are like, what, what you mean by them. And then also how they apply even to women who are not wives and mothers.

[Emma Waters]

Yes.

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

Okay. So there's a couple of versions of this that we see throughout history.

[Emma Waters]

So in Greek mythology, you have the

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

maiden mother, crone progression of a woman's life. But there's also a theologian, James Jordan,

[Emma Waters]

that I have really appreciated his work in this area where he talks about

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

through the Bible there being this progression

[Emma Waters]

of priest, king and prophet throughout the lives of men in the Bible, either

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

in their individual life or just in

[Emma Waters]

the arc of the Old Testament itself. And so as I was thinking about

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

what it means to write a book encouraging women tort to live a wise

[Emma Waters]

life, I wanted to provide sort of

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

like an overarching story theme of different

[Emma Waters]

seasons that we can find ourselves in as women. And so one of the oldest and I think most timeless versions of that

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

is this maiden mother, matriarch.

[Emma Waters]

And so the way I break it down is first and foremost, one does

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

not need to literally be married or have kids or be a certain age to necessarily fall into one of these categories. These really speak to the level of

[Emma Waters]

wisdom and maturity that a woman has,

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

but also her, her orientation to a given season.

[Emma Waters]

So especially women, right, who are unmarried, who maybe don't have kids yet.

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

You're very much in this maiden season of life. You're, you're most likely to be younger.

[Emma Waters]

And there's this particular way that you

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

look at the world where your life

[Emma Waters]

is ahead of you and you're fresh

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

eyed and eager and you're asking what

[Emma Waters]

does it look like to be faithful in the months and weeks ahead and years ahead of my life, Right. What is, what is God asking of

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

me in this season.

[Emma Waters]

And then you have the mother, which

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

refers to, like, sort of the middle stage of maturity in a woman's life.

[Emma Waters]

Sometimes that often does come with marriage and children, but you find yourself in

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

between, where you're no longer at the beginning of your life, but you're not

[Emma Waters]

quite a wise matriarch yet, but you're

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

in this in between zone, sort of

[Emma Waters]

connecting the generations, and you're learning how to apply the lessons and principles that you learned as a maiden in positions

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

of authority, whether that's authority in your

[Emma Waters]

home, as a mother and as someone who's running your home or in a

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

particular job that you're in. But you're taking.

[Emma Waters]

You're not simply doing exactly what you've

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

been told, right, as a maiden or

[Emma Waters]

a child would be, but you're now

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

using a higher level of discernment to

[Emma Waters]

say, okay, how do I take these true lessons? And then imply that apply them into, like, the world that I live in. And then finally, you have the matriarch. And the matriarch is oftentimes someone that is older.

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

They have years of seasoned experience and examples of living as. As wise and faithful women.

[Emma Waters]

And they're now looking back on their

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

life as sort of the vision of,

[Emma Waters]

like, what it looks like basically is

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

the mentors or like godmothers to the younger generations.

[Emma Waters]

And so they are taking all of

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

the lessons they've learned, their examples of applying it, and now they're acting as counselors to younger generations and to other people, saying, with all of the wisdom

[Emma Waters]

and all of the experience that I have now, let me help you and provide the guidance that you need to live wisely in this given age. And so we see the sort of matriarch woman in figures like Deborah in

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

the Old Testament, or Sarah Abraham's wife,

[Emma Waters]

or Elizabeth, who birthed John the Baptist and was cousins with Mary and these incredible. And Miriam as well, and these incredible

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

examples of women who have lived faithful lives as godly women and are now turning to the next generation and in some cases quite literally singing songs of praise over them and calling them into their identity.

[Emma Waters]

And you need all three, right? And they're all three blessings. And the point of it is that

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

you're not meant to remain in one season. You're meant to continue progressing onwards.

[Emma Waters]

So in chapter seven, where I really dive into older, wiser women, I talk about how today we really seem to

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

find ourselves in the maiden wars, which is to say that our culture has,

[Emma Waters]

by and large decided to idolize the maiden.

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

We say if you're young and youthful

[Emma Waters]

and unattached, with no demands or responsibilities on your time, like, that is the ideal woman. And so you see women of all ages, ages, investing an immense amount in

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

plastic surgery and clothes and this sort

[Emma Waters]

of youthful Persona because they think the

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

epitome of being a great woman or a successful woman is to be a youthful maiden who's sort of free from

[Emma Waters]

the con, the constraints of marriage and

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

family and of the natural aging process. Right. And we're all about graceful aging here,

[Emma Waters]

but the natural aging process, because they think that that is the highlight and that I think is like, like such a rejection of this beautiful model that

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

we see in the Bible and throughout life of no, you actually want to faithfully give your best to each season so that one day you can look

[Emma Waters]

back and say with great satisfaction and contentment, like that, I have fought the race faithfully, and now I can pass down everything that I have learned to empower the next generation.

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[Kylie Griswold]

I love that you that you talk about the perpetual maiden stage. It's like spiritual arrested development or like Benjamin Buttoning, kind of like maturing in reverse. But it's interesting because like you say, these three stages, they have something to do with age, but it's almost more to do with wisdom than age. And so you write in the book and throughout Scripture, we see this dichotomy between Lady Wisdom and Lady Folly, and that's set up in Proverbs. And so in what ways is Lady Folly sort of a counterfeit to these three. These three stages of womanhood?

[Emma Waters]

Yes. This is so good. And this is probably one of my

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

favorite literary themes that you see in

[Emma Waters]

the Bible, because you see this vision of Lady Wisdom, and it's Jesus Christ is actually described as wisdom in the

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

Old Testament that's fully then incarnate in Christ.

[Emma Waters]

But what I love about this, this is that in particular for women, the Bible sets up Lady Folly and Lady

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

Wisdom as these relational guides for young women.

[Emma Waters]

But also relational guides calling young men

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

or calling the simple into wisdom. But they're offering these two different visions. So throughout Proverbs, you have Lady Wisdom, who is calling this.

[Emma Waters]

She's sitting in the high places.

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

She's calling the simple to her. She's preparing a feast of wine and

[Emma Waters]

fine bread and saying, let me teach

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

you the ways that are true and that are good. And this is the sort of matriarchal embodiment of woman. But then Lady Folly, on the other hand, is presented in the Bible looking very similar to Lady Wisdom, but offering something far different. So Lady Folly also sits in the high places, and she also calls the symbol to her. But what she's calling them to is water, because she hasn't actually invested in the hard work of creating wine, in the fertilizer, ferment, fermentation process, and stolen bread.

[Emma Waters]

She hasn't even invested in the right.

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

She's just taken from other people and

[Emma Waters]

is now sort of reselling it to them. And then the Bible says, ultimately her

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

ways lie in Sheol or in hell. And you may think that you're pursuing wisdom, but in reality, you've actually bought its counterfeit, as you said, and you've bought into Folly.

[Emma Waters]

And it's her ways lead to death.

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

And it's where sexual immorality and foolishness all live and reign.

[Emma Waters]

And so in this maiden mother matriarch progression, I think you especially see it in the maiden wars that we just

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

talked about, this sort of rejection of the matriarch. And like, youthfulness is the thing to be admired.

[Emma Waters]

But you see it in other areas

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

too, when it comes to our culture's rejection of motherhood.

[Emma Waters]

And we just saw this this week on the View where the View was mocking Isabelle Brown for saying that young

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

women, you should actually prioritize marriage and

[Emma Waters]

motherhood, and you should be open to

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

it and open to it early in life, not later in life, once you've achieved achieve certain career goals.

[Emma Waters]

And they're outright mocking this as somehow

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

irresponsible and unattainable and undesirable for women. Well, that's Lady Folly speaking, because what does the Bible tell us? It tells us that marriage and children

[Emma Waters]

are a blessing and are one of

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

the greatest examples of fruitfulness in a woman's life.

[Emma Waters]

And then you see this in the matriarch status as well. And something that I call feminism for

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

thee, but not for me.

[Emma Waters]

And I think you see Lady Folly

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

speaking when you hear older women tell

[Emma Waters]

younger women things like, well, I may

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

have chosen a traditional life, but you, you should go pursue your career, enjoy your time living in the city. Don't worry, marriage and children will come eventually. You have plenty of time.

[Emma Waters]

And so young women hearing this, and I, many friends who have had this advice given from mothers, grandmothers, aunts or

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

co workers hear it and they say, well, okay, if you lived a traditional life life. And now you're telling me to actually

[Emma Waters]

not do what you did and actually delay those things in favor of my career.

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

Well, you probably know what you're talking about. Aren't you trying to warn me and tell me something essential? And I think it's deeply confusing for younger women and it's a complete inversion of like who a matriarch should be,

[Emma Waters]

which is actually pointing to the ultimately good things.

[Kylie Griswold]

Right, right. Not to go too far down the view rabbit hole, but I, I did think it was interesting that Sunny Hostin's response to that was basically to say that the reason why you shouldn't have children is because they, the cost of childcare is so, is so high. And it was kind of one of those your terms are acceptable, acceptable moments. Like, great, well, then the solution is that moms raise their own babies and we don't ship them off to childcare. It's like it's exactly what we've been, what we've been advocating for.

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

So I know there is a solution,

[Emma Waters]

but it just doesn't involve your career always coming first.

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

And maybe that's okay.

[Kylie Griswold]

Right? Exactly. Exactly. I thought it was really interesting. This is such a good point in the book, book, but just about how women, well, and men. This is not a problem that's unique to women, but tend to confuse information for wisdom. And I think especially in an age where we are constantly saturated by social media and news coming at us from every angle, you don't, you know, you don't have to flick on network television in order to get news. In what ways, I mean, do women, do women substitute this information overload for feeling wise? I think I see it on Instagram all the time, but maybe you can speak a little bit more to it.

[Emma Waters]

Yes. Okay. I'm so glad that you brought this up. So, yeah, I think this is of course always been a temptation, but especially now where AI chatbots will answer literally

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

any question you have within three seconds.

[Emma Waters]

Whether they're correct or not is a

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

different question, but they will give you information about a given topic. You have social media influencers, you have

[Emma Waters]

things like Reddit threads where it's to

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

the point that Google search is actually threatened by Reddit. Because instead of going to Google search, people actually go straight to Reddit to

[Emma Waters]

type in and then get the curated responses from the Reddit threads that they're finding. Um, and so I think this is all over the place that the more

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

information is readily available, it can feel

[Emma Waters]

like that information is then providing you with, like, the tools you need to make a decision.

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

And it's certainly part of it. You want to be informed. That's incredibly important.

[Emma Waters]

But one, there's always the question of

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

what bias are you bringing in with the information?

[Emma Waters]

And I think one of the most

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

deceptive things of our age is saying, no, this information is completely unbiased, it's morally neutral.

[Emma Waters]

I'm just telling you about it. And then you can form your own opinion. When in reality, every time you share

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

information about something, you are reflecting a certain worldview, you're reflecting a certain way

[Emma Waters]

of thinking about an issue.

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

There's no moral neutrality in the information

[Emma Waters]

we share, but we have been lured

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

into this false sense of security where we think that information can be given apart from morals that are themselves.

[Emma Waters]

And the second is that even with

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

being well informed, which is very important, we still need to have wisdom and discernment to know what to do with the information.

[Emma Waters]

So you can have an apple, right? Like just a piece of fruit sitting before you.

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

You can know every fact about the

[Emma Waters]

apple, but it actually takes wisdom and discernment to know how to use the

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

apple in a given situation. So if you're being chased by an

[Emma Waters]

insane person, it's probably a good idea to use the apple to actually, like, hit them in the head and run away as fast as you can. That would be a good use of wisdom and discernment versus if you're trying to make a pie, right? And then what does wisdom and discernment say about how to use the apple

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

to apply to that given situation?

[Emma Waters]

And that's a very silly example. But the point being that you need

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

more than just information. You actually need the wisdom to know how to apply it. Because different situations will require different things of you.

[Emma Waters]

So what does it look like to love your neighbor in one situation may

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

look very different in another. Because sometimes loving your neighbor means showing

[Emma Waters]

compassion and kindness and giving them grace,

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

turning the other cheek.

[Emma Waters]

And sometimes loving your neighbor means recognizing

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

they're doing something illegal or harmful and that they're a threat to the people around you and that you need to take action accordingly.

[Emma Waters]

And both of those are examples of loving your neighbor.

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

But you need wisdom to know when to apply one versus the other, right?

[Kylie Griswold]

Right. I think it also goes back to Lady Folly in some ways too because especially in the way that I see news sort of regurgitated on social media where women receive their information in short incomplete graphics or sound bites and then regurgitate it and then the next person picks it up and shares it and you're not really getting the full, and it feels like more, you know, water and stolen bread of this is, this is half baked. It's not fully developed. It is just something that I am taking and passing off as my own, my own thoughts, I'm passing it off as my own wisdom. But really it's just, it's just lacking. It's just empty, mindless, it's not discerning at all. And it's so, and like it is, it is the epitome of foolishness. You look like a fool when you do these things and women are so susceptible to it because, because for the reason you say too, it's this toxic empathy of I have to look this certain way or play this certain part to, you know, present myself as informed, present myself as wise, present myself as caring. And it's just, it looks a lot like Lady Folly. So yeah, yeah, let's talk about shrewdness. I was really struck in the book, especially as I was reading through the different accounts of the women that you highlight who were shrewd, specifically Miriam. But you, you mentioned a few others and I was really struck by the importance of this particular attribute as it relates to protecting and preserving life and then bringing it into our modern context and in the, in the battle for life today, obviously with the abortion fight, but then also with you know, increase increasingly medical assistance and dying, which is just a physician assisted suicide, other things like that. There are so many battles right now being waged against life and for life and just this particular characteristic of being shrewd and, and one, one particular battle that came to mind was just how, you know, how we fight for life in terms of abolitionism versus incrementalism on the abortion front and stuff. Can you just explain why this attribute was so important in scripture but is also so important today and how we advance, advance the issue of life.

[Emma Waters]

Yeah, I am so glad that you're asking about this. This was, is one of the more

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

fun chapters to write and also one of the most nerve wracking chapters to

[Emma Waters]

write because I want to be very

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

clear off the bat. When we talk about shrewdness, we're talking

[Emma Waters]

about this godly application of wisdom in ways that are very shrewd. But in the way the Old Testament, or, sorry, the New Testament says it,

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

you want to be as innocent as

[Emma Waters]

a dove and shrewd as a serpent. So this is not licensed to be manipulative or deceitful or to lie for

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

selfish gain or for any, you know, personal reasons.

[Emma Waters]

But it's a way of saying, what

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

does this situation require of me to actually do the ultimate good, which is

[Emma Waters]

to protect and preserve life as God

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

has set it out before me.

[Emma Waters]

And recognizing that your highest authority is God and not man, and so in

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

being shrewd, of course, means that sometimes you're not telling the full story in order to protect another person, but you're

[Emma Waters]

not doing so in a way that

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

is deceptive or subverting or like good authority. But in these particular instances where evil

[Emma Waters]

truly is at play. And this is the last. This is basically like the last stand you can take. Like, everything else has failed, and you're like, okay, it's. It's all or nothing. And so I start off the chapter

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

on shrewdness talking about the story of Amy Carmichael, this incredible missionary to India

[Emma Waters]

that I and many others have admired for years. And something about her story that really stood out to me is that when

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

she went to India and started working with orphans, her ministry with orphans actually

[Emma Waters]

began because she learned about this horrific

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

temple prostitution practice where young girls, sometimes babies, sometimes teenagers, were sold to the temple as what was effectively learned to be sex slaves. And in many cases, as we've seen in the modern sex trafficking world, had very short and very, very painful lives, suffering just horrific amounts of sexual abuse.

[Emma Waters]

But when she discovered this, most people

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

around her, even other missionaries, had no idea that this was going on.

[Emma Waters]

And so there were times where she

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

would actually use coffee stains to darken her skin and wear an Indian sari and sort of sneak into temples pretending to be a local so that she could observe and try to learn more about the practice and the women who were who were entrapped there.

[Emma Waters]

And then there were other times where she says that, like, she had opportunities

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

to rescue girls, but it required her to actually pay money to purchase them from the temple.

[Emma Waters]

And how deeply uncomfortable she felt because

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

she was like, you should never pay for the life of another human being.

[Emma Waters]

And yet this is the only way I can rescue this woman and her

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

sort of discerning how to engage shrewdly, where she was fighting against a very

[Emma Waters]

predatory temple practice and doing so as

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

an outsider to convince parents that the girls should come with her and not with those temple guards cards and the Progression you see throughout her life is

[Emma Waters]

this personal conviction, daily faithfulness, and shrewd, Shrewd action. And then ultimately it led to legislative

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

change such that the entire practice was, at least in official terms, banned in India. But it took this long progression in life's work to really get there.

[Emma Waters]

And so as I was looking through the Bible, there were stories of the Egyptian midwives, midwives who used shrewdness.

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

So Pharaoh said, you should kill all of the male sons that are being born when you're there at the birth. Well, the midwives, the Bible says, feared God more than man.

[Emma Waters]

And they knew that to do that

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

would be an affront to God. It would be a sin.

[Emma Waters]

And so they simply didn't do it. They just.

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

They weren't killing the Hebrew sons.

[Emma Waters]

And then when Pharaoh called them back in and was like, what's going on under your watch?

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

All of these boys keep being born.

[Emma Waters]

And they were like, oh, well, these. These Israelite women, they. They don't give birth like the Egyptians. Like, they're just so fast and so rigorous. The babies just come out and it

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

happens before we can get there. Our hands are tied.

[Emma Waters]

And Pharaoh's like, well, I guess that makes sense. I don't know anything about this, but

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

it says in the very next verse

[Emma Waters]

that God blessed them with families of their own and that he recognized that though it was maybe, you know, maybe

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

a lie in some sense, they were

[Emma Waters]

actually very shrewdly protecting those innocent unborn children.

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

You see, Miriam do. Do a similar thing when Moses floats

[Emma Waters]

in to the Egyptian princesses, like, little Oasis, and she's like, hey, I know

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

someone who could help you take care of him.

[Emma Waters]

And she's very shrewd, right? Because she doesn't mean like, also, I'm her sister and also that woman is his mother. But she provides, like, both Pharaoh's daughter with what she wants, which is a

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

nurse maid, and also gives her mother

[Emma Waters]

this incredible gift of getting to have

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

a few years with her son that she otherwise thought she would never get back.

[Emma Waters]

And so it's not.

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

It's not that it's a lie. But she chose not to give the full information, but in doing so, was

[Emma Waters]

able to bring both sides this beautiful

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

gift and what they ultimately desired.

[Emma Waters]

And you also see this in the story of Rebecca.

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

Rebecca, the mother of Jacob and Esau,

[Emma Waters]

who helps Esau present himself as the rightful heir of the blessing from Isaac.

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

And this is one of the controversial stories where people say, well, was Rebecca subverting authority?

[Emma Waters]

Was she honoring God? What's going on Here. And the beauty of the story is

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

one, Rebecca's name means blessed, which is already telling you something about how the Bible views her. But she knew that from the very beginning, one, God had intended the older son to serve the younger son. And two, that Esau, the older brother, had actually, actually sold his birthright to

[Emma Waters]

the younger brother because he actually had

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

complete contempt for God's word and God's

[Emma Waters]

laws at that time. And so she knew that if the

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

older son were to be blessed by

[Emma Waters]

Isaac, that this would actually mean, like

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

the complete loss of the faith.

[Emma Waters]

Not that God wouldn't be faithful and

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

work through other people, but that it was right for the younger son, the son who was faithful to God's word,

[Emma Waters]

to actually receive the blessing. So those are a few of the stories that we cover. But, but in the Old Testament, you

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

see this trend again and again of

[Emma Waters]

women fearing God more than man and doing so for the protection of the vulnerable, the innocent, or for God's God's own word. And so today, as I started thinking about like, okay, well, where do we see shrewdness play out in our world today? The pro life movement and the sex

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

trafficking movement were two of the most

[Emma Waters]

prominent areas that I just kept running into, where you have examples of people

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

like Lila Rose and those who were

[Emma Waters]

work with Live Action actually using very

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

shrewd means to reveal the evil of Planned Parenthood.

[Emma Waters]

So at times, either Lila or someone

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

on her team would go undercover at

[Emma Waters]

Planned Parenthood and they would, if they

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

were even pregnant and would ask for an abortion way later in term than the abortion agency would claim that they

[Emma Waters]

would do abortions just so they could

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

catch them on camera agreeing to something that they otherwise pretended they didn't do,

[Emma Waters]

or presenting themselves as a sex slave

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

who was seeking an abortion and showing the fact that the Planned Parenthood didn't actually report them for suffering from sex trafficking, they only gave them the abortion or examples in the sex trafficking movement where you have men and women who go undercover to catch these evil predators in their actions.

[Emma Waters]

And so time and time again you're seeing I, I think with shrewdness, oftentimes

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

again, it's sort of this lack of last ditch effort.

[Emma Waters]

It's, it's often coming out in these

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

very extreme circumstances where it is a life or death issue that is your job to reveal evil, to protect the innocent.

[Emma Waters]

And so on a day to day basis, it's probably not something you're really coming across. Like, I for one have not found myself in a position like that today, but it is one of those virtues and principles that I think godly women

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

need to be well acquainted with and prepared for.

[Emma Waters]

So if they do find themselves in

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

that position, they're actually be trained to

[Emma Waters]

think shrewdly and not yet not let the moment pass.

[Kylie Griswold]

Right, right. Well, and, you know, just thinking about it in terms of, yeah, life or death type scenarios and also that it's not a manipulation tactic, because especially in scripture, I think in a lot of these stories where women are exercising this shrewdness, it is paired with God's providence very clearly, you know, the timing of everything with Miriam and with Moses, Moses, and then even thinking about the story of Esther. And, you know, Esther and Mordecai were very shrewd and how they approached King Xerxes and, you know, her coming in and basically saying, let's throw a dinner party. You know, let's. Let's get. Let's get these people drinking some wine before I'm going to come to them with my requests or whatever. It was like these were very shrewd things. And yet God's providence was working in the timing and just in the methods of all of these things. And, you know, so if we're manipulating situations, we're also not relying on the providence of God. So shrewdness is very different from that, of course, completely.

[Emma Waters]

Well, and this is, again, you're also

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

seeing the weaker party use shrewdness.

[Emma Waters]

So oftentimes women who legitimately at that

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

point then had no other means of recourse.

[Emma Waters]

So at that point, Esther didn't have

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

a great political power to say, my army's going to fight your army if you try to destroy all the Israelites. Right. She had to fight within the means given to her.

[Emma Waters]

And then just. Yes. To underscore what you're saying, this is again why we started with discernment, because

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

you need discernment to know are you acting shrewdly in accordance with God's word and his providence, or are you acting

[Emma Waters]

with manipulation and with sort of like

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

sinful means or intentions in mind? And that's why discernment is so central, even for shrewdness, to know if you're

[Emma Waters]

within God's word or not.

[Kylie Griswold]

I thought it was really interesting in the book how you contrasted shrewdness with. With feminist rage. Can you explain why these two things are opposite?

[Emma Waters]

Yeah. So I think the subheading is you

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

can be shrill or you can be shrewd.

[Emma Waters]

And I was really struck by the number of women that you see throughout feminist discourse, especially recently who feel similarly as a weaker party, they feel wronged and then. But the response that they have is

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

actually to cultivate rage or anger as the source of women's power.

[Emma Waters]

And actually some of these articles or authors literally say, like, rage is your greatest weapon as a woman. And it really struck me that one,

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

this is the way of lady folly, not the way of lady wisdom. This is making lots of noise, but not necessarily getting very much done.

[Emma Waters]

And as I dove into some of the neuroscience behind rage, what was so striking to me is that one, rage

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

is a very short lived burst of emotional expression. It doesn't actually sustain you for the long run. It leaves you feeling burnt out and exhausted.

[Emma Waters]

And second, rage is actually correlated with

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

short term memory or memory loss where it actually limits your ability to fully

[Emma Waters]

remember and process and be present in

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

the moment that you're in.

[Emma Waters]

And Something that Psalm 90:12 says is that the psalmist is praying, teach me

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

to number my days, oh Lord, that I may gain a heart of wisdom. And so what's essential for gaining a heart of wisdom and walking as lady

[Emma Waters]

wisdom in our lives is having a

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

memory to learn from our life. But if we're simply giving in to these emotional bursts of rage, we're actually working against that very wisdom in our life.

[Emma Waters]

Um, and so instead of being shrewd and thoughtful and fully present in the

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

moment and using discernment to engage what is right and how do I protect

[Emma Waters]

life, Rage is this very immature reaction

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

that's very short lived and very, it's

[Emma Waters]

just, it's lacking in any real content or depth.

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

And yet that's the thing that we

[Emma Waters]

see the feminist narrative putting, like, women, do your role and like scream into

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

your phone on a TikTok live stream about how mad you are about Donald Trump being elected from your car.

[Kylie Griswold]

Probably because that's where they all do it.

[Emma Waters]

Yes, they always it right, like going in or out of work or something. You're like, okay, I don't really see what anyone is gaining from this except for like, like really funny clips to

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

share on social media.

[Emma Waters]

But like, yeah, that's just not the

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

vision of like faithful, effective women that we actually want to give women to grow into.

[Kylie Griswold]

Right, right. We only have a couple minutes left, so I want to pivot to marriage a little bit. You write that the opposite of being a girl boss is not being a trad wife, which is interesting because, you know, even among conservatism, you know, the, the rise of the trad wife has been a thing. So, so why are they not why is trad wife ism not just an antidote to. To being a girl boss?

[Emma Waters]

Yeah, I think that.

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

So I think the progression here is really interesting, where the tradwife movement really

[Emma Waters]

came to the forefront in 2020, and I think in many ways is a very positive signal that women do want to return to and embrace the centrality of the home and their life by

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

embracing marriage and children and even learning many lost domestic arts of baking and

[Emma Waters]

homemaking and all of these, these skills

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

that weren't necessarily passed down to our generation from our mothers or grandmothers.

[Kylie Griswold]

But I actually want to lean out.

[Emma Waters]

The time has come, which apparently a ton of people do, which is why Sheryl Sandberg's lean In is downsizing by 25% right now, which has been also a very timely revelation. But I hesitate to go as far

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

as to say that the tradwife movement is the solution to girl boss feminism,

[Emma Waters]

because ultimately the tradwife movement, movement, like girl boss feminism, has a very particular

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

and rigid definition of what it means

[Emma Waters]

to be a successful woman. And of course, there's like, online TradWife content versus, like, your average stay at

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

home mom who would never call herself a tradwife.

[Emma Waters]

And so the terms are like, a

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

little blurry there as well.

[Emma Waters]

But ultimately both tend to present this

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

very rigid depiction where girl boss feminism

[Emma Waters]

says, to be a successful woman, first things first is your career, and you need to live this kind of life.

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

And then on the other hand, the sort of trad wife movement we see

[Emma Waters]

online says, well, to be a successful woman, you actually have to throw off

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

all work and be fully present in your homesteading experience as a wife and a mother.

[Emma Waters]

Also, here's my affiliate link for my

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

favorite new cheese bread, and you should make some at home too.

[Emma Waters]

And so, so it struck me that the tradwife movement's popularity is actually an indictment of the 2010 Girl Boss feminism,

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

saying that ultimately, women are totally dissatisfied

[Emma Waters]

with the careerism life script that they've

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

been sold, and they actually want something that integrates and honors their desire to become wives and mothers and build homes that are nourishing and meaningful for their family. And yet, in pursuing those first things first, and especially if you are married or do you have children, those are the first things that the Lord has called you to in this season.

[Emma Waters]

But at the same time, honoring first things doesn't mean you can't do anything else, right? It doesn't mean that you can't work

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

flexible or remote jobs, especially during nap times or when your kids are sleeping.

[Emma Waters]

It doesn't mean that you shouldn't have

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

these other passions or projects that you're cultivating.

[Emma Waters]

It's just a question of what comes first in your life and what fuels

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

the rest of those things.

[Emma Waters]

Yeah. And so I really, I think that there are many women who like find

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

themselves sort of torn between the two where they're not a girl boss, but they're not really a trad wife life.

[Emma Waters]

But they are women who want to prioritize their family and do good work

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

in the world and in their home.

[Emma Waters]

And they're looking for a vision of how to do that and how to do that well. And that's where I hope lead like

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

jail is one of the positive voices speaking into that and sort of painting a vision forward, saying, okay, this is

[Emma Waters]

what that thing can look like for you.

[Kylie Griswold]

Yeah, so let's get practical. So for women who have maybe bought the lie that they can have it all, or they are now my moms who have kind of switched their focus from parenting their children and they are just really absorbed by their career or they have also bought into the battle of the sexes. I love the part, we don't really have time to get into it, but where you talk about men and women as thinking of each other as battle mates instead of at battle with each other. If you have for women who have viewed their spouse as someone to battle instead of someone to work with in a joint pursuit suit, what are some practical ways that women who have found themselves in this can sort of reverse course and begin to lead like jail?

[Emma Waters]

This is a great question. Highly Recommend Reading chapter 5 on battle mates because it's so much fun and has so much good content on this. But I think a couple of the

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

things, first and foremost, what season of life are you in? Are you married? Are you unmarried?

[Emma Waters]

Did you have kids?

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

How old are your kids?

[Emma Waters]

Take a very honest assessment of just

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

where the Lord has placed you in

[Emma Waters]

this season and then asking yourself, have I unduly pushed off marriage? Have I had, you know, great men that I could have dated that I've

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

pushed aside for my career?

[Emma Waters]

Have am I married and am I

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

choosing to delay kids for a long

[Emma Waters]

time because I actually want to focus

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

on my career and feel very afraid of inviting children? Or are those things present? And now I'm trying to balance a

[Emma Waters]

full time job with these demands. Like, like, first and foremost, take stock of where you are and what's been going on. Like, yeah, and like where the Lord has placed you. Because ultimately there are every, every woman's

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

life is understood through the lens of seasons. And every season will have different demands,

[Emma Waters]

and that will look different for different

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

women at different times in their own life.

[Emma Waters]

And the second question is, is my Leela Jail is very, very honest and

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

direct and says, well, especially as a

[Emma Waters]

woman, like, your primary calling is to

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

your husband and to your children if you're married and have kids.

[Emma Waters]

And so for me, right now, we

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

have two little girls. Our oldest is three.

[Emma Waters]

And so I feel very much convicted that in this season, especially in these

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

early intimate years of a child's life,

[Emma Waters]

like, my primary calling is to be

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

a faithful wife and mother, which requires you to be present with your children. Erica Comisar and others have done a ton of research about child emotional development and psychological development in these early years,

[Emma Waters]

but it means that it. That you want to actually say no

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

to careers that take you out of

[Emma Waters]

the home when you have young children at play. Things like daycare, which are so detrimental

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

to a child's well being, Especially when you're choosing to put your child in daycare for a job that you want

[Emma Waters]

to have, not a situation where you

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

genuinely have to work.

[Emma Waters]

I think that's part of the discernment process where many people say, well, I

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

have to work in order to do everything. Ex.

[Emma Waters]

And maybe sometimes they do, but I think other times we've actually just tried

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

to maintain a certain lifestyle that maybe

[Emma Waters]

isn't essential for that season.

[Kylie Griswold]

Yeah, we're working to pay for the daycare.

[Emma Waters]

Yes. Which is what so many women do. Yeah, exactly. And so I think this is where, like, you actually have a call to be far more strategic and say, like,

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

okay, first and foremost, I'm here to care for my children and then trust the Lord that he will bless all

[Emma Waters]

the second things and bring creative opportunities to do that. Which I think is something you got into with Evie Solheim really well. And then, yeah, Third, um, it's not

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

just about your children. It is your husband. So how are you as a wife, actually working to build up and empower

[Emma Waters]

your husband to be the most effective

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

he can be at the thing God has called him to.

[Emma Waters]

And that's something women are wives. Sorry, wives are uniquely called to in this season. And this is where you get the

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

vision of battle, mate. This woman who actually strengthens and furthers her husband's work, rather than a battle

[Emma Waters]

of the sexes, who believes the sort of fleshly lies that, like, my husband doesn't understand.

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

He doesn't do as much work as I do.

[Emma Waters]

Like, he is so easy compared to

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

me or any of the other tropes

[Emma Waters]

that women can fall into at times.

[Kylie Griswold]

So, so great. Well, everybody should pick up a copy of Lead Like Jail to get so much more good stuff. I've really been blessed by this book so far. And Emma, thank you so much for writing it. It's a very needful book. Where can people buy it? Especially if they don't want to buy it on Amazon?

[Emma Waters]

If you don't want to buy it on Amazon, then Barnes and Noble has them online and in store and then anywhere else books are sold, Walmart, Target, what have you.

[Kylie Griswold]

Awesome. And where can people read more of your work and follow you online?

[Emma Waters]

Yes. Okay, so if you follow me at the Heritage Foundation, Emma Waters, you'll see

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

many of the articles I publish, but

[Emma Waters]

I am very active on x @eml

[Interviewer Assistant / Co-host]

waters and on Instagram @eml water.

[Kylie Griswold]

Awesome. And you can also find some of Emma's writing at the Federalist where she writes for us from time to time. So, Emma, thank you so much for coming on the Kylie Cast. It was truly a pleasure chatting with you today.

[Emma Waters]

Yes, this is wonderful. Thank you.

[Kylie Griswold]

Thank you so much for tuning in to this week's episode of the Kylie Cast. If you haven't done so already, please like and subscribe wherever you get your podcast. We have a channel specifically for the Kylie cast on Spotify and Apple podcasts. So if you are only subscribed to the Federalist Radio Hour or you're wrong with Molly Hemingway and David Harsani, two of our other great Federalist podcasts, go subscribe to the Kylie Cast as well so you never miss an episode. Leave us a five star review. It is one of the easiest and best ways you can help out the show. And go get a copy of Emma's brand new book lead like JL7 Timeless Princess for today's women of faith. As always, I will be back next week with more. So until then, just remember the truth hurts, but it won't kill you.