Yesterday on my Facebook page I posted a story that got my readers a bit riled up.
Here’s part of what I said:
I’ll soon be having a conversation with podcaster Sarabeth Kapusta of Reconstructing Your Faith. We’re specifically talking about Untwisting Scriptures Book #2: Patriarchy and Authority.
I didn’t talk about “the Jezebel spirit” in that book, but Sarabeth told me a story about it. She told me that back before she had a smartphone when she missed an exit on the highway, she called her dad and was able to get back on track. Pretty straightforward, eh?But her cult pastor called her and told her, “The spirit of Jezebel is deeply entwined in your soul.” And missing an exit on the highway was apparently evidence of that. So. . . .
Do you have a Jezebel story?
Well, that got people going. Here are just a few responses:
I was about 19 yrs old and the youth pastor asked me to lead worship, first time ever. At the end of practice he told me I had to change my pants because the cargo pants I was wearing represented a Jezebel Spirit.
I was in a cult for 5 years and met my ex in it. My ex abused me for 25 years. I was called “Jezebel” all the time by the cult leader and my ex because I voiced my opinions, beliefs, and feelings all the time. I was supposed to be obedient. All. The. Time. I didn’t have a say in anything. When I left the cult in 1994, I had two babies. The leader said to everyone in the cult that I was a Jezebel and a witch.
I once wore lip gloss to church and had an older man call me Jezebel for wearing it.
And licensed counselor Tabitha Westbrook said,
I was told I had a Jezebel spirit for questioning abusive authority in a church I used to go to. A friend was told she had one when she set boundaries with an abusive husband. Having read the story of Jezebel in the Bible, neither of those situations actually are anything like Jezebel who was utterly wicked & having people killed.
Well, yes, I was thinking the same thing.
And Sarabeth added,
This is a term used to shut down independent thinking and acting women that seem a threat to the “leadership” of the church. It’s an extremely abusive application of a story about an evil woman who was not evil because she was a woman with a position of power, but because she worshipped false gods, among other wicked things she did—things not limited to women, but evil characteristics men can have too. For the longest time, I associated it with a woman who would take charge and I shrunk into the background and didn’t want to be too strong or speak my mind or anything that could have the “spirit of jezebel”.
So, when this (IMHO atrocious) meme got exposed in the comments, it only makes sense that a bit of a meme battle would ensue.
I countered with my own list, which I then made into the graphic below. (You can feel free to share the graphic below separate from this post if you so choose; no explicit permission is needed as long as the credits are on it.)
Both of the images below are from famous old paintings about their respective subjects.
And since of course some of us were wondering, “Well, what about the Ahab spirit?” (Ahab was Jezebel’s husband), Don Owsley added this excellent graphic of his own:
Another friend asked:
How did they come up with the “Jezebel spirit” anyway? Is there a “Judas spirit” for men? A “Pharoah spirit?” It’s a stupid concept to take an actual person and assign their character qualities to women who only disagree with the questionable status quo. They resort to name calling when they can’t back up their arguments with facts.
Another friend expressed her appreciation for the “Jael spirit.”
My meme above is the only one I’ll be making about the topic for the foreseeable future, but the field is wide open. I invite others to make Scripturally-based graphics comparing, say, the “Pharaoh spirit” with the “Peter spirit” or the “Herodias spirit” with the “Jael spirit.” The possibilities are vast, and the Scriptures need to be more fully explored for such a worthy endeavor.
I’d love to see your Biblical contrasts in the comments, and if you do make a graphic, I’d love to see that here too.
Carry on, my friends.
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This is excellent! The clarity of bringing the actual text in which the character fruit is on display allows individuals to properly discriminate regarding what the actual sin(s) were/are.
Yes!
Yes, so important!
“They resort to name calling when they can’t back up their arguments with facts.”
yes–it happens all the time. i have been called satanist feminist, rebellious, going against God, told to go home and obey and serve my husband, my salavation doubted, –all from strangers on fb who never met me, do not know one thing about me and will stand in the same line facing God on judgement day.
my sin? that I say that God can and does call women to be gifted in any way He desires, be that motherhood, scientist, astronaut, preacher, researcher, pastor. etc. etc. –all those words other than motherhood, seem to be a trigger for them. and these are not atheists who call me that but other christians, brothers/sister in christ. –unlike them i am not going to cast aspersion on their salvation. But they sure are quick to put me in the unsaved catagory.
And when I direct them to sites like Marg Mowzcko, highly educated in bible languages, history etc. they automatically label her as biased towards women and feminist. Why? because she studies women in the bible? What is wrong with that? People study plants in the bible, or medicines or animals or clothing, etc….they are never criticized.
What is it that is so deeply imbedded in the one true church that has caused the mislabeling and suffering of women?–that is the spirit we need to name and dig out. I call it patriarchy.
My graphic below is in satiric response to all the graphs put out by gothardism who likes to have everything neat and tidy in all his 10 steps to this and 29 steps to that and 45 reasons micromanaging women’s lives and why they should not do or be something other than wife/motherhood–it shows the top heavy crap that results from making a whole theology out of a few verses taken out of context. I do not think anyone can balance a pyramid on its tip. Even the Egyptians placed the largest part of it on the ground and built up from there. It has stood for centuries. Not so gothardism based on patriarchy.
Great answer & graph!!!
Patriarchy is the Bible, sorry if you haven’t read it cover to cover yet. There’s no Biblical example of a woman leading a man in the church, in war, academia or in any endeavor. So no God doesn’t call women to be a pastors. These are doctrines of men but in your case we’ll say doctrines of women.
The world (the devil) indeed wants women to go to university to get their degrees, their careers, and then have their separate lives outside the home so a daycare, iPad or TV can raise your children. Any woman out there that says she had a career all her life and was an excellent wife and mother is a liar. Unfortunately you can’t have it all but men can’t either.
There’s never two leaders of anything, and women leading men are only on Netflix, not in real life.
Steven, I’ve addressed patriarchy at length, both in my Untwisting Scriptures book #2 and on this blog. “Patriarch” is mentioned of only a few Old Testament saints.
I agree that none of us can “have it all,” nor should we want to. Just to be clear, some women need to work in order to make meager ends meet in a family situation that is far less than ideal. It’s not even a “career” as such, just an effort to help provide for her family. I do encourage you to be willing to listen to those who don’t have easy lives.
Whether or not women can Biblically be pastors is a different topic, but you were taking what felt to me to be potshots at women going to school, women having jobs, women putting their children in daycare or giving them an iPad to babysit them. These things don’t even pertain to that argument.
I encourage you to keep your arguments focused and free of snark. You’ll get further that way.
Sorry Steven, but I worked all my adult life until i retired, and raise 3 children who are adults today and they were never in daycare, nor did Ipad raise them. That’s your generation. The first evangelist was the woman at the well.The first person to bring the good news was a woman, oh and a woman did lead the people and the men to battle, check Judges Ch 4 & 5. God can use anyone. He is in control, not man.
Thank you for this! 🙂
This is great, Rebecca- – thanks!
I gotta say… that woman’s face in the “Ruth Spirit” in the first meme—I see so much pain and sadness. It unfortunately seems to fit really well.
You know, I thought the same thing.
love learning from what you write
i have been called many things including jez spirit for holding to the idea that God can and does call women to be whatever He wants them to be. and not by atheists.
here is my graphic made to poke fun at gothardsim and all his micromanaging of woman’s lives. instead of telling them follow God’s leading for your lives. but then he would not have made all that money.
p.s. i must be getting old. i thought i already posted this but the phone rang and a cat threw up so i had to tend to those issues. when i returned hours later it said be the first to post so i guess it timed out.
I sat under the ministry of Dr’s Jerry and Carol Robeson early in my Christian development and for several years. Their books Strongman’s His Name, What’s His Game? Vol. 1 & 2.
People seem to give the “characters” of men and women in the the Bible the name “spirit of Jezebel, etc.” When in reality, these people have chosen to operate in the any of the 16 “spirits of ______” listed in the Robesons’ books.
Then a friend sent me a book, “In the Spirit We’re Equal,” by Susan Stubbs Hyatt. This book rightly delineates the role of women in society and that given by the Christian “church” over the ages.
Both these books are great resources.
I (and my mom) was accused of a “Jezebel spirit” from
the Christian church cult we left. It’s interesting how prevalent this accusation is and how out of context it is too. Thank you for sharing!
It sure is, and I’m so sorry this happened to you.
I agree it’s been unjustly weaponized, but I think scripture says much more about Jezebel then that. Jezebel led Ahab to be more wicked than any other king and she was very promiscuous. (1 Kings 21:25, 2 Kings 9:22) It is those traits Jesus calls Jezebel in Revelation. She doesn’t kill anyone, she’s a church leader leading others into sexual immorality and committing adultery. (Clearly men can have a ‘Jezebel spirit’ then!) I think this is how we got the term ‘Jezebel spirit’ because the women isn’t literally Jezebel in revelation. Come to think of it, the term fits a women I know who preyed on a boy in her youth group…. That desire to corrupt.
Yes, someone on my Facebook page was talking to me about the Jezebel in Revelation, and I told her I obviously need to make another meme.
And yes, the desire to corrupt–that is very clear.
We could modernize the concept in a meme: The corrupt, abusive spirit of, say, Mark Driscoll, versus the joyful spirit of, say, Rebecca Davis! 🙂
However, I do not know how to create memes, so …
Haha! That one made me burst out laughing!
Jezebel has been thrown at me many times while married to and even after the marriage ended by the adulterous abusive man, the pastor tried to cast out jezebel from me. If these abusive churches weren’t doing so much damage it would be comical. But it’s devastating and even causes such trauma, brokenness, mental and physical illness, poverty, shaming, etc. Now I’m the adulteress because he divorced me and I’m not even dating! Lord make it make sense! The end times are indeed here!
Anjie, I agree–it would make a good comedy if it weren’t such a tragedy. And so diabolical too. I’m so very sorry this happened to you. Lord Jesus come quickly.
Anjie, I am, like Rebecca, so sorry to hear this is happening. This is beyond words. Do you have strong Christian’s around you who can support you and continue to speak His life filled words to you?
I’m so sorry that people have treated you that way. It’s so sad how quickly and easily women can be labeled as having a Jezebel spirit simply for her Godly refusal to submit to and enable abuse. The levels of abuse in the church are downright sickening. The church I grew up in just enabled my abusive narcissistic egg donor, and ever since I’ve grown up, I’ve become a “done” as far as church is concerned. “Church” has tragically become an abuse-enabling joke of what it’s supposed to be and represent. I’m glad I left and haven’t looked back. If any of my fellow “dones” read this, please don’t let all of the sickening abuse-enabling that takes place in many (if not most) evangelical churches today turn you away from Christ. I know from personal experience that Jesus is NOTHING like the sickening abusers and abuse-enablers that have taken over so many churches today. Much love to all who see this comment. I have my own blog about abuse and other topics if anyone is interested: The Oasis Blog (wordpress.com)
I”m so very sorry for what has happened to you, arwen2002, and I’m with you that the true Lord Jesus Christ of the Scriptures is completely different from that. God bless you.