July 1, 2025 • 53 mins
Ex-vangelical Kristi Burke has been called a "Jezebel." She joins us to explain why and share her journey.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Understand the thinking atheist. It's not a person, it's a symbol,
an idea.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
The population of atheists this country is going through the.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Rule, rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred. If I
tell the truth, it's because I tell the truth, not
because I put my hand on a book and made
a wish and working together for a more rational world.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Take the risk of thinking. Feel so much more happiness.
Truth Fusian wisdom will come to you that way.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Assume nothing, question everything, and start thinking. This is the
Thinking Atheist podcast hosted by Seth Andrews.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Christy Burke hosts the website and the YouTube channel Old
Jezebel Vibes. I would describe her as a perpetrator of
good trouble. You know, she's a disruptor, but in the
most positive sense of the word. She's part of the resistance.
Christy joins me today, would you call yourself a perpetrator
(01:19):
of good trouble? Because I get those vibes off of you.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Hey, that's a compliment. I think you are one of
many people to call me a disruptor recently, and that
is not something I ever considered myself to be before.
Probably this past year, but I wear it with a
badge of honor.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
I think when we talk about resistance, I'm reminded of
all these hands off twenty twenty five protests, and I
participated in one, and I'm going to be doing so again.
You know, this idea of an expression of freedom of liberation.
I mean, you ended up resisting years ago when you
were challenging your former faith, which, as I understand it
(02:01):
was Southern Baptist religion, Southern Baptist Christianity. Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Yes, yes, I was deep in the Southern Baptist religion.
I came from a church that it was kind of
all over the place, but I think that we most
identified with Southern Baptist.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
Well, come on, I mean we're talking about I mean
I went to a Southern Baptist church. I got both
sides because mom has been Acostal and dad was exit.
Both were so we ended up in a Baptist school
and it was like thirty one flavors, right. But the
Baptist church that I went to, no applause was allowed.
I'm sure that's relaxed. Were you allowed to clap in
your church?
Speaker 2 (02:38):
No? No, I was not allowed to clap and Actually,
it's funny you bring that up because I've been recently
attending a Unitarian Universalist church and I go every now
and then. I don't go regularly, but when people perform,
you know, before the service, you might have a singer
or somebody play the piano, everybody claps afterwards, and I
always get this like feeling of like, oh, we're not
(03:00):
supposed to do that, you know, because in the church
you don't clap for people. You never praise anyone but God.
So it's raat is that the.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Thinking I was trying to remember. I mean, part of
me thought maybe they thought it was too I don't
know the Baptist in the Pentecostals, right, they're the assembly
of Gods. We're always sniping at each other about who
had their correct doctrine. So we're like, well, we don't
want to get too verbally aggressive out there. We don't
want to perform too much lest we look like those
who are practicing an abrid version of the faith. I
(03:30):
always wondered if maybe that was part of the reasoning,
but I'm just guessing.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
I think that's pretty much what they told me. My
understanding of it, which I think, you know, I probably
asked about it when I was very very young. But
my understanding was that when you were clapping for someone,
you were praising them and you were exalting them in
the house of the Lord, and so you were never
to do that when you were in church. You were
always supposed to only praise God and only give Him
(03:55):
the glory. So if somebody was singing or performing, that
wasn't them, that was God working through They get no credit,
only God.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Well, I'm interested in the type of Southern Baptist Church
that must spend too much time here. But so back
in the eighties and nineties, the SBC, which by the way,
still thinks it's the year eleven hundred, but you know,
it was always it was like wooden pews and we
had sort of arches and the big Cross and the
(04:23):
baptismal And I think there are factions of the Baptist
Church that have tried to, i don't know, drag everybody
else into the twenty first century. They've got the lighting
and the performing arts vibe and the cozy seats and
they don't look as Baptiste. So I'm wondering which version
(04:43):
did you have? Were you on the wooden pews? Or
were you more progressive in the face.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Oh, no, there was no progressive religion in my church.
We were very much old school. The church that I
was raised in. I think they must have founded it
in like the late eighteen hundreds or something crazy like that.
So it was very old, very traditional. We weren't weren't
(05:08):
allowed to have any kind of instruments like drums or
guitar or anything like that.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
It was all piano music, organ music in the choir.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
And one funny role that I love to my husband
loves to talk about is there was no dancing allowed.
And so even if you got married in the church,
a lot of people would get married in the chapel,
but then they would have their ceremony or their reception
somewhere else because the church didn't allow dancing, even between
married couples. So that's the kind of church I was
(05:40):
raised in. It was very, very strict. I would say
that my home life was a little less strict. You know.
It's that Southern Baptist thing where you put on nice
for church and then at home you're a little more relaxed.
But the church itself, my Sunday school teacher, all of
my friends and my mentors were very much much entrenched
in that traditional way.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
I remember they used to say in the Baptist church
that dancing was a vertical expression of a horizontal desire.
It was like standing sects, right, so we don't want
you got to leave enough room in between you for
the Holy Spirit or else cormal things are going to happen.
That was the vibe. So being a woman in this space,
(06:25):
I mean, I'm sorry, I'm thinking, you know, you're you're
one of the duggers. I mean, it was it that bad?
Was it skirts only and you can't have a leadership role?
Is all that true for you in.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
The church setting? So at church there were not women
leaders unless they were leading other women. I was not
allowed to wear There were very strange rules because when
I look back on it, to me, I think a
lot of it was for show. It's how you appear
to others. It's how you look. It's not about the
actual ethics or being you know, morally pure or a
(07:00):
good person. So you know, at church, I wasn't allowed
to wear pants unless it was like a Wednesday night
when it was more relaxed for youth group, I could
wear pants than but Sunday mornings. Absolutely not outside of church,
perfectly fine. I was allowed to wear pants. I was
even allowed to listen to secular music, listen watch you know,
secular movies for most of my upbringing, and then in
(07:25):
my teenage years I actually kind of adopted the ideologies
in a much more committed way than my parents did.
So I actually became a lot more strict and fundamentalist
kind of on my own.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
With the influence of the church there, we.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Should say you were on fire for God.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
And of course you know the vigor of youth, right
if you're in that culture, and you'm guessing you had
a youth group where you would have separate services and
you would have youth camps and clubs. Did you guys
have summer camp like we had Falls Creek, which in Oklahoma,
and then I think at the Tri State area, Southern
Baptist would cart their children off for two weeks to
(08:06):
do a summer camp, which sounds amazing. You got canoeing
and hiking and crafts and all this other stuff. But
three times a day there were church services and they
would either evangelize you or cause you to recommit, or
sometimes they would do training things situationals. All right, this
half of the room you're all the lost, and this
half you're all the save people, and one has to
(08:28):
convert the other. And here's a stopwatch. Go. Do you
have any experience at all with any of that stuff, Christy.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Oh, definitely. I did go to a lot of church camps.
We did a lot of like youth group trips. We'd
go up to tennis I lived in Florida, so we
would go up to Tennessee or North Carolina and go
to the mountains and do skiing and things like that.
And then that would always include you know, daily devotionals
and prayers and all of that stuff.
Speaker 4 (08:53):
But it was much smaller.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
But when I was fourteen, I went to a church
camp I think in North Carolina, and it was for
a week or two, and that was actually where I,
you know, reddicated myself. I had always, you know, grown
up in the church. There was no other way, there
was no option. It's all I knew. So I never
even questioned it. But because at home we were a
(09:18):
little bit more relaxed, I was kind of wishy washy
with it. I always believed in Jesus, of course, but
you know, I just kind of was. I felt like
I was a normal kid being raised in a very
non normal environment on Sundays and Wednesdays basically. But at fourteen,
when I went to church camp, you know, they did
the mornings. You had to do your devotionals. Everybody had
(09:40):
to break up into quiet time and do their prayer
and all of that for an hour, and then we
would meet back up later in the evening for a service.
And it was at one of those services that they
you know, they raised the music up and they have
the lights going, and it's very very much emotional manipulation,
intended to get you to feel some thing and to
(10:00):
compel you to do something.
Speaker 4 (10:02):
And you know, they said, you know.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
If anybody feels like they haven't been saved, then now
is the time to be saved. And I had always
questioned my salvation because I was a very anxious kid,
and I was taught in the Southern Baptist Church that
you have to be sure that you were saved, and
that if you are not walking with the Lord and
you're not making the right choices, you could just not
(10:24):
be saved.
Speaker 4 (10:25):
You could be not walking in the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
So as a kid, I would go to bed almost
every night, and I would pray to be saved because
I didn't want to wake up in health. And then
fast forward to the youth camp and I'm there and
I'm like, I don't know, I might be saved. I
know I've said the prayer a million times, but what
if I didn't actually mean it? You know. So in
that moment, I was like, Okay, I'm going to do this,
and I just kind of internally poured my heart out
(10:49):
to Jesus and asked him to save me and decided
to dedicate myself to him. And I became very much
involved in the church and kind of grew into this
like gold and child of the Church role for a
few years.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
But you're also in prison. I mean, everybody's watching, You're
being surveilled. God knows your every thoughts what Christopher Hitchins
called thought crime, so you know. And then as I
understand it, it was when you were a late teen
that you liberated yourself. You know, I have to tell
your whole story, but I'm fascinated, So tell me some
(11:26):
of it. What the hell happened to you?
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Well, you know, I just it was a few years
so I was fourteen when that happened, and I was
very serious. I'm the type of person that if I
really believe in something and I'm passionate about it, i
am That's all I do. And I also have ADHD
and I hyper focused, So I'm sure that probably had
a lot to do with it too, where my brain
gets fixed on something and then that just becomes everything
(11:50):
to me. It's all I think about and all I
want to do. And so for me, I think that
there was a combination there of ADHD hyperfixation where I
was excited about this new thing that I could focus on,
I could read my Bible and learn more about Jesus
and my place as a Christian, you know. But at
the same time, I think also I was expected of me,
(12:12):
and I wanted to be good, and I wanted to
prove myself as a good girl and doing the right thing.
And I just felt like that was the only way
you could be good, you could, you know, do the
right thing in life is to be on fire for Jesus.
So I did what I thought that I was supposed
to do, and then I just I just hyper fixated
(12:33):
on it, basically, and I threw away all of my
secular music and I stopped, you know, watching TV that
I felt didn't glorify God, and I started going on
mission trips and just getting really really.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
Involved in that.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
And I think, yeah, just with that, naturally you want
to grow and learn more. And that's what I did.
And through that process of trying to learn and understand
the religion and God and my place and all of this,
I had more questions than answers, and that just led
(13:08):
me on this journey of constantly chasing answers to questions
that I couldn't rationalize, and never being able to actually
rationalize them. And if something doesn't make sense to me,
I can't follow it or agree with it. I have
to understand it. And I think trying to understand God
and understand the Bible is really what put me in
a place of walking away completely or being able to
(13:32):
because I could never actually get to a place where
it made sense.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
I'm trying to picture you, and I don't know if
you did this, going to the spiritual authorities in the
Baptist Church and saying this doesn't wash, I don't buy this,
do that? How does this make sense? And they look
at you as okay, well, you're a woman, so you
need to submit to male authority. Did that happen or
was it just oh, that's a phase, or you just
(13:57):
want to sin, or's something like that.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
What happened, Well, well, what's funny is it was none
of that. Because I didn't really share my concerns and
my doubts with my church or my parents, and so
I think that probably contributed to the fact that me
leaving home and walking away was very much a big event.
(14:19):
A lot of people were very angry and upset with me,
because I think they felt caught off guard because from
what they saw, one minute, I was the golden child,
I was the good Christian girl and on fire for Jesus,
and then to them the next minute, I was suddenly
I didn't believe it, And that's not what happened. It
was a several year process, and I've told this story before,
(14:43):
but basically what happened was I started kind of courting
a guy from another church. He was a Calvinist, very
hardline Calvinist. He believed that everything was predestined. Some people
went to help because God made them to go to hell,
and I did not believe that, and so I started
trying to dig into the whole theology of determinism and
(15:04):
free will, which is a very confusing, complex topic.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
I think even for you.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Know, people who have been studying this for years and
years and years. It's a really tough philosophical topic. And
I was only sixteen when I was trying to figure
that out, and so I kind of went on my
own little journey just trying to figure out what I believed.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
I would buy books with.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
My babysitting money, and you know, I would watch videos
and just trying to dig in to find the answers
on my own. And when I would ask questions, it
was never in a way that I was doubting. It
was always just I'm trying to understand this better. I'm
trying to understand what we believe. And I felt like
nobody ever really had solid answers for me, because the
(15:47):
church I went to wasn't big on like solid theology.
Speaker 4 (15:51):
It was more just we love Jesus, we believe what.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
The Bible says, and that's all there is to it.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
But they didn't have good answers me.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
That's unsatisfying for sure. Yeah, I tell them, did you
just blurt it out? I don't believe in God or
I'm not a Christian. I mean, what did you say
and how and when did you say it?
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Well, you know, I didn't actually tell anyone and my
family that I didn't believe anymore until after I left home,
and i'd probably left I had probably been gone for
a year or two because I was I was nineteen
when I left home. I was sixteen when I started
kind of questioning things. But that questioning process was very
(16:34):
long and drawn out, and through it, I think I
was also trying to be a normal teenager couldn't figure
out what I believed. By the time I was eighteen,
I felt so sheltered and so confused, and I just
kind of broke out. I would kind of sneak out.
I was living at home, but I would kind of
sneak out and go party with friends, and so I
(16:54):
was kind of like dipping into the outside world and
really enjoying it, but also still feeling really guilty for
not being a good Christian girl. So it was this
kind of undercover, you know, life that I was living
for a little while until I just kind of I
really butt heads.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
With my family. It was a big, huge thing.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
I left home very quickly, unfortunately, and when I was nineteen. Yeah,
and then after that, I think I was about twenty
one before I realized that I was an atheist. But
there was like a good couple years there where I
still considered myself a Christian, but I didn't know what
(17:36):
that meant, and I had no idea what got who
God was, what he wanted from me. I didn't feel
connected to God when I prayed, and then so over time,
I think it just naturally got to a point where
I was like, I don't have any good reason to
hold on to this, and I don't believe it. But
I think it was that lingering fear of hell that
kept me from admitting that to myself sooner.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
But given the fact that you were you started this
journey in your teens, a time when teenagers are known
for rebelling against another family and the family line and
the customs and all that. I mean, did you get that, Oh,
you're just young and it's a phase and one day
when you grow up, we know you're going to come back. Right,
(18:18):
We've trained up a child in the way that she
should go and she will return to it. Did you
get some of that?
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Oh? Definitely, definitely. And I think you know, I had
a parent that used to tell me that, you know,
they knew that this was just going to be a
phase for me, and that eventually I would fall flat
on my face and I'd come running back to Jesus
and you know, she would she would be there, My
family would be there, and Jesus would be there with
open arms waiting for me. And I think that they
(18:46):
prayed for that for a very long time before they
realized it was not going to happen. But they I
had family members that would tell me that they had
prayed for me to fail, for me to get hurt,
or for something bad to happen to me, so that
I would have to turn back to God and realize
that I needed him. And then when my life started
kind of going better, and I, you know, I was
(19:09):
just kind of moving along and growing as a person
and I didn't really need my family or support system
as much anymore because I was becoming independent. I remember
one day I told one of my parents that, I,
you know, I was doing great. I wasn't nothing was
going wrong, and I feel like God was punishing me.
And they said that it was because Satan had gotten
(19:32):
such a hold of me and tricked me into believing
that I was doing so well that I didn't need
God anymore. So no matter what happens, the narrative always
always flips.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
Our Jezebel Vibes will continue as our conversation continues with
my special guest in just a second. I so appreciate
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(20:04):
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(20:26):
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Andrew's And now we continue with my special guest, host
of the Jezebel Vibes YouTube channel, Christy Burke. I was
told I was going through a phase when I was deconstructing. Ah,
(20:46):
you know, I won't be long, He'll be back. I
was eighteen years ago, and then you and I such
similar backgrounds. You know what I said. I think one
of the things I actually said was like that I'm good,
I'm comfortable in my skin, I'm happy. I've got a
life full of love and purpose, and there's no need
to worry about me, and it's all good. And they're like, now,
(21:07):
you know, now you're not happy. You just think you're happy,
which is such a presumptuous thing to say, Like, no,
I'm happy, I'm good. You know, I think it's a
very dismissive way to approach someone else's autonomy and their
humanity and all of that. And probably they're scared, right,
your mom and dad, right, they are hell believers Baptist Church.
(21:29):
They probably think, holy shit, what now our daughter may
be hell bound?
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Yeah, you know, it's I think it's tough because on
one hand, I know that it is manipulation, and having
come from the background that I came from, I had
a really hard time with being very susceptible to emotional
psychological manipulation. And when they would say things like that,
it really confused me. And even though I would be
(21:58):
saying I'm fine, I'm good, happy, when they said those
things back to me, there was still a little part
of me that's like, oh, maybe what if I'm wrong?
Speaker 4 (22:05):
I could be wrong, And that.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Was really hard to get over. It took me a
very long time, and so I see that it's manipulation.
But also I know that the brain is very strange,
and the brain will protect you from information that could
cause you a lot of stress, a lot of trauma.
And I think in a lot of ways, for my family,
(22:29):
who perhaps mistreated me throughout all of that, I think
that their brains were just trying to protect them. They
couldn't handle the idea that I would go to hell
or that they could be wrong about what they believe,
and so they refuse to even consider anything but that
they are right and I am wrong, because they have
to believe that in order to protect themselves, and they
(22:51):
don't do it subconcent or they don't do it consciously.
They do it subconsciously, And so I think that allows
me to, i don't know, to just be a little
more understanding and not so bitter and angry about it
because it was really hard to get through. And I
don't talk to my family anymore for a lot of
those reasons. But I also understand that they are victims
(23:12):
just like I was, and they just never broke free,
and that makes me feel really bad for them.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
What refreshing nuance, right, because a lot of people say
it's all or nothing either or people can be perpetrators
of bad ideas, perpetrators of harm, but also be victims
of bad ideas and brainwashing and all those other things,
and so we don't have to make them all of
any one thing. Human beings are extremely complex, and I
(23:39):
appreciate the compassion that comes with that. I mean, you
and I both rawn a pretty hard line. Boundaries are important,
and I think, you know, families like to give themselves
permission to do and say things that we would not
allow from anybody else. And yet sometimes we think, oh, well,
it's your mother, it's your father. You know you got
to put up with it. Did you have to go
through that? Did you have to sort of be like, hey,
wait a minute, would I take this from somebody else?
Speaker 2 (24:02):
Oh? Definitely. I mean years in therapy of my therapist
saying hey, you got to set some boundaries. Maybe let's
work on setting boundaries, and I'm like, absolutely not. You know,
I wouldn't even set any kind of boundary for a
long time because I didn't feel like I was allowed to.
When you're raised in that environment, even if you end
(24:22):
up walking away from it, you no longer believe all
of those core values, those core ideas about how you're
supposed to behave, who you're supposed to be, how you're
supposed to treat other people, and what you take from them,
that is all still there. And the process of deconstruction,
I've realized is a very small bit of it is
deconstructing what you believe about God, and a very big
(24:45):
part of it is deconstructing your entire worldview and everything
that you know about reality, existence, yourself and other people.
And so yeah, I mean, I definitely had to get
to that point where I I realized that I deserve
to be treated a lot better and I wouldn't take
this from anyone else. But it took me years and
(25:06):
years and years to get to that point. And you know,
I've cut off several of my family members and I
haven't talked to them in years, and it's a really
tough thing.
Speaker 4 (25:19):
But it was like the best thing I could have done.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
And it happened over a long period of time, just
accumulating where one day I just finally kind of just
said enough is enough, I'm done. And you know, it's
unfortunate happens, but for a lot of people who walk away,
it's kind of the only option, especially if those you
walked away from just cannot accept who you've become and
the fact that you're just not like them anymore.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
Talking here with Christy Burke of the Jezebel Vibes channel, Okay,
there's some people going, who's Jezebel. I've heard of Jezebel.
Sounds kind of, I don't know, naughty, all right, Jezebel
was probably doing some shady stuff in the Bible. Who
was Jezebel? And why Jezebel vibes?
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Well, you know, originally, Jezebel Vibes came just from a
comment that I got on TikTok. Somebody just literally commented
and said, you've got Jezebel vibes, and I just thought
that was so great, and I wanted to kind of
reclaim it because Jezebel is often used as an insult
against women who are strong, who think for themselves, who
(26:26):
are confident and refused to bow down to patriarchal standards
and traditional values. So I really liked the idea of
reclaiming Jezebel. And I remember reading back through her story
shortly after that and really kind of studying the words
and the story and realizing that the things they said
about Jezebel in church were so not biblical, and we're
(26:50):
just kind of made up as a way to demonize
her character. And Jezebel might not be, you know, the
most innocent character in the Bible or in history, but
she's certainly not someone who was promoting child sacrifice like
they often like to say. That's nowhere in the story,
even though it's constantly attributed to her story. So when
(27:11):
I was reading back through, I thought, you know, this
is someone who refused to bow down to this patriarchal
god that these people wanted her to bow down to,
and she decided to live her own life and do
her own thing, and the people around her did not
like that. And anytime men in the Bible had power,
(27:33):
they could do whatever they wanted and it was perfectly fine.
But when a woman has power and she decides to
do things her own way, she is demonized as this horrible,
sexually immoral woman who sacrifices children. And it's just not
her story. And I loved that she knew her fate,
she knew what was coming to her, and she decided
(27:53):
to dull herself up and await her fate and stay
true to herself to the very end. And even you
knowing thrown out of a window and fed to dogs,
she stayed true to herself. And so I find that
very admirable. And I really like kind of reclaiming that word,
that name Jezebel as something that empowers me rather than
(28:15):
is used as an insult against me.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
It's kind of reminiscent of the traditional story of Lilith,
the first wife of Adam, and she was just, you know,
she was doing it her way. She wasn't going to
be told what to do. She was sexually liberated. She
demanded equality, and the men were like, you know, Adam
and God were both like, oh, this is not going
to work out, right, you're out. Let's try it and
(28:40):
make a submissive helpmate so to speak. I don't know,
I got Lilith vibes from what you were just saying, So.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
Yeah, yeah, well you know. And it's funny too, because
when I think about the story of Adam and Eve,
Eve is such an interesting character and I love reclaiming
Eve too, because something I find to be really incredible
Eve is that she actually wasn't the sweet submissive wife.
You know, she did her own thing and in the garden,
(29:09):
you know she is she's told by Adam. I love
the story because the God never actually tells Eve directly
not to eat from the tree. It never says that
he told her. It says that he gave the message
to Adam. And then all of the sudden, one day,
the serpent comes up to Eve and he says, oh,
you know, why aren't you eating from the tree, And
she says, well, you know, we eat from it will die.
(29:30):
So what I say from the story is she was
getting this information from Adam, not from God himself, and
so Adam gave her an order, gave her a command.
Speaker 4 (29:38):
The serpent was like, hey, you're not going to die.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
If you eat from it, your eyes will be open
and you're going to become like God. And in the story,
when she looks at the tree, and it says that
she sees the fruit is good for gaining wisdom, and
so instead of thinking about what the serpent told her
or what Adam told her, she looks at the tree
and she says, you know what, this fruit looks good.
I'm going to eat it. And she makes the decision
(30:00):
to gain knowledge. I mean, that's what it's all about.
Your's she wanted to gain knowledge, and so she eats
from the tree and then exactly what the serpent said
would happen happened, which is that her eyes were open.
And God says, she has become like us, or become
like me, you know. And so Eve ate from the
tree because she wanted to. And then she gained wisdom
(30:23):
and you know, yeah, she suffered the consequences, but she
chose knowledge over ignorance, and she did that within herself.
And I think that's a really cool story and I
love reclaiming Eve in that way too.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
My friend Promise runs the Eve was framed channel the
way that that's Eve was framed. She got a raw deal.
Everybody's blaming the woman because right after that happened. What's
one of the first things that happens is the God's like, okay, well,
from now on, you're going to be kind of a
You're going to have desire for your husband. So sexual
desire for your mate is going to be part of
(30:57):
a curse and it's going to hurt like hell to
give the children, which is just crazy. And that was
taught to the women in our culture. The reason that
childbirth is so traumatic and so painful and agonizing and
all those things is because all these thousands of years ago,
Eve ate the fruit and the garden and we just
accepted it. Oh oh, well, that's interesting. It sucks for women, right,
(31:21):
But even the women in my life accepted that that's
the way it was. It's a weird kind of would
you call it slavery, like a slavery of the mind, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
I mean absolutely. I think it's just it's always been
a way to keep women in their place. Say you
know what, this is your purpose, this is what God
cursed you to be, and you better suck it up
and you better like it, because that's just the way
things are. Your place is to listen and obey. And
if you don't, well, you know, look what happens to Eve.
(31:52):
And now you have to suffer too because of Eve.
And it is so strange how we just accepted that
we deserve to be punished for what somebody that we
didn't even know thousands.
Speaker 4 (32:01):
Of years ago did.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
But it was so easily accepted, and now that I'm
so out of it, I look back and I'm like, man,
what a terrible thing to tell people that, and to
tell women that they deserve to be cursed, they deserve pain,
and to be second class just because some woman a
(32:23):
long time ago chose wisdom and knowledge for herself.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
I like to frame it in a way that people
they resist, and yet they can't refute the facts of it.
I think I frame it like a couple of cosmically
conjured garden nudists engaged in a rebellious act of fruit
munching because they were told to by a talking snake.
I mean, if you say it in that way, then
(32:48):
even the apologists are like, well, you know, come on,
come on, you make it sound so stupid. What do
you doing? You know, before I get into what you
call an unlikely alliance and you did a video about
this a couple of months ago, I want to talk
about some of the things that people are hurling at
(33:09):
you to try to convince you to come back or
to tell you that you're wrong. What are some of
the apologetic arguments that are that you have to feel,
you know, is it that you want to sin or
any of those types. I mean, do you hear some
that are familiar enough to recite here?
Speaker 2 (33:26):
Well? Yes, I mean I think it's all the you know,
it's all the hits, you know that you just want
to send and all that. But I think at this
point I have developed a reputation with my content that
shows that I have I'm very thoughtful, and I have
thought this stuff through. I'm not just some I don't know,
(33:46):
rebellious person who's trying to just have fun and screw
screw over the Christians or screw over God. I don't
think people really think of me like that anymore. I
think it's pretty easy to see that I probably overthink.
Speaker 4 (33:59):
I think a lot.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
And so I think the number one comment that I
get from people who disagree with me and perhaps want
to try to convince me that I'm wrong, is just
that I'm not What is it that I'm just ignorant
or I'm not really thinking about this right, or I'm
not really considering the context. You haven't really thought this through,
(34:21):
So it's it's really just a way to tell me
that I'm looking at it the wrong way and I
just need to If I just shifted my perspective, I
would understand. But because I am an atheist and I
don't have the Holy Spirit, I can't shift my perspective
because the Holy Spirit has to do that for me.
It's it's kind of like a you know, this like
circular thing where you like you have to you have
(34:44):
to how in order to get the Holy Spirit, you
have to understand, but you can't understand unless you have
the Holy Spirit. And it's just a way for them
to be like, oh, well, no matter what, you're just
wrong because you just you don't have the Holy Spirit
to teach you.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
As a next vangelical, do you use the label atheist?
Do you get some people get hung up there. I
don't really care too much what the labels are. I
think I'm more interested in authenticity and you know, people
taking their journey on their terms. But do you embrace
the word. Do you call yourself anything?
Speaker 1 (35:17):
I do?
Speaker 2 (35:18):
I call myself. I call myself an agnostic atheist, though
I tend to shorthand it to atheists just because that's
what I am. I don't really need to say agnostic
because that to me goes without saying. I just don't know.
I struggle with using it because on one hand, I
am an atheist, and I'm proud to say that I am,
(35:38):
and I'm not going to hide that. On the other hand,
I know that atheist comes with a lot of misconceptions.
People tend to misunderstand what I mean when I say
I'm an atheist, and they assume that it means that
I am sure there is no God, which couldn't be
further from the case. It is just a lack of
belief in a deity. So I I struggle with using
(36:01):
it because I know that people will always misunderstand or
make assumptions. But I also kind of like that because
it gives me the opportunity to clear the air and
to clear up those misconceptions that people often have.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
Let me toss this out and you can check me.
I will say, well, I know the Christian God is
a myth, like we've deconstructed that, and we know the
Bible is human made, and we know it's contradictory, and
it's all the things that you and I talk about
all the time. And so I know that I'm an
atheist about that God. Now I know I'm an atheist
about the Islamic God, and i know I'm an atheist
about here here, But as far as the overall sort
(36:34):
of deistic is there a higher power or something out
there somewhere, I guess agnostic makes more sense. Is that
a fair way to approach it? I mean, when you
say we know the Christian God is just we know
that one's wrong, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
Yeah, So I think these days I struggle so much
to say I know the Christian God is not real,
and it's really just it's just because of the way
I like to present the things that I say. I
think in the most basic, simple sense, yeah, I know
that the Christian God does not exist because I know
(37:10):
that it's not It doesn't align with reality. I know
that it is inconsistent, it doesn't align with the rules
of logic, that sort of stuff. But I also have
gotten to a point where I realize how absolutely subjective
reality is to each individual person. And although reality might
be objective, I don't know that I could ever really
(37:32):
know that, and I could never know what the objective
reality is because I only have my own perspective. I
only have my own subjective understanding of the reality I'm in.
So I think I always get caught up on you know,
there could be something I'm missing. But as far as
what I know about reality, what I know about the
rules of logic and consistency. No, I don't I think
(37:55):
that the Christian God does not exist.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
I'm not trying to like shoot you. I think I'm
interested in approaches like I may or may not lead with.
I don't I think the Christian God is totally human
made and total bullshit. But it depends on what my
goal is, who my audience is, who I'm engaging, right,
Because if I say that to somebody that I'm trying
to reach, that is a pretty mauch sure fireway to
(38:18):
kick them back on their heels. They shut down, fight,
fight or freeze. Nothing gets accomplished, everybody leaves frustrated. So
I mean, I tend to lead with a more not
charitable but I go less hard at the Christian God
in certain context. And I think you and I have
this in common. Many of the allies that we have
(38:38):
for our secular democracy and to promote and preserve human rights,
many of our allies are religious, and some people that
makes their brain explode. Why in the world would you
ally with a Christian or a Muslim, or a Jew
or a Hindu or whatever. How would you respond to that?
Christie oh Man.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
I've got a lot of pushback from people ever since,
you know, I started talking about an alliance with those
that might not think like we do. It's tough when
you come from the background, you have the religious trauma.
Speaker 4 (39:14):
You don't want to associate with that at all.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
If you think it's wrong and it's causing harm, then
in the most simple way you can think about it,
it's like, oh, well, that's bad what those people are
believing causes harm. Therefore I don't want anything to do
with it. But it's there's so much more nuance and complexity,
and I know that people can be incredibly complex, and
(39:37):
just because they have been made to believe a certain
thing about the reality, it doesn't make them bad. And
I think, I really do think that people generally are
good inside, and that it is their experiences, what they're taught, propaganda,
all kinds of different things that can shift their perspective
and perhaps cause them to hold harmful beliefs and even
(39:58):
act in harmful ways because of the those beliefs. But
I've realized that I can't just put all Christians or
all religious people into a box that I would be.
I wouldn't be it wouldn't be honest for me to
assume that every Christian is what I came from, you know,
(40:19):
is a judgmental Southern Baptist. And all Christians have their
own unique beliefs, and many of them really do just
want to do the right thing and just have a
belief in a deity that they think has created the
world and given them rules to abide. Bye, And as
long as they have good intentions and they want to
do good in this world, and I am happy to
(40:40):
team up with them and the resistance and do whatever
we can to preserve our freedoms and our democracy. And
I really think it's important that atheists and Christians stop
putting this wall between one another and making all these
assumptions about each other, because I know Christians make a
lot of assumptions about that aren't true, and in return,
(41:01):
Atheists tend to make a lot of assumptions about Christians
that aren't true. And I don't like to make assumptions
because I usually end up being wrong. So I would
rather be open and let people show me and tell
me what they believe and what they think, and if
it's not harmful, it's not causing harm, then I would
you know, I have no issue with what they believe.
I'm not going to try to convince someone to believe
(41:22):
something else. What you believe is very personal and it's
affected by so many different things. And you know, the
brain is a weird thing and it holds on to
beliefs for all kinds of different reasons.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
One last break and then we're back with Christy Burke.
Hang on, there's a video of this conversation if you
want to watch after you're done listening. That link is
in the description box. I'm talking with x vangelical and
(41:56):
host of the Jezebel Vibes channel, Christie Burke. I think
for me it comes down to do we have a
clash of beliefs or do we have a clash of values.
Like I have a lot of allies for State Church
separation who are humanists. They don't want to judge anybody there.
Jesus would never condemn anybody, that God would never create hell,
(42:18):
blah blah blah. Maybe they've rewritten their own version of Christianity,
but I mean, from their heart, they really want the
good and I'll take that person any day of the
week over some really nasty atheists out there. I mean
because I want someone who loves people and wants to
make the world a better place. But I think we
can also eventually have the conversation about what is true,
(42:40):
what's verified, what's mythology, what's fact, what's supported, what's not,
what's not line by ingersol, the more false we destroy,
the more room we make for the true. And I
think if it's not true, that's important. But if I'm
hanging out with somebody who is marching alongside me against
Project twenty twenty five condemning the stealing of the country
(43:04):
to create freaking Gilead, and they happen to go to
a Christian church, I don't give a shit right because
they're still on my side. And that's hard for a
lot of people to process because I think they think, well,
if they're a Christian, then they've given cover to the
Christian nationalists who are behind Project twenty twenty five, who
want to dominate the world and create Gilead. They're guilty
(43:27):
by association. It's I don't know, it's messy. I've thrown
a lot out of here. CHRISTI any of that. You
are to do it all or.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
I definitely get what you're saying. If I'm marching along
someone and there, I hope that they are a Christian,
and I hope they go to a Christian church, because
I think we need a lot more people in the
Christian churches speaking out, standing up and actually doing something,
taking action instead of just praying or you know, going
(43:56):
along with what's what's happening. So I would hope that
the people marching beside our Christians and we'll go into
our Christian churches and we'll talk to their communities. Because yes,
we have a very big issue with Christian nationalism, and
the churches kind of as like one, you know, as
a whole, are very very harmful in our society. But
I think that at the same time, the church also
(44:20):
has a history of speaking out against certain types of oppression.
The church has a history of standing up for the
separation of church and state. Baptists specifically have a history
of that. And so I think if I think that
there has to be a way to kind of get
into these communities and to speak to that. And what
(44:42):
you said about you know, beliefs and values is really important,
because I think you're right that at the end of
the day, we might have totally wildly different beliefs but
I truly believe that even if I were to walk
into a church that is very Christian nationalists and sit
down with individuals and have a face to face conversation
about what we value as human beings outside of our beliefs,
(45:03):
I think that we would look almost identical in what
we value our freedom, democracy, well being, happiness, human life,
things like that. Even I like to bring it up
as an example like abortion, I think that even if
I were to sit down with someone who is very
very anti abortion, I am very pro choice, and have
(45:25):
a conversation about what we value, like boiling it all down,
I think we'd both realize that we both value human life.
They might just value the human life of a fetus
more than they value a living woman who is pregnant.
I value the life of a living woman.
Speaker 4 (45:42):
But when you boil it all.
Speaker 2 (45:43):
Down, we both value human life. And I think it's
really important that Christians and atheists everybody in between kind
of have these these conversations about what we value, not
what we believe, because we'll actually end up probably getting
on the same page. And I think we would see
more Christians and more churches joining the resistance.
Speaker 3 (46:04):
Well, I don't think atheists are going to win this
fight by patting down the hatches and sealing up the
walls and welding our culture shut right. I mean I
want to team up with Amanda Tyler of the Baptist
Joint Committee, who is a devout Christian and she is
the founder of Christians Against Christian Nationalism and Rachel lazarup
(46:26):
at Americans United for Separation of Church and State. She
is practicing jew. You know, so, am I going to
get hung up on the label or am I going
to see the person and go, Wow, she's a hero.
You know, She's somebody I want to ally with in
this world to rehumanize these conversations. I appreciate that tone
in your work. You bring real equity with the insider's perspective.
(46:46):
It's not like you're like, well, we need to be
more charitable to believers because you were one, and you
were a good person when you were one. I think
once we start to see each other in that way,
it kind of opens up a world of possible abilities
before we wrap it up. Tell me about your inbox.
You must hear from a lot of people who are
just scared shitless, like I don't know what I believe,
(47:11):
and I don't know what to do. And I've never
emailed anybody or whatever before in my life. But here's
where I'm at. I know you got to get some
of that, Christy.
Speaker 2 (47:20):
I do. I get a lot of my My inbox
is usually very full. I think it's I don't know.
I get a lot more emails than I would expect
to with the amount of views that I get. But
I do get a lot of emails from all kinds
of people. Hold I'm gonna say, get my cat is
like meowing, Hey, can you please stop?
Speaker 1 (47:38):
Thank you?
Speaker 3 (47:39):
It's okay. My cat's very vocal as well. It's like
really very hoggy of the spotlight.
Speaker 2 (47:48):
Here. It doesn't like close doors. So but anyway, I yeah,
I get a lot of people who are very angry
with what I'm doing. I get a lot of people
who also use it as an opportunity to witness. It's
probably what I would have done if you know, back
(48:10):
when I was a teenager, I would have reached out
to people and been like, I can save you. You know,
Jesus loves you. But I also get a lot of
people who are just saying, you know, I am sorry.
My cat will not hear I'm gonna just hold on.
I'll hold him. I think that's what he want.
Speaker 3 (48:30):
What's your cat's name?
Speaker 2 (48:32):
This is Goose, Oh sweet little. I think he just
wants to.
Speaker 3 (48:36):
Be held, Okay, going.
Speaker 2 (48:41):
So, I got a lot of people in my inbox
that say, you know, I've been struggling for a long time.
I've been questioning, but I don't really know what to do.
I'm scared. I have family that would be so mad
at me. And I think the main theme is just fear.
People are so afraid because they know deep in their
(49:03):
heart that what they're being taught is not accurate and
it doesn't align with the reality that they are experiencing.
But they have been taught that if they deny that
the reality they've been taught to believe in, that they'll
go to help or they'll lose everything. They'll lose their community,
they'll lose, you know, the support and love of their family, and.
Speaker 4 (49:26):
That is very scary for a lot of people.
Speaker 2 (49:29):
So I think the main thing is just people are afraid.
They're afraid to step out, they're afraid to even feel
differently than what they're taught to feel.
Speaker 4 (49:37):
And I just find that to be so it's just so,
it's just so unfortunate.
Speaker 2 (49:42):
You know that people feel as though they can't actually
follow their own authentic path because their path has already
been carved out by someone else.
Speaker 3 (49:52):
Yeah, you don't have permission. That's sort of the coda
of the Bible. This is who you are, this is
how you worship. This is a list of commands you
should follow. And if you don't, you're either disobedient or
in rebellion, or you want to be God, you're just
being haughty and prideful and egotistical. I mean, it's interesting
to watch Fundi religions and all of these mechanisms they
(50:13):
have for controlling people and to be free. And it's
lovely to see someone who's busted out and who is
free in helping other people to do the same. I
just I'm a fan. I appreciate you and your story too.
Speaker 2 (50:27):
I think I've been following you since probably Yeah.
Speaker 3 (50:32):
I think I was made aware of your work like
years ago, and I think I don't know if I
reached out or I was going to send a message
and invite you and have a it just never happened.
Speaker 2 (50:42):
So this has been a long I had to tell
you this funny story. When you first reached out to me,
it was like a year and a half ago or so.
You sent me an email and I was on a
hike at the time, and I was listening to an
audiobook that you narrated, the Eightist Handbook to Old Testament,
So I was a listened into you. And then you
email me asking, you know if you want to team up,
(51:04):
and I'm like, this.
Speaker 4 (51:05):
Is just crazy.
Speaker 3 (51:06):
There is no escape from me. I am, I am
omni present, Christy, I am all, I am everywhere. What's
it like to be able to hold a cat like
my cat? He's very Persian, so he wants to be
near me. He'll sit on my lap. But he refused,
Like if I was to try to pick him up
the way you just picked Goose up, we would have
(51:28):
to call paramedics, right, he would go crazy. But it
sounds like Goose is all over it.
Speaker 2 (51:34):
Oh, they love it. I have four and I have
one cat that does not like to be picked up
at all. But Goose used to hate it. Goose actually
used to hate me. He just did not like me
like my husband. But I would like come and sit
beside him, and he would like make a noise. And
run off, but now he is obsessed. He's a bellcrow
cat and I think, yeah, three of them that love
(51:55):
to be held. I have one that I think he's
another orange cat, and if he could be held twenty
four to seven, I think he would I don't. I
think he could survive off of love and cuddles and
would never have to eat again.
Speaker 3 (52:07):
There is no resisting your charms. You will break the
cats barriers down always, and you will receive all of
the love. If there's anything that I or this audience
can ever do to support you and your work, you
have your people, cool my people, because I'm a fan.
You're a bridge builder. I think you are sort of
pulling back the curtain as to what's happened behind many
(52:28):
of these high control cultures. I think your voice is
a liberation voice for women and for all of us,
and I just wish you and yours the very best.
I will link to your channel in the description box
of this conversation, and let's not wait years and years
to talk again. So we'll grab the cats and we'll
rendezvous and do another interview here.
Speaker 4 (52:46):
Okay, that sounds great, Thank you so much. This is great.
Speaker 1 (52:49):
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Speaker 2 (00:10):
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Speaker 1 (00:13):
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Speaker 3 (00:29):
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Speaker 3 (00:56):
Christy Burke hosts the website and the YouTube channel Old
Jezebel Vibes. I would describe her as a perpetrator of
good trouble. You know, she's a disruptor, but in the
most positive sense of the word. She's part of the resistance.
Christy joins me today, would you call yourself a perpetrator
(01:19):
of good trouble? Because I get those vibes off of you.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Hey, that's a compliment. I think you are one of
many people to call me a disruptor recently, and that
is not something I ever considered myself to be before.
Probably this past year, but I wear it with a
badge of honor.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
I think when we talk about resistance, I'm reminded of
all these hands off twenty twenty five protests, and I
participated in one, and I'm going to be doing so again.
You know, this idea of an expression of freedom of liberation.
I mean, you ended up resisting years ago when you
were challenging your former faith, which, as I understand it
(02:01):
was Southern Baptist religion, Southern Baptist Christianity. Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Yes, yes, I was deep in the Southern Baptist religion.
I came from a church that it was kind of
all over the place, but I think that we most
identified with Southern Baptist.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
Well, come on, I mean we're talking about I mean
I went to a Southern Baptist church. I got both
sides because mom has been Acostal and dad was exit.
Both were so we ended up in a Baptist school
and it was like thirty one flavors, right. But the
Baptist church that I went to, no applause was allowed.
I'm sure that's relaxed. Were you allowed to clap in
your church?
Speaker 2 (02:38):
No? No, I was not allowed to clap and Actually,
it's funny you bring that up because I've been recently
attending a Unitarian Universalist church and I go every now
and then. I don't go regularly, but when people perform,
you know, before the service, you might have a singer
or somebody play the piano, everybody claps afterwards, and I
always get this like feeling of like, oh, we're not
(03:00):
supposed to do that, you know, because in the church
you don't clap for people. You never praise anyone but God.
So it's raat is that the.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Thinking I was trying to remember. I mean, part of
me thought maybe they thought it was too I don't
know the Baptist in the Pentecostals, right, they're the assembly
of Gods. We're always sniping at each other about who
had their correct doctrine. So we're like, well, we don't
want to get too verbally aggressive out there. We don't
want to perform too much lest we look like those
who are practicing an abrid version of the faith. I
(03:30):
always wondered if maybe that was part of the reasoning,
but I'm just guessing.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
I think that's pretty much what they told me. My
understanding of it, which I think, you know, I probably
asked about it when I was very very young. But
my understanding was that when you were clapping for someone,
you were praising them and you were exalting them in
the house of the Lord, and so you were never
to do that when you were in church. You were
always supposed to only praise God and only give Him
(03:55):
the glory. So if somebody was singing or performing, that
wasn't them, that was God working through They get no credit,
only God.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Well, I'm interested in the type of Southern Baptist Church
that must spend too much time here. But so back
in the eighties and nineties, the SBC, which by the way,
still thinks it's the year eleven hundred, but you know,
it was always it was like wooden pews and we
had sort of arches and the big Cross and the
(04:23):
baptismal And I think there are factions of the Baptist
Church that have tried to, i don't know, drag everybody
else into the twenty first century. They've got the lighting
and the performing arts vibe and the cozy seats and
they don't look as Baptiste. So I'm wondering which version
(04:43):
did you have? Were you on the wooden pews? Or
were you more progressive in the face.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Oh, no, there was no progressive religion in my church.
We were very much old school. The church that I
was raised in. I think they must have founded it
in like the late eighteen hundreds or something crazy like that.
So it was very old, very traditional. We weren't weren't
(05:08):
allowed to have any kind of instruments like drums or
guitar or anything like that.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
It was all piano music, organ music in the choir.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
And one funny role that I love to my husband
loves to talk about is there was no dancing allowed.
And so even if you got married in the church,
a lot of people would get married in the chapel,
but then they would have their ceremony or their reception
somewhere else because the church didn't allow dancing, even between
married couples. So that's the kind of church I was
(05:40):
raised in. It was very, very strict. I would say
that my home life was a little less strict. You know.
It's that Southern Baptist thing where you put on nice
for church and then at home you're a little more relaxed.
But the church itself, my Sunday school teacher, all of
my friends and my mentors were very much much entrenched
in that traditional way.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
I remember they used to say in the Baptist church
that dancing was a vertical expression of a horizontal desire.
It was like standing sects, right, so we don't want
you got to leave enough room in between you for
the Holy Spirit or else cormal things are going to happen.
That was the vibe. So being a woman in this space,
(06:25):
I mean, I'm sorry, I'm thinking, you know, you're you're
one of the duggers. I mean, it was it that bad?
Was it skirts only and you can't have a leadership role?
Is all that true for you in.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
The church setting? So at church there were not women
leaders unless they were leading other women. I was not
allowed to wear There were very strange rules because when
I look back on it, to me, I think a
lot of it was for show. It's how you appear
to others. It's how you look. It's not about the
actual ethics or being you know, morally pure or a
(07:00):
good person. So you know, at church, I wasn't allowed
to wear pants unless it was like a Wednesday night
when it was more relaxed for youth group, I could
wear pants than but Sunday mornings. Absolutely not outside of church,
perfectly fine. I was allowed to wear pants. I was
even allowed to listen to secular music, listen watch you know,
secular movies for most of my upbringing, and then in
(07:25):
my teenage years I actually kind of adopted the ideologies
in a much more committed way than my parents did.
So I actually became a lot more strict and fundamentalist
kind of on my own.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
With the influence of the church there, we.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Should say you were on fire for God.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
And of course you know the vigor of youth, right
if you're in that culture, and you'm guessing you had
a youth group where you would have separate services and
you would have youth camps and clubs. Did you guys
have summer camp like we had Falls Creek, which in Oklahoma,
and then I think at the Tri State area, Southern
Baptist would cart their children off for two weeks to
(08:06):
do a summer camp, which sounds amazing. You got canoeing
and hiking and crafts and all this other stuff. But
three times a day there were church services and they
would either evangelize you or cause you to recommit, or
sometimes they would do training things situationals. All right, this
half of the room you're all the lost, and this
half you're all the save people, and one has to
(08:28):
convert the other. And here's a stopwatch. Go. Do you
have any experience at all with any of that stuff, Christy.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Oh, definitely. I did go to a lot of church camps.
We did a lot of like youth group trips. We'd
go up to tennis I lived in Florida, so we
would go up to Tennessee or North Carolina and go
to the mountains and do skiing and things like that.
And then that would always include you know, daily devotionals
and prayers and all of that stuff.
Speaker 4 (08:53):
But it was much smaller.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
But when I was fourteen, I went to a church
camp I think in North Carolina, and it was for
a week or two, and that was actually where I,
you know, reddicated myself. I had always, you know, grown
up in the church. There was no other way, there
was no option. It's all I knew. So I never
even questioned it. But because at home we were a
(09:18):
little bit more relaxed, I was kind of wishy washy
with it. I always believed in Jesus, of course, but
you know, I just kind of was. I felt like
I was a normal kid being raised in a very
non normal environment on Sundays and Wednesdays basically. But at fourteen,
when I went to church camp, you know, they did
the mornings. You had to do your devotionals. Everybody had
(09:40):
to break up into quiet time and do their prayer
and all of that for an hour, and then we
would meet back up later in the evening for a service.
And it was at one of those services that they
you know, they raised the music up and they have
the lights going, and it's very very much emotional manipulation,
intended to get you to feel some thing and to
(10:00):
compel you to do something.
Speaker 4 (10:02):
And you know, they said, you know.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
If anybody feels like they haven't been saved, then now
is the time to be saved. And I had always
questioned my salvation because I was a very anxious kid,
and I was taught in the Southern Baptist Church that
you have to be sure that you were saved, and
that if you are not walking with the Lord and
you're not making the right choices, you could just not
(10:24):
be saved.
Speaker 4 (10:25):
You could be not walking in the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
So as a kid, I would go to bed almost
every night, and I would pray to be saved because
I didn't want to wake up in health. And then
fast forward to the youth camp and I'm there and
I'm like, I don't know, I might be saved. I
know I've said the prayer a million times, but what
if I didn't actually mean it? You know. So in
that moment, I was like, Okay, I'm going to do this,
and I just kind of internally poured my heart out
(10:49):
to Jesus and asked him to save me and decided
to dedicate myself to him. And I became very much
involved in the church and kind of grew into this
like gold and child of the Church role for a
few years.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
But you're also in prison. I mean, everybody's watching, You're
being surveilled. God knows your every thoughts what Christopher Hitchins
called thought crime, so you know. And then as I
understand it, it was when you were a late teen
that you liberated yourself. You know, I have to tell
your whole story, but I'm fascinated, So tell me some
(11:26):
of it. What the hell happened to you?
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Well, you know, I just it was a few years
so I was fourteen when that happened, and I was
very serious. I'm the type of person that if I
really believe in something and I'm passionate about it, i
am That's all I do. And I also have ADHD
and I hyper focused, So I'm sure that probably had
a lot to do with it too, where my brain
gets fixed on something and then that just becomes everything
(11:50):
to me. It's all I think about and all I
want to do. And so for me, I think that
there was a combination there of ADHD hyperfixation where I
was excited about this new thing that I could focus on,
I could read my Bible and learn more about Jesus
and my place as a Christian, you know. But at
the same time, I think also I was expected of me,
(12:12):
and I wanted to be good, and I wanted to
prove myself as a good girl and doing the right thing.
And I just felt like that was the only way
you could be good, you could, you know, do the
right thing in life is to be on fire for Jesus.
So I did what I thought that I was supposed
to do, and then I just I just hyper fixated
(12:33):
on it, basically, and I threw away all of my
secular music and I stopped, you know, watching TV that
I felt didn't glorify God, and I started going on
mission trips and just getting really really.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
Involved in that.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
And I think, yeah, just with that, naturally you want
to grow and learn more. And that's what I did.
And through that process of trying to learn and understand
the religion and God and my place and all of this,
I had more questions than answers, and that just led
(13:08):
me on this journey of constantly chasing answers to questions
that I couldn't rationalize, and never being able to actually
rationalize them. And if something doesn't make sense to me,
I can't follow it or agree with it. I have
to understand it. And I think trying to understand God
and understand the Bible is really what put me in
a place of walking away completely or being able to
(13:32):
because I could never actually get to a place where
it made sense.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
I'm trying to picture you, and I don't know if
you did this, going to the spiritual authorities in the
Baptist Church and saying this doesn't wash, I don't buy this,
do that? How does this make sense? And they look
at you as okay, well, you're a woman, so you
need to submit to male authority. Did that happen or
was it just oh, that's a phase, or you just
(13:57):
want to sin, or's something like that.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
What happened, Well, well, what's funny is it was none
of that. Because I didn't really share my concerns and
my doubts with my church or my parents, and so
I think that probably contributed to the fact that me
leaving home and walking away was very much a big event.
(14:19):
A lot of people were very angry and upset with me,
because I think they felt caught off guard because from
what they saw, one minute, I was the golden child,
I was the good Christian girl and on fire for Jesus,
and then to them the next minute, I was suddenly
I didn't believe it, And that's not what happened. It
was a several year process, and I've told this story before,
(14:43):
but basically what happened was I started kind of courting
a guy from another church. He was a Calvinist, very
hardline Calvinist. He believed that everything was predestined. Some people
went to help because God made them to go to hell,
and I did not believe that, and so I started
trying to dig into the whole theology of determinism and
(15:04):
free will, which is a very confusing, complex topic.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
I think even for you.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Know, people who have been studying this for years and
years and years. It's a really tough philosophical topic. And
I was only sixteen when I was trying to figure
that out, and so I kind of went on my
own little journey just trying to figure out what I believed.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
I would buy books with.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
My babysitting money, and you know, I would watch videos
and just trying to dig in to find the answers
on my own. And when I would ask questions, it
was never in a way that I was doubting. It
was always just I'm trying to understand this better. I'm
trying to understand what we believe. And I felt like
nobody ever really had solid answers for me, because the
(15:47):
church I went to wasn't big on like solid theology.
Speaker 4 (15:51):
It was more just we love Jesus, we believe what.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
The Bible says, and that's all there is to it.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
But they didn't have good answers me.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
That's unsatisfying for sure. Yeah, I tell them, did you
just blurt it out? I don't believe in God or
I'm not a Christian. I mean, what did you say
and how and when did you say it?
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Well, you know, I didn't actually tell anyone and my
family that I didn't believe anymore until after I left home,
and i'd probably left I had probably been gone for
a year or two because I was I was nineteen
when I left home. I was sixteen when I started
kind of questioning things. But that questioning process was very
(16:34):
long and drawn out, and through it, I think I
was also trying to be a normal teenager couldn't figure
out what I believed. By the time I was eighteen,
I felt so sheltered and so confused, and I just
kind of broke out. I would kind of sneak out.
I was living at home, but I would kind of
sneak out and go party with friends, and so I
(16:54):
was kind of like dipping into the outside world and
really enjoying it, but also still feeling really guilty for
not being a good Christian girl. So it was this
kind of undercover, you know, life that I was living
for a little while until I just kind of I
really butt heads.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
With my family. It was a big, huge thing.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
I left home very quickly, unfortunately, and when I was nineteen. Yeah,
and then after that, I think I was about twenty
one before I realized that I was an atheist. But
there was like a good couple years there where I
still considered myself a Christian, but I didn't know what
(17:36):
that meant, and I had no idea what got who
God was, what he wanted from me. I didn't feel
connected to God when I prayed, and then so over time,
I think it just naturally got to a point where
I was like, I don't have any good reason to
hold on to this, and I don't believe it. But
I think it was that lingering fear of hell that
kept me from admitting that to myself sooner.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
But given the fact that you were you started this
journey in your teens, a time when teenagers are known
for rebelling against another family and the family line and
the customs and all that. I mean, did you get that, Oh,
you're just young and it's a phase and one day
when you grow up, we know you're going to come back. Right,
(18:18):
We've trained up a child in the way that she
should go and she will return to it. Did you
get some of that?
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Oh? Definitely, definitely. And I think you know, I had
a parent that used to tell me that, you know,
they knew that this was just going to be a
phase for me, and that eventually I would fall flat
on my face and I'd come running back to Jesus
and you know, she would she would be there, My
family would be there, and Jesus would be there with
open arms waiting for me. And I think that they
(18:46):
prayed for that for a very long time before they
realized it was not going to happen. But they I
had family members that would tell me that they had
prayed for me to fail, for me to get hurt,
or for something bad to happen to me, so that
I would have to turn back to God and realize
that I needed him. And then when my life started
kind of going better, and I, you know, I was
(19:09):
just kind of moving along and growing as a person
and I didn't really need my family or support system
as much anymore because I was becoming independent. I remember
one day I told one of my parents that, I,
you know, I was doing great. I wasn't nothing was
going wrong, and I feel like God was punishing me.
And they said that it was because Satan had gotten
(19:32):
such a hold of me and tricked me into believing
that I was doing so well that I didn't need
God anymore. So no matter what happens, the narrative always
always flips.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
Our Jezebel Vibes will continue as our conversation continues with
my special guest in just a second. I so appreciate
your support on Patreon at the show two days early
and totally commercial free with the special RSS feed. It's
(20:04):
interesting a lot of folks don't even use the RSS feed.
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to support, how often, how many shows, just set your limits,
(20:26):
whatever's comfortable. But thank you, Paytreon dot com, slash seth
Andrew's And now we continue with my special guest, host
of the Jezebel Vibes YouTube channel, Christy Burke. I was
told I was going through a phase when I was deconstructing. Ah,
(20:46):
you know, I won't be long, He'll be back. I
was eighteen years ago, and then you and I such
similar backgrounds. You know what I said. I think one
of the things I actually said was like that I'm good,
I'm comfortable in my skin, I'm happy. I've got a
life full of love and purpose, and there's no need
to worry about me, and it's all good. And they're like, now,
(21:07):
you know, now you're not happy. You just think you're happy,
which is such a presumptuous thing to say, Like, no,
I'm happy, I'm good. You know, I think it's a
very dismissive way to approach someone else's autonomy and their
humanity and all of that. And probably they're scared, right,
your mom and dad, right, they are hell believers Baptist Church.
(21:29):
They probably think, holy shit, what now our daughter may
be hell bound?
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Yeah, you know, it's I think it's tough because on
one hand, I know that it is manipulation, and having
come from the background that I came from, I had
a really hard time with being very susceptible to emotional
psychological manipulation. And when they would say things like that,
it really confused me. And even though I would be
(21:58):
saying I'm fine, I'm good, happy, when they said those
things back to me, there was still a little part
of me that's like, oh, maybe what if I'm wrong?
Speaker 4 (22:05):
I could be wrong, And that.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Was really hard to get over. It took me a
very long time, and so I see that it's manipulation.
But also I know that the brain is very strange,
and the brain will protect you from information that could
cause you a lot of stress, a lot of trauma.
And I think in a lot of ways, for my family,
(22:29):
who perhaps mistreated me throughout all of that, I think
that their brains were just trying to protect them. They
couldn't handle the idea that I would go to hell
or that they could be wrong about what they believe,
and so they refuse to even consider anything but that
they are right and I am wrong, because they have
to believe that in order to protect themselves, and they
(22:51):
don't do it subconcent or they don't do it consciously.
They do it subconsciously, And so I think that allows
me to, i don't know, to just be a little
more understanding and not so bitter and angry about it
because it was really hard to get through. And I
don't talk to my family anymore for a lot of
those reasons. But I also understand that they are victims
(23:12):
just like I was, and they just never broke free,
and that makes me feel really bad for them.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
What refreshing nuance, right, because a lot of people say
it's all or nothing either or people can be perpetrators
of bad ideas, perpetrators of harm, but also be victims
of bad ideas and brainwashing and all those other things,
and so we don't have to make them all of
any one thing. Human beings are extremely complex, and I
(23:39):
appreciate the compassion that comes with that. I mean, you
and I both rawn a pretty hard line. Boundaries are important,
and I think, you know, families like to give themselves
permission to do and say things that we would not
allow from anybody else. And yet sometimes we think, oh, well,
it's your mother, it's your father. You know you got
to put up with it. Did you have to go
through that? Did you have to sort of be like, hey,
wait a minute, would I take this from somebody else?
Speaker 2 (24:02):
Oh? Definitely. I mean years in therapy of my therapist
saying hey, you got to set some boundaries. Maybe let's
work on setting boundaries, and I'm like, absolutely not. You know,
I wouldn't even set any kind of boundary for a
long time because I didn't feel like I was allowed to.
When you're raised in that environment, even if you end
(24:22):
up walking away from it, you no longer believe all
of those core values, those core ideas about how you're
supposed to behave, who you're supposed to be, how you're
supposed to treat other people, and what you take from them,
that is all still there. And the process of deconstruction,
I've realized is a very small bit of it is
deconstructing what you believe about God, and a very big
(24:45):
part of it is deconstructing your entire worldview and everything
that you know about reality, existence, yourself and other people.
And so yeah, I mean, I definitely had to get
to that point where I I realized that I deserve
to be treated a lot better and I wouldn't take
this from anyone else. But it took me years and
(25:06):
years and years to get to that point. And you know,
I've cut off several of my family members and I
haven't talked to them in years, and it's a really
tough thing.
Speaker 4 (25:19):
But it was like the best thing I could have done.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
And it happened over a long period of time, just
accumulating where one day I just finally kind of just
said enough is enough, I'm done. And you know, it's
unfortunate happens, but for a lot of people who walk away,
it's kind of the only option, especially if those you
walked away from just cannot accept who you've become and
the fact that you're just not like them anymore.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
Talking here with Christy Burke of the Jezebel Vibes channel, Okay,
there's some people going, who's Jezebel. I've heard of Jezebel.
Sounds kind of, I don't know, naughty, all right, Jezebel
was probably doing some shady stuff in the Bible. Who
was Jezebel? And why Jezebel vibes?
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Well, you know, originally, Jezebel Vibes came just from a
comment that I got on TikTok. Somebody just literally commented
and said, you've got Jezebel vibes, and I just thought
that was so great, and I wanted to kind of
reclaim it because Jezebel is often used as an insult
against women who are strong, who think for themselves, who
(26:26):
are confident and refused to bow down to patriarchal standards
and traditional values. So I really liked the idea of
reclaiming Jezebel. And I remember reading back through her story
shortly after that and really kind of studying the words
and the story and realizing that the things they said
about Jezebel in church were so not biblical, and we're
(26:50):
just kind of made up as a way to demonize
her character. And Jezebel might not be, you know, the
most innocent character in the Bible or in history, but
she's certainly not someone who was promoting child sacrifice like
they often like to say. That's nowhere in the story,
even though it's constantly attributed to her story. So when
(27:11):
I was reading back through, I thought, you know, this
is someone who refused to bow down to this patriarchal
god that these people wanted her to bow down to,
and she decided to live her own life and do
her own thing, and the people around her did not
like that. And anytime men in the Bible had power,
(27:33):
they could do whatever they wanted and it was perfectly fine.
But when a woman has power and she decides to
do things her own way, she is demonized as this horrible,
sexually immoral woman who sacrifices children. And it's just not
her story. And I loved that she knew her fate,
she knew what was coming to her, and she decided
(27:53):
to dull herself up and await her fate and stay
true to herself to the very end. And even you
knowing thrown out of a window and fed to dogs,
she stayed true to herself. And so I find that
very admirable. And I really like kind of reclaiming that word,
that name Jezebel as something that empowers me rather than
(28:15):
is used as an insult against me.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
It's kind of reminiscent of the traditional story of Lilith,
the first wife of Adam, and she was just, you know,
she was doing it her way. She wasn't going to
be told what to do. She was sexually liberated. She
demanded equality, and the men were like, you know, Adam
and God were both like, oh, this is not going
to work out, right, you're out. Let's try it and
(28:40):
make a submissive helpmate so to speak. I don't know,
I got Lilith vibes from what you were just saying, So.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
Yeah, yeah, well you know. And it's funny too, because
when I think about the story of Adam and Eve,
Eve is such an interesting character and I love reclaiming
Eve too, because something I find to be really incredible
Eve is that she actually wasn't the sweet submissive wife.
You know, she did her own thing and in the garden,
(29:09):
you know she is she's told by Adam. I love
the story because the God never actually tells Eve directly
not to eat from the tree. It never says that
he told her. It says that he gave the message
to Adam. And then all of the sudden, one day,
the serpent comes up to Eve and he says, oh,
you know, why aren't you eating from the tree, And
she says, well, you know, we eat from it will die.
(29:30):
So what I say from the story is she was
getting this information from Adam, not from God himself, and
so Adam gave her an order, gave her a command.
Speaker 4 (29:38):
The serpent was like, hey, you're not going to die.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
If you eat from it, your eyes will be open
and you're going to become like God. And in the story,
when she looks at the tree, and it says that
she sees the fruit is good for gaining wisdom, and
so instead of thinking about what the serpent told her
or what Adam told her, she looks at the tree
and she says, you know what, this fruit looks good.
I'm going to eat it. And she makes the decision
(30:00):
to gain knowledge. I mean, that's what it's all about.
Your's she wanted to gain knowledge, and so she eats
from the tree and then exactly what the serpent said
would happen happened, which is that her eyes were open.
And God says, she has become like us, or become
like me, you know. And so Eve ate from the
tree because she wanted to. And then she gained wisdom
(30:23):
and you know, yeah, she suffered the consequences, but she
chose knowledge over ignorance, and she did that within herself.
And I think that's a really cool story and I
love reclaiming Eve in that way too.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
My friend Promise runs the Eve was framed channel the
way that that's Eve was framed. She got a raw deal.
Everybody's blaming the woman because right after that happened. What's
one of the first things that happens is the God's like, okay, well,
from now on, you're going to be kind of a
You're going to have desire for your husband. So sexual
desire for your mate is going to be part of
(30:57):
a curse and it's going to hurt like hell to
give the children, which is just crazy. And that was
taught to the women in our culture. The reason that
childbirth is so traumatic and so painful and agonizing and
all those things is because all these thousands of years ago,
Eve ate the fruit and the garden and we just
accepted it. Oh oh, well, that's interesting. It sucks for women, right,
(31:21):
But even the women in my life accepted that that's
the way it was. It's a weird kind of would
you call it slavery, like a slavery of the mind, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
I mean absolutely. I think it's just it's always been
a way to keep women in their place. Say you
know what, this is your purpose, this is what God
cursed you to be, and you better suck it up
and you better like it, because that's just the way
things are. Your place is to listen and obey. And
if you don't, well, you know, look what happens to Eve.
(31:52):
And now you have to suffer too because of Eve.
And it is so strange how we just accepted that
we deserve to be punished for what somebody that we
didn't even know thousands.
Speaker 4 (32:01):
Of years ago did.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
But it was so easily accepted, and now that I'm
so out of it, I look back and I'm like, man,
what a terrible thing to tell people that, and to
tell women that they deserve to be cursed, they deserve pain,
and to be second class just because some woman a
(32:23):
long time ago chose wisdom and knowledge for herself.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
I like to frame it in a way that people
they resist, and yet they can't refute the facts of it.
I think I frame it like a couple of cosmically
conjured garden nudists engaged in a rebellious act of fruit
munching because they were told to by a talking snake.
I mean, if you say it in that way, then
(32:48):
even the apologists are like, well, you know, come on,
come on, you make it sound so stupid. What do
you doing? You know, before I get into what you
call an unlikely alliance and you did a video about
this a couple of months ago, I want to talk
about some of the things that people are hurling at
(33:09):
you to try to convince you to come back or
to tell you that you're wrong. What are some of
the apologetic arguments that are that you have to feel,
you know, is it that you want to sin or
any of those types. I mean, do you hear some
that are familiar enough to recite here?
Speaker 2 (33:26):
Well? Yes, I mean I think it's all the you know,
it's all the hits, you know that you just want
to send and all that. But I think at this
point I have developed a reputation with my content that
shows that I have I'm very thoughtful, and I have
thought this stuff through. I'm not just some I don't know,
(33:46):
rebellious person who's trying to just have fun and screw
screw over the Christians or screw over God. I don't
think people really think of me like that anymore. I
think it's pretty easy to see that I probably overthink.
Speaker 4 (33:59):
I think a lot.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
And so I think the number one comment that I
get from people who disagree with me and perhaps want
to try to convince me that I'm wrong, is just
that I'm not What is it that I'm just ignorant
or I'm not really thinking about this right, or I'm
not really considering the context. You haven't really thought this through,
(34:21):
So it's it's really just a way to tell me
that I'm looking at it the wrong way and I
just need to If I just shifted my perspective, I
would understand. But because I am an atheist and I
don't have the Holy Spirit, I can't shift my perspective
because the Holy Spirit has to do that for me.
It's it's kind of like a you know, this like
circular thing where you like you have to you have
(34:44):
to how in order to get the Holy Spirit, you
have to understand, but you can't understand unless you have
the Holy Spirit. And it's just a way for them
to be like, oh, well, no matter what, you're just
wrong because you just you don't have the Holy Spirit
to teach you.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
As a next vangelical, do you use the label atheist?
Do you get some people get hung up there. I
don't really care too much what the labels are. I
think I'm more interested in authenticity and you know, people
taking their journey on their terms. But do you embrace
the word. Do you call yourself anything?
Speaker 1 (35:17):
I do?
Speaker 2 (35:18):
I call myself. I call myself an agnostic atheist, though
I tend to shorthand it to atheists just because that's
what I am. I don't really need to say agnostic
because that to me goes without saying. I just don't know.
I struggle with using it because on one hand, I
am an atheist, and I'm proud to say that I am,
(35:38):
and I'm not going to hide that. On the other hand,
I know that atheist comes with a lot of misconceptions.
People tend to misunderstand what I mean when I say
I'm an atheist, and they assume that it means that
I am sure there is no God, which couldn't be
further from the case. It is just a lack of
belief in a deity. So I I struggle with using
(36:01):
it because I know that people will always misunderstand or
make assumptions. But I also kind of like that because
it gives me the opportunity to clear the air and
to clear up those misconceptions that people often have.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
Let me toss this out and you can check me.
I will say, well, I know the Christian God is
a myth, like we've deconstructed that, and we know the
Bible is human made, and we know it's contradictory, and
it's all the things that you and I talk about
all the time. And so I know that I'm an
atheist about that God. Now I know I'm an atheist
about the Islamic God, and i know I'm an atheist
about here here, But as far as the overall sort
(36:34):
of deistic is there a higher power or something out
there somewhere, I guess agnostic makes more sense. Is that
a fair way to approach it? I mean, when you
say we know the Christian God is just we know
that one's wrong, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
Yeah, So I think these days I struggle so much
to say I know the Christian God is not real,
and it's really just it's just because of the way
I like to present the things that I say. I
think in the most basic, simple sense, yeah, I know
that the Christian God does not exist because I know
(37:10):
that it's not It doesn't align with reality. I know
that it is inconsistent, it doesn't align with the rules
of logic, that sort of stuff. But I also have
gotten to a point where I realize how absolutely subjective
reality is to each individual person. And although reality might
be objective, I don't know that I could ever really
(37:32):
know that, and I could never know what the objective
reality is because I only have my own perspective. I
only have my own subjective understanding of the reality I'm in.
So I think I always get caught up on you know,
there could be something I'm missing. But as far as
what I know about reality, what I know about the
rules of logic and consistency. No, I don't I think
(37:55):
that the Christian God does not exist.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
I'm not trying to like shoot you. I think I'm
interested in approaches like I may or may not lead with.
I don't I think the Christian God is totally human
made and total bullshit. But it depends on what my
goal is, who my audience is, who I'm engaging, right,
Because if I say that to somebody that I'm trying
to reach, that is a pretty mauch sure fireway to
(38:18):
kick them back on their heels. They shut down, fight,
fight or freeze. Nothing gets accomplished, everybody leaves frustrated. So
I mean, I tend to lead with a more not
charitable but I go less hard at the Christian God
in certain context. And I think you and I have
this in common. Many of the allies that we have
(38:38):
for our secular democracy and to promote and preserve human rights,
many of our allies are religious, and some people that
makes their brain explode. Why in the world would you
ally with a Christian or a Muslim, or a Jew
or a Hindu or whatever. How would you respond to that?
Christie oh Man.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
I've got a lot of pushback from people ever since,
you know, I started talking about an alliance with those
that might not think like we do. It's tough when
you come from the background, you have the religious trauma.
Speaker 4 (39:14):
You don't want to associate with that at all.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
If you think it's wrong and it's causing harm, then
in the most simple way you can think about it,
it's like, oh, well, that's bad what those people are
believing causes harm. Therefore I don't want anything to do
with it. But it's there's so much more nuance and complexity,
and I know that people can be incredibly complex, and
(39:37):
just because they have been made to believe a certain
thing about the reality, it doesn't make them bad. And
I think, I really do think that people generally are
good inside, and that it is their experiences, what they're taught, propaganda,
all kinds of different things that can shift their perspective
and perhaps cause them to hold harmful beliefs and even
(39:58):
act in harmful ways because of the those beliefs. But
I've realized that I can't just put all Christians or
all religious people into a box that I would be.
I wouldn't be it wouldn't be honest for me to
assume that every Christian is what I came from, you know,
(40:19):
is a judgmental Southern Baptist. And all Christians have their
own unique beliefs, and many of them really do just
want to do the right thing and just have a
belief in a deity that they think has created the
world and given them rules to abide. Bye, And as
long as they have good intentions and they want to
do good in this world, and I am happy to
(40:40):
team up with them and the resistance and do whatever
we can to preserve our freedoms and our democracy. And
I really think it's important that atheists and Christians stop
putting this wall between one another and making all these
assumptions about each other, because I know Christians make a
lot of assumptions about that aren't true, and in return,
(41:01):
Atheists tend to make a lot of assumptions about Christians
that aren't true. And I don't like to make assumptions
because I usually end up being wrong. So I would
rather be open and let people show me and tell
me what they believe and what they think, and if
it's not harmful, it's not causing harm, then I would
you know, I have no issue with what they believe.
I'm not going to try to convince someone to believe
(41:22):
something else. What you believe is very personal and it's
affected by so many different things. And you know, the
brain is a weird thing and it holds on to
beliefs for all kinds of different reasons.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
One last break and then we're back with Christy Burke.
Hang on, there's a video of this conversation if you
want to watch after you're done listening. That link is
in the description box. I'm talking with x vangelical and
(41:56):
host of the Jezebel Vibes channel, Christie Burke. I think
for me it comes down to do we have a
clash of beliefs or do we have a clash of values.
Like I have a lot of allies for State Church
separation who are humanists. They don't want to judge anybody there.
Jesus would never condemn anybody, that God would never create hell,
(42:18):
blah blah blah. Maybe they've rewritten their own version of Christianity,
but I mean, from their heart, they really want the
good and I'll take that person any day of the
week over some really nasty atheists out there. I mean
because I want someone who loves people and wants to
make the world a better place. But I think we
can also eventually have the conversation about what is true,
(42:40):
what's verified, what's mythology, what's fact, what's supported, what's not,
what's not line by ingersol, the more false we destroy,
the more room we make for the true. And I
think if it's not true, that's important. But if I'm
hanging out with somebody who is marching alongside me against
Project twenty twenty five condemning the stealing of the country
(43:04):
to create freaking Gilead, and they happen to go to
a Christian church, I don't give a shit right because
they're still on my side. And that's hard for a
lot of people to process because I think they think, well,
if they're a Christian, then they've given cover to the
Christian nationalists who are behind Project twenty twenty five, who
want to dominate the world and create Gilead. They're guilty
(43:27):
by association. It's I don't know, it's messy. I've thrown
a lot out of here. CHRISTI any of that. You
are to do it all or.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
I definitely get what you're saying. If I'm marching along
someone and there, I hope that they are a Christian,
and I hope they go to a Christian church, because
I think we need a lot more people in the
Christian churches speaking out, standing up and actually doing something,
taking action instead of just praying or you know, going
(43:56):
along with what's what's happening. So I would hope that
the people marching beside our Christians and we'll go into
our Christian churches and we'll talk to their communities. Because yes,
we have a very big issue with Christian nationalism, and
the churches kind of as like one, you know, as
a whole, are very very harmful in our society. But
I think that at the same time, the church also
(44:20):
has a history of speaking out against certain types of oppression.
The church has a history of standing up for the
separation of church and state. Baptists specifically have a history
of that. And so I think if I think that
there has to be a way to kind of get
into these communities and to speak to that. And what
(44:42):
you said about you know, beliefs and values is really important,
because I think you're right that at the end of
the day, we might have totally wildly different beliefs but
I truly believe that even if I were to walk
into a church that is very Christian nationalists and sit
down with individuals and have a face to face conversation
about what we value as human beings outside of our beliefs,
(45:03):
I think that we would look almost identical in what
we value our freedom, democracy, well being, happiness, human life,
things like that. Even I like to bring it up
as an example like abortion, I think that even if
I were to sit down with someone who is very
very anti abortion, I am very pro choice, and have
(45:25):
a conversation about what we value, like boiling it all down,
I think we'd both realize that we both value human life.
They might just value the human life of a fetus
more than they value a living woman who is pregnant.
I value the life of a living woman.
Speaker 4 (45:42):
But when you boil it all.
Speaker 2 (45:43):
Down, we both value human life. And I think it's
really important that Christians and atheists everybody in between kind
of have these these conversations about what we value, not
what we believe, because we'll actually end up probably getting
on the same page. And I think we would see
more Christians and more churches joining the resistance.
Speaker 3 (46:04):
Well, I don't think atheists are going to win this
fight by patting down the hatches and sealing up the
walls and welding our culture shut right. I mean I
want to team up with Amanda Tyler of the Baptist
Joint Committee, who is a devout Christian and she is
the founder of Christians Against Christian Nationalism and Rachel lazarup
(46:26):
at Americans United for Separation of Church and State. She
is practicing jew. You know, so, am I going to
get hung up on the label or am I going
to see the person and go, Wow, she's a hero.
You know, She's somebody I want to ally with in
this world to rehumanize these conversations. I appreciate that tone
in your work. You bring real equity with the insider's perspective.
(46:46):
It's not like you're like, well, we need to be
more charitable to believers because you were one, and you
were a good person when you were one. I think
once we start to see each other in that way,
it kind of opens up a world of possible abilities
before we wrap it up. Tell me about your inbox.
You must hear from a lot of people who are
just scared shitless, like I don't know what I believe,
(47:11):
and I don't know what to do. And I've never
emailed anybody or whatever before in my life. But here's
where I'm at. I know you got to get some
of that, Christy.
Speaker 2 (47:20):
I do. I get a lot of my My inbox
is usually very full. I think it's I don't know.
I get a lot more emails than I would expect
to with the amount of views that I get. But
I do get a lot of emails from all kinds
of people. Hold I'm gonna say, get my cat is
like meowing, Hey, can you please stop?
Speaker 1 (47:38):
Thank you?
Speaker 3 (47:39):
It's okay. My cat's very vocal as well. It's like
really very hoggy of the spotlight.
Speaker 2 (47:48):
Here. It doesn't like close doors. So but anyway, I yeah,
I get a lot of people who are very angry
with what I'm doing. I get a lot of people
who also use it as an opportunity to witness. It's
probably what I would have done if you know, back
(48:10):
when I was a teenager, I would have reached out
to people and been like, I can save you. You know,
Jesus loves you. But I also get a lot of
people who are just saying, you know, I am sorry.
My cat will not hear I'm gonna just hold on.
I'll hold him. I think that's what he want.
Speaker 3 (48:30):
What's your cat's name?
Speaker 2 (48:32):
This is Goose, Oh sweet little. I think he just
wants to.
Speaker 3 (48:36):
Be held, Okay, going.
Speaker 2 (48:41):
So, I got a lot of people in my inbox
that say, you know, I've been struggling for a long time.
I've been questioning, but I don't really know what to do.
I'm scared. I have family that would be so mad
at me. And I think the main theme is just fear.
People are so afraid because they know deep in their
(49:03):
heart that what they're being taught is not accurate and
it doesn't align with the reality that they are experiencing.
But they have been taught that if they deny that
the reality they've been taught to believe in, that they'll
go to help or they'll lose everything. They'll lose their community,
they'll lose, you know, the support and love of their family, and.
Speaker 4 (49:26):
That is very scary for a lot of people.
Speaker 2 (49:29):
So I think the main thing is just people are afraid.
They're afraid to step out, they're afraid to even feel
differently than what they're taught to feel.
Speaker 4 (49:37):
And I just find that to be so it's just so,
it's just so unfortunate.
Speaker 2 (49:42):
You know that people feel as though they can't actually
follow their own authentic path because their path has already
been carved out by someone else.
Speaker 3 (49:52):
Yeah, you don't have permission. That's sort of the coda
of the Bible. This is who you are, this is
how you worship. This is a list of commands you
should follow. And if you don't, you're either disobedient or
in rebellion, or you want to be God, you're just
being haughty and prideful and egotistical. I mean, it's interesting
to watch Fundi religions and all of these mechanisms they
(50:13):
have for controlling people and to be free. And it's
lovely to see someone who's busted out and who is
free in helping other people to do the same. I
just I'm a fan. I appreciate you and your story too.
Speaker 2 (50:27):
I think I've been following you since probably Yeah.
Speaker 3 (50:32):
I think I was made aware of your work like
years ago, and I think I don't know if I
reached out or I was going to send a message
and invite you and have a it just never happened.
Speaker 2 (50:42):
So this has been a long I had to tell
you this funny story. When you first reached out to me,
it was like a year and a half ago or so.
You sent me an email and I was on a
hike at the time, and I was listening to an
audiobook that you narrated, the Eightist Handbook to Old Testament,
So I was a listened into you. And then you
email me asking, you know if you want to team up,
(51:04):
and I'm like, this.
Speaker 4 (51:05):
Is just crazy.
Speaker 3 (51:06):
There is no escape from me. I am, I am
omni present, Christy, I am all, I am everywhere. What's
it like to be able to hold a cat like
my cat? He's very Persian, so he wants to be
near me. He'll sit on my lap. But he refused,
Like if I was to try to pick him up
the way you just picked Goose up, we would have
(51:28):
to call paramedics, right, he would go crazy. But it
sounds like Goose is all over it.
Speaker 2 (51:34):
Oh, they love it. I have four and I have
one cat that does not like to be picked up
at all. But Goose used to hate it. Goose actually
used to hate me. He just did not like me
like my husband. But I would like come and sit
beside him, and he would like make a noise. And
run off, but now he is obsessed. He's a bellcrow
cat and I think, yeah, three of them that love
(51:55):
to be held. I have one that I think he's
another orange cat, and if he could be held twenty
four to seven, I think he would I don't. I
think he could survive off of love and cuddles and
would never have to eat again.
Speaker 3 (52:07):
There is no resisting your charms. You will break the
cats barriers down always, and you will receive all of
the love. If there's anything that I or this audience
can ever do to support you and your work, you
have your people, cool my people, because I'm a fan.
You're a bridge builder. I think you are sort of
pulling back the curtain as to what's happened behind many
(52:28):
of these high control cultures. I think your voice is
a liberation voice for women and for all of us,
and I just wish you and yours the very best.
I will link to your channel in the description box
of this conversation, and let's not wait years and years
to talk again. So we'll grab the cats and we'll
rendezvous and do another interview here.
Speaker 4 (52:46):
Okay, that sounds great, Thank you so much. This is great.
Speaker 1 (52:49):
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