#64 | Finding Hope, Shedding Shame, Pt. 1 | Audrey Frank

It's watering time, everybody.

It is time for Apollo's Watered, a podcast to saturate your faith with the things of God so that you might saturate your world with the good news of Jesus Christ. My name is Travis Michael Fleming, and I am your host. And here's today's question. What is the difference between living with guilt and shame?

It's a pretty big question, and one that affects every single one of us. But I find that oftentimes we have a very hard time understanding what guilt and shame really are.

And that's why we're having another one of our deep conversations with my friend, Audrey Frank. Audrey is an expert in honor and shame. She's a daughter of God, a poet, wife, mother, and friend.

She is a voice giver to those who have been silenced by shame.

She's a storyteller guide who leads us through the art gallery of God's Grace, decorated with the God's great masterpieces created in the lives of people around the world who have been given honor instead of shame, gladness instead of mourning, and hope instead of despair. She has a degree in intercultural studies and theology and more than 25 years of experience living among different worldviews.

But her greatest credentials, according to her, and I love this, is that her picture hangs in God's great gallery, and it's streaked with the contrasts of deepest darks and brightest lights.

I wanted her to come on the show because I believe in talking to her and the stories that she hears from people around the world, but specifically Muslim women.

We will understand a lot more of ourselves as well as those around us, so that we can help them find the freedom in Christ and honor instead of shame and understand how to deal with guilt and shame and what they mean to us in our everyday lives and how we might run to Christ and really find our identity in him. And I want to let you know that today's episode is brought to you in part by Derek Eastman Insurance Agency.

Audrey.

Frank, welcome to Apollo's Watered.

Thank you.

Are you ready for the fast five?

I'm ready.

Okay, here we go. These are designed really with you in mind as we walk through these fast five. Here we go. Number one, your favorite college sports team.

The Carolina Tar Heels, of course.

I knew you were going to say that. I knew it. Okay, here we go. Here's another one for you. If you were a restaurant, what restaurant would you be and why?

I would be a Middle Eastern restaurant because I love hummus and I love falafel.

I often call falafel feel awful. Even though I do. I've grown to like it. But at first, when the first time I had it, I did not like it, but I've grown to like it.

But anyway, here we go. Next one. Number three. The strangest food you have ever eaten.

Oh, I don't know if it's appropriate to say it on air. Was a part of a goat. That's all I can say.

Oh, okay, that's good. I love that, by the way. I love that. Okay, here we go. Now, this one.

If you can say it on air, what's your most embarrassing cultural moment that you can share on air?

Well, it's probably.

I don't know if I can say this one on air either, but I'll leave a little to the imagination and have faith in our listeners that they can fill it in. So I wanted some pillows made.

And to get these pillows made for my sofa in North Africa, where I was living, I had to not only pick out the fluff to fill the pillows, but also the case for the pillows and then the COVID for the pillows. And I didn't know that zipper is a very bad word in Arabic. And so I walked into this table, Taylor.

And of course, he was a male businessman because all of the businessmen on this particular street, except two people, were male. And I had to assert myself a bit as a female to be heard. And he was not listening to me.

And finally I said, I want you to put a zipper right here on this pillow. And zipper means something very embarrassing. And those who know Arabic will know what I'm talking about. And that's the end of that.

Please move on to the next question.

Okay. Well, it sounds very embarrassing. We all have those cultural moments.

He turned red. He was embarrassed, but I didn't. I just thought he was being obstinate. So I shouted it louder and I went home.

And my language helper arrived, and she wouldn't even allow me to say it in the alleyway outside my door. She shoved me inside the house, slammed the door and said, I cannot believe you said that. Your husband probably has heard about it by now.

Oh, that's pretty embarrassing.

I never used it again, though.

That's pretty embarrassing. I mean, we've all had those cultural moments where we're very embarrassed. I had a moment when my wife and I were Dating.

And we were in Israel, and we had come out of a shop, and a man stopped right in the middle of the street. And then he started looking her up and down. And I. And I thought, what is go? Like, this is just very rude.

And he looks at me and he goes, she's very nice, very good condition. I give you 500 camels. And I was like, I didn't know what to do. And she was like, answer like, no, say no. I was just in shock. I was in shock.

So we all have those cultural moments, though, where, you know, we just do. Whenever we interact with people from different cultures. It's. It's. It's.

But thank God for grace and mercy and letting us get through all those things. So here we go. If your life. This is question five. If your life were a movie, who would you have play the main character and why?

Oh, that's a great question. I don't know. I need to think about it. Because all of the people I want to play aren't really actors. So you might just.

Because your name is Audrey. And I can't but help think of Audrey Hepburn. If Audrey Hepburn were alive, would you have her play the part in your movie?

Yes, I would, actually. She would do a great job.

Yes. But why? Why?

Because of her character. She knows suffering. She knew suffering in her life. She also knew courage, and she also went behind borders to do difficult things. So, yes, indeed.

She was very compassionate.

So would your movie be a drama?

It would be a drama, but it would have some humor in it, for sure.

Okay.

She had the ability to be really funny, so I think she could balance all of that.

Well, that's awesome. I love that. That's a great answer. That's a great answer. Okay, so let's hear your story, Audrey Frank. I mean, let's hear your story.

Just tell us about a bit who you are. I can detect a bit of a Southern accent in there.

And yet I know that you've written a book called Covered Glory, but I just want to hear your story and what God has done in your life. And really, what led you to the part where you wrote the book?

Well, I am a storyteller, and that's tricky when you ask a storyteller to tell a story. I'm also a one on the Enneagram, so I'm linear, and I like to do everything the right way. Want to start at the beginning? That's tough.

We don't have time. So I'll start when I was nine years old.

Okay.

I was attending a Rural, tiny little church in the mountains of North Carolina. And while I was there, I heard the gospel. But one particular Sunday, a man came to our church, and he was a doctor in Africa.

And I didn't know it at the time, but he was. I now understand that he was working with the. During the AIDS epidemic.

And, I mean, he was working during the beginning when they were just beginning to understand what was happening. And so he showed us slides, and so many children were so sick. And afterwards, I went up to him and asked him if I could go back with him.

Now, I thought I made this up. When I was an adult, I remembered this, but I thought I went to my mother and I said. I said, mom, did this happen this way? And she said, yes, it did.

So there's the validation that I did not totally imagine any of this. But I walked up to him and I said, can I go back with you? Because I was enamored with purpose.

When I saw what he was doing, I wanted to do the same thing. So he must have loved children and been really good with them. And the reason I know that is because he got down on my level.

I wasn't very tall, and he looked in my eyes and he said, start praying now, and one day God will take you there. So fast forward.

When I was in my early 20s, and I was just about to get on an airplane to fly to East Africa to begin my dream, I asked my mother again, you know, this is what I remember. Is this really how it happened? And she said, that is exactly what happened. And you drove us insane praying every night.

And so I knew when you and your husband came to me and said, we're going, I knew you and God had settled this a very long time ago. So I love that story because it's my story, but not just that, because it's God's story. In my life, I was a child who was born to a teenage runaway.

I was almost aborted. But there's no almost in God's kingdom, right? Money was given for that abortion.

And I did continue to have a pretty twisty, bumpy life from age 9 until I got on that plane later in my 20s, growing up in trauma. But God was faithful to me and he was writing his story. And I love the thought that he saw me and that he knew where he would take me.

And not only that, he knew There were other women who were going to be part of my story and I would be part of theirs. It's phenomenal to me. Now, as a. As a much older adult, I realize that he was. It wasn't just about me. It was all of us.

We often say, you know, when we're. When we sit down as authors to write a fiction work, we focus on one protagonist. Well, in God's story, we're all the protagonists.

And it's just amazing to me, he's such a good God.

So really, I mean, hearing your story, you've been through a lot, and I know you're just really summarizing it, and you talk a lot about it in the book. I mean, just the fact, like, I hear every single part of that and every part. It just amazes me more how.

How a teenage runaway mother, that's one thing, and then to almost be aborted, that's another thing.

I mean, and in hearing how God really touched your life at a young age, but that didn't mean you weren't without your share of trauma and pain and struggles. And you reveal a little bit of that in the book. But I want to transition for a moment, because now God has taken you to East Africa.

You've been in Africa for some time. And then really, God had birthed within you a desire to write and to communicate and specifically about women within the Muslim world.

And so what was the real impetus that you felt you needed to write this book or that God was really calling you to write this book?

Well, I've always been a writer. It's how I've processed with God since I can remember. But it was always private. It was between me and God.

I didn't really want to invite people to even have an opinion about my writing because it was personal. It would be like offering your journal to the world.

But when we returned to the United States after serving in the Muslim world for 13 years, and I was lost. Because back to my story at 9 years old, that was my identity. I was so confused as to why God was leading us back to my home country.

I thought I would spend the rest of my life in another culture, in another land.

What I did not know is that the Arab Spring would happen and that suddenly my home country and many other Western countries would experience an absolute influx of Muslim peoples coming into our countries, fleeing from war and so much tragedy, needing care and attention, compassion and help. And as I looked around me, I began to notice that there were others who had thought the same thing. They were.

They were secure and working in other countries and other cultures. But God had brought them back here to the United States. And we were. We all found each other.

We all began to realize we're here and there and it's beginning to look like an intentional assembly assignment. And we began working together.

And in that process, I was approached by my friend Fouad Masri at Crescent Project and asked if I would come alongside him and Jamie Staples, who was the women's event coordinator at that time.

And we together developed a curriculum for women's training courses around the US and we traveled to major cities and we trained women in the American church how to reach out to the Muslims in their neighborhoods. And so as we began doing that, of course I'm having to write in order to speak.

And over the years, my husband and I had found one bit of knowledge and understanding to be extremely crucial to our work. And that was an understanding of the honor shame worldview.

And at that time, his was one of the first works where people were really, really explaining, trying to help us understand from the ground, this is what it looks like and this is the theology behind it, the themes of honor and shame throughout scripture.

But that was the only tool we had for many years before, before others like Jason Georges and Werner Mischke and others have written many other wonderful books. DAVID DA SILVA but that is all we had on the ground, on the front lines working.

And so as we began training churches around the United States, I began speaking about that and realizing that they didn't understand it either and that it key to seeing our Muslim neighbors, to seeing the way they saw the world. So God began to burden me to make a resource available and let the women's voices be heard.

Because women in honor shame cultures are the honor burden bearers. And I didn't find their voices stories being heard. And I had had the high privilege of walking alongside so many of them.

And so I had all of these stories that that needed to be told. And one thing shame does to everyone, regardless of their culture or worldview.

One of the first things shame does is silence a person, remove their voice. And it seemed very powerful to me.

And one day I had an experience with the Lord in prayer where it was very clear to me he wanted me to write this book. So I Asked him, I was headed to Chicago, up where you are, and I asked him to confirm it to me. And the very next day, I taught.

I taught a lecture on the honor shame worldview. And a young woman walked up to me afterwards, she was Afghan. And she said, she said to me through tears, she said, thank you.

No one's ever explained my worldview to me before. Will you write a book about this?

So then I was weeping because she didn't know that I had just knelt in prayer the day before and asked God to confirm this to me. And from how she was talking, I could sense that she was walking with Jesus now. But it hadn't been very long.

And I asked her, how long have you been a follower of Jesus? And she said, just a few months. And her story came tumbling out. And I tell her story in covered glory with her permission and her edits.

And it's a remarkable story. She was a university student training to return to universities in the west to teach about Islam.

And when she encountered what the Koran said about women, it challenged her. She challenged her professors, and she was dismissed from her program. But you'll have to read her story.

It's incredible because I have read it. I mean, it's incredible hearing that. So when you write this book, I mean, God's really laid it upon your heart to address women within Islam.

And are you writing the book to women, trying to encourage them, or who really is your audience as you're putting this together?

I appreciate that question so much, and I'll tell you why. When an author sets out to write their proposal and pitch it to a publisher, one of the first things we have to determine is our target audience.

And you have to understand, I came from the front lines in many ways, I felt. And not to. Not to under. Not to compare myself unfairly to our. To our great warriors and veterans and those who are serving in military service.

But in many ways, I felt on a spiritual level like someone who had come from the front lines with a burning hot message for the American church. And to straddle that was a little tricky because I hadn't been serving in the American church for over a decade and my experience was different.

And I needed to put my finger on the pulse of the American church for a while, just to understand where they were. And so when I came to my American publisher, they didn't quite know what to do with me.

They loved the stories, but I told them from the beginning my heart was to create a tool for other workers like myself that I wish I'D had when I was beginning. I wanted to create a tool for men and women. Because, Travis, you're not able. You're not.

It's not really appropriate for you to directly minister to a Muslim woman because ministry is divided along gender lines, regardless of how we feel about the value, the equal value of men and women. But the practicality is, in Muslim cultures, our ministry is divided along gender lines.

However, you have a powerful, immeasurable testimony to Muslim women. They are watching the way you treat your wife. They are watching the way you behave toward them. They're watching the way that you behave in society.

So you. It doesn't mean you don't have an influence in their lives.

So this book needed to be for men and women, and I wanted it to be a tool, particularly for workers. I wanted to create something I wish I'd had, and I wanted to do that through stories because I feel that they are a megaphone for theology.

It is surely a sin to bore people with the beautiful theology of God, so why not tell a story to illustrate it? So. So that was my goal. But when I told my publisher that it didn't really, that kind of thing sell that kind of.

And we do have to, at the end of the day, when we're talking about book, so often publishers do have to think about that. And so they asked me, well, could you bring this message to the American church? Could you help them understand it?

So my target audience, on paper, my publishers understand this. So this isn't news to them if you're watching out there. My publisher and I decided that my target audience would be women in the American church.

Well, of course, God is sovereign, and he knew what he was doing. He knew he was raising up a whole new group of women here in the US who had a heart for the Muslims in their neighborhoods and their communities.

And so, indeed, it was accurate. But when I wrote it, I had every one of those women whose stories I share, I had them in my heart.

I had everyone whom I'm still praying they would come to know Jesus as their Lord and Savior. I had them in my mind.

I wanted any woman to pick up that book and feel welcome and to feel that she could identify with it, whether she is a woman who is experiencing shame here in Western culture, whether she is a Muslim woman who has been rejected by her. Her family in the Muslim world, whether she is a.

A woman who has been in the church for a long time, knowing she's forgiven, but still carries a great deal of shame and doesn't know what to do with it.

Hearing that as you were telling stories about interacting with women from different cultures. We had a woman come to a Muslim woman come knocking on the door of our church in the suburbs of Chicago.

And she had had experiences with churches when she was in Iraq. So she came in and she wanted to pray. And I said, sure, you can come in and pray.

And she walks in and the only experience she'd had with churches was Catholic. So she asked, where are the candles? And I went, where's that Yankee candle? So I got a Yankee candle, French vanilla one. I lit it up.

I didn't know what I was doing. And I prayed for her. She asked me to pray. And then she was really broken about something and I inadvertently. We had other people.

There are other people present. But I went to just give a side hug, and that was so faux pas from her cultural standpoint. And she just put her hands up. No.

And I was like, ah, you know, I didn't know what to do. And I think many people are like, I was. We're just very ignorant on what to do and what to say. And I do know that she was watching us.

And we had other women from different cultures that came and very similar things. We had some couples coming from Africa sitting in the church service, and the man would sit in a row and his wife would sit behind him.

And then she saw how the American families were, I mean, how they sat with one another. And then she made it a point to let her husband know she was going to be sitting with him.

But we're talking about this cultural worldview that so many Westerners are unfamiliar with, and especially even honor shame. I mean, we talk about honor shame and we assume in many ways that people know exactly what we're talking about.

But I just want to go back to that for a moment.

Explain this worldview of honor shame so those in the American church can have it because many times they think it's a far away, it's such a different culture. But the reality is it's a lot closer than you think.

And I'm not just talking about cultures and Muslims, but sometimes takes on different names in our own culture. But what I'd like you to talk about just for a moment is what is honor shame and why do we need to know about it today in our culture?

That's a great question. The honor shame worldview is like a pair of glasses. We all have them. Our worldview is like our lens. We see the world through.

And honor and shame is a lens that sees the world through whether a behavior is honorable or shameful.

And honor shame cultures are, they are collectivist cultures, meaning that belonging to the group is much more important than one's individual rights. It's easy to explain this and understand it if we contrast it with the Western worldview of right versus wrong or innocence guilt. We judge the world.

Here in the United States, for example, our lens judges the world through what is right or wrong.

What is if someone is guilty or innocent, if these shoes are right for me or wrong for me, if this presidential candidate is right or wrong, if, if this person who committed this supposed crime, are they guilty or are they innocent? And this is how we, this is how we judge the world. And this is not, this is not wrong. Haha. This isn't wrong of us.

But it may be incomplete because everyone, everyone shares a bit of all the worldviews, but any certain one is more predominant at a certain time in history. And at this time in history, we still have more of an innocence guilt worldview in America, although I believe it's changing.

And that's a conversation for later, however, in Muslim cultures. And some reports tell us that maybe even as high as 2/3 of the world's cultures are honor shame cultures.

If that gives you an idea, these cultures are not individualists placing the rights of the individual above the group. They are actually collectivists placing the rights of the group above the rights of the individual.

And so if this begins to help us have a little insight, we see, unfortunately, one of our most common examples is one of the absolute worst, and that is honor killings. We look at honor killings throughout the Muslim world and we're horrified. And indeed they are terrible, they are wrong.

But that's my worldview, judging it, saying it is wrong.

From an honor shame worldview, when someone breaks the rules of the group and they bring shame upon not just themselves, but they bring shame upon their family, the community, the nation, their religion of Islam, then something must be done to restore honor. And this is why we see brothers killing their sisters.

Because the sister brought shame not just to herself, she brought shame to her community, to her family, her community. She brought shame to the future, to the marriageability of her siblings, and all these things through that worldview.

And I believe that whether the worldview is one or the other, whether it is guilt, innocence, or whether it is shame, honor, it is a pursuit for salvation. Both of these efforts are pursuit for innocence, a pursuit for rightness, a pursuit for honor.

All of these are interchangeable synonyms, if you will, for a pursuit for righteousness salvation. And there are many parallels to the way shame is managed in the honor shame worldview.

There are many parallels to the gospel provision for us, even the ultimate way that honor shame cultures manage shame, which is honor killing or purging. I think of it as purging the shame, restoring the honor, even that we have the shed blood of Jesus Christ. He did shed blood.

He did finally pay the price for every human's honor. And I find it fascinating to see the parallels there and what we can learn from it.

Do you see that?

I mean, going back to the thing you mentioned a few moments ago, do you see that having a revival in the west, or as you mentioned, every culture at one time or another has that aspect of it. It just depends on what's going on. But are you seeing a growth of this honor shame idea in our culture?

Because it really seems to me if you go on YouTube and you put in Brene Brown and she talks about shame, I mean, she's getting tens of millions of hits because of that. Because you see the scene that it seems to be that it's in the Western culture. I mean, are you really seeing that right now? Are we seeing that?

Very much. Very much. In fact, I, first of all, was most surprised at my own story.

As I began to understand life through the worldview of my Muslim friends, I began to see my own story more clearly. And I began to see that the theme of my own life was actually a theme of. It was a journey from shame to honor.

And I will forever be grateful to that worldview for helping me see that in my own life.

But when I returned here to live in the United States about 10 or so years ago, I was amazed to see different groups crying out for honor, whether it is our LGBTQ community, whether it is Black Lives Matter, whether it is name your group. Right now, there are many groups who the heart cry that brings all of them together is, see me. I have value. And that is not an unfair cry.

If you look at our history, if we study our history in the west, we will see that only a couple hundred years ago, during the founding of the United States, for example, we were primarily an honor shame culture. There were still duels. There were families married their daughters to honorable families. These things, it was still done this way.

I'm not passing judgment on whether that was good or bad. I'm just pointing out that history tells us the story that.

That we have this in our past and we have it in our future, and it's moving toward it in our present. Right now, and I believe that the message of the gospel has been. Has been accurate, that we are forgiven of our sins.

And that is true, that perhaps there is another facet that we desperately need to know, because there are many, many people in the United States today and in the Western world who have heard the gospel message that they're forgiven, but they don't know what to do with their shame.

And isn't that one of the strangest parts of shame? Because I think about what we're talking about, I think about any given culture, there are those behaviors that are shameful.

But it seems to me, and this is perhaps beyond our discussion time today, because I'm just fascinated with the topic, but it seems that shame has flipped the script, where now it's almost the. The dishonorable behavior in a Western American culture is considered to be right. And anyone who disagrees with that is considered shameful.

And it's amazing just how that's kind of reversed. And I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. But as you interact with Westerners, I mean, what do you think the most Westerners miss?

I mean, yes, the innocence guilt idea, but what do they really miss or misunderstand about honor Shame?

Let's. Let's start by defining shame, because some people who are listening are probably a little confused about what we mean.

And I only say that because I'm encountering that in all of my. All of my speaking to people, I'm learning that they need us to differentiate shame from guilt. We use them interchangeably.

And it's important to understand that shame is an identity issue. Shame says I am bad. There is something intrinsically wrong with me, and there is nothing I can do about it. I'm a hopeless case.

But guilt is a behavior issue. Guilt points to behavior. I did something wrong, I did something bad. There is recourse for guilt. We can do community service.

We can do A, B or C and get our record expunged. We can seek forgiveness. But there seems to be no recourse in the mind of the one who is shamed. And this is a very different issue.

And when I explain this, I find that Westerners begin to have an aha moment. They resonate and say, oh, oh, I know what that is. It's fascinating.

I was speaking recently to a group of teenagers, and there were about 40 present, and I began to define the difference. They came into this time thinking, we have to listen to this lady. It's going to be boring. What is she talking about? What book did she write?

She was over there with people who wear a hijab. What does she do?

Is she on TikTok?

As soon as. As soon as I started defining and differentiating guilt and shame, just a resonant, it was almost visceral around the room.

Oh, and they started talking, talking, talking, talking.

Oh, wow.

About the belief that so many of them had. Yeah, I'm bad. I'm bad. There's nothing I can do about it.

I feel that our culture is crushed between the guilt, innocence, which pushes us to performance. Because if you're guilty, as I said a moment ago, there's recourse. You can do something about it, Right?

But if you're shamed, there's nothing you can do about it. You need rescued. So the person who's feeling shamed. I am bad. Is living and immersed in a culture of do something about it.

And so they're doing, doing, doing, doing, doing, doing, doing, trying to make the bad go away. And they never will be able to. We never will be able to. We need a rescuer. We need a messiah. We need Jesus Christ who has done it for. For us.

And that's the beauty of this. And so that's the first most important thing I would want someone to know about honor, shame.

But regarding seeing those from that culture, the most important thing I want them to know is that shame is not just a feeling for those from that worldview. It is a position in society. And that might not matter to me as an individualist in the US So who cares if you like me or not?

I don't need your approval. Well, the truth is that we all do need each other. We were created for community. And I think every heart knows that deep, deep down.

But in collectivist cultures, it's the essence of your. Of your life as you're belonging to the group.

If anyone listening wonders, if you're an American, particularly, and you're wondering, what do you mean about this belonging to a group? Just go back in your mind to middle school or high school.

Let's not. Let's not go back to when we were in middle school or high school. Let's understand what you mean.

Let's just think about the shoes you really wanted that everyone had, or think about how terrible it felt when you didn't fit in. Okay, let's move on. That was in there. I'm going to date myself, but for me, it was a members Only jacket.

Okay.

Wow.

That does date you.

Oh, it does. And I'm not ashamed.

But you're right, though, because I. I do remember just to illustrate from my own personal experience, I remember being on the playground. I mean, it wasn't middle school.

I was actually in elementary school. And we didn't have very much money. My father passed away, so our income was pretty limited growing up.

But I remember when my mother took me to Walmart and got me a new pair of sneakers, and they were pro wings. And I was so excited that I got new sneakers because that's the age where you realize that, where you think your shoes make you run faster.

You know, that's the part of it. And then I was showing them off and my buddy came up and he stomped his foot down on the log roll, which was, I remember very vividly.

And he goes, those are junk. You need Nikes. And I felt bad. I felt like I was not good enough in the group. And that's just a small way. But we do feel that way.

I mean, we want to get more than the person around us because we are searching for honor, we are searching for status, we are searching for esteem.

But most people, what I know noticed, especially in the Western church, don't grasp that they still see salvation in such an individualist save me from hell. And it has no other impact on my life. It's just this Sunday morning, me and Jesus, my sins are forgiven.

But really it's about the pursuit of one's life, how one sees oneself in society, how one understands their role within society, both as men and women. How do we go about correcting that?

Because I find that interacting with, hearing you talk about this and interacting with people from different cultures, I feel like there is a deficiency in our modern Western application of the gospel that I think honor shame acts as a corrective lens to help us highlight that other facet of it. And our knowledge and our growth within Christ grows more. I mean, would you agree with that? Would you disagree with that?

What would you say about that?

I would agree with that, definitely. Understanding just a little bit of the owner shame worldview can change the way you see many things, particularly the gospel.

But you ask the question, what should we do to correct that? A first step would be to read the Bible with the honor shame worldview in mind. The Bible was written in the context of an honor shame worldview.

And my friends from that worldview have opened my eyes to that. The things that my friends see in a Bible story I've heard my whole life are phenomenal to me because they are things I have never seen before.

Even the story, let's take the story of Mary, the mother of Jesus. We all know the story. We know it so well.

But the story of Mary has been one of the most important ones to many of my friends who have come out of Islam and become followers of Jesus because she was honored by God. They see the honor. They see that she didn't lose her position.

The fact that Joseph, that God went to Joseph and spoke to him and said, no, no, no, no. Don't you do what your culture, your honor, shame culture is telling you to do.

Your honor, shame culture is telling you, Joseph, to strip her of her position, to cast her out. But don't you do that. God was restoring and preserving her honor. He wasn't restoring it. It wasn't lost. It could have been lost.

He was protecting it from the beginning. And I learned that from a Muslim woman. I learned that from a Muslim woman.

Another thing that is commonly that was surprising to me was how much emphasis our Muslim friends put on the genealogies, the genealogy of Christ. So many of them have read that and said, oh, my goodness, look at his impeccable pedigree.

You actually refer to that. You said you knew of a man who actually memorized the genealogy as his own, right?

Yes, he did.

I don't find that in a lot of kids clubs. You know, this is the. Hey, every.

Hey, kids.

It's the, it's the passage for the week we're going through Matthew, chapter one. All the begats who remember of their scripture. You know, you just. You don't see that on T shirts and mugs. You just don't.

I know. And I tell the story and cover glory of a. Of a friend of mine who was looking at wedding pictures with me.

And I guess my husband and I look a little alike. And she was, she was shaming me. She said, did you marry your brother? I said, no, I didn't marry my brother.

And she said, but you don't have the last name. Shame on you. Why did you. Why did you. The word she actually used in Arabic is a word for trash or throw away.

Why did you throw away your father's name?

How could you so explain that for a second because I don't think a lot of people captured what you just said there.

So I took my husband's. I took my husband's last name, okay? As most people do in the West. In the West, Yes.

As many people in the west, they will take their husband's name when they get married. She saw that and she, she asked me, why did you throw away your father's name? Shame on you. Genealogies and the honor in a name.

And I said, I did, I didn't. In the west, this is what we do sometimes, etc. Etc. And she said, well, how will anyone know who you are or where you came from?

How will anyone know your honor? That was such a profound question.

I couldn't stop thinking about it for many days afterwards when she asked me that, because it made me begin to think about my own story and just my own life. And I didn't know my father and I never bore his last name and I didn't know my earthly father.

And so that just drove me to my spiritual genealogy, back to our friend who memorized Matthew 1. Wait a minute. I have been restored through the lenses of honor and shame.

When I look at my own story and the Gospel applied to me and my salvation, I don't only see that I'm forgiven. I also now see that I bear an honorable name and I have a genealogy that is purely honorable because of Jesus Christ. It's remarkable.

It is redemption for everyone.

That was the first part of my discussion with Audrey Frank.

I would really highly encourage you to come back next week as we continue this discussion and really delve into what it means to be living in honor and how we are to deal with our shame and how God just transforms our identity. And listen in also as she shares this story of how so many different Muslim women are being touched and freed by the Gospel of grace.

I would also like to encourage you that if you've been blessed by this podcast, then would you support us and consider partnering with us? Just go online to apollos watered.org that's apollos watered.org and in the upper right hand corner is a support us button.

You would really help us so that we can continue to help water your faith so that you can water your world. I also want to let you know that this episode was brought to you in part by Kathy Brothers of Keller Williams Innovate.

Water your faith, Water your world. This is Travis Michael Fleming signing off from Apollo's Watered. Stay watered everybody.