How Babylon Infected the Church
Five years after my garage encounter with the Lord about Mary Magdalene, I was still wrestling with questions that seemed to have no clear answers. I'd moved to Texas and was visiting back East when I had one of the most intense spiritual encounters of my life—a dream that would unlock the mystery of why the Church had gotten women so wrong.
Let me tell you, I'm not typically a dreamer. I'm left-brained, analytical, the type who likes to look up words and definitions rather than operate in the realm of visions and dreams. When creative, right-brained people fascinate me with their artistic abilities, I'm usually the one saying, "You don't want to sit next to me in church because I sing loud and I don't even know what keys are, much less stay on one!"
But when I do have a dream that really stays with me, I know there's something important I need to pay attention to. This dream wasn't just memorable—it was impossible to ignore.
The Dream That Shook Me
I woke up in the very early morning, just as the sun was rising, and I was literally shaking. My whole body was trembling with this overwhelming sense that there was a catastrophic problem somewhere. My heart was racing, I was sweating, and the entire bed was damp. It was one of the most intense experiences I'd ever had.
In the dream, I was standing in a large institutional building—some kind of medical facility. There was a woman behind the counter wearing a white lab coat, holding a large clipboard. I had apparently brought my dog there (in real life, I had a pair of rescued Dobermans named Priscilla and Aquila—we called Priscilla "Prissy").
The woman was looking at me with this Stepford wife-like expression, everything perfectly pleasant, completely unaware of any problem. But at the bottom of her clipboard, written in huge three or four-inch letters, were the words: "SHE HAS CHALDEE."
My heart was absolutely racing in the dream. I kept pointing at her clipboard, trying to get her attention: "It's not okay! It's not okay! She has Chaldee!" But the woman just stood there, completely oblivious to what her own medical evidence was showing.
I woke up in a panic, asking myself: What is that? Why am I so upset? What does "Chaldee" even mean?
Unlocking the Mystery
Later that day, I was visiting some friends and we started processing the dream together. My friend Kelly instantly knew by the Spirit that "Priscilla" represented the Christian woman. That resonated deeply in my heart, but I still had no idea what "she has Chaldee" could possibly mean.
Obviously, my analytical mind kicked in immediately. I looked up "Chaldee" and discovered it was the language of the Chaldeans—the people Abraham had been called out of. But "she has Chaldee" as some kind of diagnosis or condition? I was completely lost.
When I returned to Texas, I "coincidentally" (with a capital G) signed up for an online class called "God's Release of Women" through Christian Leadership University. Early in that course, I learned something that made everything click into place.
Many of the anti-female sentiments that were prevalent in Jesus's day weren't actually biblical at all. They had been codified and written down as laws in their oral traditions—the Talmud—and many of these discriminatory laws were literally written in the language of Chaldee during the Babylonian exile.
Suddenly, the Lord's message became crystal clear: the "diagnosis" affecting the Christian woman wasn't a biblical problem—it was a Babylonian infection.
The Babylonian Infection
Here's what I discovered that changed everything: When the Jewish people were exiled to Babylon, they began developing oral traditions to help them maintain their Hebrew identity in a foreign land. This was actually a good thing—they wanted to preserve their faith and culture. But something devastating happened in the process.
The Babylonian culture began to influence their interpretations. Remember, throughout Scripture, both Egypt and Babylon are used as symbols of worldly systems that operate apart from God's design. And Babylon, in particular, was deeply rooted in domination-based power structures.
When the Jewish scholars wrote down their oral traditions (the Talmud), they included about 600 laws compared to the 216 or so in the Law of Moses. Of those additional 400+ laws, over 100 were specifically anti-female. They weren't from God—they were from a culture that hated women.
These traditions said women should cover their heads like mourners, shouldn't speak in public, and were inherently inferior to men. By Jesus's time, these man-made traditions had been placed on the same level as Scripture itself. This is exactly what Jesus was addressing when He said, "You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions!" (Mark 7:9).
The Spiritual Diagnosis
The dream was showing me that the Christian woman had "Chaldee"—she was infected with Babylonian thinking that had nothing to do with God's original design. Just like mixing a little poison into good food makes the whole meal dangerous, mixing Babylonian power structures into God's design had poisoned the Church's understanding of women.
Jesus came to confront this very system. When He spoke to the woman at the well—breaking the Talmudic law that said men shouldn't speak to women in public—the disciples were shocked not because she was a Samaritan, but because she was a woman. When He chose Mary Magdalene to announce His resurrection, He was deliberately disrupting the Chaldean mindset that said women's testimony was worthless.
Paul, too, was working against this same system. Far from being anti-women, Paul was actually one of the greatest liberators of women who ever lived, next to Jesus Himself. But he had to work within the cultural constraints of his day while planting seeds that would eventually undermine the entire domination-based system.
The Medical Emergency
The most heartbreaking part of the dream was the woman behind the counter—representing church leadership—who had the diagnosis right there on her clipboard but was completely unaware of the problem. She had a pleasant, "everything's fine" attitude while holding evidence of a catastrophic condition.
This is exactly what's happening in much of the Church today. We have the evidence right in front of us:
Spiritual abuse in hierarchical systems
Half the body of Christ prevented from fully using their gifts
Women and men living with cognitive dissonance between God's heart for equality and what they've been taught Scripture "clearly" says
A damaged witness to the world that increasingly recognizes toxic power dynamics
Yet many church leaders continue with the "everything's fine" attitude, not recognizing that there's a spiritual emergency requiring immediate attention.
The Cure for Chaldee
The beautiful thing about understanding the diagnosis is that it points us toward the cure. The Christian woman doesn't need more submission to human authority—she needs deliverance from Babylonian thinking that was never from God in the first place.
The cure is returning to Jesus's revolutionary model:
Mutual submission instead of hierarchical dominance
Power flowing through love instead of force
Leadership through service instead of control
Unity between men and women that reflects God's image
As I write in BLIND SPOT, we've been filtering Peter and Paul's words through our flawed perceptions, opting for the world's dominance-based hierarchies rather than Jesus's revolutionary model of power through love. We essentially missed the whole point.
A Call to Healing
If you're reading this and something in your spirit is resonating with the "she has Chaldee" diagnosis, know that healing is possible. The same God who called Abraham out of the land of the Chaldeans is calling His people out of Chaldean thinking today.
This isn't about throwing out Scripture—it's about reading Scripture with the same heart Jesus had when He consistently elevated women against cultural norms. It's about recognizing that God's Kingdom operates on completely different principles than the world's power systems.
The fall of dominance-based hierarchy in the Church isn't something to fear—it's something to celebrate. It signals not the Church's destruction but its purification, making way for the Bride of Christ to emerge in her true beauty.
The question isn't whether the Church has been infected with Babylonian thinking—the evidence is overwhelming. The question is: are we ready to receive the cure?
Blessings,
Susan 😊