The Rich Man and Lazarus (and Atheism)

Artwork showing the rich man enjoying a feast in his home, with Lazarus outside his door. Image source. 

In Luke 16:19-31, Jesus tells this parable:

“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.

“The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’

“But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’

“He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’

“Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’

“‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’

“He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

Reading this parable now, I'm astounded at how the meaning of it is so completely different from how I understood it when I was evangelical.

Here's how I interpret this story now: Jesus introduces us to 2 characters, a rich man and a very poor man. The poor man, Lazarus, begs outside of the rich man's house, for years, but the rich man does not do anything to help him. In the afterlife, Lazarus goes to heaven and the rich man goes to hell- Lazarus goes to heaven because he suffered so much on earth, so he deserves to have a better life, and the rich man goes to hell because he had a good life on earth but didn't help the poor. Jesus doesn't directly state that these are the reasons they went to heaven/hell; it's treated like it's just obvious. Also, these reasons are emphasized by what Abraham tells the rich man- that in his earthly life, the rich man had good things, while Lazarus suffered.

Now that the rich man understands how serious it is that rich people need to help poor people, otherwise they will go to hell and be in agony forever, he asks Abraham to send Lazarus to go and warn his brothers about this. But Abraham says, no, they should already know, because they have access to the teachings of Moses and the prophets. The rich man knows that his brothers won't take Moses and the prophets seriously, because he didn't either during his life, but surely if someone comes back from the dead, that will convince them.

And Abraham says, no, "If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead."

The main point of this story is our obligation to help others. And also, that someday there will be justice- God will help people who suffered on earth, and send rich people to hell for not doing anything to help.

The secondary point is, rich people should know this. They have the teachings of Moses and the prophets, or other religions, or moral philosophies. Of course they are able to realize that they have a moral obligation to help others. But they don't want to. They will make excuses. The rich man in the story says his brothers will definitely believe if they see someone come back from the dead, but Abraham tells him, no, they'll still make excuses.

You shouldn't need a miracle, or a religion, or anything like that. It's obvious that people who have enough money for their own life should give to help others. And if you don't accept that basic obvious fact of morality, then even if you did see a miracle, you would still come up with reasons to ignore the people in need around you.

Just reading the parable by itself, without bringing in any of one's own beliefs about heaven and hell, it seems pretty clear that this is what it's saying. If you are rich, you need to use your money to help others, otherwise you will go to hell.

But of course, for evangelicals, Jesus can't possibly be saying that.

Evangelicals "know" the criteria for getting into heaven or hell: It's not about what you do, it's only about your faith in Jesus. If you believe in Jesus, and you "prayed the prayer" to commit your life to him, you will go to heaven. If you didn't do that, then by default you go to hell, because everyone is a sinner and deserves to go to hell. 

Evangelicals strongly disagree with the idea that people go to heaven just because they had a bad life and God feels bad for them. No! God has actual standards! You have to have the correct faith; God's not going to let you in just because They feel bad for you. And as for the rich man going to hell because he didn't help Lazarus- evangelicals would say, there totally are rich people that go to heaven, don't worry if you're a rich person- but maybe it's a little more difficult for rich people because they tend to rely on their money rather than realizing they need Jesus. And of course God *wants* you to use your money to help others, so if you *truly* believe in Jesus (at the level required to go to heaven) then you would do that, but let's be clear, going to heaven does not hinge on whether you helped others, it hinges on your faith in Jesus.

So we have this situation where evangelicals are totally sure this parable cannot mean what it obviously means. (Similar thing for the parable of the sheep and the goats.) Lazarus must have gone to heaven because he believed in Jesus- yeah that's not mentioned at all in the story, but that was definitely the actual reason, despite Abraham's words, "in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony." And the rich man went to hell because he didn't believe in Jesus- and if he had believed in Jesus, then his faith would have inspired him to help Lazarus. And when he talks about sending Lazarus to warn his brothers, he means sending Lazarus to tell them about the necessity of believing in Jesus. And the rich man says that his brothers won't believe just based on Moses and the prophets- I mean, yeah, when you're trying to convince someone of a particular religious doctrine, and your argument is "here are some ancient religious writings" this usually fails to convince them to convert to your religion. The rich man says it would convince them to give up their atheism if they saw an actual resurrection, but that's actually not true either. Atheists are really stubborn and unreasonable like that.

Wait, what? Why are we suddenly criticizing atheists...?

Yes, seriously, this is the interpretation of the parable I had when I was evangelical: There *is* enough evidence, from the bible, from "Moses and the Prophets," that people should *know* they are supposed to believe in Jesus and commit their lives to him. But when you talk to actual atheists, they tell you that's not enough evidence. They may give you examples of what kind of miracles they would have to see, that *would* count as evidence of the supernatural- but they're actually lying about that. Like Jesus says here, even if they saw someone come back from the dead, they would still not believe. So don't feel bad about how your apologetics arguments fail to convince those atheists. It's a *them* problem!

Yes, really. Evangelicals take this parable about how rich people need to help poor people, or else the rich people will go to hell, and turn it into this bizarre cheap shot at atheists. It's such a weird feeling for me, reading this now when I'm so far removed from evangelical ideology, realizing how obviously Jesus' point is that rich people need to help others (or else they will go to hell!) and somehow evangelicals managed to make it not about that at all- because evangelicals already know that the way to get into heaven is believing in Jesus- and then take this line at the end and turn it into a claim that "you know how your atheist friends say they would believe in God if you had better evidence? Well actually they're lying about that."

The rich man in hell wants to send Lazarus to tell his brothers how to avoid going to hell- and so evangelicals know that obviously means he wants Lazarus to tell them to believe in Jesus. That's how you avoid going to hell. Like we're so committed to this idea that faith in Jesus is the be-all-end-all, *the* answer for how to go to heaven, that we don't even read Jesus' actual words in front of us. (Even if we saw someone rise from the dead, we still wouldn't read Jesus' actual words in front of us.)

Try this on for size: This is a parable about rich Christians who don't use their money to help others. They should know that they're supposed to do that. They have Moses and the prophets. They have the bible. They even believe that Someone rose from the dead, and this still fails to convince them that they need to give money to help others.

How many Christians do we see right now, who are sure that Christianity is about political power and making rules to control other people, rather than helping the poor? Jesus was right. His followers believe He rose from the dead, but we still won't do what he said.

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Related

The Parable of the Living Wage

Sheep and Goats

Jesus Weighs in on "Being Right vs Doing Good"

What kind of God will judge how we treat immigrants?

White Privilege and the Rich Young Ruler

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. The Long Hunt for China’s Vanishing Elephant Slides (April 16) "She often navigates narrow alleys, old residential compounds, ruins, and abandoned industrial sites, asking for directions along the way. At some point, an elephant slide simply appears — a moment Sun describes as similar to “clearing a level” in a video game." Wow definitely check out the photos in the article - all the slides are different.

2. Harvard Legacy of Slavery Initiative Releases Database Identifying 1,613 Enslaved People (May 13, via) "Harvard’s Legacy of Slavery Initiative released a public database Tuesday identifying 1,613 people who were enslaved by Harvard leaders, faculty, and staff or who labored on Harvard’s campus between 1636 and 1865." The database is here. 

3. KUA MUSIC【祢是我的一切／You Are My All In All】蔡佳靈 (2024) Mandarin Chinese cover of the worship song "You are my all in all."

4. Red vs blue button (May 16) "In other words, game theory says the correct strategy is to argue loudly and meaninglessly on the internet."

5. Unprecedented corruption and Calvinism (May 18) Linking this because I was struck by what it says about this "blessing of the bikes" event, where a Lutheran church invited motorcycle riders to "receive blessings and prayers."

These rituals can cater to a superstitious understanding of religion, with participants viewing the “blessing” as a kind of talisman against the potential danger of their vocation or avocation, and it’s important to conduct such rituals in a way that doesn’t encourage that understanding. But they can also be a demonstration of solidarity and neighborliness — a way for the church to say “You are a part of this community and we care about you.”

!!!!! Wow, this is a take I haven't heard before. In other words, we have to be careful that people do not interpret "the blessing of the bikes" to mean we are actually blessing the bikes and God will give you protection specifically because you attended this event and got "blessed." It's really striking to me that Fred frames it like 'that would be unfortunate if people interpreted it that way' [my paraphrase, not an actual quote] rather than that just being the default obvious interpretation. 

I'm over here asking "what if prayer isn't 'talking to God'" feeling like I'm breaking all kinds of rules... are there Christians out there saying, "Wow, that would be unfortunate if people interpreted prayer as literally talking to God"?

6. Results Age (May 13) "Please, we need your help. Our research suggests you're the last living descendant of the person who knew how to format this config file."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. WWND? (What would Nebuchadnezzar do?) (May 14) 

An Evangelical Case for Trump as the Antichrist (May 4) This is exactly what I'm saying! I don't even believe in "the" antichrist, but he checks all the boxes!

2. Lessons in Training, Strategy, and Discipline From the Civil Rights Movement (April 27) "With that, the civil rights movement had won. The American public had been made aware, Bevel said, 'in the most graphic way possible, that a sheriff in Alabama was beating law-abiding citizens whose only offense was asking for the right to vote.'"

3. Revealed: The Trump administration arrested the parents of at least 27,000 kids in seven months, ICE records show (May 8) "Families described scrambling for funds after a primary breadwinner was detained or deported. Teens and young adults had to drop out of school to take care of younger siblings after both parents were deported. Children were left wondering when or whether they would ever be able to see parents who had been deported back to countries where they faced death threats."

4. NYU Langone Releases Grand Jury Subpoena: Feds Want Names Of Every Trans Youth Care Patient (May 15) "In addition to the names of providers, the DOJ wants the names and medical histories of every trans youth patient who received gender-affirming care from Langone since 2020. The DOJ also asserted that “de-identified information” is insufficient." Holy crap.

Also from Erin in the Morning: Federal Court Finds Trump Admin DOJ Misled Courts To Target Trans People's Private Data (May 15) "DOJ has proven unworthy of this trust at every point in this case. It has misrepresented and withheld information to both this Court and the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas." 

Marriage

 

"Mawwiage." (From "The Princess Bride.") Image source.

[content note: it's about how, historically, sexual violence has always been a big part of marriage]

Thinking a lot about marriage lately, and what marriage is overall, in a general sense. As in, if you look at all marriages throughout history. The overall picture of it is very bleak for women, and I don't know what to think about that. My own marriage and my own culture- where you get married to someone because you genuinely love them and want to marry them, and you are equals- this is very much an anomaly if you take an outside, objective view of what marriage has always been.

Praying Non-Literally

The tortoise and the hare. Image source.

In my post The Prayer That Jesus Taught Us To Pray, I said that instead of viewing prayer as talking to God, "What if prayer is a ritualized way to express our hopes and our understanding of our place in the world?" And I want to flesh that out a little more.

Maybe "ritualized" isn't the right word- but what I want to say is, a mode of communication where we format the words into a certain structure/genre, but the actual meaning of it isn't the surface-level statements of that structure. The actual meaning is something more abstract and deeper, and the structure is just a vehicle for communicating those deeper ideas.

Some examples:

1. Satire

Satire is a style of writing where you take some bit of truth and then present it in an exaggerated way in order to show how ridiculous it is. So at the surface level, the statements in the satire are not true. But their purpose is to make a point.

For example, The Onion is a satire news site. The articles say things that are not true- but there's a purpose to it, and sometimes they make really insightful points. Here's an Onion link:

Experts: Ebola Vaccine At Least 50 White People Away - This one's from 2014, and it says that medical experts have publicly discussed a timeline for an ebola vaccine in terms of how many white people are affected. Okay, that's not true, no one said that. But the point it is making is that ebola is a deadly disease which the world should take seriously- but the world is not taking it seriously because mostly it's African people who are being affected by it. The point of the article is to call out the implicit racism in what kinds of issues get treated as important.

But if you just take it at face value, as if it's describing something that really happened, you will think that health experts really did say that ebola only really matters if it affects white people, and that everyone just nodded along and this is fine. No- the point of it is not to read it and accept that it's true; the point is to expose the racism in how the world was reacting to ebola.

2. Fables

A fable is a little story which is supposed to teach some kind of life lesson. Sometimes they have talking animals or magic- things that are not real. 

For example, "The Tortoise and the Hare" is an old fable where the tortoise and hare are having a race, and the hare runs fast initially but then gets distracted and doesn't finish, while the tortoise keeps plugging along and eventually crosses the finish line. And we are supposed to learn that "slow and steady wins the race."

This is not a true story, and if you think it's a true story, you'll get bogged down in all kinds of details. How did the tortoise and hare communicate with each other in order to agree on the rules for the race? Do animals understand the concept of a race? Do animals understand the concept of a finish line? If you ask all these questions, you're missing the point, because it's not a true story. But the point is to teach a lesson which is useful and true, in some sense.

3. Job interviews

On the surface, a job interview consists of an interviewer asking questions, and a candidate answering the questions. But the point is not "here is a question, now I will correctly answer the question." That's not the point at all. As a candidate, the important thing is not to answer the questions correctly; the important thing is to communicate a deeper message that says "I am the kind of person you would want to hire for this job." (And a secondary purpose is to find out information about the job, so you can decide for yourself if you would even want to work there or not.)

So for example, the interviewer asks, "What's your biggest strength?" You're not supposed to say what your actual biggest strength is, by some absolute objective measure. Maybe you're really good at making animal sounds, or pouring milk into cereal in exactly the right proportions, or making babies laugh... perhaps you're in the top 1% of people in some weird little niche ability, such that it would make sense to say that's your biggest strength. No! Don't tell the interviewer that!

The answer you actually need to give to this question is not "what's your biggest strength" but "talk about a strength you have, that is related to this job, that will make the interviewer believe that you are a person they should hire."

Or, maybe the interviewer says, "Tell me about a problem you had in your previous job, and how you solved it." You don't have to take this super literally. Maybe you can't think of an example from your previous job, but you have a good example from the job you worked at before that. That's fine! Talk about that! It's not about the literal words of the interviewers' questions; it's about communicating a deeper message about what kind of person you are, and that you are a competent person they would want to hire.

Don't *lie* in a job interview, obviously, but it's okay to not directly answer the question but instead talk about something along the lines of the general idea of the question, with the primary goal being presenting yourself as a good job candidate, rather than literally answering the question.

The surface-level statements all need to be true, but the actual *meaning* of the job interview is not in the surface-level statements.

4. Sharing links to news stories

Let's say you have a website, and you post links to news articles. And a lot of these links are about some topic, like, immigrants committing crimes, or something. Each individual story is true on its own- statistically, there must be immigrants who commit crimes; any large population will inevitably have some members who commit crimes. It's certainly possible to collect the facts about specific cases where this happens, and write true news articles.

So, each individual story is true, but the effect of sharing so many of them is that it creates the impression that this is really common. That's the "deeper meaning" being communicated. And this might be unintentional in a lot of cases- maybe you consume a lot of content related to some certain topic, and it makes you subconsciously believe that whatever you're reading about is more common and normal than it is in reality.

You can even get cases where something happens, and we feel like we shouldn't talk about it because it plays into some harmful political narrative. I really hate this, this tendency to want to cover up true facts about specific real events just because we know that people will not take those facts as simply describing the literal events that happened, but will draw sweeping conclusions. 

5. "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

People are always asking kids what they want to be when they grow up. I recently realized, when kids answer this question, it's not about what job they're actually going to have when they grow up. It's a way of expressing their interests and their sense of identity. So it's not literally true, but it's still communicating something meaningful.

When I was a kid, I had this book where every page was one of the grades from kindergarten to 12th grade, and every year you were supposed to glue a picture of yourself onto the corresponding page, and write some stuff about what your life was like that year- and each page had the question "What do you want to be when you grow up?" along with some checkboxes with potential jobs. For the earlier pages, like for kindergarten kids, the choices were like, "doctor", "firefighter", "policeman", and then you flip ahead to the high school pages and they're like "engineer", "salesperson." Middle-school-Perfect-Number was like, wow this really exposes how fake the whole "what do you want to be when you grow up" thing is. 5-year-old kid checks the box that says "firefighter" but then they grow up a little bit and we don't even offer that checkbox any more, nobody actually believes you when you're 5 years old and you say you're going to be a firefighter.

But! It turns out, it *was* useful and meaningful, even though it has no actual connection to the job the kid will have, decades into the future. It's not actually about that. It's about how the kid understands their own identity, and what they imagine their ideal life to be.

6. Prayer

So now we come back to prayer. Full disclosure, I don't pray, because of all the, uh, unfortunate implications when you really take seriously the belief that God takes action in response to prayer. God's gonna help me with whatever first-world problem is bothering me, while not taking action to help other people with much bigger problems? God's going to choose to take action to answer prayers of people who believe the correct things and pray with the correct attitude... and therefore if some horrible tragedy happens to you, it must be your own fault for not praying correctly?

I just don't want to be a part of that at all. It makes sense that *I* prioritize myself, and I put in more effort to solve my "first-world problems" than I do to help victims of human-rights violations on the other side of the world, but God is supposed to be objective and love everyone equally- it is quite ****ed up if They are actively intervening to help me, when there are wars and atrocities happening to other people.

But here's an idea I'm starting to explore: Prayer isn't *literally* talking to God. God does not hear our prayers and then take action in response to them. Instead, prayer is about using the literary structure of "here's a message we want to tell God" in order to communicate deeper ideas about how we view ourselves and what kind of world we want.

For example: In my 2016 post, Prayer Rates Don't Correlate With Actual Risk, I looked up statistics about the leading causes of death in the US- the top causes are heart disease and cancer. But people aren't constantly praying "God, protect us from heart disease." Instead, people pray for safety from violence, plane crashes, terrorism, etc- things that statistically have a very small chance of affecting you personally. I pointed out that people pray about the things that they are worried about, rather than the things that truly pose a danger to them. And that if Christians truly believe that God acts powerfully in response to our prayers, we should harness that power by identifying the biggest actual threats- using statistics, not whatever fearful thoughts pass through our heads after reading the news- and targeting our prayers toward those threats.

But in that post, I also said this is a terrible idea because then we would have to think about heart disease and cancer constantly, and stress ourselves out, in order to pray most effectively. That's a terrible way to live, and I just cannot believe in a God who chooses to give protection to people according to the amount of worrying they do over heart disease and car accidents which are most likely to occur within 10 miles of their home.

But get this: What if prayer *isn't* a process by which we convince God to intervene in our lives and help us? What if it's *not* true that by naming a specific scenario in your prayers, you tweak the probability of that specific scenario occurring in real life? What if it's not about affecting God at all, but it's about our own feelings and how we view ourselves? If viewed that way, it does make sense that the things people pray about are the things they're worried about, and it doesn't make sense to come up with additional worries to pray about in order to get additional protection from God.

Okay, here's a question: Maybe Christians already *do* view prayer non-literally, and it's just me who misunderstood it and thought God was really gonna do something? Well, no. Christians talk about how they went through medical troubles or financial troubles, and God helped them through it *because* they prayed. "Prayer works!" So people really do believe that God acts in response to prayer.

Still, though, Christians don't actually act in accordance with that belief. They don't treat prayer as something so urgent and powerful, with the Almighty God of the universe standing by to listen to whatever thoughts and requests we have. In practice it's more like... kinda boring and feels like it's not accomplishing anything.

Another thing: Back when I was evangelical and I prayed a lot, I used to wonder why we're supposed to pray over and over for the same thing. I would spend lots of time begging and begging God, over and over, the same things over and over. But, why isn't it enough to just tell God 1 time? Why do They need to be reminded over and over? Are They just really bad at staying on task, and They'll forget to do it if you don't keep reminding Them? Do They need some kind of to-do list app? Jesus said, "your Father knows what you need before you ask him", so why do we even need to pray at all, let alone praying multiple times for the same thing?

(I would say that part of the answer, from an evangelical perspective, is that God only answers prayers if we truly mean it and we ask with the right attitude. If you just pray 1 time and assume God will do it, then you're not taking it seriously enough, and you're acting like you're entitled to God doing things for you. You have to pray over and over to show God you're really serious and humble. Yeah- in this blog post, I'm specifically focusing on the "asking God to do things" aspect of prayer, but evangelicals would tell you that prayer is much more than that.)

Also, I'm not saying "If you look at how prayer is talked about in the bible, and how Christians talk about it, it makes sense in this 'non-literal' interpretation rather than viewing it as 'talking to God.'" No, it's not that simple- I think there are some *aspects* that line up more with the non-literal interpretation, but at the same time, there are plenty of bible verses that definitely talk about prayer like it's literally going to affect God's actions and cause things to happen in the real world.

And I'm not saying, "Well, Christians say prayer is 'talking to God' but that's not literal, it's just a symbol that points to a deeper meaning, so it's fine that people are describing it as 'talking to God'" - no, the implications of "talking to God" are very different from this "it's about how we understand ourselves and what kind of world we want to live in" that I'm describing. If you really go all in on "I'm talking to God" and try to live according to the implications of that, it's bad. So let's not say it's "talking to God" if it's not.

Anyway, this is just an idea I'm exploring. Not sure if I really believe it or not. For a long time, I've been very firm about "I don't pray" because of these issues when it's understood as "talking to God" but maybe I would be interested in it if we viewed it a different way.

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Related

The Prayer That Jesus Taught Us To Pray

Prayer Rates Don't Correlate With Actual Risk

On believing that "prayer works"

What Does God Do When You Pray For An Anonymized Patient By Bed Number?

I Figured Out What The 1-10 Pain Scale Is Actually About

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Well most of the links this time are depressing news, but I found a fun song for you guys to listen to:

Six13 - Uptown Passover (an "Uptown Funk" adaptation for Pesach) (2015)

2. Three Model Organisms For Taste (May 8) "Young children aren’t going to object to having to draw a lion with wings. Young children love drawing lions with wings. No child has ever said 'I hate lions with wings, I wish my country’s flag was something cool, like a red square on top of a white square.'"

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Tennessee Republicans pass a map to break up the state's lone Democratic House seat (May 7) "Tennessee Republicans on Thursday passed a new congressional map that would crack Shelby County — home to majority-Black Memphis — into three different districts, in an effort to eliminate the state's lone remaining Democratic-held seat."

TN Democrats Burn Confederate Flag in Dramatic Walkout Over Redistricting (May 8)

And more bad news from Virginia: Court rejects Virginia redistricting in a blow to Democrats' counter to Trump, GOP (May 8)

2. Stuck in limbo: millions of professionals risk losing legal status under Trump pause (April 28) "'Many of these people did everything they could to be on the right side of the law,' Bier said. "And simply because the government just decided one day that they're not going to process their applications and not give them a decision they have no idea, 'Should I leave the country? Is my status expired?''"

3. Republicans want to add $1 billion for Trump's ballroom security to ICE funding plan (May 6) 

4. Kids Are Being Harmed by Tear Gas, Pepper Spray Under Trump. There Could Be Long-Term Consequences. (May 7) "Families who live near an ICE facility in Broadview, Illinois, felt the effects inside their homes when officers tear-gassed the protesters who routinely gathered there. ... Each time the tear gas seeped in, the kids coughed, and their throats often burned. The eldest, a high school senior with asthma, would hide out in his second-floor bedroom."

5. Babies Are Bleeding to Death as Parents Reject a Vitamin Shot Given at Birth (May 6) "In almost every case, the babies’ deaths could have been prevented with a long-standard vitamin K shot. But across the country, families — first in smatterings, now in droves — are declining the single, inexpensive injection given at birth to newborns to help their blood clot." !!! Definitely get the vitamin K shot for your newborn baby! Hospitals all give this to newborn as a standard procedure, but now because of all the misinformation about vaccines, some parents are refusing it.

6. FBI Director Kash Patel sues the Atlantic claiming false reporting about drinking, absences (April 20) Wow pathetic.

7. 'Don Colossus' statue of Trump not a 'golden calf,' pastor insists (May 11) 

Sunday reading (May 10) "As soon as you hear the sound of the horn, flute, zither, lyre, harp, pipe and all kinds of music, you must fall down and worship the image of gold that King Nebuchadnezzar has set up."

This Is Not A Golden Calf! (May 12)

Jonah, the Whale, Inerrancy, and Children's Bibles

Kids' craft featuring a whale made out of a paper plate, with Jonah stuck to its tongue. Image source.

[spoiler warning for the biblical story of Jonah]

The other day, my son asked me to tell him a story, so I told him the story of Jonah, and right in the middle of it, I realized "this is clearly not a true story." And no, it wasn't the part about the whale that tipped me off.

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Why was I invited to Beast Studios? (April 18, 1-hour-18-minute video from Folding Ideas) "But I just left haunted by a profound sense of tragedy. This glimpse inside a vast industrial machine that exists to produce nothing."

2. Prediction Markets: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (April 20, 32-minute video) Wow, I knew prediction markets were bad, but they are even more of a horrifying dystopia than I thought.

3. Midwives saved his mom's life — and inspired him to pursue the profession (May 5) "A study, published in the Lancet Global Health in 2020, forecast that, if the number of midwives increased to universal coverage levels, 67% of maternal deaths could be averted as well as 64% of neonatal deaths and 65% of stillbirths. This equates to more than 4 million lives saved each year."

4. Canadian fiddler sues Google after AI Overview wrongly claimed he was a sex offender (May 4, via) "If a human spokesperson made these false allegations on Google’s behalf, a significant award of punitive damages would be warranted. Google should not have lesser liability because the defamatory statements were published by software that Google created and controls."

5. Anti-poverty program is effective even in one of the world's toughest settings (May 4) "Now, research shows it works even in incredibly difficult circumstances, like in the southwestern city of Baidoa. Half of the city's 1.2 million people are internally displaced, driven from their homes by extreme drought and violence by the militant group al-Shabab."

6. H-Bomb: A Frank Lloyd Wright Typographic Mystery (February 25, via) Wow I am so into this, I really need to know if the H was originally installed upside-down.

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Thank you to the commenters who left comments on the previous blogaround related to the Supreme Court case about drawing districts to dilute minority votes. What I'm kind of concluding is, this is racial gerrymandering, which has a lot of overlap with partisan gerrymandering. For the Republicans who are pushing it, their motivations are "we want our candidate to win" and also "we don't want black people to have equal voting power" and those motivations are kind of intertwined with each other. Gerrymandering is already bad because it results in a set of elected representatives that doesn't statistically match the population, and this is unfair- but on top of that, because of the US's history of racist voter suppression, it makes sense to have the Voting Rights Act to specifically guard against racial gerrymandering. 

Or, put another way, it's about how partisan gerrymandering has a disproportionate negative effect on minority voters. And the Voting Rights Act recognized that reality and put protections in place, which the Supreme Court says we don't need any more. 

(I am also boggled by all the articles saying it's been John Roberts's life goal to get rid of the Voting Rights Act. Why would someone *want* to get rid of the Voting Rights Act?)

Links:

What to do with a lawless Supreme Court? (May 4) "Since intent is what matters, and a pro-Republican gerrymander looks just like a White-racist gerrymander, it’s impossible to prove racist (rather than partisan) intent. So the VRA’s protection against racial gerrymanders — effectively the last piece of the VRA still standing — is effectively dead."

The Supreme Court’s Conservatives Just Issued the Worst Ruling in a Century (April 29, via) "After the Civil War, Congress passed the Reconstruction Amendments—the 13th, abolishing slavery; the 14th, requiring that states, among other things, not deny persons equal protection of the laws; and the 15th, barring racial discrimination in voting. Despite these amendments, racial discrimination was rampant in the early 20th century, and in the American South, Black citizens were consistently denied the opportunity to vote. In 1965, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, which provided enough protection to vastly increase the opportunities for minority voters to be able to register and vote."

Supreme Court guts Voting Rights Act, greenlights GOP gerrymanders (April 29) "'Today… the majority straight-facedly holds that the Voting Rights Act must be brought low to make the world safe for partisan gerrymanders,' Kagan wrote in dissent."

2. He recorded his quest for tariff refunds. It shows why billions may never get repaid (May 4) "When the refund portal opened on April 20, businesses that applied did so in minutes. Brown was not among them. And he's still not ready."

3. SPLC Caved to Fascists. They’re Being Targeted Anyway. (May 1) "It’s so disappointing to see an organization that has the funding and goals and staff to make real change in the world, but the leadership decided to bet it all on cowardly compliance. We have seen this over and over and over again ever since Trump took office for his second time: the institutions that stand up to him, win. Those who give in, lose."

Yeah... I remember right after the 2024 election, I got so many emails from all these non-profit organizations that were like "we're going to fight back! send us money!" I'm sure it was a good opportunity for all of them to make money- but what are they actually *doing*? How do you know which ones are actually going to use your donation to fight in the way that you want? 

I kind of use the strategy of seeing which lawyer groups are mentioned in the news articles about standing up against these bad policies and suing to protect people's rights. Which lawyer groups have their lawyers calling a judge in the middle of the night to stop an illegal deportation flight. Those are the groups that are worth donating to.

4. Pope Bob Chooses Formerly Undocumented Dude To Be Archbishop Of Pissing Off Trump (May 3) "Throughout his career, he has worked with immigrant communities from all over the world, and insisted that all people deserve to be treated with dignity. In his last sermon at his church after becoming a bishop, he said, 'We cannot say that we love God if we do not love those who are closer to us. […] Empathy, my brothers and sisters. Empathy — putting ourselves in the shoes of others — is to realize our common humanity.'"

As 1 John 4:20 says, "For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen."

5. They Want You to Think Abortion Pills Are Illegal (May 4) "Something else to remind your communities of: informal networks of accessing medication abortion also remain in place regardless of court rulings."

6. Powell to stay on at Fed until 2028 (April 30) "This is an obvious own goal by Trump. If he had just shut his mouth, Powell would likely have also left the board in May allowing Trump to appoint another lackey to that spot."

7. Protester Banned From U.S. Rep. Chuck Edwards’ McDonald’s Properties (April 17, via) "She ended up learning which six McDonald’s restaurants her congressman owns when she got banned from them."

The Kingdom of Children: Communion and Baptism

Communion cracker and small cup of juice. Image source.

I've been reading R. L. Stollar's book, "The Kingdom of Children." Here's a part of the book that talks about including children in communion. From pages 167-168:

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. That "Pending PayPal Charge" Email Is a Scam — Even Though It Really Came From PayPal (April 28, via) "Don't call the number. Don't reply."

2. The hard problem of AI therapy (February 26, via) "Suppose you’re a high-functioning person with anxiety who discovers that the chatbot can always soothe you on the spot. You ask one question—Do you think I handled that email wrong?—and feel relief. Ten minutes later: But what if she’s actually mad? Then: Can you rewrite my follow-up? Then: List ten reasons I’m not a bad person for sending it."

3. How China’s Deaf Delivery Riders Find a New Life in Gig Work (April 20) "By contrast, most deaf interviewees described becoming delivery riders as turning a new page, one of less discrimination and greater autonomy. Delivery platforms offer features that make interacting with restaurants and customers easier, such as voice-to-text conversion, pre-written messages, and digital badges that will alert users that the rider is deaf."

Also from Sixth Tone: Nine Months After Cloning Its First Yak, China Has 10 More (April 30) "To date, the team has generated over 200 cloned Tibetan yak embryos. By the end of 2028, they aim to build a core herd of over 100 cloned yaks, develop a new high-altitude yak breed, and establish standard breeding protocols."

4. 1 Corinthians 13 in the news (April 27) "Read the Beatitudes from Luke’s Gospel you cowards!"

Also from the Slacktivist: The literary puzzle of Isaiah 1 (April 29) "The current form of our Bibles tricks us into reading Isaiah 1 and Amos 5 as critiques of the religious observance prescribed in the Books of Moses, but actually what we have is the Books of Moses configuring their religious commandments, in part, as a response to and a defense against those critiques in Isaiah and Amos."

5. Soniferous Aether (April 27) From xkcd.

6. Women Have Agency: You Don’t Have to Obey Churches or Husbands Who Want to Control You (April 29) Posting this here because it's important to get the word out about this: If you are a woman who has decided to divorce your abusive husband, and now your church leaders are requiring you to come to a meeting so they can decide if you're allowed to do that, you can just not go. !!! Yes, really! You can just not go! Say no! They can't do anything to you! Even if you signed a "church covenant"- those things are not legally binding. It will not hold up in court. You can say no!

A lot of us spend our whole lives with the mindset "I need to be a good girl" which means when some authority figure says "you have to" do something, then you have to do it. We might not even realize there's another option: NOT doing it.

I'm so glad I learned about boundaries- I really had no idea about any of this before I learned about boundaries.

7. This week in "what Chinese songs is my toddler listening to": 蹦蹦跳跳 沒煩惱 李昕融 舞蹈完整版 簡單舞蹈 律動 廣場舞 洗腦歌 幼兒律動 幼兒舞蹈 兒童舞蹈 兒童律動 抖音舞蹈 動態歌詞 TIKTOK KidsDance【#波波星球泡泡哥哥bobopopo】

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Trump’s cruel plan for Afghan refugees, briefly explained (April 23, via) "Many of the 1,100 Afghans now stuck in limbo in Qatar aided the US over nearly two decades of war as interpreters working with US troops or served as members of the Afghan special forces. Some, the Times reports, are family members of American soldiers, and more than 400 are children."

2. Texas Tech Issues Ban On Students Writing On LGBTQ+ Topics (April 24) "The implications are profound—and at times border on absurd. In core and lower-level courses, there are no exceptions at all. A history professor course could not allocate instructional time to the Stonewall riots or the gay rights movement. If a U.S. history textbook includes a chapter on the AIDS crisis, the professor must skip it."

3. White House posted photo of Trump, King Charles III with 'TWO KINGS' caption (April 29)

4. James Comey posted a picture of seashells by the seashore. Trump's DOJ indicted him for it. (April 29) "The most embarrassing 24 hours (yet) of the Justice Department in President Donald Trump’s second administration continued apace on Tuesday, when Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced another indictment of James Comey, the former FBI director. This time, Comey — targeted by President Donald Trump as a political enemy — was indicted in North Carolina in connection with his since-deleted Instagram post showing a photo of seashells laid out in the shape of the numbers '8647.'"

Also from Law Dork: SCOTUS guts what remained of the Voting Rights Act before taking on TPS termination case (April 30) "The decision in Louisiana v. Callais upended the pivotal civil rights era voting law that Congress initially passed in 1965 and reauthorized several times since, leaving the section at issue “all but a dead letter,” as Justice Elena Kagan said with a somber voice, nearly stone faced, as she announced the dissent from the bench."

I don't really understand this Voting Rights Act case- all the articles I've read say it's so terrible that the Supreme Court has ruled this way, because it allows states to draw districts in a way that racial minority voters are always grouped together with a population of white voters which outnumbers them, and therefore the racial minority voters don't have any meaningful representation. This is confusing to me- it seems to rely on the assumptions that all people of color vote the same way, all white people vote the same way, and white people wouldn't vote for a candidate who would take minorities' needs seriously. Probably this is me being naive about how racism works, and missing some key facts about the history of racist voter suppression. If anyone has an article that explains this, post it in the comment section~

5. U.S. to issue commemorative passports with Trump's picture for America's 250th birthday (April 29) Fortunately it's only the Washington DC office that's doing this, and if you apply for a passport at any other location, you will just get a regular one without the mark of the beast.

6. The Trump team is quietly eliminating U.S. support for birth control abroad (April 29) This makes me so mad. Having penis-in-vagina sex is really common, and for women who are doing that, they *need* to have some kind of birth control, otherwise their lives will be completely dominated by the huge burdens of pregnancy and caring for babies. Those MAGAs claim they are "helping women" by being mean to trans people, while ending the programs that *actually* help women.

On just giving people money

Cow and calf. Image source.

Here's a good post from Ozy Brennan: The joys of cash benchmarking. It's about comparing the results from a charity program (for example, giving cows to poor people) to the results for a different charity program which used the same amount of money, but just directly gave the money to the recipients, rather than giving them a specific thing or service. Ozy says that the majority of the time, cash outperforms other charity programs, when you measure the effects on people's health, economic situation, etc, and therefore our default stance should be to just give people cash, unless we have a good reason to think that some other approach will outperform cash.

The default thing to do with your altruistic dollars should be:

1. Find the poorest person you can.

2. Give them some money.

If you do anything with your altruistic dollars other than find the poorest person you can and give them money, you should have an explanation for why this is better than finding the poorest person you can and giving them money.

The post says that there definitely *are* charity programs that outperform cash- for example, preventative health care, like vaccines and anti-malarial mosquito nets. It's often the case that people don't take initiative and choose to spend their money on preventative health care (I think when you're extremely poor, you never have enough money for everything, and there will always be some other expense that feels more urgent than preventative health care), *but* if you do that math, it is better and more cost-effective to spend money on preventative health care rather than taking your chances on getting sick.

So because this is a known weakness of human psychology, charities can help by specifically providing preventative health care, and this can be more effective than giving cash. So yes, some charities do outperform cash- but most do not, and Ozy argues that in general you should just give cash unless you have a good reason to think a particular program will outperform cash.

And yes, there are charities that straight-up give cash to people living in extreme poverty, like GiveDirectly.

So, while I was reading this post, I felt like... Intuitively, I think it can sometimes be good to spend money on a specific *thing* instead of just transferring cash directly to the recipients, even if statistically that is "less effective." But maybe I'm wrong about that? So I want to think through it, and write this post about it.

Ozy is coming from an effective altruist perspective, and the whole idea behind effective altruism is that we should give money to charity in a way that maximizes the amount of good that results from it, as measured in lives saved and improvements to people's health and quality of life. But I think, for people who aren't effective altruists, there's sort of a different motive when donating to charity: You have an idea in your head for how you want the world to be, and you give money to a charity that is working to move things in that direction.

So, for example, the charity that gives people cows. Imagine a poor person, living in extreme poverty in the developing world. Now imagine that they are given a cow, and they then have the benefits of getting milk from it, or killing it and selling the meat. That world seems to be a better world than the world where they don't have a cow- and guess what, *you* can make it happen! You can change the "this specific poor person does not have a cow" world into the "this specific poor person has a cow" world.

Whereas the "giving people money" story looks more like, imagine a poor person, struggling to have enough money to meet their basic needs for food, shelter, and health care. Okay, now give them a few hundred dollars. Well, that's great, that will help them a lot with whatever their current needs are- but they're still living in extreme poverty. It doesn't really change the situation. This is a much more boring story than the "give them a cow" story.

(I notice that on GiveDirectly's website, they have a bunch of examples of how the recipients used the money to start a business that totally turned their life around. This is because donors want to imagine that the world where people receive this money is a world that looks different- in obvious ways, which feel good to the donors- from the world where they don't. But realistically, I don't think most of the recipients are using it for something that makes for a good story. I think they're using it for things they really need.)

But if you think about it for a second, you'll realize that it's more helpful for someone to receive money equivalent to the price of a cow, rather than receiving a cow. If the recipient believes a cow would benefit them, they can go buy one- so, this is the same result as if they were just given a cow. And if they feel like something else would help them more, then they can use the money for something else. So, they have more options than just getting a cow- so this is better. (And maybe you've had the experience where you are having financial problems, because of something boring like rent or medical debt- and then someone gives you a juice machine as a birthday gift, and you're like, well, that's nice, but I would have preferred to just have the money.)

Anyway, in the cow example, I do agree that in general you shouldn't donate to charity programs to "give someone a cow", and should donate to something else instead. As a donor, you imagine that hypothetical world where some poor person receives a cow, and how that's better than the current existing world- but I think there is such a huge difference between our lives and the lives of people living in extreme poverty, and therefore, whatever we're imagining about the lives of people in extreme poverty, it's probably wrong. So, not really a good idea to make decisions based on that. Give it to the recipients as money, because they actually know their own situation.

(However, for a donor who is either going to donate to the "give someone a cow" charity or not donate at all, "give someone a cow" is the better option! There are plenty of people who donate in that way, so, it does make sense that such a charity exists.)

I think it's often true that when people donate their money, they aren't trying to help the recipients as effectively as possible, but they're trying to address a specific problem. For example, if you give money to an organization that helps victims of domestic violence. This is not because you want to help these victims *in general* but you want to help them with problems that were caused by the domestic violence. Right? Maybe I shouldn't speak for everyone, but when *I* donate money, it's not because "I want to make people's lives better overall" but more like "I want to counter the effects that this specific problem has had on people's lives." (Or, "I want to prevent this problem from happening.") Effective altruists would strongly disagree with this- the entire point of effective altruism is that we should do whatever gives the most benefit (when you measure lives saved, health, quality of life, etc), and we should *not* focus on a specific problem. So the top charities recommended by effective altruists are charities that fight malaria, because the way the math worked out, those ones save the most lives per dollar. Not because there's any particular reason that we should care about malaria more than other problems. 

But I'm not an effective altruist; I see specific problems in the world and I want to do something about them, because I have feelings about them, rather than doing something about other problems that I don't have feelings about.

So, maybe I'm wrong about this, but I do feel that "I want to help people with some specific problem that emotionally resonates with me" is okay. It doesn't have to be about "I want to help in whatever way does the most good."

But also, sometimes this leads to weird results. For example, suppose you have a family member who has some specific disease, call it Disease A. And so you want to help people who have Disease A. You donate to an organization (let's call them Charity B) that pays the hospital bills for their treatment.

But then, another charity comes along, Charity C. And Charity C says, yes it's great that Charity B is paying for people's medical treatment, but in practical terms this often is not good enough- the medical treatment is still inaccessible because there are very few hospitals which can provide the treatment, so most patients have to pay a lot of money to travel, in order to get the free treatment that Charity B is paying for- and many patients can't afford the travel costs, so they can't get treatment at all. But, good news, Charity C has been set up specifically to pay for people's travel costs, hotel, lost wages, etc, all that overhead that is necessary in order for them to even come and get the treatment.

And so, since you care about people who are affected by Disease A, you decide you also need to donate to Charity C. You hadn't realized that many of these patients couldn't access the benefits of Charity B, but of course you want them to be able to. So, you reason, yes we need Charity C.

And then another charity comes along, Charity D. And they say, there's another disease, Disease E, whose symptoms are pretty much the same as Disease A, but it doesn't get any media coverage. So, this is really unlucky for people who have Disease E, because they are pretty much having all the same problems as people with Disease A, but they're not eligible for any of the support from Charity B or Charity C. A new charity has been started, Charity D, to help people with Disease E.

And so you donate to Charity D too- because your original motive for donating is that you knew someone who had Disease A, and so you care about people who have Disease A- but in your opinion, Disease A is pretty much the same thing as Disease E. If your relative had had Disease E rather than Disease A, well, it would have been the same thing, from your perspective.

So there are always going to be cases along the lines of "I'm donating money to help people with some certain problem. Oh, but, turns out, there's another problem which is pretty much the same as that problem, but which doesn't fall under the technical definition that the charity is using to choose its recipients." 

Wouldn't it be easier to skip all this and just find the poorest person and give them cash? 

There's sort of a mismatch... the donor has this idea in their head about what the problem is and how to help with it, and the charity has a program that is doing concrete things related to that problem- but the practical implementation of it probably looks very different from whatever fantasy the donor is imagining.

Anyway, I just wanted to write down my thoughts on this, because when reading Ozy's post I had this feeling like it *can* be a good thing to donate to a charity that does a specific thing, rather than giving cash and letting the recipients choose what to do with it- even if it's not like one of Ozy's examples where data shows it's "more effective." Maybe as a donor, you don't want the recipients to just choose whatever they feel is most useful, but you want to help them with a specific problem. I don't think that's a bad thing, but it's definitely something we should be aware of and think about. How to balance what you want, as a donor, with what the recipients feel is most useful. (Effective altruism says we shouldn't balance this at all, but only do what the data has shown to be most effective in improving people's lives.) 

Also, if we're talking about helping people in extreme poverty in developing countries, most of their problems do stem from the fact that they don't have enough money, so I agree that it's better to give them money rather than giving them something that feels "fun" to the donor, like a cow. There's not going to be some cool clever trick that totally changes their lives- the problem is poverty, the problem is money. The problem is not that it just never occurred to them that there are benefits to owning a cow.

But if you want to help people in the US, or other developed countries, who are having a problem that you relate to and you feel is important (note that effective altruists don't do this at all- they give their money to developing countries because a dollar goes much farther for recipients in extreme poverty), then I think there is more room for the donor's own feelings and opinions on how they *want* the problem to be solved. What kind of world they want to work towards, rather than just what's going to be most immediately useful to the recipients.

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Also, if you want to just give people cash, you can donate to GiveDirectly

Related

"Portfolios of the Poor" (book review)

My Weird Hangups About Charity