Blogaround

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1. On World Vision, gay marriage, and taking a stand on the backs of starving children (posted March 24) "It is unfathomable to me that people would choose to punish and drop the child they sponsor over a difference in doctrine."

2. Urban Church P̶l̶a̶n̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ Plantations (posted March 18) "I’m amazed at how quickly majority-culture pastors with no urban ministry experience acquire a passion for urban ministry and then automatically assume that they are qualified for the job."

3. The Day Evangelicalism Died (posted March 26) "As a result, Evangelicalism as we knew it, died. Instead of affirming the trinity and the inspiration of scripture in order to be called an evangelical and leaving all other theological debates open for charitable disagreement, the New Evangelicals have now added neutrality on same sex marriage something that must be disavowed before signing on. When leaders wished World Vision “farewell” and declared this “apostasy“, they made the lines dark and clear: you can’t be an evangelical if you don’t agree with them."

4. This seems relevant... (posted March 27) Yeah.

5. There is no such thing as ‘holiness’ apart from love (posted March 26) "What, pray tell, is the content and substance of this loveless holiness? What are these other laws that Jesus and Paul forgot about when they both told us that love is the fulfillment of the law?"

6. In which this is for the ones leaving evangelicalism (posted March 29) "Evangelicalism doesn’t get our loyalty: that fidelity is for our Jesus." Amen, amen.

7. And this baby elephant:

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Have a good week!

Go ahead and say I'm not a Christian. I don't care anymore.

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I don't want to be an evangelical anymore.

Remember when Jesus said, "Come, you who are blessed by my father, receive your inheritance. For I was hungry, and you refused to partner with people who believe same-sex marriage actually counts as marriage, rather than give me something to eat."

You guys, I don't even know what to say about this whole thing with World Vision. The loudest voices in evangelicalism have made it quite clear that hating gay people is much much MUCH more important than helping the poor. And they were so loud and so powerful that World Vision ended up reversing their decision.

I guess it's not some extreme minority of evangelical Christians. And so I don't want to be evangelical anymore.

I know people criticize Christians for making LGBT issues the most important thing, but man, I always thought that was an exaggeration.

And I've tried to argue and I've tried to explain to other Christians how it's possible to support gay rights and love the bible, but now I think I'm done. Fine, I don't care, whatever.

Because it turns out I was trying to reason with people who would abandon their sponsor children rather than consider the possibility that maybe it's okay for different Christians to have different views on gay marriage.

Dear God please please please let that be just a small minority. Please God let it be all talk. They wouldn't really do that, would they?

Fine, say whatever you want about me. I won't argue any more. It's no use. Perfect Number's not a Christian. Perfect Number abandoned her faith. She was led astray. She hates the bible. She just wants to take the easy way. She's rejected God.

Whatever.

I know it's not true, but why should I bother trying to correct them? These are the same people who declared everyone should quit supporting the great stuff World Vision is doing to help poor children- because World Vision is okay with hiring gay Christians.

Is this a joke? Is this really what evangelical Christianity is about?

Seriously, I can't even imagine a more extreme example than this. Like if you wanted to make up a story to make evangelical Christians who oppose gay rights look really bad... Did somebody make this up as a joke, just to criticize Christianity?

Yeah, I'm done. I don't want to be evangelical anymore. And I don't care what anyone says anymore.

Go ahead. Say I've fallen away. Go ahead and pray for me. Whatever.

I hate God? Yeah sure, okay.

I don't value the bible? Okay whatever.

I'm not a real Christian? I'm going to hell? Fine.

This week I saw the true face of evangelical Christianity, and I am so done.

So I cleaned my shower...

When I moved into my apartment, the shower looked like this:

See that loofa hanging there? Yeah that belonged to the previous resident.

Then I cleaned it and scrubbed it to get rid of the nasty black mold, and now it looks like this:

Where was God? 上帝在哪儿？

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God, you could have f***ing saved them. What the hell?

You should have.

I am soooo angry. So so so angry. Last night I heard the news about the Malaysian flight- how it crashed in the goddamn Indian Ocean with no survivors. All of China has worried about it for 2 straight weeks- worried so much that I got tired of worrying.

Why did this happen? The world is stupid.

God, why did this happen?

It hits me hard because those people were all just like me and my coworkers and my students. People who have the money to travel internationally. Maybe for a vacation or a business trip. People who shared photos on social media and posted about how excited they were for the trip. And worried about their luggage exceeding the weight limit. And got stopped at security because of a water bottle.

The majority of the passengers were Chinese. The ones who were my age were their parents' only child. And I don't even want to think about what happened on the plane, and the extra confusion thrown in by language barriers.

This is so stupid. The world's not safe, you guys. WHERE WERE YOU, GOD?

What can we do? Just keep praying, keep living our lives- value every day because life is so fragile. And look forward to the day when God will save us all, and there will be no more crying or pain.

But until then, God, WHAT THE HELL?

Yeah, this post was supposed to be about Psalm 94. It's not. But if there's one thing the psalms have taught me, it's that you can tell God exactly how you feel. He can take it.

And he feels all our pain.

But this is still not okay.

It matters so much to me because there's a freakin' planet and a 12-hour flight separating me from my family. I'm already afraid of flying.

Oh God...

God... why?

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This post is part of a link-up on the topic of Psalm 94. To read other people's posts, click here: What do we do with vengeance Psalms? Here are 4 ideas.

Blogaround

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1. Big Bang breakthrough announced; gravity waves detected (posted March 17) "Scientists believe that in the fabric of space-time, there are tiny ripples called quantum fluctuations. If you could look at space-time on the smallest scale possible, you would, in theory, see them, even today." Sounds like Star Trek.

2. Respecting Every BODY (posted March 12) "Thinking about it, I realized something. Bobby wanted back in the bucket because he trusted me. He knew I would listen to him and get him out as soon as he was done. He knows I respect him and his body."

3. Lies, Damn Lies, and [Church Divorce] Statistics (posted March 14) "Think about it. You and your wife both attend church faithfully. You have your marriage difficulties and get divorced. The chance of both of you still attending the same church are pretty much nil."

4. The Particle Zoo: Subatomic Particle Softies. So cute.

5. Finnish reindeer now have glowing antlers to protect them from cars (posted February 18) "Bonus: Now ANYONE can guide the sleigh!"

6. Setting the record straight on Jesus, ‘the friend of sinners’ (posted March 20) "I asked him about the notions espoused by Carter and others that the 'sinners' with whom Jesus fellowshipped were actually followers. Burge replied, 'I’m surprised that someone would actually say that.'"

7. Poke2048, another variation on the game I linked to last week.

8. India beats the odds, beats polio (posted March 22) Great!

9. Guy Sings Katy Perry's Dark Horse in 20 Different Styles and It's Awesome (posted March 21) Wow.

Don't drink the water! (A bit of clarification)

If you've never been to the wondrous land known as People's Republic of China, I highly recommend it. BUT the most important thing you must know is this: Don't drink the water!

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Tap water in China has bacteria, so it's not safe to drink. But don't worry, it's completely fine for the following:

• Showering (even if you get a few drops in your mouth, don't worry about it)
• Brushing your teeth- surprisingly enough, this is safe. One of my friends even told me he takes a gulp of water to rinse his mouth, and spits it out, and he's fine.
• Washing dishes
• Washing fruit/vegetables
• Giving water to my cat. He's a cat. Whatever.
• Cooking, if you're making soup or something that requires boiling it.

A couple drops is no problem. But if you actually drink a bunch of the tap water, you might get diarrhea.

(If a restaurant gives you a drink with ice, well, that ice is also a bit suspicious...)

So then, what do Chinese people do for water?

Option #1: Boil water.

If you're making soup or noodles or whatever, it's fine to use the tap water- you just have to make sure it boils first.

And for drinking water, you can use one of these electric pitcher things to boil the water first, and then it's safe to drink:

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Almost every hotel room I've stayed in in China had one.

Also, China doesn't have water fountains. Occasionally you'll see a hot water dispenser, which gives you boiled water for your instant noodles or whatever. I've seen these on trains and in waiting areas at the airport.

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Be careful because the water is super-hot.

Option #2: Buy bottled water.

So you can buy bottles of water, just like in America. That water is safe.

Also, these water-cooler things are really common in China:

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My apartment is furnished, so it already had one of these. Whenever I'm at my home and I want to drink water, this is where I get it. The office where I work also has one, along with some free paper cups.

And what do you do when your huge jug of water is empty?

Well you could do what I did, the first time it happened to me, and go into the office for your apartment and start asking incredibly confused questions in broken Chinese.

But here's what you're actually supposed to do: There's a phone number to call, and you just tell them your address and what type of water jug you want (??? I had no idea what to say when they asked me this question- water is all the same, right?) and then some guy will show up at your door with a full one, which is incredibly heavy, and take away your empty one. And you pay him 15 kuai.

From time to time I see people (must be the water-delivery people) riding around on mopeds with like 6 of these giant water jugs.

Maybe the average American would be shocked at the idea of living somewhere where you can't drink the tap water, but really, it's not that bad. It's normal to me now. It's not a problem at all.

Does God believe in Meta-God?

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How can God know whether he's omnipotent? Or omniscient?

What if there's another god, so powerful and sneaky that God doesn't even know that she exists? We'll call her Meta-God. And so far, she hasn't done anything to interfere with God or the physical world- she's just stayed up in her own meta-dimension, which not even God knows about.

So maybe, Christianity gives us a good representation of what God has done in the world, and who God is- but it's only as accurate as God's own beliefs about his power and his ability to do the things he has promised. What if suddenly, Meta-God intervenes and does something that NO ONE could have predicted?

Sure, God raised Jesus from the dead, and God loves people and totally plans to make a new heaven and new earth and there will be justice and all that- but what if Meta-God appears out of nowhere and screws up all God's future plans?

Who knows what kind of future Meta-God will give us?

We don't know anything about who she is at all. She's never even done anything to hint that she exists.

Maybe God believes himself to be all-knowing and all-powerful, but he's not. Actually Meta-God is, but there's no way God could know that.

Psalm 93:2 says, "Your throne was established long ago; you are from all eternity." And sure, maybe that's true, as far as we know, and as far as God knows.

But what if? Then us Christians are screwed. Actually everyone is screwed. We just gotta take our chances with Meta-God.

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So... what do we do? Is there a Meta-God or not? We can never know.

I don't know about you, but I'll just keep living my life normally, with no concern at all about Meta-God. Hey, we don't have any evidence about her. There's no real reason to think she exists. But also no way to disprove it. (Perhaps this is similar to how atheists feel?)

But for a Christian who believes she knows all the answers (yeah that was me a few years ago), the idea of a Meta-God is earth-shattering. Because no matter how many apologetics books you read, no matter how well you can recite the arguments for Christianity, no matter how much you research about history and evidence for the resurrection and all that, you can never prove that Christianity is true. And back then, I would have been 100% NOT OKAY with that.

(Defining what exactly it means to say "Christianity is true" is a whole 'nother discussion...)

Maybe it seems true, maybe God even believes it, but in the end, Meta-God will have her way. Maybe God would let you into heaven, but Meta-God would then kick you out.

There is no certainty. There can never be certainty.

It's faith. I'm a Christian, but there's no way I could ever know if Christianity is true or not. I have a lot of reasons for my beliefs, but no proof. Proof is literally impossible, because not even God can know if there is a Meta-God.

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This post is part of a link-up on the topic of Psalm 93. To read other people's posts, click here: a boulder in the ocean.

Blogaround

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1. Want to understand your gay family member? Go see Frozen. (posted January 27) "A later scene, in which Elsa must make it through a coronation ceremony without letting anyone glimpse the truth about herself, is positively gut wrenching. I know that feeling, too, and all too well. It’s how I felt year after year, at every family gathering, in every church service, any time I was in a social setting and people were asking about my life and whether I’d met any cute girls lately."

2. Talented Parents Are Way More Obsessed With 'Frozen' Than Their Daughter (posted March 11) Lip-syncing to "Love is an Open Door." This video is fantastic.

3. Chinese adaptations of famous brand logos (posted March 9) Cool!

4. ‘God is Done with You’: Pensacola Christian College and Sexual Violence (posted March 11) Trigger warning.

5. And a couple of really simple, really cool games: 2048 (original), 2147483648 (8x8 version), and 2584 (Fibonacci version).

6. Watch this impersonator sing "Let it Go" in TWENTY-ONE Disney voices (posted March 15) Sorry everything on the internet is about Frozen lately. But seriously this video is fantastic.

7 (Chinese) Quick Takes

1. Here's "Let it go" from Disney's "Frozen" in 26 Chinese languages:



In China, each place has a local language. Sometimes they're called dialects- but they're different enough that you can't understand them if you only know Mandarin. Which, by the way, is the official language of China, and when I say "I speak Chinese" I mean I speak Mandarin.

Everyone I've met speaks Mandarin, and everything on tv is Mandarin, and everything important or official is in Mandarin, so it's not necessary to learn local languages. But wow, that video's pretty cool.

2. So a few days ago, I was traveling on the train, and when it arrived at the destination, I got off and went to wait for a bus. Of course, to get to the bus stop, I had to walk through a group of people asking in Chinese if I wanted a taxi, or occasionally in "English", "HELLO! TAXI!" Yeah, best to just ignore them- they're not the legitimate taxi drivers.

So I get to the bus stop, and I'm waiting, and this woman comes up and starts asking me in Chinese where I'm going and if I want a taxi, and I just shook my head and ignored her. And she keeps talking to me, like "Can you speak Chinese??? Can you speak Chinese???" and I can but if she knows that, she'll really never leave me alone, so I just ignored her.

Meanwhile I'm a bit confused about which number bus to wait for- it seems the one I was planning for was done for the evening. Hmm. I walked over to check the sign that said which bus route goes where, and there's a group of people around my age. They see that I'm white, so they start trying out some English sentences:

"YOU! Are beautiful!"

"Hello! How are you!"

And so on. And the taxi lady from earlier tells them "She can't speak Chinese."

So then they keep going on with practicing their favorite English sentences, and I just kind of smile, and then one of them asks "WHERE DO YOU! Come from!" and I realized okay, the game's over, I either talk to them in English and listen to their broken English, or I let them know I can speak Chinese.

So I said, "其实我会讲中文 [Actually, I can speak Chinese]" and everyone was shocked and laughed because that was unexpected, right? And then they all started asking me questions in Chinese and they were all so excited to talk to me.

Well that was ... interesting.

3. Recently, I've had several conversations in Chinese about zombies (僵尸 jiāng shī).

4. I like to wave my hand back and forth and watch my cat's eyes follow it. Haha, such a silly little animal, I can control his eye movements just by moving something around in front of him. He is so easily entertained.

And then I realize, I'm watching my cat's eyes move, and I'm incredibly entertained by that. Who's the silly one here?

5. Long long ago, I wondered how Chinese people type stuff. Do they have a massive keyboard with thousands of keys, because there are thousands of different characters?

No. Here's how it works. Suppose you want to type the character 冰 (bīng), which means "ice." All you do is type "bing," and if your keyboard (regular qwerty keyboard) is in Chinese mode, it will bring up a list of characters that are pronounced "bing." And you just pick which one you want.

Like this. The first one is the "bing" that means "ice."

In Chinese, there are finitely many possible pronunciations, so there are a TON of characters for each one. Sometimes you have to click through a long list before you find the right one.

6. On a related note, that's why my Chinese writing is horrible now. I usually just type Chinese, mostly when I'm texting on my phone, so I've forgotten how to write them by hand. When you type, all you need is a vague idea of what the character looks like. Kind of like how autocorrect ruins people's ability to spell, but much worse.

A lot of Chinese people have this problem too.

7. Chinese people are really good at drinking hot things.

"7 Quick Takes" linkup is here.

God Can't Send Me To China

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I was hanging out with some of my students between classes, and one of them, Leo, was talking about how he had visited relatives and “sent” presents to his nieces and nephews. On hearing this, I highly suspected what he meant was he gave presents to them. This is a really common mistake for Chinese people studying English, probably because the verb 送 (sòng) doesn’t have an exact English equivalent.

So I asked the students, “Do you know the difference between ‘send’ and ‘give’?” No, they didn’t.

I handed my cell phone to Leo (it was the most readily available object) and said “I’m giving you my cell phone.”

Then I took the cell phone back, and walked to the opposite end of the room. “Raymond, can you come here?” I said, and Raymond, another student, came over to me. I handed my phone to him and said to give it to Leo. “Now I’m sending you my cell phone,” I said to Leo, from across the room.

After that exercise, I further explained that with “give” you should be right there together when they get the gift, but with “send” you are not together- maybe you mail it or you get another person to take it there.

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And then I realized, God can’t send me to China.

Long long ago, after my first trip to China, I prayed and prayed and prayed, “God, send me to China, send me to China.” (Because I thought I wasn’t allowed to go without a special invitation from God- we can discuss that in a different blog post.) But if we use the definition I gave my students, “God, send me to China” implies that God is not in China. He would be with me in America, and send me to another place where he is not.

Wow. Oops.

But wait, we believe God is everywhere, right? What does it mean for an omnipresent being to “send” someone somewhere? Normally when you “send” an object, it goes away from you. But surely that can never be the case with me and God. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. 

Okay, what about if we use a company as an example. Big companies have branches all over the place, and sometimes they move their employees from one location to another. This is the closest thing we have to an omnipresent being sending someone somewhere.

Let’s say I worked for Microsoft, in New York City, maybe, and then they wanted me to move to the Beijing office. Yes, I would say, “Microsoft is sending me to Beijing.” But... Microsoft is also in Beijing.

Perhaps in this case we use “send” even though I’m not moving away from the one doing the sending.

Or maybe, the order for me to move to Beijing came from the headquarters of the company, in America. So I actually would be moving away from the one doing the sending.

Well what if I worked at the Beijing Microsoft and then they wanted me to come back to one of the US offices? Would I say, “Microsoft is sending me to the US?” Would I use the verb “send”? Maybe “moving me” or “bringing me” instead?

It’s a little bit unclear in this case. But usually, we use the word “send” when something is going away. And isn’t that how I pictured it, long ago, when I prayed for God to “send me to China”? 

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Maybe instead, I should say God invited me to China. God brought me to China. God introduced me to China.

Maybe instead of praying “God, send me to China,” I should have prayed, “God, I want to be with you in China.”

Psalm 92: Why should we praise God?

"It is good to praise the Lord
    and make music to your name, O Most High,
proclaiming your love in the morning
    and your faithfulness at night,
to the music of the ten-stringed lyre
    and the melody of the harp."
Psalm 92:1-3

Praising God. People do this by singing, talking about God's goodness, giving thanks to him, etc.

Why should we do it?

Well, a partial answer to this question is that it helps us emotionally connect with God. Music is good for that. And talking about good things God has done helps us focus on good things and feel better.

And does it have other effects besides helping us feel good and thankful and closer to God? Like, does it affect how God feels? Does it make him happy? Hmm. I'm not sure, but I hope it does.

The other half of "why should we praise God?" is the question of what exactly we are praising him for. And this is where it gets tricky for me. Because if we thank and praise God for good things that happen, what about bad things?

Praising and thanking God only makes sense if we believe God caused those good things to happen. Okay then, what about the bad things? Did God cause those? See it just doesn't make sense to me that we should credit God with everything good and just not mention the bad things.

The only way I can make sense of it is to say God made the whole world, and there are good things and bad things, so let's focus on the good things and thank God for those. But they must be viewed as parts woven into the rest of the world and how everything is connected- rather than individual events directly caused by God.

For example, God made a world that contains kitties, and I love kitties! (I happen to live with the best kitty in the world, by the way.) So I can say, wow God is so great, giving us a world with kitties in it! But I won't say God destined me to meet and care for this one particular furry creature, as part of his divine plan for my life. Right? Because why is God spending his time and energy assigning me a specific cat? I can think of a thousand more important things he should be doing.

And God made us a world that has things like love and friendship, and good food and pineapple juice (you guys, I bought pineapple juice at Walmart today- come to China and have some!) and light and sound and beauty and quantum physics. So cool! Yes, I can totally get on board with thanking and praising God for all that. ^_^

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I'd still like to believe he's involved in my own individual life... but I'm not sure how that would work.

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This post is part of a link-up on the topic of Psalm 92. To read other people's posts, click here: Wired for Praise.

Blogaround

1. A couple good ones from xkcd: Now and Frequency.

2. The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary (posted March 3) "He was shocked to learn that women don't just use old rags, but other unhygienic substances such as sand, sawdust, leaves and even ash."

3. Three highly ignored teachings of the New Testament: Sabbath healings, circumcision, and unclean food (posted February 22) "That is a tremendously revolutionary statement that calls out one of the most pious-sounding things that Christians always say about worship and life in general: It’s not about you; it’s about God’s glory. Nope, the Sabbath is made for humankind, not for God’s glory." This post hits it out of the park.

4. What Really Changed After The Resurrection? (A Challenge For Lent) (posted March 5) "In other words, if the kingdom of God is really at hand, the only way people are going to notice is if we become the physical embodiment of the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven."

5. Sex, Divorce, and Good Christian Kids (posted February 5) "I’m watching too many couples play Russian roulette with their lives because they aren’t listening to their gut instincts about who they want or need to spend their lives with because they happened to have found one person somewhat enchanting and willing to play the Christian marriage game and the stakes are: your whole future on this decision, made in the worst possible state of mind, horny celibacy."

6. Fake Magazine Covers That Expose Real Inequality (posted March 8)

7. 40 Ideas for Lent 2014 (posted March 5)

8. Fukushima disaster: Plan to send residents home three years after nuclear accident labelled 'irresponsible' (posted March 10) 

Psalm 91: Does Prayer Work?

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"If you say, 'The Lord is my refuge,'
    and you make the Most High your dwelling,
no harm will overtake you,
    no disaster will come near your tent."
Psalm 91:9-10

Really?

If we take this literally, it's obviously not true. Bad things happen to good people sometimes. But I know it's poetry and it's not meant literally- it's meant as something that's true in general. But is it really true in general?

Are people who follow God really less likely to be victims of random accidents and diseases and violence?

Does prayer work?

Well, that's a question.

I used to think yes, definitely. Pray for something, and it's more likely that it will happen- as long as it's something clearly GOOD, like sick people getting healed or me doing well on my physics exam. Praying for your football team to win doesn't count.

And the more people that pray, the more likely it will happen. So if someone is sick, get EVERYONE you possibly can to pray for them. Umm but wait. Nowadays, social media allows us to write stuff that gets seen by hundreds of strangers... so... there's more answered prayer now than in the past because our advanced technology means we can contact WAY WAY MORE people and get them to pray?

Technology affects the work of God? Umm, no that doesn't seem right. So perhaps getting strangers on the internet to say a prayer doesn't count? But... they... hmm.

Does prayer work? Psalm 91 says it does. And all my life, I've heard Christians say it does. But maybe they're biased.

How about some scientific studies? Wikipedia has a bunch of information here and here. Sounds like different studies came to different conclusions- sometimes prayer kind of maybe helped a little, and sometimes there was no difference.

But of course, you could argue that God's not gonna take someone seriously if they're just praying because they're participating in a study- so those results don't have any relation to the REAL effectiveness of praying. Maybe it's the kind of thing that science just can't measure.

Okay, here's another question: Do we want to live in a world where prayer works, or not? Wouldn't that be unfair to the people who don't believe in God? I don't deserve anything special just because my beliefs are (I'm assuming) slightly more accurate than someone else's.

I definitely believe that prayer can make a person feel more calm, more confident, and maybe that's good for one's health. But what about things that are observable in the real world, which happen because you knew Who to talk to to make it happen? What about saying to this mountain, "Move from here to there"?

Does prayer work? I used to say yes, because, you know, that's The Right Answer. But now I don't know.

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This post is part of a link-up on the topic of Psalm 91. To read other people's posts, click here: Psalm 91.

Blogaround

1. 5 Good Reasons to (Temporarily) Leave the Church (posted February 24) Well amen to this.

2. Please enjoy the Mandarin Chinese version of "Let it go" from Disney's "Frozen":

3. My Problem With the Bible (posted February 17) "The bias of the Bible is from the vantage point of the underclass. But what happens if we lose sight of the prophetically subversive vantage point of the Bible? What happens if those on top read themselves into the story, not as imperial Egyptians, Babylonians, and Romans, but as the Israelites?" A-freakin-men.

4. Eastern and Western attitudes about life explained in 18 simple infographics (posted November 2013) Yes. Especially the "problem-solving approach."

5. Why You Shouldn’t Be Color Blind (posted February 25) "The point is if someone who is culturally or ethnically different from you comes around, it is unrealistic and unloving to pretend that you don’t notice."

6. It Happened To Me: I Almost Became a Victim of Human Trafficking at the Sochi Olympics (posted February 24)

7. Shock and anger after Kunming brutality (posted March 3) Jesus help us.

8. everybody... put the camel bones down and step away before someone gets hurt (posted February 19) "The presence of anachronisms does not in and of itself render Genesis historically valueless, but it does likely tell us something about the time when these stories were written and the perspective of the writers."