But if that doesn't help you, that's fine too

Image text: "Beliefs" with a silhouette of a head and a bunch of thought bubbles in the brain. Image source.

Yesterday I published God Is With Us (a post about autism), which was about my understanding of the Incarnation- I believe God lives in us (all of us, no matter our religion) and feels our emotions at the same time we feel them. In particular, God experiences the pain of sensory overload, and the stigma from being misunderstood or judged for being autistic.

For me, this idea is really meaningful and helpful, but I want to say this: If it's not helpful for you, that's totally fine.

Like maybe someone would object, and say "So what if God feels our pain- they don't actually intervene and do anything to help, so what's the point?" And indeed, I don't believe God intervenes in our lives. If I believed that, it would raise a lot of awkward questions about why a world where God is constantly micromanaging the tiny details of my life is also a world with so much systemic injustice. How could I credit God with helping me find a new job, for example, when God hasn't fixed the widespread societal problem of resumes with "black-sounding" names being less likely to get called for interviews? (Yes, quite awkward to give God credit for something that I actually got through white privilege...)

Because of the problem of evil, I don't believe in a God who actually does tangible things in our lives. But I do believe in a God who is with us and feels what we feel. It's comforting for me, but if it's not comforting for you, I get that. That's totally fine. You don't have to believe any of this.

If you don't believe in God at all, that's also fine. I'm ex-evangelical and still a Christian, but if you're ex-evangelical and not Christian anymore, that's fine too.

And I don't try to convince people my beliefs are right. I'm not interested in convincing anyone to become a Christian. It really does not matter to me what people's religious beliefs are- what matters is how they treat people.

Back when I was evangelical, I would have answered the question "why are you a Christian?" by trying to make an argument about why everyone should be a Christian. I would have seen it as an opportunity to "do evangelism" to the person who asked. I would have crafted my answer with the goal of getting them to think they should be a Christian too.

But now, my answer is that I love the concepts of resurrection and incarnation so much. I love "your kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven." (As Belinda Carlisle said, "Heaven is a place on earth." That's my religion.) These ideas are so beautiful and meaningful to me, and so I believe them. Maybe that's not a very good reason to believe something- okay, sure, that's why I'm not trying to convince anybody. If you think it's not a good basis for belief, I get that. That's totally fine.

A few months ago I was talking with a friend who's queer and non-religious, about my experiences coming from a queermisic Christian background and then coming to a new understanding of Christianity that's queer-affirming. He asked me, why continue to believe at all? Why not just get rid of the whole thing? And I said, yeah, some people do that, and that's also completely valid, I get it.

So if I ever say "God is like this or that" I don't mean it in the sense of "this is the right answer and if you don't agree then you are wrong and you need to change." Of course that's how I meant it back when I was an evangelical, but please don't take it that way now. When I call people out for having terrible beliefs, it's because I know those beliefs lead to abuse, mental health problems, mistreating people in the name of God, etc. It's not because we disagree about some abstract idea related to the nature of God. I don't care what religion you are; I care how your beliefs affect people. The Sabbath was made for us, not us for the Sabbath.

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And since we're talking about incarnation, let me share one of my favorite songs about it~ "The Final Word" by Michael Card~
"Their final word was Jesus, they needed no other one"


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You asked and I answered~ In my 2018 Reader Survey, one of the top 5 topics you voted for was "the Christianity that Perfect Number believes now." Hence this post. :)