Blogaround

October 23-29, 2022 is Ace Week! Awesome! Image source.

1. The 2022 Ace Community Survey is now open! Go take the survey! Even if you aren't asexual, it still helps if you take it :)

2. The Unending Lies of Matt Walsh (October 21) Jessie Gender's 4-hour-long video responding to Matt Walsh's "What is a Woman?" documentary. And, wow, Jessie's video is extremely good. Matt Walsh has a lot of disgusting things to say about trans people and about women, and frankly he creeps me out. 

I remember years ago, when I first became aware of Walsh's blog... and it read to me like, take a Christian belief and then take it to such an extreme that it becomes heartless and shockingly offensive. I don't view him that way any more, though- I don't see anything Christian in it; I just see hate. 

Did he change and move farther from the Christianity I knew? Or did I change and can no longer imagine a Christianity compatible with that much hate?

3. Texas Woman Nearly Loses Her Life After Doctors Can't Legally Perform an Abortion: 'Their Hands Were Tied' (October 18) [content note: miscarriage, medical trauma, anti-choice politics] "'It was just so frustrating to be dealing with something so traumatic, and then just gamble with the outcome of Amanda's life unnecessarily,' says Josh."

4. Netflix & AI Discrimination (June 4) "Here’s why Netflix’s response is laughable.  I completely believe that Netflix’s algorithm is not based on race, gender, ethnicity, or orientation. I believe that they only use a member’s viewing history. But that doesn’t make it any better?"

5. Equality vs equity: An overanalysis (February 13) "Of all my complaints about this meme, my most significant is about its choice of words. On the surface level, the meme is educating us about the distinction between 'equality' and 'equity'. However, outside of the meme, that is not how the words are used."

6. I didn’t want a baby (June 27) This writer talks about her feelings about her abortion- how she felt various conflicting emotions, including sadness. 

I think this is a really important story to tell, because I feel like, in pro-choice discussions, it's like you have to say abortion is a great thing, and if you say it's a hard decision or something, then supposedly that cedes ground to "pro-life" people because they're going to jump on that and say "see, it's a HARD DECISION, that's why we need to force women to have unnecessary ultrasounds and a 24-hour waiting period and yell at them from the sidewalk, because they can't just make a HARD DECISION by themselves."

I'm pro-choice. But that doesn't mean I have to believe "abortion is always great and awesome" or whatever. I don't really think abortion is a good thing. (I think the medical technology that allows doctors to perform abortions in a safe way is a good thing! Laws that ensure that people have access to abortion care are a good thing!!!) But you know what else is also not a good thing? Pregnancy. Like, oh GEEZ, pregnancy is THE WORST. I did a whole pregnancy, and I hated it. But it was worth it for me because now I have a perfect child. But DAMNNN obviously no one should have to go through all that if they don't want to. And obviously the pregnant person is the only one who has full knowledge of the situation and is able to weigh the options and make the decision that is right for their situation.

I remember Dr. Parker's book "Life's Work" also talks about this- many of the women that come to him for abortions have complicated feelings about it. He says it's very normal that a woman knows that having an abortion is the right decision for her, but she still has feelings of caring about her "unborn baby." (But I feel like the pro-choice people on Twitter don't want you to say that, because then "pro-life" people are going to swoop in like "AHA, this is why we need to stop women from having abortions.") Women who have abortions aren't the stereotypes that get thrown around in political debates, like this stereotype of a foolish girl who was talked into it and doesn't know what's going on, or the stereotype of someone who says "it's just a clump of cells."

7. Billy Graham’s apology was a lie (October 25) "Billy Graham visited the Oval Office to talk to the president of the United States about the evil Jewish conspiracy that he believed had a 'stranglehold' on America."

8. One Of The 10 Hardest Puzzles We've Ever Seen (October 24) 1-hour-37-minute sudoku solve video. This is incredible.

9. Biden pushes crackdown on bank ‘junk fees’ that government says will save Americans $3 billion a year (October 27)

10. People of faith, Fox News grifter edition (October 11) "Nobody talks about people of politics, because the idea is inherently stupid. The idea of people of faith is similarly stupid — everybody is a person of faith, in the sense that everybody operates from axiomatic metaphysical priors, except for Richard Dawkins, who is just purely rational and objective all the way down to the last turtle — but of course 'people of faith' not really an idea per se, it’s just some idiotic slogan, meant to make conservative white Christians feel like they’re under some sort of constant massive cultural attack by the godless socialist woke hordes."

11. ‘Do They Even Read the Bible?’ — Why Exposing White Evangelical Hypocrisy is a Dead End (October 25) "But the White evangelical Bible isn’t simply a biblical text that speaks to its readers, it’s a complicated assemblage of social, political, and theological assumptions that determine in advance how that text speaks. The White evangelical Bible speaks for itself only after the reader makes arguments out of biblical allusions and citations that reinforce what the White evangelical already knows to be true." This is SPOT ON.

12. Trump’s Ties to Jerry Falwell Jr. and His Wife’s Creepy Pool Boy Sex Saga Revealed (October 26) [content note: Jerry Falwell Jr.'s sex life] "'I felt guilty,' Granda says in the film. 'I’m like, I know the truth about Jerry. He’s trying to appear like this strongman, but I know him as the cuck in the corner of the room.'"

13. The ace nerd (October 27) "It’s obvious that the nonsexual nerd is not 'for' ace nerds, and the writers are not interested in any real world intersection."

14. An Ace Reading of "When She Loved Me," Exploring the Drawbacks and Affordances of Nonhumanity (2021) "When friends get partners and suddenly disappear from our lives, we're told that we should've expected to be dropped eventually."

Sea Monsters on Land, and My Life With Vaginismus

I'm submitting this to the October 2022 Carnival of Aces (which I am hosting). It's more of a purity/ repression/ vaginismus story than an asexuality story, but this is the story that's on my mind right now, so here it is. I think for those of us who are asexual and grew up in "purity culture" it can sometimes be hard to separate out which of your feelings/thoughts/beliefs come from your own asexuality and which come from being repressed- and the way I wrote this post focuses more on the "repression" aspect of my experience (though I would say that being able to successfully maintain that level of complete ignorance about anything sexual is a possible indication of just being naturally asexual). 

Anyway, here it is, maybe some other asexuals can relate.

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[content note: it's about vaginismus, which is a medical condition where the vagina won't open]

There's a scene from the 2021 Pixar movie "Luca" that I have some feelings about, since I grew up in purity culture and very strictly repressed myself because I was a "good girl."

Some background about the movie "Luca": Luca is a sea monster who lives in the ocean near a small Italian town. The sea monsters in this story have their own advanced society underwater which is sort of parallel to human society. Luca's mom teaches him that "land monsters" (humans) are dangerous and want to kill sea monsters, and therefore he is forbidden to even THINK of going to the surface. And then there's this scene:

Luca meets another sea monster boy, Alberto, who pulls him out of the water, onto the beach. As Luca flails around, screaming and panicking, Alberto just watches him, and then says, "First time?"

And Luca answers, "Of course it is! I'm a good kid!"

And wow that is relatable. Here's Luca, so extremely repressed and ignorant, who had worked hard his entire life to make sure he stayed ignorant. Totally unaware of what his body can do- when he comes out of the water, his fins and scales transform to look like human hair and skin. So completely shocked and horrified at the idea of being out of the water, and then he's just thrown into it and expected to be able to handle it.

And then there's me... I grew up in this Christian "sexual purity" ideology, where the most important thing about dating and marriage is that you NEED to be a virgin on your wedding day. And more than that- you need to have no experience with anything sexual at all. You shouldn't masturbate. You shouldn't have "lustful thoughts." Repress your sexual feelings completely until your wedding day.

(Same thing with romantic feelings- though I guess there's a little more freedom there, because at least you're allowed to be in love with your partner if you know you're going to marry them.)

I followed the rules about sex. Of course I did! I didn't have sex in high school or college. I didn't even consider it, think about it, imagine it. It was just some abstract faraway threat, looming in the background- I never thought of it as something that could actually be a real thing in my life. Never even considered it.

Never masturbated. Never even considered masturbating. Because, I had heard (from Christian teaching about sex) that masturbating was a sin, and you will probably become "addicted to masturbation" and it's just all bad.

I never thought about my own genitals. It's like they weren't even part of my life at all. The most awareness I had was when I occasionally tried to use tampons- but it was very much "taking a shot in the dark" rather than approaching it with a practical mindset about collecting the information I would need in order to insert the tampon correctly.

Better to just know nothing about your genitals at all. If you think about such things, then that curiosity might lead to *wanting* sex, which might lead to *having* sex, and that would just be the most horrible thing in the world.

For me, the moment I was pulled out of the water like Luca was this one time when I was sick and in the hospital, and the doctor wanted to do a transvaginal ultrasound. I don't know exactly why- I think there was some something that looked like it might be a problem and they just wanted to check it.

Anyway, so... like... ooof... I'm a good girl, right? I just do whatever the doctor tells me to do. And then suddenly the ultrasound technician is asking me why her ultrasound wand won't go into my vagina, as if I'm supposed to know? How would I know anything about that? I'm a good kid!

Like I'm trying to figure out what on earth is even happening here, and she's asking me why doesn't it work, how could I not know this, what about my sex life? And I'm just, beyond shocked, why would I have a sex life???? Why would anyone think I had a sex life???? (I was in my 20's...)

The ignorance you work so hard to maintain your whole life- keeping yourself so pure that you literally know nothing- and then suddenly it's working against you.

The ultrasound technician, completely shocked that I have no experience with putting things in my vagina, and me, completely shocked that someone would assume I had experience with that.

(And a similar thing happened when I eventually did start having sex with my partner- and I was expected to know what the problem was. Suddenly, my purity and ignorance were working against me. I had always been taught that if you know nothing about sex, that guarantees that you will have AMAZING sex. In a shocking twist, that's not true.)

It happened like this for me because I had vaginismus. But even for other pure girls who don't have that specific problem, I can imagine they also get thrown into situations where suddenly their purity and ignorance, which they worked so hard to maintain, are working against them.

[content note: discussion of rape. To skip it, scroll down to the picture of Luca watching his hand transform]

So... I have read blog posts about good pure girls who didn't know anything about their own genitals, until they were raped. Didn't even have the words to describe what had happened, because they had never been taught anything even close to actual useful sex ed.

Like imagine a rapist knowing more about your body than you do. And using that against you.

Fortunately that didn't happen to me. But I see that I was really vulnerable back then when I didn't know anything.

Luca looks wide-eyed at his hand as it transforms from having fishy scales to human skin. Image source.

And I could keep this Luca-and-sex-ed metaphor going further: Luca meets Alberto, who is very confident and eager to teach Luca about the human world. But the audience can see that Alberto is actually wrong about A LOT of things. Luca has no idea, though, and just totally believes whatever Alberto tells him. Kinda like when you don't give kids any sex ed, they end up learning all kinds of misinformation from bad sources instead.

Obviously I am not saying this is what the movie is "really about" or anything like that. Just that it reminds me of my own experiences in some way.

Because wow, that scene where Luca is pulled out of the water for the first time, and he's completely scandalized by the idea that someone would think he should know what's going on- I've been there.

---

Related:

How Pregnancy and Childbirth Changed My Asexuality (or, actually, A Post About Vaginismus)

On Gynecologists and Angry Turtles

When the Teacher Says, "Don't Look at Your Report Card" 

I Wanna Preach the Good News of Masturbation

On Purity, Asexuality, and Timing 

They said it was about "valuing our bodies." That was a lie.

Blogaround

1. Alex Jones has been ordered to pay $1 billion over his Sandy Hook lies. Will he? (October 14) 

2. ‘God’s perfect timing’? Evangelists cancel Florida event after hurricane (October 11) "But instead of acknowledging the error on their end, and instead of admitting that God’s 'perfect plan' wasn’t so perfect after all, and instead of apologizing for saying the event would not be cancelled, the two evangelists are just moving forward as if they never made the earlier announcement."

I have feelings about this because I definitely was in situations, back when I was evangelical, where people made these big grandiose statements about how this or that was going to happen because God wanted it to, and it was going to be AMAZING, and then the thing didn't happen and nobody ever mentioned it again. There was no "when we said X would happen because God willed it, we were wrong, let's think about what that means- why were we wrong, and how should we change our behavior going forward so we don't make these big bold proclamations that turn out to be wrong?"

I guess looking at the situation honestly and realistically like that would be "lack of faith" or something.

3. Pastor who gave kids ‘I ❤️ hot youth pastors’ stickers placed on leave (October 9) "NOPE NOPE NOPE. What church is this? They must be publicly shamed to oblivion."

4. Reading Elementary as a Nonromantic Love Story (October 12) "Sherlock Holmes is characterized as someone who only very infrequently dates people, who is generally suspicious of romance, and who frequently has sex that’s got nothing to do with romance. Joan Watson is characterized as someone who makes an effort to go on dates but ultimately realizes that romantic scripts are distasteful to her. In contrast to their scattered, short-lived romantic entanglements, the show centers on the relationship between the two of them, which grows into a committed partnership while remaining nonromantic."

5. Micro-Dosing Nostalgia With China’s Miniature Modelers (October 13) "Hundreds of millions of people who grew up in traditional village homes left for cities, or moved into modern houses and high -rises in redeveloped villages. Often, their original homes have been demolished, victims of China’s relentless rural development."

6. Robbie Coltrane, Hagrid in ‘Harry Potter’ films, dead at 72 (October 14)

7. Top Dinner Suggestions According to a Three-Year-Old’s Eating Habits (2019) "Around the edges of a cheeseburger without ever actually biting into the meat"

8. Is it normal to think of money in different "contexts"? (2012) "Say I'm going on a date - depending on the place, I've got a rough idea of how much it's going to cost. Say $100 for the two of us. But if we get an extra glass of wine, or a different main course, or whatever, it could be $120 or even $150. This to me is kind of irrelevant. I wouldn't want to buy the most expensive bottle of wine and end up spending $500, but $100, $120, $130? - it's all the same. Now consider that I had to take a long subway ride to get there, and wanted to bring the magazine I was reading, but I didn't want to hold that or put it on the table during the meal. It cost about $5, and I could have just thrown it away and bought another copy later. That $5 should be inconsequential, right? Especially when I really don't care either way if I spend $100 or $140 on the date."

I think about this A LOT. It feels like, psychologically, the things that people focus on in terms of where it is or isn't a good idea to spend money aren't actually the things that, looking at the big picture logically, make an actual difference.

For example, maybe I'm excited because I got 1% cash back from my credit card company, oooh they are depositing $25 in my bank account, hooray! Wow, 25 dollars! Awesome! That's 25 dollars I didn't have before! Yes! But uh, I got this $25 because I spent $2500 with the credit card- perhaps I could look through those purchases and find ways to reduce them such that I spend $25 less. But somehow, that doesn't feel as exciting as getting $25 back from the credit card company. (And a big part of this is that that's how the credit card company wants you to feel- they benefit when you see it as a good thing to spend enough money to get a good-sized "cash back.")

Personally- and this is because I am from a really privileged background, and I always heard about how important it is to save money and not spend on things you don't need, like going out to dinner, but there was never any actual risk that we wouldn't have enough money for our basic needs- when I spend money on something that I feel is "too expensive", I kind of feel vaguely guilty about it, but then nothing bad actually happens. Or, I get in the habit of eating out at restaurants- which, over the course of 1 month, adds up to a lot, but since it's just a little bit every day I don't really pay attention to it- but then if I buy some little thing like for example cookie cutters, thinking that I'm totally going to bake cookies, and then I don't bake cookies, and see the cookie cutters sitting there, never used, I will feel bad about "wasting money" on them, even though every week I spend money here and there without being careful about it, that adds up to more than the cost of the cookie cutters.

A good way to view one's budget, I think, is: there are long term things where we need to set aside x amount of dollars each month, and the rest of our income we use for whatever normal daily expenses we have. I don't subdivide the "everyday" expenses into further categories, because then you start playing ridiculous games about "I shouldn't spend money on a taxi because we don't have enough money in the 'transportation' budget- even though getting a taxi would benefit me A LOT more than that snack I bought yesterday with the 'food' budget, which cost more than the taxi would cost" and just causing yourself a lot of anxiety over things that don't actually matter.

9. Biden wants to let gig workers be employees. Here’s why it matters. (October 17)

I don't believe in a literal "Jesus coming back." But, be ready.

Portal scene at the battle in "Avengers: Endgame." Image source.

[content note: spoilers for "Avengers: Infinity War", "Avengers: Endgame", and "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier"]

So I decided to get back to my blog series blogging through the gospel of Matthew. Let's take a look at Matthew 25:1-13, "The Parable of the Ten Virgins." 

Go click the link and read it :)

Okay, so, my first reaction to this is that I don't really know what to do with it, because it's about Jesus coming back ("the bridegroom" arriving in the parable). And, even when I was evangelical, I could never understand why we were supposed to care about Jesus coming back. I reasoned that the church has been around for 2000 years, and all throughout that time, anyone who said Jesus was coming back "soon" turned out to be wrong. Odds are, it's not going to happen in my lifetime, little-Perfect-Number said to herself, so the most logical response is to just not care about it at all.

I read in the bible "be ready" and I was like, no, don't think I will.

Or, sometimes I thought, okay, if Christians say I'm supposed to "be ready" because Jesus could come back at any moment, what does that actually mean? What specifically do I need to do? And people gave me answers like "get saved" and "obey God" and "don't get caught in the middle of a sin." And I thought, aren't these things we should all be doing anyway? So I still don't see any reason to be interested in whether or not Jesus is coming back "soon."

Back then I believed in something sort of along the lines of "the rapture." (I believed in the general idea, though my mom always said that it was not cool how Christians think a "Left Behind"-style rapture is from the bible- all the "real Christians" disappear at the same time and leave piles of clothes behind- yeah, indeed, not cool how people think that's from the bible. It's not.) But now, as an ex-evangelical reading this, I ask myself what I believe about Jesus coming back. Sometimes on this blog I mention that I believe the kingdom of heaven will come to the earth, and that I believe there will be resurrection. But is it going to be Jesus suddenly appearing and righting all the wrongs of the world at the same time, magically? No, that doesn't make sense.

See, here's the thing about the rapture, as portrayed in the "Left Behind" books: The suddenness of it, on such a huge global scale, causes all kinds of disasters. Car accidents because drivers suddenly disappeared. Plane crashes because pilots suddenly disappeared. Imagine the effects on the economy/ supply chain, when a significant proportion of the population suddenly disappears. It would be a disaster.

And, well, maybe "Left Behind" isn't a good example, because perhaps the point was that it should be a disaster for those non-Christians who are left behind, but we don't need to care about them because we'll be raptured.

(Though I will say, it's common for evangelical teenagers to worry that Jesus is going to return before they get a chance to have sex. So, there's an example of how, even though being "raptured" is a positive thing, the timing of it will inevitably be bad for some Christians. Just because of the massive scale of it, it's statistically inevitable that Jesus is going to interrupt some good pure virgin couple's wedding night.)

Here's a better example: "Avengers: Endgame." Or, rather, we'll get to "Endgame" in a minute, but first I'll mention the Snap in "Avengers: Infinity War", because it's basically the same as the rapture in "Left Behind"- half the population of the universe suddenly disappears, and there's chaos because those disappeared people were in the middle of doing things which become dangerous if suddenly left unattended. And then in the aftermath of it, the world has to learn how to cope with such a huge change.

But anyway, the Snap in "Infinity War" was performed by Thanos, the villain, so it's not a good comparison to Jesus coming back. Let's talk about how the heroes set things right in "Endgame." In "Endgame", 5 years have passed since all those people disappeared in the Snap. The Avengers are on a mission to collect the infinity stones so they can undo the Snap- but there is a discussion to be had about how exactly to undo it. Do they just erase the past 5 years, go back in time to right before the Snap, and then live in a universe where none of it ever happened? Tony Stark can't accept this idea, because he has a daughter who was born in those 5 years. He insists that they can't change anything about those 5 years. So, in the end, once they gather the infinity stones, they fix the universe by bringing back all the people who had disappeared, but not changing anything else. (I'll point out that this means that people who died in all the car accidents/ other chaos caused by the Snap don't come back.)

So, hooray it's a happy ending, but there are A LOT of problems caused by all these people suddenly appearing. I like the Marvel movies and shows that explore these problems, rather than acting like the Blip (that's what they call the Snap + everyone reappearing 5 years later) is just an isolated thing that doesn't matter anymore after the "Endgame" credits roll. 

The Marvel tv series "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" is all about this. In this series, we learn that people who had been poor and/or refugees (before the Snap happened) benefitted from the Snap because countries opened their borders and it became easier to find jobs, due to half the population disappearing. But when all the disappeared people suddenly reappeared, countries started to kick out those people who had come in during those 5 years. A group called "the Flag Smashers" formed to fight back; the Flag Smashers are the main villains that Sam (the Falcon) and Bucky (the Winter Soldier) are fighting. At the end of the show, when they defeat the Flag Smashers, Sam gives a whole speech about how he actually agrees with their cause, and everyone should stop calling them "terrorists."

In other words, all around the world, there is tension between people who just popped back into existence after 5 years, and need help integrating into society, and people whose lives improved during those 5 years, and now are seeing those lifelines taken away. What happens if someone reappears in the house they owned 5 years ago, but now a different family is living in it?

I say all of this to make the point that it's not possible for Jesus to come back and just suddenly fix all the problems. Bruce Banner couldn't do it with all 6 infinity stones. Anything you do at that kind of scale is going to cause a whole bunch of other problems. 

I mean, the only way it could work is if you magically mind-control everyone to agree "ah, when you look at the big picture and weigh everyone's needs in a fair way, XYZ is the best course of action." But I don't think Jesus does that mind-control stuff.

During the Shanghai lockdown, we saw the same idea at work. All the normal supply chains were cut off, and the government had to scramble to come up with systems to deliver food to people. And because it was thrown together with little time to plan, and on the scale of 25 million people, we saw a lot of things go wrong. There were videos on WeChat about meat that was supposed to be delivered to residents in lockdown, but the meat sat outside in the heat for too long and went bad. Or trucks full of donated food, arriving from other provinces, but delays on the roads entering Shanghai meant that the vegetables rotted, and lots and lots had to be thrown away. We all received free bags of a random assortment of vegetables- inevitably some of these vegetables ended up being wasted if people didn't know how to cook them, or didn't have enough space in their fridge, or just didn't want to eat so much cabbage all the time.

I think that happens in every kind of disaster-relief situation (and yes, I do think we should view the Shanghai lockdown as a disaster-relief situation... I would say the initial disaster was covid, but then the lockdown itself was a bigger disaster). Some of the efforts that are sent in to help actually don't help.

My point is, if you're like "oh no, 25 million people need help" and then you try to help them, well, you can't just solve all their problems all at once. 

I'm not saying you shouldn't help- certainly there are society-wide policies that can be implemented to address society-wide problems, and there will be a benefit in the long-term. I'm not saying "well don't even try to make the world better, because you'll cause other problems no matter what you do." I'm saying it's complicated and there is no way to magically make the world perfect all at once, without destroying people's capacity to have an emotional reaction to change- which is an essential part of human nature, I would say.

All this is to say, I don't believe in a literal "Jesus coming back." I don't believe that at some specific day and hour, Jesus is going to appear in the sky all over the world and right all the wrongs at the same time, Endgame-style. It just doesn't make sense.

The world can't be fixed so fast. It has to be gradual.

As I think about this "sudden change vs gradual change" idea, I'm reminded of what Martin Luther King Jr. wrote:

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

He was pushing back against the idea that black people should "wait" and accept that changes will be gradual. 

Just a moment ago, I said change had to be "gradual" because it's not *literally* possible to fix every single problem in the world at the same time. But King is talking about "wait" and "justice too long delayed" in a different sense- prioritizing the comfort of those already in power, rather than taking the steps that will truly make society more equal and just.

In other words, King was fighting to bring justice and the kingdom of heaven to this earth, and "white moderates" told him they didn't agree with his methods because they weren't ready.

They weren't ready.

And now we've come back around to the parable of the ten virgins- 5 were ready, 5 were not ready. What if we read it like this: It's not about a specific day and a specific hour when a literal Jesus will literally appear and literally make the whole literal world literally perfect- it's about being ready when you see the kingdom of heaven coming to earth in whatever little ways it comes in your local area in your time in history.

What if "keep watch" isn't about a "newspaper clippings thumbtacked to the wall and criss-crossed with red thread"-style of obsessive theorizing about when "the rapture" will be, but about looking for Jesus in your own life when you see people in need, and looking for the kingdom of heaven in your own society when you see large-scale trends or policy changes?

For example: Student loan forgiveness. This was in the news recently. People who have student loan debt can get $10,000 of that debt cancelled (or $20,000 in some cases). So many people are struggling with huge student loans with predatory interest rates, and now the kingdom of heaven is coming, in a small way. This can't solve everything (I think it's much more important to do something about the cost of college tuition, and teenagers being pressured to take out loans when they have no understanding of how money works in reality) but it's a start.

But some people are mad about it. At its worst, this anger is an ugly us-vs-them "these people are inferior to me because [reasons] but now the government is giving them $10,000 and not giving me anything!" But some of that anger may come from a more legitimate place, perhaps from someone struggling financially for reasons unrelated to student loans, and they want to know why they didn't get money for their financial needs. And yes, like I said, it's not possible to fix all the problems on such a massive scale, in just 1 move. So we should keep going, listen to people's concerns, and figure out what other policies should be put in place to help more people.

I'm also thinking of the immigrants who were sent on buses or planes from Florida and Texas and dropped off in blue states without any communication beforehand. Residents of Martha's Vineyard (and other places where immigrants were randomly dropped off) came together to help. When Jesus comes, will you be ready? When Jesus comes, will you help him find a place to sleep, give him food, give him new clothes?

Not that we literally have to be ready- ie, you don't have to literally have an emergency shelter set up and waiting at all times, as if you actually expect to use it immediately. That's just silly. (You can see in the parable that all 10 of the "virgins" [honestly we should read this as "young women" but I won't get into that] fell asleep while waiting, which was fine- it's not saying you have to literally be about to spring into action at any little sign of anything. It's more about the overall attitude.) But you should have a mindset where you can see that something is an overall good for society, even if it inconveniences you in the short-term, and accept it. Keep watch and be ready for the kingdom of heaven, not just focused on your own little life and what benefits you.

So in summary, I don't believe in a literal "Jesus coming back" because we can see how that worked in "Endgame" and in any situation where there's a sudden massive policy change- even though it's a good change, it causes other problems that society has to deal with. But keep watch, and when you see the kingdom of heaven coming in some small way in your life, be there to support it.

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One more thing I want to say about this parable: It has always bothered me how the 5 "foolish" women asked the 5 "wise" women to give them some oil, and they said no. Weren't we taught to share in Sunday School class? I asked this question as a child in church, and the answer was "It's a parable- that means it's a metaphor, and in a metaphor, it's not like every single part means something- there are places where the metaphor breaks down. For the purposes of this parable, it's not possible for the wise virgins to give oil to the foolish ones- just leave it at that. In reality we are supposed to share, but that wasn't what this parable is about."

I basically agree with this answer, but I feel like it's important to point that out, whenever we talk about this parable. There's a "don't share with those in need" message here, glaring at us as we read this parable, and I feel I have to point it out and address it.

---

Related:

"On earth as it is in heaven" 

Why Does the Kingdom of Heaven Belong to Children? 

Ending Slavery Didn't Address the Real Problem

If Thanos Tells You To Build An Ark, You Say No

-------------------

This post is part of a series on the gospel of Matthew.

Previous post: "For Pregnant Women and Nursing Mothers" (Matthew 24)

Next post: The Parable of the Talents: Risk and Return in Building the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 25:14-30)

Click here to go to the beginning of the series.

Covid Cases After the October Holiday

 

People take photographs of the flag-raising ceremony in Tiananmen Square during National Day in Beijing, Oct. 1, 2022. Bloomberg/VCG Image and caption source.

Complete list is here: Index of Posts About the March 2022 Shanghai Covid Outbreak 

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Hey so here's another update about how things are going with the pandemic, here in Shanghai.

October 1-7 was the National Day holiday (国庆节). This is the second-biggest holiday in China (the first is Chinese New Year) and typically tons of people are traveling during this time. 

The schools in Shanghai have a policy that if a student leaves Shanghai, they can't come to school for 3 days after their return to Shanghai. During those 3 days, the student must get tested twice (nucleic acid testing). (Note: before the holiday, this is the policy that the schools announced, but then later, the government added a rule that anyone who enters Shanghai must be tested 3 times in 3 days. So, 3 times instead of 2.) And then after that there's an additional 7 days of "health monitoring" but you can go to school. So anyway, because of this policy, it seems that most families with school-age kids did not travel during the October holiday this year.

(The policy used to be that the student couldn't come to school for 14 days after arriving in Shanghai. 3 days is much better.)

So, less travel than a typical National Day in the Before Times, but still there were lots of people traveling, and this led to new covid cases in Shanghai.

Here are the stats:

Number of locally-transmitted covid cases in Shanghai (ie, not including "imported", which means international travelers who just entered China):

September 24: 0
September 25: 0
September 26: 0
September 27: 0
September 28: 1
September 29: 6
September 30: 3
October 1: 5
October 2: 4
October 3: 3
October 4: 6
October 5: 11
October 6: 18
October 7: 23
October 8: 21
October 9: 34
October 10: 28
October 11: 38
October 12: 47
October 13: 49
October 14: 42
October 15: 28

Graph of local covid cases in Shanghai. Image source.

(As I've explained in previous posts, please don't pay any attention to the distinction between "confirmed" and "asymptomatic", because "asymptomatic" doesn't really mean asymptomatic.)

So, like, if you're trying to stay at 0, these numbers are scary big.

So because of this, for the past week there's been sort of this fear about getting locked down. I have a bunch of friends who are teachers, and they've been telling me things like "all of my classes have some students who are locked down at home and so I have to set up a video camera so they can watch the class" and "half our teachers are locked down in their homes, and 1 is in central quarantine." I know people whose apartment buildings got locked down for 2 days because of a close contact. And so on.

I'm still going about my life like normal. I get tested every 2ish days, and then just take the subway and go to work like normal, go out to malls and restaurants, hanging out with friends, all of that. Honestly I don't think it's worth it to say "I am not going to go out, because I might get labelled as a close contact depending on where I go, and then forced to quarantine"- I think that doesn't make sense, because you can be forced to quarantine at home just because someone else in your building is a close contact. The reasons you can get stuck in a quarantine are many, so I think it's not worth the trouble to change your behavior and not go out.

Probably I should start wearing a mask at work, if I was really concerned about it. I wear a mask when I go other places, but not at the office, because blah nobody feels like wearing a mask. But I feel like the risk of covid is low enough that I don't need to wear a mask at work (30-40 cases per day, in a city of 25 million people).

---

Big meeting in Beijing

20th CPC National Congress to be held from Oct. 16 to 22: spokesperson (October 15)

20th CCP National Congress: Five issues to watch (October 13)

So, this is the big Communist Party meeting. Apparently it's the reason some big entertainment-type events in Shanghai in September were cancelled- they were being more strict about anti-covid policies before the big meeting.

And also, I've heard international people in the WeChat groups make comments, for several months now, about how maybe the zero-covid policy will change after this big meeting. I have no idea why anyone would think that. Like the politicians actually want to end zero-covid but they think it's politically useful to continue it for now, at least until the big meeting? What? That is definitely not true.

I think maybe some details about it would change, like maybe the specific number of days that people need to quarantine, things like that. But anyone who's holding on to hope that "maybe they'll open the border and I can go see my family", no, that's not going to happen. (I mean, yes technically the border is not closed, and I know people who have entered China during these covid times, but it is very hard and very expensive.)

Ah, and SHINE published this (*cough* propaganda): 'Lying flat' not advisable in virus battle: People's Daily (October 12) This term "lying flat" [躺平] basically means giving up and doing nothing. I think this term originated as a reaction to China's work culture of doing tons and tons of unpaid overtime. "Lying flat" means just kind of doing the bare minimum instead of working yourself so hard in a futile effort to get ahead. (My husband says it can also be translated as "quiet quitting".) Anyway, this term, "lying flat", is discussed as an alternative to zero-covid. Honestly, though, I would say there is a big area in between. Ending zero-covid doesn't mean you just give up. You can have policies about masking in public places. You can provide free nucleic acid testing (which Shanghai is doing now). You can make sure that people have paid sick leave if they have covid or if they are a close contact. Like, if zero-covid ends (which, no it's not going to end any time soon, let me tell you) that doesn't mean China has to do what the US did. Like, you can definitely do better than the US.

Anyway... I guess my opinion is, the results of zero-covid are good, but I don't trust the government systems in charge of it. A lot of things about the details of how it's implemented are very nonsensical and bad. Like taking people to quarantine hotels because a week ago they were somewhere near a covid-positive person. A week ago! What good does it do to put them in quarantine 1 week later??? Or, calling people in the middle of the night to tell them they need to be quarantined. Is this some kind of psychological strategy- like, people aren't in a good emotional state to think clearly in the middle of the night, and there's no one else around to witness it if the pandemic workers are doing something shady... yeah, not cool.

(Plus all the shit that went down during the Shanghai lockdown.)

Oh and one more thing about the big meeting: ‘We all saw it’: anti-Xi Jinping protest electrifies Chinese internet (October 14) A protester put a banner on a bridge in Beijing. I heard about this from my husband, interestingly enough. He must have seen it on the internet before it was censored into oblivion. Because, yeah, obviously, you're not going to be able to find any Chinese websites reporting that this happened.

---

Remember when I said no one is tracking you down?

Hey so remember how, when I've described the requirements about getting tested, I said the rules are you have to get tested at least once every 7 days (though in reality you have to get tested more often than that, because when you go to a public place they need to see a negative test result from within 72 hours), but I said if you don't, nobody's going to track you down? Well, here's a little bit of an update: I saw a conversation in a WeChat group where someone said she updated her passport number in the health code app [随申办] and now apparently the system thinks she hasn't been getting tested because there aren't recent test results under her old passport number. She said the pandemic workers have been calling her every day to tell her to go get tested.

So, uh, that's immigrant life in China. The systems are designed for people with Chinese names and Chinese ID cards, and there will always be some weird confusing workaround for international people (except when there's not, then it's just like "guess you can't use it, lol"), and it doesn't always work.

But anyway, hey, now we at least know that if you appear to be in Shanghai but aren't getting tested once a week like you're supposed to, someone will call you.

---

Feelings

Mostly, I'm just going about my life like normal. But sometimes I feel a sudden fear, about the possibility of getting stuck in a lockdown. Like a fight-or-flight, trauma-based response... that kind of fear. Like, my life is normal now, but we know what we lived through, here in Shanghai. 

I remember taking out the trash at night, during the lockdown, and it was so quiet outside- no traffic sounds, no people walking down the street, no music from the old ladies dancing in the park. Just birds. That really happened... And I used to stand outside our building for a few minutes, even when the rules said we weren't allowed out of our building at all (except to pick up deliveries/ take out the trash/ walk dogs), just enjoying the fresh air, and feeling the extreme weirdness of the quiet streets. That really happened.

And today, walking down the street, I saw kids playing in the park, kids riding their bikes... And just thinking how good and right that is. And how that's something we can't take for granted, because during the lockdown, it was taken from us.

I know several people who left China soon after the lockdown ended. One of my friends said, "It's going to happen again, and my mental health can't take it, and this city can't take it, but it's going to happen again. I hope I'm wrong" and then he moved to Canada. I get that. Makes a lot of sense.

So we just... keep going along like normal, but I guess now we all know, on some level, that we don't really have freedom, and we can't really trust the pandemic control system.

---

Links

Sixth Tone

National Day 2022: A Mix of Patriotic Fervor and Pandemic Controls (October 4) A bunch of good photos in this article.

SHINE

Shanghai clarifies self-health monitoring measures (October 13) "Residents, who have links to previous confirmed patients, have to do a three-day home quarantine and four-day self-health monitoring. The government information office said in a WeChat post today that individuals can go to school or work during the four-day health-monitoring period but should take nucleic acid tests as required and avoid gatherings."

At least two weekly COVID-19 tests for all until November (October 10)

Yellow health code for travelers without three daily tests (October 10) "All travelers to Shanghai from other provinces must receive a daily nucleic acid test for three days in a row, otherwise their health code will turn yellow, according to the city's big data center."

Pop-up window on health code for Shanghai travelers, returnees (October 9) "People traveling or returning to Shanghai from other provinces will receive a pop-up notification covering their health code, if they fail to undergo a nucleic acid test within 48 hours of their arrival. ... The pop-up window will prevent travelers from displaying their Suishenma health code, banning them from accessing most of Shanghai's public services, transport and places."

Here's what you should do if your health code turns red (October 8) So, suddenly a lot of people found that their health code had turned red. I heard many people saying their health code had turned red for no reason at all- probably that's not true, probably it's because they were in the same general area as someone who was covid-positive- though they might have been a block away and not even there at the same time, so yeah it doesn't make sense, and I understand the anger about this.

Anyway, this article is the official government view on what the red health code means and what you need to do.

Red health code. Hey, this is a good idea for a Halloween costume! Very scary to people in Shanghai! Image source.

Blogaround

1. The kingdom of heaven is like: Legal quirk allows gay couples in China to get married online in conservative Utah (October 6). I love this!

2. You CANNOT and MUST NOT Solve This Sudoku (October 3) 1-hour-35-minute sudoku solve video, with a very advanced ruleset. (This puzzle illustrates the concept of a "deadly pattern" very well.) I love this. Here are my favorite quotes:

• 55 minutes, with not one single digit in the grid yet: "And if this doesn't work, I'm turning the camera off, because my brain, my brain is already shot to pieces."
• 1 hr 03 min: "Have we been doing sudoku? That is a philosophical question."
• 1 hr 19 min: "What an extraordinary puzzle this is. Imagine if I don't manage to solve it now. I will probably cry, actually. I will probably cry, because this is, it's amazing. It's amazing."

3. Biblical Womanhood T-Shirt. I love this!

T-shirt that has a drawing of a tent peg through a skull, and says "Biblical Womanhood, Judges 4-5"

4. Sign o’ the times, mess with your mind, hurry before it’s 2 late (October 4) "We were 16 years old and our pastor, youth pastor, and the Bible teacher at our Christian school were all assuring us that we’d never be 26."

5. Forced Birth is Torture. (September 22) [content note: medical/pregnancy trauma. Mother and baby survive, fortunately] "What happened next was several hours of careful cutting and suction and burning and stitching while I lay with my arms strapped down and the baby wailed."

6. If the Media Are Reluctant To Properly Label the GOP’s Racist, Christian Nationalist Ideologies, We’ll Have Trouble Hanging on to Democracy (May 20) "Every time a Republican who has voiced “Great Replacement” views in the past is interviewed, he or she needs to be explicitly asked about it—and if they don’t actively disavow their past claims, it needs to be stated that they subscribe to white nationalist ideology—an ideology that has killed hundreds in the US in the last years alone, and millions in the last century worldwide."

7. The New York Times Has Badly Lost Its Bearings (May 13) 

8. I Opposed Abortion Until I Fought To Defeat Personhood In Mississippi. Here’s Why. (May 25) "'We’re just trying to get the amendment on the ballot. That’ll all get figured out later.' The brush-off chilled me. I had an ectopic pregnancy in 2004 and, unfortunately, that is not a pregnancy that will survive. It must be terminated, or the mother will die."

9. What Jesus Said to the Homeless Man (October 2) "In my experience, one hundred percent of people experiencing homelessness battle demons every day."

10. ‘Graduation Day’ for Guide Dogs Highlights Their Rarity in China (October 10) "However, the number of guide dogs in the country is grossly inadequate — a 2019 report by the China Association of the Blind said there were fewer than 200 guide dogs for a country with about 17 million people with visual impairments."

11. Rochester to pay $12M to settle lawsuit filed by Daniel Prude family, largest civil rights settlement in city's history (October 6) [content note: police brutality] "The settlement is not an admission of liability, the court documents show."

12. Angela Lansbury, 'Murder, She Wrote' and 'Beauty and the Beast' star, dies at 96 (October 12) 

13. How SEO Is Gentrifying the Internet (2020) "'Can Cats Eat Blueberries?' was a masterpiece by SEO writing standards and an absolute turd by regular writing standards. A reader might spend five minutes reading the article and still have no idea if it’s OK to roll one (1) blueberry across the floor for their floofy pouncemonster to chase. However, as long as the reader spends those five minutes looking at the page—and more importantly, the ads that are placed on it—then mission accomplished. This is where the SEOification of the internet has brought us, and it [****]ing sucks."

14. Sex Work and the Power of Choice (2011) "When you think about this for ten seconds, you should realize that it makes no sense. People in any other service profession can, and do, turn down customers they don’t want to work with."

15. Sex-Positivity, Compulsory Sexuality and Intersecting Identities (2012) "There are too many issues of power and privilege at play which are not adequately challenged and criticised. The institution of compulsory sexuality still underpins sex-positivism."

16. that female athlete doesn’t look feminine enough (August 18) "Girls looking insufficiently feminine is now a complaint that the government takes 'seriously', and that the government then investigates."

17. The City of Philadelphia Apologizes for Decades of Medical Experiments Performed on Black Inmates (October 11) "From 1951 through 1974, Dr. Albert Kligman, a dermatologist from the University of Pennsylvania, conducted 'the dermatological, biochemical and pharmaceutical experiments that intentionally exposed about 300 inmates to viruses, fungus, asbestos and chemical agents including dioxin—a component of Agent Orange.'" And the article goes on to describe experiments even more disturbing than that. WTF????

18. Epidural-Induced Births ‘Far Behind’ in China, Says Top Expert (October 12) "Mi Weidong, an anesthesiologist at the country’s top health authority leading the taskforce in promoting epidural anesthesia, said that only 30% of female respondents in a nationwide survey were offered anesthetic services during childbirth, despite a large majority of them opting for a more painfree delivery method."

19. (Chill) Ex-Ace Narrative 1: Validation (August 14) "Amidst this chorus of voices, ace communities were the only ones to consistently say 'The subjective experiences you're having are real and okay-- even if they're non-normative and statistically uncommon. You can articulate your own relationship to sex and sexuality on your own terms. You don't need to change your behaviors/desires/attitudes to more normative ones for the sake of fitting a relationship or an ideological ideal. You don't have to organize your life around the expectation that you're someday have a more normative relationship to sexuality.'"

Celia and Mike's Baby

Celia and Mike Wazowski, from the movie "Monsters, Inc." Image sources here and here.

Celia lay on the bed, with her shirt pulled up to show her big, purple, pregnant belly. She and Mike watched, excited, as the doctor put gel on the ultrasound wand and began to move it around on her.

As the white lines started to pulse and wiggle across the black screen, Mike stared with his eye wide. "It's our baby!" he finally said. "This is amazing!"

"Mikey, I can't even tell what I'm looking at yet," said Celia.

"This is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen," Mike answered, still staring at the screen.

"Okay," the doctor began. "The baby has one head. Its body is a round ball shape, like daddy," she said as she nodded toward Mike. The doctor was a red monster with four arms, wearing a white coat. Two of her hands tapped on the computer keyboard, and one hand moved the ultrasound wand across Celia's belly.

"How many eyes?" asked Mike.

"Wait a minute, I'm checking the organs first. Here's the heart- one heart," said the doctor. Celia squinted at the pulsing white blob on the screen.

The doctor continued, "Very good, the heart is healthy. Brain looks good, liver looks good. Your baby has one eye."

Mike and Celia looked at each other, overjoyed. "Oh googly bear," Celia said. Then she turned to the doctor and asked, "How many legs? I feel like it has a lot of legs in there."

"I see..." the doctor said. "Not legs or arms... it has tentacles. See them moving? I think... probably 6 or 8 tentacles... Hard to see exactly how many."

She added more gel to the ultrasound wand and pushed it against Celia's belly again. "No tail," she said. "Ah, I see a ... something on the top of the head ... I can't tell for sure, but it is probably a snake like you have," she said to Celia.

Celia's tentacle-arm came up to touch her snake hair.

"It looks like just one snake," the doctor said. "Sometimes the child is born with one, and then more will grow later."

Celia nodded. "I only had one when I was born," she said.

The doctor pushed the ultrasound wand against Celia's belly again. "And I see two horns on its head." She clicked something on her computer, then laid the ultrasound wand down on her table, and with two of her hands she pulled out paper towels to wipe off Celia's belly. Then she gave Mike and Celia a big smile, and said, "Congratulations, everything looks great."

Mike took Celia's arm and helped her stand up. "Schmoopsie-poo, you are doing so great," he said. "I can't believe how lucky we are. I'm going to be a father!"

Blogaround

1. On maintaining monarchical succession (September 29) "And here is the thing, none of this is any different to the medieval conception of monarchy. Charles is apparently the King 'by the Grace of God', because that’s just the way the supreme being wants it, I guess? God just simply loves for one family to have a bunch of untaxable land for some reason."

2. The body horror of being pregnant (May 12) "That is the bruising from maybe three or four injections. They were daily injections. We ended up having to inject all over my belly, hips, sides, and butt trying to give the bruises time to heal before using the same injection site again. And did it hurt. Every injection burned like fire for long after the shot was over. We followed all the pain-management tips we could find and it still hurt like a motherfucker. I wept with gratitude when the OB specialist saw my bloodwork and said she didn’t think it was necessary to continue the Lovenox. I’d done 84 injections at that point."

3. ‘It Was All a Hoax’ (September 27) "We told the lady, 'We’re from Venezuela. We came from Mrs. Perla.' We were terrified. We thought they would take us to jail or deport us. Many of us cried."

4. This tweet:

Did not have “Bob and Larry are trans icons” on my 2022 bingo card, but I’m here for it. 🏳️‍⚧️ 🍅🥒 pic.twitter.com/TO8HuKPkEe

— Jessica Kantrowitz 🍂🐈‍⬛🎃 (@jfkantrowitz) October 4, 2022

And this reply:

I have been saying, the Belly Button song is very clearly about being a trans man coming out to your girlfriend

"You could opt for a prosthetic but of course you'd have to know / it'd be covered by your shirt, but not your HMO" pic.twitter.com/ZYFPnP5uBX

— pumpkin spice foyer coffee (@foyercoffee) October 4, 2022

5. And another Veggie-related tweet:

Ever wonder what happens when you say your position on abortion matches the position the National Association of Evangelicals has held since 1971? (That exceptions should be considered for life of mother and rape)

Our friends at "the Bee" must SHAME you.https://t.co/aKGyVXsEI6

— Phil Vischer (@philvischer) October 5, 2022

(The Babylon Bee is TRASH.)

6. Florida joins Texas, Arizona in weaponizing migrants by sending them to other states (September 16) "Since April, Governor of Texas Greg Abbott has been pulling similar stunts, starting with busloads of migrants sent to Washington DC, and now including New York and Chicago as drop-off locations. Local mutual aid networks have often been on the front lines of providing care for the human beings shuttled about without adequate infrastructure in place."

And: Inside The Local Mutual Aid Effort Supporting The Migrants Texas Bused To D.C. (May 24)

And also there's a GoFundMe here (for Washington, DC): Support Migrants Being Bused to DC from TX & AZ! 

7. Museums: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (October 3) About how western museums have stolen artifacts from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. This is still happening now.

I Would Love to Know If God Intervened to Stop Covid From Spreading in Churches

People wearing masks at a church service. Image source.

So I saw this article from Christianity Today, The Curious Case of Coronavirus Contagion in Church, about a research study on whether or not people in the US who attended church during "lockdowns" were more likely to get covid. As an ex-evangelical math nerd, I was ALL OVER IT. Like, you guys, this is THE EXACT THING I am interested in. 

Christians always say "prayer works"- which I take to mean "prayer [if done correctly, feel free to add all kinds of criteria here about how to do it correctly] will cause God to take actual real actions in the world [not just psychological stuff in the pray-er's own mind, but affecting reality in ways external to the pray-er] to cause things to happen- or at least to change the probabilities that things will happen", for example, if you get a bunch of people to pray that a sick person will get better, then there is a higher probability that they will get better, compared to if people weren't praying for them. I am very interested in the question "what kinds of statistics and overall trends in the world would we be likely to see, if it is indeed true that 'prayer works'?"

Back in 2016, I wrote Prayer Rates Don't Correlate With Actual Risk, where I said that, if it's really true that "prayer works", then we need to harness that power by figuring out what the biggest dangers are in people's lives, and specifically praying against those things. As a first step, I looked up the stats on causes of death and found that heart disease is the biggest killer, with 23.53% of deaths- so, let's spend 23.53% of our prayer time praying against heart disease. And so on, building a model from there for how to pray most effectively. But Christians don't actually pray about the things that truly pose the biggest danger; we pray about things that we happen to be worried about. It's about our feelings, not about which things are truly harmful in reality (and we can know which things are truly harmful in reality by looking at statistics). 

Inexplicably, my post did not go viral and cause Christians all over the world to say "this blogger is absolutely right! I need to make sure in my church, we pray that people don't get into car accidents driving home from the grocery store 100 times more often than we pray for people to have a safe flight!" Or, alternatively, to say "wow if we follow this 'prayer works' logic then it leads to the conclusion that we are safest when we are constantly imagining what kind of horrible tragedies might happen to our families and praying against them, and I can't believe in a God who would want to destroy people's emotional health in that way, therefore I refuse to believe 'prayer works.'" (Which is the conclusion that I myself hold. I don't believe "prayer works" because I can't follow a God who decides whether to heal you based on whether you prayed "correctly.")

And in 2020 I wrote An Invisible Virus and an Omniscient God, where I said that, if it's really true that some Christians can have a "personal relationship with God" so strong that they become good at "discernment" and listening to God, then we should see extremely devout Christians getting infected with covid at lower rates than the general population, because God will warn them to avoid places where covid outbreaks are taking place, invisible to everyone except God. I very much doubt that this is the case, but I would love to see some statistics on it, and I thought perhaps this study in the Christianity Today article would be those very statistics.

And also, I have linked to this paper before: Prayer and healing: A medical and scientific perspective on randomized controlled trials (2009). The "Discussion" section at the end is EXTREMELY GOOD. It asks a lot of questions that people definitely should be asking if it's really true that "prayer works."

All this is to say, oh man, I am SUPER INTERESTED in the idea that perhaps God protected Their most devoted followers from getting covid, to an extent that's statistically significant. I don't believe it, but on some level, I still want to find statistical evidence of it. When I was evangelical I always wanted that, and bizarrely, no one else seemed to care. If they really believe it, then they should care, and that's why I'm still looking.

So let's take a look at Christianity Today's article. It's paywalled, but actually all the information is in the "article preview" and the only thing behind the paywall is one infographic, so don't worry if you don't have a CT subscription. And anyway, the study itself, which the article links to, is what we're really interested in.

CT titled their article "The Curious Case of Coronavirus Contagion in Church", and the subhead is "Pandemic impact was not as predictable as expected, sociological study finds." My first thought, upon reading this title and subhead, was that perhaps a study had found that, even though people who went to church in person during the pandemic were more likely to get covid than people who didn't go anywhere, they were less likely to get covid than people who went to non-churchy places in person. For example, imagine 2 hypothetical indoor gatherings of 50 people who are mostly wearing masks- one gathering is a church service, one gathering is something else- perhaps by some miracle, the people at the church service were less likely to get covid there than the people at the non-religious event. 

That was my first thought, on reading the title. Could it be that God intervened at church services to make it less likely for covid to spread there, compared to other in-person events with similar levels of social distancing, mask-wearing, etc? I am SUPER-INTERESTED to hear about any data on that.

(This probably says something about my own brain and where my thinking is, in terms of being evangelical vs ex-evangelical...)

Okay, so, no, that's not what the study said. Here's Christianity Today's summary:

People who went to church during the height of the COVID-19 lockdowns were generally more likely to catch COVID-19. This is fairly straightforward. Yet look a little closer, and the facts get a bit more perplexing.

The “association between attending in-person worship during lockdown and later testing positive for COVID-19 was limited primarily to those who were not previously frequent worship attendees,” according to a study published in the American Sociological Association journal Socius.

[The study specifically looked at May to August 2020. In the US.]

Oooh, fascinating! So if you were already regularly attending church, and you continued to regularly attend church throughout the "lockdowns" (I put "lockdowns" in scare-quotes because I lived through the Shanghai lockdown) (some of you have never set your alarm for 6:55 so you can button-mash on a grocery app at exactly 7:00 am for the slim chance to buy vegetables, and it shows), the church attendance didn't really increase your chance of getting covid. But if you didn't attend church much before, and then you just started attending during the "lockdowns", then there is an increased chance of you getting covid.

Wow! I am so interested in this data! On reading CT's article, my mind comes up with all kinds of explanations for this. Maybe people who just started attending church are not as strong Christians as those who were already regular attenders, and so God miraculously protected the strong Christians better than the weak Christians. Maybe for those Christians who defied government orders and kept having church, standing up against "persecution" [note: those of us who live in reality recognize that it was a public health emergency, not "persecution"], God supernaturally protected them from covid, just like Daniel in the lions' den. Maybe long-time church members have the experience and familiarity with how their church runs and are already connected to the church's social groups and communication channels, and therefore it's easier for them to adapt to whatever new policies get put in place to stop covid from spreading, but new people don't know what's going on at all so they can't follow the new anti-covid rules well. Maybe there's something about the sort of people who would suddenly start attending in-person church in a pandemic... who would do that?

(To be clear: All of that is my own speculation. CT's article doesn't say anything about that. I don't want to misrepresent what the CT article said. It simply said "here are the results of the study; how interesting that the increased chance of getting covid was only for the new attenders" but didn't give any speculation about the reasons why.)

And honestly, I really wanted it to be "God miraculously protected the strong Christians better than the new Christians." I went and read the whole paper (full text is here). The researchers who wrote the paper give this as a possible explanation:

However, interactions indicate that this increase was limited primarily to those who were not regular attenders previously. The results suggest that worship attendance during lockdown substantially increased COVID-19 infections for the minority who attended possibly as a form of protest.

And:

How do we interpret this latter finding? Contrary to what we might expect from the 2021 BRS or 2020 CES data showing an association between general worship attendance and COVID-19 infection, it does not seem to be the case that deeply devout Americans disregarded stay-at-home orders, attended worship gatherings frequently during lockdown, and then got infected and tested positive for COVID-19. Rather, our data suggest that some Americans who were relatively disconnected from faith communities (they rarely or never attended) reported attending in-person worship gatherings more frequently during late April or early May 2020, and it was these Americans who later tested positive for COVID-19. This suggests that their reported in-person worship attendance at the height of lockdown restrictions did not reflect their stronger commitment to religious community but that their very attendance may have been an act of defiance or protest against the restrictions. Persons who would have otherwise stayed at home (as they usually did in 2019) suddenly felt compelled to attend in-person worship when they were advised or demanded not to and then were more likely to test positive for coronavirus. Another possibility is that in-person worship would have been among the limited opportunities for even irreligious Americans to actually interact socially at the height of lockdown, though the strength of this explanation is mitigated somewhat by controlling for other kinds of gathering frequency.

Oooh! I had not thought of this explanation: that people who suddenly started attending church during "lockdown" did so as a political statement against the idea of government policies to stop covid, and in particular, restrictions on religious gatherings. I guess if that's their motivation, they're not going to be like "let's try to keep having church but with reasonable precautions to stop covid" like existing members would probably say. Instead, it's more of a "look at us, not following the rules! You can't stop us!"

And, continuing along those lines: Initially I was imagining that in any given church, you have some long-time members and some new people, and the new people are more likely to get covid than the long-time members, perhaps because God miraculously protects the long-time members because they are very good faithful Christians. [No, I don't actually believe that- I am just considering it as a statistical model.] But wait, what if it's not about specific individuals in a church, but about the overall congregation? What sorts of churches would have the most new members during "lockdowns"? Probably churches that were making big public statements about how they're not going to follow the anti-covid rules. Whereas, on the other side, I've heard of churches that required people to sign up beforehand if they wanted to attend the in-person services. Churches that had online services for a long time, and were very very careful about starting up in-person services again. That kind of caution and hoops to jump through will deter newcomers from casually dropping by to check out your church. Those reasonable and careful churches probably had very very few new people.

So- and this is just me hypothesizing; the actual data says nothing about this- maybe the question to ask is "what kind of church is most likely to have a covid outbreak?" And a church that takes the pandemic seriously and sets up a bunch of new policies- and is therefore more difficult for new people to attend- will be much less likely to have a covid outbreak than a church that proudly breaks the rules and attracts new people who attend just to make a political statement.

To be clear: the researchers' explanation (that new church attenders were more likely to get covid because they were just attending church to make a political statement) is just their attempt to explain their findings; it's not something that's supported by the data itself. It seems intuitively true to me, but do remember that it's just an idea and not something we have the actual stats to support. Same thing with my idea about churches that openly break the rules (and therefore have covid outbreaks) being more attractive to people who suddenly want to start going to church in a pandemic. It seems to make sense, but we don't have data on it, so don't believe it just yet.

But anyway, so, yeah, turns out this study doesn't show that God miraculously protects devout Christians from getting covid. The explanation offered by the researchers makes much more sense. At least I'm glad to see that long-time church members who continued to go to in-person church did not have an increased risk of getting covid (probably because most of them took it seriously and set up precautions to stop the spread, rather than treating it like an us-vs-them political issue). That's good news. But if we want statistical evidence that "God answers prayer" and/or supernaturally protects Their most devoted followers, we'll have to keep looking.

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Related:

Prayer Rates Don't Correlate With Actual Risk

An Invisible Virus and an Omniscient God 

I'm SO HAPPY I Won't Be Praying During Childbirth