Blogaround

1. Black Hole Star – The Star That Shouldn't Exist (December 15) Wow this is wild.

2. Longtermism: the good, the bad and the ridiculous (December 12) You know how I sometimes talk about how hell completely ruins Christianity, because you can justify any atrocity ever by saying "well it's not as bad as hell"/ you can claim that what you're doing is so good and important even though it harms people, because there's a chance you're saving people from hell/ etc? Well, turns out the secular world is able to come up with an equivalent which is bad in all the same ways that heaven/hell are. Great...

3. The Pro-Life Mayberry Myth (January 8) "People who oppose Clinics aren’t that different from those who oppose colored folk."

4. Back on the (prayer) chain gang (January 13) I wrote about prayer last week- here's another Christian perspective on it. Also, the footnote at the end about how church prayer chains are "women's work" is SPOT-ON.

And another post from the Slacktivist: Tasting and grazing (January 16) [content note: euphemisms for oral sex] "Sex is not a separate universe with a separate set of rules."

5. Mansplaining in the Bible (January 15) "In Hannah’s case, well-meaning but totally clueless Elkanah doesn’t help the situation when he mansplains to Hannah why, in truth, she has no reason to be sad."

6. "For God So Loved The World?" (pdf, published in 1989) This is a very long, very good paper about the concept of "redemptive suffering" as it relates to Christian conceptualizations of what Jesus' death meant, because "redemptive suffering" has been used to argue that it's *okay* that injustice is happening (in particular, this paper mainly focuses on oppression of women) and that victims need to just accept their suffering like Christ did.

A lot of very very good points here. It's long, but since I'm a Christian feminist, I'm extremely interested in all of this, and I recommend reading the whole thing.

My opinion is, the core of the problem being discussed here is that suffering does exist in reality, and all religions have to address that somehow- have to address it by offering some kind of hope in the midst of suffering, something positive or inspirational, something along those lines. But there's a very fine line between "you will move on from this bad thing and have a good future" and "if that bad thing hadn't happened, then this other good thing wouldn't have happened after" [which may be true in a literal, factual, cause-and-effect sense] and "it's actually GOOD that that bad thing happened, because look at these good things that came as a result." There's a very fine line between "God understands what you're going through" and "therefore you're blessed to be in this bad situation because you are getting closer to God." There's a very fine line between "God sees and cares about what you're going through, God knows you don't deserve this, God will make this right someday" and "that's good enough, you don't need to consider whether it's possible for *you* to make a change and get OUT of the bad situation."

I 100% support the idea of using religion to find something positive in a bad situation after the fact. But we have to be careful that we don't buy into those "positive" things so much that we are no longer working to prevent those bad things from happening in the first place. Prevention is much MUCH better than finding a silver lining after the fact, and we have to make sure we NEVER lose sight of that.

For example, when someone dies, you often hear people say "they're in a better place." But nobody really believes that 100%. If you did, then you would kill yourself right there so you could go to "a better place." Everyone knows that *not dying* is better than if someone dies and then everyone convinces themselves to believe "they're in a better place." My god, I hope resurrection is true, but I don't know.

Anyway, my views are probably closest to what this paper calls "the suffering God." I also think the writings of Dr. King and Oscar Romero (also mentioned in the paper) are very important and powerful. They truly did take up the cross, and they had a lot to say about it.

I disagree with the paper's conclusion, because the writers seem to be saying they're not okay with *any* talk of anything positive at all related to suffering, because it can be twisted and used to tell victims that they need to just accept their suffering and that it's somehow good that these things are happening to them. I mean, yes I see that it can be twisted that way- but the reality is that suffering does exist, and I think religion has to at least say something hopeful about it. Otherwise, what good is religion?

Also, the writers of this paper seem to be saying they're not okay with any Christian view that says the cross is important. At the end, they present their own Christian ideology, which includes the point "No one was saved by the death of Jesus," which is, uh, surprising, but DAMN I read this section and I'm like "that'll preach." The Christian ideology they present here at the end is powerful and worth reading.

7. If you know someone is adopted—tell them (January 12) It is shocking to me that apparently there really exist people who adopt kids and then intend for those kids to never find out.

8. Atheist group demands Indiana sheriff end coercive inmate baptisms (January 14) "The problem here isn’t that the prisoners are making a public proclamation about their faith, which is obviously their right. The problem is the Sheriff’s Department promoting these religious events as if they’re inherently positive and treating Christianity as the office’s default faith."

9. Penelope Garcia’s Criminal Minds (December 21) "Historians have their favorite online resources, but where in the digital world is Garcia searching? According to the series, Garcia is accessing a series of digital archives that are equal parts fantasy and aspiration. Watching her work and seeing her archives are opportunities to think about what it would take to make this fantasy the historian’s reality."

10. The Double Standards of Sexual Expectations in Marriage (January 16) Oh my this post is so good. Every single point here is SO REAL. This could be an entire exhibition hall in the museum of "Are the straights okay?" (And no, we are not okay.)