The Great Sex Rescue: Be Like Jesus

Image text: "What does the Lord require of you, but to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8" Image source.

Links to all posts in this series can be found here: Blog series on "The Great Sex Rescue"

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So we come to chapter 11 of The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended [affiliate link], titled "Just Be Nice." Here's what it's about:

After tackling these issues [from the previous chapters], though, we were still left with a handful of scenarios from these books that didn't fit neatly into any one harmful teaching. In trying to figure out where to slot them into the book, we realized that they shared a common denominator: following these pieces of advice meant looking less like Jesus.

As we start to wrap up this book, we want to point us back to Jesus's example of serving, not being served. And the answer is shockingly simple: please, please, people, just be kind.

Wow, I think this is a really good way to put it- "following these pieces of advice meant looking less like Jesus." A lot of the things that Christian marriage books tell women they have to do- would Jesus tell women they have to do those things? If a husband tells his wife she is required to have sex with him even if she's in pain, is he being like Jesus?

"The Great Sex Rescue" says we should understand sex "through the lens of the cross." I don't really like using "cross" language for sex... I mean, I understand that their point is that it should be about loving and serving each other, like Jesus did, but, man, Jesus' death on the cross was the ultimate extreme example of loving people, to the exclusion of his own feelings/desires/pleasure/life, and sex should NOT be like that. Isn't most of this book about how it's wrong that women were taught that we need to endure pain, and not care about ourselves, and women are taught that sex should be about making a sacrifice for the sake of your husband's pleasure...? 

Having confidence that what I want matters, and being unwilling to have painful sex, and believing that I should stand up for myself and insist that it be a good experience for me or else I'm not doing it- uh, that is nothing like what Jesus did on the cross. But that's what sex should be. (And these are all things that "The Great Sex Rescue" has argued for in previous chapters.)

Okay so my point is, this metaphor doesn't work for me. I get that they're saying sex should be about loving and serving each other, but I just don't think the cross is a good metaphor for this, because sex should also be about feeling good and getting what you want.

Moving along, one of the examples given in this chapter is period sex. Most women don't want to have sex when they're having their period, and some Christian marriage books tell wives it's their responsibility to come up with some workaround to satisfy their husbands' "needs" anyway. (ie, she has to give him a hand job- something along those lines.)

"The Great Sex Rescue" responds by saying this:

Let's think this through. Is it kind for a man to ask for a hand job when his wife is unwell? How unwell does she have to be before it's not kind anymore? How crampy does she have to be for her physical well-being to take precedence over sexual expectations? Do we really believe that the kindness that flows from the Holy Spirit working in our lives would ask an exhausted, torn apart postpartum woman for a hand job?

On the one hand, this is a great point. When someone is in pain, how about you care about them, rather than burden them with more tasks they have to do?

On the other hand... the Christianity I used to believe in really was like this. Give and give and give until you literally can't any more- that's what I believed God wanted me to do. This excerpt from "The Great Sex Rescue" is asking rhetorical questions- "How crampy does she have to be for her physical well-being to take precedence over sexual expectations?"- they're not trying to actually identify where to draw that line, but rather showing how ridiculous the whole thing is... but... But back when I was a good evangelical, "on fire for God", I really did think that way. I really did ask myself questions like that, and take them extremely seriously... I tried to lay down my life, as much as I could, and only do the bare minimum for myself- isn't that what it means to be a Christian?

It really says something about the God I used to believe in. We believed that God will keep asking you to do harder and harder things, to give of yourself in ways you didn't think you could handle, "but he will give you the strength to get through it"- instead of, like, sometimes you need to stand up for yourself and protect yourself by saying NO. Keep giving, keep sacrificing, and if you ever think that something you need is a higher priority than something that you could do to serve someone else, well you're selfish and sinful.

So glad I don't believe in that kind of Christianity any more. And it's good that "The Great Sex Rescue" is telling women that it matters if sex is enjoyable for them- they shouldn't just do everything their husband wants and totally ignore their own desires.

(See also: Gregoire's "Fixed It For You" blog post where she takes this quote "The most difficult time for this man was during his wife's period, because she was unavailable to him sexually" from the book "Sheet Music", and changes it to "The most difficult time for this woman was during her period, because she was bleeding from her vagina." Blew my mind when I read that. The idea that we should care about the wife when she's not feeling good, instead of asking her to do more things- so astonishingly healthy, I was shocked.)

And then there's this really good quote:

One woman, commenting on this pressure to have sex while on your period, said this:

I honestly feel like a lot of men want only the positive aspects of our bodies (i.e., the parts that make them climax) without any of the drawbacks. Those drawbacks are everything from normal aging to menstruation to the difficulties of childbirth and the effects those have on our bodies and psyches. Being hot, young, and not on your period or not pregnant is an incredibly short time in a woman's life, and I have no idea why young men contemplating marriage are not told in the most blunt of terms that being ready for marriage and sex means accepting all of those changes.

Yes, well-said.

The next part of this chapter is about taking care of your health, as a way to show kindness to your spouse because it could affect their enjoyment of sex.

First, the authors of "The Great Sex Rescue" call out Christian leaders who tell women they need to make sure they continue to look as attractive as they did when they got married. This is ridiculous and not realistic. Like, you are marrying a person, with a real body, which ages- and pregnancy and childbirth also change a woman's body, that's just a fact. "The Great Sex Rescue" points out the double standard where women are required to look attractive for their husbands, but no one really tells men they have to look attractive for their wives.

Next, "The Great Sex Rescue" says that it actually is a problem for a couple's sex life if the man gains too much weight. It means there are certain sex positions they might not be able to do, they can't really get close enough to physically stimulate the woman in the ways she needs in order to orgasm, and the man has less "usable length."

I hadn't heard about that before, and I don't really have an opinion on it. (My first thought was maybe they can use a sex toy to make up for those problems. I'm always trying to engineer a solution; I'm helpful like that.) I guess I'll just say that I think you should take care of your health because it's good for you. I don't really think your partner's sexual satisfaction should be the reason you take care of your health. That just strikes me as a bit odd. 

But yes, I totally agree about the double standard- women are expected to look young forever, even though that's not actually possible, and there's not really an equivalent expectation for men.

Overall, the point of this chapter is that you should basically be a decent human being in your marriage. When having sex, both partners should have a mindset of loving and serving each other. Be kind- and this sounds like common-sense stuff. (Also, as the rest of the book says, your own pleasure matters. It shouldn't just be about serving your partner; it should be about both of you being equals.)

It reminds me of this post by the Slacktivist, Do Justice, Love Mercy, Walk Humbly … In Bed, which addresses "the intrinsic oddity of trying to talk about 'sexual ethics' as something separate and distinct from, you know, just plain ethics." Yes, he's absolutely right. "Sexual ethics" shouldn't be about rules for when and how and whether to have sex. It should be about treating each other right, similar to how you should treat people right in all other areas of life.

So the message of this chapter is "Just Be Kind" and I like that. It shouldn't be about gender roles and how much the wife has to give and sacrifice because men's "needs" are so important. It should be about just being a decent human being toward your spouse.

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Links to all posts in this series can be found here: Blog series on "The Great Sex Rescue"

Blogaround

1. I’m an ER Doctor. If the Supreme Court Upends EMTALA, Patients Will Die. (April 24, via) "I have treated these cases, and that moment hangs on a knife’s edge. Women can go from stable and bleeding to unstable or dead within minutes. Uninformed anti-choice lawmakers with no medical knowledge are creating these laws. They have not seen what I have seen."

2. DOJ requests judge order Steve Bannon to begin prison sentence (May 14)

3. What is the infected blood scandal and will victims get compensation? (May 22) "More than 30,000 people in the UK were infected with HIV and hepatitis C after being given contaminated blood products in the 1970s and 1980s."

Also this video: Rishi Sunak apologises to infected blood scandal victims: ‘Day of shame for British state’ (May 21) Really well-said.

4. I like this song - God's Own Fool (Christian music from the 1980s)

"So come lose your life for a carpenter's son, for a madman who died for a dream. You'll have the faith his first followers had, and you'll feel the weight of the beam."

5. Google promised a better search experience — now it’s telling us to put glue on our pizza (May 24, via) "The feature, while not triggered for every query, scans the web and drums up an AI-generated response."

6. The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel (May 19) 4-hour-5-minute video. Wow this is really good! Jenny Nicholson talks about her experience at Disney World's Star Wars hotel- which she paid $6000 for, and which has now closed. She has a lot of very good insights about what it could have been, what Disney could have done differently to make it a better experience. Also I love her dry humor.

7. Mysteries do not need to be solvable (May 16) "Usually, Sherlock Holmes would pull some clue out of thin air, that hadn’t been mentioned before; or else there would be an event that led to the mystery being solved. It was unambiguous that most stories were not even trying to be solvable."

8. Journal Club: Emma and Queer Austen (May 22) "We discussed how an ace reading doesn’t necessarily just mean interpreting a character as ace, it could also mean seeing a celibate character, and understanding that celibacy is not a bad thing."

Don't Fire Your Friends, Okay?

HR meeting stock photo. Image source.

So there was this tiktok video on how to break up with a friend. I saw this on twitter a while ago (the video is from 2023)- people very much disagreed with it. And, yeah, the twitter people are right, DO NOT DO THIS. This tiktok gives really weird and bad advice.

It's short, I'll just transcribe the whole video here:

Person A: I've noticed you've been withdrawn and haven't wanted to hang out recently. What's going on?

Person B: I've treasured our season of friendship, but we're moving in different directions in life. I don't have a capacity to invest in our friendship any longer.

Person A: Is it something I did? This feels really sudden.

Person B: I get that it might be hard to understand, but I've been reevaluating many areas of my life recently, including my ability to be a good friend to you. I just want to be honest and upfront so I don't disappoint your expectations. I'm sorry if this feels painful and confusing. I wish you all love and success.

I have to blog about this, because it's a really BAD IDEA, and I'm autistic and I can easily imagine that for some autistic people, it's not obvious why this is bad advice. So I want to walk through it and give a thorough explanation... Like, it scares me that this advice is out there in the world and some well-intentioned autistic person is going to come across it and then actually do this to their friends.

Naively, one might think, "I have this friend, Person A, and there's nothing wrong with them, but I just don't really have time to spend with them any more. It's not worth my time to maintain this friendship. And shouldn't I be honest with them about that?" and then do what this video says.

No! Don't do this!

Instead, here's what you should do: You can just not contact them, if you don't want to spend time with them. You don't have to sit them down and give them an explanation. Seriously, it is EXTREMELY NORMAL that someone just doesn't contact one of their friends for a long time because their life circumstances make it inconvenient. Everyone understands this; you don't need to act like it's something you have to explicitly explain to them. Or, if they ask you why you they haven't seen you recently, like the person in the video did, you say, "I've been really busy with [whatever is going on in your life]." That's it! Just "I've been really busy" and then tell them some interesting thing that's been going on in your life.

Don't tell them you made a deliberate decision not to "invest in our friendship" any more!!! That comes across as really hurtful. Frame it as more of a passive thing, like of course you wish you could spend more time with them, but your life is just too busy.

If we're being brutally honest, the truth is that there are other people in your life that you do spend time with- you care about Person A less than you care about these other people. If you really really cared about spending time with Person A, you would rearrange your life to make it happen. The truth is that you prioritize other things higher than your friendship with Person A.

But don't be brutally honest! Don't say "I care about you less than the other people in my life", don't say "I've decided it's not worth my time to maintain a friendship with you." Yeah these things are true, and anybody who thinks about it for a few seconds will be aware that that's the reality behind statements like "I've been too busy"- but you shouldn't actually say it explicitly. That's just mean.

Just go with "I've been really busy." This is the normal social script for telling someone it's not worth your time to hang out with them any more. Even if you haven't actually been that busy, you can still say it!

A lot of the criticism of this tiktok video was along the lines of "this sounds like the language you find in a mass-layoff email from HR." Yeah, it does.

Person B just informs Person A that's they're not going to be friends any more, and when Person A is upset and wants to know the reason, Person B doesn't give a real reason, and just expects Person A to be fine with that. This is really weird. Person A has feelings about it, and Person B simply tells them to just not. Person B is being "honest" and therefore everyone should be okay with this. Uh, that's not how it works. This is really weird.

Let me just say, if you do this, there's no going back. By having this conversation as shown in the tiktok video, you are destroying the friendship. Person A will always remember you as "that weirdo who informed me, out of the blue, that we're not going to be friends any more, even though I didn't do anything wrong, and never gave a reason why, just a bunch of therapy-speak." Let's say you're too busy to spend time with Person A now, but then a year later you want to contact them- ha, no. No, by having this conversation with them, you're destroying that possibility.

Whereas, the normal thing to do, the thing that people will understand and be fine with, is to just not talk to them for a while, maybe years, and then if your life circumstances are such that you decide you want to talk to them again, then you contact them again. And that's fine. I have friends that I haven't talked to in years, and I have no idea what's going on in their lives, but if I was visiting the area where they lived I would be happy to see them and catch up. And that's great. But if you do what the tiktok video says, you are destroying that.

(I guess there is also a chance that you come across so weird, and Person A is so baffled at what to even think, that they'll decide surely what you meant to say was that recently you've just been too busy, that's all. Maybe you'll get lucky and they'll interpret it that way.)

So, in summary: If you don't want to spend time with one of your friends any more, don't frame it like "I decided not to be friends with you any more." Frame it like "my life circumstances are such that I don't really have time right now, but of course I still like you." 

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Related:

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

Boundaries and Lunch

Blogaround

1. Why Tech Alone Won’t Free Women From Their Chains (May 9) "Since smartphones allow for multitasking, women often perform a variety of decentralized, invisible digital tasks at the same time. It can therefore be difficult for family members, and even those completing the chores, to distinguish between housework, social communication, and leisure time, with the result that women’s work is often misinterpreted as play, which diminishes the effort they put in and generates new family conflicts." Oh this is SO REAL! I'm in China- and the article is about China- so I don't know if this is similar in other countries. Probably yes. I have an app for grocery shopping- every time I think of something we need, I go put it in the cart in the app. I have to think about what we're having for dinner, keep track of whether we need toilet paper and other infrequently-purchased things, and think about what time the groceries should be delivered. And my husband handles the communication with our kid's school. All of this is through apps on the phone.

Also from Sixth Tone: Chinese Detergent Brand in a Spin Over Sexist Ad Campaign (May 11) "'It’s Mother’s Day, and you still want moms to do housework?' one user wrote on microblogging platform Weibo. 'I suggest you run the campaign again on Father’s Day to make laundry easier for dad,' another posted."

2. “Unprecedented” Google Cloud event wipes out customer account and its backups (May 18, via) "But no, the actual worst-case scenario is 'Google deletes your account,' which means all those backups are gone, too."

3. An exercise in frustration (May 20) "For the image below I asked ChatGPT/DALLE3 to keep each detail exactly the same but to make it so that we can see it's raining outside the tent. Not only did it completely change the image, but it's not even raining."

4. The Case For Open Borders (May 17, via) "The difference between an invasion and migration, is that an army comes over the border with guns to seize territory, and migrants come over the border in order to, for example, take a job in a restaurant and send their kids to school."

This is an interview with John Washington, author of a new book, "The Case For Open Borders." Wow I am so interested in this! 

I am an immigrant- I am American and I've lived in China for 10 years. Back when I was thinking about moving to China, I totally believed that I could just move to whatever country I wanted to. My whole life, I had heard about American missionaries moving to so many different countries around the world (and my decision to move to China was very much influenced by Christian missions ideology), and about Americans going on vacation to beautiful and interesting places all around the world. 

And at some point- I think after I moved to China- I found out that many people, because of where they were born, can't just go galivanting around to whatever country they want. *I* can, because I'm American, but many citizens of other countries can't. That was shocking to me. Everyone should be allowed to live wherever they want!

That's what radicalized me. Support all immigrants- legal immigrants, undocumented immigrants, refugees, third-culture kids, etc etc etc. Support all immigrants.

Kangaroos and Creationist Fan Theories

Kangaroo, with a baby kangaroo in its pouch. Image source.

Here's a fun video from Joel Duff: New Solution to the Marsupial Migration Problem? Divine Action vs Natural Laws. (Also, Duff's blog post, and the Slacktivist's post about it, The Long March Of The Koalas Revisited.) The video is 1 hour and 24 minutes long, and is probably only of interest to people who are obsessed with the details of young-earth creationism. I LOVED it, that's why I'm blogging about it here.

Basically, it's about this question: During the Flood, all of the land animals died, except for the ones on Noah's ark. [According to young-earth creationist ideology.] The bible says the ark eventually came to rest on Mount Ararat, and then from there all the animals dispersed. Now we see that Australia is home to many species of marsupials, while the rest of the world has placental mammals. How did this happen? Marsupials got off the ark and walked to Australia, and didn't stop anywhere along the way to establish populations in other places? All of the marsupial species walked from the Middle East to Australia, and none of the placentals did that? How on earth could that happen?

(Adding the caveat here that there are marsupial fossils in Antarctica, and also there are marsupials native to South America- so it's not *just* Australia. But mainly Australia.)

I used to be a young-earth creationist, and I don't remember ever hearing about this question back then. But wow, it's a good question! Why on earth is Australia full of marsupials, and other places aren't, if all the animals started out in the ark and dispersed from there?

(The fossil record adds another complication- because young-earth creationists believe that the overwhelming majority of the layers of fossils were deposited during the Flood. So, before the Flood, you have marsupials living in Australia- we know that's where they lived before the Flood, because we find fossils there deposited during the Flood. And then 2 of each "kind" of marsupial ["kind" has a specific meaning in young-earth creationism, it's similar to a genus or family- NOT a species] traveled from Australia to wherever Noah was. Then, the Flood came, and all the marsupials in Australia died. Then, after the Flood, the ones on Noah's ark came all the way back to Australia. That's a bit, uh, odd, right? Why do we see such continuity between the fossils found in a certain place, and the animal species that currently live in that place, if the Flood basically reset everything? After the Flood, the whole landscape of the earth would be completely different than before. So many layers of mud covering everything. Why would animals end up going back to the same places where they lived before the Flood?)

Thinking about it now, it feels to me like a case of "the writer of the 'Noah's ark' story just kind of glossed over the part." If you're going to have a global flood, it makes sense to say "Oh but what about the animals? Oh, we can save a male and female of each kind of animal, there ya go"- that's a first attempt to address the problem of how to save the animals, and the "Noah's ark" story doesn't go any deeper than that on this issue. (Maybe because it wasn't the point of the story!) But if you start to think about it, you realize the problem is MUCH more complicated than "save a male and female of each kind of animal." How do you gather the animals and get them all onto the ark? How do you feed them all during the Flood? How do you make sure that *none* of them die, and *all* of them reproduce? And how do they spread out to the whole world after the Flood, to the locations where we see these species of animals living today?

In Duff's video, he discusses a creationist article written by Graeme Taylor, Marsupials in Australia—an act of God?. (Duff does not believe in young-earth creationism, but he takes it extremely seriously, and his entire blog is about going through the little details of things found in the fossil record, etc, and asking whether it's possible to explain them from a young-earth perspective.) Taylor's article presents the idea that maybe God supernaturally directed all the marsupials to travel to Australia.

The way I see it, there are 4 possible young-earth creationist explanations for marsupials living in Australia:

1. Some natural explanation that makes you go "oh, that makes sense" for how all the marsupials would travel to Australia, while none of the placentals would. No one has come up with such an explanation.
2. The marsupials all just decided to cross mountain ranges and climb onto vegetation rafts that floated to Australia, for no real reason, just a wild coincidence. This is what most of the young-earth creationist scientists have been saying, and Taylor's article is challenging this and pointing out that it is very unrealistic.
3. The marsupials all decided to cross mountain ranges and climb onto vegetation rafts that floated to Australia, because God supernaturally made them want to do that. God intervened constantly during their journey, in small ways, to make sure they survived and arrived in Australia. This is the theory that Taylor presents in his article.
4. Maybe God just teleported them straight to Australia. There aren't any creationist scientists actually advocating this explanation, but Duff brings it up in his video and asks "why not?" If God was going to do a bunch of small miracles to help the marsupials along, all throughout their trip to Australia, why not just do one big miracle instead? Wouldn't that be easier?

Watching Duff's video, the thing that really strikes me is how, in Taylor's theory, God really really wants marsupials to live in Australia. God intervened in so many little ways, to make sure Australia's animals were different than animals you find elsewhere. This must have been really important to God, or else why would They go to all that effort, doing all those small miracles, overriding animals' instincts to not get on vegetation rafts floating out into the open ocean?

In explanations 1 and 2 (which I listed above), you don't have to believe that God really really wanted marsupials to live in Australia. In explanations 3 and 4, you do. And, like, why? Why was it so important to God that marsupials live in Australia, and not establish any other populations anywhere else along the way?

And even if you're fine with claiming "God just really really wanted Australia to be *different* and have marsupials," there's another problem, which Duff points out: What about the dinosaurs? Young-earth creationists believe that dinosaurs were on Noah's ark, but they all died out very soon afterward. Why? Wasn't the point of Noah's ark to save every kind of animal? Why would God do the work to ensure that 2 of every kind of dinosaur got on the ark, and then just let them die out anyway right after? If God is so invested in marsupials living in Australia, willing to do all these tiny little miracles to guide them on their journey and make sure they survive, then it must also be true that dinosaurs went extinct because God just really really wanted them to go extinct. What? What was the point of bringing them on the ark then? Is God just really bad at planning?

Actually, this question isn't just about obscure creationist fan theories. It's also about how God intervenes in the world now. Plenty of people claim that God healed them from this or that sickness- and what they mean is, God guided them to find doctors who were able to help them, etc. We don't have evidence of God doing *obvious* miracles (like my "explanation 4" above), like growing back amputated limbs.

When people pray and ask God for help, they expect that God will answer that prayer by doing a series of little, subtle "miracles", each of which is unremarkable by itself, but they add up to the result that God wanted. God causes you to be late for work because of traffic one day, and that causes you to meet someone who has some important effect on your life, and so on. People don't expect that they pray and then God answers with some glowing magic like in a Disney princess movie. But, why not? Wouldn't it be easier for God to just do 1 big miracle instead of a bunch of complicated small miracles?

And Duff brings this up in his video too. He says it's not just about Noah's ark, but it's about the nature of how God intervenes in the world, and all theists (including himself) have to think about this question. Yeah... I'm a Christian, so I have to think about this too.

Personally, my answer is that God does NOT intervene in the world. And the biggest reason that I believe this, is the existence of systemic racism and other systemic injustice. If I believe that God is doing all these little tiny things to help me because They have this elaborate plan and They really want me to get this or that job and meet this or that person, then I also have to believe that God really really wants black people to get denied mortgages, and not believed by their doctors, and pulled over by cops for no real reason, and sent to jail for drug use at higher rates than white people who are doing the same things. WTF? Why would God want that??? Not cool! So I just can't believe God intervenes at all. How could it be the case that "God has a plan" and God is always doing these intricate little actions to influence people and carry out the plan, and it adds up to a world with systemic injustice? WTF? 

(Which is basically the problem of evil.)

It's the same as the situation with the marsupials and the dinosaurs. If you believe God really wanted the marsupials to live in Australia, and did miracles to make sure this would happen, then you also have to believe God really wanted the dinosaurs to die.

In conclusion: I loved the video, and it's so delightful to imagine creationists doing the math about how far a kangaroo can hop in a day, and all of the other weird implications of this fan theory. But it goes deeper than that; it's about our beliefs about how God acts in the world now. Does God do big or small miracles? Does God avoid big obvious miracles because They want to allow people to not believe in Them? (This is the reasoning I have ALWAYS heard from Christians, but I don't buy it.) Does God have a specific "plan for your life"?

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Related:

I used to be a young-earth creationist 

I Didn't Like the Ocean in "Moana" Because it was Too Much Like God

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

My Racist Personal Relationship with God

Does God Use Miracles To Take Sides?

The Great Sex Rescue: Be Normal!

A pride parade. Image source.

Links to all posts in this series can be found here: Blog series on "The Great Sex Rescue"

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We are still in chapter 10 of The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended [affiliate link]. I've split up this chapter into 3 parts; this post will cover the last part, pages 197 to 198.

So, this is the last little bit of chapter 10, a chapter which has had a lot of very important things to say about marital rape, consent, coercion, and painful sex. I'm reading along, basically agreeing with the whole chapter, feeling sad for how Christian culture makes it necessary to say these things which should be very obvious... and then we get to this last part, about "Holding Your No Responsibly." It's a little 1-page section about how you can't just not consent to sex forever; there's a "tension" because "we are also the only proper sexual outlet our spouse has." (They make an exception for abuse though- if your spouse is abusive, you don't have to work your way toward being able to consent to sex.) 

Take a look at this bit:

If your no relates to something the vast majority of people consider a healthy part of a sexual life, such as intercourse or touching various parts of the body, seek appropriate professional help so that if you're healthy and it is possible, your no can turn to a not yet, but soon.

O.O

Give me a minute to pick my jaw up from the floor.

...

Okay.

So, my first reaction to this is, oh my, this whole chapter has had such important and true things to say about rape and coercion, and then suddenly there's this. I very much disagree with this. They're saying that if you're married and your spouse wants to do some sexual thing that most people see as very normal, well, basically you do have to do it. You don't have to do it every single time they ask for it, but overall, in general, you do have to be doing it.

It should be very obvious why I- as an asexual- do not like this!

But, let me step back for a moment and say I do understand why Gregoire and the other authors of "The Great Sex Rescue" are saying this. One of the common criticisms she gets is from men who don't like her message of "it's wrong to coerce your wife into having sex", because, these men say, how can you ever get your wife to have sex if you don't coerce her? (In other words, these men are announcing to everyone that they are bad at sex, and they can't imagine any woman would actually *want* to have sex with them.) So they criticize Gregoire and say that her message will lead to sexless marriages.

As we saw in chapter 8, Gregoire doesn't think it's okay to have a sexless marriage. So there is a "tension", as the book says here. On the one hand, consent is hugely important! It's not okay to coerce or rape anyone. But on the other hand, you [supposedly] can't just never have sex with your spouse. (Unless your spouse is abusive.) So... how does this work?

I think the way she solves this contradiction is like this: If you have a healthy marriage, if you treat each other right, if you both treat each other as equals during sex and care about it being a good experience for both of you, THEN both spouses will naturally enjoy sex and want to have sex- you won't have a situation where one of them doesn't want to have sex.

This is just simply not right. Asexuals exist. Gay people exist- what if it's a gay person married to an opposite-sex spouse?

But anyway, that's the motivation for this bit of "The Great Sex Rescue." Apparently, a sexless marriage would be so incredibly bad, and we must reassure everyone that if they follow our advice correctly, such a dreadful outcome will not happen. Uh, okay.

This is one of the main things I've criticized about this book- the way it tries to make everyone fit into this narrow heteronormative allonormative ideal (ie, everyone is straight, and no one is asexual). If you're married, you have to be straight and you have to have PIV [penis-in-vagina] sex. I was actually really shocked to see this part of the book say it so directly- if it's "something the vast majority of people consider a healthy part of a sexual life" then in the long run, you do need to consent to it... I just... wow.

I agree that it would suck if you get married expecting to have sex with your spouse, and then your spouse discovers that they are asexual and they never want to have sex. 

It would also suck if you get married expecting that you will enjoy sex, because everyone always talks about how it's the best thing ever, even though it doesn't make any intuitive sense, but you assume that it will become more clear when you're actually doing it, and then you figure out you're asexual and you don't want sex at all, and then what do you do about your spouse expecting to have sex with you frequently?

It would also suck if you get married, to an opposite-sex partner, and then you discover you are gay.

What all of these scenarios have in common is people not being allowed to explore and know themselves before marriage. In purity culture, you're not supposed to have any sexual experience before marriage, and you have to repress your sexual desires as best you can. You can't know yourself; your Christian leaders dictate to you what your desires will be. You go into marriage just assuming that you're sexually "normal" and that your spouse is "normal"... you have to assume this, because you're not allowed to gather any information that can help you get a more accurate read on it.

So what do you do if you then discover that you and your spouse are not sexually compatible? "The Great Sex Rescue"'s solution is that the partner who is farther from "normal" is the one who needs to change. (Okay the book doesn't use the word "normal." The one who is farther from "the vast majority of people" needs to change.)

I very much disagree with this. Why does it matter what "the vast majority of people" think? You're in a monogamous marriage- "the vast majority of people" are not involved in your sex life at all; it's just the two of you. And you both equally matter, and ideally you can discuss it and invent some sequence of sexual and/or intimate actions that you both enjoy, regardless of how close they are to "the vast majority of people." Or, unfortunately, sometimes people do break up because of this. But regardless, the idea that you should just automatically rule in favor of the partner whose desires are closer to "the vast majority of people" is not a good solution.

I will say, however, that I believe there is value in at least being aware of what is "normal." I don't really like it when people (queer people, sex educators, etc) say there is no normal, normal doesn't matter, and things like that. I guess because I'm coming from an extremely sheltered purity-culture background... when I hear people say that you shouldn't even care what's normal, that normal doesn't matter at all, it sounds to me like this kind of scenario: Someone who is so sheltered that they don't know anything at all about the practical ways that people have sex. They've never watched porn, never masturbated- they heard that women sometimes fake orgasms, but they're confused about how that would even work- like, how do you even know what an orgasm is supposed to be like, in order to fake it? All they know is their own desires. And then their partner says they want to do some sexual thing- and it's something that the more sheltered partner has NEVER heard of. It seems to come out of nowhere, and they have no context for understanding whether it's reasonable or not. And all they know is this very theoretical "normal doesn't matter, only your desires and your partner's desires", no practical experience at all... How can you make a good decision about whether to consent or not?

(Reminds me of the part in "50 Shades of Gray" where Ana was researching BDSM on her computer, to decide if she wanted to enter into a contract about it. Like WHOA, SLOW DOWN, she has no experience with sex at all- she should definitely NOT be entering into a BDSM contract. This is NOT the kind of decision you can make by just reading stuff on the internet. That scene really freaked me out a lot, because I am one of those "reading about everything on the internet" people, and I can easily imagine an alternate universe where I falsely believed that my internet research made me totally ready to do sexual things that I definitely would not actually want.)

It's useful to have a general idea of the landscape of what's "normal." (And I think I shouldn't necessarily blame the people who say you shouldn't care about "normal" at all- they were likely not thinking about the possibility that someone could be so sheltered they really don't even know what "normal" is.) Or, going beyond that, to see examples of practical ways that this plays out in people's actual lives, even if it's different from "normal." If you're ace, it is very helpful to hear from other aces about their experiences and their choices and what works for them- just to give you an idea of what the possibilities are, and help you figure out what choices you want to make. That's more helpful than the very theoretical "you can do whatever you want, as long as you and your partner both consent."

If you're extremely sheltered, and your partner suggests something, and it sounds so weird and you're not sure about it- if it's something that many people enjoy doing, then maybe you decide to try it and see if you like it. Obviously you don't *have* to, but this is useful information to help you decide. But if it's something like, your partner wants to hurt you during sex, and your first reaction is "I hate this idea, but... I should care about what my partner wants, so I should at least consider it..." then it could be very helpful to know that most people would say no to that.

The problem, of course, is that there can be things that are seen as normal even though they are unhealthy. People think it's normal if the man has an orgasm and the woman doesn't. People think it's normal if sex is painful for women. Believing that something is more likely to be reasonable/healthy because it's "normal" can be a problem! Still, I think it's better to at least know what "normal" is, and use that as a reference point, than to have no reference point at all.

In summary: I very much disagree with this line from "The Great Sex Rescue," which says you ultimately need to consent to something if "the vast majority of people" think it's normal. This idea is a result of not being allowed to have sex or explore your own desires before marriage, and it very much does NOT work for aces and/or queer people.

---

One more interesting thing from the end of chapter 10:

Using a code word can help both of you know that you are staying within each other's boundaries while giving you an easy way to speak up if you're getting uncomfortable. Choose a code word that will mean "I'd like to stop now," whether it's uncle or something innocuous, like pineapple or Appalachian. Then, when you hear that code word, stop what you're doing. Reassure one another of your love, and decide together what you want to do next. While code words are great tools for healthy marriages, they will not stop an abusive spouse from harming you. Again, if you are in an abusive marriage, please enlist outside professional help.

Yes, this is a good idea! And I also think it's really good that they said this won't help if your spouse is abusive. I can easily imagine someone in a bad relationship, reading a lot of books, looking for some little trick that will make their relationship better, when the truth is that if your partner is not interested in having a healthy relationship, there is literally no way to fix it on your own.

But here's why I'm pointing out this paragraph and blogging about it: Umm, what they're talking about here is called a safe word. The book calls it a "code word," but this is the exact same thing as a safe word. Why don't they call it a safe word????? I am FASCINATED by this question. 

I *guess* it's because safe words are related to BDSM, and there's a very real risk that good evangelical Christians will attack this book if they find out that it mentions something related to BDSM. You know how evangelicals are about that kind of thing- getting all culture-war-y, blowing things way out of proportion rather than engaging with what's actually being said.

Anyway, the advice about safe words is good. Too bad they didn't actually call it a "safe word" though.

---

Links to all posts in this series can be found here: Blog series on "The Great Sex Rescue" 

Related:

The Great Sex Rescue: The Chapter Where It's Not Okay To Be Asexual 

The Great Sex Rescue: Sex Drive

Scripts

Why would it be bad news if ancient Romans had loving gay relationships?

Ancient Roman painting of 2 women. Image source.

Here's a thought I had when I was writing my review of the book "Slaves, Women & Homosexuals":

So, for Christians who view the bible as inerrant, as the authority over our lives, and who therefore believe it is very very important to carefully analyze all the rules in the bible, to research ancient Near East culture and ancient Hebrew and Greek languages, to really really figure out what *exactly* the writers meant, and how we must put those things into practice in our lives now- for Christians who are coming from that perspective (and, full disclosure, I do NOT view the bible that way, though I did when I was evangelical), the discussion of "what the bible says about homosexuality" goes like this:

On the one side, you have the traditional view, which says that the bible says same-sex sexual relationships are DEFINITELY sinful. There are 6 "clobber passages" in the bible which mention homosexuality, and all of them portray it as bad.

On the other side, you have Christians doing queer apologetics, making the case that these passages can be interpreted differently, and that the bible does NOT say that all same-sex sexual relationships are sinful.

(Queer apologetics were extremely helpful to me, years ago, but now I no longer believe the bible is an authority over our lives, so I don't really need the "queer apologetic" approach now. But yes, I really needed it back then, and I'm glad there are Christians doing this work. Back then, I was mainly influenced by Justin Lee and Matthew Vines.)

Here's the main queer apologetics argument: Whenever the bible condemns homosexuality, it's condemning homosexual practices which were clearly immoral for other reasons. For example, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is an attempted gang rape. Gang rape is wrong. Just because it was men trying to rape men doesn't mean all gay relationships are wrong; it really has nothing to do with that at all. And in passages like Romans 1, same-sex relationships are characterized as being driven by overwhelming lust- in ancient Roman times, they didn't view people as having a "sexual orientation"; they viewed homosexual behavior as caused by an excess of lust. Also it was common for adult men to have sexual relationships with boys. All of this is, uh, not healthy. The bible isn't condemning loving, consensual, committed same-sex relationships between equal partners, because that wasn't really a concept they had back then. 

(Ya know, hetero relationships back then were also not very healthy/consensual/equal...)

(Other key components of the queer apologetic are: Genesis 2, where God says "it is not good for the man to be alone"- therefore, since in modern times we know that it's natural for some people to be gay, we should allow them to have same-sex relationships, rather than requiring them to be single. Also, Jesus' teaching about "a good tree cannot bear bad fruit"- what is the "fruit" of preaching that being gay is wrong? It's BAD- queer people are at a high risk of things like hate crimes, being rejected by their families, depression, and suicide. But if you accept and support queer people, everything is so much better. Jesus said you will know them by their fruit.)

So anyway, the argument very much depends on the idea that there wasn't really a common relationship structure in ancient Roman culture (when the New Testament was written) which is similar to same-sex marriage today. So when the apostle Paul, or the other biblical writers, were condemning homosexuality, they weren't condemning our modern version of it.

Anyway, that's the background information that sets the stage for what I want to talk about:

I remember one time I was reading someone's argument about the bible and same-sex relationships, and they talked about all this, and then they said, "But, it turns out, there were loving same-sex relationships in bible times. And, yes, Paul would have known about them. So, when we read the bible passages condemning same-sex relationships, it means all same-sex relationships are wrong."

Reading that, it was like... like it just deflated the whole argument. Like, oh, there were healthy gay relationships back then. Oh. So, all the gay people nowadays who want to date are just out of luck. And that's that.

(Queer Christians and allies have pushed back against this; I seem to recall I read something by Matthew Vines arguing against the idea that "oh they totally had equal gay partnerships back then and Paul would have known about it"- here's a link along those lines. Though personally, like I said, I don't care because the bible is not in charge of me.)

Anyway, recently when I was reading "Slaves, Women & Homosexuals," (and wondering why straight Christians want to spend so much time and energy barging into gay people's lives and telling them what they're allowed to do) it brought up that memory of when I read someone saying there were loving gay relationships back then, and how discouraged I felt when I read that.

And, can we just take a minute and marvel at how BIZARRE that is?

Like, suppose we find out that there were same-sex couples in ancient Roman times that had happy, loving relationships. Wow, good for them! Right? Let's be happy for them! But somehow, "traditional" Christians turn that into "and that means gay people now are not allowed to get married" which is bad news. What is going on here? How are we turning this into bad news?

Why not just be happy for people? Why not just let people live their lives? How can historical information about the existence of healthy relationships be used to forbid people from having healthy gay relationships today?

The authority of Scripture is a hell of a drug.

---

Related:

"Slaves, Women & Homosexuals" (What is this book actually about?) 

The "Redemptive-Movement Hermeneutic" Argument for Queer Acceptance

We Need Queer Theology

"The Author of Leviticus Would Have Been Cool With It"

"The Authority of Scripture" is One Hell of a Drug

Blogaround

1. 40-year ban on gay clergy struck down (May 1) "Without debate, General Conference has removed The United Methodist Church’s ban on the ordination of clergy who are 'self-avowed practicing homosexuals' — a prohibition that dates to 1984." Good news!

2. The Protest Derangement Class: A Response to John McWhorter (April 30) "We're back to just calling loud people violent. I truly don't understand how one person can milk a truly meaningless talking point for this long. I don't know how to keep responding to it, it's too dumb." (18-minute video)

3. How a beloved worship song became the theme song of Christian nationalism (May 1, via) The song is "How Great Is Our God" (youtube link) and I actually still really like this song, even though I'm ex-evangelical and I don't go to church. But yeah really gross to find out Christian nationalists are using this song.

4. China launches historic mission to retrieve samples from far side of the moon (May 4) Cool!

5. Alphabetical Cartogram (May 1) Very useful map from xkcd.

6. Man or Bear Discourse Might Feel Familiar to Atheists (May 4) "Being calm, rational people, the atheist community received this message thoughtfully, in its intended spirit, and took Rebecca's words into consideration during future interactions with-- I'M KIDDING, obviously that's not what happened at all." (12-minute video)

7. No, Paul Won’t Teach Seminaries of the Future through the Miracle of AI (April 29) "It’s Paul plus an imaginative recreations of what Paul might be like. If we take that part out, we just have the letters, and ChatGPT is not necessary for an encounter with Paul. If we add it in, we’re not engaging with Paul anymore."

8. The Supreme Court is breaking America’s faith in the law (April 29) "I truly believed that at least seven members of the court would take the potential failure of democracy as a proposition seriously enough that the partisan valence of this case went away. That didn’t happen."

9. Mr. Yuk (April 30) "He saw first-hand the impact of the lack of information on poisonings and decided to do something about it. He started collecting information on poisonous substances and filling it on these little index cards. He ended up accumulating information on roughly 9000 different substances, and by the 1950s he was the go-to poison expert."

10. All the time (May 6) "Holiness was distinct from goodness, distinct from love, or mercy, or justice, or patience, or presence. And it often seems to be — for my dad as for so many of his fellow Calvinist believers — something almost opposed to those other attributes."

11. Is China Ready for Hospice Care? (May 1) "Questions like how to broach the topic, with whom, and how to hold family meetings are all issues that require a soft touch. If family members are concealing a condition from the patient — a not uncommon practice in China — it is even more difficult to have these conversations."

12. 'Dance Your Ph.D.' winner on science, art, and embracing his identity (May 4, via) "'It means the time I did my kangaroo research,' says Menário Costa. 'But [it] also means the first time I lived as a gay man. It's the first time I lived as an immigrant, five years without going home. The time of reconnection to myself, of exploring my sexuality, of bridging these beautiful communit[ies].'"

13. Our Campus. Our Crisis. Inside the encampments and crackdowns that shook American politics. A report by the staff of the Columbia Daily Spectator. (May 4, via) "We had been briefed on what to do if we got swept by the police. The plan was to form two concentric circles: people of color on the inside, white people on the outside. We were informed that it’s harder for cops to arrest you if you’re sitting. So the plan was, once we knew cops were coming, to sit in your circle."

"Desiring God" says God wants women to be scared of men

Gaston corners Belle against a door. Image source.

So uh, here's a post on "Desiring God", written by Greg Morse: The Future of Masculinity [via]. The whole post is such utter nonsense, it's hard to even believe someone wrote this and took it seriously, and it was posted in 2020 so why am I even blogging about this? I'm blogging about this just so you know what the organization "Desiring God" is about. And just in case you ever come across something else that Greg Morse wrote, so you don't make the mistake of taking it seriously, lol.

Or, in other words, I'm writing for myself, little Perfect-Number-from-15-years-ago, who thinks that "Desiring God" is a really good Christian organization, and I have to believe what they say. Little Perfect Number who believes in complementarianism, that God made men and women different, and God wants women to be barred from certain leadership positions, and this is good and godly and I must conform myself to it, because that's what it means to be a Christian.

(Wait a minute, we've talked about Greg Morse before! Wasn't he the one who wrote a post about how real men don't use plastic forks, and I was so boggled by that? Fellas, is it gay to eat potato salad at a picnic?)

(Wait, Morse is also the one who wrote the post about how it's good to stand up at a funeral and announce that the dead person is in hell.)

Okay so let's talk about Morse's 2020 post. It's based around a scene from a sci-fi novel by C. S. Lewis, "That Hideous Strength." I haven't read that, so I can't speak to whether Morse's interpretation is actually what Lewis was trying to say. (I am a fan of C. S. Lewis though.) Apparently, in this scene in the novel, a character called "the Director" is talking to a woman named Jane, about how she has been trying to avoid men who are truly masculine, because she sees them as unpredictable and dangerous, but it's wrong for her to do that. Masculinity is supposed to be a little aggressive and dangerous, and women just have to accept that, rather than try to get away from it. Rather than marry a safe and trustworthy man. Like, what on earth? The post literally says "She had chosen a husband, Mark, accordingly. He 'really understood' her — meaning that he posed no threat to her self-government and asked nothing of her she was unwilling to give." As if that's a bad thing!

This reads like Morse lives in a fantasy world, where action heroes and movie villains are so cool because they're badass and violent. Like he doesn't know anything about the reality of what it's like for women who are victims of men's violence. Like he's romanticized it, like a little danger is exciting but at the end of the day you don't *really* have to be scared because masculine men are good. Like he doesn't know what it's like to be a woman and feel vulnerable and eventually realize that no one is going to come and save you- you have to make yourself stronger and protect yourself.

And then there's this extremely bizarre section which says that God is so incredibly masculine, that even men are feminine in comparison. What??? That's not in the bible anywhere- Morse just made it up! (Or he got it from someone else who made it up.) What on earth???

I will say, though, I do like the section in Morse's post where he takes bible verses about God and changes the "he/him" pronouns to "she/her"- that's my religion. My God is male and female and nonbinary. Makes me want to go change more bible verses to she/her, what a great idea! So ridiculous when people try to limit who God is, and say They are male and not female. Morse changes the "he/him" to "she/her" in an attempt to show us how that would sound wrong (???) and therefore God is a "he/him"- but really it says more about him than it does about God.

Anyway. What really struck me, while reading Morse's post, was thinking about myself back when I was a good evangelical. What if I had read something like this, back then, saying that masculinity is inherently possessive and dangerous, and that's the way it should be, and as a woman I am supposed to let scary manly men rule over me? (I did read articles from "Desiring God" back then.)

Also, what if a woman marries an abuser, and she's scared of him, but she thinks that's normal and doesn't realize the way he's treating her is wrong? What if she didn't even know that it's possible to marry a good and trustworthy man and have a healthy marriage? What if she doesn't know that it's NOT healthy to be scared of your husband? OMG. She thinks to herself, "He's a great guy, so loving and kind to me. Sometimes he gets angry and I'm scared of him, but that's normal, that's just what masculinity is, that happens in every marriage sometimes." 

!!!! OMG, if you've never heard this before, you need to hear it: Many many women are in healthy marriages where they are NEVER scared of their husbands. NEVER. It should happen NEVER. If it happens "sometimes," that's a red flag.

Anyway. Back then, I wondered what "wives submit to your husbands" really meant. I had heard it in church my whole life, but I didn't feel that it made sense to restrict people based on their gender, but I still believed that Christians were required to be complementarian (ie, required to believe in "wives submit to your husbands," and that women can't be leaders to the extent that men can, and that the man has to be the "spiritual leader" in a romantic relationship). So I was very much looking for an explanation of how this was supposed to work- what *is* godly masculinity, or godly femininity, and how can it make sense that as a woman I'm made for a role that feels restrictive to me, but the restrictions are right and good and how God wants it to be.

I was looking for answers, answers to help me believe in complementarianism. I know I'm required to believe this- make it make sense! (Forever grateful to Rachel Held Evans for presenting an argument that it's possible to be a Christian and NOT be complementarian- finally an answer that makes sense!) What if I had found an article like this back then? Saying that masculinity *is* aggressive and dangerous and I need that in my life. Saying that God wants me to be with a man who makes me feel unsafe. Saying that God is so extremely masculine, so different from me, a woman. Men are like God, and I am not. (I am sure Morse would say this is a misinterpretation of his article- but, come on, this is necessarily how it comes across when you make a big huge deal about how it's so important to believe God is masculine and not feminine.)

So when I read this, first of all it's just so much nonsense, so laughable, so obviously out of touch with reality- but then I think about where I was back then, 15 years ago or so, and how something like this could have really affected me. I understand how it feels to have a mindset that would take this seriously. I had been told my whole life that Christians have to believe that God made men and women different, for different roles, and that it's super important that we all follow the correct roles- and it made no sense but I tried to believe it... If I had come across some horribly misogynist hot take that genuinely did the world-building to make it make sense, like Morse's article, I might have believed it.

---

Related:

"Desiring God" Goes Full Toxic Masculinity 

Men have no idea what it's like for women in complementarian churches 

This May Be The Most WTF Christian Article On Sex I've Ever Read 

Don't Invite Anybody From 'Desiring God' to Your Funeral 

"The Authority of Scripture" is One Hell of a Drug 

And this post from the Slacktivist: Brief Interludes With Hideous Men (Part 1)

Also please enjoy this song, "God is a Girl." This is my religion.

Christian Nationalism / Faith Without Works Is Dead

Image text: "I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth." Image source.

Here's a post from Hemant Mehta about Christian Nationalism: Doug Wilson has ludicrous ideas for how the U.S. could become a Christian Nation. I'm writing about this because there's one line in it that's just so completely bonkers I can't get it out of my head. 

So, it's a post about Doug Wilson. If you don't know who Doug Wilson is, first of all, I'm happy for you. But anyway, I recommend this 2018 post from Libby Anne: It Is Long Past Time For Evangelical Leaders To Condemn Doug Wilson’s Views On Slavery And The South. Wilson says that slavery was a good thing, and he has a bunch of other terrible opinions too. (Gross, how will I explain Doug Wilson to my children?) 

Mehta's post is about how Wilson is advocating Christian Nationalism. Wilson has a bunch of suggestions for what the US government should do, and one of them, the one that's so bonkers I need to blog about it, is this: 

Or, Wilson suggested, “the Apostles’ Creed could be incorporated into the Constitution.”

... The Apostles' Creed? Uh, "I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth..." You know that's how the Apostles' Creed goes, right? Like it starts with "I believe" and lists out the basic things that Christians believe, mostly about what Jesus did. How on earth would that go into the Constitution? I'm objecting to this from a grammatical perspective- if you plop this into the Constitution somewhere, what would the pronoun "I" even be referring to? And how does it relate to anything else at all in the Constitution? It's a bunch of belief statements. That's not what the Constitution is.

(Obviously I also object to it because the government should not have a religion.)

I *guess* what Wilson means is that the Constitution should say that government officials are required to recite the Apostles' Creed, or something like that. (Ugh how am I gonna explain that to my children?) But when I read that in Mehta's blog post, the first thing that came to mind was some bizarro universe where you're reading the Constitution and it's talking about the responsibilities of Congress or whatever, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, "I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth." ???

And actually, now I'm realizing that everything about Christian Nationalism feels like this. Wanting to take symbols of Christianity and paste them onto the US government, without caring about what they actually mean. Making a big deal about how it's so important to be a Christian, without talking about what it actually means to be a Christian, what Christians are supposed to do, what it means to follow Jesus. You ever notice how Christian Nationalists talk a lot about Christianity and not about Jesus? 

It's about selling "God Bless the USA" bibles just because the bible is a symbol in a culture war, not because you actually care about reading the bible and following what it says. (I agree with all the comedians who made jokes about "I'm surprised that bible didn't burst into flames when Trump touched it.")

It's about using your Christian identity to create an "us vs them"- like Christians are better than non-Christians, and Christians should control the government. (And there's also racism mixed in with this- like only white people count as real Christians.) Is that how Jesus lived? Is that what he told us to do? Do Christian Nationalists even care about what Jesus said?

The apostle James said, "Faith without works is dead." If you identify as a Christian, but you don't do any of the good things that Jesus said we should do, then what does it matter? Your Christianity is meaningless. 

If we really want to make political policies consistent with what Jesus said, I have a few suggestions. Immigration: The bible says we should help immigrants. Health care: The bible says we should help sick people. And yet, strangely, the Christian Nationalist position on those issues is the opposite of that. Like they just think "Christian" is a cool thing to be, and makes you better than other people, but they never think about how to actually follow Jesus.

Faith without works is dead.

The apostle James also said, "You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder." If you believe in God, if you recite the Apostles' Creed, well, whatever, I'm not impressed with that. Even demons believe in God. Who cares? Jesus certainly doesn't care. What matters is what you do.

And Christian Nationalists take the Lord's name in vain when they say this is what Christianity is about, with no mention of the things that Jesus actually taught. No mention of "Love your neighbor as yourself."

Taking Christian things and sticking them onto the government, using them as symbols for why we're better than other people, without understanding what those symbols actually mean. Putting the Apostles' Creed into the Constitution because it sounds like a very Christian thing to do, even though it makes no sense. Faith without works is dead.

---

Related:

In Some Alternate Universe, I'm Writing a Post About Masks and "Causing to Stumble"

Blogaround

1. I laughed so hard

Does anybody else think it was a missed opportunity that Jesus’s carpentry knowledge never came into play later in the story? It would have made for a good setup and pay off

— Trey the Explainer (@Trey_Explainer) April 27, 2024

2. Republican Officials Openly Insult Women Nearly Killed by Abortion Bans (January 9, via) [content note: pregnancy loss] "[The] groups leading the charge against reproductive rights liked to claim that they loved pregnant women and only wanted them to be safe and cozy, stuffed chock-full of good advice and carted around through extra-wide hallways for safe, sterile procedures in operating rooms with only the best HVAC systems. Then Dobbs came down and within minutes it became manifestly clear that these advocates actually viewed pregnant people as the problem standing in the way of imaginary, healthy babies—and that states willing to privilege fetal life would go to any and all lengths to ensure that actual patients’ care, comfort, informed consent, and very survival would be subordinate."

3. Net neutrality is back: U.S. promises fast, safe and reliable internet for all (April 26) 

4. What I'll remember about Daniel Dennett (April 20) "The first is his book Breaking the Spell (affiliate link) from 2006. It’s the book I’ve always recommended to anyone curious about atheism but who still had a foot on the side of religion."

5. Last Stop: Looking Past the Stigma Facing China’s Morticians (April 30) [content note: descriptions of dead bodies]

6. "One Of The Best Puzzles I Ever Solved": WARNING: VERY Hard! (April 30) 2-hour-45-minute nurikabe solve video. I love these super long videos of extremely hard puzzles.