"The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind" (book review)

Book cover for "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind," 1995 edition.

The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, by Mark Noll, is a book that was published in 1995. (There's also a 2022 version which includes some updates about Trumpism.) I've seen this book mentioned by ex-evangelical blogs many times over the years, and I finally read it. Here is my review of it.

---

The overall thesis of the book

I had heard that this book was about anti-intellectual pressures in evangelical Christian culture. I had heard the quote, "The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind." 

And, growing up evangelical, I had experienced some of this anti-intellectualism. There are questions you're not allowed to ask in church. There is an attitude that "we know better than scientists and scholars because we have the bible." I was guessing that was the sort of thing this book would talk about.

But it mostly didn't. It was not about what it's like "on the ground" in evangelical culture. Noll is a historian, and the book traces the history of evangelical attitudes toward intellectual thought, over the past several hundred years, showing the movements that came and went, and how that led to where we are today. (Or rather, in 1995.) That's really useful to know about, but it wasn't what I was expecting, so at first I couldn't really understand what Noll's point was.

Here's his point: Evangelicals have not done the work of applying evangelical beliefs to high-level academic study. Catholics have universities which were founded out of the Catholic tradition and do good quality research in many many different fields, but evangelicals don't really have anything like that. Yes, there are evangelical seminaries and bible colleges, of course, but these aren't really known for their high-level research. We should be applying evangelical ideas to all fields of academic research- philosophy, art, politics, and so on, but evangelicals aren't doing that.

And, because of that, evangelicals are not obeying the command to "love God with your mind." They are not interested in learning about the world that God created. And because evangelical thinking is so shallow, they are not prepared to face new ideas or societal developments and respond to them in a way that's reasonable and consistent with evangelical Christian beliefs.

The first thing that came to mind for me was, well, what about creationism, that's an example of evangelicals applying their ideology to science and going really deep with it and inventing a whole field of """science""" that's completely different from "secular" science. But, then Noll mentioned creationism as an example of evangelical anti-intellectualism. So, no, that's not what he thinks evangelicals should be doing.

---

I have to admit I don't really get it

I'm having a really hard time grasping what it would mean for evangelicals to deeply apply evangelical thinking to big academic questions or societal problems.

The book talks about how Catholics have historically valued tradition and study, and major universities were started because of a Catholic drive to learn about the world and do excellent academic work. It's very hard for me to imagine evangelicals doing something similar, because, to be honest, when I was evangelical, that was one of the reasons we viewed Catholics as "fake." Yes, we were highly suspicious that Catholics were "fake Christians" because being Christian is about having a "personal relationship with God" (this is how evangelicals define "Christian"), and Catholics were not so big on that. Catholics were more into tradition and church hierarchy. Evangelicalism is about reading the bible yourself, experiencing God yourself, having spiritual experiences that mean a lot to you personally but are hard to explain to other people. We felt that Catholics had kind of missed the point- they followed their traditions and their church leaders and the pope, rather than going directly to the bible or directly to God. They were all caught up in listening to what other people said about God, rather than having a "personal relationship" with God. So, they were highly likely to be "fake Christians."

"The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind" talks a lot about this aspect of evangelicalism. Experiencing God and the bible in an "intuitive" and personal way, which is accessible to everyone- and how that causes evangelicals to not value advanced academic study.

Academia is all about building on the work that other people have done. Spending years learning about some very very niche problem and then advancing humanity's knowledge on it- and only people who have spent years studying in your same field can even understand what you're working on. To me, it feels very incompatible with the evangelical focus on how God is always right there with us and God knows everything, and we already have all the answers we need because we have the bible.

Yes, there are evangelicals in academia. Of course there are. I went to grad school, for engineering, and I was evangelical back then. What I'm saying is, I don't understand what it would even look like to meaningfully bring one's evangelical beliefs into one's academic work, unless you were studying theology or something very obviously religious like that. The evangelicals who study engineering, for example, keep their engineering work separate from their religious beliefs. Yes, sometimes there's an element of "I'm really stuck on this problem, I'm going to pray for God to help me figure it out" or "I can't take credit for figuring this out on my own- God gave me the ability to do it." But beyond that, I don't see how they can mix.

Okay, maybe because I'm thinking about my experience in STEM, that's why it doesn't make sense to bring religious beliefs into it. Maybe for fields about philosophy and morality, and art and meaning, and how we should live and how we should structure society, maybe in those areas it makes sense that evangelicals should bring their evangelical beliefs into their academic work. And Noll says there are evangelicals who do a good job of this, but mostly they work for secular or Catholic universities. There aren't evangelical institutions where people do this kind of work.

But I'm still having trouble understanding what Noll wants evangelicals to do, exactly. The examples in the book, of evangelicals doing this well, come across as not evangelical, to me.

I'm not sure how to explain how exactly this feels "not evangelical." It's something about... for evangelicals, being a Christian is about having an active, dynamic, emotional "personal relationship with God." It's a little wild, a little risky, full of big dramatic gestures about "laying down your life", and God suddenly "calling" you to go do some ridiculous thing. This is the polar opposite of good academic work, which is about spending years studying the minute details about what other researchers have done in your field, very careful, getting the citations right, making sure every claim you make is backed up by something that your readers could look up. Just years of normal and boring human work- no "you have to believe me because God randomly told me this."

And it feels really "not evangelical" to me, when considering the question "what does our Christian faith have to say about this or that issue?", to answer by citing sources built on years of human effort doing the necessary academic work. No, that's exactly what we're NOT supposed to do, right? We should address the question "what does our Christian faith have to say about this or that issue?" by praying about it and considering whether any thoughts which subsequently pop into your head may or may not be from God. And reading the bible and simplistically applying 1 bible verse to whatever the issue is.

The bible says "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding." And "leaning on your own understanding" sounds a lot like valuing a legacy of work done by academics over many years, right? "Trusting in the Lord with all your heart" would be believing whatever random thing "God told you" just now, right?

So, I mean, I understand that evangelicals can be in academia and do good work there, but the work itself does not read as "evangelical" to me. It's a separate thing from their religion. So I couldn't really understand what Noll would want this to look like, in an ideal world. 

Keep in mind, this book was written in 1995, so things may be much different between then and when I was "on fire for God" sometime around 2010-ish. Also, my experience is as an average church member, who also read a lot of bible-study books because I'm a nerd. Whereas, Noll is a historian who studies evangelical culture in the US. He is an evangelical with much more of an academic background than I have. I've heard (mostly from the Slacktivist) that there is a disconnect between what pastors learn in seminary and what the average churchgoer believes. For example, scholars who have actually studied the story of the Exodus know that it didn't really happen. But even if the pastor knows this, no way they can say it out loud in church- to the average evangelical, it's very much NOT acceptable to believe the Exodus didn't really happen- that's an attack on the bible! So there's a disconnect between the anti-intellectualism of the average churchgoer, and the higher-level leaders who have more awareness that these commonly-required evangelical beliefs just aren't true.

So my point is, it's very likely there's a difference between my opinion and Noll's on what "feels evangelical."

---

Creationism and pre-millennial dispensationalism

The two main examples of anti-intellectualism that this book gives are young-earth creationism and pre-millennial dispensationalism [PMD]. Here, let me define them: Young-earth creationism is the belief that God created the whole universe in 6 days, like Genesis 1 says, and therefore the earth is only about 6000 years old. Pre-millennial dispensationalism is the belief that the world is going to end "soon", and Jesus will come and "rapture" all the Christians away, and then the anti-christ will come, etc, and therefore we should obsess over news stories about things happening in the Middle East, to look for clues that match up with the prophecies in the bible.

I used to believe in young-earth creationism. And as for pre-millennial dispensationalism, and the other popular Christian ideas about how the world will end "soon", I never got into that at all. I guess I believed it was true that the bible gave prophecies about when the world would end, and that Christians who paid attention would be able to pick up on the "signs" when it happened, as the PMDs claimed. But I felt there was a very low probability that any of it would happen in my lifetime, so I didn't see any point to doing that kind of obsessed analysis and "being ready" for when Jesus comes. I thought, we've had 2000 years of Christians believing Jesus would come back "soon", and all of them were wrong. Probably it won't happen in my lifetime either! So I very much refused to be part of any of the "Jesus is coming back SOON, we have to be READY" hype.

"The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind" points out that creationism is about refusing to learn about this amazing world that God made, if that knowledge might contradict your view of what "the bible says." And PMD ideology responds to news events in the Middle East (and/or the question of whether bar codes are "the mark of the beast") in an extremely shallow way- simply trying to match them up with bible verses, making claims about "here's what the bible says about this." Rather than actually learning about the history of the real-life groups involved, what they actually want, the reasons for conflict, etc.

---

Inerrancy

The book talks about the evangelical belief in biblical inerrancy. Noll describes this modern approach as taking a "scientific" view of the bible; in other words, viewing the bible as a list of ironclad true statements, and building on top of that. Developing ideas about biology/geology, as in young-earth creationism, or piecing bible verses together like a challenging puzzle, to find connections to modern news events, as in pre-millennial dispensationalism. Simply taking each verse as a true statement which can be 100% believed, and making logical deductions accordingly. 

This is a very new view of the bible. (Noll says that Christians who argue for this reading of the bible aren't "defending the bible"; they're defending an interpretation that's less than 100 years old.) In contrast, one could read the bible with an awareness of ancient literary genres and the reasons that writers would have spun the stories in certain ways. The things they wrote to make sense of the world, not because they actually happened.

This is also a bit confusing to me- is Noll saying biblical inerrancy is an example of evangelical anti-intellectual sentiment, and therefore evangelicals should abandon it? This makes no sense to me. How can you BE evangelical and not believe in biblical inerrancy? Like, yes, I agree that evangelicals should abandon their belief in inerrancy, but by doing so, they would cease to be evangelical- yes, I believe they should abandon evangelicalism, actually. But obviously that's not what Noll is trying to say.

I don't recall if the book says inerrancy is a problem, or if it says this approach of "reading the bible scientifically" is a problem. From my point of view, those are the same thing. As I define it, inerrancy is this insistence that every single thing in the bible is true, actually true. Does Noll define inerrancy differently? Does Noll think you can believe "the bible is inerrant" and also believe that the creation story in Genesis 1 didn't actually happen at all, under any interpretation of the word "happen", but was just something they wrote back then to illustrate how they viewed the relationship between God, people, and the earth? That's not inerrancy- or at least, I would not call it inerrancy.

Again, this book was published in 1995. Surely things have changed since then. And Noll is coming from an academic background, whereas I just went to church A LOT. So... that's why I'm not quite understanding some of his points.

---

Some examples of my experiences of anti-intellectualism in church

In my experience in church, yes there were comments about how we already know the answers because we have the bible, and scientists don't know what they're talking about. I remember hearing a story that went something like this:

My 6-year old son was at school, and his teacher was telling the students that the Exodus didn't really happen the way the bible said. Moses didn't really part the Red Sea. The Israelites just walked across on a sand bridge where the water wasn't as deep. Just a few inches of water. Then my son raised his hand and said, "Wow, it's so amazing that the whole Egyptian army drowned in just a few inches of water!"

The point of this story is: Oh those public schools, trying to tell our kids that the bible isn't true! It's horrible, it's an attack on Christianity! This teacher talking about the Israelites walking through a shallow section of the Red Sea- lololololol! So ridiculous! Taking the big dramatic story about Moses parting the Red Sea, and turning it into this silly thing about simply wading through the water- that's so funny! Lolololol! And it doesn't even make any sense, because then how would the Egyptian army drown in that water? Even a child can see right through it! LOLOLOLOL! [whole congregation laughs]

(And don't even get me started on the uninformed jokes people at church make about evolution!)

I remember one of my history teachers in high school, saying something like "Religious people believe [some bible story]. And historians believe [some modified version of the bible story which doesn't have miracles]." I really didn't like the way she said it, like saying "people who are more realistic know that the things in the bible didn't really happen." I wondered if there were any historical scholars who were "on our side", ie, who believed a very simplistic, naive, "the bible is inerrant" ideology.

Another thing: I sometimes read articles talking about "People say Christians don't value science, but that's not true! There are scientists who are Christians! For example, Francis Collins." I don't know why, but it seemed that Francis Collins was always the one they pointed to. I heard about him many times, but I don't actually know what his scientific contributions were. I think something about medical research? [Oh okay I just googled him- he worked on the Human Genome Project.] Wow, that's very interesting, isn't it- evangelicals mention Francis Collins just to score points in a debate against an atheist who says "Christians are anti-intellectual", but do we know or care about what scientific things Collins actually worked on? Lol, no. We mentioned him not because we actually cared about science, but because we wanted our debate opponents to stop saying we didn't care about science.

And another thing I remember from when I was evangelical was this: Sometimes I would read about scientists who were Christians, and it was presented like "hooray, our beliefs aren't illogical, see, here are some smart people who believe in this." But sometimes I would dig deeper, and find more information about these role models, and I would find out that they didn't actually believe all the things that "real Christians" should believe. Their faith was much more nuanced than that. For example, they weren't creationists. They didn't believe Moses wrote the Pentateuch. Etc. So... they didn't meet the evangelical criteria to be "real Christians" actually. And so they couldn't really be used as evidence for "see, smart people believe these things." I remember being kinda concerned about that, back then.

---

Other writing which used "scandal" in the title

Because this is an important book related to the history of American evangelicalism, the title has inspired some other similar titles:

The Scandal of the Evangelical Heart, a 2013 post by Rachel Held Evans. It's about how she grew up always knowing all the apologetics answers- but the reason she began to question what she had been taught was because of her heart. This is very similar to my own reasons for leaving evangelicalism. 

The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience, a 2005 book by Ron Sider. I have not read this, but I know that Ron Sider was an evangelical who advocated for evangelicals to seriously follow the bible's teachings regarding helping poor people and other social-justice causes.

---

Conclusion

If you're always talking about evangelicalism, like I am, then you should read this book. Yes, definitely required reading if you are this specific type of person.

But, as I said, I feel like I didn't really *get* it. I don't even know what it would look like for evangelicals to seriously apply their beliefs in an academic sense. That would mean valuing tradition and history and the work that other people have done, long before us, and that comes across to me as not evangelical. Evangelicals are more about "I read this bible verse and here's how I felt about it" or "I was praying and a random thought popped into my head, maybe it's from God"- and treating these personal, emotional experiences as more real and truthful than whatever those stuffy arrogant scholars have to say. From that perspective, building on the academic work that people have been doing for hundreds of years is NOT a good thing- it means there have been hundreds of years during which that line of study could have gotten off-track, as sinful humans continue to develop it. Better to go directly to the source- directly to God, who is the Truth- ie, whatever random thoughts passed through your head while praying and/or reading the bible.

I honestly don't see any way you can be evangelical and believe that the way we advance our evangelical thinking is through work done by researchers rather than claims about "God told me this."

Well, I mean, I'm oversimplifying it a bit... In my experience, yes, evangelicals are interested in learning the meanings of ancient Greek and Hebrew words, to understand the bible better. Yes, evangelicals do believe that whatever the original Greek or Hebrew said is a better interpretation than whatever naive thought popped into your head when you read an English translation. Yes, we did believe we could get more insight into what the bible was saying if we learned about the culture it came from. And no, we didn't just believe that any thought that flittered across your mind while praying must be a message from God.

But... it wasn't like we were going to learn anything new from that kind of study. It was like, we already knew the answers, generally, and we looked up the meanings of ancient Greek words to kinda fill in some details.

And yes, we very much did believe that it was common for God to tell you something by just giving you some random thought out of the blue. A big source of evangelical anxiety is trying to figure out which random thoughts are from God and which aren't. (And some random thoughts might actually be from the devil! Watch out!)

I never realized how the "personal relationship with God" is so bound up with anti-intellectualism, so I'm glad I read this book. 

(When I think of anti-intellectualism in Christian spaces, I think of someone saying "I'm having doubts about the existence of God" and then people shaming them for even saying that out loud. People telling them the point is to "have faith" with no evidence. And yeah that kind of thinking definitely exists in evangelical spaces, but there are also a lot of evangelicals pushing back against it, saying, "God really is real, therefore our beliefs are strong enough to handle any questions you have. Ask any questions you want. It's normal to doubt." I was one of the evangelicals advocating for the right to question and doubt back then. But still, there was always a limit to it- you could ask any question you wanted, but at the end of the day you had to come back to what we already know are the "correct" beliefs.)

In the book, Noll doesn't really come right out and say "the concept of a 'personal relationship with God' is inherently anti-intellectual." He talks about historical movements which have placed emphasis on each person being able to easily understand the bible and having an "intuitive" experience of God, and how that came along with de-prioritizing advanced academic work based on evangelical beliefs. I'm having a hard time understanding what he would want evangelicals to do instead, because to me this is sounding like "the concept of a 'personal relationship with God' is inherently anti-intellectual" but I don't think it's possible to be evangelical and not believe that the most critical aspect of Christian faith is having a personal relationship with God.

So, in summary: This is an important book if you're interested in the history of American evangelicalism. Evangelicals have emphasized having an individual, "intuitive" experience of God, and have not applied their beliefs in more advanced, academic ways. The result is a shallow ideology which isn't able to meaningfully address new societal issues. But, I don't understand what the book wants evangelicals to do instead. Respect for history, tradition, and the work that scholars have done feels not evangelical to me.

---

Related:

I used to be a young-earth creationist 

A Bit Suspicious That "Heavenly Tourism" Confirms Everything We Already Believe

Blogaround + Happy Year of the Snake!

Happy Chinese New Year everyone! January 28 was the big night, and it is now the year of the snake!

For Chinese New Year, there is a tv show called 春晚 [chūn wǎn] (which I like to call "Chinese New Year's Rockin' Eve"). Here are the performances I liked from this year's 春晚:

Magic tricks from Lu Chen (刘谦). The first one, about swapping around the cups and chopsticks and whatever, is boring and not even really a magic trick. The second trick is really clever if you can read Chinese- I loved it! (And there's a joke at the beginning where one of the hosts (小尼) says "please give me another chance"- this is because at last year's 春晚, that same guy was one of the hosts, and Lu Chen was doing a magic trick about instructing all the audience members to move cards around in a certain way, and this guy must have messed up a step and his turned out wrong- all the other hosts got the right result at the end, except him, and this was on live tv and he just kind of pretended it was fine, but we all noticed. Anyway this year he didn't mess up, so all is good.)

Anyway, highly recommend this video if you can understand Chinese! Actually, back when I was first studying Chinese, I watched a lot of Lu Chen videos- magic tricks are a good tool for language learning, I would say, because the magician is always talking about what they are physically doing, or describing the objects they are using.

And if you want to watch something in English, here's One Republic performing "Counting Stars". This is really cool! 春晚 has had international performers before, but I don't think any of them have been, like, big famous pop stars I've actually heard of.

These dancing robots:

This song, featuring athletes from China's Olympic team:

Also, Sixth Tone has a photo roundup of public snake structures for the new year: Collage: The Year of the Snake

---

Okay now on to the blogaround links!

Here, I sorted the links. Here are the links not related to that felon:

1. New York becomes the first state to close schools for Lunar New Year (January 29)

2. AlphaMove (January 31)

---

And I sorted all the links about the latest fascist nonsense down to here. If you are too burned out, you don't have to read them. Donate to a group that supports immigrants and then do something to make yourself happy.

1. Amazon removes 'equity for Black people' and 'LGBTQ+ rights' from company policies (January 13, via) So... big companies only care about diversity and equality when it's the politically popular thing to do.

2. The Chilling Line Trump Just Crossed On Transgender People (January 29) "The attacks on transgender people are no longer cloaked in the faux respectability of “evidence,” “science,” or “protecting kids.” They never truly were, but now even the pretense has been abandoned."

3. Quakers sue to keep US immigration agents out of houses of worship (January 28) "The lawsuit by five Quaker groups said the policy was infringing their right to practice their religion by sowing fear among congregations and leading to the cancellation of services."

4. Fearing encounters with ICE, tribal leaders offer guidance to their members (January 29)

Motivated By Inerrancy Or Sexism?

Icon that says "Bible commentary." Image source.

[content note: rape]

A few days ago I published a post called David's Womanizing, which included quotes from the bible about David's 10 concubines who were raped by David's son Absalom. Here's a summary of that story: David was the king. His son, Absalom, started a rebellion and David had to flee from his palace- but he left 10 of his concubines there. Then Absalom's advisor told him it would be a good political strategy for him to have sex with David's concubines, so he did that. Later, Absalom is killed and the rebellion is over, and David comes back home. Here's what happened to the 10 concubines:

When David returned to his palace in Jerusalem, he took the ten concubines he had left to take care of the palace and put them in a house under guard. He provided for them but had no sexual relations with them. They were kept in confinement till the day of their death, living as widows.

After I published that post, I thought I'd do some googling to see if anyone else was as horrified by this bible story as I was. 

I found a few commentary websites- Precept Austin and Biblehub. Both of these contain excerpts from bible commentaries by many different writers. And... wow, I have feelings about this, I don't know why I have so many feelings, I've read plenty of commentaries before, and what I find on these sites is pretty standard commentary stuff... but... they all just read so heartless to me, and I'm shocked and saddened, wondering how these writers could be so heartless toward these 10 women.

Some commentaries put part of the blame on these women, saying they should have tried harder to resist being raped. Some commentaries say that these women could not be seen in public because it would remind people of Absalom's rebellion. Some commentaries say that they were "defiled" by Absalom and so they couldn't be sexual partners to David any more.

Here's one quote on that, but many of the other commentaries said similar things:

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Put them in ward; partly, because they had not vigorously opposed Absalom’s lustful desire, as they should have done, even with the hazard of their lives; and partly, lest the sight of them should renew the memory of Absalom’s filthiness, and of their own and David’s reproach, which it was fit to bury in-perpetual oblivion; and partly, because it might appear incestuous to have to do with those who had been defiled by his own son; and partly, because as David would not, so it was not now convenient that any other man should have any conjugal conversation with them.

I just... how can someone say something like this? Bible scholars sitting there and writing that these women couldn't be seen in public... like for them to even exist isn't proper because then people will have to think about Absalom. Like they can't be people any more, they can only be ugly reminders of what Absalom did.

(This reminds me of how Monica Lewinsky says people have advised her that she should change her name- because her name is also the name of the scandal. Like there's something wrong with her simply existing in public after what happened to her. She says she will not change her name, and asks why nobody ever says Bill Clinton should change his name.)

At the same time though, I don't know enough about what life was like for kings' concubines to know if this is actually a worse situation for them. Is it worse to be required to have sex with the king, or to not be allowed to have sex at all (or to go out in public, apparently)? Note that this meant they could not have children. Either way it's not great for them. It's not like they all had great marriages with David and then Absalom came along and so David suddenly ended his good healthy relationships with these women. Either way, their having sex or not having sex was full of political meaning, and was never about what they wanted. So, I actually don't know if this was a worse outcome for them or not.

But this story just made me think... what if you're a straight man, and your wife gets raped- would you say "well I'll do the bare minimum to provide for her financially, so no one can accuse me of being unfair to her, but we won't have much of a relationship any more, obviously"? How about, like, having some compassion for her? Why is the commentators' only concern about how it makes David look?

(I mean, I know that's not really a good comparison, because what the bible is talking about here is totally different from how we think of marriage today. I wish Christians would acknowledge that, instead of claiming there's some "biblical definition of marriage" which we supposedly still follow.)

So that's when it hit me- these commentary writers really don't care about women, do they? This is just blatant sexism. I mean... I've often heard feminists talk about how the bible is mainly focused on men, how a lot of famous theologians are men, etc, and I never really paid much attention to that, because there's nothing inherently wrong with talking about men, or learning from men. The issue is when women are explicitly being excluded, and typically you can't know for sure that's happening, you can just look at the relative numbers of men and women and feel a bit suspicious about how it ended up that way.

But... I don't know why, something about this just strikes me as "wow they explicitly don't care about women." To discuss rape victims in these kind of terms, like "well yeah then David couldn't have a relationship with them any more because it would look bad." 

But then I thought, maybe it's not sexism, maybe this heartlessness comes out of a belief in biblical inerrancy. You believe that everything in the bible is true, so then if you read something bad in the bible, you have to accept it and just keep reading without thinking too much. That's why the tone of these commentaries is like "well, here's what the logic would have been, in their society, to justify treating these women that way- okay keep it moving, keep it moving, next verse!"

But wait, no, inerrancy wouldn't apply in that way in this passage. Inerrancy would come into play for passages like Deuteronomy 20:16-18, where God commands his people to "completely destroy" all the people in the promised land. To commit genocide. If you believe in inerrancy, you have to believe that God really said this, and that since God said it, it must be right. You have to believe that genocide is right in this case.

This 2 Samuel passage about David is different. Even if you believe in inerrancy, you don't have to believe that David was right. You can say "yes, the bible is inerrantly recording something that really happened. But what David did here was wrong." See, this verse doesn't say anything about God's opinion. God can't be wrong, but other bible characters can be wrong. In fact, that's one of the go-to talking points that inerrantists use. Someone comes along and makes the argument "there's a lot of violence in the bible" and then the inerrantist answers "the bible isn't condoning that. These passages are descriptive, not prescriptive. People aren't perfect! A lot of these bible stories are about teaching us what NOT to do." Which holds up logically if it's something like this, something that the bible says David did but doesn't mention God approving of it. That argument doesn't work when the bible explicitly says it was God who told them to commit violence, for example.

And actually, there was a part of one of the commentaries that said David did wrong:

David came to his house at Jerusalem, and the king took the ten women, the concubines whom he had left to keep the house, and placed them under guard and provided them with sustenance, but did not go in to them - David seems to respond a bit in the flesh in this passage (in my opinion) especially since the act committed against these women was the consequence of David's sin! Oh, the ever widening circle of our secret sins! Beware! After all who had left the concubines in Jerusalem? David had. And who had heard and should have pondered the prophecy by Nathan about his wives (2Sa 12:11-12+). David had heard this prophecy, and theoretically should have taken the concubines (who were considered lesser wives) out of harm's way. Of course it was a prophecy from God and every prophecy is fulfilled perfectly. So one must propose that David had to leave them to fulfill the prophecy. I don't think he knowingly did that, but somehow was caused to forget Nathan's prophecy. In either event, David seems to react strongly against the 10 women who would have had no choice but to surrender to Absalom raping them! They are collateral damage of David's sin with Bathsheba and against Uriah!!!  

Our sins like David's can affect so many others in so many different ways!

This bit is good in that it says David "seems to respond a bit in the flesh"- this is Christianese for "his behavior is sinful and not what God would have wanted." Also it says "the 10 women who would have had no choice but to surrender to Absalom raping them"- good job not blaming the victims for being raped. Seems like that's a low bar to clear, but several of the other commentaries failed to clear it.

So this commentary writer has thought a bit about what it was like for these women, and how David did not treat them right. But the passage I pasted there only talks about that a little bit; its overall point is discussing how this fulfills the prophecy from 2 Samuel 12:11-12, and making a bland point about how our sin affects other people. 2 Samuel 12 is after David rapes Bathsheba and murders her husband Uriah, and the prophet Nathan comes to David and tells him that was wrong, and "Before your very eyes I will take your wives and give them to one who is close to you, and he will sleep with your wives in broad daylight." So now, look at that, Absalom rapes David's wives, we've come full circle, the prophecy is fulfilled, score a point for inerrancy.

Heartless. 

Even though this commentary excerpt has some compassion for these women, it's mostly framed in the context of "did David do the right or wrong thing here?" 

Oh and then that web page moves into talking about "Was David Right to Take Concubines?" which is all about the laws that God gave about marriage, and contains nothing about how the concubines were actually treated. It's all about examining whether or not polygamy breaks God's laws. Nothing about how it affects actual people. That's the inerrancy mindset right there.

But then I thought, maybe there's a third explanation for why these commentaries come across so heartless toward these 10 concubines. It's not necessarily about sexism, or inerrancy- it's about the purpose of a commentary. Commentaries are intended to be resources that pastors can use when they write sermons. And sermons are about "how to be a good Christian" or "here are some things you should believe about God." Caring about these concubines doesn't really fit into that. So the commentaries spend very little time on it.

Oh.

So, my whole life, I've had the wrong idea about the purpose of a commentary.

Uh, let's back up, because I'm really deep in the weeds here. I read lots of commentaries when I was evangelical, but that's not really a normal thing that evangelicals do. Pastors do that. Bible study leaders do that. The average evangelical does not. 

The average evangelical talks a lot about how we're all supposed to read our bibles every day, and we feel guilty for not doing it enough. But no one's walking around in church saying "we should all read more commentaries." 

I took all that "read the bible every day" stuff really seriously. Evangelicals are always talking about how it's so important to read the bible and know the bible and memorize the bible and base your whole life on the bible, but very few actually follow through on that. I did. I did read the bible every day, back then, and I often encountered weird things in the bible, and I felt like "this is weird, I need help to understand it better" and so I would go look for commentaries to help.

Commentaries are useful in the sense that they do at least have some kind of comment on every single verse. It may not be that helpful, it may not acknowledge the WTFery of the verse in question, it may leave me with even more questions than I originally had, but at least it will say something. That's better than all the sermons and Sunday school lessons which totally ignore all the super-weird passages in the bible.

But now I'm suddenly realizing, if I want to "understand the bible better", commentaries are not really the right thing. Commentaries are for "I want to write a sermon based on this bible passage. I want to spin this such that it can teach us something about how to be a good Christian."

So... what I actually needed was not a commentary, but something more... academic? I seem to remember occasionally coming across academic papers about the historical context of something in the bible, and they weren't trying to make a point about "here's what this bible verse can teach us about how to live a good Christian life." They were just, you know, talking about a thing.

The awkward thing about an academic treatment of the bible, though, is that it won't be from a biblical-inerrancy perspective! So good evangelicals aren't really allowed to read that.

And what I need now is not really a commentary, but maybe something more along the lines of a feminist reading of the bible. That's why I'm enjoying the book "Womanist Midrash" so much.

But wait, back up, I seem to be saying here "when I was evangelical, I just wanted to understand the bible better, so I read commentaries, but that wasn't really the right thing, because commentaries are written from the perspective 'here's what this bible passage teaches us about how to be a good Christian.'" Uh, hello, when I was evangelical, I *did* believe that all bible passages had something to teach us about how to be a good Christian. I *did* have that mindset when I read the bible. 

Every day I did my daily bible reading, and I believed that I would read something that would inspire me and connect me with God. And when I felt depressed, or lonely, or had doubts, or other negative emotions, I would open the bible and expect that God would help me feel better through reading it.

And it all fell apart when I started to question evangelicalism... I would try to do my daily bible reading, and over and over I would get stuck on this or that weird thing. I would come into it thinking I'm gonna open the bible for 10 minutes and get some inspiring message from God, and instead all I could think about was how so many little things in the passage struck me as wrong. (I wrote about this in 2015: Why on Earth Did I Ever Expect the Bible to be Anything Other Than Incredibly Weird?)

It used to be, when I was feeling bad, I would take my bible and open it and read something- I had a few favorites that I would often read in situations like this- and it would help me feel better. And I took that as evidence that the bible truly is from God. But I'm ex-evangelical now; I don't think that way any more. 

I still have favorite bible passages. There are bible passages I love, that I find very inspiring. But I'm very aware that I picked them out of a sea of, well, everything. A sea of problematic stories and ancient misogynistic laws and violence and genocide. They don't serve as evidence that the bible is "God-breathed"- they just show that all throughout history, there have been at least some people who have had really profound and inspiring things to say about love and justice.

So. Wow this has become a long blog post- can we bring this back to David's concubines somehow? Why do the commentaries care so little about what life was like for them, and the injustice of David responding to their being raped by ending his relationships with them? Is it because of sexism- the commentators are men who just really don't care about women? Is it because of inerrancy- the commentators need to keep their belief that everything the bible condones is right? Is it because of the whole purpose behind writing commentaries in the first place- they're meant to help frame the bible in a way that lends itself to teaching us how to live our lives- and caring about David's concubines doesn't fit into that purpose at all?

I remember when I first began to encounter feminist readings of the bible, how my mind was blown by things that had been there the whole time- I knew these stories, I knew these characters, but I had just never thought of them in that way. I guess I had been held back by sexism, inerrancy, and the belief that the bible is meant to teach us lessons on how to live our lives.

---

Related:

Womanist Midrash

David's Womanizing

The Worst Bible Story 

Why on Earth Did I Ever Expect the Bible to be Anything Other Than Incredibly Weird? 

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

Blogaround

1. I've seen a lot of people on the internet talking about this, and I think it's really important: You don't have to burn yourself out constantly being horrified by everything the orange antichrist is doing. It doesn't actually help anyone if you read every news article and feel bad all the time. Figure out a tangible action you can take to help people (for example, donating money to trans people), and do that, instead of trying to keep up with all the news.

Soooo you don't have to read any of these links, if it's not good for your mental health. Go do something nice for a trans person instead.

2. A German Eye On Elon Musk's Hitler Salute (Yes, That's A Hitler Salute) (January 22) "The gesture speaks for itself; it's documented on video."

3. Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde confronts Trump in sermon (January 21) "Towards the end of her sermon Budde said, 'I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away. And that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land.'"

Yes! Love this!

But wow the reaction from MAGA land. My goodness. They hear the *actual teachings of Christianity* and they post screeds on social media about how it's extremist "woke" Trump-hating political ideology. These people are gonna be all *surprised pikachu* on that day when Jesus says to them "I never knew you." 

In particular, the orange antichrist called Budde's sermon "nasty", which, uh, what? She wasn't nasty at all. Her remarks were extremely polite, she didn't say anything bad about him at all, she just asked him to have mercy on vulnerable people who are scared- specifically, gay people, trans people, and immigrants. He hears that as an attack on himself. That says a lot about him.

Additional links on this: The Bishop Who Pleaded With Trump: ‘Was Anyone Going to Say Anything?’ and Bishop Mariann Budde tells NPR 'I won't apologize' for sermon addressing Trump

4. I love the Washington Post's new mission statement and so should you (January 16) "We do not speak truth to power; we do not uncover scandals by those put in positions of public trust, we do not have anything there about Facts or Accuracy or Democracy or Information. All of it is sidelined to bring you an almost violently generic mission statement scraped off any one of hundreds of television and movie pitches."

5. Judge blocks Trump’s ‘blatantly unconstitutional’ executive order that aims to end birthright citizenship (January 23) "'Where were the lawyers' when the decision to sign the executive order was made, the judge asked. He said that it 'boggled' his mind that a member of the bar would claim the order was constitutional."

6. Reddit won’t interfere with users revolting against X with subreddit bans (January 23, via) "Since Tuesday, hundreds of subreddits have discussed and/or implemented bans against the site formerly called Twitter, as reported by 404 Media. Dozens of subreddits have already agreed to disallow the sharing of any links to X, with moderators (volunteer Reddit users) agreeing to enforce the bans."

David's Womanizing

David creepily watching Bathsheba. Image source.

I've been writing some posts recently about King David, inspired by the book "Womanist Midrash"- about David and Michal, and David and Abigail. In this post, I just want to post a few quotes from the book, about how David had a huge number of wives.

From page 203:

There is a perception among my students that David had a couple of wives, but certainly not a couple dozen, and that Solomon's legendary marriage volume is de novo and not a generational pattern. These commonly held assumptions do not hold up under close reading of the biblical text. There are ten named individual women to whom David is either engaged or married or with whom he fathers children-- in addition to at least two different groups of women whose numbers and names go unrecorded. These numbers regularly come as a shock to students and congregants. Most are aware of David's notorious transgression with Bathsheba but are not familiar with the extent to which the Bible chronicles his womanizing. Table 1 on the next page is a quick and dirty list of David's women.

The collective categories "Saul's former wives" and "other primary wives and secondary wives taken in Jerusalem" could have included a handful, dozens, or hundreds of women on a Solomonic scale. There is simply no way to know how many marriage and sexual partners David had.

From page 211:

That Maacah, Haggith, Abital, and Eglah join Abigail and Ahinoam, marry David, and give birth to his children at Hebron means David has at least six wives with whom he is living, sleeping, and making babies before he ever lays eyes on Bathsheba; this is in addition to his banished but still legal and accessible wife, Michal. What was life like for all of them?

From page 197:

See 2 Sam. [12]:8, where God through Nathan acknowledges giving David "his master's women," as though that should have kept him from having Bathsheba abducted so that he could rape her.

---

And a couple bible references about David's wives who were raped by David's son Absalom:

2 Samuel 15:14-16

Then David said to all his officials who were with him in Jerusalem, “Come! We must flee, or none of us will escape from Absalom. We must leave immediately, or he will move quickly to overtake us and bring ruin on us and put the city to the sword.”

...

The king set out, with his entire household following him; but he left ten concubines to take care of the palace.

2 Samuel 16:20-22

Absalom said to Ahithophel, “Give us your advice. What should we do?”

Ahithophel answered, “Sleep with your father’s concubines whom he left to take care of the palace. Then all Israel will hear that you have made yourself obnoxious to your father, and the hands of everyone with you will be more resolute.” So they pitched a tent for Absalom on the roof, and he slept with his father’s concubines in the sight of all Israel.

2 Samuel 20:3 

When David returned to his palace in Jerusalem, he took the ten concubines he had left to take care of the palace and put them in a house under guard. He provided for them but had no sexual relations with them. They were kept in confinement till the day of their death, living as widows.

---

Follow-up post: Motivated By Inerrancy Or Sexism?

---

Posts about the book "Womanist Midrash" by Wilda C. Gafney:

Womanist Midrash 
The Slavery We Ignore in the Book of Exodus 
The Second-Worst Bible Story 
Michal wasn't here for David's worship, and now neither am I
Why did I think David was the good guy in the story of Abigail? 
David's Womanizing

---

Related:

Bathsheba's Son

Blogaround

1. Mark Zuckerberg Preps for More Ethnic Cleansing (January 15) "You may be left wondering what the big deal is. After all, YOU are so smart and savvy and cool that you haven’t used a Meta product since Facebook opened its doors to people who didn’t even have an official university email address. Allow me to take you back to 2017, when security forces in Myanmar conducted a genocide, butchering the Rohingya ethnic minority, resulting in thousands raped, tens of thousands dead, and hundreds of thousands forced from their homes to become refugees."

2. Trump to make historic move toward revoking birthright citizenship (January 20) "Trump wants to reinterpret the phrasing 'subject to the jurisdiction thereof' to mean that the federal government would not recognize automatic birthright citizenship for children born in the U.S. to parents without legal status, incoming White House officials told reporters on a call on Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss upcoming actions."

I've read some other articles which clarify this isn't *only* about children whose parents don't have legal status- it also applies if their parents are legal immigrants on a temporary visa. 

Anyway, NOT COOL to target children like this. WTF? 

I support all immigrants. As I've said before, I was shocked to my core when I found out that some people- many people- most people- just aren't allowed to travel to certain countries, just because of where they were born. The US simply will not give visas to people from certain countries, because those countries are judged to be so poor and desperate that there's a significant chance those people might overstay their visas rather than going back. That's what radicalized me. I always took for granted that I can choose to live in any country I want to- turns out I have that opportunity because I'm an English-speaking American. Everyone should be able to live in whatever country they want to.

(Note, though, that many countries don't have birthright citizenship. China doesn't have birthright citizenship. But the situation in China is completely different than the US. The US is "a nation of immigrants," and birthright citizenship is one of the things that makes America great.)

And another NPR article on immigration: Migrants left in despair at the border as asylum system shuts down (January 20) "A few dozen migrants had already scored appointments. Some of them had waited almost a year in Mexico, applying every day for the chance to cross the border legally. And then, within minutes, their dream of making a new life in the U.S. was undone."

I'm so mad about this. What does the orange antichrist know about trying so hard, traveling so far, going to a completely foreign place, hoping to make a better life for your family? He doesn't know anything.

But anyway, instead of being mad, let's donate to RAICES or the ACLU. Fight the legal battles to protect immigrants.

3. Kent Hovind’s latest ‘wife’ says bye-bye (January 16)

4. A Year of Empty Threats and a “Smokescreen” Policy: How the State Department Let Israel Get Away With Horrors in Gaza (January 15, via)

5. Former head of Planned Parenthood Cecile Richards has died (January 20) 

6. Photos: Families reunite as the Israel-Hamas ceasefire takes effect (January 19)

7. A Line By Line Analysis Of Trump's Big Anti-Trans Executive Order (January 22) I'm really worried about this too.

Fake Documents

Kids playing outside at a kindergarten in China. Image source.

So, my son recently started kindergarten. In China, kindergarten (幼儿园) is 3 years long, and it starts at age 3. When I was a kid in the US, I had 2 years of preschool (starting at age 3) and then 1 year of kindergarten (age 5), but in China this is combined together and called "kindergarten." The public school system in China starts with kindergarten at age 3 (though as far as I know, kindergarten in not compulsory; compulsory education in China starts at age 6). (Whereas in the US, the public school system starts at age 5, and preschool is kind of optional.)

Anyway, getting him registered for kindergarten was A Whole Thing. In China, the bureaucracy is ridiculous, and also parents are very competitive about getting their kid into "a good school." The one-child policy contributed A LOT to this competitiveness, because if you only have 1 kid, you have to really really really make sure you do everything you possibly can so that kid is successful. Parents spend a lot of money sending their kid to all kinds of extra tutoring and extracurricular activities, and kids don't have any time to just play and have a childhood. (That's my opinion...)

So anyway, we are in Shanghai. Shanghai has a bunch of different districts, with varying levels of how hard it is to get your kid into a public school. In some districts, parents were told not to even bother applying if you're not a Chinese citizen and you don't own your home, because you'll be so far down the list that you definitely won't be able to get into a public kindergarten. (Have to do private instead.) But where we live, there are (comparatively) less people, so we didn't have to deal with any restrictions like that.

Because, yeah, there's a whole hierarchy. A whole priority order of which kids get into public school. It goes something like this:

1. Kid has a Shanghai hukou for the district the school is in
2. Kid has a Shanghai hukou, but the address on the hukou is a different district (for example, if you own property elsewhere in Shanghai, and your hukou address is registered there, but that's not where you actually live or where you want to send your kid to school)
3. Kid has a hukou from somewhere else in China (not Shanghai)
4. Kid is from another country or Hong Kong/ Taiwan/ Macau

Basically it's like that. I didn't check that the details are exactly right, so don't take it as literally true, but this is the basic idea. There's a hierarchy, based on your hukou, and people with a Shanghai hukou have more rights to get into Shanghai's public schools. Also I think whether you own an apartment in Shanghai is a factor in this hierarchy.

Ah, now I have to explain what a hukou (户口) is: It's an official document that all Chinese citizens are supposed to have, which lists the names of all the members of your household, and your address. Ie, this document says what city you are "officially" a resident of. In Shanghai, tons of people come from other cities to work, and their hukou is still registered in their home city. (Apparently if you meet certain requirements- like you work for a certain number of years, pay taxes in Shanghai, have a high enough salary- you can transfer your hukou to Shanghai.) Anyway, for accessing public services like medical care and the public school system, people with a Shanghai hukou have more rights than people without.

Anyway, yeah, this is a problem in China, the inequality between big cities vs small cities vs countryside. But people say the hukou system is "necessary" because the population is so high, so you have to put limits on who can access public services. Or something. 

(And I've heard that in the countryside, some families had multiple kids even though they were under the one-child policy. [Note that the one-child policy ended in 2016 and now China is trying to encourage people to have more kids.] The kids who were born after the first kid weren't able to get a hukou or ID card or documents like that. Which is a huge problem.)

ANYWAY, my kid has US citizenship and a US passport, and also has Chinese citizenship, but doesn't have a hukou because... okay it's so complicated and if I explain the whole thing, I'll never get to the actual point of this blog post. Bureaucracy! China doesn't recognize dual citizenship, but the reality is that my kid has both Chinese and US citizenship, so what does that mean? It means more bureaucracy!

So that was a big problem, trying to figure out what category Square Root would fit into when applying for kindergarten, and which documents he needed to submit. Because for each of the categories in my list above, there's a set of documents that you're supposed to bring, and he doesn't have the complete set for *any* of the categories. International kids are supposed to submit their foreign passport, and their Chinese visa which is in that passport. Well, Square Root has a US passport but he doesn't have a Chinese visa because he's a Chinese citizen so he doesn't need one (and China won't issue him a visa anyway because he's a citizen). 

So we called various officials from the school, education department, and immigration office, to ask them how to handle this situation, and they don't know. Like, isn't it their job to know? Seems like it would be! But nope, they are all totally confused by the existence of a half-Chinese kid. 

Eventually we came up with a set of documents that was acceptable, to register him under the "international" classification. So, thank goodness, but wow that was really stressful.

But then there was a second problem, which is what I actually want to blog about there. I titled this post "Fake Documents"; this second problem is where the fake documents come into play.

See, our second problem was this: You need to have some document proving you live at the address that corresponds to the school you are applying for. There is a public kindergarten right across the street from our apartment complex, and we really wanted him to go to that one, because it's right there. So convenient! Anyway, each public school has a specific geographical area assigned to it (this is called 对口 in Chinese). Our apartment complex is in the designated area for this public school. So far so good, right?

For some reason, I thought that since we live here, we would have no issue fulfilling the "we live here" requirement. I don't know why I thought that; that's a real rookie mistake. In China, it's often much more complicated than that. Turns out that, to prove that you live there, you need to either have a property ownership document (if you own the home) or you need some "rental agreement" document issued by some certain government office.

Now, silly me, I thought that since we signed a contract to rent this apartment, that contract would be the document we would use to prove we live here. LOLOLOL! Nope! It's more complicated than that!

No, you have to go with your landlord down to some certain government office, and they will issue you a document that says you and your kid live at this address.

(Note: The landlord owns 1 individual apartment, not the whole building. I was confused about this when I first came to China.)

So, my husband contacted our landlord to say we need him to come and bring his ID card and property ownership document, and do this for us.

The landlord says he "can't."

And there was some back-and-forth between my husband, the landlord, the apartment agent, and the government office that issues these documents. Trying to work through the reasons why the landlord supposedly "can't" and make it work somehow.

Because, in China, a lot of times when people say they "can't" do something that you need them to do for you, it actually means "they can, but they don't want to, but if you inconvenience them enough about it, then they will do it." (Reminds me of the parable of the persistent widow.)

Eventually it came down to this: If the government office issues this document, they will not issue another one for the same address for the next 5 years. This (supposedly) is to prevent property owners from letting all of their relatives and friends pretend to live at their address, just to get into a good school. So the landlord felt like, what if in the future, he has a grandchild who is going to live in this apartment and go to public school? (I don't even know if he has a grandchild or not.) So that's the reason that he refused in the end.

So... then what? If you don't have this document, then you just can't go to public school. Do we have to move...? My husband and I spent a little bit of time searching for legal avenues that we could use to force the landlord to do this for us. (Some of the moms in the WeChat groups suggested threatening to report your landlord for tax evasion- because it's common that landlords aren't paying taxes on the rental income, even though they're supposed to.) But we couldn't come up with anything workable.

At this point, you should be thinking "wow this system is really broken." Yes! You're right!

So anyway. Then the apartment agent said he found a different landlord who owns an apartment in our complex. This landlord is willing to go with us to the government office and pretend we are renting his apartment. For a fee, of course! The fee that this landlord was asking was less than the price of 1 month of private school. 

So that's what we did. We got this document with a fake address on it (still in our same apartment complex though) and used that to register Square Root for kindergarten. And it worked, now he attends the public kindergarten across the street, and it's going well.

So what I actually want to blog about is the ethical questions about this.

When my husband and I were discussing whether to use a fake address, my concerns were these:

1. Are we going to get in trouble?
2. Are we going to have to use this fake address on other documents, and it's going to be a pain trying to keep track of which documents have our real address and which ones have our fake address, and will lead to further bureaucracy headaches in the future?

I wasn't like "no, this is out of the question because it's unethical to bribe a landlord and submit a document that claims we live at an address that's not our real address." I wasn't concerned about the ethics of it, because I could see how broken the system was. A system that broken is not the arbiter of right and wrong.

Maybe in Shanghai, if you rent your home rather than owning it, you just don't have rights to send your kid to public school. You don't have that right, you can only send your kid to public school if your landlord deigns to allow it. Is that the way it's supposed to work?

(My favorite quote from my husband during this process was "I have paid taxes in Shanghai for 10 years, and my landlord decides whether I can send my kid to public school?")

Sometimes I almost say we "had to" get this fake document, but the reality is we didn't "have to." We could have said, "oh, okay, our landlord has decided that Square Root can't go to public school, and that's just the way it is" and then either moved to a different apartment with a different landlord, or paid tons of money for private school and spent a lot of time every day dropping him off and picking him up from the private school (which is not across the street from our apartment).

So, you see we didn't "have to", but we were very very strongly incentivized to do it. And I've heard of a lot of situations in China where, because the bureaucracy is so huge and ridiculous, people are strongly incentivized to lie to the bureaucracy, like we did. Not because people are trying to cheat and steal or whatever, but because we are just trying to live our normal lives and do completely reasonable things, but the system is heartless and nonsensical, and we feel we deserve better than however things happen to shake out when we follow the rules.

My husband told me this isn't a China thing, this is a "this is what the real world is like" thing. I don't know; I have spent almost all my adult life in China, so there are often things I never was aware of before, which feel to me like "this is how it is in China" but perhaps are actually "this is what being an adult is like."

It's an example of privilege, though. If you're able to live your life and you never get into a situation where you need to lie to a giant heartless bureaucracy, just to get the same rights that everyone else has- that's an indication that you are relatively privileged.

What's interesting to me, though, is that it seemed like nobody actually cared if the address on our document is indeed the actual address of the apartment we are actually renting and living in. The teacher at the school who was helping us seemed to have an approach like "as long as you come up with some configuration of documents that the system will accept, you're good"- like, not caring if those documents were true, just that we had the documents. And also, at another step in the process we needed to get a different document from our apartment management, and my husband told them "we live in building X, but we are using an address in building Y for this, see, we have a contract in building Y" (which was the fake contract from our fake landlord), and the apartment management just totally did not care at all. They asked 0 questions about "why are you using this address if you actually live in building X?" All that mattered was that their policy says they can issue this document that we need if we show we have an apartment contract, and so, that's what they did.

And my husband told some friends about this whole thing, and when he got to part about "the fee that the fake landlord was asking for was less than the price of 1 month of private school" they were like "oh that's great!" like so happy to hear how well this worked out for us. Nobody was like "uh isn't this a little shady?" Like it's just a funny story and thank goodness it all worked out in the end, and there's no, like... ethical questions about it...?

It seems to me like, in China, the bureaucracy is so extensive, and so focused on little tiny details that have to be exactly right or else they can't accept the documents you submit, that everyone has run into absurd problems with it. (Which is one of the reasons I'm glad I didn't change my last name when I got married- can you imagine always having to explain that to random government employees? "Yes my name is different than on my old passport/ diploma/ etc but I am the same person" NOPE their system does not have an option for that [though I've heard you can get your consulate to issue a document officially stating that you are the same person- perhaps that will work].)  Everyone has been in that situation where you just don't have the right fapiao (which is a specific type of receipt you need if you're going to get reimbursed for something) so you're just out of luck. And therefore there's sort of this awareness that these bureaucracy rules are not the definition of "right" and "wrong." Instead, you do what you have to do to make it work for you. 

My view is more like, these systems are set up to benefit society as a whole, and it's not good when people decide "the rules shouldn't apply to me because [reasons]." But here in China, when you see enough little nitpicky bureaucracy headaches, perhaps it's not possible to believe that those rules "benefit society." And yes, I am sort of saying "the rules shouldn't apply to us because we really do live in this apartment complex and we really should have the right to send our kid to the public school across the street, it's just that our landlord is being a jerk- and the fake address is in the same apartment complex as our real address so what difference does it make?" I realize I am "making an excuse", and you don't have to agree that it's ethical to do what we did.

But, I want to tell you, there's more to it than just "well you shouldn't use a fake document, that's just completely out of the question, because it's unethical." It's not right to view the situation in such simplistic terms. If you view it that way, you're saying that this system has the power to define what's ethical and what's not. This system, which allows landlords to refuse to let renters use their address to get into public school. Really? That system? That's the one you need to obey in order to be "ethical"? 

Back when I was evangelical and "on fire for God", I definitely believed lying was a sin. (Though conveniently omitting certain facts- in order to give the impression that something false is true- I thought was okay depending on the situation. Because it doesn't technically fit the definition of lying.) I thought if I was in a situation where it seemed like the best option was to lie, that would be an example of "temptation." And, the bible says, "No temptation has seized you except that which is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out, so you can stand up under it." So, because lying would be a sin, I needed to "trust God" and not lie, even though everything about the practical reality of the situation screamed that it was a bad idea. Somehow, God would work things out.

I don't believe that any more. I mean, just to name 1 example, we have a God who allowed millions of people to die of covid. You really think a God as hands-off as that is going around carefully making sure that no one is harmed by their naive conviction that "lying is a sin, regardless of the situation"?

So. Yeah. We registered our kid for kindergarten using a document that had a fake address on it, because our landlord refused to give us a document with our real address. I won't say that we "had to", because we did have other options: move, or send our kid to a private school which would be way more expensive and far from our home. I think it's okay that we did this, even though it's lying- because the system is set up with so many layers of bureaucracy, which often trips up people who really are trying to follow the rules and do the right thing.

And, you don't have to agree with me, but at least I want you to know that you can't view it like it's as simple as "lying is wrong, and that's that." You have to recognize that there exist systems and societal structures which are so broken that sometimes the right thing to do is to lie to them.

---

Related:

Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, and Me

Perfect Number Watches VeggieTales "The Ballad of Little Joe" (2003)

Blogaround

1. What does it mean that AI is “remixing existing work”? (January 13) "What does that even mean?"

2. Zendaya and Tom Holland Are Engaged! (January 6) 

3. With a TikTok Ban Looming, Users Flee to Chinese App ‘RedNote’ (January 13) "As of Monday, Xiaohongshu was the number one most-downloaded app in Apple’s US App Store, despite the fact that it doesn’t even have an official English name."

I wrote this comment about it on Pillowfort:

Lollll I'm in China so I have to weigh in on this. (I'm American, my husband is Chinese.) I haven't used xiaohongshu but my husband has it on his phone and has used it very occasionally.

So last night my husband hands me his phone and shows me how his whole xiaohongshu feed is all Americans- "tiktok refugees." And then I get to work this morning and my Chinese colleagues are talking about "why are there a bunch of foreigners on xiaohongshu all of a sudden?"

I find the whole thing extremely funny!

I've typically seen xiaohongshu described as a Chinese equivalent to Instagram. It's known for having mostly women users, and people use it to post about their lifestyle/ travel/ things like that. (The linked article does a good job describing it.) My husband says it's mainly used by the people who have enough money to travel and who live in the biggest cities in China, so it doesn't show what the "average" Chinese person's life is like.

When we wanted to take our daughter to get pictures taken, we searched for a local photographer on xiaohongshu. It's useful for that because businesses post there to advertise. And one time we took a cruise to Japan, and we were looking for information on what to do in the various Japanese cities we docked at- we searched on xiaohongshu and found posts by other Chinese tourists, showing interesting things you can do in the area near the dock. Really useful and practical, with maps and photos. Xiaohongshu is good for things like that.

And over the past few days that this has been going on, my husband has been showing me a lot of videos of Americans talking about the things they've learned about normal life for Chinese users of xiaohongshu. Americans are finding out that the cost of living is SO MUCH LOWER in China than in the US. Chinese people finding out about frankly dystopian aspects of US society, like school lunch debt, kids in school saying the pledge of allegiance every day, people in the midst of a medical emergency asking everyone to NOT call an ambulance because it would cost thousands of dollars... and so on.

I think this is great. Just normal people talking about their normal lives. To show you what is really going on, which isn't like what you see in the news or the way politicians talk about China. Seeing that the problems we have in the US aren't inevitable- there are other countries which simply don't have those problems. A better world is possible.

In some of the videos from American tiktok users talking about what they learned about China, though, I'm seeing them making statements which very much oversimplify the situation. (Which is not their fault I guess- it's their first time finding out about these things, so obviously they don't understand all the details.) For example, talking about how in China you can buy a home... uh... what... in reality, it's SO EXPENSIVE to buy a home in big cities in China. We're talking about a husband and wife getting their parents on both sides to contribute their life savings, that's how expensive it is, and that's seen as normal. (And there's nonsense gender roles involved in this too- people talk about how a man has to own an apartment or else no woman would agree to marry him, ugh. In practical terms though I think both partners are contributing to the cost- but people always *say* it's a requirement for the man.) 

And also, it's normal for a mortgage to be WAYYY HIGHER than the price of renting an equivalent apartment. I was super confused when I heard this is the case in Shanghai- isn't a mortgage supposed to be lower than renting, because when you rent you're also paying for the landlord to do maintenance if necessary? That's what the typical financial advice in the US says. But in China people view buying a home as an investment. People will buy an apartment and just leave it empty because the money you could make on rent is not really that much in comparison. Personally I feel like it's a bad idea to buy an apartment as an investment, because what if the market then goes down? 

(I mean, the housing market in Shanghai is absurd though- maybe this is not true of smaller cities.)

But I think the American tiktok users were excited about how China doesn't require homeowners to pay property tax every year. And Chinese users were super confused about the concept of property tax. And like, somehow that message mutated into "people in China can buy homes and everything is wonderful."

And the cost of living is much lower in China than in the US, and for someone like me who works as an engineer, that's great- my salary is lower than what I would get in the US, but it's much higher than the average salary for an average person in Shanghai. So because the average salary is so low, I'm not sure how much it really *helps* that the cost of living is low (in absolute terms compared to US dollars). 

But anyway, I think it would be great if these Americans stick around on xiaohongshu and keep learning more about the world.

4. Democrats Rail Against "GOP Child Predator Empowerment Act" (January 16) "What followed was a series of Democratic representatives hammering the same point home with fiery rhetoric. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez railed against the notion that the bill was about protecting women and girls, stating, 'Republicans, who have voted consistently against the Violence Against Women Act, who have taken the rights of all women to have control over their own body, who as women are bleeding out in parking lots, now want to pretend today that they care about women… And why? To open up genital inspection on little girls across this country in the name of attacking trans girls. We have two words. Not today.'"

See, THIS is what I want to see. Democrats actually taking a stand for trans people. Normally what I see in news stories in Republicans taking a strong stand that trans people are disgusting sexual predators, and Democrats kinda waffling around like "uh I don't know, maybe it's politically beneficial to throw trans people under the bus?" and "yeah I guess I'm not really supposed to say this but I do feel uncomfortable with my daughters playing sports with biological males." Come on! 

This is a clear moral issue, not something to be embarrassed about. Trans people are just normal people who just want to go to the bathroom like everybody else. For sports, let's be reasonable about it and base it on actual scientific evidence, not just ban trans people entirely. It is DISGUSTING that Republicans are spending so much energy attacking this tiny group of people.

5. 'Concerns About A Stronger-Than-Expected Economy' Is A Real CNN Thing We Just Read (January 12) 

6. Resentment vs. gratitude: from parking spaces to ASL (January 14) "I suppose they can shoehorn this into the generic category of a “my tax dollars are being spent on other people who aren’t me, personally” complaint."

So, some right-wing weirdos think there shouldn't be ASL interpreters on tv during the broadcasts about the fires. I mean... this is so absurd, but I feel like I kind of understand it, because I grew up around Republicans and they often made little comments about how exhausting it is that we constantly have to be "politically correct" about some new thing. (Yeah back then it was called "politically correct" instead of "woke.") The logic goes like this: The way things are now is fine for regular people. And now apparently we have to change it, we're not allowed to say certain things, we have to hear "press 2 for Spanish" on the phone, it's like there's always another group we have to "be inclusive" of, and it's just too much. All these things are meaningless- they're just things that we're told we have to do now, otherwise we're not "politically correct" but there's no actual reason for any of it. Just a bunch of inconveniences to regular people. Enough is enough.

And then I found out, those things that we labelled as "politically-correct nonsense"- those things actually matter for people who are affected by them. They are real people. This isn't just some pointless contest about who can be the most politically correct. 

The argument only makes sense if you think deaf people don't actually benefit from having ASL interpreters on tv. Or if you think that they matter so little compared to "regular people" that they should just have to rely on imperfect closed-captioning, in order to not potentially inconvenience any "regular people" by reminding us of their existence. Once you realize that they are real people and ASL helps them a lot, the whining from these MAGA types comes across as obviously ridiculous. 

And, I mean, when I was a child it was understandable that I bought into that, because my Republican role models were very negative about efforts to "be inclusive", and I had to believe that they had a good reason for that- but if you're an adult and you still can't grasp that people who are different from you are people... I don't know what to tell you. That's a YOU problem.

7. Radon (January 13) "When was the planet under this house built?"

I also liked the Chess Zoo.

8. Flags to be raised for Trump's inauguration, despite half-staff order for Carter's death (January 15) What is this nonsense

9. Immigrant workers are helping investigate labor abuses. Will Trump let them stay? (January 15) "'Employers look at you completely differently when you have a social security number,' he says. 'In every sense you feel safe. You feel comfortable. You are free to go anywhere.'"

This is really interesting! I had never heard about this before. The US government gives legal protections to undocumented immigrants who are helping give evidence about employers breaking the law. This is really clever, because it's a big problem that businesses can get away with mistreating undocumented workers, who feel like they can't report it because they'll be deported. 

And it shows that maybe it's easier to give them legal status than one might think. That's great. I support all immigrants.

10. Trump coverage needs to change and here’s how (December 31) "'You’ve got to stop covering him like he’s just another politician, with a different agenda,' Johnston told me recently. 'He’s a criminal and a con artist. And that has to be central to everything you cover about him.'"

11. Lifeboat Capitalism (January 9) "If the term 'crime against humanity' has any meaning, it must apply to very wealthy people who—knowing that their actions are causing a climate change crisis that will devastate future generations and destroy hundreds of millions of lives—chose not to stop those actions, but instead to undertake a systematic campaign of lies and propaganda in order to continue making themselves money. Is there anything, really, more contemptible than this?"