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| Photo of a computer. Image source. |
Hi all, it's a new year, so it's time to do a roundup of my top blog posts from last year.
First we have the posts with the most pageviews:
1. "Slaves, Women & Homosexuals" (What is this book actually about?): "Slavery is a 'neutral example' which can prove to Christian patriarchists that hey, you guys don't literally follow everything in the bible either, so you can't just say 'well the bible says' and automatically dismiss our arguments for women's equality. And, if any of those patriarchists want to bring the criticism 'well if we allow women and men to be equal, it's a slippery slope to accepting homosexuality, and oh wouldn't that be terrible if Christians accepted homosexuality'- that's why the book also addresses 'the homosexual issue', and if to say 'don't worry, good evangelicals, equal rights for women DOESN'T mean we have to accept homosexuality.' It gives the egalitarian arguments in the book a lot more credibility, from an evangelical perspective, if the author also shows why those same arguments do NOT support gay rights."
2. The Great Sex Rescue: Marital Rape: "This section was hard to read, because a lot of the anecdotes in it are horrifying. It's about husbands who rape their wives, and claim that it's right for them to do so, because of the bible or whatever. It's about Christian marriage books that teach that all men are like that, and don't mention that marital rape is A REAL THING- so the women in these situations don't even know that what's happening to them is rape and it's wrong."
3. What do we do with Christians who are never going to accept queer people?: "You need to throw queer people under the bus, in order to be seen as a good evangelical. That's just a fact. That's just an undeniable fact. This is how it works."
4. The "Redemptive-Movement Hermeneutic" Argument for Queer Acceptance: "Basically, the idea that Jesus' message was about inclusion, especially among groups which were marginalized and rejected by society, and therefore in our culture that means acceptance of queer people."
5. The Great Sex Rescue: Be Normal!: "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."
6. The Slavery We Ignore in the Book of Exodus: "God and Moses freed the Israelites from Egyptian slavery, and then turned around and said 'so anyway, if you want to sell your daughter as a slave, here's how.' Doesn't the story of the Exodus hit different, once you realize that?"
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And then these other posts which are my favorites too:
7. Womanist Midrash: I love this book so much. I've written a whole series of posts on it, actually. Links can be found at the end of this linked post.
8. Michal wasn't here for David's worship, and now neither am I: "You can understand how, if someone treats you like that, and then they're like 'I LOVE GOD SO MUCH, I SIMPLY MUST DANCE,' you might hate them."
9. A Comprehensive Pro-Choice Ethic: "I always hear politicians saying 'women can make their own choices about their bodies.' This is nothing more than a euphemism for 'abortion is legal' (or, possibly, 'abortion is legal and accessible'). I don't like that. I want to live in a world where 'women can make their own choices about their bodies' means exactly that. Certainly that includes abortion access, but it includes so much more than that."
10. What Does God Do When You Pray For An Anonymized Patient By Bed Number?: "Does God handle it differently depending on which way you anonymize the study? What if there are multiple patients with the same initials- would it be like, the researchers assign Prayer Volunteer 1 to pray for patient C. D., and there is another patient C. D. in the control group not getting prayed for (different person but same initials) and God uses Their omniscient knowledge of the researchers' methods to figure out which is which and make sure the prayers get allocated correctly? Or would the researchers need to add an additional indicator to pass along to the prayer volunteer, to pass along to God, to make sure God knew who they were talking about?"
11. Raising Mixed Race (a book for parents of mixed-race Asian kids): "I guess my son does have thoughts about race. But doesn't have the language to communicate them with me."
12. Christian Nationalism / Faith Without Works Is Dead: "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?"
13. I Had Pre-Eclampsia: The story of how my little daughter was born.
14. "Expecting Better": Asking the Right Questions About Pregnancy: "These are the questions that we absolutely should be asking! But instead, these 'rules' are presented to pregnant people like they are ironclad rules, like if you eat precut fruit, it's BAD for your baby, OH NO!!! I've seen the amount of stress and anxiety this puts on pregnant people- because, it's seen as, yeah it's tough to give these things up during pregnancy, but it's for YOUR BABY, and you'd DO ANYTHING for YOUR BABY, right?"
15. Here's How We Do Our Budget: "I found that the most important thing I need from a budgeting system is it needs to be cumulative- ie, we allocate money to a certain category this month, and then if we don't use it, that money continues to exist in that category and simply rolls over to the next month. This way, there's no need to wonder about 'well sometimes we spend more and sometimes we spend less, so... I guess that's fine overall?'"
16. "The Red Tent" (this bible fanfic is great): "The main thing that this book does is to portray a whole realistic world which contains ideas and practices that we know were common in bible times, but may be hard for us to imagine because they are so different from our modern world."
17. Kangaroos and Creationist Fan Theories: "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?"
18. A Bit Suspicious That "Heavenly Tourism" Confirms Everything We Already Believe: "Really? Someone goes to heaven and comes back, and all we get is more confidence that we were already right about everything? We don't, like, learn anything new? Really?"
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So what's coming up in 2025 on "Tell me why the world is weird"? Well *glances at drafts folder* there are gonna be a lot of posts about the bible. So if you are saying to yourself "I wonder what Perfect Number thinks about the bible," then this is the blog for you. (I also write about plenty of other things too, lol.)
Also I should mention I have a patreon~
Thanks for reading! As always, let me know what kind of topics you like to read about~