Jesus Weighs in on "Being Right vs Doing Good"

Artwork showing Jesus healing a blind man. Image source.

This is a follow-up to my post Being Right vs Doing Good~

So, what did Jesus have to say to the question, "Which is more important: being right or doing good?"

Okay I'll just tell you the answer now: it's doing good. Jesus was not interested in telling everyone the "right answers" and making sure everyone had the "right beliefs." Jesus was interested in how people treat each other.

Here are the receipts.

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Who is my neighbor 

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

So this "expert" asks Jesus a question- "Who is my neighbor?" In response, Jesus tells the parable of the good Samaritan. In this parable, a man is beaten by robbers, who leave him laying on the side of the road. A priest walks by and doesn't help. A Levite walks by and doesn't help. Then a Samaritan walks by, and stops to help this guy, bandaging his wounds, bringing him to an inn to take care of him.

That's Jesus' response. This story. This guy asked "who is my neighbor" and Jesus told a story. And then Jesus asked, "Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?" and tells him to "Go and do likewise."

Readers who are paying attention may notice that we still are not given a proper definition of "neighbor" here. We know the command is "love your neighbor as yourself," and surely we need to know what "neighbor" means, in order to understand this command, right? But Jesus doesn't give us that.

Jesus' purpose was not to make sure everyone knew all the exact nuances of "the rules", so we could rules-lawyer about them. It's not about that. The point of the story is not to teach you an exact definition of the command "love your neighbor as yourself." The point is that you should help people. That's what matters. What you do.

(As a person who over-analyzes things, I have to say, this annoys me.)

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The sheep and the goats

In Matthew 25:31-46, Jesus tells the parable of the sheep and the goats. He says that people will be separated into 2 groups- sheep and goats- and the King will tell the sheep that they will be rewarded because "I was hungry and you gave me something to eat" (and other scenarios where they helped him). The sheep then ask what he's talking about. He says, "Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me." For the goats, it's the opposite- they will receive eternal punishment, because "I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat" and so on.

So I want to ask you this question: Is the purpose of this story to teach us the process by which people get judged and sent to heaven or hell? Or is the purpose of this story to teach us that we should help people?

I think the point is we should help people. 

I don't think the point is to tell us the mechanisms of how people go to heaven or hell. Like Jesus really wanted us to know that someday he's gonna divide people into 2 groups, and if you helped hungry/thirsty/sick/etc people then you go to heaven... wait, how much do you have to help such people? What is the threshold exactly? How do you know if you've done enough to get into heaven?

It's not about that. It's not about those questions. Jesus is not telling us facts about how heaven and hell work. He is telling us that we should help people. That's the point.

Maybe it's *not* true that there's really a judgment and a heaven and hell. I don't know. Maybe it's just a story that serves as a guide to getting us into the right frame of mind, to have an attitude of being open and generous and compassionate towards people as we live our lives.

And I'll admit, as a person who overanalyzes things, I *do* worry about "how do I know if I've helped enough people to get into heaven?" But I think if we're worrying about that, we're missing the point of the parable. Worrying about if I've done enough- that puts the focus on myself. But the point of the parable is we should help others. The point is not "we should make sure we've helped others enough to meet whatever Jesus' standard is, and we should constantly worry about that."

Maybe it needs to not be literally true, or else you do end up with those implications. 

(And I love how the sheep clearly do *not* have the correct beliefs about Jesus/heaven/hell. Jesus says "I was hungry and you gave me something to eat" and they initially disagree with him. Jesus doesn't care- what matters is what you do, not your beliefs behind it.)

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My point

When you read what the bible says about Jesus' life, well, it doesn't look like the sort of thing that one would do if one's goal was to teach everyone the correct facts about morality/God/etc. If that was his goal, he could have spent all his time giving clear explanations (and then Christians wouldn't have had anything to argue about amongst ourselves for the past 2000 years). He could have said, "okay, here's how it works. Here's how heaven and hell work. Here's the correct teaching about the nature of God." He could have told us the exact correct details about the Trinity, free will, how atonement works, souls, church hierarchy structures, baptism, etc etc etc.

Instead, he cared about people, helped people, healed people. His teaching was about what you should do- not how to have the correct beliefs about everything. And he often used parables, which introduces the risk that someone is going to understand the parables incorrectly. He was okay with that. (Contrast this with modern evangelical Christian media, which has to hit you over the head with the message, because wouldn't it be terrible if we used a bit of subtlety and then somebody didn't get the "correct" message from it?)

Yeah, Jesus didn't act like a person who thinks the highest priority is that everyone needs to have the correct beliefs about everything. Doing good is what actually matters. 

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Related:

Sheep and Goats

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. The Fatima Sun Miracle: Much More Than You Wanted To Know (October 2) An extremely long post overanalyzing a weird thing- this is the exact content I am interested in.

2. The phantom menace of biblical chronology (October 7) "No Star Wars fan will let you get away with suggesting that Episode IV: A New Hope was written as a sequel to Rogue One. They’ll be upset by the suggestion not just because it is incorrect, but because that error would change how we should understand and interpret both of those stories."

3. 30 Years Ex-evangelical (August 29, via) "In other words, I was under the impression that evangelicalism was a deep personal commitment to love Jesus for the sake of making the world a more just and beautiful place for all of God’s children. Lol."

4. Israel, Hamas reach a ceasefire, with hostages and prisoners to be freed within days (October 9)

Gazans stream towards wrecked homes as Israeli forces pull back under ceasefire (October 10)

And another thought related to this: That felon supposedly has a plan where the whole population of Gaza would "voluntarily" leave and then the land would be turned into a nice resort (?) and then the people of Gaza would come back (??). Uh, but, fact check, relocating a population is ethnic cleansing and can sometimes even count as genocide. I wish I had a good article that explained this. I think a lot of Americans may have this really naive idea that it's not a bad thing to just move people from one place to another. It would be nice to have a link which very clearly lays out what exactly the problem is and why this is a bad thing.

5. A rescue ship saved them from the sea. Now these migrants find a tough road in Europe (2024) "When the rescuers from Doctors Without Borders reach them, they find 162 people, 29 of them children, so tightly packed into the vessel that many can only stand. The overcrowded boat rocks precariously and if the crowd moves too fast toward the rescuers' dinghies, it could capsize."

6. Over 350 Rescued After Blizzard Hits Everest’s Eastern Slope (October 7) I saw some reports about this from other news sites, but since it's in China it's good to have an article about it from Sixth Tone.

7. How Birthday Party Lady Is Showing the World Boundaries in Marriage (October 8) "SIL sent a text at midnight the night before the party asking if it was still on. On the day of the party, no decorations had been bought, and husband got off work AFTER the party was supposed to start. But she held her ground."

8. The “Debate Me Bro” Grift: How Trolls Weaponized The Marketplace Of Ideas (September 17) "He was showing up armed with a string of logical fallacies, nonsense talking points, and gotcha questions specifically designed to enrage inexperienced college students so he could generate viral social media clips of himself 'owning the libs.'"

The difference between debating to "win", vs actually wanting to communicate and listen to people and learn from each other... I think this is really important, and it took me way too long to even realize the difference. (I'm thinking about my own experiences with apologetics.) When someone makes a point and you don't know how to respond to it, or asks you a question you don't know the answer to, do you try to come up with whatever "your side's" official answer would be? Or do you genuinely ask yourself what you believe about it and what your actual reasons are? To say your actual reasons can be embarrassing- and don't do it if you're in a discussion with someone who can't be trusted with that kind of honesty- but is a very necessary step to coming to a belief that makes sense.

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Action item: Submit a comment on this proposed change that would affect overseas voters (and other US citizens who vote by mail). This proposed change would require voters to show documentary proof of US citizenship, such as a passport, in order to register to vote. It sounds like this means people would actually have to go *in person*, which is impossible for US citizens like me who live overseas. (Comment period is open until October 20.)

2. Treasury Department may issue $1 Trump coin for 250th anniversary of U.S. independence (October 6) Eww, what on earth?

3. Eventually You're Going to Have to Stand for Something (October 5) "When Klein scolds that "we have to live here with each other" he is making a statement about who it is he is getting ready to live with and who he is getting ready to live without, and most gallingly he is ignoring the fact that when it comes to supremacists all of us have been living with them already all along. Nobody is suggesting mass deportation of white supremacists, or the dissolution of straight marriages, or stripping away health care for conservatives."

4. Federal workers sue the Education Department over partisan shutdown emails (October 5) "'Without giving notice to their employees, let alone obtaining their consent, the Department of Education has replaced employees' out-of-office email messages with partisan language that blames 'Democrat Senators' for the shutdown,' the complaint said. 'Employees are now forced to involuntarily parrot the Trump Administration's talking points with emails sent out in their names.'"

And also about the shutdown: IRS walks back guidance promising back pay for furloughed workers (October 10) Excuse me, what?

Schumer slams GOP health care policies: ‘No f‑‑‑ing way’ (October 8) 

5. Higher Education Leaders Reject Trump Administration's "Compact for Academic Excellence" (October 5, via) 

6. Standing up to ICE in the suburbs, the People’s Patrol puts its faith in resistance (September 29) "Racing toward the industrial park on an expressway, Cavazos says the People’s Patrol includes 180 people, all volunteers. The center holds trainings for the work every other Friday."

7. Judge William Young's ruling against Rubio and Noem is a lesson for all in the Trump era (October 2) "Throughout his opinion, Young focused in on several actions of this administration — allowing Rubio’s horrifying statements to speak for themselves, confronting America with a matter-of-fact description of what ICE is and how America’s immigration system operates, and damning the administration’s use of masks in its immigration enforcement."

And this quote (via) from lawyers who know what's what:

Plaintiffs of course understand the hardship the government shutdown places on everyone, including the government's attorneys and their clients. For that reason, Plaintiffs offered to agree to the stay Defendants seek if Defendants in turn would agree to refrain from enforcing the TPS terminations challenged in this case. But Defendants refused. They apparently have the resources to detain and deport thousands of immigrants with no criminal history to dangerous countries, but would prefer not to expend the resources needed to defend the legality of such actions in court. 

Also from Law Dork: Supreme Court lets Noem end legal status for many Venezuelans in the U.S. (October 4) "Explaining the stay request before the Supreme Court over Chen’s September ruling, Jackson echoed that concern, 'What should happen to 300,000 human beings while our colleagues on the Ninth Circuit, and then perhaps we, do the job of judging?'"

Being Right vs Doing Good

Sign that says "Right" with an arrow pointing in one direction, and "wrong" with an arrow pointing the other direction. Image source.

Which is more important, being right or doing good? Having the correct opinions on every issue, or taking actions which make a positive difference in the world?

In the ideology of conservative Christianity and conservative politics, being right is more important than being good. You can see this in so many different issues. I have examples.

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"Saved by faith, not by works"

I was taught that this is the main message of Christianity: We are not saved by something we did; we are saved by what Jesus did. We can never do enough good deeds to earn our way into heaven- we just need to believe in Jesus, that's how we get to heaven. We are saved by faith, not by works. 

Evangelical Christians say it's totally legit if someone does all kinds of immoral things, and then on their deathbed they repent and convert to Christianity- on that basis, they get into heaven. It doesn't matter what they did. It doesn't matter if they did good things or if they murdered a lot of people. What matters is that, in the end, they had the correct beliefs.

I've seen conservatives speak out against "the social gospel"- ie, the idea that Christianity is about helping people here and now, that Christianity can be good news for the poor (as Jesus said in Luke 4:18), that Christians should fight for justice. Speaking out against "the social gospel" because it would be bad if people were too focused on this idea of doing good and helping people, and that caused them to place less emphasis on making sure everyone believes the right things. Yeah, conservative Christians are very suspicious of anyone preaching that Christians should do good deeds. Doing good deeds should be a secondary concern- we can't ever lose sight of the fact that being right is the most important.

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Focus on the Family

Focus on the Family is a conservative Christian organization which teaches that there is only 1 correct way to have a family. You have to follow all these rules- that's the "correct" way to live. That's God's way. This image of a hetero couple, with children, the husband as the head of the family, and divorce is not allowed.

If anyone is not living according to this model, well, they deserve whatever happens to them. They should be living the right way. See, we need to teach everyone that if you don't live the right way, then the natural result is that bad things will happen to you. That's just the way it is. It's a kindness, to let everyone know about the risks of living the "wrong" way.

One might point out, hey, wouldn't it be better if we do some research on people's actual family situations, and what kind of ideas/policies would actually help them? Ha! Of course not. In conservative ideology, we already know that people will only get the best outcome if they follow our rules. If they're not following our rules, we shouldn't support them in that. 

(See these posts from the Slacktivist: "Pro-Family" means anti-families and To truly be ‘pro-family,’ you have to be pro-worker)

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Is homosexuality worse than other sins?

15ish years ago, when everyone was arguing about marriage equality, sometimes people would point out that it seems like conservative Christians are treating homosexuality like it's worse than any other sin. What's up with that?

Back then, I was evangelical, and my position was that it's *not* worse than other sins, and we should try to have consistent beliefs about sin, treating all sin as significant but also able to be forgiven by Jesus. (And also, I believed it wasn't a sin to have same-sex attraction, but it was a sin to "act on it.")

But also, at the same time, it sort of made sense to me why we always talked about it in a way that gave people the impression that we thought it was the worst sin. Because there was something about it that intersected with this "being right vs doing good" dichotomy, in a way that other sins didn't. The issue wasn't just that "it's a sin to be in a same-sex relationship"- it was "it's a sin to be in a same-sex relationship, but some people are claiming it's not a sin, and they are wrong, and we need to make it very clear that they are wrong on this factual matter." If a Christian leader does something really bad, like abuse kids, or embezzle money, or whatever, they can stand up and make a big speech about "oh I did this sinful thing, but now I have repented and God has forgiven me." Regardless of their actions, they can proclaim that they now have the "correct" beliefs. But if a Christian leader gets outed as gay, well... they're going to continue to be gay. 

In an ideology where your actions don't really matter, as long as you say the right thing, a refusal to accept the required beliefs about homosexuality is basically worse than any actual bad thing you can do.

People might ask "Why are Christians making such a big deal about this? Aren't they supposed to be, like, helping the poor or something?" But see, nobody is debating whether it's good and important to help poor people or not. See, we all already know the "correct" answer on that, so no need to really make a big deal out of it. But this LGBT issue, well, people have the wrong opinions on it- so we need to argue with them all the time.

(Anyway, I'm queer now, and glad to not be in evangelical world any more.)

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Policies that actually lower the abortion rate 

In the "pro-life" movement, the belief that abortion is bad, and that those women who want abortions are evil and must be stopped, is treated as more important than actually creating policies that lower the abortion rate.

Statistically, we know that banning abortion doesn't really lower the abortion rate. You know what does? Giving people good sex education, and access to contraception. Oh, but the "pro-life" movement can't be supporting those things- because, we know the correct lifestyle is to not have sex outside of marriage. If you're following the correct lifestyle, obviously you will never need an abortion. (Fact-check: this is not true.) It's very important to make sure everyone knows the correct way to live, and if they stray from that path, well, no we shouldn't give them any help or support. Just keep telling them what the correct thing to do would have been.

And another thing that lowers the abortion rate: Policies which help women have more control over their lives, enabling them to set up their lives in such a way that they're able to have the number of children they want to have. Policies which protect pregnant people's rights. Paid maternity leave. Ah, but the "pro-life" movement doesn't advocate for these things. Because it's about having the "right" opinion on abortion- not about actually doing things that will decrease the abortion rate.

(See this post from Libby Anne: How I Lost Faith in the “Pro-Life” Movement)

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And every issue is like this

Seriously, most conservative political positions I can think of, they're about how we already know the right way to live and/or structure society, and therefore the most effective thing we can do is to tell people that's what they're supposed to do, and reward people who are already doing it. We can't give any help to people who aren't living the right way, ugh, that would be terrible, that would send the message that it's *okay* to live like that.

Political policies related to economics, for example. People who are college-educated, people who don't have credit card debt or student loans, people who are rich, people who own businesses- they are the ones doing things the "right" way. If someone proposes a new government policy that would financially help people who are not doing things the "right" way, well, obviously it's a bad idea- we should be teaching people what the right way is, and encouraging them toward it. Not rewarding their bad behavior.

Or another example- universal health care. Wow, wouldn't it be great if the US had universal health care? But conservatives oppose it, because the government isn't *supposed* to be doing that. We already know the "right" way to have a society, and it's that people should be responsible for themselves, rather than being dependent on the government.

(Very interesting that this belief about the "right" way to run one's government doesn't seem to take into account all the other countries in the world, and their different government structures and policies and the results they produce. Very interesting.)

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Conservatives would argue that doing things the "right" way *is* what's most beneficial

Now, I'm kind of framing this like conservatives believe they must follow what is "right" at the expense of doing what actually helps people- but this isn't exactly accurate. They would argue that getting everyone to do things the "right" way *is* what's most helpful, in the long run.

They would argue that, if you really had perfect information about the results of polices that promote doing things the "right" way, vs policies which naively help people who appear to need help- if you analyze these results and calculate which way does the most good, you would find that doing things the "right" way *is* what's best, in terms of real-world results. Sure, they believe this on an abstract, theoretical level, but if you point to a specific study that found that sticking to the "right" way was harmful, this is not going to change their minds. Just speaking for myself back then, when I was growing up republican, I would have said the study wasn't measuring the full scope of the results. (Maybe something seems like a good idea now, but in the long run leads to the downfall of society, ever think of that? ... It's very hard to come up with actual evidence to prove or disprove this...)

It's not really about the evidence. We already know the right answers, so there's not really much of a need to actually go out and collect evidence about the real-world effects of these ideas. We already know what the right way is.

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Which is more important, being right or doing good? Conservative Christianity and conservative politics say it's more important to be right. And this explains so much.

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See also, this post from the Slacktivist: Rights for me but not for thee, which discusses the idea "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect." 

I personally feel it fits better to say conservatism is about being right (and I said in this post). But you could make the case that this "in-groups and out-groups" thing is kind of saying the same thing. The in-groups are the people who are doing things the right way- of course the government should support them, not put restrictions on them! And the out-groups are people who are not living according to the "correct" rules- well obviously the law should try to push them to live the "right" way- and definitely should not give them any support in their wrongness.

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Follow-up post: Jesus Weighs in on "Being Right vs Doing Good"

Related:

On Washing Machines and Republicans 

How long will you wait for your experience to match up with the bible?

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Journal Club: Global Asexual Solidarity (September 30) "Chen says this argument goes too far. They criticize it for relying on an Orientalist fantasy of a pre-existing “authentic” sexuality, and ignoring the agency of local activists."

2. The War on Science (September 23, 4-hour-2-minute video from Shaun) "This book is a collection of tired, irrelevant, right-wing, culture-war nitpicks being released at the most ridiculous possible time. These complaints have never been less relevant to reality, which makes the entire book read like one big joke."

Wow, turns out a lot of the essays in this book are some professor writing "I got fired because of some little mundane thing that THE WOKE MOB got angry about" and then Shaun digs up what actually happened and it turns out the professor in question was sexually harassing students/ had a long-term pattern of extremely racist behavior/ etc.

3. Jane Goodall, renowned chimpanzee researcher and animal advocate, dies at 91 (October 2, via) "He said Goodall was among the first researchers to make close observations of chimpanzees as individuals with personalities and quirks, at a time when other scientists were not trained to observe such specific details."

4. People Mountain, People Sea: Golden Week in Pictures (October 3) This week is China's "Golden Week" (the week we have off work for the October 1 National Day 国庆节 holiday). Usually it's 7 days off work, but this year it's 8 days because Mid-Autumn Festival 中秋节 happens to fall during this week too. This article has a bunch of photos showing the crowds of vacationers all around China.

Also, the phrase "people mountain, people sea" is a direct translation of the Chinese idiom 人山人海. It means it's very crowded. Like you look at a crowd and it looks like a mountain of people or a sea of people.

5. Israeli forces board Gaza flotilla, detain Greta Thunberg, other activists (October 1, via) "At least three ships from the Global Sumud Flotilla, made up of 44 vessels and some 500 activists, were intercepted approximately 70 nautical miles (130km) from the coast of Gaza, according to organisers."

And more updates on this:

Greta Thunberg ‘beaten and forced to kiss Israeli flag’, activists say (October 5, via) 

Greta Thunberg is among flotilla activists deported from Israel. Others remain in prison (October 7)

6. Multi-generational vulture nests hold 700 years of human artifacts (October 3, via) Cool!

7. This Is What Happens When Therapists Don’t Understand Asexuality (September/October issue, via) "As I scribbled darkly with a dark pen, my therapist talked with us about how I could move forward toward having penetrative sex a certain amount of times per month."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. There will be No Kings protests on October 18. Join if you can!

2. UN says Fox News host apologized after calling for world body to be bombed (September 27) "'What we need to do is either leave the U.N. or we need to bomb it,' Watters said. 'Maybe gas it ... we need to destroy it.'"

3. Trump revives family separations amid drive to deport millions: ‘A tactic to punish’ (October 2) "Among Mukherjee’s clients are a two-year-old and a seven-year-old. 'An Ice officer has threatened to separate each of these children from each other and from their mother and their father, detain them in separate facilities, and put them on four different deportation flights,' she said. 'This is unnecessarily cruel.'"

4. Massive immigration raid on Chicago apartment building leaves residents reeling: 'I feel defeated' (October 2, via) "Armed federal agents in military fatigues busted down their doors overnight, pulling men, women and children from their apartments, some of them naked, residents and witnesses said. Agents approached or entered nearly every apartment in the five-story building, and U.S. citizens were among those detained for hours."

5. ‘Could have been an email’: Officials balk at Hegseth's generals meeting (September 30) "'It‘s a waste of time for a lot of people who emphatically had better things they could and should be doing,' said a former senior defense official. 'It’s also an inexcusable strategic risk to concentrate so many leaders in the operational chain of command in the same publicly known time and place, to convey an inane message of little merit.'"

6. The federal government is shut down. Here's what that means across the country (October 6)

Democrats united in effort to stop Trump's 'lawless activity,' says Sen. Van Hollen (October 6)

7. Trump Promotes Magical Conspiracy Beds (October 2) "In a serious country with democratic norms still in place, a circumstance like this would lead directly to journalists forcing Donald Trump to explain whether or not he posted the video, and as a follow-up they would force him to elaborate on whether or not he understands reality. Like, does he know he never said this? Does he know that magical beds don’t exist?"

8. A federal judge blocked Trump from sending the National Guard to Oregon — again. Here’s what we know (October 6)

"Girls & Sex" (book review)

Book cover for "Girls & Sex" by Peggy Orenstein

[content note: discussion of porn, discussion of oral sex]

Here's my review of the book Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape by Peggy Orenstein. Overall, I enjoyed it, and I feel like it helped me understand some things about the way people talk about sex.

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Overview

This book is about the culture ("hookup culture") surrounding high school and college girls, in regards to sexual relationships. It's about what's expected, what's seen as normal, what they want, how they feel about it, what kinds of expectations they are facing from boys, how girls' knowledge of feminism doesn't necessarily stop their behavior from being dictated by these societal pressures, etc.

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