Blogaround

1. If you've signed up for Bluesky, you've signed up for offloadable moderation. (January 1, via) "So instead of communicating, for instance, 'if you see a flagrantly racist post, report it to staff, and we'll take it down,' the BS stance on the matter is 'if you see a flagrantly racist post, use this optional feature to label it as racist, and other users can opt-in to your moderation judgment about that post while we as a platform continue to host it.'"

2. New Residency Based Tax Bill Introduced in the House of Representatives (December 18) Cool, this is a bill intended to help US citizens living abroad who don't owe US taxes but are still required to file every year.

Let me tell you a bit about what I have to do in terms of filing US taxes, as a US citizen living in China long-term: If you are a US citizen abroad, you have to file a US tax return every year, even if you don't owe anything. If you are outside the US for at least 330 days of the year (er, not exactly "the year", it's a bit more complicated than that, but to make it easier to understand I'll just say "330 days of the year"), then you can exclude all your foreign-earned income, and you do not have to pay US income tax on it. (I have an American friend in China who told me about how he had to carefully plan exactly how long his US vacations would be, otherwise he would owe tens of thousands of dollars in income tax, yikes. My US vacations have been short enough I haven't had to worry about this.) Anyway, I meet this requirement, so I don't owe any US income tax on my income from my job in China. I also have income in the US, just interest on bank accounts, nothing big, and that would be taxed but it's low enough that it's less than the standard deduction so I don't owe any tax on that either.

(I'm lucky since my parents have tax software and just do this for me. But I imagine it would be quite a pain to have to figure out how to file taxes on your own, and what's the point if you don't even owe anything.)

So, I'm glad to see this new bill which is aimed at simplifying all this for Americans living abroad. In practical terms, I'm not sure it will help *me* that much- looks like I will need to file anyway because I do have some US income, but at least I won't have to fill out the FBAR form, so that's nice. Seems like it will be most helpful for Americans who don't have any US income.

3. A Profile In Courage (December 18) "With so many terrible examples of how not to take on Trump, Judge Juan Merchan in Manhattan shines a light on the correct way forward."

4. All right, I have no idea what to make of this, but the orange antichrist said that any international student who graduates from a US college should automatically get a US green card (I found this link via Jay Kuo).

Various thoughts that I have about this:

• He says a lot of things. Just because he says something doesn't mean it has any connection to what he actually believes or plans to do. So we shouldn't view this like it's an actual serious policy which is going to happen.
• I like this! Think about it: International students graduating from college in the US. They've already lived in the US for several years. They already have their stuff here. They're likely already renting an apartment, and have a US bank account. They already have experience speaking English and interacting with American society. And then when they graduate, they have to worry about if they'll be able to find an employer who can sponsor them on a work visa- they have a limited amount of time before their current visa expires. Why not just give them a green card so they don't have to be stressed about whether or not they'll suddenly be kicked out of the country due to the unstable whims of their employer? That would really be a huge help.
• This would be a huge change in immigration policy. Does the orange antichrist realize that? (I very much don't think this will actually happen, because it's such a huge change.)
• This video (I don't know the original date of it) has surfaced now, in the context of the conflict between the "just really racist and anti-immigrant" faction of MAGA and the "US tech companies need to be able to hire highly educated immigrants from Asia" faction of MAGA. (Please note that ELON MUSK IS AN IMMIGRANT. On some level, I've always been baffled by his support of the MAGA movement. I guess he's just so incredibly confident that he will be seen as "one of the good ones.") I try not to care that much about these internal fights where both sides are terrible.

5. Biden Commutes 37 of 40 Federal Death Row Sentences: WTF? (December 23) This is a post from Rev. Jeff Hood. He is a spiritual advisor to inmates on death row, and an activist who believes the death penalty should be abolished. He is not happy with Biden for commuting 37 out of 40 death sentences- why not all 40? He calls this "a moral abyss of federal sentencing that only pursues death sentences in rare cases, prioritizing some murder victims above all others."

Well, yeah, I agree that it doesn't make sense to commute 37 out of 40. When I saw the news that Biden had commuted 37 out of 40 death sentences, I was happy to see it because it's better than not doing that, but I do feel it's weird to not commute all of them. Feels like 3 of them were not commuted simply because they're the ones we've all seen in the news, that we have feelings about- but the 37 whose sentences were commuted are also murderers. If you read about them, wow, they've done really horrific things, it's not like they're "not as bad" as the 3 that you had already heard about. I think commuting these death sentences should be about an ideological belief that it's immoral for a society to have a death penalty. It's not about "oh these criminals don't really deserve the death penalty, but those other ones do."

6. I'm Suing Honey (January 3) Wow! Legal Eagle is bringing a class action lawsuit against Honey for stealing affiliate commissions.

7. Siri “unintentionally” recorded private convos; Apple agrees to pay $95M (January 3, via) "The only clue that users seemingly had of Siri's alleged spying was eerily accurate targeted ads that appeared after they had just been talking about specific items like Air Jordans or brands like Olive Garden, Reuters noted (claims which remain disputed)."

8. As Trump rewrites history, victims of the Jan. 6 riot say they feel 'betrayed' (January 5) "'All these elected officials, they don't care about the officers - people like myself that put their lives on the line to protect them,' he said. 'We did our job and gave them the time to escape, to evacuate the building. And they seem to have forgotten the fear that Donald Trump's mob made them feel.'"

Recurring Donations

Clip art image of hands putting coins into a box for charity. Image source.

Heyyy it's January so it's time for my annual post about setting up monthly donations to charity!

I think most people don't really have much of a plan about donating to charity. If they happen to see something that makes them feel sad about some situation in the world, then they go donate, but they don't have a "rational" overall strategy for it. What I mean is, you should ask yourself these questions: How much money do I want to donate to charity this year? Which issues are important to me, which should be prioritized in my charity budget?

Pick organizations that are doing good work, and set up monthly donations to them. Even if it's just $10/month, that's great, charities like to have monthly donations. Do it this way so you can be really intentional about what your priorities are. Not haphazardly based on when somebody happened to ask you, or when you saw something in the news that made you sad.

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And I'll put a plug here for RAICES, which helps immigrants in the US with legal representation. If you're looking for a way to help immigrants, donate to them~

"Children of God Storybook Bible" (kids' book review)

Book cover for "Children of God Storybook Bible."

If you've been following my blog for a while, you will know that I don't like how bible stories are typically presented to kids, but also I want to read books to my son to introduce him to the bible. I've tried out a few kids' bible story books and reviewed them on my blog. Here's a review of Children of God Storybook Bible, by Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

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Content

This book contains 56 bible stories:

• 24 stories (43%) are from the Old Testament
• 32 stories (57%) are from the New Testament. (Of these, 27 are about Jesus.)

As for the actual bible, a quick google tells me that the Old Testament is about 75% of the bible. Now, from a Christian perspective you can certainly make a case that the stories about Jesus are the most important part of the bible, so maybe it makes sense to have these overrepresented in children's bibles. But, still, it misrepresents what the bible is. 

I think it's common that people learn about the bible through this kind of "telling stories to children" method, and so they never find out that the real bible is so much weirder and, frankly, ****ed-up than what we see in children's books. This bothers me greatly.

As for which stories were chosen to include in "Children of God Storybook Bible," mostly it's the ones you'd expect, you got your creation of the world, Joseph's coat of many colors, Moses and the burning bush, etc. But there were a few surprising inclusions and omissions:

Surprising inclusion: Naboth's vineyard (1 Kings 21). Wowwww I don't think I've EVER seen the story of Naboth's vineyard included in a children's bible! What were they thinking??? Here's the gist of it: King Ahab wanted to buy a vineyard from a guy named Naboth, but Naboth refused to sell. So Queen Jezebel arranged to have Naboth falsely accused of cursing God and the king, and executed. Then Ahab took his vineyard. Then God sent the prophet Elijah to Ahab to prophesy that he and Jezebel would be punished for this- that they would be killed. Ahab made a show of repenting, so God amended it to say this punishment would happen to Ahab's household in the time of Ahab's son instead.

WHAT? I mean, yeah, this is a good example of how most bible stories are like, WHAT? They're not cute little morality lessons. Why would you tell the story of Naboth's vineyard to little kids? My first thought when I saw this here was "oh, maybe this is good because it pulls back the curtain a bit and shows kids that the bible isn't a bunch of nice stories." But then the second thing I thought was, "imagine you're a little kid, and the way the bible has always been presented to you is as if it's a bunch of nice stories, and then you read this, and you have to force yourself to believe that this is a nice story- wouldn't you end up even more messed-up?"

Reminds me of my thoughts, when I was a little kid, about the story of Jacob stealing his brother Esau's blessing (Genesis 27). This is a common one in little kids' bibles (it is not in "Children of God Storybook Bible" though). Basically, Esau was the older twin and so there was a tradition that their father, Isaac, should recite a blessing for Esau. But Jacob put on Esau's clothes and pretended to be him (Isaac had bad eyesight) and tricked Isaac into blessing him instead. 

Hmm, sounds like what Jacob did was wrong, doesn't it? Also kinda messed-up that he took advantage of Isaac's bad eyesight and tricked him.

But the way these stories are told to little kids, Jacob is one of the "good guys" and Esau is a "bad guy." Many many times in the bible, the three patriarchs of the Israelite people are listed: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jacob was the father of the 12 tribes of Israel. Whereas, Esau, apparently God just didn't like Esau.

So when I was a little kid, and heard this story of how Jacob stole Esau's blessing, I didn't think "wow that was a really bad thing that Jacob did." I wasn't able to even have a thought in that direction, because I knew that Jacob was a "good guy" and Esau was a "bad guy." I remember I was a teenager when this dawned on me- hey, wait a minute, lying to his father and stealing the blessing which was really important to his brother, those are bad things to do, aren't they? Aren't they? Why has no one pointed that out before??? I remember asking myself, "wait a minute, all the times I heard this story in Sunday school, what cute moral lesson did they even claim it was meant to teach???" (I *think* it might have been, Jacob was a trickster, but God loved him anyway- how wonderful that even though we are all imperfect, we can still be part of God's plan.)

So my fear is that including the story of Naboth's vineyard is NOT going to make kids realize "oh, the bible is not a bunch of nice stories about how we need to love God, and God always saves his followers." Instead, kids are going to hear it as "we know the bible is a bunch of nice stories, and therefore this story about Naboth being falsely accused and executed is also a nice story which teaches us a nice lesson about God." And you twist your brain in order to make yourself believe that, and you end up with even more exvangelical trauma.

You may think I'm reading way too much into this. Maybe I am. I grew up evangelical and really took them seriously when they said the bible is "God's love letter to us" and we need to read the bible every day and apply it to our lives, we need to memorize the bible as much as we can, and the bible is inerrant. I really truly bought into all that.

I'm not raising my son in that kind of environment, obviously. So he can hear these bible stories and be fine and he won't get trauma from them, because to him they are just stories. No one is teaching him that the bible is meant to be an authority over his life and he has to force himself to believe it is THE moral standard.

Moving along:

Surprising omissions: "Children of God Storybook Bible" does NOT include the story of Abraham almost sacrificing his son Isaac (Genesis 22), and it does NOT include the story of Joshua and the battle of Jericho (Joshua 6). These are staples of children's bibles; I'm surprised they are not here. But, also, holy crap, I HATE SO MUCH the way these stories are taught to kids. It's GOOD that they're not included in this book.

Abraham and Isaac- God tells Abraham to go up on a mountain and sacrifice his son. Abraham obeys, and just as he is picking up the knife to kill his son, an angel intervenes and says not to really do it, it was a test, and God is pleased with Abraham for passing the test, being willing to kill his own son at God's command. Hey, little kids, what a lovely story, it teaches us that we should always obey God. It was good that Abraham was willing to kill his son, this makes him a role model of faith (rather than a dangerous person who should be locked up, my GOD). Your parents should kill you too if God ever tells them!

Joshua and the battle of Jericho- After God brought the Israelites out of Egypt, God led them to the promised land, where people were already living, so obviously they needed to kill those people and take their homes. The first city they came to was Jericho. God told the Israelites to trust him, and that he would help them win their battles. And that they needed to march around the city for 7 days, and the walls would miraculously collapse. So they did that, and then they killed every person in Jericho- men, women, and children (except Rahab's family because she helped them). Wow, little kids, what a wonderful story! It teaches us that we should always obey God, even when God tells us to do something that doesn't make sense, like marching around the walls of a city, haha that was so silly, wasn't it? Such a good story, it teaches us that God keeps his promises. God promised to give the Israelites the land, and he did! And they killed everyone who was living there! Such a great story! Such a nice moral lesson for us!

You think I'm joking, but I'm not. It really is that bad.

So, it's surprising that these 2 stories aren't in this book, but also, that's a good thing.

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I don't like how each story ends with a little prayer

At the end of each bible story, there's a little one-line prayer. 

• Many of these are pretty typical bible-lessons-for-kids fare: "Dear God, thank you for giving us each other to love." "Dear God, help me to trust your promises."
• Some of them come across a bit more social-justice-oriented than what I have typically seen in children's bibles: "Dear God, help me to bring freedom to all of your children." "Dear God, let me love all people no matter where they come from." "Dear God, help me to protect the powerless." I like this!

But: I strongly dislike this framing device. It reads like each of these bible stories can be summed up into a tidy little prayer; like each bible story teaches us a nice little lesson about how to be a better person, or about some wonderful thing God has done.

To be fair, a lot of the stories about Jesus actually can be summed up that way. The stories about Jesus are much less likely to be problematic compared to the violent Old Testament stories. So I'm fine with presenting most stories about Jesus to kids as "here's a nice lesson we learn from it."

And actually, maybe the issue I'm having with "Children of God Storybook Bible" isn't so much that the individual stories picked for this book are problematic, but that I'm so extremely aware of which large sections of the bible have been skipped. (For example, there's nothing at all from the books of Joshua or Judges in "Children of God Storybook Bible.") See that's the difficulty with having a "children's bible" with content that spans the whole bible- it gives the impression of being a children's version of the bible, rather than what it actually is, which is an extremely careful and deliberate cherry-picking of individual bible stories which can be kinda-sorta salvaged into something like a nice kids' story, unlike the majority of the bible. That's why I feel good about the books I bought for my son which tell only 1 bible story each. If it's not pretending to be the whole bible, then you don't have the dilemma of "just skip the messed-up parts" vs "tell the messed-up parts to kids and pretend they're not messed-up."

(But actually, aren't I doing the same thing? I am very carefully picking books for my son, each book containing 1 single bible story that I deem appropriate for children. Once I accumulate a whole bunch of these books, won't I have a collection that spans the whole bible while also having giant glaringly-obvious gaps, just like "Children of God Storybook Bible" does? Uh. Yeah this is why I'm having such a hard time figuring out how to introduce bible stories to my son.)

Also, above the title of each bible story, there's a sort of summary phrase- for example, the story about Adam and Eve being kicked out of the Garden of Eden is titled "Leaving the Garden", and above the title there's the text "God loves us even when we do wrong." The story about Jacob's dream with the angels on a ladder is titled "A Wonderful Dream" and the text above it is "God speaks to Jacob." Sort of ... taking each story and summarizing it in a way that puts a positive spin on it. I also do not like this.

I feel like, if it was just telling the stories, maybe I can work with that. But summing each story up with a tidy little prayer- no, I don't like that.

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As an example, here's the story of Noah's ark, as told by "Children of God Storybook Bible"

God begins again

Noah's Ark

Genesis 6-9

Before long, people started fighting and hurting one another terribly. God wept that they were not enjoying the lovely earth he had made. Finally, he said, "I must make a new beginning. I will send a flood to cover the whole earth."

But one man named Noah was kind and did what was right.

God told Noah to build a big boat called an ark. Then God said, "Gather all your family and two of every kind of animal, bird, and insect." God sent the rain, and Noah led everyone into the ark. For forty days and forty nights it rained so hard that the water covered even the highest mountains.

Boy, did it smell inside the ark! And the noise! The ROARing and the BAAing, the NEIGHing and the MOOing! But-- amazingly-- everyone got along. Yes, even the lion lay down with the lamb.

At last the rain stopped. Noah sent out a dove in search of land. When the bird returned with an olive leaf, Noah and his family cheered. Noah thanked God for saving them.

God told Noah, "I promise not to send another flood to cover the whole earth." And God made a beautiful rainbow so people would never forget his promise.

Dear God, thank you for rainbows and for keeping your promise to us.

You see what I mean about how this is presented as a nice story that teaches us a nice lesson? God felt that everyone in the world- the entire population of the earth- was so evil they deserve to DIE (except Noah and his family), so God sent a flood to kill them all, and we tell kids that this is a good thing.

Meme that says "Am I the only one around here who doesn't want to teach my kid it's good when God kills everyone on earth?" Link to meme generator.

I want to teach my kid, if someone claims that an entire population, an entire city, an entire ethnic group, is so evil they all deserve to die, to NEVER believe that. That is NEVER true, and you should never trust anyone who would claim that. Even if it's God. (See also: If Thanos Tells You To Build An Ark, You Say No)

In Sunday school, Christians teach this story to kids, and they definitely tell kids that unfortunately everyone was so evil that God needed to kill them all, but then the Sunday school lesson glides right by that without questioning it, and moves on to the fun imagery of all those zoo animals together, and the nice lesson about trusting God.

Of all the bible stories which are commonly taught to kids, "Noah's ark" is definitely the worst one.

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The art is very good

Many different artists contributed to this book. Each bible story has a different art style, and the art is very well done.

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Lots of words on each page

My son is in preschool, and the amount of words on each page is a bit much for him. Maybe this is more of an elementary-school-level book. Most of the bible stories are only one 2-page spread. For a kid who mainly likes to look at pictures in his books, it's not a high enough pictures-to-words ratio.

This doesn't really bother me much because I can skip some of it if it's too long, or summarize it, or stop in the middle and ask him something about the story. To make it more interesting for him.

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My son's reaction

As I said, this book has a lot of words on each page, so I think he wasn't fully able to pay attention and understand most of the stories. At some points, though, he did ask some good questions. He asked why Pharaoh made the Israelites slaves. He asked why God parted the Red Sea. When I read about God giving Moses the 10 Commandments, my son pointed at Moses and asked, "Is that God?" and I said no it's Moses, God is everywhere but we can't see Them, and my son kept saying "why?"

So even though I'm all exvangelically thinking to myself "humph I don't like how this book presents the bible like it's a bunch of nice stories", when my son asks questions about it, inevitably I will reveal to him that many of these are not nice stories. Because my son is in an environment where we are treating bible stories as stories rather than morality lessons that have authority over our lives, this won't be harmful to him. So, as much as I'm complaining about the book in this blog post, I was able to read it to my son and make it a good thing for him... but I just wish I had a book that would just be a good thing on its own, without me needing to do all this, uh, overthinking.

And, sometimes the God of the bible is a bad guy. I think that will help answer a lot of the "why" questions.

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God's pronouns

This book uses he/him pronouns for God. Which is fine, because the bible does too. But, what's a queer Christian gotta do to get a children's book that calls God She or They?

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Conclusion

I'm not impressed with this book because, like all other children's bibles I've seen, it presents the bible as if it's a bunch of nice stories which teach us nice morality lessons and nice concepts about God. There are things this book does well- the art is good, and I like how some of the moral lessons were related to social justice concepts like protecting those who are powerless, and helping immigrants. But overall this isn't how I want to teach my kids about the bible.

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Related:

Not Sure I Want My Kid Reading the Bible 

2 Wrong Ways to Write Bible Stories For Kids 

"Who Is My Neighbor?" (Kids' Book Review)

"Our God: A Shapes Primer" (baby book review)

"The Storm That Stopped" (kids' book review) 

"Jesus and the Lions' Den" (kids' book review)

Blogaround + Happy New Year!

1. Louisiana forbids public health workers from promoting COVID, flu and mpox shots (December 20) !!! Very concerned about this.

2. There Are Many Programs Trying to Reduce Recidivism. This One Works. (December 19, via) "In the United States, the likelihood that a released convict will return to prison within five years is 45.8 percent. For the 750 GRIP graduates since 2012 who have subsequently been released, the figure is 1.71 percent."

3. The Lasting Legacy of Jimmy Carter, Dead at 100 (December 29) "He had decades of possibility ahead of him when he left the White House in 1981, and he chose to devote the latter half of his life to continued public service. In 1982, in partnership with Emory University, he established the Carter Center, an organization dedicated to promoting peace and well-being around the globe. Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, who died in November 2023 at age 96, famously volunteered with Habitat for Humanity for decades, and he brought to action what most presidents only speak about, says Claire Jerry, curator of political history at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History."

4. Nasa makes history with closest-ever approach to Sun (December 27, via) Cool!

5. More Chinese Couples Are Choosing to Live Apart. Is It Worth It? (December 30) "The study found that commuter marriages are often a rational choice driven by career ambitions, financial instability, and a desire for long-term family security. For many couples, living apart is not a passive compromise but an active decision made to maximize opportunities in an increasingly competitive urban job market."

6. Facebook and Instagram to Unleash AI-Generated ‘Users’ No One Asked For (December 30, via) "But the implications of a Facebook where the majority of the activity is bots bouncing off one another are hard to grasp, even at a moment when artificially gamed exchanges are common on the social network."

7. Star Trek: Tik Tok (2010, via) Wow this is fantastic. It's Kesha's son "Tik Tok" with clips from "Star Trek" (the original series).

8. I Watched Every Disney Channel Original Movie (December 24) Here's a 6-hour video from Big Joel reviewing over 100 Disney Channel original movies.

9. JK Rowling Falsely Claims "There Are No Trans Kids" (December 30) "There is no evidence that transgender identities are “caused” by any external factor. Rather, transgender people have always existed as a natural part of human diversity. Transgender individuals comprise an estimated 0.5–2% of the U.S. population, and many of them have understood their identity from a young age."