On demons and what really matters

Palm branch. Image source.

Here's a post from Tripp Fuller: I Am Undefeated Against Demons. 1 and 0. (via) It's about this one time where someone came to Fuller's church seeking an exorcism, claiming to be possessed by a demon. I love the part where the church secretary says to Fuller, "Since you’re the only one here from the South and you used to be an evangelical, we figured, you could handle this."

Fuller doesn't believe in demons. But here's someone coming to him, in need of help. He needs to help him, and the way to do that is just go along with the "it's a demon" framework, even though it's not.

He started talking. And while he was talking, his face would do a thing, and the voice would change, and the demon would pop out to say hi like an uninvited co-host on a podcast. Then he was back. Then the demon was back. Then he was back.

As I listened, here is what I was actually hearing. This guy was a horrible boss. He was making piles of money off people he treated badly. He was a workaholic. He had an addiction problem. He was taking all of it out on his family.

Now, friend. If anything is going to count as demonic, that will do.

Really fascinating that Fuller is witnessing this odd behavior and still totally doesn't believe it's a demon. The *actual* problem is that this guy is mistreating the people around him. 

Fuller tells this guy that the way to get rid of demons is to let the love of God in. Accept God's love for you, and stop hurting the people around you. And Fuller prays over this guy, while hitting water with a palm branch- not that he believes the palm branch is doing anything, but because this "demon-possessed" guy is looking for some kind of ritual to get rid of the demon.

I'm really interested in this post because it's a perspective on demons that I've totally never heard before. Basically, the idea is that when people talk about demons, there aren't *actually* demons, but if people want to use spiritual concepts like that to describe their experiences, fine, whatever- BUT the important thing is about how people treat each other, about relationships, about emotional health. And these spiritual concepts like "demons" are maybe acceptable to believe in, but only in service to what actually matters (love, community, emotional health, etc).

(Here's a question: so apparently Fuller doesn't believe this "demon" is really a demon- but he tells this guy to "let the love of God in"- does he believe "the love of God" is a real thing, or is that also just an imaginary concept that we can believe in if it's helpful for us, sort of a metaphorical way to think about accepting yourself and caring for the people around you?)

Let's contrast this with the mindset where these spiritual things- heaven, hell, God, the devil, angels, demons- are real, and they are more real than the physical world we can perceive. The gospel I was taught said that what really matters is whether you go to heaven or hell for all eternity. Our lives on earth are just the blink of an eye; it doesn't really matter what we do here. The only important thing we can do in our earthly lives is to correctly believe in Jesus and "get saved" so we go to heaven instead of hell.

And so, in this mindset where the spiritual world is more real than the physical world, ideas like morality, human connection, and emotional health are kind of... orthogonal to what really matters and what's really real. Yeah sure, God wants you to be a good person, love others, etc, but that's just some arbitrary rules that God made up- we just have to do them because God said to, not because they are central to the things that really matter.

And there's a tension... The more you believe in hell, the more you believe that your friends are in danger of going to hell, the more you will harass them, lie to them, coerce them- anything you can possibly do to push them toward "getting saved." Belief in the realness of the spiritual world is at odds with common-sense morality.

At the church where I grew up, people didn't talk about demons lurking in the world around us, possibly affecting our lives. (With one exception: I heard warnings about Harry Potter. Specifically, the concern that Christians had was that the spells in Harry Potter are real, so if kids read the books and then try those things out, it really will summon demons.) I know there some churches where people talk about demons all the time, but that wasn't my experience. Then when I was in college, some of my Christian friends would describe things that happened to them as "spiritual warfare"- like "I had a really good conversation with a non-Christian friend, I told her about Jesus- but then after that, I felt really discouraged and just kept thinking about all the things I should have said differently- maybe it's spiritual warfare." Ie, maybe the devil is planting these thoughts of discouragement in your head, because you did a *good* thing by talking to your friend about Jesus, and the devil is trying to stop you. I kind of believed that, but also I felt like, "really? We really believe that the devil himself is influencing our emotions? Isn't that kind of, uh, crazy?" I always thought it was suspicious that people would call it "spiritual warfare" like a vague and abstract euphemism, comes across as less bonkers than "the devil is doing this to me."

I have 1 anecdote about demons. So, when I was a college student, I went to a Christian conference. At one point, there was a group of us just hanging out and talking, maybe 5 students, and one of the other students there (let's call her Claire) told this story about when she personally had cast out a demon. So this is something I heard secondhand; I have no way to tell you how true any of it is. But anyway, Claire said there was a girl, let's call her Hannah, who was acting weird one night, and putting her legs in weird positions, and Claire and her friends were sure it was because Hannah was possessed by a demon. (I think there was more to it than that, like Hannah had a history of weird/"sinful" behavior, so she was thought to be more likely to be demon-possessed than the average person, but I don't remember the details.) So Claire and her friends stayed there with Hannah all night, commanding the demon to leave "in the name of Jesus." Claire told us, if you say "in the name of Jesus," the demon has to leave, it has to. Apparently they sat there with Hannah for quite a long time telling the demon to come out "in the name of Jesus," and eventually, by the time it was morning, Hannah seemed to be back to normal. 

When I heard this story, the main angle I viewed it from was "if this is true, this is PROOF that the spiritual world is real, and our Christian beliefs are true." That's what I wanted back then: proof. To get the enticement of atheism out of my head. Sure, there are plenty of people out there claiming some kind of miracle happened to them, but how do we know they're not making it up? Is there photo/video evidence? Do we have statements written down, by the people who witnessed it, immediately after it happened? Can we ask these witnesses a bunch of questions to get a clear picture of what happened, and make sure they're not mistaken about it?

So I viewed it through the lens of wanting proof, wanting to know if my beliefs were true or false. I noticed that my friends didn't seem to view this kind of story in that way- I had this urge to collect and preserve evidence, but other Christians didn't seem to have that. I guess they weren't viewing it in terms of "I need to prove this to myself and to other people." I guess they don't have something inside them that's always telling them to be an atheist.

It's very interesting to me, reading Fuller's blog post, about how he sees this guy right in front of him, exhibiting such odd behavior, and it doesn't affect his non-belief in demons at all. He just ignores all that, and says the real problem is the way this "demon-possessed" guy has broken his relationships with his family and co-workers, and the solution is to get this guy to accept the love of God, and then to treat people better. Like the question of whether the spiritual world exists- whether demons are real- doesn't matter at all. The only thing that matters is how we treat each other.

It's a perspective that views religion not as the realest thing, but as a tool that is useful only to the extent that it helps with the things we feel are most important to our lives in this physical world. Human connection, community, emotional health, that kind of thing. It's the opposite of "our earthly lives are just the blink of an eye, and all that matters is eternity in heaven or hell."

It feels like it's basically the same thing as "none of these religious claims are true at all, but they are good because they are useful for encouraging people to live in a moral way and love each other." (One could also make the argument that religion encourages people to do bad things, though. So maybe if all this is not true anyway, we'd be better off with no religion at all.)

So it's not "we believe our religion is true, now let's live according to the implications of that, no matter how strange they may seem- that's what faith is supposed to be." It's more like, we have our own experiences, real experiences and feelings in the physical world, and we're very rooted in that- that's real. And if religion can kind of give us a framework for viewing those experiences, great- but if religion ever tells us something too weird or not matching what we see in the real world, well then religion has reached the end of its usefulness, and we don't take it that seriously. Have common sense instead of having faith.

On the one hand, I like this, because it's something that actually makes sense (we should treat each other right) rather than something that depends on arguing about if demons exist/ if God exists/ etc. On the other hand, isn't this the same thing as saying my religion is not true? I don't like that; I want it to be true. I'm not just here for metaphors and inspiration; I really believe He lived and died and His tomb is empty.

But I'm stuck in a weird place where I feel that religion only matters if it leads you to do counter-intuitive things, things that look like a bad idea to people outside the religion; but also, don't ever do that- history is full of the wreckage of things that people did because their religion told them to, which everyone outside the religion could quite obviously see were bad ideas.

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Related

Don't know why I never realized this about Old Testament prophets

Faith, Fruit, and "Do you actually believe your religion?"

"The Kingdom of Children" (a book about child liberation theology)

Being Right vs Doing Good

So. Demons.

Katy Perry's God-Given Freedom

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. The Dirty Golden Yellow House (July 13) "Marital rape is not rare, but the telling of it is."

2. The Princess and the Pea (July 13) From xkcd.

3. NO-ONE IS GOING TO BUY YOUR VIDEOGAME (posted in June or July. via) It's an essay- click "Run manifesto" to read the essay. "It is easier and more fulfilling to show me who you are than it is to try and triangulate who you think I want you to be."

4. Andy did you hear about this one? (July 13) "What are humans like? Well, they’re made of meat. And also here is a statue they have chosen to show us. It depicts an innocent man being tortured to death by imperial power."

5. Lindsey Graham Dead, World No Worse (July 13) "Lindsey Graham made a horror of his life. Continually, day by day, on purpose, for decades. He built a tower of monstrosity right up to the sky and then died. Do him the honor of acknowledging his life's work. You can't be trusted to burn down what you're pretending not to see."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Man killed by ICE in Maine remembered as a father and hard worker (July 15) "He's saying, 'my son was a wonderful son. And I don't know why they did this to him.'"

2. What “voter fraud” really means (June 17, via) "I think it’s next to impossible for bien pensant liberals of the bipartisan comity is important despite our differences [italics added] variety to grasp that white supremacists truly believe that white people should rule the country because white people are hierarchically superior to non-white people, and that men should rule the country because men are hierarchically superior to women, and that Christians should rule the country because Christianity is true, which means it’s God’s religion, which means it’s true, because the Bible says so."

3. Update: E. Jean Carroll got paid, despite Trump having "stall[ed] this case for years” (July 9) "Law Dork confirmed that funds totaling more than $5.62 million were transferred to E. Jean Carroll on Tuesday."

Inspiration and Incarnation: An Aside About Apologetics

Noah and the dove. Image source.

I'm been reading "Inspiration and Incarnation" by Peter Enns, and blogging about it. I already wrote my post about chapter 2, but here's another fun little paragraph I want to talk about, from that same chapter.

This is in the section discussing the creation story and flood story from Genesis. They are very similar to myths from other ancient cultures. And the myths from other cultures are older. So, what do we do with that? It looks like the bible stories are just borrowed from other myths, rather than being directly from God, but that can't be right, can it? Page 41 talks about what you would do if you're a Christian in an apologetics argument:

If pressed, one could attempt to mount the argument that the Israelite stories were actually older than all the ancient Near Eastern stories but were only recorded later in Hebrew. Such a theory-- for that is what it is, a theory-- assumes that the biblical stories are the pristine originals and that all the other stories are parodies and perversions of the Israelite original, even though the available evidence would be very difficult to square with such a conclusion. But could it have happened this way? Yes, I suppose one could insist on such a thing, but it would be very difficult for someone holding to such a view to have a meaningful conversation with linguists and historians of the ancient world. To argue in such hypothetical terms can sometimes become an excuse for maintaining a way of thinking that is otherwise unsupportable. It is just such explanations that some readers might find problematic, for these explanations seem motivated by a desire to protect dogmatic commitments rather than to engage the available evidence.

!!! This is so real! This is exactly what it's like, to believe in biblical inerrancy, and to do apologetics. 

It's like... you start with the idea that if you're a Christian, you have to believe all these things about the bible. You have to believe it's inerrant. You have to believe there are no mistakes or contradictions- that it's telling 1 consistent story throughout. You have to believe that Moses wrote the Pentateuch. And that basically every book in the bible was written very close to the time of the events that happened, by whoever seems like the author when you do a very superficial reading of it. Yeah, any talk of "the book of Isaiah was pulled together from multiple authors" or "this was written hundreds of years after these events happened" is bad- you can't even consider that. It would be going against God.

You start with an idea of what the bible is, and then when someone brings up evidence that seems to contradict that, you have to come up with an explanation for why we can totally ignore that evidence and it doesn't matter.

Someone says "other cultures also have flood stories which are similar to the Noah's ark story." You have to say, well, yes, there really *was* a global flood, so that's why there are stories about it. But the Noah's ark story is the truth about it, and all the others are inaccurate. See? Easy. So we can just ignore all those other flood stories, because they're wrong and our version is right. No need to read them or care about what they say.

Someone points out that the 4 gospels don't exactly agree on who saw Jesus and when after the Resurrection. So you have to come up with some convoluted timeline that fits everything in, such that nothing the bible says is *technically* wrong. Even though, if your timeline is the truth, then the biblical writers wrote in a very misleading way, giving their readers an incorrect impression of what actually happened. But, no need to think about that! The important thing is that every isolated statement in the bible is true in some sense. Move along, nothing to see here!

Or any of the other little inconsistencies in the bible. Someone points them out- ugh, probably some internet atheist just looking to cause trouble. You go through and explain why each of these supposed contradictions is actually fine, nothing to see here. You make up all kinds of fan theories for how 2 seemingly-contradictory statements from the bible can both be true at the same time. That's what being a Christian is about, right? (It often goes so far, with Christians taking these fan theories so seriously because they're necessary to uphold the idea of inerrancy, that we don't even realize that they're fan theories and we actually think they are taught by the bible itself.)

And all of your explanations are like... well, it's not *impossible* that it could have happened that way. But if you just look at the evidence we have, other explanations seem far more likely. You're not really engaging with the evidence- you're viewing the evidence as a nuisance, and your task as a good Christian is to find excuses so we can ignore all that evidence.

If you're able to make a case that "it's not impossible" that your beliefs about the bible are right- well, that's good enough! That's what we're going for - "not impossible." You became a Christian for other reasons totally unrelated to biblical inerrancy and apologetics, and then you found out that one of the requirements to be a Christian is to believe certain things about the bible, so you hack a path through the jungle to show it's "not impossible" that those beliefs about the bible are true. There, all done!

But as Enns says, if that's what you're doing, you're not going to be able to have a meaningful conversation with the experts who are actually studying these things. With people who look at the actual evidence and explore the implications of it. People who really take the bible seriously, and spend their careers working to learn more about it. People who ask questions about *why* the biblical writers wrote things which are inconsistencies or mistakes- these are fascinating questions, but of course good Christians who believe in inerrancy are not allowed to ask them.

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Posts about "Inspiration and Incarnation":

Inspiration and Incarnation: Introduction
Inspiration and Incarnation: Other Ancient Near East Literature
Inspiration and Incarnation: An Aside About Apologetics

Related

The Bible and the Pixar Theory 

My mind is blown by how cool the Synoptic Problem is

"The Wise Men Came 2 Years After the Shepherds" Is Just a Fan Theory

Adding Incest to the Story of Cain

The Bible Stories As I Read Them Were Never Actually In The Bible

Who Cut Samson's Hair? (a post about reading the bible for what it is)

Children's Bibles and the 2 Creation Stories

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Types of Tornado Alert (July 3) From xkcd.

2. Chip Off The Old Block (July 1) "I’m not claiming any of this is smart or interesting. I’m claiming he constantly says whatever he’s thinking about to anyone around him, no matter how irrelevant and repetitive, and that this is of course the first sign of a future great blogger."

His kids are about the same age as my daughter, and yeah this whole post is what it's like.

3. On Christianity and Aliens (cont’d.) (June 29) "Your faith can be shattered not just by visitors from Vulcan and Vega, but by visitors from Samaria and the uttermost parts of the earth. It is existentially threatened by the idea that God might also love anybody who isn’t you."

4. Platner formally withdraws from Maine Senate race and Democrats announce process to name new nominee (July 11) "The formal withdrawal comes two days after Platner said he would quit the race, facing an allegation of sexual assault that he has denied."

And: The Banality of Misogyny (July 7, via) "It’s just occurring to me, she says, because I’ve never told anyone he assaulted me, I don’t know how I would ever get anyone to believe me if I needed to down the line. So I wanted to tell you, just in case."

And also, about Graham Platner, there are some corners of the internet (for example) which are discussing the fact that the victim apparently had texted him to say she needed a "glute massage", and he said he was coming over, and she told him not to. Discussing whether this means that it's not really rape.

I'm kind of thinking about this from 3 different angles. First, there's the modesty/ purity culture angle, which says that if a girl/woman does anything that might inspire a man to think about her body in a sexual way, well, men just aren't able to control themselves. From that point, whatever he does is not his fault. She should know that.

There's also the "it was a misunderstanding" angle. Whenever there's a big news story where a victim comes forward to talk about being sexually assaulted, and we hear the details of the story, there are always things that people will point to and say "she was sending mixed messages" and how could the perpetrator have known that the victim didn't want it? If she doesn't want it, but she doesn't tell him that directly, and she just goes along with it, then from his perspective it's consensual, and he is utterly shocked to later find out that she feels it was not consensual. I don't think this applies to the Platner case because the victim says she directly said no (here's the link to the Politico article that broke the story), but I've seen it in other cases.

I think there's quite a difference between "mixed messages" and "literally how could he have known that she didn't want it, there were no signs." And I think it's very normal that there would be [what people call] "mixed messages" leading up to a sexual assault, because the reason the perpetrator was able to get that close is because the victim does like them / trust them / is attracted to them, to some extent. Calling it "mixed messages" assumes that the only 2 possibilities are "she wants to have sex with him, specifically in the way that he wants" or "she doesn't want anything to do with him at all", and when we categorize her actions into these 2 categories, wow it's so puzzling how some of them fit into one category and some of them fit into the other one. Mixed messages. 

Like, uh, maybe she actually wanted something else, and the problem is that we're trying to force it to be one of these 2 specific things.

And then there's the "playing social games" angle (not sure what to call it, but we'll call it that). Basically, there's sort of a set of rules for social interactions between people, and you can manipulate people to get what you want- as long as you stay within the rules, no one can blame you. For example, if someone says "no", then you have to stop, and you can't have sex with them. But if you ask them over and over, and you manage to catch them in a state of mind where they don't say "no" because they don't have energy or they're not thinking clearly- ha, they didn't say "no", that means you *can* have sex with them and you can't be blamed. You've played the game and won, that's how it works.

You see this same kind of thinking when kids annoy each other playing the "I'm not touching you" game. One kid is hovering in the other kid's personal space, but because they are not *actually* touching, they are still acting within the rules, and they claim that the other kid therefore can't complain about it. It's a line of thinking based on "see what I can get away with", where the standard way we interact with other people is that we try to get what we want, we try to do things to people that they don't like, and it's just a matter of being clever enough to do it within the rules that society has prescribed.

So then when people talk about rape and consent, and say things like "drunk people can't consent to sex," for people who are coming from that "playing social games" perspective, it comes across like a slight modification in the rules of the social games. Like, now instead of targeting drunk people, in your efforts to do things to people that they don't want, you can maybe try getting your victim to drink a little bit but not enough to "count" as drunk under the societally-recognized rules.

And for the people arguing "it was a misunderstanding"- maybe we shouldn't take that to mean "if you, as an objective observer, witnessed the entire sequence of events, you genuinely might not realize that this person didn't want it" but rather "this person said something flirty, therefore the rules of social obligation say that the other person is *right* to expect that they are going to have sex. Why are you feminists suddenly trying to change the rules? This is so unfair." The "misunderstanding" is about whether the victim said something which does or does not belong to the category of "flirty things that mean they want to have sex"- if it does fit in that category, then they *do* owe the other person sex- the "misunderstanding" is that the victim believed it did not fit in that category, but the perpetrator thought it did. Rather than the "misunderstanding" being about "I paid attention to all of your behavior and I actually had no idea that you didn't want it."

But the real solution is not about closing loopholes, defining the rules perfectly so that there's no opportunity for rapists to rape while still carefully following all the rules. What we actually want is consent culture. A cultural norm where people own their own bodies, and you cannot do something to someone that they don't want. Like, genuinely, it's not about keeping within society's rules; it's about not doing things to people that they don't want.

It was so mind-blowing to me to learn about boundaries- the idea that the bedrock truth is that I own myself, my body, my money, my feelings, etc, and the challenge of navigating the social games of what to say in a confusing situation is just a superficial external layer, rather than a game that I need to win in order to escape the prospect of people doing things to me that I don't want. 

Like if a pushy salesperson keeps telling me I should buy their product, and I tell them I don't want it, and they explain to me why my reasons for not wanting it are not valid, and we go back and forth, until I don't know what to say anymore- so, that means I have to buy it. Under the "playing social games" logic, that's what it means. The salesperson is better at the game of staying within the appearance of having a polite conversation while also pushing me into something I don't want. But, no, let's not look at it that way, let's look at it from the "boundaries" perspective. My money is mine, and nobody has the right to *make* me buy something- and that's true regardless of my ability to think of a polite/convincing response. "No" is a complete sentence. You don't *have* to explain your reasons. Sure, it's good to be polite about it- it's a little rude to just directly say "you can't make me do this, you have no right"- but that politeness is just a surface-level thing, that's just a layer you put on the top, while the bedrock truth of it is nobody has the right to make you do something you don't want. If you can't think of a polite response, that doesn't mean you lost the social game and now people have a right to do things to you- it means you are allowed to be a little rude, to say "no" even though people might think that level of directness is a bit outside of the rules of the social games.

It's like I said in this post, Welcome to Purity Culture, Today We are Overanalyzing Hugs, where I responded to an article that included a section on what to do "If his hug makes you feel uncomfortable" that gave some tips about how to avoid a hug while still staying within the rules of the social games- for example, "When he reaches out to hug you, turn and give him a side hug rather than a front-on hug." Sure, these can be useful suggestions, but I didn't like how it was framed like, here are some strategies for playing this social game, hope this helps you win. Rather than, like, you have an absolute right to refuse a hug, and here are some tips for how to spin your refusal in a socially-acceptable polite way, but at the end of the day, if someone doesn't get the hint and they're still trying to invade your space, they are the one in the wrong, and you are allowed to be rude.

Anyway, something I've seen on the internet, where people talk about consent and explain it as, literally you should only have sex with someone who wants to have sex with you. It's not about memorizing more and more detailed rules and staying within them while also manipulating people to get what you want. No, it's way simpler than that- it's about whether the other person *genuinely wants to have sex with you*. And then there are replies from people who finally got that that's what "consent" means, and they're incredulous. They reply and say 'this sounds totally unworkable. I can only have sex with someone who genuinely wants to have sex with me? That doesn't sound like something that would ever happen- you feminists are saying I can never have sex at all.' This really says something about them- maybe they haven't technically raped anyone (?), but their entire approach for all of their previous sexual experiences has been about manipulating people into things they may or may not want. Like, approaching dating/sex more as a game theory thing than as a "we both actually want this" thing.

Playing social games vs actually caring about what the other person wants. If someone says she wants a "glute massage", then by the rules of the social games, you can probably get away with claiming that she was asking for it. And, from the "playing social games" perspective, that's what matters- rather than genuinely caring about what the other person wants or doesn't want.

5. Sunday reading (July 5) "There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him."

6. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a close Trump ally, dies after a brief and unexpected illness, his office says (July 12) "Graham appeared to break with Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, saying, “Count me out. Enough is enough.” But the senator returned to the fold and remained close with the president during his second term."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Two-hundred-and-fifty years in, Justice Jackson is doing the work that is needed from our leaders (July 5) "On this Fourth of July, I am thinking about how important it is for the United States that we have leaders willing to speak forthrightly about our past and ambitiously about our future in order to make it through the treacherous present."

2. The Wet And Wild Freedom Day Catastrophe (July 7) "The only place for these tens of thousands to go, realistically, was the streets outside the event, which is exactly what happened: a crush of bodies clustered at the entrance points and choking off traffic for blocks. Everyone is just as exposed to the elements out here as we were in there, except now we are angrily bunched together with nothing to do but endure the storm and stew about the stupidity of it all."

Donald Trump Throws Miserable Tribute To Himself On America's 250th Birthday (July 6) "The Trump team claims it had planned for the weather, but the slapdash look and feel of the tents, the free-for-all of water distribution from pallets, and the general lack of common sense and guidance in dealing with (increasingly) extreme weather suggests otherwise."

3. Lorenzo Salgado Araujo shot and killed by ICE agent in Houston, authorities confirm: Live updates (July 11) 

Men who witnessed deadly Houston shooting say ICE statement is false, attorney says (July 10) "But the three men who were riding in Salgado Araujo’s work van told attorney Hugo Balderas-Ibarra the version of events presented by ICE is false: 'At no point did they use the van to ram into the ICE agents and at no point were these ICE agents’ lives ever in any danger,' the lawyer said in a video posted to his Instagram."

4. GOP governor signs bill forcing trans inmates to detransition (July 6) "The bill does not allow those who have already begun treatment to continue and does not offer any plan to wean them off the medication. Experts say forcing them to stop at all, let alone cold turkey, will have disastrous mental and physical health consequences."

5. The Christian Past That Wasn't (June 30, via) "There are many stories like this that invent a grand narrative about the Christian past of our nation— a Christian past that, put simply, wasn’t. Some of these stories are false. Some contain a measure of truth, but they are exaggerated in such a way that they become mythical. Those who believe America was or is or should be a Christian nation use these fabrications to create myths about America from the days of the first European arrival to the present."

Every Bilingual Child is a Unique Flower

Toy monkey. Image source.

My second kid is 2 years old now, and she is learning language so fast! She mostly speaks Chinese, but I've been really surprised at how much English she uses- this is so different from her older brother when he was that age.

We live in China, and little Wavelength (this is what I'm gonna call her on the blog) is with her Chinese nanny or Chinese grandma while I'm at work all day. So it makes sense that she's mostly speaking Chinese. I'm really amazed at how fast she has been picking up Chinese. She can say whole sentences. Like the other day, at breakfast, her brother accidentally spit food on me while he was talking, and I didn't even realize that little Wavelength saw that, and then a few minutes later, she said "哥哥吐妈妈衣服" which means "brother spit mom's clothes" which is an accurate account of what happened.

Another time, she picked up a little dinosaur toy and said "恐龙尾巴掏牙" which means "dinosaur tail pick teeth" because she had been walking around with that dinosaur and using its tail to pick her teeth, and all of us told her to stop that. But now she's totally sure that's what the dinosaur toy is for, so that's what she said about it.

In English she can also say some sentences, which is great. Not as many as in Chinese though. She says "mama read brown bear" or "mama read monkey" to ask me to read her a book. She says "mama play legos." "Mama sing ABC." Etc.

She knows lots of animal names in English too! Cat, monkey, horse, dolphin, sheep, elephant (but she pronounces it "ofan"), giraffe (but she pronounces it "jwaff"), doggo (I guess I call dogs "doggo" and she has picked up on that), penguin, and probably more that I'm forgetting. She also knows all these, and even more, in Chinese.

And she can say "eat" in English. The funniest time was when she was trying to shove things into a toy T-rex's mouth, saying "Eat! Eat!" Also she knows "sit" - one time I saw her trying to sit on this stuffed parasaurolophus we have- she said her name and then "sit dinfour." ("Dinfour" is her attempt to say "dinosaur.")

The thing that really impresses me is that she doesn't just understand English, she also speaks it. Her brother (whom we call Square Root her on the blog) wasn't like that. He could understand English, but he always talked in Chinese. 

Why is that? Why is the little one speaking English so much more than her brother did at that age?

I thought the reason Square Root didn't speak in English at that age was that I was the only one in his life who talked to him in English. Kids in this kind of environment think to themselves "I have 1 oddball parent who speaks a completely different language that no one else speaks" and don't see any reason to bother speaking it themselves. (Maybe this is not totally true of our situation- because me and my husband talk to each other in English.)

Also, that was during the pandemic, when we got stuck in China for 3 years, lolsob. (Or, rather, it was possible to leave China, but almost impossible to get back in, so I didn't try to leave.) So during the time he was a toddler and was learning language, we didn't have a chance to visit any English-speaking relatives.

But then during the Shanghai lockdown, I was with him all day every day for 2 and a half months, lolsob, and he started speaking English. And now he doesn't have any problem speaking English or Chinese- though his Chinese is better than his English, and sometimes with my relatives he speaks Chinese and they have no idea what he's saying, and he claims he doesn't know how to say it in English, but upon further probing it turns out he can describe what he wants to say in English, even though maybe he didn't have an exact translation for how he would have said it in Chinese.

But his little sister is different! She says lots of things in English, without hesitation. She'll point at a horse and say "马" and then "horse." She taught her Chinese grandma the word "monkey." Why is she saying all these English words, unlike her brother?

(And here's another interesting question: Does she say English words to *me* at a higher frequency than she says them to the people in her life who don't understand English? Does she have an awareness of what language is for what person? I don't know.)

Is it because we have been able to travel outside of China, and visit relatives who speak English? Well, we only do that once or twice a year, and last time we did, she hadn't learned that many words yet, so I don't know if that made a difference. 

Is it because the existence of the bilingual older sibling has changed the language environment?

Is it because she learns languages faster than he did- and we see that in both Chinese and English?

Is it because the two of them are just different people and have different preferences about how much they want to speak English?

Probably it's all of these reasons. And I'm finding it fascinating how her language learning is so different from her brother's.

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Related:

My Toddler's Experience With Baby Sign Language 

I wonder what my toddler thinks about being bilingual

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Journal Club: An Ace Reading of Frodo (June 29) "Hobbit culture emphasizes the importance of family and lineage, but Bilbo and Frodo are both highlighted as strange for being perpetual bachelors. This puts a lot of distance between them and their home culture."

2. The Lexicon of Revolution: Tracing the Origins and Global Journey of China’s ‘Long March’ (June 30) "In 1976, 'Long March' was first added to the dictionary, merely as a subentry under 'long.' However, in June 2016 — coinciding with the 80th anniversary — the OED upgraded it to a standalone main entry with a comprehensive historical definition: 'The retreat of Chinese Communist forces ... in 1934–35 ... over a distance of 6,000 miles.'"

Also from Sixth Tone: Investigation Uncovers China’s Underground Height Surgery Market (July 1) Wow this looks horrifying.

3. Jurassic Park but with a Cat (2021, 1-minute video, via) and Jurassic Park with a Cat — Behind the Scenes (7-minute video)

4. Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are married. What to know about the wedding (July 5)

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. The Supreme Court upholds grace periods for mail-in ballots, siding against the GOP (June 29) I don't really *get* this case- so, the question is about how the deadline for mail-in ballots is defined: is it that your ballot has to be received by election day, or postmarked by election day? Both of those seem like reasonable policies to me; either one should be fine, as long as everyone is clear on which one it is. I'm confused about why this is always framed as "Democrats are in favor of counting the ones that arrive after election day, Republicans are not" and also why Democrats are talking about this like it's about the big questions of democracy and fairness to voters- it *doesn't* seem intuitively obvious to me that being on the side of fairness and democracy means that even the ballots received after election day should be counted.

(Okay, but from the Supreme Court's perspective, the question is about whether states are in charge of their own election policies.)

My initial thought was, maybe it's about "people who have enough money and resources that they're able to live their lives in an organized way and don't have trouble with meeting deadlines" skewing Republican, and "people who are poor and therefore never have enough time or money for all the things they need to deal with, so they often miss deadlines" skewing Democrat- so that's why Democrats want to count them and Republicans don't? Or maybe "people who aren't paying attention and didn't realize there was an election until the last minute" correlates more with voting for Democrats. Something like that?

*I* vote by mail- I wonder if any of my ballots have ever been received after election day. I try to get it done as early as possible, because I know there's uncertainty in how long it takes to mail stuff from China to the US (unless you pay like 50 bucks for a good shipping service like DHL or Shunfeng). But yeah, sometimes the time between when the ballot becomes available to download and print, and the election day, is not that long- maybe it makes sense that a lot of mail-in voters send in their ballots and they *don't* arrive by election day, even if these voters are being responsible and aware of what's going on. 

Maybe the partisan angle is about how Democrats are more likely to vote by mail than Republicans. So I should think of it not as "this is about counting the ballots of people who are bad at meeting deadlines, apparently a key demographic for Democrats???" but more like "it *is* reasonable that some proportion of mail-in ballots arrive after election day- this is about protecting the right to vote, for people who vote by mail." (I would be interested in seeing the statistical distribution showing when mail-in ballots arrive, relative to election day.)

And then another way to think about it is, those ballots are already in the mail. People *want* to vote, they have the right to vote, and they did the work of filling in the ballot and mailing it. You *should* count them.

2. Immigration is about Race (June 29) "Both of Alito’s opinions are mockeries of legal reasoning. He had a conclusion to get to, and he got there. He can’t say it in so many words, but he wants to Make America White Again. And the other five conservative justices agreed with him."

3. Megyn Kelly faces backlash over ‘profoundly racist’ rant against Haitian immigrants after Supreme Court ruling (June 26) "'We don’t care if you’re offended. Get out! Go home! Go back to f***ing Haiti!' Kelly said on her podcast."

And also about Haitians: The U.S. healthcare system is in crisis. A Supreme Court ruling could make things worse (July 2) "Experts say deporting Haitian TPS recipients will have a catastrophic impact on the nationwide healthcare workforce crisis — a workforce that is hugely dependent on immigrant labor."

4. Israel Bombed a Turtle Sanctuary & Killed Mona Khalil (June 29) "In my opinion, Israel destroyed the Orange House, and Khalil, because they want to destroy what it and what she stood for: hope. A better life. A life where even poor refugees can care about helpless little turtles."

5. Supreme Court upholds birthright citizenship on constitutional grounds (June 30) So the court ruled 6-3 that the 14th amendment says what it says. Uh. Jonathan Last writes, "The first time the Trump administration was able to find any judge, anywhere in America, to state that it had the ability to do away with birthright citizenship was when it got to the Supreme Court. And then it found three of them." (And Kavanaugh, even though he sided with the majority, it was for other reasons, not because he believes the 14th amendment says what it says.)

The six opinions in the birthright citizenship ruling have a lot to teach us about the U.S. today (July 2)

And apparently a bunch of MAGAs are really unhappy about this, and have a lot of racist things to say about it. My "favorite" is Steven Crowder, who is mad that "little Josue born to illegal Haitians in Springfield, Ohio is just as American as you and me." Um, yes? That's what America is about? So I guess they're not even going to pretend America is about equality for everyone. And for the MAGAs who make a big deal about being Christian, I guess they aren't even going to pretend that Christianity is about a God who loves everyone.

6. He sent a harsh email to ICE's top official. 5 months later, federal agents tracked him down (July 1) "'It's starting to look like a pattern of knocking on people's doors to ask them questions about clearly constitutionally protected speech. And that is very troubling,' said Nathan Freed Wessler, the deputy director of ACLU's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project."

7. House Democrats accuse Trump of 'hijacking' America's 250th birthday for his own gain (July 2) "'They had a chance to do this in a bipartisan way or a way that wouldn't enrich cronies, but they pretty clearly didn't do that,' said Zibel. 'I think that this is a follow-the-money situation that needs to be explored.'"

When Prayer Inspires You To Do It Yourself

Praying hands. Image source.

So I want to talk about how Christians connect the concepts of "praying for something" and "doing the thing yourself."

Back when I was evangelical, I had this belief about prayer: Prayer is so important. If we are doing some big thing for God, or if we really really need something, we absolutely have to pray about it. Of all the things we could potentially do to ensure the success of the venture in question, prayer is the most important. 

We would always say that- prayer is the most important part. If you're working on something that you feel like God wants you to do, and you work hard but you don't pray about it, well you're shooting yourself in the foot. What are you even doing, trying to do things without prayer, as if you don't need God?

When I was a college student, I was getting ready to go on a summer mission trip, and I had to send out my fundraising letters. Yeah this is a thing in evangelical culture- young people go on mission trips that cost several thousand dollars, and they write letters to adults in their church, to ask for money for the trip. The basic structure of the letter has to be like this:

I'm going on a mission trip to [some place] because [big lofty ideas about God]. Here's how you can help: First of all, pray for us. Prayer is the most important thing! Second, give me money. [but maybe word this a bit more politely]

And then I kept a list of all the people who had donated to my trip, and the amounts, to see how close I was to the target amount. I did *not* reach the target amount, and had to add a few hundred dollars of my own money. (I wrote about this here: A Little Story About a Mission Trip and Money.)

Anyway, the reason I'm telling this story is, we all had to say "prayer is the most important thing." We all had to say that if someone prays for me to raise the money, that's more effective than actually *giving* me money. We all had to say that, but nobody kept track of "I have 15 people who agreed to pray for me, wow that's great." What we kept track of was, how much money have we collected so far, and how much more do we need? When it was time to pay up, those of us who hadn't raised the whole amount had to pay for part of it ourselves. There was no part of the process where we were asked how many people prayed for us, and were judged on whether or not it was enough.

We claimed prayer was the most important thing. If someone prayed for me to be able to raise the money, if they prayed really really hard, then God would prompt various people to give me the money I needed. And, it might happen that someone is praying really hard- "God, please help Perfect Number raise the money"- spending a lot of time, a lot of emotion, really really begging- because we believed prayer was most effective if you prayed over and over, and if you "really meant it"- and then God would cause a thought to occur to this person, in the middle of their praying- "hey, what if *I* gave her some money?"

Yes, it can happen that you're praying for something, and the way God answers your prayer is by making you realize that *you* should do it. Indeed, God will only answer your prayer if you "really mean it"- and if you truly do want me to get the money for the mission trip, then you will certainly be willing to put in some of your own money. Otherwise, I guess you don't "really mean it" when you're praying, and God won't listen to your prayer.

So in this ideology, we kind of viewed prayer like this: You pray really hard for God to do something, you put a lot of emotion into it, and this hands the task over to God, who has various strategies available to accomplish what you asked, if God decides that's what should happen. Sometimes this means that God will then prompt the very same person who was praying, to make them realize that *they* have the ability to do something about it.

So I'm writing about this because I want to compare it with what I believe now. In my post The Prayer That Jesus Taught Us To Pray, I talked about conceptualizing prayer like this: We're *not* asking God to do these things; we're making a statement about how we think things should be, and this gives us clarity about what actions *we* should take to make it happen. 

In both cases, you pray for something and then you do the work yourself- but they're so different. In the ideology I used to have, God was in charge of doing the things- we just needed to pray really really really sincerely and persistently, and then God would do it. And sometimes this "God doing it" would involve, somewhat surprisingly, making you realize that *you* should do it. Kind of an unexpected and indirect thing, but sure, that's a valid strategy God can use.

But now I don't believe God acts in response to prayer. It's on us. I don't think you can pray really hard, and then sit back, assured that you've done your part to put the wheels in motion to get this done. 

You could think about the difference between these 2 ideologies as cutting out the middleman. Pray to give the task to God, and then God gives it back by giving you the realization that you should do it. I find this really ineffective and error-prone- there are several failure points where someone/Someone might bungle the handover.

And here's another example: There have been times where I saw somebody unhappy, and I wanted to help them, but I didn't know what to say. What if I said the wrong thing, and made it worse? So I prayed about it a lot. I asked God to help them feel better. And I felt good about that, because God is always perfect- if I attempted to help them, I might do it wrong, but if I pray and then God is the one who takes on the task of helping them, well, God will surely not screw it up like I would. I remember being glad that I could pray, and not take any action myself- it was a way to help, without any of the risk. 

Maybe that's bad? That you can pray, and feel like you did something, and so you no longer have the burden of being obligated to do something. Remember how we always said prayer was the most important thing? That it's more effective to pray and ask God to do something, rather than to do something yourself. Maybe this belief is not good.

The apostle James wrote, 

Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?

Is prayer the same way? If you see someone in need, and you pray for them, and do nothing else, would James say, "what good is it"? I never would have interpreted this verse that way, when I was evangelical- because I did think prayer counted as "doing something."

But also, when I was evangelical, I believed that an important part of prayer was listening to God. You pray for something, and you also sit quietly and see if God tells you anything. It very well could happen that you pray for something, and then when you sit there and listen to God, God answers by saying that *you* should do the thing. I did believe that was very important. You don't just pray and that's all- you pray and then listen for whatever God has to say about your prayers.

I saw a poll on the internet one time- a Christian was asking other Christians how they understood prayer, and the 2 choices were:

1. Prayer changes God
2. Prayer changes me

Christians say all sorts of things about prayer, but in this case, it was boiled down to these 2 views- which I agree is a helpful way of looking at it. Do you believe you pray, and then God goes and does something about it? Or do you believe you pray, and it helps you to become a better person? (Possibly by inspiring you to do the thing yourself.)

Personally I don't believe in either of those- but I think this helps clarify the differences in how Christians view prayer.

So my point is, I now believe that praying should go right along with doing the thing yourself. But in a very different way than I did back then.

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Related:

The Prayer That Jesus Taught Us To Pray

Praying Non-Literally

The Parable of the Talents: Risk and Return in Building the Kingdom of Heaven