Well I believe in God and evolution but I don't call it "theistic evolution"

A group of zebras. Image source.

So I wrote my review of "The Language of God" but I decided to make a whole separate post about theistic evolution because I have a lot to say about it.

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How the book defines theistic evolution

Here's a quote from pages 200-201:

There are many subtle variants of theistic evolution, but a typical version rests upon the following premises:

1. The universe came into being out of nothingness, approximately 14 billion years ago.
2. Despite massive improbabilities, the properties of the universe appear to have been precisely tuned for life.
3. While the precise mechanism of the origin of life on earth remains unknown, once life arose, the process of evolution and natural selection permitted the development of biological diversity and complexity over very long periods of time.
4. Once evolution got under way, no special supernatural intervention was required.
5. Humans are part of this process, sharing a common ancestor with the great apes.
6. But humans are also unique in ways that defy evolutionary explanation and point to our spiritual nature. This includes the existence of the Moral Law (the knowledge of right and wrong) and the search for God that characterizes all human cultures throughout history.

If one accepts these six premises, then an entirely plausible, intellectually satisfying, and logically consistent synthesis emerges: God, who is not limited in space or time, created the universe and established natural laws the govern it. Seeking to populate this otherwise sterile universe with living creatures, God chose the elegant mechanism of evolution to create microbes, plants, and animals of all sorts. Most remarkably, God intentionally chose the same mechanism to give rise to special creatures who would have intelligence, a knowledge of right and wrong, free will, and a desire to seek fellowship with Him. He also knew these creatures would ultimately choose to disobey the Moral Law.

This view is entirely compatible with everything that science teaches us about the natural world. It is also entirely compatible with the great monotheistic religions of the world. The theistic evolution perspective cannot, of course, prove that God is real, as no logical argument can fully achieve that. Belief in God will always require a leap of faith. But this synthesis has provided for legions of scientist-believers a satisfying, consistent, enriching perspective that allows both the scientific and spiritual worldviews to coexist happily within us. This perspective makes it possible for the scientist-believer to be intellectually fulfilled and spiritually alive, both worshiping God and using the tools of science to uncover some of the awesome mysteries of His creation.

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BioLogos

In the book, Francis Collins says the name "theistic evolution" isn't that great, and he wants to rebrand it as something different. He calls it BioLogos. "Bio" from "biology", and "Logos" which is a Greek word meaning "word" or "reason." As in, John 1:1, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Christ is the logos of God. So Collins has invented this word, BioLogos, which combines biology and following God in a logical way.

So as I'm reading this, I'm like, wait a minute, I know a website called BioLogos. I've read articles from this site before. I never really got a sense of what their overall position is- is it theistic evolution? If you asked me to describe the BioLogos site, I would say it's articles about the topics of creation and evolution, from a Christian perspective, and they're pretty good, and very noticeably are *not* the typical creationist talking points.

Well I just did some googling, and here's what it says on the "history" page of BioLogos: 

BioLogos began with Francis Collins, one of the world’s leading scientists.

In 2006, Collins wrote The Language of God (2006), the best-selling book that told the story of his journey from atheism to Christian faith, showing that science is not in conflict with the Bible, but actually enhances faith.

The outpouring of response to the book showed the need for virtual and actual meeting places to ask questions, discuss issues, and learn from the top Christian minds in the sciences and theology.

Wow, I had no idea. Pretty cool that this organization was started by him.

(But again, it goes to show: I've heard plenty of Christians claiming Francis Collins as a symbol, like "oh people say you can't be smart and be a Christian, but look, we have Francis Collins on our side!" Like, score a point for our side as we argue with the atheists. But I have very rarely heard Christians actually being interested in what Collins has to say.)

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Did God use evolution?

Theistic evolution, as I understand it, is the idea that "God used evolution." I don't buy this. I can't buy this. Evolution is a heartless process that generates more complex and better adapted creatures by ruthlessly letting the less-adapted ones die.

Yeah sure, the book says evolution is "elegant." Okay, it's elegant. Something as simple as natural selection, choosing among variations in a species, producing the amazing variety of life we see in our world today. Yeah it's "elegant," I'll give you that. But what about all the animals that die? What about the species of animals that have a ton of offspring, because that's a good evolutionary strategy, and then the majority of the offspring die very quickly? What about the little baby sea turtles struggling to get to the ocean, being eaten by seagulls? What about the male lions killing other lions' cubs? Did God want it to be this way?

The idea that "God used evolution" makes it sound like everything is just fine, with one's religious beliefs and the reality of evolution. It's not fine! This is basically the same thing as the Problem of Evil. How could a good God allow this? And the claim is not only "God allowed this", but that God chose to use the mechanism of natural selection to create all the animals, including humans. God chose that? Really? Y'all are fine with this?

So my position is like... I believe in a God who is all-powerful and good, and I believe in evolution, and this is a problem. This is a problem! Just like how the Problem of Evil is a problem. It's not just "oh, God used evolution" and that's all there is to say.

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The last will be first, and the first will be last

The entire point of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection is that love triumphs over power. (Okay, that's my take, but Christians have a lot of different opinions on what's "the entire point of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection.") He came to bring the kingdom of heaven to this earth- a new kind of kingdom where the last will be first, and the first will be last. Blessed are the poor. The meek will inherit the earth.

It might look like power is winning. It might look like the strong can oppress the weak and get away with it. But this is not the end of the story. This is not how God wants it to be. He came preaching a message of love and acceptance, challenging the power structures that existed in society, and He was killed for it. But that is not the end of the story. He lives!

But how can that be the case, if "God used evolution"? Does God want the last to be first, or does God want survival of the fittest? The first will be first. The last get removed from the gene pool. If the last were first, humans never would have evolved.

This heartless process, which is the total opposite of the message of Jesus, is the mechanism God used to create humans? And you all are fine with that?

And this isn't just about Jesus. The Old Testament also talks about how it will be in the kingdom of heaven. The prophet Isaiah said, 

The wolf will live with the lamb,

    the leopard will lie down with the goat,

the calf and the lion and the yearling together;

    and a little child will lead them.

The cow will feed with the bear,

    their young will lie down together,

    and the lion will eat straw like the ox.

The infant will play near the cobra’s den,

    and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.

They will neither harm nor destroy

    on all my holy mountain,

for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord

    as the waters cover the sea.

The wolf will live with the lamb. The cow with the bear. The child will put his hand in the viper's nest. This is how God wants it to be, in the kingdom of heaven. But if wolves and lambs really lived together peacefully, humans would not exist. The struggle between predator and prey is what made animals evolve such amazing and fascinating complexity. 

Joel Duff has a good post which asks the question: in a young-earth creationist worldview, what would we expect animals to look like before the Fall? Young-earth creationists believe that before Adam and Eve sinned, there was no death- not even animal death. What would animals look like, if the threat of death wasn't something that their features needed to adapt to? That link has a rather terrifying photoshopped image of a rabbit with its eyes on the front of its head. Prey animals have eyes on the sides of their heads because of death. Every single interesting trait that any animal has, it's because if they didn't have that, they would be more likely to die. It's because of survival of the fittest. It's because of power. It's because this world is not the kingdom of heaven, that Jesus came to bring.

If you're an atheist, this is fine. Yeah animals and people were produced through natural selection, which is cruel and heartless, but it's not like anyone *wanted* it to be that way. It's not like it's "supposed" to be that way, in any sense. Sure, that's what how the natural world works, but we can choose to live in more moral and altruistic way instead.

But if "God used evolution" and we have signed on to worship that God, well, what then?

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God changed

If there is an answer to this, it must be something about God changing. Maybe the animal world is meant to be governed by "survival of the fittest," but humans are meant to be different. Or maybe God doesn't value animal lives at all, so it doesn't matter that a huge fraction of them died, in service of the greater good of evolution- but humans bear God's image, and They actually care about that, so now They want to change it and say we have to care for each other and the last will be first. Or maybe God originally used evolution and natural selection, but then changed Their mind and wanted things to be different.

To a large extent, we could say I view the work of Jesus and the message of Christianity as a reaction to the way the world is. Jesus came to preach good news to the poor- but, if God was on their side, then why are they poor in the first place? The God of this kind of religion is not a God who has always been in charge of the whole world, but instead is taking the current state of the world as a starting point, and taking steps to make it better. We hope for the future where God will make everything right- but why do we need to do that? Why didn't God just make it right in the first place? IS IT BECAUSE THEN HUMANS NEVER WOULD HAVE EVOLVED?

Kind of comes across like a religion that isn't true at all, but helps us feel better because we imagine that it means God *will* make things better. But if this was actually true, wouldn't God have already made it better? If religion is about the hope that things will get better- well, what reason is there to think that there would be a significant change, if God has always been totally in charge of the world?

This is why I don't pray. If we really believe that God is gonna intervene and help us in response to our prayers, well why didn't God just intervene earlier and prevent our problems from happening in the first place? Does our world, with all its problems and injustice, look like a world where God is frequently intervening to help people?

And believing the message of Jesus is about bringing the kingdom of heaven to the earth, about our responsibility to do good, right the wrongs, and fight for justice- which is what I believe- doesn't it come across like a religion that's not true at all, and its only value is in inspiring people to do good? God's not actually doing it, so we have to?

(I realize I've just opened a whole can of worms, but yeah there you have it.)

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I'm a Christian because I really do believe in Jesus. His incarnation, his teachings, his message, his resurrection. But that doesn't mean I think this is all fine and my religious beliefs totally make sense. What does it say about God, that They "used evolution" to create all life on earth? Are we really okay with that?

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Related

"The Language of God" (surprisingly I like this book!)

Animals Screw Over Other Animals and Get Away With It

I used to be a young-earth creationist

"The Language of God" (surprisingly I like this book!)

Book cover for "The Language of God"

I recently read The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief by Francis S. Collins (published in 2006) and surprisingly, I really liked it! This is a really good book! It gives Collins's perspective, as a scientist and Christian, and it's just very reasonable. It doesn't come across as "let's fight those atheists" or fearful of science. It's about his own reasons for leaving behind atheism and converting to Christianity, and it's about how evolution is just true and Christians should accept that, and creationism and intelligent design just ain't it, and how science and faith are compatible. 

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Francis Collins

Collins was the director of the Human Genome Project. This was a team that sequenced the entire human genome, billions of DNA base pairs, which is pretty amazing. (The title, "The Language of God" refers to the idea that the DNA base pairs are the "language" that God used to create life.)

I've seen Christians make a big deal about how Collins is a Christian. The argument goes, see, Francis Collins is a Christian, and he's a famous scientist! So, our beliefs *are* legit and compatible with science! The assumption is that Collins holds all the same beliefs that the Christians who claim him as a symbol do. Turns out, this assumption is very wrong! All throughout this book, Collins comes across as thoughtful and reasonable, rather than holding on to dogmatic beliefs that we can't question and we just have to keep saying louder.

Case in point: evolution. A big chunk of this book is about how evolution is true and Christians should accept that. Collins discusses creationism, and talks about why it's wrong. He discusses intelligent design, and why it's wrong. And then he talks about theistic evolution, which is the position he holds.

I was totally surprised. I really had no idea what this book was about; I had no idea that Collins accepts evolution and I had no idea that he was openly advocating for Christians to accept evolution. Really, no idea. All those times that I've heard Christians say "look, Francis Collins" as if that proves that their beliefs are reasonable- wow, I really had no idea that he was out here telling Christians to accept evolution. In the Christian subculture I grew up in, we all knew that of course Christians do not believe in evolution.

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."

Inspiration and Incarnation: Introduction

Book cover for "Inspiration and Incarnation"

I started reading Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament by Peter Enns, and it's so good, I decided to write a blog series on it. This post will cover the preface and chapter 1.

Enns is a biblical scholar. I've read and reviewed 2 of his books before: The Bible Tells Me So (published 2014) and Genesis for Normal People (published 2019). I really enjoyed those and I want to read all of his books. This one, "Inspiration and Incarnation," was originally published in 2005, but I have the 10th-anniversary edition, published in 2015. The writing style of "Inspiration and Incarnation" is more formal and academic than "The Bible Tells Me So" and "Genesis for Normal People"- those two had a lot of [in my opinion] unnecessary pop culture references- I know some readers like that, so, that's fine, but I definitely like the style of "Inspiration and Incarnation" better.

Here's the overall idea of this book: In the past 150 or so years, there has been new evidence uncovered about the civilizations and cultures of the ancient Near East. Archaeologists have found writings from people groups who lived near the ancient Israelites- and these writings have many similarities to what we see in the bible. This is something of a problem for evangelical Christian ideology, because evangelicals believe the bible is inerrant and inspired by God, and so they don't want to believe that it's similar to other ancient writings, that it was influenced by them and it borrowed ideas from them, that it has mistakes and anachronisms, that it follows the genre conventions of ancient Near East writing rather than being absolute truth as we would view it from a modern scientific perspective.

The conservative bible scholars respond to this problem by downplaying the similarities between the bible and other ancient writing. The liberal bible scholars respond to this problem by saying the bible is the same as other ancient writing, and therefore it isn't special or inspired by God. Enns claims that both sides are making an incorrect assumption: that if the bible is similar to other ancient writing, that means it's not really from God. He says that, on the contrary, God gave us a bible which is fully human and also fully divine- just like Jesus was fully human and fully God. God speaks to humans within their own cultures.

The Rich Man and Lazarus (and Atheism)

Artwork showing the rich man enjoying a feast in his home, with Lazarus outside his door. Image source. 

In Luke 16:19-31, Jesus tells this parable:

“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.

“The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’

“But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’

“He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’

“Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’

“‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’

“He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

Reading this parable now, I'm astounded at how the meaning of it is so completely different from how I understood it when I was evangelical.

Here's how I interpret this story now: Jesus introduces us to 2 characters, a rich man and a very poor man. The poor man, Lazarus, begs outside of the rich man's house, for years, but the rich man does not do anything to help him. In the afterlife, Lazarus goes to heaven and the rich man goes to hell- Lazarus goes to heaven because he suffered so much on earth, so he deserves to have a better life, and the rich man goes to hell because he had a good life on earth but didn't help the poor. Jesus doesn't directly state that these are the reasons they went to heaven/hell; it's treated like it's just obvious. Also, these reasons are emphasized by what Abraham tells the rich man- that in his earthly life, the rich man had good things, while Lazarus suffered.

Now that the rich man understands how serious it is that rich people need to help poor people, otherwise they will go to hell and be in agony forever, he asks Abraham to send Lazarus to go and warn his brothers about this. But Abraham says, no, they should already know, because they have access to the teachings of Moses and the prophets. The rich man knows that his brothers won't take Moses and the prophets seriously, because he didn't either during his life, but surely if someone comes back from the dead, that will convince them.

And Abraham says, no, "If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead."

The main point of this story is our obligation to help others. And also, that someday there will be justice- God will help people who suffered on earth, and send rich people to hell for not doing anything to help.

The secondary point is, rich people should know this. They have the teachings of Moses and the prophets, or other religions, or moral philosophies. Of course they are able to realize that they have a moral obligation to help others. But they don't want to. They will make excuses. The rich man in the story says his brothers will definitely believe if they see someone come back from the dead, but Abraham tells him, no, they'll still make excuses.

You shouldn't need a miracle, or a religion, or anything like that. It's obvious that people who have enough money for their own life should give to help others. And if you don't accept that basic obvious fact of morality, then even if you did see a miracle, you would still come up with reasons to ignore the people in need around you.

Just reading the parable by itself, without bringing in any of one's own beliefs about heaven and hell, it seems pretty clear that this is what it's saying. If you are rich, you need to use your money to help others, otherwise you will go to hell.

But of course, for evangelicals, Jesus can't possibly be saying that.

Evangelicals "know" the criteria for getting into heaven or hell: It's not about what you do, it's only about your faith in Jesus. If you believe in Jesus, and you "prayed the prayer" to commit your life to him, you will go to heaven. If you didn't do that, then by default you go to hell, because everyone is a sinner and deserves to go to hell. 

Evangelicals strongly disagree with the idea that people go to heaven just because they had a bad life and God feels bad for them. No! God has actual standards! You have to have the correct faith; God's not going to let you in just because They feel bad for you. And as for the rich man going to hell because he didn't help Lazarus- evangelicals would say, there totally are rich people that go to heaven, don't worry if you're a rich person- but maybe it's a little more difficult for rich people because they tend to rely on their money rather than realizing they need Jesus. And of course God *wants* you to use your money to help others, so if you *truly* believe in Jesus (at the level required to go to heaven) then you would do that, but let's be clear, going to heaven does not hinge on whether you helped others, it hinges on your faith in Jesus.

So we have this situation where evangelicals are totally sure this parable cannot mean what it obviously means. (Similar thing for the parable of the sheep and the goats.) Lazarus must have gone to heaven because he believed in Jesus- yeah that's not mentioned at all in the story, but that was definitely the actual reason, despite Abraham's words, "in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony." And the rich man went to hell because he didn't believe in Jesus- and if he had believed in Jesus, then his faith would have inspired him to help Lazarus. And when he talks about sending Lazarus to warn his brothers, he means sending Lazarus to tell them about the necessity of believing in Jesus. And the rich man says that his brothers won't believe just based on Moses and the prophets- I mean, yeah, when you're trying to convince someone of a particular religious doctrine, and your argument is "here are some ancient religious writings" this usually fails to convince them to convert to your religion. The rich man says it would convince them to give up their atheism if they saw an actual resurrection, but that's actually not true either. Atheists are really stubborn and unreasonable like that.

Wait, what? Why are we suddenly criticizing atheists...?

Yes, seriously, this is the interpretation of the parable I had when I was evangelical: There *is* enough evidence, from the bible, from "Moses and the Prophets," that people should *know* they are supposed to believe in Jesus and commit their lives to him. But when you talk to actual atheists, they tell you that's not enough evidence. They may give you examples of what kind of miracles they would have to see, that *would* count as evidence of the supernatural- but they're actually lying about that. Like Jesus says here, even if they saw someone come back from the dead, they would still not believe. So don't feel bad about how your apologetics arguments fail to convince those atheists. It's a *them* problem!

Yes, really. Evangelicals take this parable about how rich people need to help poor people, or else the rich people will go to hell, and turn it into this bizarre cheap shot at atheists. It's such a weird feeling for me, reading this now when I'm so far removed from evangelical ideology, realizing how obviously Jesus' point is that rich people need to help others (or else they will go to hell!) and somehow evangelicals managed to make it not about that at all- because evangelicals already know that the way to get into heaven is believing in Jesus- and then take this line at the end and turn it into a claim that "you know how your atheist friends say they would believe in God if you had better evidence? Well actually they're lying about that."

The rich man in hell wants to send Lazarus to tell his brothers how to avoid going to hell- and so evangelicals know that obviously means he wants Lazarus to tell them to believe in Jesus. That's how you avoid going to hell. Like we're so committed to this idea that faith in Jesus is the be-all-end-all, *the* answer for how to go to heaven, that we don't even read Jesus' actual words in front of us. (Even if we saw someone rise from the dead, we still wouldn't read Jesus' actual words in front of us.)

Try this on for size: This is a parable about rich Christians who don't use their money to help others. They should know that they're supposed to do that. They have Moses and the prophets. They have the bible. They even believe that Someone rose from the dead, and this still fails to convince them that they need to give money to help others.

How many Christians do we see right now, who are sure that Christianity is about political power and making rules to control other people, rather than helping the poor? Jesus was right. His followers believe He rose from the dead, but we still won't do what he said.

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Related

The Parable of the Living Wage

Sheep and Goats

Jesus Weighs in on "Being Right vs Doing Good"

What kind of God will judge how we treat immigrants?

White Privilege and the Rich Young Ruler

Praying Non-Literally

The tortoise and the hare. Image source.

In my post The Prayer That Jesus Taught Us To Pray, I said that instead of viewing prayer as talking to God, "What if prayer is a ritualized way to express our hopes and our understanding of our place in the world?" And I want to flesh that out a little more.

Maybe "ritualized" isn't the right word- but what I want to say is, a mode of communication where we format the words into a certain structure/genre, but the actual meaning of it isn't the surface-level statements of that structure. The actual meaning is something more abstract and deeper, and the structure is just a vehicle for communicating those deeper ideas.

Some examples:

1. Satire

Satire is a style of writing where you take some bit of truth and then present it in an exaggerated way in order to show how ridiculous it is. So at the surface level, the statements in the satire are not true. But their purpose is to make a point.

For example, The Onion is a satire news site. The articles say things that are not true- but there's a purpose to it, and sometimes they make really insightful points. Here's an Onion link:

Experts: Ebola Vaccine At Least 50 White People Away - This one's from 2014, and it says that medical experts have publicly discussed a timeline for an ebola vaccine in terms of how many white people are affected. Okay, that's not true, no one said that. But the point it is making is that ebola is a deadly disease which the world should take seriously- but the world is not taking it seriously because mostly it's African people who are being affected by it. The point of the article is to call out the implicit racism in what kinds of issues get treated as important.

But if you just take it at face value, as if it's describing something that really happened, you will think that health experts really did say that ebola only really matters if it affects white people, and that everyone just nodded along and this is fine. No- the point of it is not to read it and accept that it's true; the point is to expose the racism in how the world was reacting to ebola.

2. Fables

A fable is a little story which is supposed to teach some kind of life lesson. Sometimes they have talking animals or magic- things that are not real. 

For example, "The Tortoise and the Hare" is an old fable where the tortoise and hare are having a race, and the hare runs fast initially but then gets distracted and doesn't finish, while the tortoise keeps plugging along and eventually crosses the finish line. And we are supposed to learn that "slow and steady wins the race."

This is not a true story, and if you think it's a true story, you'll get bogged down in all kinds of details. How did the tortoise and hare communicate with each other in order to agree on the rules for the race? Do animals understand the concept of a race? Do animals understand the concept of a finish line? If you ask all these questions, you're missing the point, because it's not a true story. But the point is to teach a lesson which is useful and true, in some sense.

3. Job interviews

On the surface, a job interview consists of an interviewer asking questions, and a candidate answering the questions. But the point is not "here is a question, now I will correctly answer the question." That's not the point at all. As a candidate, the important thing is not to answer the questions correctly; the important thing is to communicate a deeper message that says "I am the kind of person you would want to hire for this job." (And a secondary purpose is to find out information about the job, so you can decide for yourself if you would even want to work there or not.)

So for example, the interviewer asks, "What's your biggest strength?" You're not supposed to say what your actual biggest strength is, by some absolute objective measure. Maybe you're really good at making animal sounds, or pouring milk into cereal in exactly the right proportions, or making babies laugh... perhaps you're in the top 1% of people in some weird little niche ability, such that it would make sense to say that's your biggest strength. No! Don't tell the interviewer that!

The answer you actually need to give to this question is not "what's your biggest strength" but "talk about a strength you have, that is related to this job, that will make the interviewer believe that you are a person they should hire."

Or, maybe the interviewer says, "Tell me about a problem you had in your previous job, and how you solved it." You don't have to take this super literally. Maybe you can't think of an example from your previous job, but you have a good example from the job you worked at before that. That's fine! Talk about that! It's not about the literal words of the interviewers' questions; it's about communicating a deeper message about what kind of person you are, and that you are a competent person they would want to hire.

Don't *lie* in a job interview, obviously, but it's okay to not directly answer the question but instead talk about something along the lines of the general idea of the question, with the primary goal being presenting yourself as a good job candidate, rather than literally answering the question.

The surface-level statements all need to be true, but the actual *meaning* of the job interview is not in the surface-level statements.

4. Sharing links to news stories

Let's say you have a website, and you post links to news articles. And a lot of these links are about some topic, like, immigrants committing crimes, or something. Each individual story is true on its own- statistically, there must be immigrants who commit crimes; any large population will inevitably have some members who commit crimes. It's certainly possible to collect the facts about specific cases where this happens, and write true news articles.

So, each individual story is true, but the effect of sharing so many of them is that it creates the impression that this is really common. That's the "deeper meaning" being communicated. And this might be unintentional in a lot of cases- maybe you consume a lot of content related to some certain topic, and it makes you subconsciously believe that whatever you're reading about is more common and normal than it is in reality.

You can even get cases where something happens, and we feel like we shouldn't talk about it because it plays into some harmful political narrative. I really hate this, this tendency to want to cover up true facts about specific real events just because we know that people will not take those facts as simply describing the literal events that happened, but will draw sweeping conclusions. 

5. "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

People are always asking kids what they want to be when they grow up. I recently realized, when kids answer this question, it's not about what job they're actually going to have when they grow up. It's a way of expressing their interests and their sense of identity. So it's not literally true, but it's still communicating something meaningful.

When I was a kid, I had this book where every page was one of the grades from kindergarten to 12th grade, and every year you were supposed to glue a picture of yourself onto the corresponding page, and write some stuff about what your life was like that year- and each page had the question "What do you want to be when you grow up?" along with some checkboxes with potential jobs. For the earlier pages, like for kindergarten kids, the choices were like, "doctor", "firefighter", "policeman", and then you flip ahead to the high school pages and they're like "engineer", "salesperson." Middle-school-Perfect-Number was like, wow this really exposes how fake the whole "what do you want to be when you grow up" thing is. 5-year-old kid checks the box that says "firefighter" but then they grow up a little bit and we don't even offer that checkbox any more, nobody actually believes you when you're 5 years old and you say you're going to be a firefighter.

But! It turns out, it *was* useful and meaningful, even though it has no actual connection to the job the kid will have, decades into the future. It's not actually about that. It's about how the kid understands their own identity, and what they imagine their ideal life to be.

6. Prayer

So now we come back to prayer. Full disclosure, I don't pray, because of all the, uh, unfortunate implications when you really take seriously the belief that God takes action in response to prayer. God's gonna help me with whatever first-world problem is bothering me, while not taking action to help other people with much bigger problems? God's going to choose to take action to answer prayers of people who believe the correct things and pray with the correct attitude... and therefore if some horrible tragedy happens to you, it must be your own fault for not praying correctly?

I just don't want to be a part of that at all. It makes sense that *I* prioritize myself, and I put in more effort to solve my "first-world problems" than I do to help victims of human-rights violations on the other side of the world, but God is supposed to be objective and love everyone equally- it is quite ****ed up if They are actively intervening to help me, when there are wars and atrocities happening to other people.

But here's an idea I'm starting to explore: Prayer isn't *literally* talking to God. God does not hear our prayers and then take action in response to them. Instead, prayer is about using the literary structure of "here's a message we want to tell God" in order to communicate deeper ideas about how we view ourselves and what kind of world we want.

For example: In my 2016 post, Prayer Rates Don't Correlate With Actual Risk, I looked up statistics about the leading causes of death in the US- the top causes are heart disease and cancer. But people aren't constantly praying "God, protect us from heart disease." Instead, people pray for safety from violence, plane crashes, terrorism, etc- things that statistically have a very small chance of affecting you personally. I pointed out that people pray about the things that they are worried about, rather than the things that truly pose a danger to them. And that if Christians truly believe that God acts powerfully in response to our prayers, we should harness that power by identifying the biggest actual threats- using statistics, not whatever fearful thoughts pass through our heads after reading the news- and targeting our prayers toward those threats.

But in that post, I also said this is a terrible idea because then we would have to think about heart disease and cancer constantly, and stress ourselves out, in order to pray most effectively. That's a terrible way to live, and I just cannot believe in a God who chooses to give protection to people according to the amount of worrying they do over heart disease and car accidents which are most likely to occur within 10 miles of their home.

But get this: What if prayer *isn't* a process by which we convince God to intervene in our lives and help us? What if it's *not* true that by naming a specific scenario in your prayers, you tweak the probability of that specific scenario occurring in real life? What if it's not about affecting God at all, but it's about our own feelings and how we view ourselves? If viewed that way, it does make sense that the things people pray about are the things they're worried about, and it doesn't make sense to come up with additional worries to pray about in order to get additional protection from God.

Okay, here's a question: Maybe Christians already *do* view prayer non-literally, and it's just me who misunderstood it and thought God was really gonna do something? Well, no. Christians talk about how they went through medical troubles or financial troubles, and God helped them through it *because* they prayed. "Prayer works!" So people really do believe that God acts in response to prayer.

Still, though, Christians don't actually act in accordance with that belief. They don't treat prayer as something so urgent and powerful, with the Almighty God of the universe standing by to listen to whatever thoughts and requests we have. In practice it's more like... kinda boring and feels like it's not accomplishing anything.

Another thing: Back when I was evangelical and I prayed a lot, I used to wonder why we're supposed to pray over and over for the same thing. I would spend lots of time begging and begging God, over and over, the same things over and over. But, why isn't it enough to just tell God 1 time? Why do They need to be reminded over and over? Are They just really bad at staying on task, and They'll forget to do it if you don't keep reminding Them? Do They need some kind of to-do list app? Jesus said, "your Father knows what you need before you ask him", so why do we even need to pray at all, let alone praying multiple times for the same thing?

(I would say that part of the answer, from an evangelical perspective, is that God only answers prayers if we truly mean it and we ask with the right attitude. If you just pray 1 time and assume God will do it, then you're not taking it seriously enough, and you're acting like you're entitled to God doing things for you. You have to pray over and over to show God you're really serious and humble. Yeah- in this blog post, I'm specifically focusing on the "asking God to do things" aspect of prayer, but evangelicals would tell you that prayer is much more than that.)

Also, I'm not saying "If you look at how prayer is talked about in the bible, and how Christians talk about it, it makes sense in this 'non-literal' interpretation rather than viewing it as 'talking to God.'" No, it's not that simple- I think there are some *aspects* that line up more with the non-literal interpretation, but at the same time, there are plenty of bible verses that definitely talk about prayer like it's literally going to affect God's actions and cause things to happen in the real world.

And I'm not saying, "Well, Christians say prayer is 'talking to God' but that's not literal, it's just a symbol that points to a deeper meaning, so it's fine that people are describing it as 'talking to God'" - no, the implications of "talking to God" are very different from this "it's about how we understand ourselves and what kind of world we want to live in" that I'm describing. If you really go all in on "I'm talking to God" and try to live according to the implications of that, it's bad. So let's not say it's "talking to God" if it's not.

Anyway, this is just an idea I'm exploring. Not sure if I really believe it or not. For a long time, I've been very firm about "I don't pray" because of these issues when it's understood as "talking to God" but maybe I would be interested in it if we viewed it a different way.

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Related

The Prayer That Jesus Taught Us To Pray

Prayer Rates Don't Correlate With Actual Risk

On believing that "prayer works"

What Does God Do When You Pray For An Anonymized Patient By Bed Number?

I Figured Out What The 1-10 Pain Scale Is Actually About

The Kingdom of Children: Communion and Baptism

Communion cracker and small cup of juice. Image source.

I've been reading R. L. Stollar's book, "The Kingdom of Children." Here's a part of the book that talks about including children in communion. From pages 167-168:

In evangelical ideology, sin is bad because it separates you from God, not because you hurt another person

Image text: "Isaiah 61:1a. The spirit of the sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor." Image source.

Here's a good post from Sheila Wray Gregoire: Who Is the Real Victim When Men Lust? Every Man’s Battle Says It’s Men! It's about how the book "Every Man's Battle" (a best-selling book in Christian culture) seems to have the assumption that the reason it's bad when a man lusts is that it damages the man's purity. The authors of "Every Man's Battle" don't seem to have any awareness of how men's lust can be harmful to the women who are being objectified/harassed/assaulted because of that lust.

This is a very good point, and I want to talk about how it connects to evangelical Christianity's overall concept of what sin is, and what the gospel is. 

Evangelicalism teaches that this is the main message of Christianity, the "good news" we are supposed to share with the world: We have all sinned, and therefore we all deserve to go to hell. God cannot tolerate any sin at all- only perfect people who have never sinned can be in God's presence. But, fortunately, Jesus lived a perfect sinless life and died for us. This solves the problem of us being separated from God because of our sin (which is the biggest problem we have)- when we believe in Jesus, God forgives our sins, and we can go to heaven.

In this framing, when someone sins, it's bad because it means they have committed a terrible offense against a holy and perfect God, and therefore they deserve to go to hell. They desperately need Jesus' forgiveness. When I was a little kid, hearing gospel presentations in Sunday school, it was all about making us feel bad for how terrible we are because we are sinners and God is judging us.

So when they talk about "sin", as an abstract concept, it leads us to have empathy for the sinner. We feel bad for them because they are in danger of going to hell, and we want to save them. And also, we can't really judge them too much, because we are sinners too.

There's very little concern for the victims of your sin- the people you are sinning against. Actually, the way that I understood the definition of "sin" when I was evangelical, it doesn't even need to have a victim. It just meant I was breaking God's rules. Like if I had a selfish thought, or I didn't prioritize my daily bible reading, or if I dated someone that God didn't give me permission to date.

(The example that really takes the cake is Psalm 51, where David writes, "Against you, you only, have I sinned". Yeah, this is after David raped Bathsheba, then when he found out she was pregnant, he had her husband killed, and married her, then the prophet Nathan came and said that was wrong, and as a punishment, the baby would die. In David's prayer of repentance he says, "Against you, you only, have I sinned" as if the problem was just between him and God and didn't really affect anyone else.)

Reading arguments from gay Christians in support of same-sex relationships, that's where I came across the idea that sin is defined as something that hurts people, and it blew my mind. I had never thought about sin that way before. Upon hearing this, I listed a few commonly-recognized sins- lying, stealing, cheating on one's spouse- and was surprised to find that they did share a common thread of you're doing harm to another person. Was that really what "sin" meant? Well, Romans 13:8-10 says it is:

Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

The apostle Paul is saying here that all you need to know is "Love your neighbor as yourself." Similarly, Jesus said the 2 greatest commandments are to love God and love your neighbor as yourself, and "All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." Sin is *not* about reading through the bible and making a list of everything God said not to do, however arbitrary it may seem. Sin is hurting people. 

And the gospel... In evangelicalism, the gospel is good news for people who feel bad about their sin and worry that it means they will go to hell. Evangelicalism claims that this is the main problem that we need to be saved from. But check this out; I believe something completely different now: I believe the gospel is good news for the victims, for the marginalized, for those who are suffering, for those who are suffering the effects of other people's sin.

Sin is not just between you and God, where you did something bad, and so you are deserving of sympathy because now you are at risk of going to hell. No, sin affects other people, and the sympathy should be for the people on the receiving end of it.

The starkest example I have experienced, of these two opposite ways of understanding "sin" and "the gospel", was when I was part of a Christian group in college, and we were planning a series of events we called Human Trafficking Awareness Week. (I wrote about this in 2013: How "the gospel" almost stopped us from fighting human trafficking.) We knew that human trafficking was bad, and we wanted to raise awareness and take action against it. And also, we were evangelical, so we felt it was important to "share the gospel" at our outreach events.

But we couldn't figure out how to get from "let's fight human trafficking" to the gospel. We thought long and hard, and couldn't come up with anything that could work as a natural connection between the two. We believed the message of "the gospel" was "you, as an individual, have sinned against God, and so you deserve to go to hell, but good news! Jesus forgives you!" And that didn't seem to have anything to do with the realities of injustice in the world, and our obligation to take action to fight it.

And now I'm like, really? Seriously? We couldn't figure out how freedom for the captives has anything to do with the main message of Christianity? I guess we never paid attention to how Jesus began his ministry on earth by proclaiming:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,

    because he has anointed me

    to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners

    and recovery of sight for the blind,

to set the oppressed free,

     to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

Proclaim good news to the poor! Set the oppressed free! Freedom for the captives! *This* is what Jesus came to do. It's not about how every individual needs to make a private spiritual deal with God in order to escape hell; it's about transforming this world into the kingdom of heaven, defined by love, justice, and freedom.

That's the gospel. And, I would say, if our Christianity is not "good news to the poor", then it's not good news at all; it's not the gospel. 

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And also, I didn't want to get into this because it could be a whole separate post, but: the power dynamics about what sorts of "sins" result in people being shamed and labelled as "sinners." Why is it that when Christians say someone is "living in sin", they mean a couple who is living together and presumably having sex, without being married? Why don't we say that employers who don't pay their workers a living wage are "living in sin"?

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Related:

Being Right vs Doing Good

"The Big Wide Welcome" (kids' book review) 

Forgiveness for Sins You Don't Know You've Committed

Why did I think David was the good guy in the story of Abigail?

Don't Protect God

Yes, I Want Justice (A post about white evangelicals and #BlackLivesMatter)

"Christians Aren't Perfect" When It's Convenient

The Kingdom of Children: Eschatology

Image text: "Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low. Isaiah 40:4A" Image source.

I've been reading "The Kingdom of Children: A Liberation Theology" by R. L. Stollar. Here's a section about "eschatology."

From pages 113-114:

In this chapter, we will look at what theologians call eschatology. This is the study of the future, the study of how the kingdom of God breaks into our right-here and right-now and creates profound changes to our lives. In liberation theology, eschatology is the focus on how powers around us-- our churches, our government, our economic order-- need to be redeemed. They need to be redeemed because they are set up in a way that makes it harder for us to love our neighbors as ourselves. They need to be redeemed because they do not place the first last and the last first. Liberation theologians want us to think about how the kingdom of God should disrupt these powers around us. "Hope in the future seeks roots in the present."

Child liberation theology raises the same issues, but with regard to children. Child liberation theology also engages eschatology by asking how we can better realize the kingdom of God in the right-here and right-now for children. The path to doing this involves taking Jesus seriously when he said in Mark 9:37, "Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me." What I am going to argue might seem too audacious or maybe even sacrilegious. Part of realizing the kingdom of God in the right-here and right-now is seeing children as God-to-us. Children are not simply representatives or servants or mouthpieces of God. They are, in a profound and real sense, God's chosen and royal substitutes. They serve as God-to-us in our right-here and right-now.

Now before you discard this book, let me tell you what I am not saying: I am not saying that children are gods. I am not saying that we should worship children. And I am not saying that children are substitutes for God in the sense that we no longer need God. What I am saying is that Jesus called us to see children as God-to-us in our right-here and right-now. They are the neighbors who we are supposed to love as ourselves. And just as the commandment to love our neighbors is rooted in the greatest commandment to love God (Matt. 22:36-40), loving children is similarly rooted in loving God. This makes loving children an act of worship.

Eschatology? As far as I know, eschatology is about heaven and hell and the end of the world- the complete opposite of the "right-here and right-now" Stollar is talking about. He says, "This is the study of the future, the study of how the kingdom of God breaks into our right-here and right-now and creates profound changes to our lives." The grammar of the sentence suggests that those are 2 different ways of saying the same thing, but, what on earth, "the future" is totally different from "how the kingdom of God breaks into our right-here and right-now." Right?

Even so, I'm like, really into this. I'm very excited about the idea that our beliefs about heaven and hell and the end of the world should have a profound effect on the way we live now- in particular, that it means the kingdom of God breaks into our world now, and we fight for liberation for everyone.

When I was evangelical, I believed that people go to heaven or hell based on whether they are "saved"- ie, whether they believed in Jesus and "prayed the prayer" to commit their lives to him, with the appropriate amount of emotional sincerity. Heaven and hell last for eternity; everything we do here on earth is meaningless in comparison. Our actions in this life only matter to the extent that they nudge people closer to "getting saved," to falling on the correct side of that binary.

In evangelical land, it's easy to have the attitude "well, I'm saved, so there's nothing else I need to be doing now. Just waiting till I go to heaven." Or, "why should we give food to hungry people? If we're not also telling them about Jesus, it's pointless."

In evangelical land, it always felt like there was this big divide between the eternity of heaven and hell, and the normal lives we're living right now. Like getting people saved to get to heaven is the most important thing, and the time we spend just living our normal lives outside of that is just busywork. 

But now my beliefs are completely different. Now I believe that we are supposed to bring the kingdom of heaven to the earth, as Jesus taught us to pray. Heaven is not some faraway unreachable thing; heaven is going to come to this earth, and we should do the work to make it happen. As Martin Luther King Jr said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." That's heaven- and it ain't gonna bend itself. We have to do it.

So we look forward to heaven by doing the work to fight for justice on this earth. It's so profoundly and viscerally connected- not like the "pie in the sky when you die" and "fire insurance" of evangelicalism. I love it.

And that's what Stollar is talking about here. Eschatology is not this faraway future thing- it's about how the kingdom of God comes into our world right now. It's about the systems and powers in this world, and how they need to be redeemed and transformed, every valley raised up and mountain made low.

(Suggested background music for this post is Belinda Carlisle's "Heaven is a Place on Earth.")

So... it strikes me as strange that Stollar uses the word "eschatology" for this, but also, I love it. I think this a good way to think about heaven and hell. (And maybe this *is* how "eschatology" is used in liberation theology?) Let's do the work right now on this earth. That's heaven and hell.

And it makes me think, maybe religious beliefs should be understood as projections that inform our thinking about what we should do right now. Just like a complex 3-dimensional object projects a 2D shadow- religious beliefs are that shadow, and we live our lives in the shape of a 3D object that could make that shadow. Maybe heaven and hell are not real, but whatever you believe about them makes a real difference in how you live. Maybe religion is not actually true, but it's about the power of a story. Sure, you could make a list of behaviors that people should do or not do, but people respond better to stories. A big grand story about what the world is, and how God wants us to live, and the way that filters down into our very concrete actions in the here-and-now.

(And, to clarify, I'm not saying being religious is better than being non-religious. There's a wide range of different ways that people map their religious beliefs [or lack thereof] onto questions of morality/purpose/how we should live our lives, and I would not say that religious people's mappings are better than non-religious people's.)

I wouldn't regret it, if I lived my life in an effort to bring heaven to this earth, and then it turned out heaven didn't exist. Even if heaven is not real, there's something about this that *is* real. Something about... helping people is the right thing to do, even if there's no God rewarding you for it. That's real. It's a religious belief- because how can you prove it? what would it even mean to prove it? It's a religious belief that feels even deeper than my religion, somehow. 

My religion is "I don't know how to explain to you that you should care about other people."

The kingdom of heaven is not far away. As Jesus said, the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

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Follow-up post: Faith, Fruit, and "Do you actually believe your religion?"

Posts about "The Kingdom of Children":

"The Kingdom of Children" (a book about child liberation theology)
The Kingdom of Children: Comparing Religions
The Kingdom of Children: Eschatology
The Kingdom of Children: Theology and Play
The Kingdom of Children: Communion and Baptism

Related 

The Prayer That Jesus Taught Us To Pray

I don't believe in a literal "Jesus coming back." But, be ready.

"Muppet Christmas Carol" Is My Religion

On Christianity and Waiting

A church for a small population of Christians

A church in Shanghai. Image source.

I recently went to an international church in Shanghai, and I have some thoughts about what church is, what we want to get out of church, and how that looks different when Christians are a small minority, vs a majority.

But first, a basic overview of churches in China. Americans have a lot of misconceptions, so here, let me fix that. I'm not involved with any church group in China now, so I don't know the whole picture, but I have at least attended different kinds of churches in China.

Also, this is specifically about Protestant Christianity. In China, Catholicism is categorized as a different religion from Protestantism, and I don't have any experience with the Catholic churches in China. (Except the one in Sheshan, which I visited one time because it's a landmark of interest for tourists.)

Here are the 3 types:

1. Chinese "3 Self" churches. These are the government-approved churches. In my experience, it's very easy to find them. You can just, like, search for "教堂" [church] on any map app. The church buildings look like obvious church buildings. It's not like "oh we have to be sneaky, we're not allowed to be Christians in China" like American Christians imagine.
   These churches are supervised by the Chinese government, so I know there must be some kind of restrictions on what they're allowed to say and do. But to an average churchgoer, you wouldn't notice there are any restrictions. I know that American evangelicals would be concerned "these churches are only allowed to say what the Chinese government lets them say, so they're not preaching REAL CHRISTIANITY" but I've attended church services at Chinese churches and I never noticed anything being censored. Like, I never noticed anything that was like "they're not preaching the REAL GOSPEL, they're preaching a censored version of it." All the doctrines that were preached were basically within the range of what I've heard in American churches.
   I'm sure that the leadership of these churches is aware of being watched by the government and maybe not being allowed to do some things, but without any clear rules. I once heard a Chinese pastor talking about feeling like "are we allowed to have a Sunday school? We don't really know... let's just start doing Sunday school and see if the government says anything."
2. International churches. These churches are required by law to check people's ids, and only people with a foreign passport (or Taiwan/ Hong Kong/ Macao id) are allowed to attend. (Yes, people from Taiwan/ Hong Kong/ Macao are explicitly allowed by the Chinese government to attend international churches, whereas citizens of mainland China are not. Make of that what you will.) It must be the case that international churches have more freedom in what they're allowed to do, compared to Chinese 3-Self churches- but I am not familiar enough to know any details on this. The Chinese government always says their main concern about religion (and the reason why there is persecution of Christians) is that foreign groups will come and influence Chinese people. So, if your church does not allow any Chinese citizens to attend, the government is not as concerned about what exactly you're doing in there.
   When I first heard about churches literally barring an entire demographic of people from attending, I was like, wtf, that doesn't seem like what Jesus would do. I guess there's sort of a trade-off- if you follow this rule, your church has more freedom in what you can do. And maybe it's not that big of a deal because Chinese citizens have other churches they can go to.
3. Underground churches. I don't really know anything about these because they're secret, obviously. American Christians have the idea that all churches in China have to be underground churches, but wowww that's not true!

So these different types of churches exist in a sort of ecosystem, and I think each type has a valid role. I think American evangelicals might totally write-off the 3-Self churches and say they're just worthless and totally misguided because they're only teaching what the Chinese government approves of, and the only real church is the underground church, but that's vastly oversimplifying it. 

SO ANYWAY. Recently I went to an international church here in Shanghai. Why? Well, I don't want to be a member of a church. I don't want to attend regularly. But just on that one particular day, I wanted to experience a kind of churchy atmosphere. So I did.

The greeter at the door made me show a photo of my US passport- because only non-Chinese are allowed to attend. It was nice to not be racially profiled in China for once! Hooray! Everywhere else I go, everyone assumes I'm not a Chinese citizen, because I'm white, but at this church they explicitly asked. 

(It has not escaped my notice that, as a Chinese citizen, my husband would not be allowed to come to this church. He's not interested in church anyway, but that's one of the reasons I don't really want to get that involved.)

This church was extremely diverse. Wow. Just a huge mix of people, from different countries all over the world- Africa, Asia, etc- people talking with different accents, people expressing themselves in different ways during the worship songs. 

And so it made me wonder, how does it even work, having such a diverse church? These people are all coming from different church systems in their home countries. Different flavors of Christianity, with different beliefs about what it even means to be a Christian, what the non-negotiable Christian beliefs are. What do they do about the question "are women allowed to be pastors?" Or "are same-sex relationships sinful?" These are questions that, in the US, frequently cause half of a church to split off and go start a new church. (And who knows what issues cause church splits in other countries?) But that doesn't really seem like an option here in Shanghai- the population of international Christians is so small, you can't sustain that many different churches for every little niche.

And so, doesn't it follow that the model of what a church *is* has to be different, when we're talking about a place like Shanghai where international Christians are such an extremely small percentage of the population, and you need to cast a wide net and gather a very diverse group of people, in order to have a church, compared to a place like the US, where there are lots of Christians, and large swaths of them are culturally similar to each other.

In my experience with evangelicals in the US, when people are "church shopping," they're looking for a church that agrees with them on all of the big doctrines that they consider essential to Christianity. Evangelicals believe that many many churches are not preaching "real" Christianity, the real gospel, biblical Christianity, but have been led astray by our sinful culture and are just preaching nice things that people want to hear, rather than real Truth. So, you have to find a church that's "really preaching the gospel." You might have to filter out quite a few churches, if they have a belief about something, which you feel is not the "correct" belief that Christians should hold. Or, filter them out because they *don't* have an official belief on some issue, they think different Christians can have different opinions, and you think that's unacceptable and there's only 1 right answer. 

And then you would also have additional preferences about music styles, how well you get along with the other churchgoers, etc. And that's how you choose a church.

It's based on a model of church attendance where the church is in charge of you. You carefully research churches and find one that believes all the correct things, and then you commit to them, and you are subject to their teaching. (And perhaps at some later point, something happens that causes you to have concerns that this church is not "really" preaching the "real" gospel, and so if that happens, you leave and look for a different church.)

But that's not really possible for me in Shanghai, and actually, I don't think it is possible for *most* international Christians in Shanghai. You're not going to find a church that explicitly agrees with all the beliefs that you personally consider essential to Christianity- there just aren't enough churches for that.

So, under these circumstances, church has to be something different. It can't be "the church is in charge of me"; it has to be more like... there are certain things I am looking to get out of this church, and that is why I choose to attend, but I'm in charge of my own beliefs and my own spiritual life- I know that I'm not going to agree with everything the pastor says, and that's fine because I'm not expecting the church to be in charge of me.

It seems like the church's overall approach has to be, this is a group of Christians who want to have a church. And they can't really get extremely specific about "here's our official position on this or that controversial issue." Yeah, sure, the church should have some standard "I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth" and so forth, the abstract doctrines that are the foundation of Christianity, but different Christians understand those doctrines completely differently, and so your church policy can't really get into those specific details.

The church can't really take a stand on any of the "controversial issues", but instead has to be inclusive of a wide range of opinions on what Christians are supposed to believe. And therefore even if you choose to be a member of this church, you can't really look to them as an authority on the "controversial issues" that you think are very important. So, your motivations for attending the church have to be something other than that.

(I guess? This is my speculation, upon seeing how extremely diverse this church was.)

So if, as a churchgoer, you're saying to yourself "there are certain things I am looking to get out of this church, and so obviously if the church isn't giving me those things, then there's no reason to attend"- wow, I find this very interesting. You have to understand yourself and your own desires, and what kind of church would be worth attending. And everyone's answer is going to be a little different. 

This is a completely different mindset from the evangelical view on church- there have been so many articles posted on conservative Christian sites about how it's terrible that people are going to church less and less, that Christians think it's okay to not go to church, that Christians think it's okay to have requirements about what they want from a church, and to stop going if those aren't met. These conservative organizations, scolding us all and telling us how wrong and sinful it is to not go to church. Listicles about excuses people give for not going to church, and why all of them are invalid. You have to go to church.

So it seems like, if you're in Shanghai and you're looking for an English-speaking church, you have to see what churches are available- there aren't that many- and kind of see how they are and what you're able to get out of them, and decide if it's worth your time to attend. You have to be in charge of your own religious life, because you won't find a church that perfectly fits your ideals about what Christianity is supposed to be. It's not like I always conceptualized it when I was evangelical- that you find a church that is preaching "real" Christianity, and then that church is "in charge" of you (unless you ever determine that they have stopped preaching "real" Christianity)- and that Christians are all obligated to do this.

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Related:

Persecution

Churches in Xiamen, China

So I've Discovered That (For Me) Church Culture Causes Depression 

I Did Easter in English This Year