Blogaround

Grey cat laying on a sweater, with a little red heart toy. Image source.

1. 'Pillar of the community' deported from US after 39 years to a land he barely knows (posted February 9) [content note: deportation]

2. Study: “Bad Girls” More Likely to Say “No” to Sex (posted February 1) "Women with sexual agency were much more likely to say “no” instead of going along with an undesired activity just to please their partner. Women who didn’t prioritize their own pleasure, and who didn’t see themselves as sexual beings, were more likely to just do what they were asked to do regardless of whether they really wanted to, leading to regret."

3. The Unintended Consequences of a Spiritual Discipline (posted 2017) "The easy examples of a Lenten fast as giving up chocolate or candy or sugar or carbs mirror the disordered rules of restrictive eating."

4. Escaping gay conversion therapy in Kenya (posted February 7)

Honest Lent: It's Okay Not to Read the Bible

Drawing of a man in front of Jesus' tomb saying, "As long as the tomb is closed, Jesus is both alive and dead!" Caption says, "Saint Schrodinger, the forgotten disciple." Image source.

Hi everyone, happy Easter! He is risen~ So I've been doing this series called Honest Lent, but for the past week I haven't posted anything about it, and that's fine. I've been busy, and also I wasn't really feeling inspired by any of the passages on the list. And that's totally okay.

I used to read the bible every day, just like good Christians are supposed to. In college, I set my alarm and got up early so I'd have about 40 minutes to an hour before classes, to read the bible and pray. I did it because I loved God, yes, but there was always this feeling like "if I miss a day, I'm being bad. God has done so much for me, the least I can do is set aside a little bit of time every day for him." If I missed a day, that meant I was ungrateful and I didn't value my relationship with God.

There was one day I slept through my alarm and didn't wake up til the afternoon. (Being a college student, I was constantly so incredibly sleep-deprived.) I had already missed several classes, but I decided to skip another one so I could read the bible. Because that was the most important thing. I trusted that if I put God first, God would make sure I didn't face any negative consequences for skipping class.

Years of living that way, putting all that guilt on myself if I missed a day, and the result is that now I can hardly read the bible at all. It causes so much stress- I feel like I have to read it, I have to spend time and focus, no distractions, I have to find some inspiring message, some positive truth that will help me as I go about my day, I have to like it, I have to pray, every day I have to treat the bible with the attention and respect it deserves. Or else I'm bad- I'm a bad Christian, I'm putting other things before God, God loves me so much and I can't even stop for half an hour and spend time with God, I'm so bad and ungrateful.

But Jesus said, "The Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath." Religious activities like reading the bible are meant to be good for us. They're not meant to be a huge burden that causes mental illness. And right now, the healthiest thing for me is to NOT read the bible, and to know that it doesn't make me a "bad Christian."

So when I decided to do Honest Lent, I was very clear about how it did NOT mean I would be reading the bible every day. I would only read the bible when I felt like it, and I would only write blog posts about it when I felt like it. And during Holy Week I didn't feel like it at all, and that's okay. I didn't "fail" at Honest Lent. There's nothing to feel bad about. I wrote a lot of good posts, I enjoyed writing them, and it was healthy and not stressful. Just because I didn't read the bible every day and I didn't write anything for Honest Lent during Holy Week doesn't mean I've done something wrong. The goal was never to read the bible every day- the goal was to read the bible in an amount that is healthy for me. And I did that.

Because I really do like the bible, and I want to read it more, but right now the only way I can do so is if I explicitly reassure myself that it's okay not to read the bible, and it's okay to not like certain passages, and it's okay to feel whatever feelings I feel- I don't have to be "inspired" and "fed" and learn some nice things about God or whatever.

The Sabbath was made for us, not us for the Sabbath.

Anyway, it's Easter, I'm not going to church and that's okay. I love Easter, and I believe in resurrection. Yes, I believe in The Resurrection, but more importantly, I believe in resurrection. Not just that it's a thing that happened one time 2000 years ago, but that the whole world looks forward to resurrection. Resurrection for everything and everyone.

Happy Easter, and remember, it's okay not to read the bible.

Honest Lent: Unclear Passages

Image text: "God is love." Image source.

For Honest Lent, let's look at 1 John 4:7-21.

Wow, I love this passage! It's about how love is the most important thing, how "knowing God" is equivalent to loving people. It doesn't matter what religion you are- if you love people, then you're connected to God. Yes, even if you don't believe in God. This passage says, "Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God." This is probably THE MOST important belief in the Christianity I follow. What truly matters isn't the language you use to describe what "God" is or what gives your life purpose. What truly matters is how you treat people.

But here's something a bit odd about this passage: Verse 15 says "If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God." Wait a minute, but verses 7 and 8 said that loving people is equivalent to knowing God. And then verse 15 here seems to be saying that agreeing with the statement "Jesus is the Son of God" is equivalent to knowing God. So, which is it? Those are very different things. One is about actions and one is about religious beliefs.

Well church people always say "use the clear passages of Scripture to interpret the unclear ones." However, what they really mean is this: "clear passages" means "things that fit with what I believe the bible teaches" and "unclear ones" means "things that just seem wrong to me." It's not actually about how "clear" or "unclear" the actual language of the passage itself is. "Unclear" means you read something and you think "no way, this can't be right." Like verses that clearly say women need to be silent in church- but you're like, no, that's ridiculous. You label it an "unclear passage" and then go find some "clear passages" about how God loves all genders equally, and decide that the one about how women can't speak in church can't possibly have really meant it.

Or you find a verse that says after death, people will be rewarded according to what they've done. But you say, no no, that can't be right, the evangelical church very clearly taught me that "the gospel" is you don't get to heaven based on what you've done, but based on whether you "got saved." So you call Matthew 16:27 an "unclear passage", even though it very clearly says "he will reward each person according to what they have done." And you go off and find a different verse, a "clear" one, which says we are saved through faith alone, and you decide Jesus didn't really mean we're saved by what we've done.

That's how this works, this "use the clear passages to interpret the unclear ones." "Clear passages" are the ones you can easily accept because they confirm what you already believe. "Unclear passages" are the ones you disagree with.

So if I was using that strategy here in 1 John 4, I would say the bit about love being equivalent to knowing God is a "clear passage" because, ya know, that just makes sense, right? Like, of course the most important thing is love, of course God would think that's what really matters, not the specific religious facts you believe. And then this bit about how you need to believe Jesus is the Son of God in order to have God living in you, well that's an "unclear passage" because hey, that doesn't make sense, then only Christians can know God, and obviously that can't be right, because God loves everyone, no matter what religion (or none at all) they follow. So the conclusion is that verse 15 didn't really mean what it said.

Yeah, you see how ridiculous this is, right?

This is why I don't really believe in "use the clear passages to interpret the unclear ones"- or at least, not the way I've seen it practiced in church groups. I have a conscience which says love is what really matters, not religion. I really don't care how many bible verses agree or disagree.

Honest Lent: What's the connection between love and knowledge?

Picture of a heart, with text from 1 Corinthians 13. Image source.

Today for Honest Lent, we're reading 1 Corinthians 13.

All right, this is "the love chapter." I've read it tons of times. I memorized it back when I was in bible quizzing in high school. But today I noticed something weird. The chapter starts out saying all these nice things about love, good for reading at weddings- love is patient, love is kind, etc. But then, for some reason, the writer starts talking about things we know and don't know:

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

So... seems like he kind of gets off-topic here. Why is this passage suddenly talking about "we know in part"? Is it connected to love?

Maybe it's related to what I wrote about yesterday: We don't need to understand everything in the bible; the most important thing is love, and everyone can understand that. Maybe this passage in 1 Corinthians 13 is saying there are always things we can't understand, and all we can do is fill in the gaps with love. Love is more important than knowledge. Love is more important than having all the correct "biblical" rules.

Honest Lent: Whatever Other Command There May Be

Drawing of two cliffs with a huge chasm between them. One side is labelled "Man (Sinful)" and the other is "God (Holy)." Image source.

Today for Honest Lent we are reading Romans 13:8-14. I totally love this part:

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.

I love this. This bit is one of my favorite parts in the entire bible. It sums up how I believe we should read the bible.

Back when I was a good evangelical, I believed that as humans we aren't really capable of knowing right and wrong. God gives us a lot of rules and commands, and some of them make sense to us (like "don't steal", obviously you shouldn't steal because it's a bad thing to do to another person), but there are others that we can't understand the reasons for, and we just have to trust God. For example, don't have sex if you're not married. Now purity-culture advocates can give a lot of reasons why "God gives us this rule for our own good", reasons about health risks and emotional risks- and yes, there is some truth to those things. In certain circumstances, it's best to not have sex. (Though it's no secret that I believe following the purity culture rules actually leads to more emotional damage.) But it was never really about that. Purity culture never said "You should abstain from sex because of reasons X, Y, and Z related to your health and emotions and ability to have healthy relationshiips, so of course if you're in a situation where reasons X, Y, and Z don't apply, then it's fine to have sex." Ha. Yeah right. Instead, it's "You should abstain from sex for because of reasons X, Y, and Z, but even if you think X, Y, and Z aren't related to your situation, you STILL need to not have sex, because God said so and God knows what's best for us." It was never really about reasons X, Y, and Z- those were just things we told ourselves so we wouldn't have to admit we were following an arbitrary, legalistic command.

So that's what I believed. Some of God's rules make sense, and some don't, and we have to obey anyway. And when we read the bible, we need to study the ancient language and culture it came from in order to know which rules "apply to us today" and which do not. We can't just use, like, common sense or something- no, we need to find experts in ancient Hebrew literature to read the whole thing and tediously compile a list of commands the writers intended to apply to all people for all time. And then we follow those commands, even if they don't make sense. Even if they seem like a really bad idea. Because we're too sinful, we're not capable of knowing right and wrong. We need to obey what the bible says, and that's that.

But then, one day, I read Justin Lee's biblical argument supporting same-sex marriage. And he said that this passage in Romans 13 tells us that sin is defined as things that are not loving- for example, you don't steal from someone if you love them, you don't cheat on your spouse if you love them, etc. And that this is the way we should read the bible and determine which commands "apply to us today": which ones, when applied to our modern-day context, are loving things to do for people, and which ones cause harm? The bible isn't a bunch of arbitrary commands that we need to study and memorize all the details in order to know what morality is. No, it's all summed up like this: Love your neighbor as yourself. That's it. Everyone can understand that.

I remember being really surprised- I had never thought about sin in that way before. I thought through a bunch of examples of things the church taught me were sins, and it blew my mind that, for almost every single one, I could frame it as treating someone in an unloving way, and identify a specific person who would be hurt by it. The only exceptions were the rules about sex or sexual orientation. Don't have unmarried sex, don't watch porn, don't date someone who's the same gender, etc. There was no obvious "victim" for those "sins". (Which is why I no longer believe they are sins.)

Evangelical theology says sin is bad mainly because it breaks my relationship with God. The church didn't really teach me to think about the person that I hurt through my sin. They basically teach that God is the victim. And that meant I couldn't really distinguish between actions that actually hurt someone, and something harmless like "making an idol" by being "too" interested in some hobby. In a more disturbing example, it means purity-culture Christians can't see the difference between rape and consensual unmarried sex.

But thank goodness for queer people doing theology, showing me how totally messed-up my view of sin was. Now I believe what it says in Romans 13: every commandment can be summed up as "love your neighbor as yourself."

Honest Lent: Heap Burning Coals

Picture of a lego, with the text "Hope you step on a". Image source.

Today for Honest Lent, we are reading Romans 12:9-21.

Specifically, I'd like to talk about this part:

Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary:

“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”

... what.

Okay, the way I understand this- the way I heard it in Sunday school- was this: You should be very nice toward your enemies, because then they will feel really bad. They'll feel much worse than they'd feel if you just used normal, expected ways of fighting with them.

And... wait, so the writer of Romans thinks it's totally cool that we want to make our "enemies" feel really bad? And he's advising us on the best way to do it?

(As an aside, I'd like to point out that this will only work if your "enemy" has a conscience and also knows that you were hurt by something they did. If you don't have both those conditions met, then they will just think "oh this person is being nice/ being normal" and not really think much of it.)

And "leave room for God's wrath"- does that mean "I know you want revenge, you want to see this jerk suffer, well let me tell you the BEST way to make them suffer- let God do it"? I'm really uncomfortable with this idea that wishing bad things upon your "enemy" is totally fine, and that by obeying the bible, you can bring THE MOST bad things upon them.

Longtime readers of my blog know that I am very much NOT a fan of the idea, within Christianity, that it's not okay to have certain feelings. So yes, I very much believe it's okay to be angry at someone who treated you in an evil way. It's totally okay to hate them, and never want to see them again, etc. But in terms of actual punishment- wishing or causing actual bad things to happen to them- wow then you gotta slow down. I believe in justice but not revenge. And "is it okay for me to hurt this person in this way because they hurt me in that way?" can be a difficult moral question. I'm not saying the answer is always "no, turn the other cheek"- but I'm saying you have to be careful, because revenge is not a good thing.

But this passage in Romans doesn't advise caution, or encourage people to think about the difference between justice and revenge, or anything like that. Instead it tells you how to "heap burning coals on his head" and still maintain the appearance of kindness. And I'm not okay with that.

Honest Lent: Teacher's Pet, God's Pet

A little girl gives an apple to her teacher. Image source.

For Honest Lent, let's read Mark 10:35-45.

This is the story where James and John show up and ask Jesus if they can sit as his right and left in his kingdom. Jesus more or less says no, and uses it as an opportunity to talk about wanting greatness by being a servant, etc.

But the bit I want to talk about is where Jesus says, "but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared." (Matthew's account of this story says, "These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared by my Father.")

I remember one time, long ago, reading that verse and wondering, "Wait, does that mean that 2 people actually will get to sit at Jesus' right and left? And God the Father will pick them? ... I wonder if it'll be me."

Because I used to be that good kid that got unexpectedly recognized and rewarded by teachers. Most of the time, I was just quiet, didn't really talk to anyone, kind of lonely, didn't really understand the entire concept of social interaction. I just did what the teachers said we were supposed to do. Do homework, don't make trouble, etc.

And most of the time, it felt like no one really noticed me. But every now and then, there would be a "one amazing student is getting this special reward/ opportunity" and suddenly the teacher was talking about how smart I was.

And I used to wonder if God saw me that way too. I was good little girl, I was following all the rules- but that meant I didn't stand out. Because in general, if you don't make trouble, the adults don't have to step in and deal with you. (The principal at my elementary school knew all the "bad" kids' names, but not mine.) But apparently my good grades and math ability spoke for themselves, and every now and then there was some pretty great unexpected recognition. And I wondered if God would do that for me too.

I read about Mary, how the angel visited her and said she had been chosen to give birth to the Son of God. Could that have been me? I wondered. Did God pick her because she was the best at following all the rules, getting good grades, and not making trouble, like me?

And I read the story of Noah, about how God killed everyone because they were all bad except Noah and his family. And I was scared- because what if, among the victims of the flood, there was a little girl like me, who was quiet and didn't attract attention, who was good all the time but most people didn't notice... and God didn't notice? God said everyone in the world was so bad they deserved to die, except Noah and his family, but ... could God have missed some of the quiet ones?

Like the times that our teacher would make a whole long speech about how our class was so bad and we need to get our act together. I hadn't done anything bad, but they hadn't noticed me. A bunch of kids in the class were "being bad," so the teacher said we were all being bad. What if God was like that?

One more thing I'd like to say: I no longer define "good" and "bad" in that way. Back when I was a little kid, my identity was very much based on "I'm smart" and I thought I was better than the other kids because of that. I don't necessarily think that was a bad thing for me at the time- I didn't really fit in or have friends, and the adults always said the most important thing was education, not something "shallow" like having a social life- so it would have been difficult for me to not see the world that way. But now I'm an adult, and nobody hands me a list of number theory problems and then tells me I'm so much smarter than everyone else when I get them all right. And "goodness" doesn't mean just avoiding bad behavior (though that's consistent with evangelical teaching on "sin" and how "God takes sin very seriously", blah), but it means actually making a difference in the world. And it's better to make mistakes in your efforts to do good in the world than to just lay low and not break any rules.

Honest Lent: Whitewashed Tombs

Whitewashed tomb. Image source.

Today for Honest Lent, let's look at Matthew 23. This is one of my favorite chapters in the bible. I recommend reading the whole thing.

Seriously go read the whole thing.

I love this because it's about religious leaders who are so sure that they have the "correct" beliefs. They can back it up with Scripture and logic- but they have no compassion. They don't care how their beliefs affect other people.

They think obedience to the bible is the most important thing. They don't realize that love for people is the most important thing. They ignore the clear teaching of Scripture, "The Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath."

These are the politicians who don't think everyone deserves health care. I guess if you have a child born with a disability, you should have to live in poverty. They talk all kinds of talk about "personal responsibility." They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.

These are the churches who don't "allow" women to be senior pastors. They pull out bible verses to justify their misogyny- as if hate is okay if the bible says it is. They strain out a gnat and swallow a camel.

These are the Christian organizations that refuse to be associated in any way with the message that being queer is acceptable. The Christian bookstores who pull an author's books because the author made a statement in support of marriage equality. The concerned parents who think trans people are predators and shouldn't be allowed to use the bathroom. The Christians who won't give money to a relief organization if that organization has employees married to same-sex partners. The churches that would never allow a queer person to be a pastor. The Christians who claim equality for LGBTQIA people is an attack on "religious liberty." They shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces.

You can find bible verses that support your hate, your bigotry, your desire to blame other people for their own problems so that you have an excuse not to help them. You can feel good about yourself because you have the truth and other people aren't as godly as you. You can be a whitewashed tomb. But you're missing the entire point of Jesus.

Honest Lent: "Think About Such Things"

Image shows a pretty tree with the text of Philippians 4:8 written next to it. Image source.

[content note: Christian ideology which is damaging to mental health]

Today for Honest Lent, I'm reading Philippians 4:1-9.

Specifically, I'd like to talk about verse 8. "Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things."

Okay, sure, there's something to be said for thinking about positive things rather than negative ones. This verse could be interpreted as encouraging self-care. It's good for your mental health to focus on the positive things in your life, instead of dwelling on bad things. That's good advice.

But.

See, this is a bible verse. And that means, when I was a good evangelical, I would have viewed it as an absolute command, not a sometimes-useful piece of advice. And there is a world of difference between those two things.

If it's a bit of advice about mental health, then that means its purpose is to make us feel better, to give us less stress. It means we can understand the purpose, and we have the ability to judge whether or not this advice is worth following in our current situation. If following it would help achieve that purpose, then we should totally do it. But if there is a situation where it would not be helpful to try and force ourselves to think about "excellent or praiseworthy" things, if doing so would cause more stress, then we can make the choice not to follow this advice. In other words, when it's useful, we can do it and benefit from it, and when it's not useful, we can just ignore it. (The Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath.) When viewed in this light, this verse about focusing our thoughts on positive things is a very good and healthy principle.

But if it's a command from God, then everything is different. If it's a command, then when we fail to do it, we're sinning. The church taught me that sin is a big deal- committing any tiny little sin meant I deserve death, I deserve to go to hell, I killed Jesus. Any little sin is a serious rebellion against God, a vicious, heartless attack on the one who constantly showers us with love, mercy, and forgiveness. If you keep thinking about sad things and you can't help it, you're hurting God. You are a bad bad person. And if you have depression, first of all it's your fault; if you had been obeying God and thinking about "whatever is true, whatever is noble," then you wouldn't have depression. And now in addition to your depression, you should feel really guilty for your failure to obey what God commanded here. And in addition to that, you should try to force yourself to only think of good things, and then feel even worse when that doesn't work. (They tie up heavy burdens for others, but they themselves will not lift a finger to help.)

The difference between viewing this as a command and viewing it as a possibly-helpful piece of advice is enormous. If it's a command, any good it might have done is completely destroyed, and it heaps more guilt and self-hate on people who are already struggling.

But if it's just some good advice we are free to take or leave, that means we're in charge. We have the authority to decide when it would be helpful to follow it, and when it doesn't apply. But of course this would be unthinkable in the evangelical Christianity I learned. Believing that I had the ability to know the purpose behind biblical "commands" and I should choose to ignore them if they wouldn't achieve that purpose in my current situation? Ha. Of course not. Of course humans are so sinful, we can't trust our own minds, we're always looking for excuses to ignore the "clear teaching of Scripture."

Just because the bible says something doesn't mean you have to obey it. Only obey it if it's a good and healthy thing that makes sense. This stuff about forcing yourself to think about "positive" things and then feeling bad when you're not able, labelling your mental illness as "sin", doesn't help anybody. The Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath.

Honest Lent: "Seek First God's Kingdom" Doesn't Work If You Have Autism

Mushroom cloud. Image source.

For Honest Lent, let's look at Luke 12:22-34.

In this passage, Jesus teaches his disciples "do not worry." Specifically, do not worry about food or clothes. He says God will take care of you because look at how God provides for the ravens and flowers, and obviously you're so much more valuable. I won't get into the fact that food insecurity and malnutrition are real things that exist in the world- which proves that no, God does NOT always take care of people's basic needs. (Jesus makes a promise here which is NOT TRUE.) What I really want to talk about is verse 31: "But seek his kingdom, and these things [your needs] will be given to you as well."

This is what I was taught in church. Seek God first. Don't focus on your own needs. Follow God, put others before yourself, and then God will make sure your needs are met too.

Let me tell you something: This doesn't work if you have autism.

As it turns out, I have different needs than other people. And I've only realized this in the past few years; I wasn't diagnosed with autism until I was in my early 20's.

For me, the biggest example of this "different needs" thing is related to sound. As it turns out, other people are hearing sounds not nearly as loud as I hear them. For most of my life, I had no idea. I had lived 20+ years baffled over how other people can tolerate such awful awful unbearably loud sounds. Finally I found this explanation: My sensory system is such that sounds are much louder for me than for other people. For me, those loud sounds literally are unbearable. They are literally painful.

So that means I have needs. Like the need to not go see a fireworks display. But nobody ever told me "you know your own needs better than anyone else, and those needs are real things that other people need to take seriously." I believed I was being unreasonable if I asked for something that was different from everyone else. I believed that it was just me being weird and if I went to therapy and tried hard enough I could become "normal", so my sensitivity to sound was my own fault and not something that other people need to take seriously.

I can't blame this all on the church. In society in general, there's so much ignorance about mental health and disabilities, and people aren't taught to take people at their word when they claim to have some invisible condition that requires special accomodation. But the church's teaching about "don't focus on your own needs, just obey God and help others and then your needs will magically be met too" certainly didn't help things.

So I thought it was wrong to ask for special treatment. I thought it was "selfish" to ask the adults if I was allowed to sit out of some activity that was going to be overwhelming for me in terms of sensory stimuli or social interaction. Actually, I didn't even know it was an option. We go see fireworks on the 4th of July because that's what we do on the 4th of July. I didn't understand that it was an activity that was intended to be enjoyable, and that other people actually enjoyed fireworks. I had no idea. And then one year my mom said I could stay home if I wanted, while the rest of the family went to the fireworks- like, YES! OF COURSE I want to stay home. But I wouldn't have thought to ask for that on my own because I didn't understand that my cowering in pain was completely different from how other people experience fireworks. I had no idea I had different needs. Real needs. Real pain. Not just "me being weird."

If you're neurotypical and not disabled, then maybe the concept of "don't advocate for your own needs, they will naturally get met when you focus on God and helping others" might work. Because your needs are obvious things that your loved ones can relate to. It will be easy for others to see when your needs are not being met, and they will step in and help you.

But that doesn't work for me. If I don't say anything, then people don't *get* that loud sounds are unbearably painful for me. For most of my life, I didn't even *get* that. And even people who cared about me and wanted to help didn't know how, and treated me in ways that actually turned out to be harmful. I wonder how things could have been different if someone had told me I am an expert on my own needs and I have a right to advocate for myself, to tell others what my needs are and insist on it even if they try to ignore me. I wonder if that's even a realistic thing to imagine- even if I did get a diagnosis as a child, would any adult actually give a child the authority to act as an expert on their own needs and choose for themself whether they were able to participate in various activities?

I used to act uncertain when I tried to communicate about the loud-sounds problem. I didn't have the language I needed back then- I didn't know it was about needs and pain; I thought it was me being weak and unreasonable and selfishly asking for special treatment. I used to ask instead of tell. My tone of voice showed that I believed it was an unreasonable request, and so people didn't take it seriously- or they made suggestions based on their total ignorance of the problem, and I treated those suggestions as more important than my "silly" sensory issues (which, I thought, are my own fault because I could choose to go to therapy and become "normal"). I used to end those conversations with "I don't know if I'll be okay with that or not, but ... okay."

But now I've learned to say it this way: "Loud sounds are extremely painful for me, so if there are balloons at the party, I will not be able to go." Like it's just a fact of the universe, just a simple cause-and-effect, and I'm not going to entertain any suggestions about how I should "get over it" and "it's not that bad." I'm very much "leaning on my own understanding" here- nobody told me "it's perfectly reasonable for you to avoid things that make loud sounds, because they cause pain to you in a way that's completely different from what most people are experiencing." I figured that out on my own, and it's not like I can ask other people to confirm it- they don't know what I'm feeling, and I don't know what they're feeling. I've decided I don't need anyone's permission to advocate for myself. If I say this is what I need, then I have the right to tell people and expect to be taken seriously.

I used to "seek first God's kingdom," but God did not take care of my other needs. The only way to make sure those unique needs are met is if I stand up for myself, if I communicate to other people that this is a real thing that needs to be taken seriously. Any hesitation, any "humility", any "putting others first" on my part, when coupled with the fact that other people can't relate to what I'm feeling, gets interpreted as an indication that what I'm asking for isn't a real need that other people should care about.

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Related:
Globophobia part 2: God Didn't Help

Honest Lent: Abraham's Slaves

Fighting between Abraham's and Lot's workers. Image source.

For Honest Lent, let's read Genesis 12:1-9.

This is "The Call of Abram." God tells him to go to a new land, and that God will bless him. So he goes. With "his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Harran."

Huhm.

People?

See this is something that bothered me, back when I was a little kid and the adults were so proud of me for reading the bible on my own. Abraham had a bunch of servants, and the bible doesn't talk about those servants like they're people, but as if they are property.

Here is what the bible says about Abraham's servants:

• Genesis 12:5. Abram goes to the land God showed him, along with "all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Harran."
• Genesis 12:16. Abram goes to Egypt and says Sarai is his sister. Pharaoh then took her and "treated Abram well for her sake, and Abram acquired sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys, male and female servants, and camels."
• Genesis 13. Abram and Lot separate because both of them have such huge groups of livestock and herders, the land can't support them both.
• Genesis 14:14. When Lot gets captured, Abram leads "the 318 trained men born in his household" to fight and rescue him.
• Genesis 15:3. God promises Abram will have many descendents, but Abram says, "You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir."
• Genesis 16. Abram and Sarai decide that Abram is going to impregnate Sarai's servant Hagar. Hagar doesn't seem to have been given a choice in this.
• Genesis 17. God again promises that Abram will have tons and tons of descendents, and he changes his name to Abraham. Also, God says all males in Abraham's household must be circumcised. Including the servants. "And every male in Abraham’s household, including those born in his household or bought from a foreigner, was circumcised with him."
• Genesis 18:7 mentions that a servant prepared food for "the three visitors."
• Genesis 20. Abraham tries that whole "Sarah is my sister" thing again, and king Abimelek took her (notice that Sarah's consent seems to not exist?). When Abimelek finds out that actually Sarah is married and God is [illogically] upset with him about this, he freaks out and gives Abraham a ton of gifts so he won't get in trouble. "Then Abimelek brought sheep and cattle and male and female slaves and gave them to Abraham, and he returned Sarah his wife to him."
• Genesis 22:3. Two servants came along when Abraham was going to sacrifice Isaac.
• Genesis 24. Abraham sends a servant to go find a wife for Isaac. (Even though the servant is the main character of this chapter, he isn't given a name.) In verse 35 he says, "The Lord has blessed my master abundantly, and he has become wealthy. He has given him sheep and cattle, silver and gold, male and female servants, and camels and donkeys."

Servants appear again and again in the background of Abraham's story, often mentioned in lists of property to impress us with how rich Abraham was. It struck me as very strange, when I was a little kid- in Sunday School we were taught that we should be like Abraham; Abraham was the hero, he trusted God, God gave him so many blessings. But I wondered, what about the servants? Where was their opportunity to trust God and be rewarded with riches? Why didn't they have a chance at being a role model for little kids in Sunday School?

It didn't make sense for the church to tell us "be like Abraham" when the majority of the people in Abraham's story never even had an opportunity to "be like Abraham."

They're just there, in the background, and nobody ever asks about their faith or whether God cared about them. (Or what their reaction was when Abraham announced "today all the men are getting circumcised!")

You could give this explanation: Maybe Abraham was the most godly, maybe the people who had to serve him as slaves wouldn't have trusted God like Abraham did if given the chance, so it's actually not unfair that the story isn't about them. Whoa, hold up there, that is some very dangerous ground you're on. Because if you believe "maybe people in bible times were trapped in lives of servitude because they weren't the sort of people who would have obeyed God and been role models for Sunday school kids anyway" then it's also reasonable to believe "maybe people living in poverty now are morally inferior and they deserve it." And that can serve as an excuse for all kinds of immorality.

I wish we could have acknowledged this injustice in Sunday School, in bible study groups, in evangelical culture in general- I wish someone would have pointed out how it's kind of messed-up the way the bible talks about Abraham's servants (slaves?) as if they're not people. But of course that's not an option. Good Christians have to force themselves to believe that everything in the bible is right and good (with caveats about how just because the bible says something happened doesn't mean it's endorsing that). In that culture, you can't point out, "Hey, isn't it weird that servants are being listed right along with cattle and donkeys, as if they're nothing more than property that symbolizes God's blessing to Abraham? And it's written like readers are supposed to be impressed by how rich Abraham was and how he owned so many people? Isn't that kind of ... immoral?"

You can't. You're not allowed to believe that the biblical writers endorsed anything that was immoral. And so you train yourself not to notice, when people- human beings created in the image of God- are referred to as property that can be bought and sold, forced into pregnancy, forced into circumcision. Just as the biblical writer did, you ignore the servants' agency and choices and see them as nothing more than symbols of Abraham's obedience to God and reward. It's all about Abraham. You imagine yourself as Abraham, or maybe Sarah- as if there is no one else in the story.

Reading the bible- really reading the whole bible- while believing that everything it teaches is by definition right and good requires you to silence your brain and your conscience. It trains you to read but not to notice. To internalize these mentions of immorality, as if they're not immoral at all, because you're can't allow yourself to question them.

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Related:
I Wish I Was This Angry About Slavery in the Bible

Honest Lent: What was the younger son's sin, exactly?

Painting of the younger son returning to his father. Image source.

For Honest Lent, let's look at Luke 15:11-32.

It's the story usually referred to as "The Prodigal Son." And I have a question: What was the younger son's sin, exactly?

Back when I was a good evangelical, I would have answered this way: His sin was leaving his father- running away and going to live on his own. He was supposed to stay there at the father's house. Because the father represents God, and the most important thing EVER is to have a relationship with God. You can't go out on your own. You can't act like you don't need God. If you try, you'll fail- just like the younger son failed.

But I don't hold that view of God anymore. So now I'm wondering if this was his sin: Initially, he had a relationship with his father, but he didn't care. He treated his father like a walking bag of money. Give me your money, you owe it to me because it's my inheritance.

After all he'd done for the son, the father finds out his son doesn't care about any of it. He just wants as much money as he's entitled to, and then he's happy to leave his father behind, cut him out of his life completely.

That's gotta hurt.

It wasn't "the son was supposed to live at his father's house, but then he left, but then he came back so in the end the situation was back to how it was supposed to be." Maybe actually, his disrespect and cruelty to his father caused incredible pain, and there's no way to make up for it. That's why it's so amazing that his father accepted him when he came back. It's not "okay great, now things are back to the correct way." Maybe it's "after what you did, things can never be the same"- but the amazing part is that the father forgave him.

Not so much "you are not living in the correct way" but "after all I've done for you, you just want to use me for my money." Well, technically, back when I was a good evangelical, I believed both. I believed that God had given so much to everyone, and by not believing in [the correct version of] God, people were actively disrespecting that God day in and day out, not caring about having a relationship with that God, just enjoying what God had given them. And that it made God so incredibly hurt and sad- it was like a punch in the gut, every single day that a non-Christian just lived their normal life and didn't believe the "correct" things about Jesus.

But I don't believe that anymore.

I now believe in a Christianity that's not so much about agreeing or disagreeing with certain statements of fact, but about relationships between people. Treating people right. So in the "prodigal son" story, it wasn't about choosing to leave home when his father expected him to stay- it was about how badly he treated his father, how he didn't appreciate all that the father did, and just wanted his money.

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Related: Speaking of "the prodigal son," here's a rather bizarre article from John Piper answering the question of whether parents should financially support their "prodigal" children. I call it "bizarre" because it never actually defines what a "prodigal" child is. Based on my own experience in evangelical culture, I would say that people seem to use that word as if it means "living in a different way than their parents want them to" and it can mean anything from drug addiction to shady illegal behavior, to dating a non-Christian, to coming out as LGBTQIA, to living with a romantic partner, to rejecting Christianity, to not regularly attending church, to wearing fairly modest clothes that their fundie church calls immodest, to dating without parental approval, to believing in a different form of Christianity than their parents do, and so on. Most of these things are totally fine [as I see it], but Christians believe it's their job to make rules for other people's lives and then use "hate the sin, love the sinner" to force people to follow those rules.

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Related post: Mind-Blowing Interpretions for 2 Familiar Bible Stories

Honest Lent: Your Body's Needs

Diagram of organs of the human body.

The next Honest Lent reading is Galations 5:16-26.

So it's about "the flesh" and "the Spirit." There is a list of "the acts of the flesh" and another list of "the fruit of the Spirit." What's surprising to me is that "the acts of the flesh" are, for the most part, very obviously immoral things. Which isn't at all what I think of when Christians talk about "the flesh."

In my experience in evangelical culture, "the flesh" meant our natural bodies and everything that comes with being an incarnate person in a body- and "the flesh" was evil. Anything our bodies needed or desired was suspect. It was "selfish" to pursue our bodies' needs and desires- it was only okay if it could be justified as obedience to God. For example, it's not okay to say "I want to sleep because I want to sleep." (Because hey, you are being lazy- if you were really devoted to God, you would wake up early and read the bible. How selfish and wrong to put your desire for sleep before God.) It has to be spiritualized, like "God commanded us to rest, God designed us to need sleep, sleep is a way of showing that we trust God and we realize we're not so important that the world can't survive without us for several hours a night."

I believed "God is all I need." And it was a sign of devotion to God to push my body, to sacrifice, to ignore my body's needs. Wake up early instead of sleep. Attend tons of Christian groups and bible studies even though I naturally need more "alone time." Don't buy nice things for myself- that money should be donated to poor people on the other side of the world. Pray and pray and pray when I feel lonely, squash down my romantic attraction.

(Someday I'll write about how purity culture is the reason I've never gotten a massage. Well, also I don't want to because I don't like random people touching me- but yeah, in purity culture, the idea of purposely spending time touching and pleasuring your body is just HORRIFYING.)

In short, I pretended I didn't have a body that had needs. "The flesh" was evil. "The flesh" was a source of temptation. There's this idea in Christianity that the self- the soul- is a totally separate thing from the body. That your body doesn't have anything to do with who you really are. It's just a "temporary vessel."

I don't believe that anymore. I believe I am a body, subject to the laws of biology. (Also there's consciousness, which is a real thing and seems like more than just a biological phenomenon, but I'm not sure exactly.) Eating, sleeping, emotions, pleasure. (Go ahead and put sex on the list if you want, though I wouldn't know about that.) When I get angry, my body feels shaky and I have a really hard time with fine muscle movements. When I get nervous, my stomach feels sick. Emotions aren't just abstract things; they have actual effects I can feel in my body, and noticing those reactions is very important in terms of health. Mental health is an important part of health.

And what's more, your body is REALLY COOL! All these natural processes going on without you even knowing. Really complicated, important science stuff.

So don't "war against the flesh." Pay attention to your body. Your needs matter. Your desires matter. Your health matters.

One more thing I'd like to mention: In this passage, "the flesh" and "the Spirit" are presented as totally separate, binary, like there's nothing in between. When I read passages with "vice lists" like this, my instinctual reaction is to be like "okay, those are all really bad, that's not me, so I'm okay." The writer says, "I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God." As if all people can be neatly classified into two groups. As if these things are all so incredibly bad, and therefore the punishment is incredibly bad, there's no spectrum of gradually increasing degress of badness. As if, if you find that you have any of these faults listed here, you're officially the wrong type of person and that's that.

What if, instead, we say immorality is incompatible with the kingdom of God? So to the extent you behave immorally, you will be unable to participate in the kingdom of God- not as an externally-enforced punishment, but just because by definition your immoral behavior creates a situation that is not good and therefore not part of the kingdom of God.

I'm not a fan of this dichotomy between "the flesh" and "the Spirit", as if they are two completely separate, opposite forces at war in our lives. Especially because it leads to the teaching that our bodies are inherently bad, and that it's inherently good and godly to ignore our bodies' needs and desires.

Honest Lent: This Passage is Extremely Gaslight-y

Boxing match between two different versions of the same woman- one representing "flesh" and one representing "spirit." Image source.

Today for Honest Lent, let's read Romans 8:1-17.

Hmm. It's about the contrast between "the flesh" and "the spirit." Now, first of all, if I were reading this as a good evangelical, it would be OBVIOUS that "those who live according to the flesh" referred to non-Christians and "those who live in accordance with the Spirit" were the real Christians. (Note: Fake Christians, which unfortunately make up the majority of people claiming to be Christians, are being counted as non-Christians.) But now I'm wondering if maybe that's not what Paul meant. Can we really be sure that he believed that everyone who didn't use Christian language to talk about the greatest source of goodness and meaning in life is "living according to the flesh"? What about, for example, a Muslim person who lives as Jesus taught that people should live?

When I was an evangelical, I believed that people are all, by default, living in "the flesh", sinful and lost and bad. Then, if they make a decision to follow Jesus, at that exact moment they change to living in "the spirit", and they are now a completely different kind of person. (See Two Corinthians 5:17.) Yes, after that moment, God is going to "work on them" and change them to become more and more like Jesus, but that key moment, the moment of salvation, is where the most important change happens.

And, I believed, OBVIOUSLY all non-Christians are sinful and lost and bad. It doesn't matter if they are good people or not- well, the bible says "good people" don't really exist. All religions besides Christianity are EVIL. They "lead people astray" and give them fake answers for needs that only Jesus can satisfy.

Fortunately, I no longer believe in that Christian-supremacist nonsense. I think it's totally fine for people to believe whatever religion they want (or none at all), but what's more important is how they treat people. And right now I'm wondering if the writer of Romans held those same Christian-supremacist views that good evangelicals assume the bible teaches, or not.

Like, maybe there's a different interpretation for this passage. An interpretation that's not incredibly nasty toward non-Christians.

In the spirit of Honest Lent, though, I'll say this: I really don't care what the writer "meant." I don't take the bible as an authority over what I should believe. If the bible says non-Christians are all bad and can't even use their brains to understand things because they're just too darn sinful, well, that's not true and I won't believe it because it's not true. I don't have to believe it just because the bible says it. And if we come up with a different interpretation, a non-terrible interpretation, that's fine (actually I'd be really interested in hearing it) but it's not necessary for me. I'm totally okay with saying "well this bible passage is just wrong" and moving on with life.

Here's the main part that I have a problem with:

Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.

It's a similar idea to 1 Corinthians 2:14, which I'll also mention here because it says it more explicitly:

The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.

In other words, people who do not believe in the correct type of Christianity have minds controlled by "the flesh." They're so lost, they're not even able to do anything good, they're not able to follow God, they're not even able to understand basic facts about Christianity.

In other words, if you're not a Christian, your opinions about the bible/Christianity/etc are automatically invalid because you just don't get it. Christians don't have to actually listen to you and take your ideas seriously- they already know you're automatically wrong and they can just ignore whatever you say.

This is gaslighting.

Gaslighting means trying to make someone believe that their experiences, feelings, memories, and perceptions of the world are invalid, that something is wrong with their mind and they can't trust themselves to know what's really real. And a lot of what I was taught about "our sinful nature" was straight-up gaslighting.

Yes, I learned all the apologetics arguments. It was important to me to understand the reasons for my beliefs. But when it came down to it, I believed I was, at the most basic level, intrinsically incapable of understanding. At the deepest part of my identity, I was sinful and rebellious and was subconsciously looking for any excuse to sin. If I ever thought "well I know the church teaches that it's bad to do XYZ, but I think it's not bad for these reasons, and I have some bible verses to back me up"... ooooh, be careful. Because maybe my sinful nature is deceiving me into thinking my reasons are correct and reasonable, but in reality they're just a flimsy, laughable excuse driven by my desire to sin against my God. And I can't trust my own brain to know which it is.

It took me a long time to question and get out of evangelicalism because of that gaslighting. I couldn't figure out if the new ideas I was reading made way more sense than what the church taught me, or if that's just what my sinful nature wanted me to think.

This isn't okay. It's not okay to dismiss someone's ideas out-of-hand because "you're not a Christian, obviously you don't get it." It's not okay to teach people to doubt their own brains and rely on the church to tell them what's true. It's not okay to claim that only people who have "the Spirit" can understand what reality is.

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Related: Gaslighting Is Not Okay, Even If It's Biblical

Honest Lent: Introduction

Artwork showing someone getting ashes on their forehead. Image source.

Last December I did a series called Honest Advent, and I liked it so much that I'm going to do the same thing for Lent. The basic idea is that a few times per week, I'll read a bible passage and then blog about my opinions on it. No pressure to agree with it, no pressure to understand every part or answer all the questions that come up, no pressure to do it every single day.

For real, no pressure. Ash Wednesday was 3 days ago and I totally did not see it coming, not til I got home from work that evening and saw people talking about it on twitter. So the first 3 days of Lent I didn't do ANYTHING Lent-y, and guess what, I do not feel one bit bad about that. And for "Honest Lent," I'm [most likely] not going to read the bible every day. I'm going to do it only when I want to. I don't even see that as an ideal, as if it's obviously better to read the bible every day during Lent than to read the bible on some days. No, the ideal amount to read the bible is the amount I want to, however much I feel like doing it over the next month.

I'm making such a big deal about this "I'm not doing it every day and I don't feel bad about that" because in the evangelical culture I come from, everyone knew that the most godly Christians need to take time every day and read the bible. In college, I used to wake up early and spend 40 minutes to an hour every day reading the bible, praying, and journaling. And in that culture, people are required to act guilty if they don't live up to that standard; they "confess" that they "struggle" and aren't "making God a priority." They are socially required to talk about how they're such bad Christians for not reading the bible enough.

But I don't believe that anymore. Nowadays, I very rarely read the bible, and I don't feel one bit bad about that. (And maybe if you want me to feel bad, you need to ask yourself some hard questions about why you follow a religion which doesn't value mental health and would rather people have depression than not read the bible.) The Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath.

ANYWAY. So. Here's the bible reading plan I chose (link is a pdf). So the first one is Luke 4:1-13. Go read it and we'll talk about it.

Here are the things I noticed:

1. Jesus ate nothing for 40 days? Really? Is that possible? All right, I googled and found some information about hunger strikes, and it seems like generally people can survive 30-40 days with no food, but not too much beyond that. And only if they're still drinking water. You really need water.

All right so it's possible, but is this a good idea? It's supposed to be super-spiritual, but ... why? This could have very bad long-term effects on a person's health.

And hey, can we talk about fasting a little bit? Growing up evangelical, I never heard about anyone I knew who was fasting. I guess there are some types of Christianity that are more into it? My church was not. Then when I was in a Christian group in college, I heard people talking about fasting- as in, an actual real-life thing that they did- and I did it a few times. (There were even times that a group of us decided to all fast on the same day.) But nobody ever taught me how exactly to do it. I wasn't sure if I was allowed to drink water or not. (After the first time fasting, I found out that people said you should still drink water- but how could I have known that? My body told me I needed to eat, and I was ignoring that need, so how could I have known that my body's need to drink water was a VERY IMPORTANT thing that could be medically dangerous to ignore?)

There was even one time when I was praying at night, and suddenly I knew that God was telling me to fast the next day. So I did. As I recall, nothing out of the ordinary happened that day- nothing to explain why "God" had "told me" to fast that particular day. But that's the relationship I had with God back then- I didn't have the right to make my own decisions, he could order me to do anything, and I would have to do it even if it made no sense. Yeah, I'm glad I'm not in that relationship anymore.

It's a really bizarre concept- denying a very real, urgent physical need because apparently that's what God wants you to do. A really dangerous concept, in my opinion.

(Readers: I'd be interested in hearing your experiences with fasting/ whether you were taught anything about fasting in church.)

[content note for the next paragraph: gun violence]

2. Satan says, "If you are the Son of God..." Now that's interesting because evangelicals like to tell a lot of stories where someone "stood up for God" by doing just what a bad person told them they should do if they are true followers of God. Probably the most common example of this trope is the shooter who asks his victims "Do you believe in God?" and presumably would choose not to kill them if they answered "no." The thing that has always bothered me about these stories that the bad guy defines what devotion to God looks like in that situation, and then the hero acts according to the bad guy's definition. Like, let's be real, if somebody's trying to kill you, you don't have to stand around and answer their questions honestly- you do whatever the hell you can to get out of there. (Even lying is okay.)

So when satan says, "If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread," shouldn't Jesus "stand up for God" by, you know, telling the stones to become bread? Otherwise, isn't he denying that he's the Son of God? NO. Because satan doesn't get to make the rules. Just because satan claims that the Son of God would do this or that doesn't mean it's true. He's just making it up. Don't play by his rules.

3. Every time Jesus answers, he quotes a bible verse. Now, when I learned about this story in Sunday school as a little kid, the teachers made a big deal about "this is why it's really really important to study the bible, so you'll know what to say when you face temptation." But I don't see it that way anymore. Because that's almost like "you have to have a bible verse backing you up when you refuse to do something- 'I don't want to' isn't a good enough reason." Which totally flies in the face of the entire concept of consent.

I believed that I didn't have the right to make my own choices based on my own desires. Instead, I had to figure out what was the "right" thing to do and what was the "wrong" thing to do. That's why we were supposed to study the bible so much- so that we would be really sure about the "right" things and the "wrong" things.

In this way of thinking, when satan tells Jesus "tell these stones to become bread," Jesus would have to then figure out if telling the stones to become bread was a sin or not, in some absolute sense. If it is a sin, he should refuse to do it. If he feels like it's a bad idea, he doesn't want to, he's not comfortable with it, but he can't pinpoint the exact reason why and back it up with a "logical"* argument, then it's much more difficult for him to refuse. He can try to give some polite excuses, but if satan keeps pushing, well, Jesus feels he doesn't actually have a "good reason" and he'll give in.

(*I put "logical" in scare quotes because I very much believe that "I am uncomfortable with this" IS a perfectly logical and valid reason, even though it is purely based in emotion. People often talk as if a thing can only be "logical" if it's completely unrelated to emotion, but I disagree with that.)

No. When you make personal decisions that don't harm anyone else, you're not required to present your reasons to a jury of your peers and wait for their approval. No. "I want to do this" and "I don't want to do this" are good enough reasons. Period.

Purity-culture girls and ex-purity-culture girls seem to have an especially hard time with this. They often feel that they need to say yes if a good Christian guy asks them on a date- they need to "give him a chance" even if they're not interested. They can only say no if they can frame their refusal as "God told me" rather than "I don't want to." And when we're no longer in purity culture, we don't know how to make decisions based on our own desires- we have no experience in that, nobody ever taught us how. For example, maybe your partner wants to come to your home, but you're not comfortable with that, but you can't really explain why. All you can think is "well I don't believe it's a sin anymore, so... I guess I have to say yes?" It's very difficult to make that transition from asking "Is this right or wrong?" to asking "What do I want?"

4. "The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world." Wait, really? "In an instant"? How have I never noticed that phrase? (I guess I generally read Matthew's version, which doesn't say "in an instant.") Wtf? Where are you going to go where you can see all the kingdoms of the world? Even if the writer thought the earth was flat (...did they?), how high would you even have to be to see them all? Did they believe there actually was a mountain that high? How long would it take Jesus and satan to hike up there? (Are they old buddies who go on mountain-climbing trips together?) And if your field of view was wide enough to include "all the kingdoms", wouldn't they be so far away that you couldn't really see any details? Like, they wouldn't look very tempting from that distance, right?

Or perhaps satan did a miracle and somehow showed Jesus "all the kingdoms" without any mountain-climbing involved? (Or maybe he showed a powerpoint? Or a flipchart? Flannelgraph? Or maybe this entire thing happened in a dream? A vision? Or Jesus was hallucinating because he was starving?)

I'm suddenly realizing this story isn't that realistic and maybe, maybe maybe maybe... should not be taken literally.

Hmm.

Well this gets into the question of what I believe about what the bible actually is, and honestly I don't have a good answer for that. I guess my position is that I think the stories about Jesus literally happened- but wow, the devil "showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world"? Really? I don't think so.

5. I just realized that throughout this entire blog post, I've been using the name "satan", but the passage itself only says "the devil." In the Christian culture I come from, there's an assumption that those are 100% interchangeable, but now I'm wondering if maybe the writers of the bible didn't understand them that way. Hmm. I should probably do more research on that.

6. The devil quotes Scripture too. People say that in church- "The devil quotes Scripture too." They meant it's not enough to read the bible- you have to know the "correct" interpretation too. There were frequent warnings about people who "twist Scripture." But now that all my beliefs have changed, I find that the things I believe now are the things that those supposed "false teachers" who "twist Scripture" believe. So the whole "twisting Scripture" thing is really a way to say "my interpretation is OBVIOUSLY the correct interpretation, and anyone who disagrees is automatically wrong."

Let me give you an example. I no longer believe it's a sin to have unmarried sex. So, good evangelicals are all like "the bible is clear, premarital sex is a sin"- but it's actually not "clear" at all. Over and over and over, the bible says that "sexual immorality" is a sin. But there's nothing immoral about consenting adults choosing to have sex and not hurting anybody. Yes, I believe "sexual immorality" is a sin (well, I believe any kind of immorality is a sin...) but it's totally possible to have unmarried sex without being immoral about it.

Clearly, I am "twisting Scripture."

At it's core, the "twisting Scripture" accusation is "well, you're wrong, because OBVIOUSLY that's not what they meant." That's literally all it is. Supposedly there's one "obvious", "clear" interpretation of the bible, and everyone knows it, but then some people try to "twist Scripture" to make it say things it OBVIOUSLY doesn't say.

So when Christians read this passage in Luke 4 with the mindset of "satan is twisting Scripture," ehhh no I don't like that. The reason Jesus shouldn't jump off the highest point of the temple is because THAT'S A TERRIBLE IDEA. Not because "that's not what the author of Psalm 91 really meant."

All right that's all I have to say about this passage. Readers, what are your thoughts? And are you doing anything special for Lent?

Blogaround

Image source.

1. For Chinese New Year a Celebration of the World’s Largest Sheep (posted February 18) Cool!

2. I Dated Christian Grey: How Women Are Groomed For Abuse (posted February 14) "I’ve been swept off of my feet by what I desperately believed to be—but were not—grand romantic gestures."

3. Atheist lent, why it matters, and also what should I (and maybe you, if you’d like) give up? (posted February 18) "But religion evolved over literally thousands of years to solve a host of problems, satisfy a broad array of needs, and contribute intimately to living a better and more meaningful life."

4. 8 Things Some A$$#ole Says in Every Debate About Sexism (posted February 19) "How can you be complaining about this when there are starving children in Africa? Starving children I'm doing less than nothing to help, because merely nothing would be ignoring them. But I'm specifically pointing out that I know about them to use them as underfed weapons against things I actually care about."

5. Why are Christian movies so painfully bad? (posted February 15) "Perhaps the film's main selling point is that it's not Fifty Shades of Grey."

6. When some faction says they, and they alone, are the Real, True Christians, you shouldn’t take their word for it (posted February 20) "Real True Christians do not base their identity on their devotion to the Bible or to the Creeds, but on finding ways to elevate themselves above other Christians they can denounce as false, apostate, liberal and inauthentic. ... They may be the ones talking the loudest about 'authentic' Christianity/Islam/fandom, but they are bound to be the least reliable examples of what such 'authentic' belief might entail." Follow-up posts: The framework of fundamentalist propaganda distorts how we view every religion and Scholar clarifies, walks back his comments in Atlantic ISIS essay.

7. Photographer captures bizarre, intimate scenes of Chinese factory life (posted February 23) "The Lunar New Year is the only time of year China's army of migrant workers gets to go home. Known as 'chunyun,' the annual travel crush is the world's largest migration of humans."

8. Immodest Proposals: The Rules (posted February 4) "If you wear a tank-top, you must pin your undershirt or bra straps so they do not show. If boys see straps, they will imagine you in your bra, and then not in your bra, and then they will spontaneously combust from lust."

9. Biblical Sexting: A How-To Guide (posted February 14) "You really turn my wheel within a wheel."