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

Fruit tree. Image source.

In my post The Kingdom of Children: Eschatology, I had a little parenthetical aside that said:

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.

In other words, we should look at the way that a religious [or atheistic] belief affects people's views on "morality/purpose/how we should live our lives", and that's how we say if the belief is good or bad. We have some sort of "common sense" feel for what good morality is, and that is the yardstick we use to measure and judge religious beliefs.

Here's the thing, though: Yes, that's how I see it now. But when I was evangelical, I would have disagreed with this. I would have said, we can't judge our religious beliefs based on the effects we observe in the real world; the whole point of religion is that we're claiming there is something bigger than the physical world. In view of this bigger spiritual "reality", our behaviors and morality are good and right, though they might appear to be harmful and wrong if you're only looking at the physical world we can see. And if you judge the religious beliefs only by their observable effects in the physical world, you're already assuming an atheistic worldview, where none of the religion's claims are true.

One could argue, if progressive Christians want to live according to the reality of the physical world, and never do anything that seems like a bad idea (but is actually a good idea if the religion's claims about the spiritual world are true), why not just go all the way and be atheists? If you never side with your religion, when assessing a concrete truth claim that people outside your religion would disagree with, which has practical effects on the choices you make in the real world, do you even believe your religion?

Excluding People In Case God Wants Us To

At the moment of Jesus' death, "the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom." (Matthew 27:51) Image source. 

In some churches, women aren't allowed to volunteer as ushers, or to serve communion, or to read Scripture to the congregation. Because, the bible says women should not speak in church, and a woman must not have authority over a man.

There are also churches that believe men and women are fully equal, and women can have all the same leadership positions that men can. They interpret those bible verses as only applicable to the first-century churches they were written to, and not absolute rules for all time.

Suppose you don't know which side of this debate to believe. It certainly seems sexist and wrong to put restrictions on women, but at the same time, it's right there in the bible, so maybe God really does want us to do it?

Maybe it would be wise to err on the side of caution, and not allow women to do things. It's difficult- it's difficult to obey God in this way- everyone will call you a sexist, and also if you exclude all the women volunteers, maybe you don't even have enough men volunteers to run your church service. One could argue that obedience to God is in fact supposed to be difficult like this. It's so hard, it's a sacrifice, look how we are sacrificing so much for God. Much more righteous than taking the easy way out and just letting women have all the same roles that men can have, right?

The problem with this framework is, it has God above us, and we are down here trying to please him, trying to follow the rules correctly, for him. God has high standards, and we have to work really hard, exclude people just in case God wants them excluded, the narrower the better, no sacrifice is too great if we are doing it for God.

But God is not up there, waiting for us to present our carefully-screened representatives to perform worship in our best attempt to follow Their rules. God is here. God is in us. All humans bear the image of God. If your church excludes women from volunteer/leadership roles, you are excluding God.

If you restrict women, you're not "erring on the side of caution." You're cutting off part of the body of Christ. You're cutting off God.

---

Gay Christians face a similar debate. The traditional interpretation of the bible says only hetero relationships are allowed, and sex is only for one-man-one-woman marriage. On the other side, you have gay Christians making the argument that those bible verses were written for the people in the ancient Near East, and they don't apply to us now.

But if you're not sure who to believe, what do you do? Maybe don't ever date a same-sex partner, just in case it's a sin. Maybe a church should not do same-sex weddings, or have queer people in leadership. High standards, for God.

But again, you're cutting off God. God is in queer people, queer joy, the way that we thrive when we're able to accept ourselves for who we are. Don't ask people to repress themselves for God- you're repressing God. All the diversity and beauty of the image of God, living in so many different people with so many different experiences and perspectives, and we're trying to cut it down, fit it in a box, make it fit the straight and narrow "rules."

---

Another example is that time in college that we brought a friend to church, and he said he was a Christian, but we "knew" he wasn't a "real" Christian. I wrote about this in my post The Worst Bible Story:

On another occasion, a friend of mine, let’s call him Hector, brought another friend, let’s call him Carl, to church. Carl claimed to be a Christian, but he hadn’t been attending church or anything, and Hector and I knew that he didn’t have a real “relationship with God”, you know, because evangelical Christians are all about judging who is and who isn’t a “real Christian.”

So Carl came to church. And that week, we had communion, and Hector stopped him and explained, you know, honestly, you’re not a real Christian, so you shouldn’t take communion. And Carl was really hurt by it (can you imagine), but I admired Hector for taking a stand like that. Defending the wafers and grape juice from those who don’t have the “correct” view on Jesus.

I would never have done what Hector did, because I was not confident enough in my understanding of 1 Corinthians 11 and I had never seen anyone stopped from taking communion before. ...

I would never have done that, but I really admired Hector for the way he stepped out in faith and took a stand for God, even though other people didn't accept it.

Excluding Christians from communion because we think they're not "really" Christians. Because we believed God was above us, judging whether we stayed in the lines or not, and God was offended by anyone who came forward and ate a little wafer but didn't meet the standards of how to believe in Jesus the "correct" way.

We thought that if someone felt hurt by being blocked from taking communion, well, that was a small price to pay to keep up the highest standards of respect for God. Making sure that only people who were definitely the right kind of Christian were allowed to participate.

We were actually excluding God.

---

Matthew 1 contains [one version of] Jesus' genealogy. It traces his ancestry from father to son, through Abraham, down through David and the kings of ancient Judah, down to Joseph, the husband of Mary. I've often heard Christians point out how interesting it is that this genealogy mentions some women. I mean, it's a typical patriarchal genealogy in that it's all about "so-and-so was the father of so-and-so," but at a few points in the list of fathers and sons, it also mentions who someone's mother was.

Specifically, the women included in the Matthew 1 genealogy are: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and Mary.

Tamar, whose first husband Er was wicked, so the Lord put him to death. Then she was required to marry his brother, Onan, who was also wicked and the Lord put him to death. Then she was supposed to marry the remaining brother, but her father-in-law Judah didn't let her, so she disguised herself as a prostitute to get Judah to have sex with her, and she became pregnant that way. 

Rahab, a prostitute and foreigner, a resident of Jericho, whose city was attacked and the people killed by Joshua and his army.

Ruth, a widow and foreigner from Moab, which was one of Israel's enemies.

Bathsheba, who was raped by King David. She became pregnant, so David murdered her husband Uriah, and married her.

Mary, the mother of Jesus, who was a virgin but probably had people judging her for being unmarried and pregnant.

This is not exactly the dream team that you would assemble if you wanted good, respectable, uncomplicated role models. So why did Matthew go out of his way to point out that these women were part of Jesus' family line? 

One way I've heard this explained is, this is great because it shows that even if we're not perfect, we can still be part of God's work. God can still use us to do amazing things, despite our flaws.

I want to spin it a little bit differently, though: God lives in the women that society rejects. The widows, the immigrants, the sex workers, the women in bad marriages, the rape victims. To exclude them, to say Jesus needs a perfect pure genealogy... you're excluding God.

---

Christian missionaries go to different parts of the world, encounter diverse and interesting cultures, where God is already there and alive, and tell the people to stop doing all that and follow the missionaries' religion instead.

God was already there, before any Christians came. The people have the image of God, and they have their own culture and religion, which is important and meaningful to them. The missionaries tell them to cut it off, to repress it, that it's *bad* because it's worshipping the wrong gods- you're cutting off God.

---

Deuteronomy 23:1 says, "No one who has been emasculated by crushing or cutting may enter the assembly of the Lord."

Hundreds of years later, an Ethiopian eunuch met Philip, one of the early Christians. Philip told him about Jesus, and he believed, and said, "Look, here is water. What can stand in the way of my being baptized?" Is this legit? Can he be baptized? Can he be welcomed and included?

Philip didn't think it was an issue at all. Philip baptized him.

Throughout the bible, there are some passages about excluding people who have some kind of imperfection and therefore don't meet the standards and can't enter God's presence. And then there are other passages about God's radical inclusiveness, about marginalized people who were accepted and approved of by God. Slaves, people from the wrong nations, people from the wrong religions. 

I don't think this is a simple Old Testament/ New Testament split- it's common for Christians to claim that the Old Testament was about rules and the New Testament is about God's love- but the verse that says women can't speak in church is from the New Testament. And the Old Testament has stories about welcoming immigrants, which stand in contrast to its laws about killing everyone in every city you conquer. 

The bible has all of these threads running through it; we use our own beliefs about the nature of God to decide which bible passages to emphasize and which to disagree with.

---

1 Corinthians 12 says that we are the body of Christ.

Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.

The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.

This passage is about diversity. About how we need diversity, or else we are actually excluding parts of Christ.

---

The Christians who want to exclude people... well, God is in them too. We can't cut them off either. 

In practice, that means thinking about how to get people who disagree to coexist in a church. You can't just say we all accept each other even if we disagree, because these issues are about one group's basic rights on one side, vs another group's bigoted opinions on the other side. 

So you need to make sure you set up a system where people who want to exclude and restrict others are not given the power to do that. And okay that sounds complicated- but really, you have to do that anyway. All the groups of people I've mentioned in this post, as examples of people who bear the image of God and shouldn't be excluded- well, they are all imperfect people who have conflicts sometimes. We all are.

---

Is God above us, waiting to see if we are good enough to meet Their standards, requiring us to restrict and ban people who aren't good enough to participate in worshipping Them? More restrictions, higher standards, the eye saying to the hand, "I don't need you."

No, God is with us, in us, and when we exclude people, we are excluding God.

---

Related:

What kind of God will judge how we treat immigrants?

Don't Protect God

"The Only Moral Virgin Birth Is My Virgin Birth"

The Prayer That Jesus Taught Us To Pray

Image text: "Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name." Image source. 

I was recently thinking about the Lord's Prayer, and I realized that if I don't view it as "talking to God," I actually really like it. 

In my experience in Christianity, prayer is defined as talking to God. We believed that God is literally on the receiving end, listening to what we're saying in real time, having opinions about the things that we prayed about, making decisions about what actions to take in response to our prayers. As the Christian cliché says, God always answers our prayers with "yes", "no", or "wait."

But now that I'm ex-evangelical and the concept of a "personal relationship with God" really weirds me out, I don't pray. I don't want to talk to Them. I very much don't want to talk to Them. I don't want Them to be there reacting to my prayers in ways that steamroll my freedom to have my own opinions and think my own thoughts and make my own choices.

For many years, I've been saying "I don't pray." But just now I've thought of something, a whole different way to conceptualize what prayer is. Get this: What if prayer is a ritualized way to express our hopes and our understanding of our place in the world?

I think there are some subgroups within Christianity that view prayer something like this. Many many times, when I was evangelical, I encountered other Christians who prayed in ways that felt "fake" to me, like they didn't really believe an all-powerful God was right there listening and taking it seriously. Using language that's flowery rather than language that reflects the urgency and power of literally talking to God. A lot of sentences starting with "may."

Now I'm like, maybe there actually *is* something to that, and I shouldn't just dismiss it as "fake." I'm still coming from a very evangelical mindset on this. 

There's no way I'm the first Christian to come up with the idea "maybe we should conceptualize prayer in some way other than 'talking to God'" - but if I ever encountered this when I was evangelical, I would have dismissed it as fake Christians not taking their beliefs seriously. But here's an idea, what if there are Christians who pray in ways very different from how I did, because they have a well-thought-out belief system where that would make sense, not because they're "not taking it seriously." (Do leave a comment if you have experience with a thoughtful and robust belief system that values prayer but doesn't view it as "talking to God.")

So let's walk through the Lord's Prayer. (It comes from Matthew 6:9-13, but the language I'm using here isn't the exact wording from the bible, it's the wording that is traditionally used in churches.) I want to talk about how I understood this when I was evangelical, and how it now means something new and exciting and inspiring to me, if I view it as a picture of what I want the world to be like, rather than "talking to God."

Our Father, who art in heaven

When I was evangelical: God (he/him) is our Father, and we are talking to God. He is all-powerful, and he is listening and doing things in response to our prayers.

But now: In some ways, we can use the metaphor of God being like a father (also mother, also nonbinary parent). In particular, it means all humans are children of God; we are all equal, and all deserve to have a good life. We should care about people, all over the world, people who are different from us- we are all God's children.

Hallowed be thy name.

When I was evangelical: God's name is holy. We want everyone to recognize that God's name is holy. Ugh, isn't it terrible that people don't believe in Jesus, don't respect God's name, don't dedicate their lives to Jesus like they're supposed to?

We're talking directly to God here, saying, hey God, *I* know that your name is holy and deserving of respect, doesn't it suck that other people don't know that? Can you do something about that, God? Can you get people to believe in you?

But now: We want God's name to be honored. And so *we* as Christians need to behave in such a way that people see we are doing good, and they respect our beliefs because of that. Yeah, this is on us. A lot of Christians are acting like Christianity means we're better than other people, and we're gonna pick fights over displaying the ten commandments in schools, and other such nonsense. But imagine this, imagine if Christians were known for doing good. Imagine if people were like "oh, Christians, they're always feeding the hungry and fighting for equal rights for everyone." Imagine that. I think if that were true, then "hallowed be Thy name" would be true.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

When I was evangelical: In heaven, God is in charge, and everyone obeys God's will. That's the way it's supposed to be, and we want it to be like that on earth too. We want everyone to become a Christian and believe what they're supposed to believe, and obey God like they're supposed to.

But now: The kingdom of heaven is a world where there is justice and freedom and everyone is able to have a good life, and we need to do the work of bringing the kingdom of heaven to earth. This is something that *we* need to do. *We* need to fight for a better world. 

Give us this day our daily bread

When I was evangelical: We are dependent on God for everything, and we shouldn't forget that. We are pathetic and shouldn't feel like we are competent to do anything ourselves. We are nothing without God, and we should pray for even our basic daily needs, because we are dependent on God for everything. Yes, we should even be *asking God* to provide for our basic food needs. We worship the sort of God who is petty and might smite us if we aren't grateful enough.

But now: I feel like, I'm lucky that I have enough money that I'm able to take care of my needs. (I don't thank God for this, because that would imply that God chose to give me money and chose to not give other people money.) We should help other people who are in need. We want to live in a world where everyone has enough food.

And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors

When I was evangelical: We are all sinners who deserve to go to hell. You have to forgive anybody who sins against you, no matter how bad it is, or else God might not forgive *your* sins and you'll go to hell.

Yeah, and we should directly ask God to forgive our sins, to remind ourselves that he's not obligated to do it, and we shouldn't take it for granted, because we're sinners who don't deserve that.

But now: We should have some grace and understanding for other people who mess up and hurt people in ways that we've also messed up and hurt people. Like, if someone gets mad at you over some little thing, they shouldn't do that, but also, you should think to yourself "well, there have been times I've gotten unfairly mad at people, and that was wrong" and so don't judge them too bad for it.

I *don't* believe we're required to forgive literally everything. What if someone's a murderer or child abuser or something? The teaching that victims always have to forgive is a big part of how sexual abuse gets covered up and allowed to continue in conservative religious environments.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil

When I was evangelical: Oh, we're all such horrible sinners, we're susceptible to temptation, and we need God to help us not sin.

But now: I'm not sure about the "temptation" part- I don't really know where "temptation" fits into an ex-evangelical ideology. Maybe temptation to just kinda take the easy way out, to just take care of ourselves and not look for ways to do more and help other people- this isn't a specific discrete event where we make a choice to do the right or wrong thing, but more about our overall lifestyle.

And again, this is on us. Know yourself, know your emotional needs, and use that knowledge to set up good habits for yourself. Make deliberate choices about what kind of lifestyle you want to live. If you have a tendency to waste time on social media, for example, set up your life so that it's inconvenient to do so.

Maybe I'm discounting the role of God too much here. Many people can tell you about some feat of willpower or emotional health they accomplished, and they say "God helped me do that- I could not have done it myself." I have had experiences like that too. They felt so real, that I still believe in them now, even though I'm like "I don't really believe in that."

For "deliver us from evil," how about we understand that as keeping us safe from the evils going on in this world- rather than our own "evil"/ "sinful nature"? We want people to be safe from evil- and so that means we should take action and help people.

For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.

When I was evangelical: God is all-powerful, and God wins in the end. Even though here on earth, a lot of people are not living the way God wants, and not believing in God like they're supposed to, fortunately it won't be like that forever. Eventually God will get everyone under his control.

But now: Even though we see bad things happening in the world, it will get better. There is something greater than the power-hungry exploitation which defines so much of how the world works. This isn't "just the way it is"- we should fight for a better world than that. God, heaven, justice, will win in the end. The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

---

What if we don't view prayer as "talking to God," asking God to do all the things that *we* think should be done, assuming God agrees with us, confident in our superiority because we believe the right things and other people don't? 

What if instead, it's a way of expressing our vision for how we want the world to be- and we're not telling it to God and asking God to act according to our ideas, because that relies on the assumptions that God agrees with us, and that God is the one who primarily takes action. No, we proclaim that this is the way we want the world to be, and then we have to do it. We're not telling God to do it- if we were, then we just need to say it really really sincerely, performing the right emotions, and that's enough- no, God is not going to answer our prayer and do this; we need to do it ourselves. 

If we don't view prayer as "talking to God," then it's obvious that the act of just *saying it* isn't enough. We need to take action. We need to be the sort of people who are working in the direction of "thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven."

---

Related

"Hey God, you and I both know..." 

"On earth as it is in heaven"

Jesus Weighs in on "Being Right vs Doing Good"

Artwork showing Jesus healing a blind man. Image source.

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

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

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

Here are the receipts.

---

Who is my neighbor 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

The sheep and the goats

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

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

I think the point is we should help people. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

My point

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

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

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

---

Related:

Sheep and Goats

Was Jesus' Death a Good Thing or a Bad Thing?

Cross. Image source.

I'm trying to finish my blog series blogging through the gospel of Matthew, so let's look at Matthew 27. This chapter describes Jesus' trial and crucifixion. So I want to talk about the question, was Jesus' death a good thing or a bad thing?

---

The evangelical take on this question

From an evangelical perspective, Jesus' death is a good thing. I mean, of course we feel sad for him because he suffered so much and didn't deserve it, but this was something that needed to happen. It was part of God's plan. We needed this to happen, so we can be saved.

In this ideology, sin is a really big problem which causes a separation between people and God, and means that all people deserve to go to hell, because we have all sinned at least once. God was really heartbroken about this problem, and had a plan in the works for hundreds of years for how to solve it. The plan was for God to become a person, to live a perfect life with no sin, and then to die a terrible death- this will "count" as payment for all the sins that all people have committed, so then we can be forgiven and go to heaven if we believe in Jesus.

(This is actually a Calvinist idea, called "penal substitutionary atonement"- evangelicalism is very much influenced by Calvinism.)

It's a very big deal that Jesus was perfect and never sinned. See, it had to be Jesus- it would only "work" if it was a perfect sinless person who suffered and died. If any of us normal imperfect people suffer and die, well, we deserve that anyway because of our own sins- so that can't be used to "pay for" anybody else's sins.

Also, it is very important to the plan that Jesus suffered an extremely painful death. One common evangelical fan theory says that Jesus' death was the worst and most painful death that any human has ever suffered. I've even heard the claim that Jesus had to live during the time of the Roman Empire, because crucifixion was the most cruel execution method ever used throughout all of history- so crucifixion had to be the one they used on Jesus. (I'm very skeptical about that- people have been coming up with inhumane things to do to each other all throughout history. I'm not sure I can really say which one is the worst.)

(Note, though, that the bible itself seems to contradict this claim that Jesus suffered the worst death ever. Jesus was crucified alongside 2 other criminals, and when they were on the crosses, at some point the soldiers came to break their legs so they would die faster. But Jesus was already dead, so they didn't break his legs. Hmm, kinda seems like maybe those 2 other guys suffered more than Jesus did.)

I've heard Christians going on and on about crucifixion from a medical perspective, and just how horrific it was... sort of fetishizing it... because it's so so so important that Jesus had to suffer so much.

And I've also heard the claim that, even though the physical pain was excruciating, that wasn't the worst part for him. The worst part was that God the Father turned away from him. That spiritual separation from God, which caused Jesus to cry out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" was the worst part.

This was God's plan, and Jesus totally knew the plan, and chose to stick to it. He was God; he could have called down angels to fight for him, but he didn't. He chose to go through all of that because of his love for all of us. This is the interpretation of Jesus' death I always heard in evangelical land.

---

But then I read James Cone

In 2018, I wrote a blog series review the book "The Cross and the Lynching Tree" by James Cone. It's a book that makes the connection between Jesus' crucifixion and anti-Black lynching in the United States. Jesus was lynched. And, as poet Countee Cullen wrote, "The South is crucifying Christ again."

When I was reading "The Cross and the Lynching Tree," there was something about the way Cone talked about Jesus' death which felt strange to me, like he was coming at it from an angle that I couldn't quite make sense of. Then I realized, it's because he's talking about Jesus' death like it was a bad thing. Which felt very surprising and new to me, coming from an evangelical background.

Cone talks about how it's bad that lynching victims were innocent and they were unjustly killed, just like Jesus was innocent and was unjustly killed. This is totally NOT how evangelicals would see it. No, in evangelical ideology, Jesus is totally different from us! Jesus was perfect and never sinned, so his suffering was a completely different thing than when average people suffer. And Jesus' death was God's plan, it had to be that way! Not like when Black victims were lynched- that wasn't "God's plan," that was obviously a terrible thing that should have never happened.

So I came to find out- not just from James Cone but from other sources too- there are Christians who don't interpret Jesus' death to be about "It was God's grand plan, to pay for our sins and save us, and Jesus had to be perfect unlike us, and he had to suffer more than anyone else, and the grand ledger that God keeps in heaven ticks over to allow us to get in, but this has nothing to do with any real-life suffering or injustice going on in the real world." Shocking! 

No, there's an interpretation of Jesus' death that goes more like this: When someone comes to teach a message of truth and love, of love being greater than power, the powers-that-be respond with violence. This is how the world is, this is something that happens over and over. Jesus should not have been killed, but this is just how the world is. Jesus was one victim among many, throughout all of history. All victims of oppressive societies which treated marginalized people with violence, and killed anyone who tried to make a change. Jesus stands in solidarity with everyone who has ever suffered unjustly in this way. And the Resurrection shows that this isn't "just the way it is." It shows that power doesn't always win. Love can triumph over power. It gives us hope as we fight for justice in this world.

(For more on this, you can look up "solidarity theory of atonement." Yeah, what I'm describing here are "theories of atonement", ie, Christians discussing the question "what exactly does it mean that 'Jesus saves us'?")

Ah, notice that this is the first time the Resurrection has come up. Yeah, notice that the evangelical interpretation I talked about above never mentioned the Resurrection.

And yeah, indeed, when I was evangelical, I believed the whole point was that Jesus' death paid for our sins. That that's really the main thing. Not the Resurrection. I remember one time I was one of the trainers at an evangelism training, and I was giving an example of how to "share the gospel"- I did the whole spiel about how we are sinners who deserve to go to hell, and Jesus' death pays for our sins, wow that's such good news. And then someone said to me "maybe next time you share the gospel, don't forget the Resurrection." And at the time I kinda laughed and modified my gospel presentation to tack it on at the end, but I didn't exactly *get* why the Resurrection would matter, when one is "sharing the gospel." The "gospel" is that Jesus' death paid for our sins and we can go to heaven if we believe in him, right? The Resurrection is... an extraneous detail? I kind of discussed this with some evangelical friends and came to the conclusion that the Resurrection is proof that it "worked" when Jesus died to pay for our sins.

Looking back at it now, I'm like, yikes. Christians who can't figure out whether the Resurrection is important. Yikessss.

As Christians, we believe that, in some sense, "Jesus saves us." But what does that *mean*, actually? Well, there are many different Christian groups with many different explanations. I didn't know that, when I was evangelical. I thought it was obviously penal substitutionary atonement (ie, the belief that Jesus died because God has to follow these very technical rules about when he's allowed to forgive sins and let people into heaven, and the only way is if a perfect sinless person dies a terrible death, and then that can count, in God's math, as payment for everybody's sins).

Or, here's another way to think about it: Of these 4 aspects of Jesus life, which do you think is the most important?

1. Jesus' birth. The Incarnation. God becomes a human. The Word became flesh and lived among us. God experienced all the things that we do.
2. Jesus' life- his teachings, miracles, the way he interacted with people
3. Jesus' torture and crucifixion
4. Jesus' Resurrection

Christians can have all sorts of different opinions on this question. In my experience in evangelical land, Jesus' death was the HUGE BIG IMPORTANT THING, and these other things were just, like... you know how when you're writing a story, and you have an idea for a really cool scene, but you have to figure out how to maneuver all the characters into the right places for the cool scene to happen, and so you have to write all this boring stuff leading up to the cool scene? Well, Jesus' life is like that.

As Rachel Held Evans said in the book "Inspired," this focus on Jesus' death treats Jesus' life as nothing more than "an interesting backstory." (I don't have the book in front of me but I think I remember this correctly.) And a recent post from the Slacktivist responds to the evangelical claim "Without the Bible and the Cross there is no gospel" by saying:

The problem here is theological, but it is also simply chronological. If “there is no gospel” without the Bible and the Cross then there was no gospel until “the Bible and the Cross.” Which means there is no gospel in the Gospels. It means that Jesus’s preaching and teaching, whatever it was, was not and could not yet have been “the gospel.”

And so it means that whatever Jesus had to teach or to say is of secondary importance.

And I would respond to that by saying, well, yeah. When I was evangelical, I thought that Jesus' teachings were important, sure, but they weren't *the* most important thing. The most important thing is we have to believe in Jesus the correct way so God will "count" Jesus' death as paying our way out of hell. That's the gospel. Jesus' teachings and miracles weren't "the gospel." He was just killing time before getting crucified.

Yeah, I very much do not view it that way any more.

Also, American Christians should all read James Cone.

---

Christian feminist paper "For God So Loved the World?"

In a 2023 blog post, I discussed this 1989 paper: "For God So Loved the World?" by Joanne Carlson Brown and Rebecca Parker. This paper takes issue with the concept of "redemptive suffering"- ie, the idea that when people suffer abuse or oppression, it's somehow okay and they should accept it, because on some level suffering is a good thing- the victims are being like Jesus, who also allowed himself to suffer unjustly. This idea has been used to tell women that we should accept abuse and mistreatment.

The paper discusses several different Christian perspectives on what Jesus' suffering means. (My own view is closest to what the paper calls "the suffering God.") But, it finds all of them to be unacceptable, because all of them treat Jesus' suffering as meaningful in some sense. The writers of this paper don't like that- they argue that if we believe we can say anything positive at all about Jesus' death, this leads to marginalized people internalizing the idea that they should accept injustice rather than fighting for their rights.

I'll say I don't personally agree with that- I think Jesus' death *was* important- but they make a lot of very good points.

Some quotes from the paper:

If the best person who ever lived gave his life for others, then, to be of value we should likewise sacrifice ourselves. Any sense that we have a right to care for our own needs is in conflict with being a faithful follower of Jesus. Our suffering for others will save the world.

and

Christianity is an abusive theology that glorifies suffering.

and

No one was saved by the death of Jesus.

This paper is a must-read if you are interested in the intersection of Christianity and feminism.

---

To sum up: In the evangelical/Calvinist, "penal substitutionary atonement" view, Jesus' death was a good thing, because all of us deserve to suffer like that, and go to hell, but because Jesus suffered in our place, we don't need to. Jesus is completely different from us, because he was perfect and didn't deserve to suffer, but we are sinners and we do. Jesus' death was full of spiritual meaning but has nothing to say about systemic injustice on earth.

A more progressive Christian interpretation, from Black and feminist Christians, says that Jesus' death was a bad thing, because no one deserves to suffer like that. And yet, so many people do. This world is oppressive and violent to so many people. Jesus is the same as us; Jesus stands with every person who suffers injustice/oppression/abuse. And actually, in some sense, it *is* a good thing that God has experienced this, that They suffered right along with people. Having a God who understands what it's like. (And this is basically what I believe now.)

Brown and Parker, writers of the paper "For God So Loved the World?" go even farther than that; they disagree with any Christian ideology which believes anything positive at all about Jesus' death. Because this kind of idea is used to tell women and marginalized people that the injustice we suffer in the world is in some sense *okay*. They make some very good points. I personally don't go that far, because the idea of a Christianity that doesn't treat the crucifixion as important doesn't really make sense to me.

---

This post is part of a series on the gospel of Matthew.

Previous post: One Of You Will Betray Me (a bible fanfic) (Matthew 26)

Click here to go to the beginning of the series.

---

Related:

"The South is Crucifying Christ Again"

Blogaround (1/18/23)

Good Friday is R-Rated 

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

About that White-Supremacist "Statement on Social Justice & the Gospel" 

"On earth as it is in heaven" 

Sure Of What We Hope For

One Of You Will Betray Me (a bible fanfic)

Clipart image of a church. Image source.

[content note: anti-gay bigotry]

---

Sunday morning, Judas was at the door of the church, greeting people as they walked in. The church lobby was crowded that morning, as people scurried around with their bibles and coffee cups. When he heard the music start inside the sanctuary, Judas made his way in and found a seat in one of the pews near the back, next to a young woman with two braids and a pink skirt.

"Oh hi!" she said. "Good morning! I'm Jamie, that's my brother John, and that's Joshua," she spoke over the music and gestured at the two guys on the other side of her.

"I'm Judas Iscariot," answered Judas. John, whose hair was the exact same shade of brown as Jamie's, leaned over to shake his hand. Joshua, who was taller and skinnier than John, waved from the end of the pew.

"It's our first time here, and these two are too shy to talk to anyone," continued Jamie. "What would they do without me?"

Judas was always excited to see new people at church. And after the service was over, Jamie chatted with him for a while, and invited him for dinner with the three of them at her apartment.

---

Judas arrived at the address that Jamie had given him. At the door of the apartment building, there was a name directory on the wall, and he pressed the button next to "421 J Fisher." He went up in the elevator to Jamie's apartment, where she was in the kitchen with John and Joshua, assembling plates of nachos. Her hair was still in two braids, like he had seen it at church, but she was wearing jeans now. Jamie handed him a plate, and after Judas got his nachos ready, he and Jamie went to the living room.

She put her plate on a small white table, and sat on the floor with the tv remote. Judas sat on a large purple bean bag chair. She started scrolling through menus, and said, "Okay, so I'm thinking we should watch Star Wars. I always like to watch Star Wars with new people. You can tell a lot about a person by watching Star Wars with them."

"Oooh!" said Judas. "Wow it's been a long time since I've watched these. Yeah, let's do that. Which episode do you like?"

"Okay," Jamie turned and faced him. "Unpopular opinion: I actually like the prequels."

Judas was intrigued. "Weren't they mostly about trade routes being blockaded, or something? Something very boring?"

Jamie scrunched her nose. "Okay, yeah, there was way too much of that in episode 1. But. Listen. Qui-Gon Jinn was right about everything."

Just when Judas started to consider that, he heard John's voice from behind him, "Oh no."

Judas turned to look at John, who had sat down on the couch with his nachos and glass of water. Judas asked, "You don't like the Star Wars prequels?"

"I just don't like hearing her talk about them all the time!" John said, and Jamie gasped like she was pretending to be offended. "I'm not watching Star Wars with her."

"I bet Josh wants to watch it," Jamie said. "Hey, let's not even watch the prequels, let's watch Empire, everyone knows that one's the best."

"No," said John.

"You're no fun," said Jamie.

"So, uh, it's okay, we can watch something else," Judas said, unsure about whether he should try to stop their bickering.

"Yes," said John. "Judas should pick."

Jamie handed the remote to Judas, and he started clicking through the menus. Jamie was happy to offer her opinion on every single movie.

As Judas was looking through the list of comedy movies, Jamie suddenly exclaimed, in a fake high voice, "Oh my god, look how cute!" She wasn't looking at the tv; she was looking at something behind him. 

Judas flinched a little, hearing her take the Lord's name in vain. He turned and looked behind him, where John and Joshua were sitting on the couch. Joshua was leaning close to John and had his arm around him, and John was glaring at Jamie. The way they were sitting together... it was like they were a couple. Judas suddenly felt panicked- were they...? If they were... He had come here, to Jamie's apartment, not suspecting anything like that at all, and... if... but it's a sin, don't they know that? But he had to make sure he didn't act different toward them because of it. He couldn't act like he was judging them. Suddenly things had become very difficult to navigate.

"Look at these two lovebirds!" Jamie gushed, and Judas was even more concerned and horrified, because that confirmed it.

"Stop it," John said to Jamie, clearly annoyed, and Joshua pulled away from him, looking uncertain.

"So," Jamie said to Judas. "Okay, this is such a cute story. So, after John graduated, he moved in with me here. But then, look who he met! And now he has moved into Josh's apartment. Wow, that's wonderful! Weirdly, though, all his stuff is still here!"

"Ugggh, can you stop telling people I moved? I still live here," said John.

"Listen to him, he's hilarious," she said to Judas, as she gestured at John. "'I still live here.' When was the last time you spent the night here?"

John stopped, seemingly unsure about what to say to that. Joshua spoke up, "So, how about we watch the movie?"

They started up a comedy movie, and Judas thought about the situation. So, John and Joshua were in a relationship. And, they were living together. Definitely not okay. Judas didn't know what to do. He was sure he shouldn't say anything about it to them directly. He needed to "hate the sin, love the sinner"- he needed to earn their trust before they would be willing to listen to him about it. 

Besides this issue, the three of them seemed like fun people. Judas was actually really curious to hear what Star Wars opinions Jamie had which annoyed her brother so much. Maybe he could hang out with them more, and become friends. And maybe they would keep coming to church. Once they were more committed to following God, maybe it would be easier to talk to them about this sin.

As he drove home that night, Judas prayed and asked God to help him know what to do.

---

The next day, Judas texted Jamie. "So, you said you like qui gon, what about Mace Windu?"

Less than a minute later, her reply came. "Okay. The thing about Mace Windu. we all love Samuel L Jackson obviously, and people fall into the trap of thinking that means mace windu is also a total badass. But he's not. It's a trap!"

Judas smiled. The way she talked, the way she had so many things to say about Star Wars, it was fascinating to him.

They texted about it for several hours that day.

---

"I'm not playing monopoly with you," said John.

"Come on," Jamie said. "Monopoly is a great game! I'll even let you be the hat."

"I don't want to be the hat, and I am not playing monopoly," said John.

"Josh wants to play it," answered Jamie. "Hey, remember that time it was just me and Josh and we played monopoly, that was fun, right?" 

"Yeah, I mean, it was fine. Sort of a case of managing my expectations. I knew you weren't gonna go easy on me," said Joshua.

"See? He loved it!" Jamie said to John. John rolled his eyes, and Jamie continued, "I am an absolute delight to play monopoly with."

"Okay, not true," said John.

"Hey, um, guys..." Joshua tried to interrupt.

"Wait wait wait, I know what game we should play!" announced Jamie. "It's a really fun game called Pack Up Johnny's Stuff Because He Doesn't Live Here Anymore."

"Jamie-" John started to say.

"Hey, guys," Joshua said. "Are we going to play something or not? If you can't pick, me and Judas are gonna pick. Now," he looked at the stack of board game boxes. "what's parcheesi?"

"Oh man, remember when we used to play parcheesi at Grandma's?" said Jamie. "Oh we are SO playing parcheesi."

"I just said me and Judas are gonna pick," said Joshua, looking at Judas.

"Well I don't know what parcheesi is, but okay," Judas answered.

Parcheesi turned out to be a game about moving little colored tokens around a board. Jamie played it like it was the most high-stakes, cutthroat strategy game.

---

"Here's what I don't understand," said Jamie, a week later when they were having dinner at her apartment again. "Hypothetically. Just, let's imagine a hypothetical situation here. Now. Why would someone need two guitars?"

"Oh great," said John.

"What...?" Judas started to ask.

"Two guitars," she continued. "That seems like a lot of guitars to have. Especially for someone who DOESN'T EVEN LIVE HERE."

"Okay, first of all, I live here," said John. "And second, they're not my guitars, they're Josh's."

"Oh!" Jamie gasped. "Oh, well, that's totally different. We love Josh. Josh can leave as many guitars here as he wants. You know what," she turned to John again, "you should really move your stuff out so Josh has more space for his guitars."

"Oh, sorry, I just, I just left them here last time..." Joshua said.

"It's okay! No worries!" said Jamie. "Hey can you play us a song?"

Joshua looked embarrassed. John smiled at him and asked, "Do you want to play something? You should."

So Joshua got one of the guitars, and the three of them watched as he started to strum it. He seemed nervous at first, but after a minute he started to sing a worship song:

"Draw me close to you
Never let me go
I lay it all down again
To hear you say that I'm your friend."

It was beautiful- the way the whole room was quiet except for Joshua's voice, the way they all sat there enraptured, in an atmosphere of worship to God. Joshua closed his eyes, and started to sing louder and more passionately as he got to the chorus:

"You're all I want
You're all I've ever needed
You're all I want
Help me know you are near."

He went back and sang the beginning of the song again, and the rest of them joined in. Judas felt great, like he was really feeling the presence of God. He thought about how happy he was to have met Jamie, John, and Joshua. 

And he saw Joshua's love for God. It seemed that Joshua was getting closer to God, and Judas was happy to see that. And, Judas thought, maybe soon Joshua would realize that being in a homosexual relationship was a sin. Judas wouldn't need to say anything to him about it; God would convict him. That would be the best way for it to go.

---

Every week, Judas saw the three of them at church. Jamie would sit next to Judas and make comments which annoyed her brother.

"John. Johnny. Johntober. I made up a song for you," she was saying. 

John shushed her; one of the pastors was up front making announcements about events going on at the church. "We're be starting these community groups next month," said the pastor. "If you're interested in volunteering, email the church office."

---

When Judas arrived at Jamie's apartment on Friday night, she met him at the door, and closed it behind her as she stepped out into the hallway. "Hey," she said, very seriously, "Josh lost his job at the furniture store. He's really broken up about it."

"Oh no," said Judas.

She narrowed her eyes angrily. "They made some bullshit excuse about his 'lack of people skills' or something. Ridiculous, right? But it's really messed him up. ... He doesn't even want to play parcheesi, can you believe that?" she asked. Judas was pretty sure that Joshua and John had no interest in parcheesi to begin with, and only played it with Jamie so she wouldn't force them to play monopoly, but, okay, sure.

Judas and Jamie entered her apartment, and found Joshua and John in the kitchen, with 2 pizzas. Joshua did look a bit upset, as Jamie had said. John was putting pizza on plates for both of them, while Joshua looked down with a forlorn expression.

"Hey guys, look who's here!" Jamie announced.

"Hi Judas," said John. "This one's pepperoni and that one's mushroom and extra cheese." Then he balanced the two plates on one arm and put his other hand on Joshua's arm. "We're gonna go pick a movie," he said as he led Joshua out of the kitchen. As Jamie started to say something, John called back from the living room, "We don't need any suggestions, Jamie!"

"Move your stuff out!" she yelled back to him.

"Was that a suggestion?" came his answer, and Jamie rolled her eyes.

The four of them got their pizza and settled onto the living room couches to watch some comedy movie that John and Joshua had picked. Partway through the movie, John leaned closer to Joshua and started stroking his shoulder, while Joshua continued to stare at the tv. Judas felt a little uncomfortable, and wondered if John was touching him because of his sinful desires, or just to encourage Joshua when he felt sad.

When the movie ended, Jamie got up and started to pick up their plates. Joshua stood up too, and said, "No, no, I can do that."

"See, this is what I mean when I said you are like, the nicest person," said Jamie. "You are definitely gonna find a new job. Don't worry." The two of them went into the kitchen, leaving John and Judas sitting around on the couch and bean bag chair.

"Maybe I can help him," Judas said to John. "I sometimes interview people at work." (Judas worked in the financial industry.) "I can help him with his resume and interview skills."

"That would be great. Thanks, man," John answered.

Joshua and Jamie came back into the living room. Joshua sat down, and John put his hand on Joshua's knee. "Babe, Judas is gonna help you with your resume."

"Yeah, let's meet up on like, Monday, maybe?" said Judas. "And... I'll pray for you. It's gonna be okay."

When Judas went home that night, he did pray for Joshua. He prayed that God would help Joshua find a new job. And he prayed that Joshua would be open to God's plan for his life.

---

On Monday afternoon, Judas arrived at Joshua's apartment building, and texted Joshua to come down and let him in. Joshua showed up in a white T-shirt and jeans, with slippers on his feet. As he and Judas got into the elevator, Joshua said, "My apartment is kinda small... I don't know if maybe we should go to the Starbucks across the street instead..."

It was a studio apartment, big enough for a bed and basically nothing else. The bed had a wrinkled blue blanket. Next to the bed was a desk with a laptop computer and piles of papers, and a small chair. Judas looked around and saw a kitchen area on the left. The stove had a small stack of plastic boxes with half-finished baked goods inside, and several coffee mugs sat on the counter.

Judas's first impression was a bit of disgust at seeing the bed. This was where Joshua and John were... together. His second thought was, "Well now I understand why John doesn't move his things into here- there's no space at all. Does Jamie know that?" His third thought was, "Why does John even come here? It's a mess. Well, I guess, temptation."

Joshua pulled out the desk chair a bit, careful not to hit a box of books on the floor next to it. "Here, sit down," he said, and Judas awkwardly sat in the chair. 

Joshua smoothed the blanket and sat down on the corner of the bed. "Okay. Umm. You know, actually, do you want to go to Starbucks? There's not really a good place for both of us to sit here."

So they took Joshua's laptop and went down to the Starbucks across the street, and Judas felt much better. Judas ordered coffee for both of them, and paid for it himself. He felt that he should do that, since Joshua had just lost his job.

Joshua opened up his resume document and passed the computer to Judas. Judas was glad to have something to focus on. He was glad to be able to help Joshua. This was something he could do to show God's love to him. Hate the sin, love the sinner.

They worked on it for a few hours, discussing Joshua's work history and skills and how to convey that in a way that potential employers would like. He didn't just need help with writing the resume; he also needed encouragement. Losing his job had really damaged his confidence, and he seemed hesitant to even talk about his strengths now.

"I don't even know why I got fired," Joshua said. "They didn't give a real reason. They just said my people skills weren't very good, but... that doesn't even make sense. That's not a real reason..."

"Yeah," Judas agreed. "I think it sounds like their own problem, and doesn't really have to do with you at all. ... Most people have lost their jobs, at some point in their life. You will move on from this and get a better job." And Judas really believed that too. There was nothing wrong with Joshua's professional skills. He was sure Joshua would be able to find a better job, and he was happy to support him in this.

---

A few days later, Judas spent most of the afternoon texting with Jamie about Doctor Who. She had never watched it, and clearly that needed to be remedied. When Judas showed up at Jamie's apartment for dinner and game night, he found Joshua and Jamie talking in the kitchen.

"...Okay, great, that'll work great," Joshua was saying.

"Yeah," Jamie said. "Hey look, Judas is here." She nudged Joshua with her elbow. "Tell him, tell him."

Joshua looked at Judas. "Oh. It's not that big a deal. You know how the church is going to launch those community groups, and we'll be reading a book on prayer? I just volunteered to host one of the groups. And Jamie said I can use her apartment. The living room here is great. I mean, you saw my apartment, I don't have space to have people over."

"Wow, cool," said Judas, but it didn't feel right. Joshua was going to be a small group leader? He couldn't do that, not when he was so obviously living a sinful lifestyle. 

Judas was sure somebody at the church would refuse, if Joshua tried to volunteer for it.

---

Judas was on the schedule to be a greeter the next Sunday, so he was at the Wednesday night church meeting.

Molly, the church secretary, was clicking through the powerpoint slides as the meeting went along. "Okay, so the next thing," she said, adjusting her glasses. "The small group leaders have to pick up the books this Sunday. We're just gonna have a table in the lobby. If you need the books but you won't be here on Sunday, you can stop by the church sometime next week and get them."

He saw Joshua's name on the powerpoint slide with the list of small group leaders. Oh no, thought Judas. He thought somebody at the church would have ... somebody would have screened him out.

"Umm, wait," Judas spoke up. "Umm... you have Joshua Lamb on the list. But... he's... actually..." Everyone was looking at him. "... same-sex attracted." Wait, the issue wasn't the attraction, there's nothing wrong with being same-sex attracted on its own, the sin is that he was acting on it... "I mean... he's... he's not submitting to Christ in that area of his life."

The room was totally silent. The other church leaders looked horrified.

"So, you mean he's a practicing homosexual?" asked the pastor, Caiaphas, from the back of the room.

"Yes," said Judas, timidly.

"Oh, wow, thanks for telling us this," Pastor Caiaphas said. "Take him off the list. Judas, can you just let him know we took him off the list?"

Judas agreed, but he had no idea what he would say to Joshua. How do you "hate the sin and love the sinner"?

---

Judas sat next to Jamie at church. When the service ended, they started to gather their things, and she asked him, "So. I've heard there are a bunch of Doctor Whos. Doctors Who? Like 10 or 12 or 13 or something. Which one are we gonna watch?"

"Well, mostly I've watched the episodes with David Tennant, so I guess we would start there," said Judas.

"All right, and which of us is going to talk John into making nachos?" she said.

Judas looked past her and caught a glimpse of John and Joshua filing out of the sanctuary with everyone else. Suddenly, Judas realized he had forgotten to tell Joshua about the small group thing. The small group leaders were supposed to pick up their books in the lobby right after the service. Judas had to get to Joshua before Joshua got to the lobby.

In a panic, he tried to weave his way around the other churchgoers. Up ahead, he could see John and Joshua. "Oh no," he thought. He hadn't even had time to figure out what to say. He hadn't had time to pray about it. "Help me, God," he prayed. "Help me know what to say." He was terrified, dreading the awkwardness of telling Joshua he couldn't be a small group leader because of his... homosexuality.

He wondered if he should have taken Joshua out for coffee and discussed it there.

So many things ran through his mind as he tried to get past people and catch up with Joshua. There wasn't time to figure out what to say. He would just need to focus on speaking the truth in love. Whatever he did, it had to be about love.

Joshua was already at the table, where a woman named Cindy was sitting with several stacks of books and a name list. She was checking the list and telling him that his name wasn't on it. John stood nearby, fiddling with his jacket and looking a bit bored as he waited for Joshua.

"Hey, uh, hey, Joshua," Judas started to say. Joshua turned around so fast, not realizing Judas was right behind him. His face was so close to Judas's, Judas had a fleeting terrified thought that Joshua was going to kiss him. No, he realized, his mind was being ridiculous because he was so nervous. He tried to breathe and calm down. He looked at Joshua and managed to say, "Can I talk to you for a minute?"

Joshua looked at him, mildly concerned but not as panicked as Judas was. "Yeah, I just, they're saying they don't have my name..."

"Hey, so, uh," Judas lowered his voice and took a step away from the table, and Joshua followed him. "So it's... the church decided you..." He was so scared, but he knew he needed to tell the truth, that's what God would want. "...you can't lead a group... because... you know..."

Wide-eyed and shocked, Joshua asked, "Because... why?"

Judas didn't want to say it. He wished he could be anywhere but here. But, he reminded himself, the most loving thing we can do is warn people about their sin. "Because of your... struggles... with... same-sex attraction."

"What?" asked Joshua.

Judas had to do this, for God. God was watching. God needed him to warn his friend about sin. "We care about you... we don't want you to feel bad... but it's just... I can't condone your lifestyle... and the small group leaders need to be more spiritually mature..."

John came up behind Joshua and put his hand on his shoulder, but Joshua shrugged him off.

Cindy was watching, Jamie was watching, everybody was watching, and Judas felt so bad. Like he was hurting Joshua. Why did he feel so bad for obeying God?

"You don't think I'm spiritually mature enough?" Joshua asked, looking more and more pained.

"Well... you... God's design for sex," Judas said, a bit too loudly in the middle of the church lobby. He felt so awkward. Everyone was looking at them. "It's supposed to be one man, one woman." He almost said something about "Adam and Steve" but he stopped himself. This was all happening so fast and he felt like he was doing it all wrong. Racking his brain for anything else to say, he finally got out, "And... you need more time to work on looking for a new job now. And also your people skills."

A new wave of shock and sadness came over Joshua's face. John stepped forward and put his hand in front of Joshua, protectively. "I'm going to ask you this one time," John said, his voice low with barely-concealed anger. "Are you saying that, no matter what we do, this church is never going to accept our relationship?"

Judas felt trapped. Why did God put him here? Why did God have to send him out to stand in front of his friends and tell them what God said about their sin? All this time, Judas had thought that if John and Joshua just came to church and got to know God, they would figure out themselves that it was a sin, and they would break up, and Judas wouldn't even have to say anything, and wouldn't that just be better for everybody?

It was so hard to walk that line between "hate the sin" and "love the sinner."

But he had to say it.

"No," Judas answered. "We can't." And his voice shook, but he knew he had to say it, for God. "It's just what the bible says."

"Okay," John answered. With his bible in one hand, he started to guide Joshua out of the church.

Judas watched them go, feeling so awful. People were staring. He had tried so hard, but it felt like it had all come out wrong. Well, he just had to pray that God would use his imperfect words to somehow speak to Joshua.

And then suddenly, Jamie was right there in front of him. "I can't believe this. I thought you were his friend," she said angrily, and she turned and strode to the door of the church.

Judas wanted so bad for her to understand. He didn't want her to say he wasn't Joshua's friend. He hurried after her, and finally caught up to her in the parking lot.

"Jamie, wait-"

She spun around and pointed her finger at him. "No, you listen, Judas Iscariot. You come to my home, you eat my nachos, and now you're throwing my brother's boyfriend under the bus."

"It's not throwing under the bus! It's just the church policy! And, and, it's a sin! I'm just telling you what the bible says!"

"You don't know!" she yelled, and her braids bounced against her shoulders. "You don't know where John was before he met Josh! You don't know what Josh has done for him!"

"Yeah, but, I mean, he could have done it without dating..."

Jamie shook her head in disgust, turned, and started to walk away. "You don't know," was all she said.

As he watched them drive away, he had a nagging feeling like he had done something wrong. Like he shouldn't have said those things to Joshua. But he had done it out of love. See, Judas was the one who actually cared about Joshua, unlike his boyfriend. Judas was the one who cared enough to tell the truth about his sin. Right? Then why did he feel so bad?

That evening, Judas wanted to text Jamie and ask if she still wanted to watch Doctor Who. But he couldn't bring himself to do it. He was sure she didn't want to talk to him.

---

Judas ran through it in his head, over and over. Part of him was sure he had done the right thing. He had spoken the truth in love. Of course Joshua couldn't be leading a small group if he didn't repent. That was just the simple truth of it. Judas hadn't said anything wrong. He had just told the truth about sin.

But, he felt terrible. Honestly, he had never wanted to talk to Joshua or John about... homosexuality. All this time, he had been hoping he would never need to say anything about it, and they would figure out it was a sin on their own.

"God, I did what you wanted," he prayed. "I did my best. But I feel so bad. Help me."

---

On Saturday night, Judas texted Pastor Caiaphas, to ask if they could talk before the Sunday morning service.

The pastor would know how to help with this problem, Judas thought. He would help him figure out what to say to his friends, to make things right. So they could be friends again. The pastor would know how to strike the right balance between "hate the sin" and "love the sinner." How to say to John and Joshua, in a loving way, that the church loves them but it's a sin to... to... to act on their homosexual desires.

Basically, advising them to break up, right? Judas rubbed his eyes with his hands. Of course that would be an awkward conversation. Of course they wouldn't take it well. Of course they wouldn't accept what he said. Because they were stuck in their sin... Judas really really didn't want to talk to them about any of this. Why couldn't God just tell them Himself? Why did Judas need to be involved, trying to tell them what to do with their sex lives? But now this had already happened, so he had to tell them something.

Pastor Caiaphas would know what to do.

He got to the church early on Sunday morning, and took the small hallway behind the foyer to get to Pastor Caiaphas's office. He saw light from the small window in the office door, streaming into the dimly-lit hallway. He took a deep breath and knocked on the door.

The door opened, and Pastor Caiaphas was there, wearing his glasses and suit and tie. "Come in, come in," he said, motioning to Judas to sit down in a chair. "Now, what did you want to see me about?"

Judas sat in the chair, and looked down at the edge of the pastor's desk, trying to gather his thoughts. "Well," he began nervously. "It's about... my friend... Joshua. You know the one I, uh, mentioned in the meeting last time. Last week. Uh, a week and a half ago."

"Hmm?" The pastor didn't seem to remember.

"You know, when we were... the list of the small group leaders..."

"Oh, the homosexual." Pastor Caiaphas suddenly looked worried. "You did tell him he couldn't lead the group, right?"

"Yes, I told him," said Judas, wishing that he hadn't.

"Oh," Pastor Caiaphas nodded, relieved. "Great."

Judas looked up at him, desperate for some answer to this. He remembered how Joshua had looked at him, how heartbroken he seemed to be, and Judas wanted so badly to make it better. 

"So," the pastor said, glancing at his watch, "is that it?"

"Uh," Judas said. "I just... he hasn't talked to me since then. I feel really bad, like maybe I said the wrong thing. Maybe I ruined our friendship. ... I just want to... like... I want him to know that I still care about him... you know... we are all sinners, and we want to show love to people who are struggling with ... that..."

"Ah, I think I have something that could help you," said Pastor Caiaphas. He picked up his leather-bound bible which was on the corner of the desk, and started to flip through it.

Finally, thought Judas. There was going to be some answer in the bible. There would be a verse about how to "hate the sin and love the sinner." How to make his friends really understand that he cared about them and wasn't judging them even though their lifestyle was sinful.

The pastor continued to flip through the pages of his bible, than stopped and looked off into the distance as he tried to remember which verse he was looking for. "Hang on, let me search it on the computer."

Judas sat there and waited as Pastor Caiaphas sat down at the desk, opposite to Judas, and typed away at his keyboard. Judas felt more hopeful than he had in days. He was going to find some bible verse, and it was going to answer Judas's questions.

"Here we go, okay." Pastor Caiaphas started flipping the pages of his bible again. "Ah. Here it is." He slid the open bible across the desk, with his finger pointing to a specific verse. "Leviticus 18:22. You shall not lie with a man as with a woman; it is an abomination."

Judas just stared at him, completely dumbstruck. What did this have to do with anything?

After a few long seconds, Pastor Caiaphas helpfully added, "That means it's a sin, Judas."

"I know it's a sin," said Judas. He wanted to say more, but couldn't quite find the words to tell him why this verse didn't really help at all.

The pastor gave him an encouraging smile. "Nowadays, our culture has strayed so far from what God said. People think, if it feels good, it must be right. But," he tapped his finger on the page of the bible, "always gotta come back to God's word. This is where we find truth."

Judas felt so lost, like his chance at fixing his friendship with Joshua, John, and Jamie was slipping away. He felt like the pastor was totally missing the point- or maybe he was the one who was missing the point...

Pastor Caiaphas started to stand up. "Anyway, I've got to go up and get ready for the service. Hey, you know what, I have a book that might be helpful for you. You can borrow it if you want." He stood up, pulled a book from his bookshelf, and handed it to Judas. Some title about what the bible says about homosexuality.

"All right, well, I'll see you in there," the pastor said, as he started to walk out the door, leaving Judas sitting in the office alone.

"Bye..." Judas managed to say.

Judas slowly got up, and came out of the office to stand in the narrow hallway. What was he going to do? He really thought Pastor Caiaphas would have answers for him, but what if there were no answers? What if he really had messed things up? What if the church didn't want him being friends with Joshua at all?

He looked down at the book in his hands. It didn't seem to be remotely helpful at all. He didn't need anyone to tell him that homosexual relationships were sinful. He already knew that. The actual issue was, how should he interact with people who were stuck in that lifestyle? How would he love them, as God loves them, without accepting their sinful lifestyle?

He opened the book to somewhere in the middle, and started reading. For some reason, the book was talking about teletubbies. One of the teletubbies was male and carried a purse, Judas read, and this was a sign of how the liberal media is trying to indoctrinate children into the homosexual lifestyle.

What on earth?

Judas's vision blurred as he tried to hold back tears. This is what I betrayed my friends for? Because some teletubby has a purse, and we're scared of that? He had come to the church for help, to learn how to love his friends, but all that he found was condemnation of sin, and culture wars about teletubbies.

Enraged, he threw the book against the wall and stormed out of the church. When he got to his car, he sat in the driver's seat and cried in the parking lot.

---

After another week, he finally got up the courage to call Jamie. She answered her phone, "What do you want?"

"Hi, Jamie, I just want to say I'm sorry, I guess, to Joshua..." Judas said.

"You're sorry for what exactly?" asked Jamie.

So many things raced through his mind- about how he cared about Joshua, about "hate the sin, love the sinner," about "speaking the truth in love," about nachos and guitars and Star Wars and parcheesi and resume writing in Starbucks, and how he didn't want to lose all that. But none of it answered Jamie's question. Judas was sorry for what, exactly? He didn't quite know. 

"I..." he started to say. He was going to tell her "I shouldn't have said those things," but, shouldn't he? He was just telling the truth about their sin. It had felt so wrong, but it had to have been the right thing to do- it's what the bible says.

He was sorry for what, exactly? He had no idea.

"Yeah, that's what I thought," said Jamie, and hung up on him.

---

6 months later, Judas hadn't gone back to church at all. One day, he was scrolling through Facebook and saw that John and Joshua were engaged. He was happy for them- and it surprised him, that that was his first reaction. He really was happy for them. He was glad they had each other. That was good- unlike what he had done to Joshua. (Distantly, he wondered if John had ever gotten his stuff out of Jamie's apartment.)

"Should I give it a like?" thought Judas. It seemed so weak and inadequate, to show up out of nowhere and "like" their Facebook post, after not talking to them for 6 months. After... what he had done. 

Weak and inadequate, yes, but at the same time, it would be crossing a line that he had never crossed before. He had never ever ever said anything positive about John and Joshua's relationship. He had always been careful to never do or say anything that could be interpreted as "condoning sin." But now he genuinely felt happy for them. That was new.

Does "love" mean a struggle to find the exact right level of judgment one should have toward one's friends? Don't judge them so obviously that they notice you're doing it, and they stop hanging out with you- but don't be too nice and "condone their sin." What if "love" means something different than that?

Judas wanted to learn to do better. Even though he didn't think he could talk to John or Joshua, he could at least be a better person the next time he met an LGBT person. He was going to read, he was going to listen, he was going to learn, and he was going to believe in a God who was love, rather than a God who would be angry at him for not judging people enough.

He clicked "like" and vowed to do better.

---

More bible fanfics:

Mary's Choice

Love Wins (an Ezra fanfic)

Strange Fire 

What Would Abraham Do? (a bible fanfic)

Related:

Unaffirming Church Bingo 

Searching for a Less Terrible Way to Express Your Hateful Theology Doesn't Count as "Love"

---

This post is part of a series on the gospel of Matthew.

Previous post: Sheep and Goats (Matthew 25:31-46)

Next post: Was Jesus' Death a Good Thing or a Bad Thing? (Matthew 27)

Click here to go to the beginning of the series.

Sheep and Goats

Nativity scene showing Jesus, Mary, and Joseph in separate cages. This was displayed by a church in 2019 to protest the US policy of jailing immigrants and separating families. Image source.

Hi readers, anyone remember when I was doing a blog series on the gospel of Matthew? Which I started in 2012? And I haven't updated since 2022? Yeah believe it or not, I still want to keep doing this blog series, so here we are. Matthew 25:31-46, the parable of the sheep and the goats. This is one of my FAVORITE bible passages.

Seriously, love the parable of the sheep and the goats. Go read the whole thing. 

---

The big point: We should help people

The point of this parable- and the point of Christianity, in my opinion- is that we should help people. You see people in need- you should help them. That's it. 

When you help people, you are helping Jesus. When you ignore people in need, you are ignoring Jesus. I believe that very literally. 

This is the whole point. This is what we should learn from this passage. I mean, it doesn't matter if you know anything else about the bible or religion or whatever- you just need to help people.

The "sheep" were confused when Jesus told them they had helped him- they said "Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink?" See, they had no idea about the connection between Jesus and helping people. They didn't have all the correct religious beliefs locked down. But that doesn't matter. Jesus doesn't care. 

---

Heaven and hell

In this story, Jesus tells us that the criteria for who goes to heaven and who goes to hell is simply this: Did you help people who were in need?

That's it. That's the criteria, according to this bible passage.

Of course, evangelicals don't believe that. Evangelicals believe that whether you go to heaven or hell is about being "saved"- ie, did you believe the correct set of religious doctrines, and have an attitude of genuine repentance for your sins, and ask Jesus to come and rule your life? Only Christians go to heaven- but actually, a lot of Christians don't even make the cut.

In evangelical ideology, getting into heaven is very much NOT about what you do. No, that would be works-based salvation, and we are the proud descendants of Martin Luther, who told those Catholics what was what. Works-based salvation, oh the horror. People think they earn their way to heaven by doing good things- as if you, a person, have the ability to earn your way to heaven, come on, stop being so full of yourself, you can do nothing, it's the grace of God that does everything, and we just have to believe, that's it. Watch out for those so-called Christians who want to tell you that getting into heaven is in any way related to what you do rather than what you believe. That's works-based!!!!!

Yeah, that's one of the very key tenets of evangelicalism. Saved through faith alone. If anyone dares to suggest that there's any connection between salvation and doing good things, we eye them extremely suspiciously.

Okay but here in Matthew 25, Jesus is literally saying you get into heaven based on whether you help people.

What did I think about this passage back when I was evangelical? Well, this was one of the "unclear passages." You know, in the bible there are "clear" passages and "unclear" passages- the bible is [supposedly] totally consistent, no contradictions, no errors, but some parts are kinda confusing, right? We have to "use the clear passages to interpret the unclear passages." So, for example, we know that we are saved through faith alone and not works- we got that from the "clear" passages of the bible- and then we come to the parable of the sheep and the goats, which seems to maybe suggest that people are saved based on whether they help others? What? That can't be right. Thus this is an "unclear" passage, and needs to be interpreted in light of what we know from the "clear" passages.

So when I was an evangelical, I understood the parable of the sheep and the goats like this: We are saved through faith alone, obviously. The criteria for getting into heaven is whether you're the correct type of Christian. When Jesus is talking about separating the sheep from the goats, he must be taking the pool of people who claim to be Christians, and separating them into the ones that are real Christians and the ones that aren't. If you're a real Christian, you'll have the right attitude in your heart, and so when you meet people in need, you'll help them- but that's a downstream consequence of being the correct type of Christian.

Back when I was evangelical, if you had suggested to me that this parable is saying that people of all religions can get to heaven if they feed the hungry, no way I would have believed you. No way it says that. People who were the wrong religions must have been already screened out, before Jesus comes and separates the sheep from the goats, right?

(Yeah so my point is, if evangelicals tell you they just simply believe the bible- they don't. Particularly the ones who take strong political stands against feeding the hungry, making sure everyone has health care, welcoming immigrants, etc.)

---

Prison?

Interesting that one of the good deeds Jesus lists is "I was in prison and you came to visit me." We don't typically think of prisoners as people in need, whom we should help. I wonder what was going on in their society when Jesus said this- did a lot of people get imprisoned unjustly? In the US, mass incarceration is a big problem- we should help people whose lives are affected by this. (Ah, I thought I was gonna write about the sheep and the goats without getting political, but it turns out I can't.)

---

Am I doing enough?

Sometimes I worry that Jesus is gonna think I'm not doing enough. I give money to charities which are helping people, but I could give more. Is Jesus going to judge me for that?

But I don't think we should get caught up in those kinds of worries. Feels kinda self-centered. The point is that I should help people, not that I should calculate what level of helping people is required so I meet the criteria of being a good enough person. Kinda like when white people are more worried about being called a racist, than about the actual effect of racism on black people's lives.

Maybe Jesus' point wasn't "here's what you need to do so that you can go to heaven." Maybe the "heaven vs hell" part of the story isn't literally true, but just a storytelling device. And the actual point is, we should help people.

---

Conclusion

I love the parable of the sheep and the goats. It's great. It says the most important thing is to help people- and by doing so, we are helping Jesus. It says that Jesus doesn't care what religion you are, only about whether you help people. It portrays heaven and hell's entrance criteria completely opposite to what evangelicals say it is. And it's political.

---

This post is part of a series on the gospel of Matthew.

Previous post: The Parable of the Talents: Risk and Return in Building the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 25:14-30)

Next post: One Of You Will Betray Me (a bible fanfic) (Matthew 26)

Click here to go to the beginning of the series.