"Hey God, you and I both know..."

Praying hands. Image source.

Recently I wrote a post called Believing in the God You Want, where I mentioned that I don't think it's good to have a "personal relationship with God" because then you start to think "God agrees with me" and you won't be open to finding out when you're wrong about things. I want to elaborate on that here.

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"Hey God, you and I both know..."

Okay let me explain the "Hey God, you and I both know..." thing. When you pray for some event xyz to happen, it's because you think xyz would be a good thing, and you think that God thinks xyz would be a good thing. So when you pray for it, and you listen to God and you don't hear any pushback from Them saying They disagree with it, it increases your confidence that God agrees with you about xyz.

This is not really a big deal if you're praying for something fairly uncontroversial, like "God, help my friend who is sick to get better." But what about these other common prayer requests:

• "God, help so-and-so to see that you exist, and become a Christian."
• "God, so-and-so shouldn't be dating their partner such-and-such because [they are gay/ one of them is Christian and one is not/ insert additional judgy reasons], help them realize that and break up."
• "God, our culture has turned away from you by [being woke/ letting gay people be on tv/ allowing no-fault divorce/ allowing children to not say the 'under God' part of the Pledge of Allegiance/ any other culture war issue], please make people stop doing that and come back to you."

Basically, prayers that say "I'm right, and other people are wrong- and obviously God is on my side on this issue." When you pray like that, and you do it day after day, and you feel emotionally connected to God and don't have any sense of something being a bit off when you pray like that- it reinforces the idea that God does indeed agree with you about what other people's correct behavior should be on these issues.

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I should mention that sometimes God does push back

Now, in my experience in evangelical Christianity, it's NOT true that every time you set out to pray for xyz to happen, you end up even more convinced that God agrees with you on xyz. Sometimes God does "push back." (I mean, I no longer believe in that kind of "personal relationship with God" so in general I don't think it's actually *God* who is "pushing back"- but I mean the person who is praying experiences it that way.)

For example, one time I was praying about something, and I realized that my feelings about it were kinda racist, and that obviously God loves people of all races equally, so I was in the wrong. Praying made me realize that I was wrong, that God did not agree with me on whatever I initially was going to pray about.

I remember another time, one of my Christian friends was telling me about struggling with low self-esteem, and praying about it, and feeling like God was telling her she was the one being selfish for making such a big deal about her self and her self-esteem. Thinking about it now, this kind of seems uh not helpful, and she probably should have gone to therapy. But the point is, she went to pray about something, and the process of praying changed her mind. 

Yes, I had experiences like that too- praying in a way that you're totally open to whatever God has to say- sometimes you feel that God is saying you're viewing the situation all wrong.

But, importantly, that's not likely to happen on any of the big culture-war issues, because evangelicals are just so confident that God agrees with them on those. You can see the examples I gave here are along the lines of "I am so thoroughly sinful that my sin has biased me to thinking about these things in the wrong way." Rather than "Maybe the things that I hear in church all the time, which we all take for granted, actually aren't true."

Here's another way God might "push back"- suppose you are worried about losing your job, so you pray that God won't let it happen, but then you lose your job anyway, but then months later you're in a much better situation, and you conclude that actually it was good that you lost your job. So you decide that when you prayed about it back then, God didn't agree with you on it. You pray for something to happen, but then much later realize it wasn't the right thing.

When that kind of thing happens though, people describe it like this: "I prayed for abc to happen, but on some level I didn't really feel peace about it when I prayed. Now I understand why I felt that way- it's because God knew that abc wasn't right for me." I am extremely curious about whether this is an accurate representation of what happened, or just a justification they came up with after-the-fact. Maybe sometimes you "don't feel peace" about something, but then everything goes fine and you forget that you had those feelings. 

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Mormons

In college, I had a bunch of Mormon friends, and they were always going on about how non-Mormons should read the Book of Mormon and pray to ask God about whether it's true, and everyone who has done this has concluded that it's true. I guess this is one of the common Mormon talking points, because they were ALWAYS advising people to do this "experiment."

(I'm very skeptical about this statistic "everyone who has done this has concluded it's true." When I was evangelical, we also threw around supposed "facts" like that. Very skeptical about whether anyone actually did any kind of study to measure this- or is it just like, if you said you tried it and you're not convinced about being Mormon, well you must have done it wrong.)

My Mormon friends said, why not try it? What's the harm? You want to find the truth, right? 

And yes, I did want to be open to whatever God wanted to tell me, to finding the truth no matter what it was, even if it meant I had been wrong and needed to change.

But I never tried this "experiment." I never prayed and asked God, "Is the Book of Mormon true?" Because every time I imagined myself going into the presence of my God and asking him "Is the Book of Mormon true?" it just felt so ridiculous, so embarrassing. Like if I genuinely prayed that with an open mind, my God would answer, "What are you talking about? Of course not."

It's like, if you have a friend that you've known for a long time, and you've talked to them a lot about their opinions on some certain topic, and then one day out of the blue you come up to them and say "Is it true that [something that people who disagree with them on that topic would say]?" Of course they would be completely shocked, and respond, "What? What on earth? Where is this coming from?" and you would feel ridiculous for even asking the question.

That's why I never asked God about if Mormonism was true. Evangelicals believe Mormonism is a cult, and so of course my God believed that. Of course my God would be flabbergasted if I came up to him with an open mind and asked if it was true.

So my point is, if you feel like you really know God, you'll be so confident that God believes you are right and other people are wrong.

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I changed, but God can't change

When I was evangelical, I had a lot of anti-queer opinions, because that's a key part of what it means to be evangelical. I believed that God intended everyone to be straight. I believed that it wasn't necessarily bad to have feelings of same-sex attraction, but it would be a sin to ever "act on" them- for example, by being in a same-sex relationship. Gay and bi people should just repress themselves, and then in the long run, they'll see that that's what's best for them. Living a "homosexual lifestyle" may seem like a good thing, but it's actually harmful to those who do it. Oh and also, gay people are pushing a "homosexual agenda" to destroy marriage or something.

On the internet, I found blogs written by gay Christians. They talked about their own feelings and experiences. As it turns out, they were not trying to destroy marriage. They were just trying to obey God, like I was. They talked about how they had tried conversion therapy, tried so hard to repress themselves, tried to follow "God's rules," and the result was so bad. And then when they accepted themselves, accepted their queer identity, everything was so much better. They talked about how good and healing it was to finally be in a same-sex relationship.

So basically, I found out that all those evangelical talking points about how gay people are so bad and they hate God, and if they just tried harder, they could become straight- I found out that was all lies. So I changed my beliefs on that.

But what about God?

I changed my beliefs because I came across information I didn't have before. But what about God? God knows everything. There were 3 possible explanations:

1. God really does buy into all the anti-gay bullshit propaganda.
2. God has known all along that it was all lies, and that actually we should accept queer people.
3. God discovered this information at the same time I did, and changed his views.

I felt option 3 wasn't possible because God knows everything. 

For option 2, I felt it wasn't possible because of how real it had felt, back then when I prayed for God to stop same-sex marriage from being legal, back when I had prayed that God would help gay people see the error of their ways... I remember one time, there was a facebook thread I was replying to, and I really spent a long time thinking about what exactly to say, and praying about it, writing a draft and then deleting parts I wasn't totally sure about, and in the end I was very confident that I was saying what God wanted me to say... This was an important part of my "personal relationship with God" back then, asking God for help with navigating "hate the sin, love the sinner." And it all felt very real- there was never any feeling that God was hinting "maybe you're wrong about this."

If God knew all along that I was wrong, why didn't he ever say anything about it?

I was talking about this to someone, years ago, and their explanation was that God *did* "say something about it"- that God led me to find the information that helped me change my beliefs. I know there are ex-evangelical Christians who conceptualize it this way, and continue to have a "personal relationship with God." That's fine for them, but I feel it doesn't match what I experienced. For me, it was so real, the way I connected with God while promoting things which turned out to be harmful. I just can't believe that God was sitting there the whole time thinking "she's wrong about this" and didn't say anything to me about it at all. (Maybe this could be explained as "God knew I wasn't yet ready to listen and change my beliefs" but I mean he could have at least said *something*.)

When I changed my beliefs on queer acceptance, it felt like rebelling against God. It did NOT feel like I was following where God was leading me.

So I was left with option 1- that my God really did believe gay people were sinning and should just try harder to be straight, and were pushing a "homosexual agenda" to destroy America or whatever.

And so I had to abandon that God. I believe in a totally different God now. And I'm not willing to have a "personal relationship" with any God again.

(A similar thing happened when I found out about white privilege and systemic racism- why didn't God ever mention those things to me before???)

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Conclusion

One of the biggest reasons that I don't pray is that I'm very uncomfortable with assuming that God agrees with me. If I pray for xyz to happen, there's the assumption that God also should believe xyz is a good thing. I can't get into that again- that's something that was really bad for me, when I was evangelical. I can't have a "personal relationship with God" again.

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Related:

Believing in the God You Want 

They Prayed About It (a post about the #NashvilleStatement)

We did a dirty thing. We prayed at her wedding.

My Racist Personal Relationship with God 

An Invisible Virus and an Omniscient God

This is what a "personal relationship with God" looks like. Be very afraid. 

Blogaround

1. Journal Club: LDS Aces (March 22) "For example, churches generally don’t have any official policy on asexuality, so it tends to be a mixed bag based on local leaders. There are also a lot of practices surrounding reproduction and marriage that don’t explicitly refer to asexuality but have profound implications."

Another post also from Siggy: Three arguments on AI Art (March 25) "If one person looks at AI art, and thinks about how it’s eliminating artists’ jobs and violating consent, that’s what the art represents to them, and that makes it ugly. Likewise, if someone else looks at AI art and thinks of the new possibilities and increased accessibility, they will have a higher opinion."

2. A Chinese City Offers Free High School Tuition for Third Child (March 23) China's one-child policy ended in 2016, and now the government is panicked about the low birth rate and trying to get people to have more children. (It's not really working.)

And another one from Sixth Tone: How an Army of Elderly Influencers Took Over China’s Instagram (March 21) "During the lockdowns, millions of over-60s downloaded and learned to use food delivery, payment, and health apps for the first time. They often did so out of necessity: It was difficult to buy groceries — or complete mandatory COVID tests — without them."

3. Extremism leads to more extremism (March 22) Oh, yikes. Answers In Genesis has been featuring articles by "Harry F. Sanders" which is a pseudonym. Here's a youtuber who tracks down "Harry F. Sanders's" other online postings and it's all extremist anti-semitic conspiracy theories and the like.

4. The kingdom of heaven is like: Minnesota House passes "trans refuge" legislation after late-night debate (March 24) "Democrats pushing the legislation forward say it will protect trans patients and providers of gender-affirming care from legal action in other states where such care is banned or restricted, creating a safe haven in Minnesota. It's structured similarly to a proposal that passed the House earlier this week that's works as a 'shield law' for people seeking and providing abortions at a time when laws vary after the fall of Roe v. Wade."

5. Distributor, newspapers drop 'Dilbert' comic strip after creator's racist rant (February 27)

6. After Utah lawmakers allowed book banning, one parent went after the Bible (March 24) 

7. Cakes and ale (and drag queens) (March 24) "That all had another layer of complication in Shakespeare’s day, when only male actors were permitted on stage. That meant the part of Olivia was played by a man dressed as a woman who was falling in love with a man dressed as a woman dressed as a man."

8. GOP rep suggests replacing libraries with ‘church-owned’ alternatives (March 24) "As conservative politics has become more extreme, libraries have become more common targets."

Blogaround

1. Biff and the Mormons: Scrubbing Toilets in Heaven (posted May 24) "Either way, nothing these missionaries offered was actually worth the risk to us to pursue."

2. Video evidence increasingly disproves police narratives (posted June 10) "Defense lawyers say the inaccurate statements are encouraged by a culture of silence in which officers protect misbehaving colleagues, a court system that rarely holds officers accountable and a public that has given police the benefit of the doubt."

3. Police: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (posted June 7) "And look, for any viewers sitting at home shocked by the scenes of police brutality, I get it. I'm white too."

4. And if you haven't done it yet, take the 2020 Reader Survey~

We did a dirty thing. We prayed at her wedding.

Bride and groom cake topper. Image source.

Back when I was in college, 2 of my friends- let's call them Angela and Adam- got married. I was there at their wedding, tagging along with another couple, let's call them Harvey and Helen.

Here's what you have to know: This was back when I was a Real True Christian. I was a leader in our campus Christian group, and Harvey and Helen were leaders too. The three of us were good evangelicals who believed the correct things, went to the correct kind of church, and worked really hard at the things that good Christians are supposed to do.

Angela was a Mormon. I had never met any Mormons before, but I knew the correct Christian teaching on it: It's a cult, it's evil, it's not Christian at all, haha let's make fun of Joseph Smith and his magic glasses. (You see, they are not real Christians because they don't use the correct jargon when talking about the Trinity, or something like that.) But then I met Angela, and she said Mormons are Christians.

I was all about evangelism back then- I loved to talk to anyone and everyone about religion. And as I talked with Angela about Christianity, it seemed like she basically believed the same stuff I did. About Jesus, about having a relationship with God... She didn't drink coffee or wear shirts that showed her shoulders, and she often said she was a "daughter of God" which isn't exactly the language my church would have used- but those were just superficial things. It seemed to me like the deeper, more important beliefs- the way she prayed, the way she related to God in general- were more or less the same as me.

I asked other Christians (including Harvey and Helen) about Mormonism. They told me all sorts of bizarre beliefs that Mormons supposedly had- apparently after you die, you become a god and control your own planet and have a bunch of wives, or something. I took this information and went back and asked Angela's Mormon missionary friends about it. Kind of as a way to prove they were wrong and I was right... but my heart wasn't really in it. Sure, maybe they have some weird little beliefs, but did that really matter? They really seemed to be committed to God in pretty much the same way I was.

I didn't know what to think. The correct Christian belief was that Mormonism is a cult and they are not Christians- the other student leaders reminded me of this. I knew it was the "right answer" that a good Christian like me should believe. But Angela was my friend, and she said she was a Christian, and she seemed pretty Christian to me. Eventually, I believed her.

Then she started dating Adam, who wasn't religious. I was immediately negative about it- he was going to be a bad influence, he was going to make her faith weaker, it's bad to be unequally yoked, you know, the standard Christian responses to the idea of dating a non-Christian. Eventually, though, Adam did become a Christian- specifically, he became a Mormon. I was negative about that too- was his faith really genuine, or was it based on his feelings for Angela instead of his relationship with Jesus?

(Please note that Adam never showed any signs of being a bad person or treating Angela badly. My one and only objection to their relationship was that he might not be committed to Jesus enough. Because in the ideology I followed, that's all that mattered. I didn't learn anything about healthy relationships or how to recognize red flags.)

And I told Angela this. I told her I didn't think it was a good idea to date a non-Christian. I remember at some point after Adam became a Christian, I somehow got into a conversation with the two of them about how I didn't approve of their relationship. They didn't seem to share my concern; they said everything was fine. And now I regret what I said, I regret the way I judged other people's personal lives- but that was what I was taught to do, as a good Christian.

Angela told me about how they were making plans for the future, how she decided to change her major so she could graduate earlier and then they would get married. I was carefully neutral in my response. I cared about her as a friend, but I didn't want to ever give the impression that I had any positive feelings about her dating Adam. You know, "hate the sin, love the sinner." When they got engaged, I was also carefully neutral. Saying things like "Wow!" or "That's a big deal!" or even "That's exciting!" but nothing that meant I thought their relationship was a good thing.

So anyway, I ended up at their wedding, along with Harvey and Helen.

And we did a very bad thing.

After we had eaten dinner and danced a little bit, the three of us were just sitting around, and we decided to pray for Angela and Adam. I can't remember any details about who prayed for what- except this one: Helen prayed that someday, Angela and Adam would find Jesus.

Wow, I feel dirty just thinking about that. I was there, I was part of that prayer, ugh, what a dirty thing to pray. Basically, Helen was saying, "God, you and I both know that Mormons aren't real Christians. I hope someday you help Angela and Adam realize that they're wrong and I'm right." Such a nasty nasty prayer. What a low and dirty thing- to claim that Angela and Adam didn't know Jesus, and more than that, to fold your hands and bow your head and come right into the presence of God and say it.

I would never have prayed something like that. I knew it was the "right answer", I knew that as a good Christian, I was supposed to believe Mormons aren't Christians. But I didn't really believe it. I knew Angela. She was a Christian. I had tried to believe the "right answer", I had tried to find huge problems with her beliefs, but I couldn't. All the differences were about superficial things, it seemed. At the time though, it wouldn't have occurred to me to question any of the "correct Christian beliefs"... I guess I basically believed Angela and Adam were Christians, but I wasn't confident enough to say it out loud.

But there was Helen, so totally confident that Angela and Adam weren't Christians- and that God agreed with her that Angela and Adam weren't Christians. It makes me sick.

We did a very bad thing. We prayed at their wedding.

Actually, I do remember one good thing I did at their wedding: I decided not to be negative about their relationship anymore, to stop judging them. I found Angela and told her, "I'm so happy for you guys, you look so happy together!" That was the first time I ever said anything good about their relationship, the first time I ever hinted that maybe it was a good thing that they were together. I decided it wasn't my job to police people's relationships and tell them whether I approved or not. I decided to just accept reality- that they are married and that they're happy and this is a good thing.

I'm telling this story to show you this is what we did, as good Christians. This is what I thought was normal. Judging my friend's relationship choices because her boyfriend wasn't the "right" religion. Insisting that someone's not a real Christian, even when they tell you they're Christian, even when they regularly attend church and bible study, even when they pray, even when they tell you all about their relationship with God. Because we know other people's lives better than they know themselves. And talking to God as if it's obvious that God agrees we're right and they're wrong. Nasty, nasty prayers.

Blogaround

Image source.

1. Church World Service, an organization that helps refugees. You can go donate to them.

2. Please Don’t Deny Our Agency (posted November 16) Totally agree with this. If you are an adult, you are responsible for what you believe. No excuses.

3. Thousands Quit Mormon Church in Mass Resignation (posted November 15)

4. Stop pitting security and compassion against each other in the Syrian refugee crisis (posted November 19) Yep.

5. Why I’m Not Capable of an Equitable Distribution of Empathy for Terror Attacks (posted November 15) THIS. Go read this. About feeling more connected to victims of certain tragedies but not others, and how that needs to be challenged when it's rooted in stereotypes/racism/etc, but at the same time, we will never be able to care about everything equally, and you shouldn't judge people for their emotions in the face of tragedy.

6. Freed Slave Writes Letter to Former Master: You Owe Us $11,680 for 52 Years of Unpaid Labor (1865) (posted November 11) "Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire."

7. Podcast from the Evangelical Immigration Roundtable about the refugee crisis. This is great. See also this website: We Welcome Refugees. Americans: contact your local government officials and tell them to welcome refugees. (Their website provides a form letter using Christian language, if that's what you're into.)

8. When Courtship Means Regret (posted November 17) "Yes really—I’ve spoken with scads of homeschool alumni who regret waiting until marriage to have sex." THIS. This is the most important thing to be said about purity culture.

9. The 41 percent (posted November 15) "Trans people have to deal with telling people in those online ads, “Looking for someone who will take me out,” or “I’m not a secret.""

Because We're All Wrong

Image source.

Slacktivist nails it with this post, Are Mormons Christian? A series of unhelpful questions.

"Is Mormon doctrine orthodox, accurate and correct?" he asks, then answers no, of course not, because Mormons are human and all human thinking has some errors.

Next, "Do Mormons have a proper understanding of salvation?" Again the answer is no, because no one does. And oh my goodness, this:

Most Mormons, to their credit, do not subscribe to the one theory of “salvation” about which I can say with confident certainty, “This is wholly and utterly wrong.” That certainly wrong theory is the notion that our salvation is dependent on our possessing a correct and proper understanding of the mechanics of salvation.

Oh dear goodness, this. How many times have I heard that some person or group of people (usually Catholics?) are "not real Christians [or not really saved] because they believe we can be saved by [some belief that differs from 'the right answer']."

Which seriously makes no sense. We're saved by having the correct understanding of how exactly we're saved? I thought it was the grace of God or something like that.

And from there of course Slactivist goes on to say Jesus loves everyone, and shouldn't we be loving Jesus by helping others rather than arguing about who's in and who's out? Amen to all of that. Go read the whole post.

And now, here's my story about the question "Are Mormons Christian?"

In college I had many acquaintances who were Mormon, plus a couple of close friends. And, you know, back then, I knew the "right answer" was that Mormons are not Christians and that it's all bad and whatnot. I talked with my Mormon friends a lot, to try to find where the difference was between their beliefs and mine- the difference that supposedly made them so dangerous and wrong. But where was the difference? They talked about Jesus and sin and all the same stuff I believed.

Yeah, if you talked about some details about their beliefs, there were things I thought were weird, but those were just details.

But, I was told by those Christians I considered "real Christians", the important difference was that Mormons think Jesus was created by God the Father, or something like that? Not sure on the exact details, but since it was an error about Jesus, it disqualified them from being Christians.

Okay... and since I was a good Christian at the time, I believed in that "right answer," even though I wondered what difference it made. The exact details of where Jesus came from and whether he's equal to God the Father- like, how does that actually affect one's life on a personal level? Was my Mormon friend's relationship with God somehow completely fake because of a line in a creed about the Trinity, which nobody understands anyway?

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And much later, I realized how wrong I was about God. I had subconsciously believed he was white, and male, and American, and more or less the same as the people in my church growing up.

And yet I had believed I was right and was therefore going to heaven, and people of other religions were wrong and were therefore going to hell.

Seriously?

Yeah, like I'm gonna get into a heaven based on understanding who God is. Yeah right. Like I'm gonna get in, thinking he's American, but Muslims aren't getting in.

Dude we're all wrong.

No one can understand God. And I can tell you I am 100% sure I'm wrong about God. I mean, how could I not be? How could any person not be?

And sure, some people's beliefs are closer to the truth than others, but who's to say where the line is?

This reminds me of all those gospel presentations I heard growing up. "Getting into heaven can't be based on doing good. Sure, some people are better than others, but who's to say where the line is? And therefore the only standard that makes sense is you have to be PERFECT, and no one is."

Unfortunately we run into the same problem if getting into heaven is based on being right about God. We're human. We can't be right about God.

But maybe we're saved by his grace, somehow. Even those in the "wrong" religions. And perhaps I should count myself among them.