Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. How Star Trek’s Federation Actually Abandons Its Ideals (July 30) 43-minute video from Steve Shives.

2. TobyMac - Made To Love (Live from Alive & Transported) (2009) Christian music from a decade or so ago. I've always liked this song.

3. France, U.K., others plan to recognize a Palestinian state. What does that change? (August 1)

4. Debating Fascists (July 25) "This was a major topic of conversation in the early 2000s amongst scientists, who worried over whether it was worthwhile to debate “the other side” on issues like climate change and evolution."

5. An Amazing Truth About ALL Sudokus That We DIDN'T Know (July 27) 1-hour-23-minute sudoku solve video.

6. An Ohio couple welcomes a baby boy from a nearly 31-year-old frozen embryo (August 2) Cool, I'm happy for them. It's interesting how people's feelings and beliefs about frozen embryos had such a big influence on this whole process, all the paperwork, transporting the embryos, etc. Would have gone completely differently if the people involved had different beliefs about frozen embryos. Anyway, congrats to them~

7. YouTube will identify and restrict minors’ accounts with AI (July 30, via) Uh what? This seems like a terrible idea, because the algorithm is going to get it wrong sometimes. Of course it will get it wrong sometimes. You're never going to get an accuracy rate close enough to 100%.

8. Holocaust Memory in a Time of Genocide (July 31, via) "At this point, the fracture between the “universal” and the “particular-Jewish” components of Holocaust memory became an unbridgeable chasm: the “pro-Jewish” sentiment, which morphed into unconditional support for Israel and its murderous war following October 7, was completely severed from the universal sentiment of human rights."

9. Zootopia 2 | Trailer (July 30) Cool!

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Jon Stewart Reacts to Colbert's Cancellation & Trump's "Bawdy" Epstein Doodles | The Daily Show (July 22) "And if you believe, as corporations or as networks, you can make yourselves so innocuous, that you can serve a gruel so flavorless that you will never again be on the boy king's radar, A, why will anyone watch you? And you are ****ing wrong."

2. Trump push to ban birthright citizenship unconstitutional, US court rules (July 23, via) "The three-judge ruling panel in the 9th US circuit court of appeals echoed a district court in New Hampshire that blocked the executive order earlier this month."

3. Innocence, identity, and blood libel (part 1) (July 28) and Innocence, identity, and blood libel (part 2) 

4. Federal judge delays expiration of TPS for Hondurans, Nicaraguans and Nepalese (July 31) "It affects about 60,000 immigrants whose temporary protected status was set to expire. The protections for the Nepalese were set to terminate on Aug. 5. The protections for Nicaraguans and Hondurans would have ended Sept. 8. Most of them have been living in the U.S. for more than 20 years." This is just wild to me, that the MAGAs are arguing that people who've been in the US for over 20 years should just leave- like why? Why should they leave? Just because the MAGAs hate immigrants, not any actual reality-based reason.

Blogaround

1. Facing the Forgotten Martyrs (The Ones We Killed) (July 11) "Our own heroes have killed countless faithful people because of their different cultures, beliefs, practices, and religions. The fact that we consider them heroes for doing so betrays a lot about our ideals."

2. Nepal becomes first South Asian country to allow same-sex marriage (July 11)

3. Shannon Harris has written a book called The Woman They Wanted: Shattering the Illusion of the Good Christian Wife. Shannon is the ex-wife of Joshua Harris, who wrote the most influential purity culture book, "I Kissed Dating Goodbye," and other books about how if you perfectly follow all of God's rules, and stay pure, and don't even kiss, and don't date unless you're really really really serious about marrying that person, and be really jumpy and scared about being "too emotionally attached" to your boyfriend or girlfriend, and worry about every little thing because maybe it will ruin your chances to ever have a good marriage... if you do all of those things perfectly, then you'll never experience heartbreak and God will give you a perfect marriage. Anyway, a few years ago, Josh announced that he had abandoned a lot of those beliefs, and then later announced that he and his wife were separating. Now we have a book that has Shannon's side of the story. I'm really interested in this.

Some of my posts about Josh Harris:
So I Watched Josh Harris's Documentary (2018)
Wishing the Best to Josh Harris and His Ex (2019)

4. We Can End AIDS, if We Follow the Path of Progress (July 14) "Worldwide, several countries are on track to end HIV/AIDS. Botswana, Eswatini, Rwanda, the United Republic of Tanzania, and Zimbabwe have already achieved the 95-95-95 target, meaning 95% of people living with HIV know their HIV status, 95% of people who know their status are receiving treatment, and 95% of people receiving treatment have a suppressed viral load, reducing the likelihood of their infection being passed on. Another 16 countries are close to doing so, while China has achieved an impressive 84-93-97 ratio."

Also from Sixth Tone: Plea for Marriage Rules Reform Sparks Debate on Parental Consent (July 13) "As per the existing regulations, couples intending to marry are required to notify their household owners, typically their parents, in order to obtain the necessary document. While this step may be straightforward for many individuals, it can pose challenges when either set of parents disagrees with the marriage."

This is so normal. We just don't usually say it in front of other people.

The Friendly Atheist has a post about a Christian who posted "the most dickish prayer you'll ever hear" on Twitter after the Nepal earthquake in April:

"Praying 4 the lost souls in Nepal. Praying not a single destroyed pagan temple will b rebuilt & the people will repent/receive Christ."

Yeah.

You may read this and think it's awful. But actually, within American evangelical Christianity, this is SO NORMAL. I can totally imagine this being said from the pulpit of the church I went to in college.

But. We- evangelicals- have to be careful. We know it comes across as ridiculously offensive and hateful, but we don't want people to think of us that way. This is what I believed, but I would never have said it to anyone so directly.

(I'm specifically critiquing the "Praying not a single destroyed pagan temple will b rebuilt" bit. Describing people as "lost souls" and saying they should "repent/receive Christ" are such overused cliches that they've lost all meaning to me. But to explicitly state that you hope for the destruction of someone's religion- well that's a bold statement. As in, yeah that's totally what we teach, but we don't say it so directly.)

Here's the thing about other religions (according to evangelical Christianity): They're wrong. And there's really nothing good to be said about them at all. People are SUPPOSED to be Christians. They are NOT supposed to follow other religions. If you believe in Jesus (like, really really believe for real) then you go to heaven. If not, you go to hell. This is one of the foundational principles of evangelical Christianity, and as I've said before, it ruins everything.

(Also, the temples destroyed in the earthquake were Buddhist and Hindu, not pagan. This guy just uses "pagan" to mean "weird religions that I don't like." They will know we are Christians by our love, yes?)

According to this belief system, if someone is not a Christian, this is a problem. What they really need is to become a Christian. Oh, you are a member of a diverse and beautiful religion, with a rich history, and it's very meaningful for you? TOO BAD. It's the wrong religion, so it's all garbage.

You might think this really unkind and unloving (and yes, I would agree). But for evangelical Christians, who start with the premise "all non-Christians automatically go to hell" and then want to love their neighbors, there's no alternative. You guys, I believe the vast majority of evangelical Christians truly do love others and want to help them. (I believe that about humanity in general- we are made in the image of God.) The problem is, believing in hell perverts and twists that love so it comes out as hate.

If someone tells me about their deeply-held beliefs, beliefs they have come to after a lifetime of careful thought and questioning, and I tell them nope, all of that is wrong and worthless and you need to believe what I tell you- wow, they'll conclude that I don't care about them at all, right? It comes out as hate. But it's because I believe that anything other than Jesus is putting them in danger of eternal torture, and people need to be saved from that... you see, I'm trying to love. (note: nope I totally don't believe that anymore)

Belief in hell screws up EVERYTHING.

Let's get back around to "the most dickish prayer" in the tweet at the beginning of this post. So, after thousands of people died in this massive earthquake, this person on twitter prays that the temples will not be rebuilt. In other words, the earthquake was awful, but also kind of good in a way because it destroyed those bad things that were offering hope and meaning without Jesus and therefore leading people to hell.

To any normal person, this is awful! How can you say something like that, after people- our fellow human beings, made in the image of God- have suffered such a huge tragedy?

But. But. The cold, hard logic is there. If all non-Christians go to hell, then there's no other conclusion. Other religions are bad. The destruction of other religions is good.

And most of us know that's too awful to actually say out loud where non-Christians can hear us. We believe it- I believed it- but actually telling people directly will only push them away from Christianity and closer to hell.

(If you don't want to tell people what you really believe because it's not good news at all, then what you believe is not the gospel.)

But the cold, hard logic is there. And the God of evangelical Christianity is a false god who asks us to believe this is what "justice" means, and silence our hearts when they tell us "no, this is awful."