Blogaround

1. Pennsylvania school boards up window openings that allowed views into its gender-neutral bathrooms (October 5) "Such openings weren’t installed in any of the school’s non-gender-neutral bathrooms." What on EARTH.

2. Where the moral obligation ends (October 7) "Daily Wire influencer and abuse-victim doxxer Megan Basham begrudgingly allows that Jesus calls us to love our neighbors, but then says, 'Ah, but who is my neighbor?'" This whole post is SPOT ON.

Also from the Slacktivist: Do you want plagues? Because that’s how you get plagues (October 10) "The Pharaoh in the biblical story of Exodus — the Pharaoh whose disobedient oppression of immigrants echoes throughout the entire canon of scripture — chose to “get tough on immigration” because he became obsessed with something very much like the racist “Great Replacement Theory” that has been actively supported by anti-immigrant white evangelicals for the past decade. “‘Look,’ he said to his people, ‘the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous'” (Exodus 1:9-10, and also the Republican Party Platform and Project 2025)."

And: ‘Where you don’t want to look’ (October 15) "In anti-abortion politics, decisions are taken away from those closest and most affected by them. Those decisions, instead, are mandated by those farthest removed from the facts and the impacts, by people unaffected and unrelated to them, for whom such decisions are abstractions based on false witness and hostile, vicious false assumptions about those directly involved."

3. Rudy Giuliani’s Daughter: Trump Took My Dad From Me. Please Don’t Let Him Take Our Country Too (September 30, via) "But if you zoom out, Trump being the president was the worst thing that ever happened to my dad, to my family, and to our nation’s modern history. The consequences will only be more severe—and irreversible— a second time around."

4. Fast Crimes at Lambda School (June 18, via) "Austen thought he could fake it 'till he made it. He lied about students getting jobs, the success of the company, and he even lied about being homeless."

5. Duracell PowerCheck: A genius idea which didn't last that long (October 9. 16-minute video) Wow, I remember when batteries had these little white dots that you could press really hard to see if the battery was good or not.

6. Republican lawsuits target rules for overseas voters, but those ballots are already sent (October 14) BOOOOOO. "'It’s not the case that anyone in the world can apply for a ballot. They still have to demonstrate they are an eligible American citizen,' she said." Yes, OBVIOUSLY.

7. Remember When Russian Pop Duo t.A.T.u Pretended To Be Lesbians? (October 10) Well I don't think I ever heard their music, but I do remember Focus on the Family clutching their pearls about it.

8. CIDABM (October 9) From xkcd.

9. Is the food in the fridge still good? California wants to end the guessing game (October 2, via) "It will require the use of 'Best if Used By' label to signal peak quality and 'Use By' label for product safety, an approach recommended by federal agencies." This sounds like a great idea. My personal philosophy toward expiration dates is, food doesn't suddenly go bad right on that date, there must be some sort of range. And the expiration date is picked such that assuming a normal distribution, you can say with a high probability that the food is okay. So, not a big deal if you're past the expiration date and the food looks fine.

(My husband is totally the opposite!)

Interestingly, in China, packaged food is stamped with the production date, and then it will also say how long it is good for (12 months, 18 months, etc) and then you have to add them yourself. And for fresh things like bread or meat, usually they will have a sticker that says the production date and use-by date.

10. Buoyed by his party and the press, a raging Trump goes full Hitler (October 13) I'm really worried about this.

11. Europa Clipper - Cool! That was launched by NASA on October 14.

12. Nature Study Reveals the Deadly Danger of Anti-Trans Laws (October 15) "They found that in the first year after a state introduced anti-trans laws, the number of teens between 13 and 17 attempting suicide jumped significantly compared to other states."

Blogaround

1. Ukraine war: Shock and joy in newly liberated villages (September 11)

2. How to tell if you’re allosexual, if you’re a journalist (September 8) "It reads like it comes from a parallel universe where asexuality is the default, and questioning people wonder if just maybe they’re not asexual after all."

3. The tangled web of evangelical opposition to abortion while believing in original sin, eternal conscious torment and the mysterious age of accountability (May 10) "Would a blastocyst soul that dies three days after conception with no consciousness suddenly wake up with a fully developed human body burning in eternal conscious torment?"

4. Collections: War Elephants, Part I: Battle Pachyderms (2019) A blog series about war elephants, which were a real thing in history!

5. Zhengzhou Becomes First Big City to Scrap ‘Hukou’ Restrictions (September 15) "China’s hukou system has been in place since the 1950s and is tied to certain social welfare benefits, including access to health care, education, and the right to purchase properties. Recently, a Chinese province and cities with fewer than 3 million people have either scrapped or readjusted their hukou policies, with Shanghai becoming one major city offering the hukou to master’s students graduating from the city’s universities."

6. ‘Ask how the Americans did it’: How racial bias in US medicine inspired Hitler and persists today (September 10) [content note: descriptions of evil racist medical experiments] "My medical training had taught me that diseases common in Black people, like diabetes and high blood pressure, were the result of race itself—that Black people had a biological tendency toward certain conditions. There was no mention of the structural racism that creates the conditions for ill health to thrive."

7. Judge: HIV drug mandate violates religious freedom of anti-gay Christians (September 7) "If all of this holds up, and PrEP drugs become harder to access, it would have disastrous consequences"

8. Mainland China reports first imported monkeypox case (September 17)

"For Pregnant Women and Nursing Mothers"

Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus escaping to Egypt. Image source.

Looking at some of the news from Ukraine as it is being attacked by Russia, and thinking about Matthew 24:

Baby born in subway station used as bomb shelter in Kyiv 

California Couple Says They Escaped War-Torn Ukraine with Days-Old Newborn

"So when you see standing in the holy place ‘the abomination that causes desolation,’ spoken of through the prophet Daniel—let the reader understand— then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let no one on the housetop go down to take anything out of the house. Let no one in the field go back to get their cloak. How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! Pray that your flight will not take place in winter or on the Sabbath. For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again." Matthew 24:15-21

Matthew 24 is labelled "The Destruction of the Temple and Signs of the End Times" in the NIV Bible, and it's basically Jesus predicting big disasters. Typically modern American Christians read this as being about the end of the world, but really it was probably about the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD.

I remember reading this passage, back in high school. And verse 19- "How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers"- just seemed completely out of left field. Like, what on earth? What does Jesus have against pregnant women and nursing mothers? Why does God want to make them suffer more?

It's very revealing of the way I viewed the bible back then. When I read the (many many) passages where prophets went on and on and on about how this or that city is going to be destroyed as punishment from God, I believed that those people in those cities totally deserved it because of their sin. And that the punishment that God was sending made sense. That it was the right punishment for their sin.

But Matthew 24... I had no way to understand this verse, about how pregnant and breastfeeding women will suffer more than the average person during this disaster. Why would God want that? If the disasters prophesied in the bible were specifically engineered by God to target people whose sin needed to be punished, well... it doesn't make sense!

I remember asking my mom about it, back then. She said, well, if you have to flee your home, it's way harder when you're pregnant or when you have a baby to take care of.

Which, yes, clearly in practical terms that is true. But I had never read the bible that way. The idea that Jesus was describing the human consequences of this disaster, and how, practically speaking, those consequences fall on vulnerable members of society moreso than others. I don't know if I had ever heard that before.

That's not the way it should be, but it's the way it is.

In every kind of society-wide problem, it's the people who are vulnerable (poor, minorities, disabled, children, etc) who suffer the worst, while people with money and privilege are able to shield themselves from it to some extent. It's always like that.

No, I haven't heard modern Christians claiming modern wars are punishments from God- but there have been many times that it was said about natural disasters. Whenever that happens, immediately a bunch of other Christians stand up and say "no, we DON'T believe this disaster was a punishment from God, and no one should say that." Which is good, but... but we also need to be doing the work of grappling with the biblical passages that said exactly that. Wars and natural disasters being sent by God as a correct punishment for sin is a huge theme in the Old Testament. Yes, it's in the bible, but it's still wrong.

And that's the way I read Jesus' words in Matthew 24, back when I was in high school. But no, it makes much more sense to read them as Jesus describing what actually happens, not what is just.

I can't imagine what it's like for the refugees from Ukraine who need to flee their homes. And for those who are pregnant or taking care of a newborn, it's even worse. You just want to give your kid the best life you can... and... 

Well, me being sad about it doesn't help anyone. I encourage everyone to direct your feelings of compassion toward doing things which can make a difference. Donate to the UN Refugee Agency.

Jesus pointed it out all the way back in Matthew 24. It's still true today. It's always true. When there is a huge disaster, it doesn't target people who are the most "sinful" or "deserving of punishment" or anything like that. That's a fantasy- it never works that way. It hurts the people who are already the most vulnerable. It hurts pregnant people. It hurts children.

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UNHCR - The UN Refugee Agency

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Related:

Why Does the Kingdom of Heaven Belong to Children?

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

Previous post: On Not Being A Whitewashed Tomb (Matthew 23)

Next post: I don't believe in a literal "Jesus coming back." But, be ready. (Matthew 25:1-13)

Click here to go to the beginning of the series.

Blogaround

First of all- yeah I'm reading the news about Ukraine and I'm scared and worried about the world. 

Don't really know what to say or do... I guess donate money to the UN Refugee Agency.

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1. We Don't Talk About Pluto - Encanto Parody (posted February 16) This is INCREDIBLE.

2. New documents reveal abolitionist's court case to free her child from slavery (posted February 27) About Sojourner Truth: "Archivist Jim Folts, who uncovered the documents, told CNN that this was the first time in history a Black woman successfully sued a White man for a family member's freedom."

3. How China’s Youtube Became a Rare Safe Space for LGBT Streamers (posted February 24) "The case of coming out vlogs on Bilibili, more specifically, calls attention to an alternative queer politics, one imagined in relation to the Chinese family."

4. Roundup of Submissions | February 2022 Carnival of Aces | Beyond Attraction (posted March 1) A lot of good posts here about how to conceptualize asexuality in other ways besides "not experiencing sexual attraction."