"Egalitarian Pleasure Party"

Clip art image of a balance scale with a female symbol on one side and male symbol on the other side. Image source.

[content note: it's about Christians teaching that men are supposed to sexually dominate women]

This is something that flitters through my mind every now and then, and I think to myself "I should blog about that" but also "maybe no one cares because it happened in 2012." Well, Doug Wilson is in the news now, for being a pastor who is super conservative and sexist, like so over-the-top sexist, you didn't even know there *were* people this sexist... so the moment has finally come when I can blog about this.

Gather 'round, it's story time.

In 2012, the book "Fifty Shades of Grey" was very popular, and the evangelical Christian blogosphere was all up in arms about it. The evangelical Christian position was, this book is BAD because it's about a sexual relationship outside of marriage, and it's being portrayed as positive and exciting. (No, for the most part, evangelical Christians did not notice that it was about an *abusive* relationship being portrayed as positive and exciting. In Christian "purity" ideology, the one and only indicator of whether a relationship is good or bad is "are they having sex outside of marriage?") And also, women being interested in this book is basically the same as watching porn, which is basically the same as cheating on your husband. (Or your future husband, if you're not married.)

Anyway, in the midst of all this pearl-clutching, Jared Wilson published an article on The Gospel Coalition's website, called The Polluted Waters of 50 Shades of Grey, etc. That's the original link, but the article was taken down due to the backlash. I couldn't find an archive link, but many bloggers wrote articles in response to it, and quoted big chunks from it, so you can get a good idea of what it said. I'm looking at Rachel Held Evans's post, The Gospel Coalition, sex, and subordination.

Here's a summary of Jared Wilson's article: Hmm, why is it that women are so interested in "Fifty Shades of Grey"? Ah, it's because women have a natural, God-given desire to be sexually dominated by men. Our society has lost sight of this- feminism teaches that men and women are equal, and that sex should be based on equality and mutual pleasure. So, women don't have any proper outlet for their God-given desire to be sexually dominated by men. They have this need that's not being met. And then "Fifty Shades of Grey" comes along, this low-quality sinful erotica that has all sorts of bad sinful sex, and so many women are into it. Well, this is the reason why.

To support his argument, Jared Wilson included quotes from Doug Wilson's 1999 book, "Fidelity: What it Means to be a One-Woman Man." Sorry there are 2 different people named Wilson. Makes it kinda hard to follow. They are not related. Anyway. Here's a quote from Doug Wilson:

Because we have forgotten the biblical concepts of true authority and submission, or more accurately, have rebelled against them, we have created a climate in which caricatures of authority and submission intrude upon our lives with violence.

In other words, Doug Wilson believes the correct, natural, God-intended way for sex to go is that the man dominates and the woman submits. And because our society has rejected that and says you should do what feels good instead of following gender roles, well now people are all screwed up and confused and that's why they are drawn to bad versions of sexual dominance and submission.

Another quote from Doug Wilson:

When we quarrel with the way the world is, we find that the world has ways of getting back at us. In other words, however we try, the sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party. A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts.This is of course offensive to all egalitarians, and so our culture has rebelled against the concept of authority and submission in marriage. This means that we have sought to suppress the concepts of authority and submission as they relate to the marriage bed.

So yeah, Doug Wilson says it just doesn't work, if you try to have sex in an equal, mutual way. It just can't work, that's not what sex is. It needs to be "A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts." (Eww.) (Also, are the straights okay?) 

People are trying to go against God's design for sex, but in the long run you can't. You try to escape God's design, and then you end up with all these "Fifty Shades" fans.

Okay so that was what Jared Wilson's article said. The feminist Christian blogosphere read it and was outraged. In particular, I saw people saying "yeah I knew that conservatives teach that men have to be the leaders, and a wife has to submit to her husband, but I'm shocked at the idea that these authority/submission roles would even apply to sex. Is this really what complementarians believe? Really? Even in sex, the husband has authority over the wife? Really?"

And my thoughts at the time... well, this was 2012. I had no sexual experience at all, because why would I have any sexual experience, I was a good pure girl. (Also I was in grad school, that's too young to be thinking about sex, right? ... This post is about how I'm asexual...) But everything I'd heard from purity culture said that sex was easy and self-explanatory. That if you don't do a good enough job controlling your desires, you'll just automatically start having sex, without thinking or making decisions. It "just happens," if you're in a situation with "temptation."

Yeah, according to the mythology I believed back then, sex is so AMAZING, but also shrouded in mystery- good, pure, unmarried people aren't allowed to know any concrete details about it. That would be "temptation." But don't worry, once you're in the proper God-approved situation where you are allowed to have sex, ie, on your wedding night, it will be great and you don't need to think or know anything beforehand, it just happens and it will be great.

It didn't really make sense to me, but I believed it. Yeah, it didn't make sense, because... if you think about it... in order to have sex, wouldn't you have to take off your clothes, in front of another person? Wouldn't you have to, uh, interact with a penis? All of that sounds so unpleasant. Hard to imagine any set of circumstances that could entice me to do that. But, purity culture assured me, when you're in that situation, you *will* want it. You'll lose control of yourself and you'll have sex without really thinking about it, and it will FEEL SO AMAZING but it's WRONG, it's BAD and WRONG, and will RUIN YOUR LIFE FOREVER. 

Didn't seem to make sense, but I believed it. Once you're in that situation, your body will just know what to do, and if you're married it will be the best thing ever, and if you're not married then it will feel good in the moment but will RUIN YOUR LIFE.

So in 2012, reading this article where the Wilsons perhaps inadvertently announced their own kinks to the world... I thought, what do I know, maybe sex is like that. Maybe when you're in that situation and your body just takes over and does what's natural and it feels amazing, maybe it will naturally be a woman-being-dominated-by-a-man roleplay. My whole life, everything I had heard from Christians about sex was in the genre of "this makes no intuitive sense at all, but on some level you *do* have these desires, and when you're in that situation, you *will* act this way." This felt no different. On some level, you *do* have a desire to be "conquered" and "colonized" by a man during sex. Hey what do I know, maybe that's true?

And then the bloggers that pushed back and had some very strong responses to this- many of them were married Christian women, like Rachel Held Evans. They had sexual experience, unlike me in 2012. There was something kind of surprising about it... about reasoning about sex based on one's actual experience. Normally in Christian culture, we talked about sex in terms of these big general principles, about "God's design" and "how God made women" and "how God made men" and "the biblical definition of marriage" and so on. It was like arguing over fan theories about a fictional world. Like hypothetical thought experiments. To have people say "I know Doug Wilson is wrong about sex because my own marriage is not like that"- that was a new and different thing for me.

Very interesting how Doug Wilson said, "however we try, the sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party" and then a bunch of people popped up to say that yes, they had done that very thing. Sounds like it's a *you* problem!

Anyway, looking back on it now, the biggest misconception I had back in 2012, the thing that blocked me from understanding in so many ways, was the idea that people don't think or make choices during sex. Like, it "just happens," you "can't control yourself," etc. Like you're just strapped into a roller coaster car and you have no control over where it goes. When I eventually did start having sex, I was so surprised at how we needed to actually take actions to make things happen. And I was just as mentally-present as any time in my normal life, and it's just as weird as you would imagine from reading a description.

So you can choose. If you're into this BDSM roleplay stuff, you can discuss it with your partner and make a choice together about it. If you want to have an "egalitarian pleasure party", great, there are all sorts of sex acts you can choose from, so you and your partner are free to pick which ones you like, and do those- they don't happen automatically, you think about it and make a choice and then take action. 

I'm kind of glossing over the role of desire and arousal here... yeah, those do affect one's thinking and one's choices. I conceptualize this in terms of how you weigh your various reasons to do or not do something- ie, you *want* to do something, for certain reasons, but also you think you shouldn't, for certain reasons- and the desire/arousal/attraction can make you weigh some of those reasons much more highly, so that in that moment it feels like a good idea. I'm probably not describing this well? But my point is, if you imagine that people don't really think or make choices during sex, because it all just happens automatically and naturally and your body just takes over- well, no, that's not how it works.

(Kind of curious about whether "people don't think or make choices during sex" is a common belief for people who grew up in purity culture, or if I just thought that because I'm asexual and couldn't imagine people would do that if they had a choice.)

I have a few things to say in conclusion. First of all, why shouldn't sex be "an egalitarian pleasure party"? Like, why would it not be what both partners want it to be, with equality between them? If it's something other than that, where they have to play certain roles and don't have a choice, isn't that obviously worse??? Second, I wish I could have told my younger self not to believe it, when Christian role models confidently announce "*these* are the desires you have, because these are the desires that everyone has"- how messed up that I believed that rather than my own feelings. And third, when someone is trying to tell you sex *is* a certain way, and it just *cannot possibly be* some other way, they're actually talking about themself, rather than big abstract overarching concepts like "God's design" for sex.

---

A few links on Doug Wilson. For years, people have been sounding the alarm about how racist and sexist and Christian-supremacist his ideology is.

From Libby Anne: 
It Is Long Past Time for Evangelical Leaders to Condemn Doug Wilson’s Views on Slavery and the South 
Doug Wilson: Women who reject patriarchy are tacitly accepting “the propriety of rape” 
Shades of Sexual Deviance: Doug Wilson and the Tale of Two Boxes

From the Slacktivist: 
Evangelical gatekeepers and conservative holiness 
For evangelicals, racism isn’t a dealbreaker, but feminism is

From me: 
Christian Nationalism / Faith Without Works Is Dead

---

Related

I need to talk about this "selfish and small" nonsense

"Desiring God" says God wants women to be scared of men 

This May Be The Most WTF Christian Article On Sex I've Ever Read

Getting the Power Dynamics Backwards 

How would we even know 'Fifty Shades' isn't normal?

Do y'all know that conservatives think trans people don't exist?

A heart shape with the colors of the trans flag. Image source.

There's something a bit off in the way that American society has been talking about trans issues. It's the way people have wildly different opinions on the question "do trans people really exist?" and this affects their entire perspective on trans issues, and yet nobody is stating clearly their position on this question.

Conservatives believe trans people don't really exist. Seriously, they really believe this. If you don't get that, you won't be able to understand what conservatives' goals are here- and how dangerous and harmful their proposed policies would be.

On the "progressive" side, I'm really unhappy with Democrats for not putting forth a clear message that trans people exist and deserve to have rights, just like anyone else. Why is this being talked about like it's just some political "issue," that voters may have various feelings on, and Democrats are waffling about, trying to decide what "strategy" to use? Why aren't Democrats talking about the fact that trans people are people, who just want to live their lives like everyone else- they are real people, they really exist, and so they should have their rights protected.

As for the people who feel they are "in the middle" on this issue- I don't know what that even means. To try to talk to someone about their opinions on health care or sports or bathrooms or whatever, it's impossible to get an actual understanding of their position, if they don't clearly state whether or not they believe trans people exist.

When I say "trans people exist", I'm defining it like this: There really exist people who thrive when they are able to transition and live as the gender they want to be. There really exist people for whom social transition (changing name/pronouns/clothes) and/or medical transition are life-giving. There really exist people for whom transition is medically necessary- rates of depression and suicide are very high for people who want to transition but can't. For some people, transition is genuinely a good thing, and so of course they should have the right to do it; they should have the right to live a life where they can be happy and thrive. Society should recognize that this is a real thing, a normal part of the range of human diversity, rather than treating them as a threat and making overly-controlling laws about who's allowed to use what bathroom.

Conservatives do not believe this. They believe there are only two sexes, and whichever sex God made you, that's the one you are supposed to be. Staying in your gender role as God intended is how people live their best life. If somebody *thinks* they're trans, if somebody transitions, it's always a bad idea- even if they're happy in the short term, it's not really what's best for them. What's best for everyone is they stay in their "natural" gender role that God gave them.

The orange antichrist's executive order says, "It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female.  These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality." These people literally believe trans people do not exist. Every law the MAGAs are making is based in this foundational belief. Sure, they start by claiming they're concerned about children being too young to transition, or whatever, but don't be fooled- they're not okay with adults being trans either. They really believe trans people do not exist.

---

I know this because it's just like how they used to believe gay people didn't exist

In the early 2000's, evangelical Christians believed gay people did not really exist. *I* was an evangelical Christian and *I* believed gay people didn't really exist. When we talked about gay people, it was always about how they're pushing their "homosexual agenda" on society, to destroy marriage, to recruit kids to the "homosexual lifestyle," etc. We talked about it like it was an "issue" that we had to push back against, to get those bad gay people to knock it off and stop being gay or whatever. It was a big scary issue out there- not something that any of us could relate to, not something where we might actually know real people who were gay, and know them to be good people.

It was in 2009, when I went to Urbana (a big Christian missions conference for college students) and saw Christopher Yuan speak, that I was first truly hit with the realization that gay people really do exist. (Really? Christopher Yuan? He's one of those gay Christians who believes gay people should just repress themselves and never date or anything...) I saw the reality that there really are gay Christians, and they are doing their best to follow God, just like I was. They weren't trying to "destroy marriage" or do any of those bad things I had heard.

Around that time, in the gay Christian community, there was "side A" and "side B"- side A means you believe that God accepts same-sex relationships, side B means you believe gay people are required to be single and celibate. Sides A and B are for the Christians who believe that gay people exist- there is also another perspective, which I sometimes saw referred to as "side X", which is basically just being hateful and talking about gay people like they're this disgusting evil "issue" rather than real people. (And honestly, as a straight person I don't think I should be allowed to take a position on side A vs side B- straight people should be side not-telling-other-people-what-to-do-with-their-personal-lives.)

Back then, there were many Christians who did not use the term "gay" but instead said "same-sex attracted" or "struggling with same-sex attraction." Nobody *really was* gay- this same-sex attraction was just a temporary condition that had come over them, perhaps because of childhood sexual abuse, or maybe they didn't bond with one of their parents well enough, or whatever other trauma had happened to them- and what they really needed was to heal from that trauma. Then they would become straight.

Seriously, even side-B gay Christians- these are the gay Christians who have committed themselves to never dating, never having sex- got hate from straight Christians because they identified as gay. The idea that being gay was an actual real thing, an actual real identity- many straight Christians could not accept this.

---

The "Joan or John" article from The Gospel Coalition

In 2014, conservative Christian site "The Gospel Coalition" published an article called Joan or John? by Russell Moore, which presented this hypothetical scenario: Suppose you're a pastor, and someone (Joan) comes to you and says she recently became a Christian, and she wants your advice with a hard question. See, actually she used to be "John" and she transitioned. But now that she's a Christian, she sees the error of her ways, obviously- but what should she do now, in practical terms? What does repentance look like for trans people?

This question sounds very reasonable from a conservative Christian perspective. It's completely premised on the assumption that trans people do not really exist. But WOWWW when this was published in 2014, trans Christians and allies had A LOT OF THINGS TO SAY about it.

This question could only be dreamed up by someone who has no idea how hard trans people have to work to access gender-affirming medical care. No idea how it feels to finally be able to transition- how life-giving it is, how right it feels, the joy that comes with it. Dreaming up an imaginary trans person who says "transition was just a silly thing I did because I wasn't following God, I guess now that I'm a Christian I'll just undo it." [my paraphrase, not an actual quote] This question only makes sense in a universe where no one really is trans. Where there exists NO ONE for whom transition is a good thing. And yes, of course conservative Christians believe that's the world we live in. God made you a man, so you'll only truly be happy living as a man.

---

Regret

Conservatives make a big deal about transgender "regret." They're even directing the National Institutes of Health to come up with some research that shows transition is bad and causes people to regret it.

Statistics show that the number of people who regret transitioning is a very small percentage- smaller than the regret rates for other medical procedures which nobody is making into a big political issue. But still, there are a few, and conservatives make a big deal about it.

Here is how conservatives imagine this goes: When people say they "regret" transitioning, they are saying, "Oh my goodness, how did I really believe that nonsense that a man can change into a woman? How was I so brainwashed that I actually believed that? Now I finally see the truth, that the best thing for me- for everyone- is to just be the gender I was assigned." They're imagining what it would take for someone to convince *them* to transition, and how bad it would be for them.

Coming from the perspective "trans people don't really exist," this is what they imagine "regret" looks like.

But in reality, "regret" can be a lot of different things. Some people de-transition because they want to transition but they lose all support from their family- this rejection makes it feel like transition is impossible, so they make the difficult decision to go back to presenting as their assigned gender. Or, some people know that they're not cis, so they think they must be a binary trans person of the opposite gender- but later they find out that nonbinary is also a thing, and feel that fits much better. Or maybe someone identifies as a trans woman or trans man, and has the assumption that this means there's a checklist of medical procedures they need to go through in order to transition- but later they decide, actually, they don't really want to do all of those. Transition was presented to them as a one-size-fits-all thing, but then they decide that's not exactly what they want. Some people have regret because they have a bad experience with a particular doctor.

Rather than proving that trans people don't really exist, regret and detransition show how important it is that people understand their full range of options. Gender is an even bigger spectrum that we think.

But it's so hard to talk about regret at all, because people will jump right to "trans people don't really exist."

---

Pretending to be trans as a "social experiment"

As another example of the vast difference in perspectives on the question "do trans people exist" and how nobody explicitly states their position but it affects everything: Here's a video from Kat Blaque, Josh Seiter's Fetish Was NOT A Social Experiment. It's about how this guy named Josh Seiter told everyone he was a trans woman, as a "social experiment" (and posted a lot of videos on social media that were kinda bizarre, like saying that trans woman should get prostate checks from gynecologists, or something along those lines, I don't remember the details) and then later revealed that he's actually not trans. And this is supposed to prove something. Like prove how wrong people are to accept trans people, or something? Fooled them, haha!

And Kat Blaque, the youtuber who is discussing this, was like, so his friends accepted him as trans, and then... lol joke's on them? Huh? 

Yeah, if somebody told me "I'm trans" and then later told me actually it was just a "social experiment" and they fooled me and I should feel bad, I too would be like "? I don't get it."

But secretly I do get it. From the perspective of the conservatives who believe trans people don't really exist, this reads like "I fooled you into thinking a man can identify as a woman, lol that's such obvious nonsense." But for those of us who believe trans people really do exist, and feel that the fact of trans people existing is just self-evidently true, it's like... "Why wouldn't I believe that you're trans, if you tell me you're trans? Some people really are trans. That's a real thing. So it's certainly plausible that *you* would be trans."

For people framing this as a "social experiment," it's not about "you believed *I* was trans, lol, joke's on you" but "you believed *people can be* trans."

---

We need to take "trans people exist" as a starting point when talking about any of these issues

When debating about bathroom bans, or sports, or gender-affirming care for minors, or any of these issues, the fact that trans people really exist should be a foundational premise, explicitly stated. There really do exist people for whom transition is the right thing, it is life-giving, it is medically necessary. There really do exist people who were assigned male at birth, but find they are much happier living as a woman, or vice versa, or as a nonbinary person. This is a real thing, and of course people should be allowed to transition if it's a good thing for them- and they should be treated as normal members of society who deserve respect and have rights. 

When considering any of these questions, treating them as real people who have rights. Not some scary "issue" that can be forced to go away if we just ban enough things.

And I suppose there are some people "in the middle" of trans debates, whose position is "I want to help the people who really are trans, but now it's gone too far and kids are getting all ~confused~ about gender, and pressured into transitioning when it's not the right thing for them." I don't know what to make of this either. Are kids *really* being pressured into identifying as trans and/or transitioning? Obviously there is no shortage of right-wingers claiming this is true, but these are the same people who think trans people don't actually exist at all- obviously untrue, I have met trans people who told me how life-giving it was to transition- it is extremely easy to find trans people saying this! (If you need links- here, here, here, it's really not hard to find.) So I don't really believe any claims these right-wingers are making about this.

Perhaps there are some isolated incidents of people hearing a teenager saying "I don't get what gender is" and then deciding "You must be trans! Let's rush you off to get hormones and surgery right now!!!!!!" (Not that they could *literally* do this, because there are many hoops to jump through to actually get hormones and surgery...) In which case, don't do that! If anybody really is pressuring kids, well, stop it! But I really don't believe that's a common thing that's happening. 

I think, if you believe that no one actually is trans, then it comes across as "pressuring them" to even talk about it in front of kids like it's a real possibility.

And if someone really is questioning their gender, what they need is more resources and information. They should talk to people who have had similar experiences. There's a whole range of gender identity and gender expression- being exposed to more diversity will help people to understand what's right for them. (Of course, if you believe no one actually is trans, then talking about gender diversity just muddies the waters- people should just be pushed harder into their assigned gender role, that's what's right for everyone.)

---

Conclusion

Every "trans issue" you see in the news right now has 2 completely different interpretations- if you believe trans people exist, you will view these issues in one way, and if you believe trans people do not actually exist, you will view these issues in a completely different way. In either case, the conclusions follow quite logically from the initial assumptions about whether or not trans people exist. But all the discussion and debate I see about this has people talking past each other, talking about totally different things, because almost no one is explicitly stating whether they believe trans people exist. Start with that! They obviously do exist! Trans people are trans because they actually are trans, not because they want to be creepy in women's bathrooms or anything ridiculous like that. They exist, and they should be treated fairly and have their rights protected just like anyone else. Start with that, and everything else becomes easier.

---

Related:

Everyone is missing the point about these "parental notification" laws 

How to Pretend to Welcome Trans People

Blogaround

1. THE EMPEROR'S NEW GROOVE and Self Love vs. Narcissism (November 8) "The Emperor's New Groove" is such a good movie!

2. Some good news on climate change (November 18) "The best message, practically speaking, would combine sounding a very loud and continuous alarm with various facts about how real progress is being made on the technological side toward ameliorating the trajectory of climate change, on both a long term and shorter term basis."

3. At SpaceX, worker injuries soar in Elon Musk’s rush to Mars (November 10) [content note: injury and death] "'Elon’s concept that SpaceX is on this mission to go to Mars as fast as possible and save humanity permeates every part of the company,' said Tom Moline, a former SpaceX senior avionics engineer who was among a group of employees fired after raising workplace complaints. 'The company justifies casting aside anything that could stand in the way of accomplishing that goal, including worker safety.'"

4. Has the ‘Double Eleven’ Shopping Festival Lost its Luster? (November 21) In China, "double eleven" (双11, November 11) is a big online shopping day, kinda the same idea as Black Friday or Cyber Monday. But this article says in recent years, the excitement for double eleven deals has kind of worn off.

Also from Sixth Tone: A Food Courier’s Pursuit of Equal Treatment (November 25) "He shares that a large state-owned enterprise that he often visits doesn’t allow couriers inside, nor will it put a table at the entrance for riders to leave takeout deliveries, meaning they need to wait downstairs and hold the food until the customer comes to collect it." 

Yeah, I order food to get delivered almost every day- it's very convenient in China, and I always see tons of delivery drivers on their electric scooters, rushing around to deliver food. From what I've heard, they're under a lot of pressure to deliver the food as fast as possible, or else they get fined- and this means they often rush through red lights and do other unsafe things, to shave off a few seconds. Sounds like a really hard job. At the office building where I work, there's a locker outside the back door of the building, and the delivery drivers put the deliveries in the locker and then you get a notification on the app- this seems to work out well for the drivers because they just stick it in the locker, give you a phone call to let you know, and then they can leave, they don't have to wait for you to come down in the elevator and pick it up.

I've had situations where the driver was at the wrong building, and calling me to ask me how to get to my address, and he asked me if he can mark in the app that the order has been delivered- ie, he marks it as complete so the app doesn't get him in trouble for being late, and then he finds his way to the right address and gives me the food. 

5. Plain white Cru not white enough for Florida evangelicals (November 22) "As a result, those Republican Christians no longer respond to Cru the way that any normal person would. A normal person would be, like, 'Oh, you mean that campus ministry group that’s so fundie they make Young Life seem cool by comparison?'"

6. I Don’t Think That Parable Means What You Think It Means (November 22) "As I encountered these parables growing up in my faith tradition, I was taught that the most powerful person in a given parable—the vineyard owner, the rich man, the king—is supposed to be God. Bolz-Weber addresses this directly: 'Why in the world do we always assume that the ruler, the slave owner, the property owner, the tyrant in the story always represents God?'"

7. In wake of state bans, abortions overall rise, reproductive care falls (October 25) "Where abortion is banned around the world, there is usually more death, not less, on account of maternal mortality rates (MMRs)."

8. Will Anti-abortion Laws Drive Women to Colleges in Blue States? (November 4?) Wow, this is really fascinating to me, because when I was in college/ in high school deciding where to go to college, never in a million years would it have occurred to me "what if I need an abortion? I should go to college in a state with abortion access." I was "pro-life" back then, because everyone I knew seemed to be "pro-life"- I had never even heard any pro-choice arguments, and I hadn't the faintest idea about what kind of reasoning could possibly lead people to be pro-choice. The idea of me having sex was unimaginable to me, the idea of me ever having sex before marriage was unimaginable to me, the idea of being one of those "bad" women who wants to have an abortion was unimaginable to me. I very much did not see it as a "women's issue" that affects everyone with a uterus- I saw it as only something that bad women would ever try to access, and of course we should make laws to stop those bad women, right?

So, really mind-blowing to me to think about high school girls putting serious thought into how these laws affect them. (I mean, also apparently a lot of high school kids are having sex, and I find that hard to fathom too...)

Also from Skepchick: The Hamas Hostage with “Stockholm Syndrome” (November 11?) "Instead of it being an actual psychological phenomenon, it’s just a story the media likes to tell when explaining victim behavior that people might not immediately understand."

9. Ah, in my post about young-earth creationism, I can't believe I forgot to include a link to Joel Duff's blog, Naturalis Historia. (I have now edited the post to include a link.) If you want to know all the specific details about how young-earth creationism can't account for the scientific evidence we find in the fossil record, etc, you definitely want to read his blog.

10. [trigger warning for transmisia] I don't recommend reading this one, but I want to at least mention it here so nobody ever forgets what kind of hateful trash The Gospel Coalition is publishing about trans people. On November 22, they published a post called "I Love My Transgender Child. I Love Jesus More." (archive link) 

I'm not gonna respond to this, I will just say this: God is nonbinary. And Jesus said, "whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me"- if you're mean to trans people, you're being mean to Jesus. (Observant readers may notice that this is THE OPPOSITE of what that article headline says- like you have to choose between loving Jesus and loving your trans child. WTF.) And if you cause a trans child to hate themself, well, Jesus said, "If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea."

And just as God is the Creator, people are made in God's image, and people reflect God's image by creating too. Trans people create their own identity, their own gender expression, and that's an amazing and godly thing.

And if you worship a god who requires you to be cruel to trans people, that's on you. You could worship a different god. You could worship no gods at all. What does it say about you, that you choose to worship that kind of god?

11. China trials visa-free travel for six countries (November 24) The six countries are: France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and Malaysia- travelers from these countries will be allowed to stay in China for up to 15 days, without a visa. Interesting! I wonder why they're doing this- I'm guessing it's to encourage tourism, to have good relationships with those countries, and because they aren't worried that people from those countries will want to illegally overstay. Anyway, cool, good news if you're from one of those countries.

This May Be The Most WTF Christian Article On Sex I've Ever Read

Image text: "Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable-- if anything is excellent or praiseworthy-- think about such things. Philippians 4:8" This is what I wish TGC had done instead of writing that article. Image source.

[content note: NSFW language]

[update, 1 day later: TGC has removed the article]

Well I got on Twitter today and EVERYBODY is talking about this godawful article at The Gospel Coalition, Sex Won’t Save You (But It Points to the One Who Will) [archive link] [content note: it's overspiritualized misogynistic smut].

If you don't want to read the article, well, that's probably a good choice, so I'll sum it up here: [content note: ugh I feel gross writing this] The writer, Josh Butler, says sex (by which he means, married sex between a cis man and cis woman, obviously) is a symbol of Christian salvation. Specifically, the man's role is the greatest form of generosity, giving his actual self by ejaculating his semen into his wife. And the woman's role is the greatest form of hospitality, welcoming her husband into her actual body. And, since this is also a metaphor for Christ and the church, Christ spiritually penetrates the church and puts his seed in her.

That's really what it says, you guys! Actually my summary here is less disturbing and graphic than the actual article. The actual article has a lot of overspiritualized language to describe semen. Like, you don't even want to know.

A few points I would like to make:

First of all, WTF. Yes. That should be our first reaction.

Second, here's the biggest problem with this article: This guy (Josh Butler) thinks ejaculation is generosity? This guy thinks ejaculation is the highest form of generosity and sacrifice? WHAT ON EARTH? ... I can't believe I am here on the internet pointing this out, but, men WANT to shoot their semen inside their partner. (Not all men, obviously- asexual men exist, and there can be plenty of other reasons to not desire that, besides just asexuality.) It's generally regarded as an extremely pleasurable activity for men. Like, what on earth, this guy thinks that a man "giving" his semen is the perfect picture of generosity. 

(The actual quote from the article is [content note: god help me, I can't even write adequate content notes, it's talking about ejaculation in spiritual language] "And what deeper form of self-giving is there than sexual union where the husband pours out his very presence not only upon but within his wife?" Yes, really, that's what it says.)

Okay, when people (sex-ed educators, for example) talk about being "giving" during sex, here's what they mean, because apparently The Gospel Coalition needs this spelled out explicitly: It means listening to your partner, learning what they want and what feels good for them, and doing the things that they want. Typically this means helping them have an orgasm. I CANNOT BELIEVE this guy really wrote an article about men being "giving" during sex, and it's *not* about a man making sure to "give" his wife an orgasm, it's about "giving" his semen.

Like, WOWWWWWW.

Like, everyone gather around and marvel at how, apparently, women's orgasms are not on anyone's radar at all, over at The Gospel Coalition, even when they are talking about a man being "generous" during sex. Like, my god, how do you miss that?

Like, if you want to say "sex is a picture of the gospel because there's giving and receiving" okay, sure, there's a case to be made there. But, turns out he didn't just mean "sex", he meant penis-in-vagina sex specifically. And, actually, even more specifically, he meant the moment where the man has an orgasm. *That* specifically is what this guy thinks points to Christian salvation.

WHAT.

My third comment on this: Wow, what a great example of how conservative Christian teaching is not inclusive of asexuals. Some people may naively think that since conservative Christianity makes such a big deal about "purity"/ "abstinence only"/ etc, then it would be accepting of asexuals. But, nope! What they actually teach is, you're not allowed to have sex before marriage, but then when you are married, you HAVE TO have sex, and it has to mean these certain things and be associated with these certain feelings. Yeah usually they don't say it in such gross, explicit terms, but there definitely is the idea that married people have to have sex, and it has a specific meaning. 

Fourth, here are some great tweets about how ejaculation is NOT a "sacrifice" (WTF) but all the stuff that women/ people with uteruses go through IS:

Also, ejaculation is not a sacrifice.

Bearing children is.

Menstruating is.

— Sheila Gregoire--The Great Sex Rescue is here! (@sheilagregoire) March 2, 2023

the sacrifice that women make in their bodies for that more closely mirrors the gospel.@jenniferwilkin once did a talk about how men only bleed when something is wrong. but every 28 days women bear witness to the shedding of blood for the renewal of life.

— Becky (and Dwight) (@BeccaLizz) March 2, 2023

Go read @BeccaLizz's whole thread, actually. Like, what is this business about ejaculation being the greatest expression of generosity, when pregnancy exists? Like, you wanna talk about giving your body for someone else? MY GOD.

Fifth, you know what is *actually* a picture of generosity/hospitality/whatever in marriage? Being there for each other. Listening to each other. Caring about each other. Taking care of your spouse when they are sick. I very much reject the idea that sex is the highest form of love or whatever. 

Sixth, The Gospel Coalition is one of those conservative Christian groups that teaches women can't be "in authority over" men. Hmm maybe if they had some women in leadership and they actually valued those women's opinions, they wouldn't have published such... uh... I mean, I've read smutty fanfiction that's not as bad as this.

All right enough about that! Please go and think about something nice now.

---

Follow-up post: I need to talk about this "selfish and small" nonsense

---

Related:

Breastfeeding: Take and Eat; This is My Body 

Here's an article about evangelical women and sex

A Post About Masturbation

John Piper Said "Sex Belongs to Christians" and I am Not the Least Bit Surprised 

What My Marriage Is Actually About (It's Not Sex And It's Not Jesus)

Blogaround

1. Well I'm late to the party on this, but The Gospel Coalition posted an article about how PMS is ... *checks notes* ... sinful? Here it is: PMS: The Monthly Fight with the Flesh

This is beyond ridiculous but I don't have time to write a whole post about it. I'll just say this: Your body has needs. Listen to your body. If your body's physical needs aren't being met, it's easier to get stressed/angry/etc, so that's why it's important to pay attention to your body's needs. Take care of those needs because they're real and they matter.

Of course TGC went a totally different direction with it, like if you get stressed/angry because of hormones, well that means you are BAD and SINFUL so just STOP.

2. When gray hair is not a crown of glory: Old age proves Rapture preachers wrong (posted January 21) "Jack Van Impe started his ministry 68 years ago, assuring his followers that the Rapture, Argmageddon, and the End of Time were poised to occur at any moment. At no moment in any of those 68 years did the Rapture occur."

---------------

And a few things about the pandemic:

1. Congratulations to Greg Locke for having the worst Christian take on COVID-19:

#CoronaVirusUpdates #COVIDー19 pic.twitter.com/ru0GYm8v9B

— Pastor Greg Locke (@pastorlocke) March 14, 2020

2. Some good news from China: China reports no domestic cases of coronavirus for first time since outbreak began (this is specifically referring to Wednesday, March 18).

Meanwhile, SOME PEOPLE (*cough* the orange antichrist *cough*) are insisting on calling this "the Chinese virus"- being nakedly racist and blaming China, during a global pandemic where we DESPERATELY NEED TO LEARN FROM CHINA.

3. I love you all. Stay safe. Cancel your plans, cancel your travel, and stay home. I repeat: Cancel your plans, cancel your travel, and stay home. Help bring groceries to your elderly neighbors. Take care of your mental health by not reading the news constantly.

Also, CANCEL YOUR PLANS, CANCEL YOUR TRAVEL, AND STAY HOME. Social distancing saves lives. Do it for my grandma.

"My Evangelism Isn't Working" is a Very Creepy Thing to Say

Two points, labelled "Point A" and "Point B" with a straight line between them. Image source.

I came across this article from The Gospel Coalition: 3 Overlooked Ways to Do Pre-Evangelism by Randy Newman. It's about some things one might say to one's non-Christian friends to possibly make them more receptive to hearing about Christianity.

At the beginning of the article, Newman tells us about his attempts to present "the gospel" to a high school friend he had recently reconnected with after 50 years. He says:

Today, I continue to pray for him, reach out to him with phone calls and emails, and talk about meeting up when I’m nearby (we now live more than 1,000 miles apart). I’m convinced I need to pursue some pre-evangelistic conversations with him before he’ll be ready to hear the gospel in a way that can penetrate. I’ve tried the direct evangelistic approach several times, and that hasn’t worked. I need another strategy.

Umm. So let's talk about what's wrong with this line of thinking. Well, it's pretty well summed up by the line "I've tried the direct evangelistic approach several times, and that hasn't worked."

"worked"?

What does he mean by "hasn't worked"? Well, it means he didn't get the result he was trying to get. Which is to say, his friend hasn't become a Christian.

Isn't that bizarre? To think that we should try to get people to change their religious beliefs, to think that there's some "strategy" we need to figure out in order to get people to change, to think that if it's "not working" that means we need a new strategy that will hopefully "work."

See this is what I mean when I say Christianity definitely did NOT teach me about boundaries, and in fact taught the exact opposite. All this evangelism stuff is based on the assumption that there's something wrong with people having whatever personal religious beliefs they have. And that as a Christian, I should try to get people to change their beliefs to match my beliefs. Instead of just respecting that that's none of my business and people have the right to believe whatever they believe, I should try to convince them to change. And if I can't get them to change, I should try harder, and get advice from other Christians about how to make my evangelism "work."

Now that I'm not in that ideology any more, and now that I know about boundaries, the whole thing sounds incredibly messed-up.

Yes, very very creepy to say your evangelistic efforts "aren't working" because your friend continues to believe whatever he wants to believe, as is his right.

And another thing I'd like to point out from the article:

Here are three strategies for pre-evangelism that might help your friends move from “Are you crazy? Christianity is ridiculous, narrow-minded, homophobic, and stupid!” to “Well . . . maybe I need to rethink this” to “OK, I’ve not been fair in the ways I’ve pigeonholed religious people” to “All right, I’ll take a look at that book about God you gave me.”

Imagine your non-Christian friend's beliefs are at point A. Your Christian beliefs are at point B. Now, A and B are so far apart that it's not realistic to think your friend can simply move from A to B. No, this article advises us about how to add points C, D, E, and so on in between A and B, and gradually move your friend along toward point B.

All of this is based on the assumption that point B is the perfectly correct set of beliefs. That I, a Christian, am not going to change my beliefs at all. We're not going to learn from each other. Nope. Sure, Christians pretend they want to "have a dialogue" and "listen" to other people- I know I did, back when I was all about evangelism. But it's all fake. We wanted to change other people. We didn't want to learn from them and change our own beliefs.

"But wait," you might say, "surely you do this too! When you meet a friend who believes some very wrong things, you try to persuade them to change." And yes, I do. But here's the difference: In boundaries morality, you can offer your reasons for why your point of view is correct, and you hope that the other person will agree rather than continue to follow their bad ideology, but you recognize that it's their right. If they believe something really harmful and nasty, you can't change them, but you can choose not to interact with them anymore. In boundaries morality, we don't believe there's some magic strategy out there that can manipulate other people into agreeing with us.

And the other difference is, when I talk about beliefs that people might have that I would want to talk them out of, I'm talking about things like racism. Things that are actually harmful. Not religious beliefs. I don't care what religion people follow; I care how they actually treat people in the real world.

It's extremely messed-up that I used to believe it was my job to talk people into changing their religious beliefs. I didn't know about boundaries. I thought it was about me- how I should pray, how I should talk to them, how I should show them God's love, and if I did all this correctly, then it would "work." I didn't know that other people's religious beliefs belong to them, and no matter what I do, I can never "earn" the right to make them listen to me and agree with me. It just doesn't work that way.

-------------

Related:
Yep, I Totally Did This Creepy Evangelism Strategy
From "Virtues Morality" To "Boundaries Morality"

Blogaround

A mother duck and 6 baby ducks. Image source.

1. Six California police officers fatally shoot rapper found sleeping in car (posted February 13)

2. This is Horrible Advice on When to “Report Ministerial Misconduct” (posted February 15) Sarahbeth Caplin reviews a terrible article from The Gospel Coalition. My favorite part is when TGC claims that you should only report a crime if you can "prove the sin from Scripture."

3. This Twitter thread about how to fix the glaring inefficiencies and safety hazards of the Monsters Inc scare floor. (posted February 18)

4. We Will Not Be Silent: An Indictment Against APU (posted February 18) "I thought you might be interested to know that Azusa Pacific University is moving to eliminate term tenure for all faculty and will now require faculty to affirm new faith statements against LGBTQ people."

5. Puppetgate (posted February 18) "Non-Autistic Autism Advocate: 'I went to see it and it was SO GOOD. I totally forgot that Laurence was a puppet he seemed so much like a real autistic child in that he was not human and he didn’t even feature that much in the play.'"

6. Reporters Must Do Better on Abortion: Six Facts You Should Know (posted February 5) "The [anti-choice] movement has invented non-medical terms like 'partial birth abortions' and 'dismemberment abortions,' and has been successful in getting these terms used in legislation and the media."

7. Christian Group to Show 4-D Ultrasounds in NYC as Part of Anti-Abortion Campaign (February 19) 3rd-trimester ultrasounds. Can you believe this. Nobody is having an abortion in the 3rd trimester- unless there is some horrible, heartbreaking health problem with their WANTED and LOVED BABY. But "pro-life" people want you to think a typical abortion is ending a perfectly-healthy 3rd-trimester pregnancy for no reason at all. This is disgusting.

8. Making Sympathetic Antagonists (And Why Thanos Wasn’t One) (posted January 25) "Or, instead of saying, 'We don’t trade lives,' Steve’s main objection to Thanos’s scheme could have been, 'Germany thought mass murder of some of their citizens would help the rest, but it didn’t.'"

9. Abuse of Faith (posted February 10) [content note: child sexual abuse] "20 years, 700 victims: Southern Baptist sexual abuse spreads as leaders resist reforms"

My Marriage Is So Good, I Forgot "Unequally Yoked" Was Supposed To Be A Problem

A man and woman praying at church. Image source.

So I read this article, from The Gospel Coalition: Help! I Married a Spiritually Immature Man. It's about Christian women who marry men that aren't good enough Christians- how women end up in that supposedly bad situation, and what the women can do about it. Weirdly, sometimes the article seems to be talking about a husband who is not a Christian, and sometimes it seems to be talking about a husband who's a Christian but just not as "mature" as his wife. Umm... referring to all non-Christians as "spiritually immature", assuming that they're not good enough husband-material- this is Christian supremacy and it's not "loving your neighbor as yourself."

I'm not going to actually go through and respond to specific points in the article, because the writer's perspective is just so completely different from mine, it's hard to know where to even begin. Instead, I will write about my own marriage, and how my "spiritual life" is related or unrelated to my husband.

All right. I am a Christian, and my husband (Hendrix) is not religious at all. We've been married for 1 year, and in total we've been together for 5 years. And us being different religions is just... not an issue at all.

When I was a kid, I was taught that it was a HUGE PROBLEM if a Christian married a non-Christian. They would be "unequally yoked." The Christian would always worry that their spouse was going to hell. The Christian would be constantly trying to change their spouse, which isn't healthy in a marriage. The non-Christian would try to get the Christian to sin, or would convince them it's okay to not go to church and not read the bible and not care about religion. And so on.

Indeed, back then, long before I met Hendrix, I was the sort of Christian that would not have been compatible with a non-Christian. I would have believed he was going to hell. I would have worried and tried to change him, and always felt superior because I'm right and he's wrong. I believed a husband is supposed to his wife's "spiritual leader," so obviously he needs to be at least as good of a Christian as me. And I used to get all worried and guilty over my "sins", blowing them way out of proportion, and I would NOT have been happy with a husband who told me those "sins" are just normal human things that aren't a big deal and I don't need to worry so much. "Sins" like wanting my friends to care about me, rather than believing "God is all I need." And rushing through my "daily quiet time" because I'm tired. And being attracted to people.

But I'm a completely different kind of Christian now. I don't believe in hell- or rather, I don't believe in the "accepting Jesus into your heart is what decides if you go to heaven or hell" version of hell. I'm not concerned about people I care about going to hell, because I believe that God is just, so They're not going to be giving out huge unreasonable punishments like eternal torture. I'm totally not interested in Hendrix becoming a Christian. Like, I have had enough problems being a Christian... I'm proud of my faith and it's really important to me, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend this to other people. I don't think it would massively change anything if Hendrix became a Christian- he already has all the qualities that make him a great husband for me. I feel weird even writing that, because it's just not even a possibility, and that doesn't matter to me at all.

And back then, when I was a good evangelical, I needed "accountability" because following God meant forcing myself into things that were unnatural and painful for me. I had to repress so many emotions, had to read the bible every day (no excuses), had to awkwardly force people into religious conversations they didn't want to have (ie "sharing the gospel"), had to deny myself and give up whatever God asked me to give up, had to be fighting my sin all the time, couldn't rest, had to constantly question my motives because if I was doing a good thing for "selfish" reasons then that was a sin. On their own, nobody can force themselves to live under that many restrictions constantly, so I believed Christians need "accountability," which means your Christian friends frequently check in with you to encourage/guilt you into it. 

So of course it would be bad if I was trying to live that way and also had a non-Christian husband. He would "tempt" me into believing it's okay to relax a bit and let some of those things slide.

It was a lifestyle that I now see as anti-human and unnatural, and that's why I would need other Christians to constantly push me to keep living that way. 

But my spiritual life now isn't like that at all. It's about being healthy and loving myself and loving people from all kinds of diverse backgrounds and learning from them. And it feels so good; it's not something that needs to be constantly pushed on me. I still feel that I need other Christians to talk to about my beliefs, and my husband isn't able to meet that need, but I have Christian internet friends and I write a huge giant blog about that stuff. So I'm good. I don't believe that married people are supposed to get all their needs for human connection met through their spouse. Of course we need friends too. That's a good and healthy thing. Not a "this is less than ideal, but we make it work" thing.

Also the idea that one person can be another person's "spiritual leader" no longer makes sense to me. Back when I was evangelical, "spiritual growth" was one-dimensional: there is one ideal way to be a Christian, and "spiritual growth" means moving toward that ideal. We all knew the things we were supposed to do: read the bible every day, pray, go to church every Sunday, be more loving, be more patient, don't be angry, don't be selfish, share the gospel, and so on. A "spiritual leader" should encourage you to do those things. They would look at your current situation and tell you what you need to do to become that "ideal" Christian. Your "spiritual leader" is farther along than you, on the one-dimensional path towards that "ideal Christian" goal.

But I no longer believe there's one correct "ideal" for people's spiritual lives. People believe in many different religions for different reasons, and that's fine. For ex-evangelicals in particular, some of us are still Christian and some stop believing in God altogether. I'm still Christian but I think it's totally fine for other ex-evangelicals to stop believing in God. (Or change to another religion. Or whatever.) That's valid. I get that. And some ex-evangelicals go to church, and some don't. Maybe we find a better church and we're happy there, or maybe we've experienced so much trauma in church settings that we're just not able to go to any church at all, even a "better" one. I wish I could go to church but I haven't found one that doesn't cause me to have depression. And some ex-evangelicals study the bible, and some have so much bible-related trauma that they don't want to read the bible at all. And some pray and some don't.

My point is, everyone has to be in charge of their own spiritual life (or lack thereof), because there's no one-size-fits-all answer. Nobody else can know what you need as well as you. Nobody else can tell you what religion you should believe. Nobody else can say whether going to church would be helpful or harmful to someone who's had bad experiences in church but still identifies as Christian. There's not one "right answer." It's different for everyone. And that's why the idea of having a "spiritual leader" no longer makes sense to me. I need to be in charge of this myself.

Yes, I sometimes ask my husband "should I go to church for Christmas?" (or other religion-related advice questions) and we talk about the pros and cons, and he's very helpful, but of course in the end it's always my decision. It has to be my decision. Nobody else knows what I need.

So that's our situation. I'm a Christian, and my religion is very important to me, and my husband is not religious. And... it's just not a problem at all. I can see how it would DEFINITELY be a problem for certain types of Christians- like when I used to be evangelical and I believed non-Christians were going to hell, and my "relationship with God" meant constantly repressing myself. But I don't believe that anymore. I now believe it's fine to believe whatever religion you believe- what actually matters is how you treat people. And nobody is qualified to take charge of another person's spiritual life and be their "spiritual leader", because nobody knows your situation better than you.

------------------

Related:
Boundaries in Dating: In which I roll my eyes so much
I'm dating a nonchristian and I want to marry him. Here's why I believe that's not a problem.

Gotta Love That Full-Blown Atheism

Fruit growing on a tree. Image source.

All right, I want to talk about this bad article from The Gospel Coalition: 3 Beliefs Some Progressive Christians and Atheists Share. The writer, Alisa Childers, says that it's common for ex-evangelicals to go through a progressive Christian phase and eventually become atheists, and therefore progressive Christianity is verrrrry suspicious and bad.

All right, I'm a progressive Christian. (I don't typically use that label for myself, but okay, sure. I actually prefer "Christian feminist.") I'm not an atheist. Let's take a look at Childers's 3 beliefs here, and see if I have them:

1. They May Adopt a Belief That the Bible Is Unreliable
2. They May Have an Unresolved Answer to the Problem of Evil
3. They May Affirm a Culture-Adapting Morality

Well for #1, yes there is stuff in the bible that's just not true. For #2, umm well I think Christians who have a resolved answer to the problem of evil are SHADY AS HELL. Because I used to be like that, and my answer was "we all deserve to die and go to hell and suffer torture forever and never experience anything good, so when bad things happen on earth, well we deserve worse anyway" which is heartless and terrible. Like if you think it's 100% fine and dandy that God is all-powerful and all-loving but horrible tragedies happen in the world... ewwwww not really okay with that. For #3, umm sure I have what they call a "culture-adapting morality" but I very much DO NOT call it that. That's sort of a straw man. And I think it's quite hypocritical that Childers claims her brand of Christianity is just plainly following what the bible says rather than "picking and choosing." LOLOLOL yeah right.

But that's not really what I want to talk about in this post. I want to talk about how she seems to think atheism is some horrific thing we should all be scared of. She uses the phrase "full-blown atheism." Ohhhhhhhhkayyyyyyyy. (Ahem, this is Christian supremacy.)

Like... atheism is fine. Like I really don't care what people believe; I care about their actions. By their fruit you will know them. If there's good fruit, then I'm cool with whatever their underlying beliefs are.

I would say that's an important part of progressive Christianity: the concept that IT'S FINE for people to not be Christians. So this "oh noes, what if people become ... *GASP* ... atheists!!!!" fearmongering is a bit lost on me.

Whatever. I'm over it. Yep, TGC is over here claiming they are doing Christianity the correct way and they're the ones who are *really* following the bible, and us progressive Christians are just following morally-suspect ideas from "the culture." It's not true, but that's old news. Evangelicalism is all about bearing false witness against one's neighbor, misrepresenting and demonizing other people's beliefs. I'm over it.

------------------------

Longtime readers of my blog may know that God has laid a burden on my heart to respond to bad theology from The Gospel Coalition. You can find all my posts about them here.

"You Don't Want Justice": Here Are the Receipts

Scene from "The Lion King" where Scar tells a mouse he caught "Life's not fair, is it?" Image source.

[content note: abusive Christian theology, hypothetical discussion of child death]

The "gospel" that I learned in evangelical Christianity said "you don't want justice." It said we are all sinners and therefore deserve to die and go to hell and never ever experience anything good- we don't even deserve to be alive right now, but God lets us be alive and occasionally happy because his mercy is just so huge and illogical. "Justice" means every single person in the world should die right now and go to hell, and wow, wouldn't that be terrible, no we don't want "justice." "Mercy" means everyone gets to at least experience some pleasure in their earthly life, and some of us get to go to heaven when we die (if we "accept Jesus") and wow isn't that just WILD how God would allow such good things for us when we all deserve death? The struggle between God's "justice" and God's "mercy"- that was the message of the "gospel" I used to believe.

And I got your receipts right here. Last week, I happened across two different articles teaching this abusive theology: If Your Kids Say This Phrase, They’re More Entitled Than You Realize (by Daniel Darling) and He Lets Us Live (by Trevin Wax). Let's take a look.

In Darling's article, the "entitled" phrase that kids say is "that's not fair."

The #1 Entitled Phrase Kids Say: “That’s not fair.”

It sounds innocent enough. Everybody wants life to be fair, right?

But this is an insidious phrase, revealing a sin so bankrupt it goes back to the very beginning, back to the Fall of Man. It’s essentially what Eve was told by the serpent. “You’re getting a raw deal. You’re entitled to more. God is holding out on you.”

Wowwwww THAT ESCALATED QUICKLY.

He gives 3 reasons why "that's not fair" is not a good thing to say. First:

First, you are right in saying that life isn’t fair.

Because it’s not fair that little children go to bed hungry this very night, having eaten nothing but a handful of rice, and here you’ve just had seconds on french fries. It’s not fair that some boys and girls grow up without a mother and father, orphaned by a war they didn’t start. It’s not fair that some children won’t even see many birthdays, succumbing to diseases we treat with immunizations and routine trips to the doctor.

Okay, this is called oppression olympics. It's when someone says you're not allowed to complain or advocate for justice on some issue when there are other issues in the world that are worse. Apparently, we need to imagine the worst possible suffering that someone in the world is experiencing, and ONLY THAT PERSON is allowed to speak up about how badly they are suffering. Everyone else doesn't get to complain; they should be grateful that their life isn't as bad.

Oppression olympics is just RIDICULOUS. I believe that everyone deserves to have a happy and healthy life- I believe that's how it is in the kingdom of God, and we want the kingdom of God to come on earth as it is in heaven. So that's the standard we should use to measure someone's suffering- if something is hurting you or damaging your mental health, etc, then it shouldn't be that way and it's right to speak up and advocate for yourself and take steps to correct it. For practical reasons, we can't always fix those problems, but that's the ideal we should try for.

But in oppression olympics, we use the worst example of poverty as the "standard", and everyone whose life is above that "standard" has no right to complain.

(I'd also like to point out: He says "you and me and all of us in prosperous, free America" have it so good compared to those poor kids elsewhere in the world- and I don't like this. Because there is poverty in the US too. When I was little, I was taught "well when people talk about 'poverty' in the US, it's not really that bad, like they have TVs and stuff so it's not like it's *real* poverty." Drawing a big contrast between the US and "third world countries" and then being heartless toward poor people in the US. Darling's article doesn't say anything like that, but I am very uncomfortable with his assumption that everyone in the US is just fine in terms of getting their basic needs met.)

Note, however, that unlike me, Darling very much does NOT believe "everyone deserves to have a happy and healthy life." In the second point of his argument, he says:

Second, you really don’t want life to be fair.
...
Listen to the words of the prophet, Jeremiah, “It is of his mercies we are not consumed” (Lamentations 3:22).

In other words, because of our sin against Him, it is overwhelming mercy that we are not immediate targets of His judgement. Instead, we are beneficiaries of His grace. We really don’t want God to be fair, but to be just.

What’s unfair is Jesus’ assuming our wrath and guilt on the cross on our behalf so we could be restored to a right relationship with God.

Yep, there it is. The idea that since we're all sinners, we deserve to die and go to hell, so nobody should ever complain about anything bad that happens, because really we deserve so much worse. I used to believe that.

This is spiritual abuse. How can a person cope, when bad things happen, when they believe they're not allowed to feel "this isn't right and I deserve better"? How can a victim stand up for themself when they're treated unfairly, if they believe they actually deserve worse?

Wax's article, "He Lets Us Live" is all about this, so we'll just go ahead and take a little break from looking at Darling's article and switch over to Wax's. He tells about when his 10-year-old daughter prayed, "Thank you, Lord, for letting David live another year" on her brother David's 5th birthday. Wax writes about how using the word "letting" there feels very strange because David hadn't been in any life-threatening situations that past year. Wax hadn't been thinking about the possibility that David might not survive to reach his 5th birthday. But, he says in his post, he should have been thinking that way. He should have been like his daughter, thinking in terms of God "letting" them live.

The assumption undergirding my daughter’s prayer was that David’s life wasn’t necessary. Things didn’t have to be the way they had turned out. David didn’t deserve another year of life, and neither did we deserve another year of that little boy lighting up our home. The fact he lived to see his fifth birthday was just as much a gift of God’s grace as the day we brought him home from the hospital.

Now, it's one thing to say "hmm, a few hundred years ago, most children didn't even survive to adulthood, and now isn't it great we have vaccines and modern medicine, we should be thankful for those things," but that's not the angle Wax is taking in his post. This is not a post about advances in medical technology. It's about how, apparently, his 5-year-old son doesn't deserve to be alive, and we should all be thankful that God performs acts of amazing mercy, day after day, in not just letting the boy die.

Like, holy hell that is abusive.

The next part of Wax's article says this:

Who knows how many accidents were averted in David’s fifth year? Who knows how close death was to our door? Who could count how many times God rearranged the flow of cells in the body to ensure that our son wasn’t struck by an illness that could take his life? Who knows how many accidents could have upended our family’s life and health? Every day, we zoom past hundreds or thousands of cars. Every day, our bodies could degenerate and die. Every day, we take our safety for granted. And every day, we are sustained by the hand of a good and sovereign God. Grace, when we deserve judgment.

All right, yeah I've heard Christians talking along these lines before. Imagining all sorts of hypothetical dangers that God "saved" us from and therefore we never ever realized we were in danger. In my opinion, it's absurd and meaningless because none of this is real. It's just our imagination making stuff up, and there's no evidence. There could never be any evidence, by definition, because these are things God prevented from happening. What's the point? You wanna make up a bunch of imaginary disaster scenarios and then thank God for stopping them all from happening? Okay, that's just a silly game in your head. None of it is real.

And then this, which is extremely bad advice in terms of mental health:

In my mind, I know these truths. I know my breaths are undeserved. I know that every moment I get with my kids is a gift and that their lives, like mine, are sustained by the sovereign ruler of the universe. Oh, but too often there is a gap between our theological knowledge and the assumptions we live with! Our theoretical knowledge doesn’t seep down deep into our hearts and then find expression in our prayers and in our words and in our gratitude for existence.
...
Why not say something so beautiful every night? Thank you, Lord, for letting me live to see another day!

He's talking about how Christians say they believe this or that, but they don't follow those things to their logical conclusions. If we say we believe we don't deserve good things, we deserve to go to hell... well if you take that to its logical conclusion, you will literally end up thanking God every day, almost surprised you didn't die, on an intense roller coaster between fear and overwhelming joy. Living in a constant state of anxiety because you truly do believe that God would be well within their rights to just kill you at any moment.

Wowwww. And here is Trevin Wax telling us that's what we should strive for.

(Note: I would like to point out that Wax never actually gives a reason to support his assertion that we don't deserve to live. I assume it's because he believes we are sinners that deserve to die and go to hell, but he doesn't say it explicitly in this particular post.)

All right, let's get back to Darling's article, because he still has a bunch more to say:

And on a more personal, pragmatic, earthly level, we should ask ourselves: Do we really want God to even out the score? For us in wealthy, rich America, that might mean taking some things away from us and giving them to the less fortunate. Or someone more appreciative.

Uhhhh... wait.

Isn't this what we should be doing, though? Those of us with more money and privilege should use that to help other people. We should give what we're able to give- counting the cost, of course. I find it extremely weird that Darling says it like it's a threat. As if we should be properly grateful while we hold on tight to the money and privilege we were born into, and that's just fine because we have the correct feelings of gratitude toward God.

Also, God taking away things from the rich and giving to the poor is literally what the kingdom of God is- at least in my understanding. Like, has Darling read the bible? There's A LOT in there about how rich people who hoard their wealth should WATCH OUT because God is going to come and set things right some day. In Darling's post, he writes it like a threat that we can avoid by not ever saying "that's not fair", like something that's not real, just a thought experiment to prove that we don't *really* want things to be fair- but, umm, this is what is ACTUALLY GOING TO HAPPEN AT THE RESURRECTION.

Like... have you read the bible?

(To be fair, later in the article he does say we should have "a healthy sense of justice" where we take action to help those who have less than us.)

On to Darling's third point:

Third, an ungrateful and entitled heart is evidence of a deeper problem with God.

This is what worries me most about entitlement. It is saying to God: I do not trust you to be my Father, to take care of my needs, to love me and care for me.

Worse, it elevates self to a god-like position. Ingratitude says: I know better what is good for me. I’m a better god than God.

Umm. So no matter what's happening to you, you're not allowed to point out "hey, this isn't right"? You're not allowed to ever be unhappy, because that would be telling God that you don't like the way they're supposedly taking care of you? In this ideology, there's really no such thing as "bad things happening" because all of it is in "God's plan" and if you don't like it, you're saying "I'm a better god than God."

Policing emotions- yes, this is spiritual abuse.

Let me back up a bit and talk about children saying "that's not fair", which is the specific situation Darling's article addresses. Usually if children are saying this, it's because they see another child- maybe their sibling or friend- getting something that (they believe) is better than what they got.

Now, when I was a kid, I thought a lot of things "weren't fair", but now that I'm an adult I realize parents are flawed human beings who sometimes don't really know what to do and are just making it up as they go along, so that's why the rules end up being inconsistent from one sibling to another. As a child, I imagined my parents were always confident in their parenting approach, like they had decided on firm rules and were applying those rules differently to me and my siblings. But it wasn't like that.

When I was treated differently than my siblings, it was because the situation was different, or what I needed was different, or my parents realized that some rule they used to have wasn't actually a good rule so they changed it, etc. They weren't trying to making things "unfair." And I think that's what little kids need to understand when they say "that's not fair." Instead of having adults just dismiss it and tell them it's wrong for them to speak up when things are "not fair."

Because, even if kids don't realize that their situation differs from their siblings' and nobody is actually trying to treat them worse, their natural drive to stand up for themselves is a GOOD THING. But Darling is saying we should teach our kids that it's wrong for them to speak up when somebody mistreats them.

You should be glad that your kid is strong and confident and won't accept it when they're being treated unfairly. Even though sometimes that righteous anger is misdirected because the kid doesn't understand you're in a situation where it doesn't make practical sense to give every kid the exact same treatment.

I'm only learning now, as an adult, to advocate for myself. How to have boundaries. How to know my own needs, communicate about them, and take steps to make sure those needs are met. Because as a child I learned in church "Jesus first, others second, myself last." And that it's "selfish" and sinful to focus too much on getting what I want. That I could be "making it an idol." I shouldn't care about my own needs; I should just "put God first" and it will all work out.

And it feels like teaching your kid "it's wrong to say 'that's not fair'" is setting them up for this same I-only-just-now-realized-my-mental-health-actually-matters process I went through.

So. To sum up: As a kid, I learned in church that "you don't want justice" because "justice" means we all die and go to hell- that's what we deserve because we're sinners who don't deserve anything good. And look, I got the receipts, I got two articles on it. Conservative Christians really do literally teach this. It's spiritual abuse, and I'm so glad I don't believe it any more and I can see it for how harmful it is. Now I believe in the kingdom of God instead. In the kingdom of God, everyone deserves happiness.

--------------

Related:
I Deserve God's Love
Yes, I Want Justice (A post about white evangelicals and #BlackLivesMatter)