In evangelical ideology, sin is bad because it separates you from God, not because you hurt another person

Image text: "Isaiah 61:1a. The spirit of the sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor." Image source.

Here's a good post from Sheila Wray Gregoire: Who Is the Real Victim When Men Lust? Every Man’s Battle Says It’s Men! It's about how the book "Every Man's Battle" (a best-selling book in Christian culture) seems to have the assumption that the reason it's bad when a man lusts is that it damages the man's purity. The authors of "Every Man's Battle" don't seem to have any awareness of how men's lust can be harmful to the women who are being objectified/harassed/assaulted because of that lust.

This is a very good point, and I want to talk about how it connects to evangelical Christianity's overall concept of what sin is, and what the gospel is. 

Evangelicalism teaches that this is the main message of Christianity, the "good news" we are supposed to share with the world: We have all sinned, and therefore we all deserve to go to hell. God cannot tolerate any sin at all- only perfect people who have never sinned can be in God's presence. But, fortunately, Jesus lived a perfect sinless life and died for us. This solves the problem of us being separated from God because of our sin (which is the biggest problem we have)- when we believe in Jesus, God forgives our sins, and we can go to heaven.

In this framing, when someone sins, it's bad because it means they have committed a terrible offense against a holy and perfect God, and therefore they deserve to go to hell. They desperately need Jesus' forgiveness. When I was a little kid, hearing gospel presentations in Sunday school, it was all about making us feel bad for how terrible we are because we are sinners and God is judging us.

So when they talk about "sin", as an abstract concept, it leads us to have empathy for the sinner. We feel bad for them because they are in danger of going to hell, and we want to save them. And also, we can't really judge them too much, because we are sinners too.

There's very little concern for the victims of your sin- the people you are sinning against. Actually, the way that I understood the definition of "sin" when I was evangelical, it doesn't even need to have a victim. It just meant I was breaking God's rules. Like if I had a selfish thought, or I didn't prioritize my daily bible reading, or if I dated someone that God didn't give me permission to date.

(The example that really takes the cake is Psalm 51, where David writes, "Against you, you only, have I sinned". Yeah, this is after David raped Bathsheba, then when he found out she was pregnant, he had her husband killed, and married her, then the prophet Nathan came and said that was wrong, and as a punishment, the baby would die. In David's prayer of repentance he says, "Against you, you only, have I sinned" as if the problem was just between him and God and didn't really affect anyone else.)

Reading arguments from gay Christians in support of same-sex relationships, that's where I came across the idea that sin is defined as something that hurts people, and it blew my mind. I had never thought about sin that way before. Upon hearing this, I listed a few commonly-recognized sins- lying, stealing, cheating on one's spouse- and was surprised to find that they did share a common thread of you're doing harm to another person. Was that really what "sin" meant? Well, Romans 13:8-10 says it is:

Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

The apostle Paul is saying here that all you need to know is "Love your neighbor as yourself." Similarly, Jesus said the 2 greatest commandments are to love God and love your neighbor as yourself, and "All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." Sin is *not* about reading through the bible and making a list of everything God said not to do, however arbitrary it may seem. Sin is hurting people. 

And the gospel... In evangelicalism, the gospel is good news for people who feel bad about their sin and worry that it means they will go to hell. Evangelicalism claims that this is the main problem that we need to be saved from. But check this out; I believe something completely different now: I believe the gospel is good news for the victims, for the marginalized, for those who are suffering, for those who are suffering the effects of other people's sin.

Sin is not just between you and God, where you did something bad, and so you are deserving of sympathy because now you are at risk of going to hell. No, sin affects other people, and the sympathy should be for the people on the receiving end of it.

The starkest example I have experienced, of these two opposite ways of understanding "sin" and "the gospel", was when I was part of a Christian group in college, and we were planning a series of events we called Human Trafficking Awareness Week. (I wrote about this in 2013: How "the gospel" almost stopped us from fighting human trafficking.) We knew that human trafficking was bad, and we wanted to raise awareness and take action against it. And also, we were evangelical, so we felt it was important to "share the gospel" at our outreach events.

But we couldn't figure out how to get from "let's fight human trafficking" to the gospel. We thought long and hard, and couldn't come up with anything that could work as a natural connection between the two. We believed the message of "the gospel" was "you, as an individual, have sinned against God, and so you deserve to go to hell, but good news! Jesus forgives you!" And that didn't seem to have anything to do with the realities of injustice in the world, and our obligation to take action to fight it.

And now I'm like, really? Seriously? We couldn't figure out how freedom for the captives has anything to do with the main message of Christianity? I guess we never paid attention to how Jesus began his ministry on earth by proclaiming:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,

    because he has anointed me

    to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners

    and recovery of sight for the blind,

to set the oppressed free,

     to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

Proclaim good news to the poor! Set the oppressed free! Freedom for the captives! *This* is what Jesus came to do. It's not about how every individual needs to make a private spiritual deal with God in order to escape hell; it's about transforming this world into the kingdom of heaven, defined by love, justice, and freedom.

That's the gospel. And, I would say, if our Christianity is not "good news to the poor", then it's not good news at all; it's not the gospel. 

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And also, I didn't want to get into this because it could be a whole separate post, but: the power dynamics about what sorts of "sins" result in people being shamed and labelled as "sinners." Why is it that when Christians say someone is "living in sin", they mean a couple who is living together and presumably having sex, without being married? Why don't we say that employers who don't pay their workers a living wage are "living in sin"?

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Related:

Being Right vs Doing Good

"The Big Wide Welcome" (kids' book review) 

Forgiveness for Sins You Don't Know You've Committed

Why did I think David was the good guy in the story of Abigail?

Don't Protect God

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

"Christians Aren't Perfect" When It's Convenient

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

Cross. Image source.

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

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The evangelical take on this question

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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But then I read James Cone

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Also, American Christians should all read James Cone.

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

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

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

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

Some quotes from the paper:

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

and

Christianity is an abusive theology that glorifies suffering.

and

No one was saved by the death of Jesus.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Click here to go to the beginning of the series.

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Related:

"The South is Crucifying Christ Again"

Blogaround (1/18/23)

Good Friday is R-Rated 

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

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

"On earth as it is in heaven" 

Sure Of What We Hope For

When You Believe God is Out to Get You

A rock with the words "God answers prayer" on it. Image source.

I recently posted this link, Asylum-seekers thought they were following the rules. Now some are told to start over, and I have some more things I want to say about it.

The article is about how the MAGA government is using this strategy to screw over immigrants who are applying for asylum: Find some minor part of the process that wasn't done exactly according to the rules, and then say that it invalidates the whole process. (And in some cases, it was not the applicant's fault- they didn't have an interview because the government did not have any available times to do interviews.)

On one level, I understand that people can make the argument that this is what the rules say, so this is how it should work- if you don't follow all the steps correctly, then you don't get approved. But take a step back and ask what the overall goal is. For these MAGAs, it appears to me that the goal is to deport as many immigrants as possible. So they're looking for anything they can use as a reason to reject someone's application. 

But the original intention of the asylum system is this: Some people are forced to leave their home countries because they are genuinely in danger. In that kind of situation, they *should* have the right to live in the US. And if you're thinking about it from this perspective, you don't reject people just because they didn't do every single step perfectly. You give them support to help them through all the steps, and/or just don't make it an issue if some of the less-important steps aren't quite done perfectly.

These 2 contrasting perspectives- which I'll call "the government is out to get you" vs "people *should* get approved if they genuinely meet the criteria"- well, they made me think about how evangelicals talk about God. Is God out to get us, or do They genuinely want to help people?

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The most obvious example of "God is out to get you" is the evangelical teaching about salvation. Who goes to heaven, and who goes to hell? Well, evangelicals believe this: Everyone deserves to go to hell. You have to be totally perfect and sinless to go to heaven. Yeah, sure, God loves us, God wants us to go to heaven, he's sad that we're all going to hell- but his hands are tied. That's the rules. If you have committed any sin at all, at any point in your life, you deserve to go to hell, and so God has to send you to hell. 

Oh, but, good news, God figured out a workaround. Jesus came and died on the cross, to take all our sins onto himself, so that we would appear to be perfect and sinless and therefore can go to heaven. But, in order to get your sins forgiven, you have to "pray the prayer" to "ask Jesus into your heart." You have to believe the correct things about Jesus. You have to really really sincerely believe. If you jump through those hoops correctly, then God is allowed to let you into heaven. If not, well, his hands are tied. 

Yes, apparently God loves all of us, but rules are rules, and if people didn't believe the correct things in the correct way and have the correct attitude in their hearts, sadly God just can't let them into heaven. They will be tortured in hell forever. I was taught that this was the gospel, this was the central message of Christianity, this is what we need to tell the world.

But, sometimes people would ask, what about someone who has never heard of Jesus? It doesn't seem fair for them to go to hell if they never had a chance to do all those correct steps to get to heaven. 

When I was evangelical, and non-Christians brought up this point to argue that God is being unfair, I answered by saying "well, one idea I've heard is 'people will be judged based on what they knew.' God will determine if you *would have* believed in Jesus, if given the chance, and let you into heaven on that basis." 

I said it like this- "one idea I've heard"- because I didn't know if that was for real. Sure, it seems better and more fair to say "people will be judged based on what they knew"- but is that in the bible anywhere? Are we just making this up to feel better about our religion? Carving out this exception for people who have never heard of Jesus- is that really valid?

Plus, it leads to all kinds of contradictions with other evangelical beliefs. If it's true that people go to heaven even if they've never heard of Jesus but "would have" believed, then it's not really so important for Christians to go into all the world as missionaries and tell people about Jesus. In fact, perhaps people have a better chance of getting into heaven if they've never heard, because then God judges them based on this "what if you had heard about Jesus in an ideal way" standard- maybe that gives them a better chance than "they kinda sorta heard about Jesus but not in that much detail, and so they never really gave it any thought, and didn't convert to Christianity." 

But you very much do NOT see Christians saying "hey, maybe we *shouldn't* be missionaries, because 'God judges people based on what they knew.'" Instead, you see Christians saying "We NEED to send missionaries to tell everyone about Jesus, to save them from hell! !!! This is so important! People are in danger of going to hell! This is something worth giving your life for!" 

No, this "God judges based on what they knew" idea isn't something that evangelicals truly believe and have thought through the implications of. It's just something we say when someone raises the objection that the criteria to get into heaven seem unfair. To be consistent with the rest of evangelical Christian ideology, you'd have to believe that God's hands are tied- he loves people and wants them to go to heaven, but rules are rules and there's nothing he can do about it.

The question of "what if someone didn't believe in Jesus because they've never heard" is sort of the easiest one. For all the other reasons that someone might not believe in Jesus because they had a bad experience with Christianity, evangelicals don't discuss whether there might be some kind of carve-out exception to help them. No. Rules are rules. God's hands are tied.

For example, what if someone is gay, and Christians are so mean to them about it, that they leave the church and don't believe in Jesus? What if someone is sexually abused by their pastor, and Christians are so heartless and victim-blamy about it, that they leave Christianity behind? What if someone really really wants to believe in God, and they pray and pray for God to show them They are real, they try everything they can, and they never get any response from God, so they give up on it? No, evangelicals think all these people are going to hell. Rules are rules.

As I said in my 2015 post When Christians Say "We're Sorry":

If Christians really are sorry, they know that people need to heal on their own terms.

But of course, like I said earlier, believing in hell screws this all up. Because how sorry can you really be, and how much freedom can you really allow a victim to have, when you believe in a God who won't care about that on judgment day? When you believe in a God who doesn't care that church people hurt this person, and for their own mental and emotional health, they never went to church again... when you believe in a God who says you're out if you don't believe these specific doctrines about Jesus- no excuses.

How sorry can you really be when you worship a God who puts "the gospel" above caring for victims?

If all this is true, I want to ask this question: Does God actually want people to go to heaven?

Yeah, I know the evangelical answer to that is of course God wants everyone to go to heaven! God wants it so much that he came and died for us!

But then, why are so many people failing to get "saved" because of reasons that don't really feel like good enough reasons to send someone to hell? Doesn't it seem like, if God really wanted people to go to heaven, They could set up a different system, to genuinely help people get on the path to get there? Rather than rejecting a huge proportion of humanity because they didn't believe the "right" things in the "right" way.

And yeah, I know the evangelical answer to this is, well those people must have not *really* wanted to follow God. On some level, they wanted to rebel against God, and these other factors are just excuses. God gives us free will, and some people choose to reject him. He respects their decision. (And sends them to hell for it.)

I know that's the "answer," but I don't buy it.

Also, many evangelicals have experienced salvation anxiety- ie, the worry that perhaps, when we prayed to commit our lives to Jesus, we didn't quite do it in *exactly* the right way, and therefore we're not really "saved" and we're going to hell. Maybe we didn't say the right words, or maybe we didn't "really mean it." So much worry and psychoanalyzing yourself. It's common for evangelicals to "pray the prayer" many many times, just in case all the previous times you somehow did it wrong. Children praying to Jesus every night to save them from hell, and still constantly worried that they didn't quite have the right feelings or right motivations, so what if it didn't "count"?

I submit to you that this is not a God that wants people to go to heaven. This is a God who is out to get us.

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There are plenty of other circumstances where Christians believe that God set up some kind of thing for people's benefit, but people didn't quite follow all the technicalities of all the rules, and so missed out on the entire thing. We should be asking, did God actually want people to have those benefits, or not? Setting up a system of confusing rules, where one mistake means you fail the entire thing. Doesn't seem like something one would do if one wanted people to actually succeed.

For example, you're praying for something, and it doesn't happen. You keep praying for it, for a long time, and it still doesn't happen. What gives? Doesn't the bible say "whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours"? Didn't Jesus say, "You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it"? And yet many people have the experience of praying for something for a long time, and God doesn't make it happen.

Well, the evangelical answer for this is that these biblical promises about prayer come with all kinds of caveats. Maybe the problem is that you prayed for something that was outside of God's will. Maybe the problem is that you prayed with the wrong motives. Maybe the problem is that you have some sin in your life that you haven't repented of, and so God is refusing to answer your prayers.

A lot of Christians have had the experience of wanting something so bad- something very serious, like for a family member to be healed of a serious medical problem- and trying everything they possibly can to get their prayers to "work." Trying so hard to make sure you have the right feelings and the right motives while praying. Trying so hard to make sure you're not doing anything that God might interpret as sinful. Troubleshooting. Why isn't this working?

Yeah, the model we're working with here is that God has set up a system where They answer prayers. God's power to give us whatever we ask is right there, available to us. But you have to do all of the steps perfectly. If you don't quite meet all of the criteria completely perfectly, well, that must be the reason God isn't answering your prayer.

Kind of makes you wonder if God actually wants to answer prayers at all. Rules are rules, God's hands are tied... But maybe if They actually wanted to answer prayers, if They actually wanted these promises to mean anything, They could have gone about this differently. 

Another example: Years ago, I had some health problems, and that caused me to no longer believe in the concept of "trusting God." Because, apparently I can't "trust God" to not let health problems derail my whole life. What does "trusting God" even mean, if apparently this is within the range of things which God is okay with allowing to happen to me? Trust him to do what, exactly? Not letting my internal organs try to ruin my life for no reason is apparently NOT something I can trust God for.

Anyway, I once told a Christian friend my whole sad story about my health problems and why I don't trust God. (This was way after it had happened, and I wasn't having those problems any more.) And she said, "Maybe God was trying to teach you something."

Ugh. Geez. Maybe God was trying to teach me something. Yeah, this is something that Christians believe, that God allows bad things to happen to us because They have "a plan" and maybe They're trying to teach us to love Them more or be a better person or something like that.

And I said, "Well then God did a bad job, because I didn't learn anything from this, and that's not my fault." See normally, in this ideology, it would be *my fault*, that God made these bad things happen to me, with some high-minded purpose about teaching me something important, and I totally missed that message- that would be my fault. Must have been because I didn't have the right attitude, I didn't pray the right way, whatever, that's how I missed out on this very important lesson that God wanted to teach me by [checks notes] making me feel sick all the time. My fault. Not God's.

If God wanted to teach me something, maybe They could have gone about it in a different way. Also, isn't God all-knowing? They knew this wasn't gonna work, but They did it to me anyway? This God seems really bad at planning.

You have to ask, did this God actually want to teach me something, or not?

---

Here's what it all adds up to: In this ideology, there are amazing wonderful things that God wants to give us because God loves us so much. But, any little mistake on our part might ruin the whole thing. These big grand promises about how God loves everyone and wants everyone to go to heaven, how God is so eager and ready to answer prayer and to give us good things- contrast that with the reality that oh, apparently only a small percentage of people are able to get those good things, because everyone else makes some minor mistake and therefore loses out on the whole thing.

Kinda looks like God doesn't actually want to do those things for us.

I wish Christians would stop asking "what did I do wrong, that is stopping God from answering my prayers" and instead ask "why did God set up a system where you only get your prayers answered if you pray in the exact perfect way, and then not do anything to help us know what that exact perfect way is?"

Because, isn't the point that we are not perfect, and that's okay, God loves us and meets us where we are? We were not able to reach God, so God came down to us. We aren't able to be good enough on our own, but God's love makes up for it. Isn't that what Christianity is about? "We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans." "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." "We love because he first loved us.""

As for me, I'm a Christian, but I don't pray and I don't believe God intervenes in the world, because of questions like this. When you believe God intervened in some specific way to help you with some specific thing you experienced, then that raises all sorts of questions about all of the times that God did not intervene to help people, and however you answer those questions, it can't lead to anywhere good. It leads to victim-blaming, or perhaps a belief that God has biases about who is worth helping and who isn't. No, I don't believe in that.

When Christians give all sorts of reasons why it's right for God to send someone to hell for not believing the right things, or why God's not helping you or answering your prayers because of some little thing you didn't do perfectly, this isn't a God who genuinely loves people and wants to help them. This is a God who is out to get you.

---

Related: 

ICE and Hell 

I'm SO HAPPY I Won't Be Praying During Childbirth

I Didn't Like the Ocean in "Moana" Because it was Too Much Like God

ICE and Hell

Sticks. Image source.

While the Israelites were in the wilderness, a man was found gathering wood on the Sabbath day. Those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron and the whole assembly, and they kept him in custody, because it was not clear what should be done to him. Then the Lord said to Moses, “The man must die. The whole assembly must stone him outside the camp.” So the assembly took him outside the camp and stoned him to death, as the Lord commanded Moses.

Numbers 15:32-36

What do you do with this passage, if you're a good Christian who believes in biblical inerrancy?

The first time reading it, there's a shock, your conscience jumps up and says NO, this is not fair. But you know you can't listen to your conscience, if it says the bible is wrong about something, if it says God was wrong about something. No, you are a good Christian who believes the bible. So, you have to find a way to believe that it was right that this man was executed for the "crime" of gathering wood on the Sabbath.

The apologetics arguments get trotted out. You see, God's laws were very serious, and people DID deserve to die for breaking them. You see, this man was blatantly disrespecting God, acting like he knew better than God. You see, this was around the time period when the Israelites had just come out of Egypt and were establishing themselves as a new nation, setting up their laws to say what kind of nation they would be- and so it was very important to their national identity that everyone got the message that those laws were serious.

There are 2 choices here. You could continue to assert that this was not fair- the bible is wrong about this, God was wrong about this. You would need to change your whole religion. You would need to change your whole perspective on what the bible is, and what kind of God you follow. You would need to ask uncomfortable questions about why the good Christian role models in your church believe in that kind of a God. Or, the second option, you can just make yourself believe everything is fine. That Sabbath-breaker really did deserve to die. The moral of this bible story is, don't gather sticks on the Sabbath if God said not to. Don't break any of God's laws, no matter how minor, because then you'll deserve to die too. Then it will be right for God to order your execution.

---

Most Christians don't know this bible story, about the man who was executed for gathering sticks on the Sabbath. Evangelicals talk a big game about how the bible is so important and special and inerrant and we have to devote ourselves to reading it every day, memorizing it, every single verse is inspired by God and authoritative over our lives. They always talk about that, but very very few actually do it. Very very few have read the whole bible. I was one of the nerds who actually did.

You go to any Sunday school class and ask people what they think about the story of the man who was executed for gathering wood on the Sabbath, and the overwhelming majority will have no idea what you're talking about.

In a way, it's the truly devoted bible nerds who have it the hardest- the way we have to kill our consciences. Sure, churches are full of people saying "we believe the bible" but they don't even know what they're saying. The apologetics nerds know. The apologetics nerds know that we have signed on to worship a God who ordered a man to be executed for gathering wood on the Sabbath. We know. We have done the work of killing our consciences so we can continue to be good Christians who worship this God.

Especially the bible nerds who are children. Adults all around them, telling them "wow it's so great that you're reading the bible all the time." Adults who perhaps don't know what's in the bible- and the kids don't know that the adults don't know. The kids hear "it's so great that you're reading the bible" and understand it to mean "yes, we all believe it was right that this man was executed for gathering wood on the Sabbath, and you need to believe that too, to be a good kid."

But even though most evangelicals don't know this bible story, here are some things they do openly preach: Every sin is an infinite offense against a holy God. All of us deserve to go to hell, because we are all sinners. 

Yes, really. When I was a child, I was taught that since I had committed some average sins that children commit, like hitting my sister, that meant I deserved to die and go to hell. But, they said, the good news is, Jesus came and died on the cross to take our sins away- if we believe in Jesus, we can get out of the punishment we deserve, and go to heaven instead.

(Very interesting that when telling this "good news," you don't need to mention anything about the Resurrection...)

How does this make sense? How can someone deserve to be tortured forever in hell because of some little mistakes they made? Well, according to this ideology, "every sin is an infinite offense against a holy God." In other words, because God is so perfect, even if your sin is just a little bit wrong, it is magnified to be this huge, disgusting, horrific crime, when you look at it in comparison to the holiness of God. God is so perfect, and that's why we all deserve to go to hell.

We all deserve to go to hell. But, fortunately, we can believe in Jesus, to get out of it. But there was always the feeling that it was in some sense wrong that we could escape hell in this way. *We* don't deserve it- it's Jesus covering us, covering up who we really are, to sneak us into heaven. Evangelicals literally say that if you believe in Jesus, "when God looks at you, he doesn't see your sin, he sees Jesus' sinlessness covering you."

Sometimes I happen across non-Christians who seem to assume that Christianity is meant to be about helping people and making the world better, and it's always a bit jarring to me because, where did they get that idea, that is very much NOT what I was taught Christianity is about, in the evangelical church. Or I happen across Christians who were raised in progressive churches, who believe Christianity is about helping people and making the world better, and talk about it like it's the most natural thing- this also shocks me. 

(See: Nothing about the Good News Club shocks me)

Because, yes, I'm still a Christian but I'm not evangelical any more; yes, now I do believe Christianity should be about helping people and making the world better. As Jesus taught us to pray, "Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." But damn, how hard I had to fight to get here. When I was evangelical, I believed that the main point of Christianity is that we're all sinners who deserve to go to hell, but Jesus died to save us, and we need to spread the good news, to help people escape hell. That stuff about helping people and making the world better, sure, that's nice, we should also do that, but not too much- we don't want it to be a distraction that takes our focus away from the main point, preaching about sin and hell and Jesus' death that saves us. 

Wouldn't it be terrible if we helped people have a better life on earth, but then they went to hell for eternity?

Actually, having compassion for "sinners"/ victims of tragedies might be a bad thing, because it might make us lose sight of how serious God's law is, how BAD sin is- any little tiny sin means that people deserve to go to hell. Kill your conscience before it deceives you into believing there's something wrong with God's justice.

---

Sometime around 2014, the Black Lives Matter movement gained momentum, and revealed how common it is that unarmed Black people are killed by police. Frequently when this happens, the police and/or random people on the internet come up with all kinds of justifications for why the Black victim deserved to die. Oh, he was a suspect in a robbery. Oh, he didn't comply with the police officer's commands. Oh, he was arrested for using drugs, one time, years ago. Oh, he was wearing a hoodie. Oh, we pored over all his social media and found a photo he posted where he kinda looks like a gang member.

Your conscience jumps up and tells you NO, this is not fair, but then society's anti-black racism supplies you with all these stories you can tell yourself, to get your conscience to calm down and accept everything is okay. Just like with the man in the bible who gathered wood on the Sabbath, wouldn't it be easier to just believe he deserved it? 

Christians who believe in biblical inerrancy have been trained to accept these flimsy justifications for why someone deserved to die for some kind of minor "sin."

(And also, the reason the slogan "Black Lives Matter" is used is to very intentionally NOT make the argument "this specific victim didn't deserve to die, because they were a good person and did things right." To NOT get dragged into arguments about whatever minor things a victim may have done wrong, but instead to say that NOBODY deserves to get shot in the street.)

---

When I was in college and really "on fire for God," I had it all figured out. You see, the reason that sometimes bad things happen is that we all deserve to go to hell anyway- this is God's justice. And the reason good things happen is God's mercy- God loves us and wants to give us good things, even though we don't deserve them.

This is actually a pretty Calvinist way of thinking- some evangelicals are Calvinist and some are not- and it's quite a tidy answer to the Problem of Evil. Maybe it's the only answer I've ever heard that holds together logically (besides just not believing in God at all). 

Why do tragic things happen? Why do people die in earthquakes? Why is there child abuse? Well, actually, we all deserve to have those things happen. Actually, we deserve worse- we all deserve to go to hell. So really, you can't complain about this stuff- you deserve worse. 

It's logical, but it's monstrous.

Better to not have an answer to the Problem of Evil, than to believe in this.

---

The story about the man who gathered sticks on the Sabbath comes from the Old Testament, around the time that God was giving the Law to Moses. In the New Testament, Jesus came along and did things a little differently. He treated people with kindness and love, rather than judging them for their sins. People criticized him for spending time with tax collectors and prostitutes and other "sinners."

Evangelicals believe we should follow Jesus' example. We should also show love to sinners (ie, everyone), rather than being mean to them about it. 

But there's always a sense that there was something a little bit... wrong about what Jesus did. That in reality, these people really were sinners, and they really did deserve to go to hell, and Jesus sort of offered them a temporary oasis of acceptance that wasn't really *right*, from the perspective of God's justice. And when we follow Jesus' example, and we love "sinners", we hope that this convinces them to believe in Jesus and get saved- otherwise yeah they'll go to hell, and they'll deserve it.

The message that evangelicals preach is "God loves you even though you are a sinner who deserves to go to hell." Yes, really, literally, they really say this- this isn't me rephrasing it to make it sound worse- they literally put it this way, and they think it's good news. 

I have also literally heard evangelicals say we need to "love the unlovable." Show kindness toward everyone, but always remember they don't deserve it. But that doesn't mean we're better than other people- remember, we also don't deserve anything good.

The message is not "you deserve God's love." LOL! Oh my goodness, LOLOLOLOL! Of course not! HA!

No, the message is: you deserve to go to hell, but fortunately God is doing something that's a little bit wrong, in a certain sense- to let Jesus' suffering count as payment for your sins, so you don't have to go to hell. Be thankful that Jesus lets you sneak in through this loophole, because you sure as hell don't deserve it.

(The Slacktivist has written [here's one link, but if you know of additional links from his blog, please help me out and leave a comment, I remember he has written other posts about this] about how this is sort of contradictory- how evangelicals believe that people deserve to go to hell, but at the same time, we need to warn them about hell, and tell them the good news about Jesus, so they can avoid hell- and if you're too scared to "share the gospel" with your friends, you should feel bad, it's partly your fault if your friends go to hell. So, it's right for God to send people to hell, but also, we should try to prevent it. What?)

But now, I'm not evangelical, and now, I believe people deserve God's love, simply because we are people. We deserve happiness. We all deserve the opportunity to live a good life. Damn, how hard I had to work to get here.

---

Right now, we're seeing a lot of news articles about ICE deporting undocumented immigrants in the US. And what I fear is, evangelicals will say, well, it's fine, they were here illegally, so, they deserve it, right? 

For any small sin we commit, we deserve to die and go to hell. So how can you be upset if someone commits the "sin" of being undocumented, and then they get their whole life uprooted and get deported because of it?

We all deserve to go to hell. We all deserve to go to a prison in El Salvador.

---

But you may have noticed, isn't there a double standard? Isn't the president literally a felon- why does he get to be president, while other people's minor "crimes" mean they get deported?

And we see this in the bible too- there are bible characters who were killed by God for some minor "sin," while other bible characters who commit worse sins are held up as heroes and role models. King David raped Bathsheba and murdered her husband, and at the same time, King David is called "a man after God's own heart" and seen as a great follower of God, whose example we should learn from.

I would explain the logic like this: Yes, people deserve to die for their minor sins. If you read about this happening in the bible, and you are sad for the victims and you think it's unfair, well, you're challenging God. How dare you. But at the same time, yeah, God loves us and doesn't want to give us the punishment we deserve. Isn't it great, when we see people not getting the punishment they deserve? Isn't it great that David, though he was a sinner like we are, still got to be the king and was loved by God?

So basically what it shakes out to is: When bad things happen to some strangers far away, it's best if you can convince yourself to not care. Wouldn't it be easier to find some minor thing they did wrong, and to believe they deserved what happened to them? But when something bad happens to someone we can relate to, we care about them and we want to fight for them and help them. And we say, isn't it wonderful that God is merciful and forgiving?

(Hmm, this seems like it might be a little bit racist.)

(And, to clarify, I'm not saying *every* time something bad happens far away, evangelicals believe it's fine. I'm saying evangelicals believe it's fine when they have an incentive to believe that those who did it are "the good guys"- ie, God, the US government, etc.)

---

As I've said before, the belief that "we all deserve to go to hell" ruins anything good about Christianity. It can be used to excuse any kind of atrocity. I worry about what's going on right now with immigrants being deported. I worry because I know that evangelicals- who believe in the bible and believe in hell- have been trained not to care.

---

Related:

I Deserve God's Love 

Everyone Else's Nadab and Abihu Fanfics 

"Sodom and Gomorrah" is a story about living in a "bad neighborhood" 

"Christians Aren't Perfect" When It's Convenient

John Piper Said "There Are No Innocent Children" and I am Not the Least Bit Surprised 

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

The "Redemptive-Movement Hermeneutic" Argument for Queer Acceptance

Image text: "The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice. - MLK" Image source.

In my post about the book "Slaves, Women & Homosexuals," I said that while reading the beginning part of the book, I felt surprised at the way it introduced its "redemptive-movement hermeneutic" and then claimed that this line of interpretation does NOT lead to acceptance of same-sex relationships- I was surprised because I've heard queer Christians and allies make an argument along those exact lines. How could the book say such an argument wouldn't work? (Turns out the answer is, the sections in the book on homosexuality are extremely shallow. There's a lot to be said, and the book just doesn't say it.)

In this post, I want to point you to where you can read about the "redemptive-movement hermeneutic" in support of queer acceptance. (Not just related to same-sex relationships, but acceptance of all queer identities.) For the most part, I've learned about this from the Slacktivist (Fred Clark), so I want to post a whole bunch of links from his blog here:

Overview of what it means to read the bible from this perspective:

Don't Look At The Finger 

‘Are We Capable Of Welcoming These People?’ 

Come hear the music. Come join the dance. "He heard the music and he wanted to join the party, but those 'scriptural prohibitions' wouldn’t let him. I’ve heard that same frustrated, constrained longing to dance in many other voices over the years."

Maybe God Is A Better Person Than You Think

"You can't pick and choose people":

‘You Don’t Get To Pick And Choose’ "I simply do not agree with those who say that love is not the fulfillment of the law. They’re simply wrong. Paul said they were wrong. Jesus said they were wrong. The entire church in the book of Acts said they were wrong."

Jesus Is Not At All Like That (My Video For The NALT Christians Project) 

J.R. Daniel Kirk On The Heart Of The Gospel (This Is Not An Official Statement Of A Stance On An Issue) "The gospel means that no one is excluded. The gospel means that everyone can be a part of the people of God."

Peter's vision of the sheet full of animals:

‘God Has Shown Me That I Should Not Call Anyone Profane Or Unclean’ "'Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?' Peter asks. LGBT Christians have received the Holy Spirit just as we have. To withhold the water for baptizing them, to call them profane or unclean, is wrong — it is disobedient, unloving, hurtful, harmful, unbiblical. It’s a sin."

‘God Has Shown Me That I Should Not Call Anyone Profane Or Unclean’ (No. 2) "'It is unlawful,' Peter said, 'but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean.'"

Selfish Gentiles And ‘Shellfish Objections’: Timothy Dalrymple Vs. The Apostle Peter "Peter says that God sent him a vision telling him to welcome the outsiders that his Bible told him should be shunned as 'unclean.' Dalrymple says, No, God was merely telling him that a narrow portion of dietary Mosaic law was henceforth nonbinding for Christians."

Erick Erickson Says That The Apostle Peter Is An Idiot Who Doesn’t Understand The Vision God Gave To The Apostle Peter

Al Mohler Says The Apostle Peter Was Wrong And That’s Why Evangelicals Should ‘Focus On Homosexuality’ 

Evangelical Alliance Responds To Simon Peter’s Dangerous Sermon In Acts 11 

Slavery, Seafood, Sexuality And The Southern Bible "But Peter unsettles things by changing those words, saying instead that, 'God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean.'"

The Ethiopian eunuch:

I’m Guessing It’s Named After The Other Philip "'So, OK then,' the man says to Philip. 'I’m a queer black foreigner who works for the government of a Gentile queen. Is there any reason I can’t be baptized?' And Philip baptizes him."

Religious Gatekeepers Would Not Like Philip The Evangelist "Philip knew his Bible. He knew that there were dozens of clobber texts that would have authoritatively answered the eunuch’s question. 'What is to prevent me from being baptized?' But Philip did not recite those clobber texts. He hopped down and got in the water with his new friend."

Circumcision/ it's really rich when gentile Christians try to exclude people:

The Ugly Ingratitude Of The ‘Nashville Statement’ "Here’s the thing though: Paul’s opponents here were not wrong about what the Bible says. They insisted that 'the Bible is clear' in its teaching about circumcision, and it is. (Just ask Zipporah.) This was something that was never, ever optional. Everybody knew this. Everybody had always known this."

Titus Was Not Compelled To Reparative Therapy "The texts on circumcision are not ambiguous and they are too numerous to count. The Bible is eminently clear. It says that people like Titus cannot convert unless they are circumcised and pledge to follow the rules. Paul says no to that. He says people like Titus are his brothers and sisters, his full equals. Paul isn’t just contradicting a handful of obscure clobber-texts, he’s swimming against a powerful main current of scripture."

When Gatekeepers Attack (First-Century Edition) "If the gatekeepers of the circumcision faction and 'the biblical view of everything' had managed to bully Peter and Paul into submission, then Gentiles like myself would be in precisely the same predicament that LGBT Christians are today within evangelicalism."

‘I Would They Were Even Cut Off Which Trouble You’

---

Those are the links I have where the Slacktivist goes into detail about this argument. But I've also seen plenty of queer Christians and allies say things along similar lines, though not in as much detail. Basically, the idea that Jesus' message was about inclusion, especially among groups which were marginalized and rejected by society, and therefore in our culture that means acceptance of queer people.

I went to the GCN conference in 2017. (GCN is the Gay Christian Network- it later changed its name to Q Christian Fellowship.) And one of the songs we sang there was "Draw the Circle Wide," and, wow, that was really powerful, that was amazing. It was astounding to me to have a song about inclusion and acceptance of people be sung in a Christian setting like it was a worship song. That's... it's hard to even explain how different that is from my experience with worship songs, growing up evangelical. All the worship songs we sing in evangelical land are about how amazing God is and how we love God so much and we will do anything for God. Not really anything about, uh, the importance of treating people right, or anything along those lines at all. In evangelical land, they always say worship is "just about you and God."

Anyway, here's a youtube video of the song "Draw the Circle Wide":

My point is, queer Christians tend to believe that one of the most important foundational teachings of Christianity is love and acceptance, especially toward marginalized groups. This is the gospel, this is good news, this is the message Jesus preached, this is what Christians should proclaim to the world. This is, ahem, very DIFFERENT from how I understood the main message of Christianity when I was evangelical. And specifically, this is connected to the idea of a "redemptive-movement hermeneutic" because it's about continuing to expand the circle, continuing to accept more and more groups within society and welcome them into the church as full people.

---

One more note about "inclusion"

I always hear queer people talk about "we should accept everyone"- but actually, we shouldn't accept "everyone." We should not accept abusers, Nazis, etc... If some leader from the NRA shows up at your church, okay you should welcome them but they will need to repent or else they can't fully participate. You gotta "hate the sin, love the sinner" them.

When people talk about "accepting everyone" what they mean is, being accepting of people's differences *when those differences are personal identities/decisions that don't harm other people* (and/or when those differences are related to health/disability issues that require us to give some extra support so that people are able to fully participate). I guess this is assumed to be obvious, and that's why I don't hear people explicitly spelling it out. Personally, though, I feel that this is a step that is frequently missing in people's logical arguments about acceptance of queer identities, so I'm mentioning it here. 

And anti-queer Christians often make comparisons that are along these lines- like "well if we accept homosexuality then we have to accept bestiality too" really missing the point that acceptance of queerness is about changing from a "we follow these rules because the bible says" paradigm to a "we should act in ways that support other people so they can live good lives, and not harm anyone" paradigm. As if it's about changing from a "here are the bible's rules" paradigm to a "whateverrrrr, there are no rules" paradigm. But, fair enough, because queer people and allies really do go around saying "we accept everyone" when they don't actually mean that- they mean "we accept that everyone can make their own decisions in their own personal lives about things that do not harm others." 

And when I was evangelical and I first heard queer Christians presenting the idea that "sin" should be defined as *things that hurt people* (as Romans 13:9-10 says) rather than just *things the bible says not to do* that was MIND-BLOWING to me. The idea that "sin" could and should be defined that way was not on my radar AT ALL as an evangelical. (I believed that an important component of "faith" was following rules that somehow make sense to God even though they make no sense from a human perspective. Blah. No. Jesus said "by their fruit you will know them." MIND-BLOWING.) So I'm sorta inclined to cut them a little slack if they missed that implicit logical step when they heard people arguing for queer acceptance.

For Christians who accept queer people, a big component is DEFINITELY being able to see with your own eyes/ being able to read scientific research which says that accepting queer people's right to define our own identities and make our own decisions is so GOOD and LIFE-GIVING, while requiring us to repress ourselves is really terrible. I think this plays a huge role, but oddly it's not often mentioned in these arguments about why Christians should accept queer people.

The Slacktivist has some posts which address an aspect of this- specifically, the "why won't you tolerate my intolerance" nonsense. Here's a link: Shaving The Intolerant Barber (A Continuing Series).

---

Related:

"Slaves, Women & Homosexuals" (What is this book actually about?) 

Why would it be bad news if ancient Romans had loving gay relationships?

The Christianity of GCN Conference 

We Need Queer Theology

How to Pretend to Welcome Trans People 

Forgiveness for Sins You Don't Know You've Committed

There's a person on one side, the word "God" on the opposite side, and a chasm between them labelled "sin." Image source.

I read this blog post by Sildarmillion, Reflecting on the Act of Praying after Learning to Submit, where she talks about her view of prayer (coming from a Muslim perspective). Here's one part that struck me, and I want to talk about it:

On a different but related note, I also notice that people are constantly praying for forgiveness. I often wonder for what sins they are asking for forgiveness. More often than not, people are seeking forgiveness just in case they unconsciously made any mistakes. But they are not taking the time to reflect and think about whether they really made mistakes, and what mistakes those were. If they made mistakes, they just want God to forgive them for it, without engaging in the difficult task of actually thinking about it. They might make the same mistake every day, and they’ll keep asking for forgiveness every day, without ever learning what that mistake was. This just does not feel right to me. If God keeps forgiving them for it everyday, isn’t that like being given a free pass?

Of course I believe in praying for forgiveness for something I know that I have done wrong. Praying for forgiveness is an important part of healing, repentance, and atonement. But, I take issue with asking for forgiveness for mistakes I may have made unconsciously. I am not saying I should ignore mistakes I have made unconsciously. I am saying the opposite. I am saying I should try to become conscious of mistakes I have made unconsciously. I can understand praying to become conscious of those mistakes so I can properly rectify them. But I cannot support the idea of asking for forgiveness without me having to do any reflection or introspection on what it is that I have done wrong. I don’t like the idea of asking for forgiveness for my unconscious mistakes, so that it’s just taken care off, taken off my books, and I never have to do the difficult work of dealing with it. Yet, we are encouraged to always ask for forgiveness for unconscious mistakes. I can’t get behind it.

!!!!! This is such a good point!

I grew up evangelical; here's what I believed about sin, as an evangelical Christian: Sin is a problem because it separates us from God, and ultimately the result is going to hell. All of us sin, so we are disgusting to God and we all deserve to go to hell. (Only perfect sinless people go to heaven- but there aren't any, except Jesus.)

So, in the ideology, if Person A hurts Person B, we should be concerned for Person A because now they have committed a sin and they're going to hell, oh no! This is, uh, so incredibly backwards and messed-up... Like how about we care about Person B, the victim? Doesn't the victim deserve our compassion more than the perpetrator? But in this kind of evangelical ideology, when people talk about sin, it's like the victims don't even exist at all. 

An extreme example would be when a pastor sexually abuses a child, and then a lot of Christians come to the pastor's defense, saying it's not a big deal and we need to forgive him because "we all sin" and "there but for the grace of God go I" (meaning, "it's only because of God's grace that I didn't end up sexually abusing a child", uh, WTF?). They see the abuser and they say "that could have been me" and so they want to forgive him quickly. Very interesting that they don't look at the victim and say "that could have been me" and prioritize helping the victim. Very interesting. 

This ideology doesn't care about victims. You have to care about the one who sinned, because they're in danger of going to hell, poor thing.

So when I was a child, I prayed for Jesus to forgive my sins so I wouldn't go to hell- and yes, I sometimes did pray for forgiveness for sins I had committed without being aware of it. I wasn't taught that you literally have to pray for forgiveness for each specific sin after it's committed or else you go to hell- like if you die at the wrong point in the sin/forgiveness cycle then you go to hell. Going to hell because of a timing issue. No, my church didn't teach that, but I think there are some branches of Christianity which do. (For example, some Christians teach that you go to hell if you commit suicide- because there's no opportunity to ask for forgiveness in between the "sin" and when you die.) But still, even though I didn't believe I was at risk of going to hell for any sins I committed unaware, I was still worried that God would hold it against me. (Who knows what kind of little things God would hold against me? That was the kind of god I believed in back then.) So sometimes I did pray to be forgiven for sins I didn't even know about.

(And I'm curious about how Muslims think about these concepts- there are likely some big differences.)

I'm ex-evangelical now. I don't pray, and I'm suspicious of the general concept of forgiveness. (I believe the person who did something wrong should try to make it right- but also the victim is NOT obligated to forgive them. But if it's some small run-of-the-mill sin, the kind of thing where Person A and Person B both occasionally sin against each other because no one's perfect, then they should forgive each other.) And I no longer define "sin" as "things God says are bad" but as "things that hurt people." So it's been a long time since I've thought about the idea of praying for God to forgive you for sins you don't know you've committed.

But what Sildarmillion says makes perfect sense, and I can't believe I've never heard anyone put it that way before. If sin actually matters- if it actually hurts people- then wouldn't it be very important to find out when you've done something wrong, and learn from it so you can make it right and not do it again? If you believe that you can just ask God for forgiveness for sins you don't even know about, and They forgive you, and it's fine, well that only makes sense if you believe sin is something God arbitrarily decided to be mad at you about, for no real reason. (And yes, when I was evangelical, that is the kind of god I believed in.) I submit to you that this is kind of messed-up.

And, I have an example: Racism. 

So, I'm white, I'm from the US- I have benefitted from white privilege and systemic racism. And I didn't know about it. In school we learned that slavery and Jim Crow were very bad but fortunately Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr solved those problems and now everyone is equal. And of course I did my best to treat everyone the same. But that's not enough. Systemic racism is very real, and harms people, and if you just wander through life unaware of it, benefitting from it, well, that's a sin. Now, I don't blame white people for that, and I don't think it means we deserve to go to hell or anything like that- but we need to learn about the reality of it, and do what we can to change society so people really do have equal rights. So no, it wouldn't be helpful at all if God just "forgives" you and lets you keep on going, completely unaware.

So it doesn't make sense, this belief that you need God to forgive you for sins you don't know you've committed, without any belief that it actually matters what those sins were and maybe you need to learn from them and not commit them again. What good does it do, if you don't even know what you did wrong? That would only make sense if you believe sin is just some random technicality that God holds against you.

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Related:

My Racist Personal Relationship with God

"Christians Aren't Perfect" When It's Convenient 

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

Blogaround

1. The “Good News” Starts with Bad News (posted March 27) "Look around and see if you can find a guide to sharing the gospel that doesn’t start with bad news. I don’t think it exists." She's absolutely right, which is why I reject that "gospel."

2. The Violence of the Cross and Children: Thoughts Before Holy Week (posted 2018) "Under no other circumstance would we give five year olds a coloring page with a man whipping another man."

3. I Use A Wheelchair & Dating Involves Way More Planning Than It Should (posted March 29) "I’ve called ahead to ask a restaurant if it’s wheelchair accessible only to find that when they said “Yes,” what they actually meant was, “Yes, except for a couple steps and the close-together tables that actually make it very much not wheelchair accessible.”"

4. More Evidence that Young Earth Creationism Is Literally Unfalsifiable (posted April 1) "Take a moment to notice the question Chaffey is asking: Could Noah’s ark as described in Genesis have successfully remained afloat, or did it take a miracle? Now consider the question Chaffey is not asking: Could Noah’s ark as described in Genesis have successfully remained afloat, or is the story impossible?"

Evangelicals Agree With What Chau Did (And It Makes Me Angry): Here Are The Receipts

Clip-art image of an island. Image source.

Last week I published This Is Exactly the Martyr Fairy Tale We Aspired To, about John Allen Chau, a missionary who was killed by the island tribe he was trying to "reach." I wrote:

Chau is going to be seen as a hero and a role model. There is absolutely no part of this story that will come across as a cautionary tale for evangelicals, nothing that will serve as a warning that other people should NOT do what he did. It's perfect, and that scares me.

Right now, I'm so freaking angry about being proven right.

Well, the evangelical blogosphere got right to work, publishing posts about how Chau was doing a good thing and he just loved Jesus so much and loved the Sentinelese people so much, etc. All of which COMPLETELY MISS THE POINT, which is THEY DO NOT WANT CONTACT WITH THE OUTSIDE WORLD. LEAVE THEM THE **** ALONE. Evangelical Christianity doesn't understand the concepts of boundaries and consent. They think if a missionary *feels* loving toward a group of people, and works hard for years to prepare to live among them, that gives him the right to go and do it whether that group of people likes it or not.

Receipts, receipts, receipts, I got your receipts right here. Let's start with this podcast from Christianity Today, What John Allen Chau’s Missions Agency Wants You to Know. It's an interview with Mary Ho, the international executive leader of All Nations, which is the missions agency Chau worked with. Ho talks about how Chau prepared for years for his trip to North Sentinel Island:

He first contacted [All Nations] about two years ago, and he's a very interesting young man, very focused. Since he was about 18 years old, I believe, he took a mission trip. And on that mission trip, he really felt a call to be a missionary. And around that time, he started researching on the different people groups and he came across the North Sentinelese people. He really felt that this was his life call. That his life call was to take the love and the goodness of Jesus Christ to the North Sentinelese. Since then, every single decision he has made has been to thoroughly prepare himself for this life call, and to prepare him to love and care for the people well. As you pointed out earlier, All Nations missionary John Chau, he graduated from Oral Roberts University. He majored in sports medicine, in health, in exercise science. Later he got trained as a wilderness EMT, worked at a national park, got trained in linguistics by SIL, which is probably just about the best place to get trained in linguistics. He became acquainted with all the writings on cultural anthropology. So, this young man, he was intent on fully equipping himself, and I think he knew what his life purpose was about.

She talks about how All Nations requires their missionaries to go through training, and even sometimes advises someone not to go if they don't believe that person is prepared enough. She says Chau knew about the risks of introducing diseases to the Sentinelese, so he was vaccinated and he quarantined himself for several days before he went to the island.

Well whoop dee doo. I guess the point is, if you assume Chau was just some random guy who woke up one morning and decided to illegally go to North Sentinel Island, you would be wrong. Instead, he worked hard for years to prepare to illegally go to North Sentinel Island. We are supposed to be like "ah, I see, that makes it okay."

Like if you work hard enough, you can earn the right to violate other people's boundaries. What? No, reality does not work that way. The Sentinelese have made it clear they do not want outside people on their island. And that should be the end of the discussion. Their island, their choice.

Oh but he worked hard for yearssssssss! Maybe 5 or 10 years! Well guess what, the Sentinelese have worked hard for thousands of years living on their own. The idea that some American gets to override that because he worked so hard and really really wants it and has good intentions- no. See this is what I mean when I say evangelical Christians don't know what boundaries are.

Ed Stetzer, dean of the School of Mission, Ministry and Leadership at Wheaton College, also seems to think that Chau's preparedness somehow completely changes the story. Here's Stetzer's article for the Washington Post: Slain missionary John Chau prepared much more than we thought, but are missionaries still fools? (I highly recommend Chris Stroop's "translation" of Stetzer's evangelicalese into English. For example: "I am having to do way too much damage control for evangelicals this year. Please clap.") Stetzer writes:

While both Christians and non-Christians have raised profound questions about the biblical and ethical appropriateness of pushing into places where you’re not wanted, much criticism of Chau has focused on what appeared to be his lack of preparation.

Umm. Did it though? Personally, because I have been part of that Christian missions culture, from the moment I heard about Chau I assumed he had some kind of backstory about how he was "called by God" and "loved" the Sentinelese people, and spent years telling all his American Christian friends about how obsessed he was with "reaching" people "for the gospel", and had a well-thought-out plan about how he wanted this whole thing to go, and prayed over every single part of his mission efforts, and so on and so on. People don't do stuff like this because they're "crazy" in some weird, impossible-to-understand way. No, people do stuff like this because they live in a culture that sees it as good. They pray about it and think about it logically, and because they start with certain assumptions about how the world works, they end up quite reasonably coming to these kinds of conclusions.

When I say "assumptions about how the world works" I mean things like "all non-Christians are living sad, meaningless lives" and "people who don't believe in Jesus go to hell" and "God calls us to take risks and make sacrifices, but it is SO WORTH IT, even if we die."

Stetzer then says the real question is about the concept of missions itself. Obviously, he is in favor of it. He says:

For some, the very idea of trying to convert others to a certain faith and taking any risk to do so is simply abhorrent. But Christians worldwide genuinely believe that people who hear and respond to the gospel are better off when they do.

In other words, when he's writing for a "secular" audience, he does this "oh but you gotta understand, we REALLY DO think people are in danger of going to hell, and we REALLY DO believe we are helping them by evangelizing, so you can't criticize us" routine. (He made the same argument in a post for CNN back in 2017.) And, ughhhhhh. UGHHHH. Okay, the reason this makes me mad is because HE'S RIGHT. Like if you really do believe that non-Christians go to hell, and you really love them and want to save them, then logically, you should become a manipulative creep that puts on a show of being kind and loving in order to coerce people into changing religions. And that's how I used to live when I was an evangelical.

Basically, Stetzer is right about that, and therefore we don't really have any common ground to work from, if I were trying to convince him that it's, you know, *bad* to be a manipulative creep who coerces people into changing religion. (He also wrote an article for Christianity Today, elaborating on this point. "I actually believe what is offensive to many today— I really believe that the world needs Jesus. And, I am OK that you think me a fool for believing that." All right, what do I even say to that... I got nothin'.)

But he seems to think non-Christian readers will be like "ohhhh, okay, I didn't realize that, okay that totally excuses this kind of Christian behavior, so I will not criticize them." HAHAHAHAHA yeah right. My feeling is more along the lines of "we can't reason with these jerks, so let's not even try."

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Belief in hell completely ruins anything good about Christianity. (Note: I am a Christian who does NOT believe in hell.)

Stetzer then goes on to talk about 2 things he thinks Chau should have done differently. To me, this reads as "I totally agree with what Chau did, but people won't like it if I say that, so I'm going to pretend to criticize a few small aspects so that I end up looking 'reasonable.'" Like, to me, neither of these read as real objections.

The first so-called objection is that Chau should have gone with a group, rather than alone. Just like Jesus sent the disciples two-by-two. Stetzer is acting like this is some well-known, universal, biblical command. Ha, watch this, I can come up with some biblical-sounding arguments for why it's totally legit to go alone. Hmm, remember the bible story about Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch? God told Philip to go do missions alone, so that's what he did. Maybe God told Chau to go to North Sentinel Island alone. Also, Chau probably had a lot of Christian friends back home praying for him. Maybe they supported him financially, and he sent out email updates about how his missions work was going. (I haven't heard anything about that in any of the news stories, but I will be 0% surprised if it's true.) See, he wasn't *really* alone. And also, for practical reasons, he is less of a threat to the Sentinelese people (in terms of spreading disease, and also in terms of how they perceive him) if he's just 1 person, rather than 2 people or a group.

I just find it bizarre how Stetzer seems to be claiming "see, Chau's problem was that he went there alone, when every missionary KNOWS you should NEVER do that." Ha. Yeah right. Yes, I am sure that missionaries believe it's generally better to go with other missionaries, rather than alone, but hey, if that's what God told you to do... well maybe it's not ideal but you gotta do it anyway, for the sake of the gospel.

As for Stetzer's second pretend-criticism:

Also, in regard to people’s choices, Jesus makes it quite clear in Mark 6:11, saying, “And if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, leave that place.” It appears that Chau returned to North Sentinel even after being shot at with arrows, one of which, according to his journal, stuck in his Bible.

Well I would laugh out loud if this whole situation wasn't so sad.

Like, oh, Christians are supposed to give up and go home if their evangelism targets aren't interested in being evangelized? SINCE WHEN? This is very much NOT what I was taught in church.

I was taught if people weren't interested in hearing the "gospel", that just meant it was "harder", that it was more of a "challenge"- not that you should leave them alone and stop trying. You shouldn't give up- you should "pray for God to soften their hearts" and "look for opportunities to start spiritual conversations."

Also, I would like to know why the Indian government's decision to stop trying to contact the Sentinelese, after decades of trying to send them gifts every now and then, and being rejected over and over, is somehow NOT enough of a sign that Chau was not "welcome." Apparently, it took Chau actually going there and getting shot at on his first attempt- that's when he should have known he was "not welcome" and he should leave, according to Stetzer. Well that's rich. Kind of seems like Stetzer is inventing rules after-the-fact and then claiming that CLEARLY this is what JESUS SAID and so THAT'S where Chau went wrong.

But do you want to see THE WORST article about Chau? It's this one, from Desiring God, and oh it is bad: What God Might Do with Satan’s Arrows (written by Garrett Kell).

Kell seems to completely buy into the whole "God totally called Chau to go share the gospel with these sad lost people" nonsense. But it's worse than that:

Questions have emerged about John Chau’s zeal, training, prudence, and legacy. But another even more important question sits under the surface of such a tragedy: What is God doing in all of this?

How is God working to reveal his glory to the Sentinelese people? Could he bring them forgiveness for their murder and freedom from their own pain? How will he bring healing to the heartbreak of the Chau family? Could our God be using injustice, arrows, and a fallen missionary to make his reconciling grace known to the entire world?

What? NO, no no no nonono. "What is God doing in all of this" oh god no. As if, just because someone got killed while "obeying God's call", that means there's some huge grand purpose to it, oh this is bad, this is bad. Okay, the Sentinelese DO NOT WANT contact with the outside world. LEAVE THEM THE **** ALONE. But Kell sees them as nothing more than characters in his imagined story about "God's glory" and "the gospel"; it doesn't matter what they want.

(Also, Kell takes the Lord's name in vain by assuming that God will side with him rather than with the Sentinelese people.)

Then Kell tells the story of John Williams and James Harris, missionaries who were killed by the people of an island called Erromango. Apparently, this is a beautiful story with a happy ending because years later, other missionaries came and succeeded in getting the islanders to become Christians, and then there was a big ceremony where the islanders apologized to Williams's descendants, and isn't that just great. On Twitter, Jesse T. Reese said "This article is an unbelievable piece of #ChristianAltFacts propaganda that sanctifies genocide, and it only gets worse if you dig a little" and wrote a thread about how ACTUALLY missionaries have caused a lot of harm to the people of Erromango. Go read it.

Oh, but Kell's article gets even worse:

We cannot know for sure what God is doing. But might he be stoking the hearts of his church with a fresh fire to reach the unreached peoples of the world? Could God be using the death of John Chau to stir the souls of more missionaries to take the good news of Jesus to the Sentinelese people? Could he be stirring you? Is it possible that God might be working to bring them the message of forgiveness for killing the missionary as well as healing from the injustice done to them generations ago? Could God be plotting a reunion of forgiveness in months, years, even centuries from now that will magnify his mercies before the world? Can you picture that moving ceremony on the shores of North Sentinel Island?

John Piper’s call from five years ago in the wake of another martyred missionary is just as relevant today: “I call thousands of you to take [their] place. Let the replacements flood the world. We do not seek death. We seek the everlasting joy of the world — including our enemies.”

God can spark a movement from a martyrdom. He’s done it before. Let’s pray he’s doing it again.

HOLY CRAP. NO. LEAVE THEM THE **** ALONE.

No. NO NO NO NO NO. That is the WORST possible outcome of this: that more missionaries would be inspired to go and barge in on the Sentinelese people. Kell waxes poetic about how wonderful it will be when someday there is reconciliation between Christian missionaries and the people who killed Chau- SEE, THIS IS WHAT I MEAN WHEN I SAY EVANGELICALS DON'T BELIEVE IN CONSENT. The Sentinelese have made it clear they DO NOT WANT this fantasy that Kell is imagining. But does he care what they want? Ha. Nope.

(See also: White Christian saviorism is a helluva drug, by seelolago.)

Also, remember a minute ago Ed Stetzer was claiming that JESUS CLEARLY SAID you should leave people alone if they make it clear they don't want to hear your "gospel", and then I said hahaha nope that is EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of what I was taught in church, but good try Ed Stetzer? See this is what I mean. Garrett Kell very much does NOT believe Christians should just give up and go home because the Sentinelese do not "welcome" them. He thinks that just makes it a better story, a more amazing victory when the missionaries finally succeed, some time in the future. If they kill one missionary, well that means we/God should respond by sending "thousands of you to take their place." The Sentinelese are just playing hard-to-get, as it were.

Ughhhhhhh. This is very not okay. Just LEAVE THEM ALONE. I've never been so angry about being proven right. I knew that Christians of the "unsaved people go to hell" persuasion would love this story and see Chau as a great role model driven by love for God and love for people. Those of us who live in reality see that historically, this kind of missions has done a lot of harm to indigenous people. But evangelicals imagine that they are the heroes of some grand story that God is writing, a myth that says hard work earns them the right to override other people's consent, and actually consent doesn't even matter in the first place- what really matters is that in the end, more people become Christians.

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Related:
This Is Exactly the Martyr Fairy Tale We Aspired To 
Because of an Idea
Runaway Radical: The Stories You Can't Tell In Church