Airplane Evangelism

People on an airplane. Image source.

Apparently there have been some recent tiktok videos where Christians preach on airplanes. See these links:

Christian preachers are turning airplanes into unwanted worship services

‘Airplane evangelists’ vs. ‘Sweet Caroline’

Preach the Gospel, but Not on a Plane

My first reaction to this is ugh, I don't like it. 

But, in the first link above, Hemant Mehta says, 

Other Christians have an especially important role here, too. If they believe faith shouldn’t be imposed like this, they should be the loudest people condemning this behavior—in real time if they’re fellow passengers and later if they hear about it.

And I feel like, it's not that easy. I don't know if I would do that- tell these people "hey I'm also a Christian and I don't think you should preach like this."

Oof. I've done this kind of "go up to random strangers and tell them about Jesus" style of evangelism before. Among my Christian friends in college, most of us who did this were really uncomfortable, but we believed we had to. People are going to hell! They need someone to tell them about Jesus! How can you care more about social awkwardness than about people going to hell????

So that's the logic. And I believed the "people are going to hell" part, so there was always that guilt, like, I should do more, I should tell more people about Jesus, but oh goodness it's so awkward and I'm an introvert.

So yeah, I sometimes did what we call "conversational evangelism" (or, one of my friends called it, "evangelism to the randos"). Usually we went in groups of 2, but also there were times I did this by myself. Go up to someone who's just sitting there by themself, ask them if they're okay with talking about religion- we ask first and we leave if they say no- and then ask them what they believe, and try to find a way to "share the gospel" and convince them to believe in Jesus.

It was, oh man, it was a mixed bag of emotions. So terrifying and awkward to go talk to someone who's not expecting it, to say "excuse me" to get their attention, and then draw them into a conversation where they share their personal beliefs- a weird level of emotional intimacy. But it was exciting, to hear about what these random people thought about God, and to have a chance to "share the gospel"- we felt like "God is working" and it was so exciting to be part of that.

It's the kind of thing that you don't want to do, and you psych yourself up by thinking about how God wants you to do it, and all these people are at risk of going to hell, and Jesus did so much for you so can't you do this for him?

The airplane thing, it's more like what my friends called "street preaching," where you just stand up in a public place and talk loudly about God to any passersby, rather than having a one-on-one conversation. (The difference is that on the airplane, people can't walk away.) I never did street preaching. I remember I had a friend who was interested in doing it, and was checking into the rules at our university to see if it was allowed. I don't know if he ever ended up doing it or not.

But anyway, Mehta's suggestion that other Christians should tell this airplane preacher to stop. I have a few things to say about that:

First of all, even though my initial emotional reaction is "I don't like this", can I actually give a logical argument, consistent with my religious beliefs, about why it's a bad idea? I think I could do that now, now that I don't believe in hell, but in the past I couldn't. I always felt guilty... all the people around me are at risk of going to hell, and I'm too scared to say anything about it? What's wrong with me? And now here's someone who's actually taking action and doing something about it. I don't like it, but I'm the one in the wrong. She's doing what I should be doing.

We always *said* we should do more evangelism, but we were too scared to actually do it. Now here's someone who's actually doing it. How can we oppose that?

I guess the best you can do- if you're in that ideology- is argue that this kind of loud public evangelism is not an *effective* way to convert people. You don't believe that respecting people is a good thing *in and of itself* but it's a strategy that will win you more converts in the long run.

And second, oh man, I know how it is, when you finally get up the courage to violate social norms and just go for it. You just focus on your goal, and what God wants you to do, and you block out everything around you that tells you how wrong your behavior is. Imagine if someone interrupts you right then and says "I'm a Christian and I don't think you should do that." You're not in a state where you can reason about it. You've already decided you're doing it, and if anything gets in your way, it's an obstacle that you need to fight back against. (Obviously this naysayer is a fake Christian who cares more about social awkwardness than about people going to hell!) This other Christian who interrupts you to point out that you're violating social norms- you already know all that. You already know all those reasons, you know them very well, and they have held you back, but finally at this moment you've gotten up the courage to push past them, and it's terrifying. And then someone comes and reminds you of all those reasons that you've been working so hard to ignore. You're not in a state where you can be receptive to that feedback at all.

I'm very hesitant to criticize people for how they do evangelism. It's extremely uncomfortable, and they don't want to be doing it, but they're forcing themselves to, out of obedience to God. I empathize with them, and I wish I could tell them the good news that there is no hell and they don't need to tell random strangers about Jesus, but they're not in a place where they can accept that.

It would be a different thing, if the evangelist is totally fine with what they're doing, if they're not hating it internally and forcing themselves to do it despite how wrong it feels. I feel better about criticizing them, if that's the case. And maybe the people who are posting videos of themselves on tiktok, saying "I just love a captive audience," maybe they're different from me, and they actually *like* doing that. 

It's just very hard for me to imagine *liking* to do this kind of evangelism. You stand up on the plane and make an announcement about Jesus, and then you have to wait around at the baggage claim with all these same people, oh so embarrassing. And what if you need to ask someone for help, like "oh that's my suitcase there", they're all gonna try not to make eye contact with you... You've broken the social norms, and now you're you're trying to just slip back into the world of social norms again.

And then posting it on tiktok... I feel like this is the kind of thing that one would share with one's Christian friends, and they'll admire your faith and say "that's so hard, but you did it." Not something that you would post publicly. I wouldn't think you'd want everyone to know you're the kind of person who preaches on airplanes.

But anyway. What I would say now- now that I don't believe in hell- is that as Christians, we want to be known for our kindness and love for others. People don't like being preached at nonconsensually, so we shouldn't do that. If we really want to show Jesus' love, that means getting to know people, valuing them for who they are, respecting that they have their own beliefs and can make their own choices, and they don't need you to convince them to believe in Jesus or whatever. Don't treat them like your personal mission project, like the only thing that matters is whether they're "saved" or not.

But again, this only works if you don't believe in hell. How can you "value people for who they are" if you believe in a God who isn't going to do that on Judgment Day, but will just sort them into "saved" and "unsaved" and send them to hell? Like the only thing that matters is whether they're "saved" or not.

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Related

The things I've never let myself say about evangelism

When Christians Say "We're Sorry"

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

Yep, I Totally Did This Creepy Evangelism Strategy

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. They're Made Out of Weights (June 3, via) "Omigod. You're serious then. They're made out of weights."

2. Your Book Review: Breakdown In Pakistan (July 24) This is about the phenomenon of foreign NGOs coming in and transforming local community-led organizations, giving them money but making them no longer able to connect with and raise support from their community.

3. Antiques Roadshow (August 5) From xkcd. 

4. Furiosa’s Cat Feeder (2016, via) About a cat who keeps finding ways to get extra food out of the cat feeder, and the owner's continued attempts to prevent it. "Her next move was to lie on her back in the bowl, and stick her paw up the chute. She could paw the conveyor belt itself, getting it to move. This was very effective, netting an extra meal or more." 

5. Jonathan Haidt is wrong about age-gating the internet (July 13) "I wish everyone giving this parenting advice were first required to actually try, for an hour, to configure a computer such that it gives a user the ability to meaningfully interact with the web without bombarding them with content selected to make them hooked and miserable. It can’t be done. I have tried a wide range of parental control tools, and none of them even seem to comprehend it as an aspiration."

6. Sheep and Goats and ‘Hell’ (August 4) "So they need the Sheep and the Goats to support the claim of a 'literal' Heaven and Hell, but cannot acknowledge or accept what that parable has to say about who is going to 'Heaven' and who is going to 'Hell' and why. That parable, like the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, is explicit, emphatic, and categorical. 'Heaven' is for the poor and for those who feed the poor. 'Hell' is for rich people who neglect the poor. Full stop."

Also from the Slacktivist: No sign will be given except the sign of Jonah (August 7) "And then it struck me that I was sitting there earnestly asking myself one of the most pernicious, corrosive, damnable questions one can ever wind up asking oneself: Who does and does not count as 'our' people?"

7. Why Rachel Held Evans Still Reads Like a Prophet (August 10) There's a new book called "Braving the Truth" which is a collection of Rachel Held Evans's writings. Definitely worth reading. See also, this link roundup I posted in 2019: Link Roundup of Posts Honoring Rachel Held Evans

8. Niagara Falls and the Limits of the Design Inference (July 25) "In its cosmology, then, [intelligent design] finds design in the very law-structure of the universe. In its biology, it finds design in the failure of that law-structure to account for some feature. These are opposite arguments."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Justice department moves to dismiss its charges against Olympian over reflecting pool (July 31, via) "The documents 'indicated a rushed and flawed installation process, with repeated failures of the lining during the installation process, and extensive peeling of the lining throughout the Reflecting Pool,' the motion said."

2. The Assault On Science Funding Continues (July 23, via) "But I mean what I say and I am trying my best to say what I mean: The Trump administration hates academic science funding, full stop. They hate where that money goes, and they hate who it goes to. They want to keep all that money for themselves, to hand out to favored cronies who can help them get elected and to steer yet more money and more power back into their hands."

3. Truth Social’s Audacious Plan to Sell Banks Early Access to Trump’s Posts Goes Live (August 3, via) "This story has captured our attention because it compounds the corruption that has become endemic throughout the executive branch with a new, ridiculous feature of our economy — Trump manipulating the markets through his bespoke social media platform, prompting sell-offs and rallies with his statements about the status of such things as tariffs or the Iran war, regardless of those statements’ grounding in fact."

4. They lost their work permits and their legal status. Returning to Haiti is still 'unimaginable' (August 5) "Approximately 350,000 Haitians and Syrians who have remade their lives in the United States are now at a crossroads. Their work permits and legal status have expired, yet their home countries haven't recovered from the crises that drove them to seek Temporary Protected Status protections."

5. Trump signs new orders targeting birthright citizenship, weeks after Supreme Court ruling (August 7) The wording of this one is different than the previous one- I would be interested in reading an article explaining those differences and to what extent they matter.

6. Federal funds can't be used to give test strips to drug users, raising overdose fears (August 8)

On demons and what really matters

Palm branch. Image source.

Here's a post from Tripp Fuller: I Am Undefeated Against Demons. 1 and 0. (via) It's about this one time where someone came to Fuller's church seeking an exorcism, claiming to be possessed by a demon. I love the part where the church secretary says to Fuller, "Since you’re the only one here from the South and you used to be an evangelical, we figured, you could handle this."

Fuller doesn't believe in demons. But here's someone coming to him, in need of help. He needs to help him, and the way to do that is just go along with the "it's a demon" framework, even though it's not.

He started talking. And while he was talking, his face would do a thing, and the voice would change, and the demon would pop out to say hi like an uninvited co-host on a podcast. Then he was back. Then the demon was back. Then he was back.

As I listened, here is what I was actually hearing. This guy was a horrible boss. He was making piles of money off people he treated badly. He was a workaholic. He had an addiction problem. He was taking all of it out on his family.

Now, friend. If anything is going to count as demonic, that will do.

Really fascinating that Fuller is witnessing this odd behavior and still totally doesn't believe it's a demon. The *actual* problem is that this guy is mistreating the people around him. 

Fuller tells this guy that the way to get rid of demons is to let the love of God in. Accept God's love for you, and stop hurting the people around you. And Fuller prays over this guy, while hitting water with a palm branch- not that he believes the palm branch is doing anything, but because this "demon-possessed" guy is looking for some kind of ritual to get rid of the demon.

I'm really interested in this post because it's a perspective on demons that I've totally never heard before. Basically, the idea is that when people talk about demons, there aren't *actually* demons, but if people want to use spiritual concepts like that to describe their experiences, fine, whatever- BUT the important thing is about how people treat each other, about relationships, about emotional health. And these spiritual concepts like "demons" are maybe acceptable to believe in, but only in service to what actually matters (love, community, emotional health, etc).

(Here's a question: so apparently Fuller doesn't believe this "demon" is really a demon- but he tells this guy to "let the love of God in"- does he believe "the love of God" is a real thing, or is that also just an imaginary concept that we can believe in if it's helpful for us, sort of a metaphorical way to think about accepting yourself and caring for the people around you?)

Let's contrast this with the mindset where these spiritual things- heaven, hell, God, the devil, angels, demons- are real, and they are more real than the physical world we can perceive. The gospel I was taught said that what really matters is whether you go to heaven or hell for all eternity. Our lives on earth are just the blink of an eye; it doesn't really matter what we do here. The only important thing we can do in our earthly lives is to correctly believe in Jesus and "get saved" so we go to heaven instead of hell.

And so, in this mindset where the spiritual world is more real than the physical world, ideas like morality, human connection, and emotional health are kind of... orthogonal to what really matters and what's really real. Yeah sure, God wants you to be a good person, love others, etc, but that's just some arbitrary rules that God made up- we just have to do them because God said to, not because they are central to the things that really matter.

And there's a tension... The more you believe in hell, the more you believe that your friends are in danger of going to hell, the more you will harass them, lie to them, coerce them- anything you can possibly do to push them toward "getting saved." Belief in the realness of the spiritual world is at odds with common-sense morality.

At the church where I grew up, people didn't talk about demons lurking in the world around us, possibly affecting our lives. (With one exception: I heard warnings about Harry Potter. Specifically, the concern that Christians had was that the spells in Harry Potter are real, so if kids read the books and then try those things out, it really will summon demons.) I know there some churches where people talk about demons all the time, but that wasn't my experience. Then when I was in college, some of my Christian friends would describe things that happened to them as "spiritual warfare"- like "I had a really good conversation with a non-Christian friend, I told her about Jesus- but then after that, I felt really discouraged and just kept thinking about all the things I should have said differently- maybe it's spiritual warfare." Ie, maybe the devil is planting these thoughts of discouragement in your head, because you did a *good* thing by talking to your friend about Jesus, and the devil is trying to stop you. I kind of believed that, but also I felt like, "really? We really believe that the devil himself is influencing our emotions? Isn't that kind of, uh, crazy?" I always thought it was suspicious that people would call it "spiritual warfare" like a vague and abstract euphemism, comes across as less bonkers than "the devil is doing this to me."

I have 1 anecdote about demons. So, when I was a college student, I went to a Christian conference. At one point, there was a group of us just hanging out and talking, maybe 5 students, and one of the other students there (let's call her Claire) told this story about when she personally had cast out a demon. So this is something I heard secondhand; I have no way to tell you how true any of it is. But anyway, Claire said there was a girl, let's call her Hannah, who was acting weird one night, and putting her legs in weird positions, and Claire and her friends were sure it was because Hannah was possessed by a demon. (I think there was more to it than that, like Hannah had a history of weird/"sinful" behavior, so she was thought to be more likely to be demon-possessed than the average person, but I don't remember the details.) So Claire and her friends stayed there with Hannah all night, commanding the demon to leave "in the name of Jesus." Claire told us, if you say "in the name of Jesus," the demon has to leave, it has to. Apparently they sat there with Hannah for quite a long time telling the demon to come out "in the name of Jesus," and eventually, by the time it was morning, Hannah seemed to be back to normal. 

When I heard this story, the main angle I viewed it from was "if this is true, this is PROOF that the spiritual world is real, and our Christian beliefs are true." That's what I wanted back then: proof. To get the enticement of atheism out of my head. Sure, there are plenty of people out there claiming some kind of miracle happened to them, but how do we know they're not making it up? Is there photo/video evidence? Do we have statements written down, by the people who witnessed it, immediately after it happened? Can we ask these witnesses a bunch of questions to get a clear picture of what happened, and make sure they're not mistaken about it?

So I viewed it through the lens of wanting proof, wanting to know if my beliefs were true or false. I noticed that my friends didn't seem to view this kind of story in that way- I had this urge to collect and preserve evidence, but other Christians didn't seem to have that. I guess they weren't viewing it in terms of "I need to prove this to myself and to other people." I guess they don't have something inside them that's always telling them to be an atheist.

It's very interesting to me, reading Fuller's blog post, about how he sees this guy right in front of him, exhibiting such odd behavior, and it doesn't affect his non-belief in demons at all. He just ignores all that, and says the real problem is the way this "demon-possessed" guy has broken his relationships with his family and co-workers, and the solution is to get this guy to accept the love of God, and then to treat people better. Like the question of whether the spiritual world exists- whether demons are real- doesn't matter at all. The only thing that matters is how we treat each other.

It's a perspective that views religion not as the realest thing, but as a tool that is useful only to the extent that it helps with the things we feel are most important to our lives in this physical world. Human connection, community, emotional health, that kind of thing. It's the opposite of "our earthly lives are just the blink of an eye, and all that matters is eternity in heaven or hell."

It feels like it's basically the same thing as "none of these religious claims are true at all, but they are good because they are useful for encouraging people to live in a moral way and love each other." (One could also make the argument that religion encourages people to do bad things, though. So maybe if all this is not true anyway, we'd be better off with no religion at all.)

So it's not "we believe our religion is true, now let's live according to the implications of that, no matter how strange they may seem- that's what faith is supposed to be." It's more like, we have our own experiences, real experiences and feelings in the physical world, and we're very rooted in that- that's real. And if religion can kind of give us a framework for viewing those experiences, great- but if religion ever tells us something too weird or not matching what we see in the real world, well then religion has reached the end of its usefulness, and we don't take it that seriously. Have common sense instead of having faith.

On the one hand, I like this, because it's something that actually makes sense (we should treat each other right) rather than something that depends on arguing about if demons exist/ if God exists/ etc. On the other hand, isn't this the same thing as saying my religion is not true? I don't like that; I want it to be true. I'm not just here for metaphors and inspiration; I really believe He lived and died and His tomb is empty.

But I'm stuck in a weird place where I feel that religion only matters if it leads you to do counter-intuitive things, things that look like a bad idea to people outside the religion; but also, don't ever do that- history is full of the wreckage of things that people did because their religion told them to, which everyone outside the religion could quite obviously see were bad ideas.

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Related

Don't know why I never realized this about Old Testament prophets

Faith, Fruit, and "Do you actually believe your religion?"

"The Kingdom of Children" (a book about child liberation theology)

Being Right vs Doing Good

So. Demons.

Katy Perry's God-Given Freedom

The Rich Man and Lazarus (and Atheism)

Artwork showing the rich man enjoying a feast in his home, with Lazarus outside his door. Image source. 

In Luke 16:19-31, Jesus tells this parable:

“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.

“The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’

“But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’

“He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’

“Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’

“‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’

“He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

Reading this parable now, I'm astounded at how the meaning of it is so completely different from how I understood it when I was evangelical.

Here's how I interpret this story now: Jesus introduces us to 2 characters, a rich man and a very poor man. The poor man, Lazarus, begs outside of the rich man's house, for years, but the rich man does not do anything to help him. In the afterlife, Lazarus goes to heaven and the rich man goes to hell- Lazarus goes to heaven because he suffered so much on earth, so he deserves to have a better life, and the rich man goes to hell because he had a good life on earth but didn't help the poor. Jesus doesn't directly state that these are the reasons they went to heaven/hell; it's treated like it's just obvious. Also, these reasons are emphasized by what Abraham tells the rich man- that in his earthly life, the rich man had good things, while Lazarus suffered.

Now that the rich man understands how serious it is that rich people need to help poor people, otherwise they will go to hell and be in agony forever, he asks Abraham to send Lazarus to go and warn his brothers about this. But Abraham says, no, they should already know, because they have access to the teachings of Moses and the prophets. The rich man knows that his brothers won't take Moses and the prophets seriously, because he didn't either during his life, but surely if someone comes back from the dead, that will convince them.

And Abraham says, no, "If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead."

The main point of this story is our obligation to help others. And also, that someday there will be justice- God will help people who suffered on earth, and send rich people to hell for not doing anything to help.

The secondary point is, rich people should know this. They have the teachings of Moses and the prophets, or other religions, or moral philosophies. Of course they are able to realize that they have a moral obligation to help others. But they don't want to. They will make excuses. The rich man in the story says his brothers will definitely believe if they see someone come back from the dead, but Abraham tells him, no, they'll still make excuses.

You shouldn't need a miracle, or a religion, or anything like that. It's obvious that people who have enough money for their own life should give to help others. And if you don't accept that basic obvious fact of morality, then even if you did see a miracle, you would still come up with reasons to ignore the people in need around you.

Just reading the parable by itself, without bringing in any of one's own beliefs about heaven and hell, it seems pretty clear that this is what it's saying. If you are rich, you need to use your money to help others, otherwise you will go to hell.

But of course, for evangelicals, Jesus can't possibly be saying that.

Evangelicals "know" the criteria for getting into heaven or hell: It's not about what you do, it's only about your faith in Jesus. If you believe in Jesus, and you "prayed the prayer" to commit your life to him, you will go to heaven. If you didn't do that, then by default you go to hell, because everyone is a sinner and deserves to go to hell. 

Evangelicals strongly disagree with the idea that people go to heaven just because they had a bad life and God feels bad for them. No! God has actual standards! You have to have the correct faith; God's not going to let you in just because They feel bad for you. And as for the rich man going to hell because he didn't help Lazarus- evangelicals would say, there totally are rich people that go to heaven, don't worry if you're a rich person- but maybe it's a little more difficult for rich people because they tend to rely on their money rather than realizing they need Jesus. And of course God *wants* you to use your money to help others, so if you *truly* believe in Jesus (at the level required to go to heaven) then you would do that, but let's be clear, going to heaven does not hinge on whether you helped others, it hinges on your faith in Jesus.

So we have this situation where evangelicals are totally sure this parable cannot mean what it obviously means. (Similar thing for the parable of the sheep and the goats.) Lazarus must have gone to heaven because he believed in Jesus- yeah that's not mentioned at all in the story, but that was definitely the actual reason, despite Abraham's words, "in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony." And the rich man went to hell because he didn't believe in Jesus- and if he had believed in Jesus, then his faith would have inspired him to help Lazarus. And when he talks about sending Lazarus to warn his brothers, he means sending Lazarus to tell them about the necessity of believing in Jesus. And the rich man says that his brothers won't believe just based on Moses and the prophets- I mean, yeah, when you're trying to convince someone of a particular religious doctrine, and your argument is "here are some ancient religious writings" this usually fails to convince them to convert to your religion. The rich man says it would convince them to give up their atheism if they saw an actual resurrection, but that's actually not true either. Atheists are really stubborn and unreasonable like that.

Wait, what? Why are we suddenly criticizing atheists...?

Yes, seriously, this is the interpretation of the parable I had when I was evangelical: There *is* enough evidence, from the bible, from "Moses and the Prophets," that people should *know* they are supposed to believe in Jesus and commit their lives to him. But when you talk to actual atheists, they tell you that's not enough evidence. They may give you examples of what kind of miracles they would have to see, that *would* count as evidence of the supernatural- but they're actually lying about that. Like Jesus says here, even if they saw someone come back from the dead, they would still not believe. So don't feel bad about how your apologetics arguments fail to convince those atheists. It's a *them* problem!

Yes, really. Evangelicals take this parable about how rich people need to help poor people, or else the rich people will go to hell, and turn it into this bizarre cheap shot at atheists. It's such a weird feeling for me, reading this now when I'm so far removed from evangelical ideology, realizing how obviously Jesus' point is that rich people need to help others (or else they will go to hell!) and somehow evangelicals managed to make it not about that at all- because evangelicals already know that the way to get into heaven is believing in Jesus- and then take this line at the end and turn it into a claim that "you know how your atheist friends say they would believe in God if you had better evidence? Well actually they're lying about that."

The rich man in hell wants to send Lazarus to tell his brothers how to avoid going to hell- and so evangelicals know that obviously means he wants Lazarus to tell them to believe in Jesus. That's how you avoid going to hell. Like we're so committed to this idea that faith in Jesus is the be-all-end-all, *the* answer for how to go to heaven, that we don't even read Jesus' actual words in front of us. (Even if we saw someone rise from the dead, we still wouldn't read Jesus' actual words in front of us.)

Try this on for size: This is a parable about rich Christians who don't use their money to help others. They should know that they're supposed to do that. They have Moses and the prophets. They have the bible. They even believe that Someone rose from the dead, and this still fails to convince them that they need to give money to help others.

How many Christians do we see right now, who are sure that Christianity is about political power and making rules to control other people, rather than helping the poor? Jesus was right. His followers believe He rose from the dead, but we still won't do what he said.

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Related

The Parable of the Living Wage

Sheep and Goats

Jesus Weighs in on "Being Right vs Doing Good"

What kind of God will judge how we treat immigrants?

White Privilege and the Rich Young Ruler

Faith, Fruit, and "Do you actually believe your religion?"

Fruit tree. Image source.

In my post The Kingdom of Children: Eschatology, I had a little parenthetical aside that said:

And, to clarify, I'm not saying being religious is better than being non-religious. There's a wide range of different ways that people map their religious beliefs [or lack thereof] onto questions of morality/purpose/how we should live our lives, and I would not say that religious people's mappings are better than non-religious people's.

In other words, we should look at the way that a religious [or atheistic] belief affects people's views on "morality/purpose/how we should live our lives", and that's how we say if the belief is good or bad. We have some sort of "common sense" feel for what good morality is, and that is the yardstick we use to measure and judge religious beliefs.

Here's the thing, though: Yes, that's how I see it now. But when I was evangelical, I would have disagreed with this. I would have said, we can't judge our religious beliefs based on the effects we observe in the real world; the whole point of religion is that we're claiming there is something bigger than the physical world. In view of this bigger spiritual "reality", our behaviors and morality are good and right, though they might appear to be harmful and wrong if you're only looking at the physical world we can see. And if you judge the religious beliefs only by their observable effects in the physical world, you're already assuming an atheistic worldview, where none of the religion's claims are true.

One could argue, if progressive Christians want to live according to the reality of the physical world, and never do anything that seems like a bad idea (but is actually a good idea if the religion's claims about the spiritual world are true), why not just go all the way and be atheists? If you never side with your religion, when assessing a concrete truth claim that people outside your religion would disagree with, which has practical effects on the choices you make in the real world, do you even believe your religion?

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Overton (April 8) From xkcd.

2. 'We are bonded forever': Artemis II astronauts speak about completing their historic moon mission (April 12) This is so cool!

3. National puppetry group faces backlash for platforming anti-LGBTQ Christian puppetry group (April 10) So, there's apparently a Christian puppet group, which requires its members to sign a statement saying marriage is "a man and a woman" and being trans isn't a real thing. I feel like... this kind of thing is extremely normal for conservative Christian organizations- requiring employees to agree to some kind of "statement of faith" which includes anti-LGBTQ beliefs. (Or at least it was normal 10 years ago and then I stopped paying attention?)

For me it's a dealbreaker because I'm queer. And I think it's a good thing that there was backlash against this. But also, this is really normal within that conservative Christian subculture, and groups that have these anti-LGBTQ "statements of faith" do have good people in them, doing good things. The anti-queer beliefs are just background noise, something you're required to believe if you're in that space, but not the front-and-center message the group is promoting. But still, it's not okay that they are discriminating in this way.

Anyway, glad Hemant Mehta's post is getting the word out that these nice-sounding Christian groups often explicitly bar queer people from working for them.

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Birthright Citizenship: Supreme Court Could Create an Exploitable Noncitizen Class (March 30) "Trump’s bid to strip birthright citizenship from millions is a moral, administrative, and legal catastrophe that the Fourteenth Amendment was enacted to prevent. That’s why he’s pursuing it."

2. The ‘pedagogy of moral accommodation’ (April 7) "Belief in eternal hell deforms the moral imagination. It trains Christians to call evil good. It instructs them to bless what, under any other description, they would condemn as cruelty."

This is so spot-on, and it applies to a lot of things in evangelical Christian ideology. So many apologetics answers for why some horrific thing (genocide commanded by God in the bible, sending the majority of humans to suffer in hell forever, oppression of women and queer people, etc) is actually good, and how dare you question that.

3. Donald Trump Impeachment Backed by Most Americans: Poll (April 8) and Iran ceasefire fails to quash Dem calls for Trump's removal (April 7) via

4. Did Donald Trump threaten the Pope? Here is what we know (April 10) Fascinating how the pope's bland statements about how peace is good and war is bad, which is something popes say all the time, are being viewed as an extremely political statement against that felon.

Trump posts image of himself as Jesus after attacking Pope Leo (April 13) What on earth. That felon is really posting AI images of himself as Jesus.

5. Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán is ejected after 16 years in a European electoral earthquake (April 13, via) "It was a stunning blow for Orbán — a close ally of both U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin — who quickly conceded defeat after what he called a ″painful″ election result."

6. Judge dismisses Trump's $10B lawsuit over the Wall Street Journal's Epstein reporting (April 13) "Trump filed the lawsuit in July, following up on a promise to sue the paper almost immediately after it put a new spotlight on his well-documented relationship with Epstein by publishing an article that described a sexually suggestive letter that the newspaper said bore Trump's signature and was included in a 2003 album compiled for Epstein's 50th birthday."

7. 2025 was one of most volatile years ever for U.S. naturalizations (April 13) "'What we see this administration doing is targeting even people who have followed all the rules. The administration is changing the rules on those folks,' said O'Herron, of the Brennan Center for Justice. 'That unpredictability creates a real sense of fear.'"

8. There's growing disquiet in the military. The Iran war made it worse (April 10) "'We've had a lot of calls from people who don't identify as nonviolent or pacifists,' says Woolford. 'They identify as everyday service members who are willing to defend the country but feel very unsettled and suspicious about the ways the military is being used now.'"

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

If heaven is so great, why did God even make this world?

Typical pop-culture depiction of heaven, with sunlight streaming through clouds. Image source.

[content note: stats about child death, discussion of hypothetical suicide and murder]

Let's suppose we believe that the world we live in now is flawed, and heaven is a perfect world where there is no suffering and all the wrongs are made right. (And yes I do believe this.)

Here is my big question: Why do we even have this world, then? Why didn't God just put us in heaven to start with? 

The idea of heaven seems like the kind of thing that people would come up with when they're having problems in this world. Longing for another world, which doesn't have any problems at all. 

But how about taking a step back and asking, if there really is a God who created a heaven, would this world we live in even exist? If we just start with the idea that there really is a God who wants people to live fulfilling lives- what kind of world would that God create? Would They create a world where the strong can take advantage of the weak, where some people are just born with fewer resources and fewer opportunities and that's just the way it is, and then make a second world which is perfect, which people go to after they die? Why even bother with the flawed world?

Christians have a few different ways of answering this, and I find them all weak:

1. Evangelicals (and many other groups of Christians) believe that only people who are "saved" go to heaven. Everyone deserves to go to hell because we're all sinners, but people who believe the correct things about Jesus are "saved" and can escape their deserved fate and go to heaven. So, people need to live on this earth because this is where they will choose if they're going to believe in Jesus or not, which is what determines if they go to heaven or hell. God can't just "skip" this life and put us all in heaven, because God only wants people who would freely choose that.

This argument doesn't mean anything to me because I don't believe in that kind of hell. Yeah, I used to be evangelical, and constantly worried about my non-Christian friends who were in danger of going to hell- I'm so glad I don't believe that any more. I sometimes say "I don't believe in hell" but I just mean it as a shorthand for "I don't believe that everyone deserves to go to hell, and I don't believe that one's religious beliefs are the determining factor in whether one goes to heaven or hell"- because I do believe there will be a judgment, and "the wages you failed to pay your workers are crying out against you." And "whatever you did not do for the least of these, you did not do for me."

(This argument also gets more complicated when someone asks "what about people who never heard about Jesus, and never had a chance to believe in him- it's not fair for God to automatically send them to hell" and then someone answers "God will judge them based on whether they *would have* believed in Jesus, if they had had the opportunity." So... so suddenly God is letting people into heaven based on what they would have done in a hypothetical alternate universe? Okay, then why not just judge all of us that way? No need to actually live out our whole lives on earth- God can just send us straight to heaven or hell based on what we "would have" chosen if we had in fact lived on earth. ... Honestly I've always felt this "God will judge based on what they knew" idea is just shoddily tacked on because we feel bad about people going to hell if they happened to live in a time or place where they never heard the name Jesus. "God will judge them based on what they knew" is not at all consistent with the rest of conservative Christians' beliefs about heaven/ hell/ God/ salvation/ sin/ evangelism/ missions/ etc.)

So the evangelical idea that the reason we have to live in this world is to see who chooses Jesus and who defaults to going to hell just doesn't mean anything to me.

2. In this life, because we have the choice to sin, because the world is not perfect, that's what gives us the opportunity for personal growth. To learn how to become better people, we need to be free to choose good or evil. And suffering helps us become stronger.

I don't think this argument is any good, and here's why: child mortality. Nowadays we have very good medical care and vaccines, so this is not something that most people in developed countries have experience with now, but for the vast majority of human history, it was normal for little children to die. For babies to die. For very rough ballpark numbers, I found this page from the CDC which compares current infant mortality rates to the rates from the year 1900. In the year 1900, ballpark numbers are around 10%-30% of infants dying before reaching age 1. (And if you're considering older children and not just infants, Our World in Data estimates something like 50% of children died before age 15 in the time period before 1700-ish.)

So how does it make any sense to say that it's important for us to live in this world first, before going to heaven, so that we can learn morality and make choices that shape who we are, when a significant percentage of people didn't live long enough for that to happen? And if we say heaven rights all the wrongs of this world, including infant mortality... then that means it's okay that those babies didn't live long enough to grow into people who could make good or bad decisions... if that's okay for them- and they're a significant fraction of the human population, like 10-30%- why isn't it okay for everyone? Why is it so necessary for the rest of us to live in this world, then?

If heaven is so great, why doesn't God just put us all there to start with? People have various answers to that, but the fact is, for a significant fraction of the human population, God basically *did* just "put them there to start with", ie, they died as babies. So if you say "oh but we have to live our lives on earth, to learn morality" well why didn't those babies then have to live their lives on earth, to learn morality? This is not some kind of rare statistical outlier- this is something like 30% of all people. Not *now*, thank goodness, because we have good medicine and vaccines, but if you look at all of human history.

3. There are good things we can do in this world that we can't do in heaven, like fight against injustice. And help people.

Uh... yeah it's good to fight against injustice, but wouldn't it be better if we didn't have to...? 

And hey maybe we can still help people when we're in heaven. Help each other with mundane low-stakes problems. That sounds nice.

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There's a weird paradox about heaven: we claim it's so good, and if you feel sad about someone dying, you can encourage yourself by saying "they're in a better place"- that in some sense it's good that they're no longer in this world, but they are in heaven instead.

But this needs to be just a nice thing to say to help people feel better, not something we actually literally believe. If we really did believe it's better to be in heaven than on earth, we should kill ourselves. "Ah," someone will answer, "God closed that loophole by automatically sending you to hell if you commit suicide." Okay, well then don't kill yourself- kill other people. You're helping them get to heaven, right? Maybe you feel like, if God sends you to hell to punish you for murder, that's an acceptable cost, you're okay with going to hell yourself because you know you've done so much good for other people.

This logic is especially monstrous when people believe in some kind of "age of accountability"- ie, children are innocent, and if they die they will automatically go to heaven, but adults will be judged for their sins and possibly sent to hell. So, it follows that it's better for children to die rather than grow up and be at risk of going to hell. (And there really have been people who murdered children because of this belief.)

And there have been politicians/leaders who didn't care about the large-scale effects of what they were doing, didn't care whether their policies would lead to more children dying or not, because eh it's all okay, it's God's plan.

If we truly believe we're going to heaven... well, then why do we see it as a good thing that infant mortality is no longer common? This weird paradox where we try to believe "they're in a better place"- but that has to be nothing more than a way to try to make yourself feel better about something you can't change. Not a belief that would then inform actual choices you make, which could have real effects in terms of people living and dying. It can't be that. It's just horrible to even begin to reason through the conclusions that follow from that belief.

My approach for dealing with this problem is to believe in heaven, but not with much confidence. I hope it's real, but I don't know. Don't bank on it. Don't go around murdering people (and/or deprioritizing investment in public health) if you don't even know if heaven is real or not, my god.

It's better to have less faith, it seems.

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So back to the main question I want to ask: Why didn't God just put us all in heaven to begin with? Why do we even have this world? And any answer you give has to take into account that God *did* put a nonnegligible percentage of people "in heaven to begin with" (ie, infant mortality rates have been very high throughout history). Apparently it's fine that, whatever lessons we were supposed to learn by living full lives on earth, a significant proportion of people just totally missed out on. And your answer should also take into account that we view it as an extremely good thing that in modern times, infant/child mortality is very rare. 

Advances in medical technology have very much changed the distribution of ages at which people enter heaven. Changed the demographics of heaven. Is that a good thing? Did God intend for it to be that way?

I don't have a good answer for this. I hope heaven is real, I believe in it, but this is an aspect of it that doesn't make sense.

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Related:

Sure Of What We Hope For

A Bit Suspicious That "Heavenly Tourism" Confirms Everything We Already Believe

xkcd comic where a biologist says "The heroes of my field have slain one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse." Image source.

No, I'm not harboring some kind of wish that my husband will become a Christian

Clip-art image of a bride and groom. Image source.

So JD Vance said that he hopes his wife Usha (who is Hindu) will become a Christian. Here's a link, from Hemant Mehta: JD Vance wants his Hindu wife to convert. It’s Christian Nationalism: Home Edition. 

When asked about this, Vance said a lot of things that sound nice, like how he loves his wife, they talk about this together and work out something that works for their family, he respects that people have free will and can believe what they believe. He's good at saying things that sound nice and reasonable but then when you look at the overall picture of what he's doing, the things he is actively supporting, it's the opposite of that. (JD Vance creeps me out for this reason.)

Anyway, he says they are raising their children as Christians, and that he hopes his wife will become a Christian eventually.

First of all, I want to say I don't find this surprising at all. In my experience with evangelicalism, of course we believed everyone is supposed to become a Christian. Vance is Catholic so there might be some differences between his view and the evangelical view, but yeah overall I get it. We believed that non-Christians are all going to hell. And that knowing Jesus makes our day-to-day lives so much better, and everybody else must be suffering so much, living without Jesus.

There's something kind of ... weird... about being in a marriage and believing that there's something fundamentally wrong with your spouse and they need to change. I'm not sure how to describe it. Disrespectful?

I was taught that Christians shouldn't marry non-Christians- then you will be "unequally yoked" and the non-Christian will be a bad influence, causing the Christian to "water down" their faith. This is an extremely normal thing for evangelicals to say, but I find it really offensive. They use the analogy "what if you were standing on a chair, and you were trying to pull someone up- wouldn't it be much more likely that they would pull you down?" WTF, why are we framing this like Christians are higher, better, more moral than non-Christians. Like a non-Christian can only be a bad influence on you. 

I'm a Christian and my husband is not, and we've been together for a really long time and it just really isn't an issue? Because I don't believe he needs to change. Why would he need to change? What reason is there to think that it would be beneficial to him to convert to Christianity?

(A key part of this is that I don't believe in hell. Or, rather, the evangelical version of hell, where the criteria are one's beliefs about Jesus. But surely there has to be some kind of judgment for people who, for example, go around making up dehumanizing lies about immigrants.)

Sure, if someone is interested in becoming a Christian, then yeah it would be a good thing for them to do so. But if they have no interest in it, then ... why try to convince them? How would that help anything? Even if you make the argument "well it's true, and it's better for people to believe true things than false things"- okay, so if it's true that Jesus was raised from the dead, what are the implications of that? Christians have all sorts of different opinions on what it means for us, what it teaches us about the nature of the world, morality, etc- and some of these interpretations are harmful. It's not clear that the truth of the Resurrection is enough to say that it would be a good thing for people to convert to Christianity- what if they convert to one of the anti-human varieties of Christianity? (Like, for example, one that teaches that non-Christians are lower than us and are only going to pull you down.)

For our kids, my thinking is, I want them to be able to make an informed decision for themselves. I want to teach them enough about the bible and Jesus and Christianity that they can understand why I'm so excited about it, why I find it so amazing and life-giving, why I think about incarnation all the time. To know what I love about it, so then they can decide for themselves.

Sometimes I'm reading a book about Christianity with our son, and my husband walks by and makes some kind of snarky comment about the bible. I appreciate that; we need people who make snarky comments about the bible.

I also want to tell our kids about other religions, and atheism, and that people have all sorts of different beliefs about God, and we can't ever know for sure, BUT the important thing is, we should do good and help people. We can be sure about that.

So no, I'm not sitting here in my marriage, thinking about how I've waited so long and I just hope my husband will become a Christian- no, I don't think like that at all. If he doesn't want to, then why would I want that for him? It's not a matter of "well I want him to, but I'm polite enough to not say it out loud"- no, I genuinely don't believe it's true that everyone would be better off if they became Christians.

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Related:

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

This "Do Not Intermarry With Them" Stuff Hits Different Now

Good Christians Know My Problem is I was Doing it Wrong

A woman praying. Image source.

I recently wrote a post called The Power Dynamics of the "Personal Relationship With God", and... here's the thing: When I write something like this, it's difficult because I know that the response from good evangelicals will be to say that I was just doing it wrong. That I must have been in the wrong church, or I understood Christianity wrong, or I believed a slightly incorrect version of the "personal relationship with God" ideology that got me totally off-track, and so on.

(I like when people share different interpretations about how to think about God, prayer, etc! Keep 'em coming! I don't like when they do so with the subtext that my experiences are not valid and I need to change and believe the same thing as them.)

I have only experienced this a handful of times- some nice Christian who doesn't know me but very confidently butts into my life and tells me I understood Christianity wrong. My feelings about this don't really come from actually experiencing it myself, but from being on the other side of it when I was evangelical. Oh, we judged people so much. All the time. We were so totally sure that "so-and-so had a bad experience with Christianity, because it was the wrong kind of Christianity, and what so-and-so really needs is to get over it and believe in our version of Christianity instead." Yeah. When we did evangelism, this was a really common thing. Really really common to meet people who had bad experiences with Christianity, and then we schemed about how to get them to just get over that and get in line with the "right" version of Christianity. We didn't know many details about their lives, but we were totally sure we knew what they were supposed to do.

It's an ideology which isn't able to actually care about the religious trauma that people have experienced. Whatever bad thing happened to you in a Christian environment, it's just an annoyance that we have to get past as fast as possible, to get you to where you're supposed to be, which is believing in Jesus in the "right" way.

If you believe in hell, and if you believe in a God whose criteria about who goes to hell is whether or not you have a "personal relationship with God", then yeah, this is what it leads to. You can't care about someone's religious trauma, you can't care about someone's very legitimate reasons to refuse to go to church ever again. You can't care about all the reasons I said I'll never be in a personal relationship with a God again, and I'll never give my life to Jesus- I am in charge of myself. "I'll never give my life to Jesus" comes across like, them's fightin' words, rather than a suggestion that maybe I actually have good reasons for making that decision.

(When I say "I'll never give my life to Jesus," I mean I want to be like the first son in the parable of the two sons. I refuse to swear loyalty, but I'll do the work.)

You believe in a God who doesn't care, so you can't care either. Just rush past all that and funnel people into the "correct" beliefs, otherwise they're in danger of going to hell.

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

If Christians want to really apologize, it has to come with the acknowledgement that because Christianity has hurt this person, Christians never again have the right to tell them what to do.

Let me say that again: If Christians really are sorry, then it means recognizing that the victim's pain and anger are legitimate. It's not something you just "get over." It's something that actually matters.

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?

How sorry can you really be if you still believe you have all the right answers and everybody better listen to you?

Maybe try believing in a God who does care. Maybe consider the possibility that people know their own life and their own needs, and your religious answers fall flat.

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Related:

When Christians Say "We're Sorry" 

Cut Out the Middleman (or, why I am the master and commander of my own life) 

"You Weren't There, the Night Jesus Found Me" 

Yep, I Totally Did This Creepy Evangelism Strategy

Evangelism and Blabbing About People's Personal Lives

The Power Dynamics of the "Personal Relationship With God"

Image text: "A personal relationship with God", with a hand reaching down from the top of the frame, and another hand reaching up from the bottom. Image source.

"He must become greater; I must become less." 

- John 3:30

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In romantic/intimate relationships, it can be a red flag when there's a big power difference between the 2 people. A relationship between a boss and an employee, between a professor and student, etc- these are recognized as totally unethical because of the power difference. It's a situation where one person can be coerced into things they don't want in the relationship, because the other person holds such power over their life. 

But what if it was a relationship between a person and God?

I'm talking about this in the framework of romantic/intimate relationships, because the evangelical concept of the "personal relationship with God" is supposed to be that intimate. Actually, more intimate than that, I would say. God knows you completely. God knows every thought in your mind. God knows all your motivations for all the choices you will ever make. And you are supposed to dedicate yourself completely to God. Sacrifice whatever things in your life God doesn't like. Take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. Pray more- however much you are praying now, it would be better if you were praying more. Pursue God all the time, with all you have. No matter the cost. 

It's hard to imagine a more one-sided relationship than that. God is perfect, we are the ones who are imperfect, so anything that goes wrong in the relationship must be our fault. We are sinful. We didn't pray enough. We didn't love God enough. We are weak, and we are flawed, trying to reach through the haze to access the power of God and the goodness and joy of God, if only we would get our act together.

Oh, and in this ideology, God is all you need. Anything else in your life, if you lose it, it will be okay because you still have God. Rely on God to be your everything.

When I had a "personal relationship with God"... it was... I loved him. I was obsessed with him. I wanted to do whatever he wanted me to do, and I was willing to give up anything. I wanted God to speak to me, I wanted to feel his power, I wanted to see the amazing things he was doing in the world, I wanted to be part of it. 

If only I could know what God was telling me, what God wanted me to do- but it was so hard to hear him. It was so hard to know what I was supposed to do. I worried about making the wrong choice- I was supposed to do what God wanted, but what if I really didn't know what that was? Why couldn't he just choose for me? Why couldn't he just take away all my choices- wouldn't that make it easier for everyone? We're working with a belief system that says there *is* one specific absolute right thing to do, and God knows what it is, and I don't know what it is but I'm the one who has to do it. And I tried so hard to sit and pray and listen to God, this distant and noisy communication channel- doesn't this seem inefficient? Why doesn't God just take over my life and make all my choices for me- wouldn't that be the ideal?

And the way I had to police my feelings because of him. If I was in a situation where I felt "God wants me to forgive this person" then that was it, I had to forgive them. I had to. God wants it, and God is absolutely always right. I couldn't think it through, couldn't process my feelings on it, because we already know the right answer. To seriously think it through would be to entertain the possibility of not obeying God. My obedience must be absolute- how can there be any hesitation, when we already know God is right? If I question it, if I have feelings of not wanting to do it, that would be a sin.

Many many times, I had feelings about something, and I had to stomp them down immediately because they weren't what God would want. To linger on those emotions would be a sin- and every little sin is "an infinite offense against a holy God." I deserve to go to hell for that.

When you're in a relationship with a person, and you disagree about something, there's some give and take. You both are right about some things and wrong about some things; you both should listen to each other and learn from each other. Even if it turns out one person was pretty obviously right and the other was wrong, you still talk it through and work to empathize with each other and understand each other. I don't even know if it's possible to have a healthy relationship with Someone who is always right. Like, you already know it's pointless to try to tell them why you disagree with them on something. You're automatically wrong. To continue to talk about your wrong feelings and wrong opinions, as if they matter, wouldn't that be a sin?

And I believed that, if anything bad happened in my life, it was okay because it was God's plan. He could do anything to me, and it would be right- somehow, from God's absolutely correct point of view, it would actually be a good thing, even if it seemed bad to me. 

Maybe God would take away the things- or people- that I loved, in order to teach me to trust him more. Yes, plenty of evangelicals have anecdotes along those lines- something bad happened to them, and they eventually came to believe that God had deliberately caused it, in order to teach them something. Or, perhaps God destroyed something because you sinfully loved it too much, and it was distracting you from loving God. Yeah, the God I believed in back then would totally do that kind of thing. He was a jealous God, and we believed that was a good thing.

OH AND I almost forgot to mention, this God believed I was disgusting and dirty and never deserved anything good. All humans deserve to go to hell right now, but luckily God has a bit of a weakness and loves us, so we're able to get a sort of temporary delay in getting the punishment we deserve- we're living our lives here on earth instead of going to hell right now. And for those of us who believe the correct things about Jesus, Jesus covers up our sin well enough that God can finally bear to look at us. So basically, my natural self is really bad, but fortunately Jesus is changing me into someone that can maybe kinda sorta please God. I just have to pray all the time and pursue God with everything I have. Any deviation from this, and I'm a dirty sinner that God can't even look at.

(And I won't even get into this other goal that the "personal relationship with God" is supposed to accomplish: We believe there is a spiritual world, which we can't see but it's more real than the physical world that we can see. And the closer your "personal relationship with God" is, the more in-tune with God you are, the more you will be able to sense the actual real reality of the spiritual world. Sure, we believe it exists, but it doesn't feel real- but if you have a really really good personal relationship with God, you can get to the point that the spiritual world does feel real- and that's what we should be trying to do. You want to get yourself to where it's intuitive to interpret things that happen to you in terms of what's going on in the spiritual world, and ignore the common-sense physical-world understanding of what's happening.)

I'm describing it this way, and it probably sounds pretty bad, the way God treated me, the way I sacrificed my feelings and independence and personality for him. But at the time, I was happy. I was so happy, and I loved God so much. I was happy because I 100% believed in this ideology that says God is right about everything. It was so hard, all the things I had to do to obey him, but I genuinely believed that those were the right things that I should do, and that any alternative would by definition be worse. And all that stuff about me being a dirty sinner, it didn't bother me because I believed it was true. If someone calls you a dirty sinner, why would you take offense to that, if you know that you really are a dirty sinner?

(Years later in therapy it turned out it DID bother me!)

I loved this quote from John the Baptist, talking about Jesus: "He must become greater; I must become less." I worked so hard, trying to be that perfect pure conduit that God's power could flow through, trying to get rid of my own weakness and sinfulness. I've heard evangelicals say- and I believed this back then- it's not that God is getting rid of your personality and uniqueness; instead, the personal relationship with God is the ideal environment where your natural personality can blossom, and you really become the person God made you to be, when you're following God rather than being weighed down by sin. And yeah, to some extent that was true. I did devote my life to God in a way that was uniquely mine. But living that way, I wasn't allowed to have any real choices. That really cuts off a lot of one's personality and identity- not being able to think about what you want, and choose to do something just because you want to, not because you're "supposed" to.

And this whole time, I chased God and wanted God and listened for God, and also I believed all the evangelical ideology. All the culture war issues, I had the "correct" evangelical view, and I was sure that God did too- of course he did. All this time that I wanted to know him, and I believed he knew me completely, I was totally sure I had the right beliefs about all these things, and I talked to him with the assumption that he believed those things too. It all fit together seamlessly- my personal relationship with God, and my taking evangelical talking points as if they were just self-evidently true.

My "personal relationship with God" fell to pieces as I gradually realized that so many evangelical beliefs were wrong- but God cannot change- God still believed those things, and I couldn't any more. He was revealed to be a heartless bigot who bought into misinformation.

It was so bad, going through that. My whole identity had been in this God, and he turned out to be a monster and I needed to separate from him. Everything I had thought was certain, everything I had thought I didn't need to worry about because evangelical ideology had a pat little answer, suddenly all these questions sprang up like a whirlwind, all these reasons that showed God is not worthy of worship. And my whole life I had believed I deserved to go to hell but I wasn't worried about that because Jesus covered me so it was fine- but now that I was leaving this God, the full burden of my sinfulness in God's eyes fell on me... I couldn't stop thinking about how I was so bad, I was so dirty- because I had always believed that was everyone's default state if they didn't have a "personal relationship with God."

And here I was, no longer even *trying* to have a personal relationship with God. Hard to imagine anything more dirty and sinful than that.

Yes, evangelicals very explicitly believe that if you do not have a personal relationship with God, you are not a Christian. You are going to hell.

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It may come across as strange that I'm talking about the personal relationship with God in the language we use to talk about abusive relationships. The idea that the partner with more power can coerce the other into things they don't want- well, that's totally different when it's God we're talking about. God is always good and right, so if God coerces you into something, that's actually a good thing. The control that is a bad thing in a human relationship is a good thing in the relationship with God. ... Right?

(And yes, it is very common for evangelicals to talk about God coercing them into things. Giving testimonies along the lines of "God wanted me to do [something] but I didn't want to. Silly me, I'm so sinful and selfish, haha, you guys know how it is, lol. And then God caused bad/annoying/inconvenient things to happen to me, until I finally gave up, and agreed to do the thing that God told me to do. God always gets us in the end, haha. [audience laughs]")

I don't think that any more, because I don't have a God I can trust. The God I used to worship, I don't believe in him any more, but he was very real to me back then, and he controlled my life. There are many gods that people believe in- how can you give up control of your life to a God if you don't even know if it's the right one?

I believe in a God now, and I love Them, but I don't want to talk to Them. The power dynamics are too... I just can't, I just can't deal with anything that hints in the direction of an absolute "this is what God wants me to do"- it feels coercive. I can't deal with "here's God's opinion on this or that topic"- because if I agree with it, I can arrogantly feel like I'm automatically right, and if I disagree with it, I should be forced to change immediately. The absoluteness of it is just incompatible with thinking with my own mind and feeling my own feelings. 

I need some space away from God, to think my own thoughts and feel my own feelings. Let me be wrong, let me figure things out on my own, let me change and grow. I don't want to talk to Them.

Any time I say something like "God wants us to [whatever]", that's my own opinion, based on a bunch of reasons that I've thought about. It's not "these words were handed down to us from heaven and are automatically right"- I don't want that in my religion.

The power difference between a person and God is so huge, and we are told me must give ourselves fully to him, give up everything for him, obey him even when it hurts. And I used to do that. But I can't any more. I'm never going to be in a personal relationship with a God again. It's not safe to have a relationship that intimate with that big of a power difference.

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Follow-up posts: 

My Parasocial Relationship With God 

Good Christians Know My Problem is I was Doing it Wrong

Related

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

"Moon Knight" and Boundaries With God

Used By God 

My Identity was in Christ

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

I Deserve God's Love 

God and the Overton Window