Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Southern Baptists' vote to ban women pastors sparks outcry from advocates (June 12) I just have no patience for this kind of thing any more. (I used to, but not any more.) If you are in a church that wants to put restrictions on you because you're a woman or girl, leave. God lives in you, and these churches are rejecting Her.

It's very interesting that the Southern Baptist Convention has had a huge sexual-abuse-coverup scandal, and they apparently can't do anything about that, but if a woman wants to stand in front of the church and proclaim that Jesus is Lord, that's when the SBC decides to take action.

2. Waiting For The Miracle (June 18) "Family and childcare responsibilities let us take one good vacation per year. When I told her I wanted to spend it on a Bosnian village, her first reaction was 'Sure, sounds like it’ll be a good story for your blog.'" Scott Alexander has spent way too much time and money investigating this "sun miracle" and I am so here for it.

3. The Cold Crowdfunding Campaign (2020) "Save the Girl and Save Me From Having to Toss Her Out of the Airlock"

4. Sports Commentary (June 22) From xkcd. This is spot-on.

5. Disagreeing charitably with others: a guide (May 18) "I think a lot of attempts at steelmanning wind up failing to reckon with difference and deeply held disagreement. You wind up acting like other people’s belief systems are failed versions of your own, instead of something that makes sense from experiences and assumptions you happen not to share."

---

Links related to the antichrist:

1. The Kennedy Center is a reminder that we can win, it will be messy, and Trump will be petty (June 14) "A little past 1:00 a.m. Saturday, a much-rumored tarp began being affixed to the top of the scaffolding and the mood among the dedicated crew that remained — still well over 100 people — shifted yet again, as cries of “Cover up!” and “Traitors!” rung out. Over the course of the next hour, the white tarp was extended to cover all of the scaffolding — and all of Trump’s name."

2. Shared Values (June 22) Doug Muder's news roundup for this week. I didn't have the energy to follow all these stories, so just read his post.

In particular, I'll highlight these links:

What if we covered Trump's age the way we covered Biden's? (June 22) "But the nature of Trump’s personalist presidency, in which the entire government is organized around turning his whims into reality and the barest hint of dissent is swiftly punished, makes the question of his age even more important than it was with Biden, who was surrounded by competent people who could run the government even when the president was less engaged than he ought to have been."

I’m a critical care doctor. I’ve never seen the US harm its children this deliberately (June 19) "A newborn’s first hours in a US hospital used to carry a quiet set of guarantees. A vitamin K injection against catastrophic bleeding. A hepatitis B vaccination. The assumption that whatever a family could afford, the country had already decided this child was worth protecting."

3. Sunday reading (June 21) "The fact that the church of our country, (with fractional exceptions,) does not esteem “the Fugitive Slave Law” as a declaration of war against religious liberty, implies that that church regards religion simply as a form of worship, an empty ceremony, and not a vital principle, requiring active benevolence, justice, love and good will towards man."

4. Science Shocker! It's More Dangerous To Be Pregnant In Abortion-Ban States That Don't Care If You Die (June 24) From a "pro-life" perspective, pregnant women can be neatly divided into 2 categories: the bad ones who want to kill their baby, and the good ones who would do anything to protect their baby- and they enact laws intended to stop the bad ones, assuming that the good ones would never be in a situation where the law would put restrictions on the medical care they need or want. The reality is not like that though. When you're pregnant, your life and your health are so intimately tied up with the unborn baby's- if complications arise, the best course of action is based on your own specific situation, and doesn't match this one-size-fits-all "stopping the bad ones" system of laws that "pro-life" politicians set up.

Sometimes it's surprising to me that people are claiming that "pro-life" policies are about doing what's best for pregnant women. ??? No, "pro-life" ideology treats the pregnant person as a threat to the unborn baby.

When I was a teenager and I went to a gynecologist for the first time, the gynecologist told me "we are pro-life here" and said it in a way that was meant to be reassuring (she also said "I'm sure you've heard horror stories from your friends who went to Planned Parenthood" ??? no, I had not), and I was just so boggled by that. Seriously, if I walked in here as a pregnant teenager, and you say you're "pro-life", that's supposed to make me feel safer??? "Pro-life" ideology would 100% treat a pregnant teenage girl like a terrorist who has taken a hostage and needs to be talked down. Use whatever lies and manipulation will get her to not have an abortion. All these thoughts went through my head, and *I* was "pro-life" back then. I knew being "pro-life" was about stopping those "bad" women- and I agreed with it, too- and so obviously if you *are* one of the "bad" women (for example, a pregnant teenager), you're not going to like it.

But anyway, as I've said before, from a "pro-life" perspective, when women die even though they weren't "the bad ones" and they wanted an abortion for "good" reasons, this is not necessarily slam-dunk proof that these laws are bad. Sure, we have these high-profile news stories about pregnant women who died because they couldn't get medical care, but what you don't see is all the unborn babies who are being saved by these policies. From a "pro-life" perspective, it's about trying to draw a line, to save as many unborn babies as you can (by stopping the "bad" women) while still allowing the "good" pregnant women- who love their unborn baby but had some horrible complication- to get the medical care they need and not die. It's impossible to draw that line in a way that perfectly separates the 2 categories. Maybe you need to err on the side of a few more pregnant people dying, in order to save hundreds of unborn babies.

I don't agree with this but I just want to point out that this logic exists. I don't think it's possible to really engage with and understand "pro-life" ideology if you're just looking at the shocking high-profile cases of women who were denied medical care and died. You have to also consider the unborn babies who are or are not being aborted quietly in the background.

Now, there also is evidence that banning abortion doesn't actually decrease the abortion rate. I don't know the details on that myself, but from a "pro-life" perspective, that would be relevant to the question of whether these laws are effective.

Miracles and Exceptions

Snowflakes. Image source.

How rare does something have to be, to be a miracle?

This might seem like a strange question to ask. Why would miracles be defined in terms of the frequency at which they occur? Isn't a miracle defined more along the lines of, something that doesn't have a natural explanation, because God intervened supernaturally to do it?

Yeah, but if God "intervenes supernaturally" frequently enough, then these "miracles" start to become something we can measure and quantify scientifically. Scientists will say "this is a known phenomenon that happens, we know it happens, we've observed it many times" even though they don't have a full explanation of the reasons why. At that point, can you even say it's a miracle?

Miracles are, supposedly, events that break the laws of nature. But how do we even know what the laws of nature are? The universe didn't come with an instruction manual which listed out the laws of nature. Over thousands of years, generations of scientists have worked hard to come up with theories and test them, and all this hard work has led to our current understanding of what "the laws of nature" are.

In other words, our "laws of nature" are based on repeated observations of how the world works. If miracles are so rare that they've never shown up as any kind of observable pattern in our scientific data, then sure, okay, maybe it makes sense to define miracles as breaking the laws of nature. 

But there are Christians who believe miracles are happening all the time. I've heard plenty of anecdotes about "so-and-so had some serious illness but then suddenly got better and the doctors have no idea how" - yes, you go to church and everyone knows someone personally that had a "miraculous" recovery like this, and I just... if it's really happening so frequently, then is it really true that "the doctors have no idea"? This idea that miracles are things that science can't explain, and they're constantly happening, seems to rely on a misunderstanding of what science even is- as if science is about strong confidence in the explanations we already have, and denial that there can exist things that we don't currently understand. Wow, that's so backwards- in reality, pursuing science means being excited about things we don't understand- let's research them! Let's understand them!

Probably what's more likely is many illnesses have a known rate at which people just kinda mysteriously recovery, and it's not yet understood how it's happening (or maybe it *is* understood, but your doctor wasn't expecting it because it's rare), but it's a known observable thing, and the scientific types aren't calling it a miracle. (And maybe it's better if it's not a miracle, but something we could study and use for more patients' medical treatment.) 

You end up with this weird paradox where it only makes sense to believe in miracles if you also believe they're so rare that you're never going to see one.

Or, alternatively, you can believe that God is constantly intervening to make the laws of nature what they are. When we observe a chemical reaction happening, it's because God is actively causing it to happen- and They do it the same way every time, and scientists observe it and call it a law of nature. As Colossians 1:17 says, "in him all things hold together." (I actually like this idea and might believe it? ... Okay the more I think about it, the more I feel like, I like some aspects of it but not others.) Not sure if it really matters though- if physics always works the same way because that's how physics works, or if physics always works the same way because God is always there doing it, does that difference actually matter? (Hmm, but maybe if physics causes you to fall off a cliff and die, it's not great to believe God personally caused that to happen.)

A long time ago, when I was a teenager, I heard a Christian speaker giving a talk about how apparently scientists don't know how bees fly. Because based on the bees' weight and the size of their wings, it shouldn't be physically possible. And this speaker said it's a great illustration of how God does miracles, and science doesn't know everything. I was so incredibly annoyed by this, this God-of-the-gaps thinking, this claim that "it shouldn't be possible for bees to fly" (??????). Are we really claiming that every time a bee buzzes around, God is personally doing a miracle, and scientists shouldn't even bother trying to understand it? A while later, I was very happy to come across an article about how bees fly (apparently there's something different about it compared to other flying things, so I guess that's where this Christian speaker got this idea from). It's not a "miracle"! It's not a mysterious thing that science can never understand! (Here, if you ever meet someone making this claim, send them this article to slap it down.)

Anyway. Some Christians would argue that God makes sure that miracles never coincide with situations where scientists are gathering data- the belief is that it's not possible to collect evidence or proof of miracles, because "Do not put the Lord your God to the test." This makes no sense because it imagines the world is clearly divided into situations which can/are being measured and having data collected, and situations which aren't. What? How on earth could there be a situation where, on some fundamental level, it's impossible to gather data for analysis??? And also, with modern technology we're collecting so much data, there are security cameras everywhere, people's phones are tracking their location all the time, people are wearing smart watches which monitor heart rate and other health indicators- if God does a miracle right now, surely some of it will be captured in data somewhere.

And if there was a miracle, and it was captured in data, would it no longer look like a miracle? What if you were collecting data when Moses led the people out of Egypt and God parted the Red Sea (which I don't think actually happened BUT THAT'S NEITHER HERE NOR THERE)- you would see high wind speeds in your data, and you could say "oh, the sea parted because of the wind"- would you then feel like it wasn't a miracle? But what caused the wind? Well, a difference in air pressure caused the wind. But what caused that? And you can go on forever, asking "why"- at what point does the science end and the miracle begin? 

If a miracle really did occur in our real physical world, there will be real physical effects that can be measured. But if we really did measure them, would we still *feel* like it was a miracle?

And you might say "well you can collect data when the miracle happens, but that won't tell you the real reason why, so you're not really 'capturing' the miracle in your data"- but all scientific study is like that. You collect data, and the data never tells you the reason why something happens- you have to come up with a hypothesis and test it.

Another anecdote: I once watched a tv show about supposed miracles, and one of the stories on the show was about a guy who got run over by a train, and his body was cut in two, but he survived. Wow, he survived! And the show interviewed different people who offered their opinions on whether it was a miracle. This annoyed me SO MUCH because they never actually gave a good definition of what a "miracle" was, and so people took the exact same pieces of information and said "therefore it's a miracle" or "therefore it's not a miracle." Like "oh, the path of the train didn't hit any of his vital organs, that's how he survived, it's possible to survive this kind of injury if it doesn't damage any vital organs, therefore it's not a miracle" and "oh, the path of the train didn't hit any of his vital organs, wow how amazing that it didn't hit any of his vital organs, what are the odds of that happening- must have been a miracle!" Aggggh that tv show annoyed me so much. 

(And people who think it's a miracle should then have to consider the question "why didn't God just stop this from happening in the first place, rather than doing a miracle to save his life after the fact?")

Probably a lot of Christians would tell me I'm overanalyzing this, and that the way we know miracles are real is more vibes-based. That has never made sense to me. If a thing is true, then you can analyze it as much as you want and it will still be true.

---

If you're in a situation where something good happened and you think it might be from God, how do you know if it's a miracle or not? If it's the sort of thing that could have happened through normal, natural means, then maybe it just happened naturally for no reason, or maybe God caused it to happen and it's a miracle. Or maybe God caused it to happen but it doesn't quite count as a miracle. 

Certainly there were many times, back when I was evangelical, that we believed "God made it not rain today so we would have good weather for [some important event]" (or some small everyday thing along those lines)- yes, I believed God had intentionally caused the good weather to happen, specifically for us. I wouldn't have called it a "miracle" though- that feels like such a big claim. I believed God caused the good weather to happen just in the normal way that good weather happens, and no matter how much data you collected on it, you would never find any anomalies to indicate God's meddling. Or, maybe God caused the good weather to happen through miraculous means. Who knows? Does it matter?

(But I don't believe in this any more- I don't believe God intervenes like that.)

I guess my point is, I've never really seen any use in distinguishing between "miracles" and situations where God intervenes through natural, undetectable means. I don't think it's possible to clearly distinguish between them. Perhaps when we read stories from the bible, the difference between "miracles" and "God intervened but it's not really a miracle" is more important? But in my actual life, it seems like you can never totally know which kind it was, and I don't know if it really matters.

---

There's another aspect of belief in God's intervention I want to talk about here. Also related to frequency. A lot of times, the dramatic stories that Christians tell go like this: "Normally, you wouldn't expect XYZ to happen. But, God is so powerful, God is always doing the unexpected, and XYZ happened, hooray!" I have concerns about how these kinds of stories are told so frequently, it kind of reverses Christians' expectations about what "normally" happens.

An example: I led bible study groups, back when I was in college. As the leader, you have to spend time beforehand preparing. You have to read the passage, do research about how it's interpreted, etc. You really should do this work to prepare, otherwise your bible study won't go well.

But occasionally, I didn't have time to prepare, and I just showed up at bible study and we read the bible passage and I had no idea what I was going to say about it. And sometimes, when that happened... well I described it as the Holy Spirit taking over, and the bible study went great, way better than expected, and clearly it was God, it wasn't me, obviously it wasn't because of me, because I hadn't even prepared anything.

Many of my friends who led bible studies have had similar experiences. I've also heard this from pastors- sometimes they don't have time to prepare a sermon, and they just go up there and the Holy Spirit gives them the words to say in the moment, and it goes great.

In the evangelical subculture I was in, we believed this happened sometimes, but we didn't think you should count on it. Normally, if you don't prepare anything, and you just wing it, it doesn't go very well. Yes, okay, sometimes God comes to your rescue, but you should do the work yourself, instead of assuming God will pick up the slack. It would be really lazy and arrogant, to intentionally not spend any time preparing, and expecting that God would make it all okay. Like you're gonna expect the Creator of the universe to personally come and save you from a problem that you caused. Yeah, we believed it was great when it happened, but don't count on it. Do the work yourself.

But the more "charismatic" Christians, who believe the Holy Spirit is constantly "moving" and doing amazing things in our lives all the time- I've noticed that they are a lot more casual about just winging it and expecting God to give them the words to say. You have pastors preaching their sermons, and they often say "I wasn't going to talk about this, but the Spirit had other plans" or "I was only going to preach for 20 minutes but the Spirit has given me more to say" and it goes on for an hour. This didn't happen in the church where I grew up, so when I first encountered it, I really thought it was an unusual situation, like normally the church service goes according to a nice reasonable schedule, but this one time the pastor has been struck with holy inspiration and wants to talk for longer- and is a bit nervous because it's so unusual and the congregation might not be happy about it, but the pastor just has to trust God and take that step of faith, to make them all continue to sit through whatever half-baked ideas might come to his mind. But no, it's not like that, in those churches, it's not unusual at all. At some churches, it's very common that the sermon goes on and on and the pastor says all sorts of things they weren't planning to say but just came to them "from the Spirit." It happens so frequently that you can make plans around it. Is that really from the Spirit, then? Do we expect God to reliably give us words to say when we put ourselves in that situation, or is it a rare, exciting thing?

Believing miracles happen so frequently that you can then predict them and rely on them. Is that what miracles are supposed to be, though?

(See 1 Kings 18 for a particularly gutsy version of this "expecting a miracle to happen." Elijah sets up a test to see whose god will make fire fall down and burn up the sacrifice. Elijah even dumps a bunch of water on the altar. Then when he prays, fire does indeed come down and burn up everything, including the water. Wow. I always interpreted this not as Elijah asking God to do the miracle, but as God telling Elijah to go set this up because God already was planning to do the miracle. Because yikes, you can't just be ordering God to do miracles.)

Here's another example: I read Phil Vischer's book "Me, Myself, and Bob," which is about the rise and fall of VeggieTales, including how they eventually went bankrupt. They spent so much money on marketing their movie "Jonah," and then it didn't do as well in the theaters as they had hoped. But Vischer wrote in his book that he thought to himself, maybe the DVD sales will be so incredibly successful, it will save the company. He thought, wouldn't that be just like God, to come through right at the last minute when it seems there is no hope? But then, no, the DVD sales were not that great, and there was no way to recover from that, and the company went bankrupt.

This belief that when it looks like everything is going bad, that means you're in a story where God comes in and demonstrates his power by dramatically saving you. Christians tell these stories so much, it becomes something we expect to happen, rather than an amazing exception that's worth talking about because it is so rare. Wouldn't that be just like God, to do something so dramatic and unexpected? I've been in situations like that too, feeling like "the reason our plans for this Christian event seem to not be working is that later God will show up and suddenly make everything into a huge success" (and then no, God did not make everything into a huge success).

All sorts of stories that Christians tell, about having faith and obeying God, and it seems like things aren't going well, it seems like a bad idea, but you just keep obeying what you believe God wants you to do, and then miraculously God comes through and makes everything great. I really did have a mindset where I expected that to happen, rather than believing that usually when it looks like you're failing, that's because you really are failing.

It's so weird, this tension where the story is dramatic and exciting because we know that's not what normally happens, but you tell those kinds of stories so often that then we expect that's what normally happens. Kind of like when you watch a movie, and the main characters are in danger, but you're not concerned at all because they're the main characters so obviously they'll be fine. Plot armor. We *expect* movie heroes to be successful despite the odds. We *expect* God has put us into an amazing, dramatic story where we obey Them even when it's hard and it looks like it's not working, and then in the end God will guarantee us great success.

---

The thing is, though, I can't totally reject this kind of "things that by definition need to be rare, but we believe they're happening all the time" thinking, because I believe in resurrection. I believe in the Resurrection, but also in resurrection as a general concept. The way the world normally works, it's about power, the strong taking advantage of the weak. The way the world normally works, death is the end, a terrifying enemy that we have to fear. But resurrection says this isn't the whole story about how the world works. That on some level, the truth is that love is stronger than power, that love is stronger than death. 

So which is it, then? Does power always win, except that one time when Jesus resurrected? Or does love win frequently enough that we can study it and rely on it, as if resurrection is a law of nature rather than an exception? (For example, we can study the tactics used by successful civil rights movements/ resistance movements throughout history. Did they work because some law of the universe and human nature says they will work, or because God made an exception and intervened to help them out? Hmm, that question has big implications in terms of whether the same tactics will work in new situations.) I really believe resurrection does describe a truth about how the world works. But in order to be such powerful good news, doesn't it need to be contrasted with how the world "normally" works, and therefore it can't be an aspect of that "normally"? There's something inconsistent in my beliefs here.

I'm very excited about the idea of resurrection, but what does that actually mean?

Or maybe resurrection does not describe the world as it is now, but only how it will be in heaven? But no, I can't get on board with that interpretation, because I believe we have to do the work here to bring heaven to the earth. To bring justice and freedom and love. Resurrection is not supposed to be some faraway otherworldly thing that we can't relate to. "Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

---

Nobody seems to have a good definition of what a "miracle" is. Is it something that breaks the laws of nature as we know them? But then if miracles happen frequently enough, wouldn't they just become part of those "laws of nature"? 

How often can you expect God to come through when you need help? Does this happen frequently enough that you can predict and rely on it? Evangelicals believe in having a "personal relationship with God", and in most personal relationships, you can rely on each other like that- but I never felt that you should do that with God. Sure, it can be tempting to want to get yourself into a badly-planned bible study just so you can feel God's power bailing you out, but I always felt that would be wrong, and God won't play along with it. "Do not put the Lord your God to the test."

---

Follow-up post: Trusting God, Predicting God, Controlling God

Related:

What Does God Do When You Pray For An Anonymized Patient By Bed Number? 

Runaway Radical: The Stories You Can't Tell In Church

Kangaroos and Creationist Fan Theories 

Does God Use Miracles To Take Sides?

Renee Bach, who had no medical training, opened a clinic in Africa. Just like missionaries are supposed to.

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. The Fatima Sun Miracle: Much More Than You Wanted To Know (October 2) An extremely long post overanalyzing a weird thing- this is the exact content I am interested in.

2. The phantom menace of biblical chronology (October 7) "No Star Wars fan will let you get away with suggesting that Episode IV: A New Hope was written as a sequel to Rogue One. They’ll be upset by the suggestion not just because it is incorrect, but because that error would change how we should understand and interpret both of those stories."

3. 30 Years Ex-evangelical (August 29, via) "In other words, I was under the impression that evangelicalism was a deep personal commitment to love Jesus for the sake of making the world a more just and beautiful place for all of God’s children. Lol."

4. Israel, Hamas reach a ceasefire, with hostages and prisoners to be freed within days (October 9)

Gazans stream towards wrecked homes as Israeli forces pull back under ceasefire (October 10)

And another thought related to this: That felon supposedly has a plan where the whole population of Gaza would "voluntarily" leave and then the land would be turned into a nice resort (?) and then the people of Gaza would come back (??). Uh, but, fact check, relocating a population is ethnic cleansing and can sometimes even count as genocide. I wish I had a good article that explained this. I think a lot of Americans may have this really naive idea that it's not a bad thing to just move people from one place to another. It would be nice to have a link which very clearly lays out what exactly the problem is and why this is a bad thing.

5. A rescue ship saved them from the sea. Now these migrants find a tough road in Europe (2024) "When the rescuers from Doctors Without Borders reach them, they find 162 people, 29 of them children, so tightly packed into the vessel that many can only stand. The overcrowded boat rocks precariously and if the crowd moves too fast toward the rescuers' dinghies, it could capsize."

6. Over 350 Rescued After Blizzard Hits Everest’s Eastern Slope (October 7) I saw some reports about this from other news sites, but since it's in China it's good to have an article about it from Sixth Tone.

7. How Birthday Party Lady Is Showing the World Boundaries in Marriage (October 8) "SIL sent a text at midnight the night before the party asking if it was still on. On the day of the party, no decorations had been bought, and husband got off work AFTER the party was supposed to start. But she held her ground."

8. The “Debate Me Bro” Grift: How Trolls Weaponized The Marketplace Of Ideas (September 17) "He was showing up armed with a string of logical fallacies, nonsense talking points, and gotcha questions specifically designed to enrage inexperienced college students so he could generate viral social media clips of himself 'owning the libs.'"

The difference between debating to "win", vs actually wanting to communicate and listen to people and learn from each other... I think this is really important, and it took me way too long to even realize the difference. (I'm thinking about my own experiences with apologetics.) When someone makes a point and you don't know how to respond to it, or asks you a question you don't know the answer to, do you try to come up with whatever "your side's" official answer would be? Or do you genuinely ask yourself what you believe about it and what your actual reasons are? To say your actual reasons can be embarrassing- and don't do it if you're in a discussion with someone who can't be trusted with that kind of honesty- but is a very necessary step to coming to a belief that makes sense.

---

Links related to the antichrist:

1. Action item: Submit a comment on this proposed change that would affect overseas voters (and other US citizens who vote by mail). This proposed change would require voters to show documentary proof of US citizenship, such as a passport, in order to register to vote. It sounds like this means people would actually have to go *in person*, which is impossible for US citizens like me who live overseas. (Comment period is open until October 20.)

2. Treasury Department may issue $1 Trump coin for 250th anniversary of U.S. independence (October 6) Eww, what on earth?

3. Eventually You're Going to Have to Stand for Something (October 5) "When Klein scolds that "we have to live here with each other" he is making a statement about who it is he is getting ready to live with and who he is getting ready to live without, and most gallingly he is ignoring the fact that when it comes to supremacists all of us have been living with them already all along. Nobody is suggesting mass deportation of white supremacists, or the dissolution of straight marriages, or stripping away health care for conservatives."

4. Federal workers sue the Education Department over partisan shutdown emails (October 5) "'Without giving notice to their employees, let alone obtaining their consent, the Department of Education has replaced employees' out-of-office email messages with partisan language that blames 'Democrat Senators' for the shutdown,' the complaint said. 'Employees are now forced to involuntarily parrot the Trump Administration's talking points with emails sent out in their names.'"

And also about the shutdown: IRS walks back guidance promising back pay for furloughed workers (October 10) Excuse me, what?

Schumer slams GOP health care policies: ‘No f‑‑‑ing way’ (October 8) 

5. Higher Education Leaders Reject Trump Administration's "Compact for Academic Excellence" (October 5, via) 

6. Standing up to ICE in the suburbs, the People’s Patrol puts its faith in resistance (September 29) "Racing toward the industrial park on an expressway, Cavazos says the People’s Patrol includes 180 people, all volunteers. The center holds trainings for the work every other Friday."

7. Judge William Young's ruling against Rubio and Noem is a lesson for all in the Trump era (October 2) "Throughout his opinion, Young focused in on several actions of this administration — allowing Rubio’s horrifying statements to speak for themselves, confronting America with a matter-of-fact description of what ICE is and how America’s immigration system operates, and damning the administration’s use of masks in its immigration enforcement."

And this quote (via) from lawyers who know what's what:

Plaintiffs of course understand the hardship the government shutdown places on everyone, including the government's attorneys and their clients. For that reason, Plaintiffs offered to agree to the stay Defendants seek if Defendants in turn would agree to refrain from enforcing the TPS terminations challenged in this case. But Defendants refused. They apparently have the resources to detain and deport thousands of immigrants with no criminal history to dangerous countries, but would prefer not to expend the resources needed to defend the legality of such actions in court. 

Also from Law Dork: Supreme Court lets Noem end legal status for many Venezuelans in the U.S. (October 4) "Explaining the stay request before the Supreme Court over Chen’s September ruling, Jackson echoed that concern, 'What should happen to 300,000 human beings while our colleagues on the Ninth Circuit, and then perhaps we, do the job of judging?'"

Figuring Out What I Believe About "The Prince of Egypt"

Scene of Moses leading the Israelites, from "The Prince of Egypt: The Musical." Image source.

[I guess I'll put a spoiler warning: spoilers for the biblical story of the exodus]

Did you know there is a musical version of "The Prince of Egypt"? Yes, this is amazing, I was on a plane recently looking at what movies they had, and they had "The Prince of Egypt: The Musical." !!!!!! I watched it and it was AMAZING. I love the cartoon movie "The Prince of Egypt," and this musical version was all that and more. Seriously, if you're a fan of "The Prince of Egypt," try to get your hands on this musical version, it's incredible. Here's a trailer I found on youtube.

At the end, when the Israelite people are finally free from slavery in Egypt, and they're celebrating, singing the song "When You Believe," I was so into it, thinking to myself "I believe this. I believe in a God who is powerful, who parted the Red Sea and saved people."

And then I was like, wait, what? We're talking about the bible story of the exodus here. I very much do NOT believe this is a true story. For one thing, I've read posts from bible scholars like Peter Enns which say there just isn't archaeological evidence that a huge population of people came out of Egypt and wandered through the desert, eventually settling in Israel. For another thing, the way the plagues would have DEVASTATED the Egyptian economy, if this was a true story. Egyptians would have starved to death, with plague after plague attacking various aspects of their agricultural system. And then the 10th plague, the death of the firstborn sons- every family in Egypt lost their firstborn son. That's horrible. In order to free Their people from slavery, God needs to kill all those innocent children- seriously? That's the God you wanna believe in?

(See also, the best bible fanfic I have ever read: Lament for the Slave Girl in Pharaoh’s House by Micah J. Murray.)

So what's going on with me? Why am I feeling like "I believe this"? What on earth?

So I thought about it for a while and I figured it out. It's the same feeling I had while watching "A Muppet Christmas Carol."

I don't actually care about sending plagues, or parting the Red Sea, or this drama about whose god is the most powerful. I don't believe in any of that. The part I believe in is people being freed from slavery, people celebrating, people working together. Happiness. Freedom. Love. 

When people are happy, when people love each other, when people are free from oppression, I believe God is there. But also, we shouldn't wait around for a miracle to happen. We need to help each other. We need to work to make the world better. Don't expect God to come and save us; we have to do the work to save ourselves.

I used to really want to see miracles, because it would be *evidence* and I could be sure my beliefs were *right*. But now I'm like, there are things more important than being right about whether God exists, etc. Things like helping each other. Liberation. Love. Turns out that's what I believe about "The Prince of Egypt."

---

Related:

"Muppet Christmas Carol" Is My Religion

Blogaround

1. This tweet

you miss a lot of the gospel if you think the feeding of the 5,000 was just to prove jesus can do miracles instead of people shouldn’t go hungry

— Mason Mennenga (@masonmennenga) August 8, 2024

2. Pro-Trump Republicans should think twice about ridiculing ‘Tampon Tim’ (August 9) Yeah, apparently Republicans are mocking Tim Walz and calling him "Tampon Tim"? (Because of a law he made that school restrooms need to have free tampons/pads available.) Not sure how many Republicans are doing this- I don't want to misrepresent them and say it's a huge proportion of them, when maybe it's not. 

But anyway. This is just so ridiculous to think that "Tampon Tim" is an insult. Everyone who has periods has been in a situation where you need a pad or tampon and you don't have one, and it's so awkward and embarrassing. You have to go around asking other girls if they have one- worst case is if you don't know anyone and you have to ask strangers. This is a real thing we have all experienced, and it's very obvious how much of a GOOD THING it would be to have free tampons and pads available in public restrooms, and some Republicans on the internet are treating it like it's weird and gross?

This reminds me of that genre of joke about men being embarrassed to go to the grocery store and buy pads/tampons for their female partners. Supposedly that's so embarrassing and unmanly and you should never ask a man to do that for you. Come on, what on earth. Why are some men so weird about this, to the extent that it's a whole genre of joke? My dad was never weird about that- my sisters and I would just tell him which specific ones we needed, and he would do his best to find them, and there wasn't anything awkward about it. It's just a thing that you need. There's no reason to make a big deal about it. There's no reason a man can't go buy it for you if you need it. Come on, are these men afraid that the cashier is going to judge them and think they are unmanly or something? Don't you think the cashier is going to think "oh I guess he has a wife/girlfriend/daughter who needs these" which is completely normal and not a cause for embarrassment at all. (Or, more likely, the cashier does not care even one bit.) Fellas, is it gay to have a girlfriend who menstruates?

Anyway, that's what I think about this "Tampon Tim" meme- it's a very normal boring thing that people need, it's not some salacious scandalous forbidden item. Anybody who thinks "Tampon Tim" is an insult is just announcing to the world how ignorant they are about women's bodies and women's lives.

3. The Paris Olympics in Photos (August 12) Photos of Chinese athletes at the Olympics.

4. Samuel L Jackson invites YOU TO VOTE FROM ABROAD (August 14) Yes! I love this! Samuel L. Jackson is looking out for immigrants like me~ Vote vote vote!

5. More delays for astronauts stuck in space as Nasa ponders return (August 14) "The latter would turn an eight-day mission into eight-month trip." This is WILD. There are literally people stuck in space right now.

6. Apple’s requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon. Here’s what you need to know. (August 12, via) What on EARTH. Apple is going to start taking a 30% cut if you use the Patreon app on iOS. !!!!! That is messed-up! If you subscribe to anyone's Patreon, definitely do it on Android or in a browser, not on an iPhone app.

(Oh hai did I ever mention I have a Patreon?)

7. “In Bible Times They’d Break a Lamb’s Leg–” (July 28) "The single instance story is, admittedly, hard to disprove. There may be some stupid leg-breaking shepherd out there who really did try to tame his sheep through a club to the femur one time. Then he got spotted by some deranged pastor who reported it to his congregation, and, before you know it, the story was off to the races faster than an angry three-legged sheep trying to run away from his stupid shepherd. It’s possible this happened one time, strictly speaking."

Great post from Dr. Laura Robinson about urban legends that Christians repeat about things that supposedly happened in the culture where the bible was written. I'm not familiar with the one about breaking a sheep's leg, which she discusses in her post, but I have heard the one about the camel and the "Eye of the Needle" gate. This is totally made-up and not real, and it's AMAZING to me how it completely changes the meaning and feeling of that bible passage about "it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle." Here's how that might play out in a typical bible study discussion:

"Jesus says that it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. Wow, that's a pretty striking image. No way a camel can go through the eye of a needle. Sounds like rich people are really in trouble, then. This really worries me because we have a lot of money compared to the average person in this world- millions of people live in extreme poverty."

"Oh, well, what he actually meant was this: There was a gate in Jerusalem called the Eye of the Needle, and it was really narrow, and when people came with their camels all loaded up with stuff, they had to take everything off the camel, and make the camel kneel down and shuffle forward on its knees. So, what he's actually saying is, rich people totally can go to heaven, they just have to be willing to give up their stuff, and they have to love God more than they love their money."

"Oh thank goodness, that's so much better! So instead of a disturbing passage about how I might be unable to be part of God's kingdom because I'm not doing enough to use my money to help others, it just means I have to have the right attitude in my heart, I just have to feel like 'yeah I would give up my money if God wanted me to.' Wow that makes me feel so much better. And it doesn't require me to actually do anything."

8. Joe Biden Will Let You Finally Cancel Gym Subscription You Haven't Used Since The Pandemic (August 14) "Among other things, the plan includes a new Federal Trade Commission rule that will require companies make it as easy to cancel a subscription as it is to sign up for."

Kangaroos and Creationist Fan Theories

Kangaroo, with a baby kangaroo in its pouch. Image source.

Here's a fun video from Joel Duff: New Solution to the Marsupial Migration Problem? Divine Action vs Natural Laws. (Also, Duff's blog post, and the Slacktivist's post about it, The Long March Of The Koalas Revisited.) The video is 1 hour and 24 minutes long, and is probably only of interest to people who are obsessed with the details of young-earth creationism. I LOVED it, that's why I'm blogging about it here.

Basically, it's about this question: During the Flood, all of the land animals died, except for the ones on Noah's ark. [According to young-earth creationist ideology.] The bible says the ark eventually came to rest on Mount Ararat, and then from there all the animals dispersed. Now we see that Australia is home to many species of marsupials, while the rest of the world has placental mammals. How did this happen? Marsupials got off the ark and walked to Australia, and didn't stop anywhere along the way to establish populations in other places? All of the marsupial species walked from the Middle East to Australia, and none of the placentals did that? How on earth could that happen?

(Adding the caveat here that there are marsupial fossils in Antarctica, and also there are marsupials native to South America- so it's not *just* Australia. But mainly Australia.)

I used to be a young-earth creationist, and I don't remember ever hearing about this question back then. But wow, it's a good question! Why on earth is Australia full of marsupials, and other places aren't, if all the animals started out in the ark and dispersed from there?

(The fossil record adds another complication- because young-earth creationists believe that the overwhelming majority of the layers of fossils were deposited during the Flood. So, before the Flood, you have marsupials living in Australia- we know that's where they lived before the Flood, because we find fossils there deposited during the Flood. And then 2 of each "kind" of marsupial ["kind" has a specific meaning in young-earth creationism, it's similar to a genus or family- NOT a species] traveled from Australia to wherever Noah was. Then, the Flood came, and all the marsupials in Australia died. Then, after the Flood, the ones on Noah's ark came all the way back to Australia. That's a bit, uh, odd, right? Why do we see such continuity between the fossils found in a certain place, and the animal species that currently live in that place, if the Flood basically reset everything? After the Flood, the whole landscape of the earth would be completely different than before. So many layers of mud covering everything. Why would animals end up going back to the same places where they lived before the Flood?)

Thinking about it now, it feels to me like a case of "the writer of the 'Noah's ark' story just kind of glossed over the part." If you're going to have a global flood, it makes sense to say "Oh but what about the animals? Oh, we can save a male and female of each kind of animal, there ya go"- that's a first attempt to address the problem of how to save the animals, and the "Noah's ark" story doesn't go any deeper than that on this issue. (Maybe because it wasn't the point of the story!) But if you start to think about it, you realize the problem is MUCH more complicated than "save a male and female of each kind of animal." How do you gather the animals and get them all onto the ark? How do you feed them all during the Flood? How do you make sure that *none* of them die, and *all* of them reproduce? And how do they spread out to the whole world after the Flood, to the locations where we see these species of animals living today?

In Duff's video, he discusses a creationist article written by Graeme Taylor, Marsupials in Australia—an act of God?. (Duff does not believe in young-earth creationism, but he takes it extremely seriously, and his entire blog is about going through the little details of things found in the fossil record, etc, and asking whether it's possible to explain them from a young-earth perspective.) Taylor's article presents the idea that maybe God supernaturally directed all the marsupials to travel to Australia.

The way I see it, there are 4 possible young-earth creationist explanations for marsupials living in Australia:

1. Some natural explanation that makes you go "oh, that makes sense" for how all the marsupials would travel to Australia, while none of the placentals would. No one has come up with such an explanation.
2. The marsupials all just decided to cross mountain ranges and climb onto vegetation rafts that floated to Australia, for no real reason, just a wild coincidence. This is what most of the young-earth creationist scientists have been saying, and Taylor's article is challenging this and pointing out that it is very unrealistic.
3. The marsupials all decided to cross mountain ranges and climb onto vegetation rafts that floated to Australia, because God supernaturally made them want to do that. God intervened constantly during their journey, in small ways, to make sure they survived and arrived in Australia. This is the theory that Taylor presents in his article.
4. Maybe God just teleported them straight to Australia. There aren't any creationist scientists actually advocating this explanation, but Duff brings it up in his video and asks "why not?" If God was going to do a bunch of small miracles to help the marsupials along, all throughout their trip to Australia, why not just do one big miracle instead? Wouldn't that be easier?

Watching Duff's video, the thing that really strikes me is how, in Taylor's theory, God really really wants marsupials to live in Australia. God intervened in so many little ways, to make sure Australia's animals were different than animals you find elsewhere. This must have been really important to God, or else why would They go to all that effort, doing all those small miracles, overriding animals' instincts to not get on vegetation rafts floating out into the open ocean?

In explanations 1 and 2 (which I listed above), you don't have to believe that God really really wanted marsupials to live in Australia. In explanations 3 and 4, you do. And, like, why? Why was it so important to God that marsupials live in Australia, and not establish any other populations anywhere else along the way?

And even if you're fine with claiming "God just really really wanted Australia to be *different* and have marsupials," there's another problem, which Duff points out: What about the dinosaurs? Young-earth creationists believe that dinosaurs were on Noah's ark, but they all died out very soon afterward. Why? Wasn't the point of Noah's ark to save every kind of animal? Why would God do the work to ensure that 2 of every kind of dinosaur got on the ark, and then just let them die out anyway right after? If God is so invested in marsupials living in Australia, willing to do all these tiny little miracles to guide them on their journey and make sure they survive, then it must also be true that dinosaurs went extinct because God just really really wanted them to go extinct. What? What was the point of bringing them on the ark then? Is God just really bad at planning?

Actually, this question isn't just about obscure creationist fan theories. It's also about how God intervenes in the world now. Plenty of people claim that God healed them from this or that sickness- and what they mean is, God guided them to find doctors who were able to help them, etc. We don't have evidence of God doing *obvious* miracles (like my "explanation 4" above), like growing back amputated limbs.

When people pray and ask God for help, they expect that God will answer that prayer by doing a series of little, subtle "miracles", each of which is unremarkable by itself, but they add up to the result that God wanted. God causes you to be late for work because of traffic one day, and that causes you to meet someone who has some important effect on your life, and so on. People don't expect that they pray and then God answers with some glowing magic like in a Disney princess movie. But, why not? Wouldn't it be easier for God to just do 1 big miracle instead of a bunch of complicated small miracles?

And Duff brings this up in his video too. He says it's not just about Noah's ark, but it's about the nature of how God intervenes in the world, and all theists (including himself) have to think about this question. Yeah... I'm a Christian, so I have to think about this too.

Personally, my answer is that God does NOT intervene in the world. And the biggest reason that I believe this, is the existence of systemic racism and other systemic injustice. If I believe that God is doing all these little tiny things to help me because They have this elaborate plan and They really want me to get this or that job and meet this or that person, then I also have to believe that God really really wants black people to get denied mortgages, and not believed by their doctors, and pulled over by cops for no real reason, and sent to jail for drug use at higher rates than white people who are doing the same things. WTF? Why would God want that??? Not cool! So I just can't believe God intervenes at all. How could it be the case that "God has a plan" and God is always doing these intricate little actions to influence people and carry out the plan, and it adds up to a world with systemic injustice? WTF? 

(Which is basically the problem of evil.)

It's the same as the situation with the marsupials and the dinosaurs. If you believe God really wanted the marsupials to live in Australia, and did miracles to make sure this would happen, then you also have to believe God really wanted the dinosaurs to die.

In conclusion: I loved the video, and it's so delightful to imagine creationists doing the math about how far a kangaroo can hop in a day, and all of the other weird implications of this fan theory. But it goes deeper than that; it's about our beliefs about how God acts in the world now. Does God do big or small miracles? Does God avoid big obvious miracles because They want to allow people to not believe in Them? (This is the reasoning I have ALWAYS heard from Christians, but I don't buy it.) Does God have a specific "plan for your life"?

---

Related:

I used to be a young-earth creationist 

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

I Would Love to Know If God Intervened to Stop Covid From Spreading in Churches 

My Racist Personal Relationship with God

Does God Use Miracles To Take Sides?

Does God Use Miracles To Take Sides?

Crowd of people worshiping in the chapel at the Asbury revival. Image source.

My posts on the Asbury revival:

February 13 Blogaround
"There is no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred": What people do with "revival"
Does God Use Miracles To Take Sides? 
The Logistics of a Revival 
Why I Don't Want to be at a "Revival"

---

Some news articles about the Asbury revival:

Asbury revival in Kentucky will end after two weeks of non-stop services, worship (February 19)

A Christian college in Kentucky is dispersing crowds of thousands after going viral on TikTok with a spontaneous 13-day worship event (February 21)

Here's why the Asbury revival is ending this week (February 20)

Asbury University has posted links to the livestream and the livestream archive. Not gonna lie, I was moved watching this. Part of me wants to worship, but, well, that's complicated because I'm ex-evangelical.

---

I'm thinking about this "revival" at Asbury, and thinking about how everyone on the internet suddenly has a hot take about it. Like, first, this thing happens, and some people are there experiencing it, and then a bunch of people on the internet, who did not experience it, all have to give their opinions on it.

(I realize that I am doing the exact same thing, though... I was not there, yet here I am writing several blog posts about it...)

I'm thinking about how there's 2 separate things: "God does a thing" and then "people argue about it on the internet." And how I've heard some people (on the internet) say, about the Asbury revival, "Let's just let it be what it is. Let's not use it to prop up our own personal political opinions." Or, people who have been there, saying that people are experiencing feelings of peace and wholeness, and other abstract, vague, positive feelings, and that it's not taking a position on any culture-war issues.

But... does that even make sense? God's Spirit comes here, and is felt powerfully by a lot of people, but doesn't take any position on any hot-button topic? Even though Christians on both sides of the "hot-button topics" feel that being wrong on those topics is a huge problem which is literally hurting people. God isn't going to say anything one way or the other, in order to avoid people arguing on the internet about it afterwards?

The issue on my mind is acceptance of queer Christians. I'm a queer Christian, but I'm asexual and that's not something Christians are having a culture war about, and I'm straight and married to a man so on the surface it looks like I'm following the rules. (I am very much NOT following the rules, though- I explore my desires and what I want or don't want, instead of just repressing myself and then having sex that's all about my husband, like I was a told a good godly wife is supposed to do.) Queer Christians who are L, G, B, or T have a much harder time in churches than I do.

But to me, being queer-affirming (which in practice means total acceptance of same-sex relationships and transgender identities) is the key question I would ask if I was going to start attending a church. Even though I'm not personally affected by gay or trans issues, it's an indicator of whether the church believes people have the right to make their own decisions about their own personal lives, or if the church believes that Christians are in charge of making decisions for everybody else. Do they believe "you have to repress yourself and fit into this box that God said everyone needs to fit in" or do they believe "the diversity of the queer community is beautiful and reflects the image of God, and it is so life-giving to discover your identity, that God loves you and your queerness, and that you don't have to force yourself into the boxes that other people made"? See, those are very different churches.

Anyway, in the context of this revival, the students on stage and/or the Holy Spirit can't just "not take a position" on queer acceptance. Of all the people on stage leading the worship music, are any of them openly queer, or not? Either way, that's taking a side. For queer Christians, their very existence in the church is political. There can't be a "this revival is just about experiencing a sense of wholeness from God, and doesn't touch on any political controversies." (See this tweet- people arguing on Twitter about how the presence of queer people on stage at Asbury does or does not mean the revival is "really" from God.)

(Or, here's another issue that God and/or the students at Asbury may or may not take a position on: wearing masks. I haven't seen anyone in those crowds or on stage wearing a mask. Does this mean *God* believes we don't have to care about covid any more?)

This is one of the big reasons why I don't want God to intervene and do things to take sides on this or that issue. Because it won't do any good. For people who directly experience it- yes, because of the emotions of it, perhaps it is powerful and convincing and can change their opinion on some issue. Like to suddenly feel like "wow I see this in a different way now, and suddenly it all makes sense" and just feel so strongly that that's true- I've had spiritual experiences along those lines before. But for anyone who wasn't there directly experiencing it, what good does it do? If someone tells you "I had a spiritual experience which confirms that God agrees with XYZ opinion" then if you also agree with XYZ opinion, you'll be like, "wow great." But if you disagree with XYZ opinion, you'll think, "well this person obviously misunderstood what God was trying to tell them"- it's not convincing to you at all, because you disagree with XYZ for your own reasons, none of which are addressed by this person's spiritual experience.

So some people were there and experienced it, and the rest of us are here on the internet writing hot takes about what it means... so what good is it that God powerfully spoke to people there, if that's not actually useful for convincing anyone who wasn't there?

Or, maybe I shouldn't say "what good is it?" I don't want to deny that it's a good experience for people who are there. I guess what I'm responding to is that idea that it's more than that. Lotta Christians on the internet writing hot takes about how this *means* something so much *bigger*, and I just don't think it does.

Perhaps some queer person there felt like God was saying that God accepts their queerness, and some other queer person felt like God was saying they need to continue to repress themself. In the past, I've heard testimonies of both of these kinds of spiritual experiences. (See also: my post on the Nashville Statement.) My opinion on them is simply my opinion on whether repression is deadly or life-giving. Just because someone says they had an epiphany from God doesn't affect my opinion on that.

So, I mean, blah. I see all these evangelical Christians on the internet talking about "we want this to spread to more university campuses" and I'm just like, blah. It's just going to result in more people arguing on the internet.

And... the thing is... maybe we could have this idea of how the "ideal" miracle is one where God doesn't take a side on any big controversial issue that Christians argue about it- but in the bible, God does that ALL THE TIME. God uses miracles to take a side ALL THE TIME. To say "these people are right and those people are wrong."

Okay let me give you some examples. Maybe the biggest example is when Elijah and the prophets of Baal both set up altars in a contest to see which god would light an altar on fire. (1 Kings 18) In a big, dramatic miracle, Elijah's God sent fire that "burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench." Then the crowd responded by killing all the prophets of Baal- was that what God wanted? 

There's Moses telling Pharaoh "let my people go" and performing miracles to outdo the miracles that Pharaoh's priests do. (Exodus 7-14) Notice that Moses never made any argument along the lines of "slavery is wrong"- instead, it was all about "my god can beat up your god." To prove a point, God does more and more violent miracles, culminating in killing all the firstborn sons of Egypt and then drowning Pharaoh's army in the Red Sea.

There's Numbers 16, where Korah challenged Moses's authority, and God caused the earth to open up and swallow Korah and his entire household.

There's Joshua 6, where God commands the Israelites to walk around the city of Jericho for 7 days, and when the Israelites obey these instructions, God causes the walls of Jericho to collapse, and then the Israelites go in and kill all the inhabitants of Jericho (except Rahab's household).

A lot of stories where God steps in and basically says "these people are right, and those people are wrong." Though I gotta say, I suspect that a lot of these things didn't really happen, and we should be asking questions about the motivations of writers who wrote "oh yeah XYZ is totally true and God thinks so too."

Moving on to the New Testament!

Jesus tells a paralyzed man "your sins are forgiven" and the teachers of the law get mad about that, because only God can forgive sins. Then, to prove a point, Jesus miraculously heals the paralyzed man. (Matthew 9)

Jesus healed people on the Sabbath, which also was taking sides and making the Pharisees mad. (Mark 3, Luke 13)

And when the devil tempted Jesus, he wanted Jesus to jump off the temple so God would do a miracle and rescue him- and Jesus refused because "do not put the Lord your God to the test." (Matthew 4) So, maybe not cool to do a miracle just to win an argument.

Ananias and Sapphira lied to the apostle Peter, and immediately fell down and died. (Acts 5)

And when the early Christians were arguing about whether Gentiles could be Christians or if only Jewish people could, God poured out the Holy Spirit on the Gentile converts and they spoke in tongues. (Acts 10) In Acts 15, Paul and Barnabus used this in their argument for Gentile inclusion. If God accepted the Gentiles by doing miracles among them, they argued, how could the Jewish Christians exclude Gentiles by requiring them to get circumcised and obey the Jewish laws?

So if we want to say, "There are Christians with strong opinions on both sides of Big Controversial Issue X, and both sides think that the other side is horribly wrong and harmful, but we don't want to get into that, we just want *unity* and *love*"... well, lol, that's not what we see in the bible at all. And really, aren't those the big issues that we would want God to give us some answers on? (Or... maybe these are the issues that we won't change our mind on, even if God comes right up and says we're wrong...)

(But again, yeah, let's be a little suspicious of writers who wrote about "we believe in XYZ because this one time God did a miracle" and you have no way to verify if the miracle actually happened...)

But, like I said, in reality isn't this useless? For people who experienced the "miracle" or "revival" or whatever, it's convincing, but for anyone who wasn't there, well, it doesn't mean anything. I'm sure we could come up with all kinds of reasons that the writers of the bible took things the wrong way and actually they were totally wrong about whatever they said the "miracle" meant. Like, oh, how tragic that Joshua led the Israelites to kill all the people of Jericho and claim that they were doing God's will.

So... then what? If God comes and actually takes a side, it just leads to people arguing on the internet, because they can't actually believe that God would disagree with them- and a secondhand miracle isn't good evidence at all because you can't really be sure what exactly happened, and it doesn't address any of the actual reasons that you hold your opinions. But if God performs miracles which never take sides, isn't that kind of ... weak? Aren't those the issues we need God's input on? And in today's church culture, the only way to "not take a side" is to never acknowledge the existence of queer Christians, never say anything good or bad about being queer- which kind of is taking a side, if you ask me.

Okay I know I'm oversimplifying this- there are definitely miracles that are not "controversial." (I mean, there could be, hypothetically, though I personally am skeptical of any miracle claims.) Like, maybe God heals a sick person. 

But... uh... actually that could still be "controversial", because what if it's someone that Christians think doesn't "deserve" to be healed? Remember when conservative Christians didn't want to help people who had AIDS? Or, more recently, when conservative Christians didn't want their daughters to get the HPV vaccine?

Okay but anyway, there must be some miracles God can do that won't be taken to mean that God is Making A Point, and then everyone has to give their opinion on said point. And maybe the fact that these spiritual experiences are very powerful and meaningful to the people actually there experiencing them, is more important than the fact that other people will argue about it on the internet. So I am oversimplifying.

But anyway... I'm just not on board with the Christians who think this "revival" is automatically a good thing. Or the Christians who want it to just be a general positive thing that doesn't take sides on any political issue- because in the bible, miracles are often used to prove a point. And I'm also not on board with the Christians who want to use it to prove a point- because how can that possibly be convincing to anyone?

Like I said in my previous post, there's what God does, and there's how people respond. We have some people who actually were there and experienced the Asbury revival, and the rest of us who weren't there, who are writing our opinions about it on the internet. (I include myself in this group.) What good is that? For people who were there, it's great and meaningful, but for people who weren't there, it's just another thing to argue about. Is that how miracles are supposed to work?

---

Related:

I Would Love to Know If God Intervened to Stop Covid From Spreading in Churches

I Would Love to Know If God Intervened to Stop Covid From Spreading in Churches

People wearing masks at a church service. Image source.

So I saw this article from Christianity Today, The Curious Case of Coronavirus Contagion in Church, about a research study on whether or not people in the US who attended church during "lockdowns" were more likely to get covid. As an ex-evangelical math nerd, I was ALL OVER IT. Like, you guys, this is THE EXACT THING I am interested in. 

Christians always say "prayer works"- which I take to mean "prayer [if done correctly, feel free to add all kinds of criteria here about how to do it correctly] will cause God to take actual real actions in the world [not just psychological stuff in the pray-er's own mind, but affecting reality in ways external to the pray-er] to cause things to happen- or at least to change the probabilities that things will happen", for example, if you get a bunch of people to pray that a sick person will get better, then there is a higher probability that they will get better, compared to if people weren't praying for them. I am very interested in the question "what kinds of statistics and overall trends in the world would we be likely to see, if it is indeed true that 'prayer works'?"

Back in 2016, I wrote Prayer Rates Don't Correlate With Actual Risk, where I said that, if it's really true that "prayer works", then we need to harness that power by figuring out what the biggest dangers are in people's lives, and specifically praying against those things. As a first step, I looked up the stats on causes of death and found that heart disease is the biggest killer, with 23.53% of deaths- so, let's spend 23.53% of our prayer time praying against heart disease. And so on, building a model from there for how to pray most effectively. But Christians don't actually pray about the things that truly pose the biggest danger; we pray about things that we happen to be worried about. It's about our feelings, not about which things are truly harmful in reality (and we can know which things are truly harmful in reality by looking at statistics). 

Inexplicably, my post did not go viral and cause Christians all over the world to say "this blogger is absolutely right! I need to make sure in my church, we pray that people don't get into car accidents driving home from the grocery store 100 times more often than we pray for people to have a safe flight!" Or, alternatively, to say "wow if we follow this 'prayer works' logic then it leads to the conclusion that we are safest when we are constantly imagining what kind of horrible tragedies might happen to our families and praying against them, and I can't believe in a God who would want to destroy people's emotional health in that way, therefore I refuse to believe 'prayer works.'" (Which is the conclusion that I myself hold. I don't believe "prayer works" because I can't follow a God who decides whether to heal you based on whether you prayed "correctly.")

And in 2020 I wrote An Invisible Virus and an Omniscient God, where I said that, if it's really true that some Christians can have a "personal relationship with God" so strong that they become good at "discernment" and listening to God, then we should see extremely devout Christians getting infected with covid at lower rates than the general population, because God will warn them to avoid places where covid outbreaks are taking place, invisible to everyone except God. I very much doubt that this is the case, but I would love to see some statistics on it, and I thought perhaps this study in the Christianity Today article would be those very statistics.

And also, I have linked to this paper before: Prayer and healing: A medical and scientific perspective on randomized controlled trials (2009). The "Discussion" section at the end is EXTREMELY GOOD. It asks a lot of questions that people definitely should be asking if it's really true that "prayer works."

All this is to say, oh man, I am SUPER INTERESTED in the idea that perhaps God protected Their most devoted followers from getting covid, to an extent that's statistically significant. I don't believe it, but on some level, I still want to find statistical evidence of it. When I was evangelical I always wanted that, and bizarrely, no one else seemed to care. If they really believe it, then they should care, and that's why I'm still looking.

So let's take a look at Christianity Today's article. It's paywalled, but actually all the information is in the "article preview" and the only thing behind the paywall is one infographic, so don't worry if you don't have a CT subscription. And anyway, the study itself, which the article links to, is what we're really interested in.

CT titled their article "The Curious Case of Coronavirus Contagion in Church", and the subhead is "Pandemic impact was not as predictable as expected, sociological study finds." My first thought, upon reading this title and subhead, was that perhaps a study had found that, even though people who went to church in person during the pandemic were more likely to get covid than people who didn't go anywhere, they were less likely to get covid than people who went to non-churchy places in person. For example, imagine 2 hypothetical indoor gatherings of 50 people who are mostly wearing masks- one gathering is a church service, one gathering is something else- perhaps by some miracle, the people at the church service were less likely to get covid there than the people at the non-religious event. 

That was my first thought, on reading the title. Could it be that God intervened at church services to make it less likely for covid to spread there, compared to other in-person events with similar levels of social distancing, mask-wearing, etc? I am SUPER-INTERESTED to hear about any data on that.

(This probably says something about my own brain and where my thinking is, in terms of being evangelical vs ex-evangelical...)

Okay, so, no, that's not what the study said. Here's Christianity Today's summary:

People who went to church during the height of the COVID-19 lockdowns were generally more likely to catch COVID-19. This is fairly straightforward. Yet look a little closer, and the facts get a bit more perplexing.

The “association between attending in-person worship during lockdown and later testing positive for COVID-19 was limited primarily to those who were not previously frequent worship attendees,” according to a study published in the American Sociological Association journal Socius.

[The study specifically looked at May to August 2020. In the US.]

Oooh, fascinating! So if you were already regularly attending church, and you continued to regularly attend church throughout the "lockdowns" (I put "lockdowns" in scare-quotes because I lived through the Shanghai lockdown) (some of you have never set your alarm for 6:55 so you can button-mash on a grocery app at exactly 7:00 am for the slim chance to buy vegetables, and it shows), the church attendance didn't really increase your chance of getting covid. But if you didn't attend church much before, and then you just started attending during the "lockdowns", then there is an increased chance of you getting covid.

Wow! I am so interested in this data! On reading CT's article, my mind comes up with all kinds of explanations for this. Maybe people who just started attending church are not as strong Christians as those who were already regular attenders, and so God miraculously protected the strong Christians better than the weak Christians. Maybe for those Christians who defied government orders and kept having church, standing up against "persecution" [note: those of us who live in reality recognize that it was a public health emergency, not "persecution"], God supernaturally protected them from covid, just like Daniel in the lions' den. Maybe long-time church members have the experience and familiarity with how their church runs and are already connected to the church's social groups and communication channels, and therefore it's easier for them to adapt to whatever new policies get put in place to stop covid from spreading, but new people don't know what's going on at all so they can't follow the new anti-covid rules well. Maybe there's something about the sort of people who would suddenly start attending in-person church in a pandemic... who would do that?

(To be clear: All of that is my own speculation. CT's article doesn't say anything about that. I don't want to misrepresent what the CT article said. It simply said "here are the results of the study; how interesting that the increased chance of getting covid was only for the new attenders" but didn't give any speculation about the reasons why.)

And honestly, I really wanted it to be "God miraculously protected the strong Christians better than the new Christians." I went and read the whole paper (full text is here). The researchers who wrote the paper give this as a possible explanation:

However, interactions indicate that this increase was limited primarily to those who were not regular attenders previously. The results suggest that worship attendance during lockdown substantially increased COVID-19 infections for the minority who attended possibly as a form of protest.

And:

How do we interpret this latter finding? Contrary to what we might expect from the 2021 BRS or 2020 CES data showing an association between general worship attendance and COVID-19 infection, it does not seem to be the case that deeply devout Americans disregarded stay-at-home orders, attended worship gatherings frequently during lockdown, and then got infected and tested positive for COVID-19. Rather, our data suggest that some Americans who were relatively disconnected from faith communities (they rarely or never attended) reported attending in-person worship gatherings more frequently during late April or early May 2020, and it was these Americans who later tested positive for COVID-19. This suggests that their reported in-person worship attendance at the height of lockdown restrictions did not reflect their stronger commitment to religious community but that their very attendance may have been an act of defiance or protest against the restrictions. Persons who would have otherwise stayed at home (as they usually did in 2019) suddenly felt compelled to attend in-person worship when they were advised or demanded not to and then were more likely to test positive for coronavirus. Another possibility is that in-person worship would have been among the limited opportunities for even irreligious Americans to actually interact socially at the height of lockdown, though the strength of this explanation is mitigated somewhat by controlling for other kinds of gathering frequency.

Oooh! I had not thought of this explanation: that people who suddenly started attending church during "lockdown" did so as a political statement against the idea of government policies to stop covid, and in particular, restrictions on religious gatherings. I guess if that's their motivation, they're not going to be like "let's try to keep having church but with reasonable precautions to stop covid" like existing members would probably say. Instead, it's more of a "look at us, not following the rules! You can't stop us!"

And, continuing along those lines: Initially I was imagining that in any given church, you have some long-time members and some new people, and the new people are more likely to get covid than the long-time members, perhaps because God miraculously protects the long-time members because they are very good faithful Christians. [No, I don't actually believe that- I am just considering it as a statistical model.] But wait, what if it's not about specific individuals in a church, but about the overall congregation? What sorts of churches would have the most new members during "lockdowns"? Probably churches that were making big public statements about how they're not going to follow the anti-covid rules. Whereas, on the other side, I've heard of churches that required people to sign up beforehand if they wanted to attend the in-person services. Churches that had online services for a long time, and were very very careful about starting up in-person services again. That kind of caution and hoops to jump through will deter newcomers from casually dropping by to check out your church. Those reasonable and careful churches probably had very very few new people.

So- and this is just me hypothesizing; the actual data says nothing about this- maybe the question to ask is "what kind of church is most likely to have a covid outbreak?" And a church that takes the pandemic seriously and sets up a bunch of new policies- and is therefore more difficult for new people to attend- will be much less likely to have a covid outbreak than a church that proudly breaks the rules and attracts new people who attend just to make a political statement.

To be clear: the researchers' explanation (that new church attenders were more likely to get covid because they were just attending church to make a political statement) is just their attempt to explain their findings; it's not something that's supported by the data itself. It seems intuitively true to me, but do remember that it's just an idea and not something we have the actual stats to support. Same thing with my idea about churches that openly break the rules (and therefore have covid outbreaks) being more attractive to people who suddenly want to start going to church in a pandemic. It seems to make sense, but we don't have data on it, so don't believe it just yet.

But anyway, so, yeah, turns out this study doesn't show that God miraculously protects devout Christians from getting covid. The explanation offered by the researchers makes much more sense. At least I'm glad to see that long-time church members who continued to go to in-person church did not have an increased risk of getting covid (probably because most of them took it seriously and set up precautions to stop the spread, rather than treating it like an us-vs-them political issue). That's good news. But if we want statistical evidence that "God answers prayer" and/or supernaturally protects Their most devoted followers, we'll have to keep looking.

---

Related:

Prayer Rates Don't Correlate With Actual Risk

An Invisible Virus and an Omniscient God 

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