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

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.

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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.

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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.

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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."

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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."

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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.

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

Cross. Image source.

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

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The evangelical take on this question

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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But then I read James Cone

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Also, American Christians should all read James Cone.

---

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

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

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

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

Some quotes from the paper:

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

and

Christianity is an abusive theology that glorifies suffering.

and

No one was saved by the death of Jesus.

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

Click here to go to the beginning of the series.

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Related:

"The South is Crucifying Christ Again"

Blogaround (1/18/23)

Good Friday is R-Rated 

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

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

"On earth as it is in heaven" 

Sure Of What We Hope For

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. The great global redistributor we never hear about: money sent or brought back by migrants (January 13, via) "According to the UN, migrant workers send back about 15% of their earnings on average. But even a little money from rich countries can make a big difference in poorer ones. For example, 15% of the average annual income in the United States is nearly twice the average annual income in Colombia."

2. The Unbearable Loudness of Chewing (January, via) "But I think a second, larger reason is that misophonia is weird. It’s hard to explain and difficult to understand and doesn’t make any intuitive sense. After all, everyone hates the sound of chewing."

3. Democrats unveil legislation raising federal minimum wage to $17 an hour (April 8) It's a good idea. I'm skeptical about its chances of passing though.

4. Pulling Out The Big Guns For Needle Phobia In An Insane World Where Nobody Seems To Take It Seriously (February 20) I'm linking this because, I don't have needle phobia but I have similar things... This post takes it seriously and gives extremely practical suggestions, which is really rare to see. Usually people just treat you like you're being silly and making a big deal for no reason, and everything would be fine if you would just "relax."

5. Tidy Profit: Camera Captures the Cleaners Changing Lives (April 16) An article about women in China working as domestic workers (they are called "ayis" in China). We have an ayi who works for us, to take care of our baby while we're at work. (This is common in China because there aren't really daycares for infants.) She also does housework. In China if you can afford it, it really helps a lot to have an ayi.

6. Intuit, Owner of TurboTax, Wins Battle Against America’s Taxpayers (April 17) "Instead, it continued cajoling lawmakers and the White House into forcing millions of Americans to shell out hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dollars to file with expensive and confusing tax prep software."

7. Holy Saturday (April 17) "And now it’s Saturday and Jesus is dead and we’re all going to die and everything I’ve told you about him turns out to be in vain and everything I’ve staked my life on turns out to be in vain. Our faith is futile and we’re still hopeless in our sins. Jesus is dead and we are of all people most to be pitied."

8. Life and Living Not Death and Dying (April 17) "Christian theologians from multiple marginalized communities have spent years critiquing a theology that centers the good news on Jesus’ suffering rather than how life triumphed over suffering by undoing, overturning, and reversing that death."

Related to that: Good Friday Without Divine Violence (April 17) 

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. The Trump Administration Threat To Transgender Adult Care Is Growing At Lightning Speed (April 16) 

Also from Erin in the Morning: Washington State Passes Bill To Cover Some 12-Month Hormone Therapy Stockpiles (April 17) This is good news for trans people in Washington state. The thing that really surprised me was, it says actually hormone replacement therapy is usually for other health issues (menopause, etc)- trans people are only a small fraction of the people who need this kind of medical care.

2. THE GOOD TROUBLE CHECKLIST (April 3) "Figure out what your lane is. Then figure out who is local to you and already doing some of that work. How can you be useful? How can you extend existing efforts? How can you show up and raise hell? Do something."

3. 'Homegrowns are next': Trump hopes to deport and jail U.S. citizens abroad (April 16) WTF. And remember, he sent immigrants there without showing any proof that they were "gang members." He also wants to send US citizens there without showing any such evidence.

4. Trump exploiting antisemitism fears to undermine rule of law, warns Jewish coalition (April 16) "'Our safety as Jews has always been tied to the rule of law, to the safety of others, to the strength of civil society, and to the protection of rights and liberties for all,' reads the statement."

5. In the middle of a hepatitis outbreak, U.S. shutters the one CDC lab that could help (April 16)

6. Confusion reigns as asylum seekers who used CBP One receive notices to leave U.S. within 7 days (April 16) "'We have families who said ‘well, I’m just going to hide, because I can’t go back to my home country, I will be killed, so I prefer to hide,’' she said."

7. U.S.-born American citizen under ICE hold in Florida is released (April 18)

8. Exclusive: Senator Chris Van Hollen talks with Rachel Maddow live from El Salvador (April 17)

And: A Maryland senator visits his wrongfully deported constituent in El Salvador (April 17) "'I said my main goal of this trip was to meet with Kilmar,' Van Hollen wrote on X. 'Tonight I had that chance. I have called his wife, Jennifer, to pass along his message of love.'"

Blogaround

1. Our Most Emotional Video (March 29) A sudoku inspired by a Tracy Chapman song. Who knew that sudoku could teach us about the history of systemic racism? This is very well done. (1-hour-6-minute sudoku solve video)

2. The Problem With Vulgar Racism Is Not The Vulgarity (March 28) "One is a cartoon character who embodies the essence and ethos of white evangelicalism in America. The other one is Ned Flanders."

Also from the Slacktivist: Holy Saturday (March 30) "We can believe in Easter Sunday, but we can’t be sure. We can’t know for sure."

3. Amazon Ditches 'Just Walk Out' Checkouts at Its Grocery Stores (April 2, via) "Though it seemed completely automated, Just Walk Out relied on more than 1,000 people in India watching and labeling videos to ensure accurate checkouts."

4. Google to delete search data of millions who used 'incognito' mode (April 1, via) "The suit revealed that Google saved the standard and incognito browsing history of users in the same profile."

5. Banality and bigotry (April 6) This is so bizarre. Richard Dawkins says, "I'm a cultural Christian." ????? What is going on?

He is Risen

 Happy Easter everyone!

 

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

A comic showing a man in a devil outfit at the gates of heaven. He says, "Sorry about this - I died at a costume party." Image source.

Anyone remember the whole "heavenly tourism" fad?

A few years ago, some "heavenly tourism" stories started popping up. Books like "Heaven Is For Real" and "The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven," which were (supposedly true) accounts of people who had near-death experiences, and supposedly went to heaven and then came back. It was a whole thing in Christian culture, back then. (Later, Alex Malarkey, the boy from "The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven" said that whole book was not true.)

These stories were, basically, about proving how right our religious beliefs are. Scoring points against people from other religions and/or atheists. Doesn't that seem... extremely weird? If you really got to go see what heaven was like, shouldn't it be about learning incredible new otherworldly information, rather than confirming that you already were right about everything?

The "heavenly tourism" stories included elements like this: A child goes to heaven and sees Jesus, who looks basically like what Christians expect Jesus to look like. The child sees angels, who are basically what Christians expect angels to look like. The child meets some of his relatives who died a long time ago- and is able to later describe what these relatives looked like, which shouldn't be possible because the child had never met them on earth- and this matches Christians' beliefs about who is in heaven and what kind of existence they would have. And so on.

And there's usually an aspect of the story that's just there to score points for "pro-life" ideology: The child meets another child in heaven, who explains that she's the sister who died in their mom's belly, or something along those lines. And when the child comes back from heaven and tells his mom, the mom is so surprised, because she never told him that she had a miscarriage/abortion. (I say this "scores points" for the "pro-life" side because "pro-life" people wrongly believe that pro-choice people view a fetus as having no value/soul/life/etc at any point of development up until birth. So, if a dead fetus goes to heaven, that means abortion should always be illegal, or something. Uh, okay.)

And there may be a few elements of the story which at first don't seem to match what Christians believe- the child says he saw something in heaven, and the good Christian adults who are listening to this story can't figure out what he's talking about. But, they dig a little deeper and they find that it TOTALLY DOES match something the bible said, or whatever, just in a way they didn't expect. So, see, we were right about everything.

Really? Someone goes to heaven and comes back, and all we get is more confidence that we were already right about everything? We don't, like, learn anything new? Really?

I gotta say, I believe in heaven, but I definitely think I'm wrong about a lot of aspects of it. If heaven is real, probably the first thing that happens to everyone who goes there is they find out it's completely different from what they expected. It must be; we have no mechanism to actually get reliable information on what heaven is like- most of our beliefs are basically folklore that has gradually built up over hundreds or thousands of years, with no way to actually fact-check any of it. A lot of it has got to be just plain wrong. And wouldn't it be awesome, to get a glimpse of what heaven really is, and find out how wrong you are?

Personally, my beliefs about heaven and resurrection come from two main sources:

1. The world is not just. I want to believe that somehow, someday, all the wrongs will be made right. I want to believe that justice is real. And so I hope that there is resurrection, that heaven is real, and I imagine what heaven would have to be like, to truly create justice.
   But maybe that's just wishful thinking. Just because I want it, doesn't mean it's actually real. Which brings me to point number 2...
2. There is a long tradition of people believing in various religions because we want there to be more than just this world. (And, in particular, I'm a Christian, so I'm influenced by Christian beliefs about resurrection and heaven.) Thousands of years of people saying the world is not just and we hope for a better world. Okay, maybe that's just wishful thinking too, and there's nothing real to it. But since it's so common, I kind of believe there's something there. I hope there is.

That's, uh, that's pretty much it. That's all the "evidence" we have that heaven exists. (I put "evidence" in scare quotes because honestly neither of those things really adds up to any evidence at all.) That's all we have to go on, as we speculate about what heaven is like. Point 1 is just our opinions on what perfect justice should look like, and point 2 is claims from religions about how maybe a few hundred years ago, God spoke to someone and gave some clues about what heaven is like. That's it. So, okay, that's the broad outlines of what heaven is, but we seriously know nothing about the details. Like, you could say "I believe God will make everything right, but I don't have any idea how that will work" and that's basically it. Beyond that, any details you believe about heaven are just fan theories.

So, wow, how cool would it be to actually go to heaven and see what it's like, and then come back? And likely the main thing that would happen is you would find out how totally wrong you are about pretty much all of it. Very cool to learn new information and find out which things we were wrong about.

Right?

But, apparently not. Because that's not the angle that those "heavenly tourism" stories take at all. They're not about learning something new; they're used as evidence that Christians are already right about everything. They're evidence for the beliefs we already have, something you can bring up in an argument with non-Christians (though honestly I don't think these kinds of stories are at all convincing to non-Christians, so good luck with that!), rather than an incredibly useful tool for examining our own beliefs and getting rid of the ones which are just wrong.

Isn't that a little... strange?

And really it's about the whole concept of certainty, about how when I was an evangelical I thought I was right about everything, because the bible gives us all the answers and that's that. But now I'm like, I don't know, I hope resurrection is real, I believe in it, but I don't know, I could be wrong. I see the ways that my beliefs are based on ... like... what I *want* to be true, rather than things I actually have evidence for. And... I do believe people have a conscience that comes from God, and so it does mean something that we understand this world is not the way it should be, and we want there to be a better world- so, perhaps that means there *is* a better world- so, there's that, but that's not really evidence either. (It's a fan theory.)

Winning arguments. Scoring points. Telling other people why you're right and they're wrong. Imagine you get to go to heaven- YOU GET TO GO TO HEAVEN- and that's all you get out of it.

---

Related:

Sure Of What We Hope For 

Someday Dave Ramsey will have to stand before God and explain why he fired a pregnant woman

And this song, "Heaven is a place on earth." Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. We'll make heaven a place on earth. That's my religion.

On "Unjust Marriage"

I searched google for "levirate marriage" and this is the diagram I got. It's a family tree, with circles (women) and triangles (men), and one triangle is crossed out and an arrow is drawn from the wife to the brother. Image source.

A while ago I saw this blog series "When Marriage is Unjust" by Herb Montgomery- here's part 1, part 2, and part 3. It's about Luke 20:27-38, where the Sadducees come and ask Jesus this weird hypothetical question about a woman who married 7 brothers in sequence because they keep dying on her- whose wife will she be at the resurrection (ie, in heaven)? Jesus tells them that at the resurrection, there will be no marriage.

Montgomery's take on this passage is:

Jesus explains that in the age to come, an age of justice, there will be no marriage. How unjustly must the institution of marriage have been that Jesus couldn’t imagine it in the coming age of justice? Jesus states that all who are children of the resurrection will be “like the angels.” We can debate whatever that means, but the implication of the phrase is that marriage will be no more because all injustice will be no more.

Marriage in the time of Jesus was so unjust and oppressive to women, that Jesus says it cannot possibly exist at the resurrection, when there is perfect justice.

(Montgomery's blog posts also raise some good points about the practice of levirate marriage- which is what the Sadducees are describing, a widow has to marry her dead husband's brother- and how it was so centered on men. Like the dead man's "need" to have an heir is more important than his widow's right to make her own choices about things like marriage. I've heard the argument that this practice was intended to help the woman, because if she was single and didn't have a son, she basically had no way to provide for herself- even so, the problems are all caused by patriarchy.)

I find this fascinating because it's so different from what I was taught "the bible says" about marriage, growing up in evangelicalism and purity culture. Purity culture teaches that "God has a plan for your life" about what person you will marry. That God picked 1 specific opposite-gender person for you, and that's "God's plan" (and you have to pray really hard and be really stressed about trying to figure out who it is, or else you're ruining God's plan). And that when you follow all of God's rules, don't have sex before marriage, and marry the one magical person that God picked, the result will be so perfect and magical and amazing. You'll have such a loving, intimate, romantic connection. You'll have the best sex ever. You'll fit right into your gender role, and it will feel so natural and fulfilling.

That was how I viewed marriage. You find someone you can truly trust, that you can love with everything you have, and you build a life together, as equal partners. I thought that's what marriage *is*. (And yes, lucky for me, that *is* what my marriage is about.)

Turns out that's a pretty modern idea- having a marriage based on romantic love. And historically, the way it often worked was, women have a bunch of less-than-ideal options, and one of those options is to get married- so that's why they get married.

It really amazes me how obvious it is that there are no women in the bible who followed the "purity rules" and then had a perfect marriage, and I totally never noticed this, until I had already started to question purity ideology. I'm a bible nerd, I knew all the stories, I knew all the messed-up ways that men of the bible treated their wives, and yet somehow I still bought this idea that "God has picked 1 guy who is perfect for you, and if you follow these biblical rules, it guarantees a perfect marriage." HOW??? (I ended up writing about this here: "God has one perfect guy for you!" Yeah, that's not biblical.)

As I was thinking about the idea of "unjust marriage" and getting married because it's the least-bad option, I thought about this article I had read, from Sixth Tone: A Vietnamese Bride’s Chinese Dream. It's about a Vietnamese woman who didn't have many options for getting a well-paying job in Vietnam, and then she heard about a cousin who had married a Chinese man and moved to China. She decided to look into this option for herself too, which meant taking a very shady bus ride hundreds of miles into China, with some other Vietnamese women. They came to some small village in China and met the available men. She says this about the man whom she decided to marry:

The next family offered 100,000 yuan and had a two-story brick house. The suitor was in good physical shape, had a junior high school diploma, was five years older than me, and looked to be freshly shaven.

The first time I saw him, I felt nothing; my only concern was the bride price. After weighing it up, I decided to marry him.

It really surprised me, the way marriage is talked about in this article. It's not about "you know this person and you love this person and you want to spend your life with them." Instead, it's talked about like... do you think you could tolerate this person? If you had to live with him and have his children, could you accept that? Is it a better situation overall than the life you have in Vietnam?

The article also talks about the difficulties that this woman has because she entered China illegally. Not having id, worrying about being deported, not even having the right documents to be able to go back to Vietnam- and also, she couldn't speak Chinese at all when she first arrived. Immigrant women in this kind of situation are extremely vulnerable. What if her husband turns out to be abusive? She can't easily leave him because then she may get deported.

This is the reality of what marriage is, for a lot of people in the world today. It's a way to get out of a bad situation, into a different-and-hopefully-less-bad situation. And I think reading about women's experiences today, choosing marriage for these reasons, can help us when we read what the bible says about marriage. 

We read words like "marriage" or "divorce" in the bible, and we think of those terms in the way we see them defined in our culture today- which is very much because of the work of feminist activists, pushing for changes in society so that women would have better options. And as a result of that feminist work, it feels normal to us to marry someone because you want to be with them, rather than because it's the least-bad option available to you. And also, the work of LGBT activists- because the concept of same-sex marriage is very much dependent on the idea of marrying someone because you want to be with them, not because of societal expectations, or economic reasons, or being expected to have children. (But also there are legal things like health insurance, hospital visitation, etc, which are very important reasons same-sex couples need to have the right to marry.) So this is how we see marriage, and then we read the bible and we assume that's what the bible means when it uses the word "marriage", but wow it is NOT.

So, in summary: In purity culture, I was taught that God has a plan for all of us to have a wonderful marriage with an opposite-sex partner, whom we work together with so incredibly well, and that we love and trust fully. And yes, I'm married now, and I'm glad my relationship with my husband is like that- we work together well, it's romantic, we love each other, etc. (But I don't believe in the gender-roles stuff, and also it's important to me that I chose to marry him, instead of just coasting along on "God's plan.") But, this view of marriage is a very modern thing- and actually, there are many cultures in the world today where that's not what marriage is at all. Instead, marriage is about financial needs, or immigration opportunities, or fitting a role that your family wants you to fit... And the concept of marriage that we see in the bible is much closer to that than to romantic ideals about "we want to spend our lives together." 

When we read what the bible says about marriage, we should remember that's the kind of marriage it's talking about. And we should be grateful that because of feminist and LGBT activists, marriage in our culture has become something so much better than what it was in biblical times.

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And 1 more thing I want to say: We can help by donating to charities that help women around the world have better economic opportunities, and charities that help immigrants. For example, there's Women For Women International, which focuses on women who are survivors of war.

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Related:

"God has one perfect guy for you!" Yeah, that's not biblical. 

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

It Doesn’t Actually Matter What Jesus Said About Divorce

US Immigration and the Definition of Marriage 

Blogaround

1. My 2023 Reader Survey is still open- go take it if you haven't done it yet. (Survey will be open until June 19.)

2. Only ONE Person Has Solved This Puzzle... (May 12) 2-hours-13-minutes sudoku solve video. My favorite part was, at 1 hour and 30 minutes in, with only 2 digits placed in the puzzle, Simon says, "Maybe this is why people have found this difficult, because they get to this point and then get stuck."

3. Optimum tic-tac-toe (May 26) "[Chat GPT] very strongly prefers to place its marks in the corners, longwindedly explaining how its corner move is a superior strategy, all while I win game after game by placing my marks in the center rows and columns."

4. Journal Club: Why is absent/low sexual desire a mental disorder? (May 24) "The author criticizes the classification of absent/low desire as a mental disorder from three primary angles: first that it doesn’t make sense to have a different diagnostic setup depending on whether someone identifies as asexual; second, that this diagnosis is disproportionately assigned to women, reflecting sexist values; finally, the distress criterion is insufficient."

5. Rare all-white panda spotted in SW China's Sichuan Province (May 27)

6. China's first homegrown large passenger jet took its maiden flight after 16 years in the making — check it out (May 29) Great!

7. Shanghai Metro on the right track after 30 years (May 28) "Meanwhile, the overall length of the city's Metro network, has increased to 831 kilometers, becoming the largest metro system among all the cities in the world, according to Shanghai's Metro operator, Shanghai Shentong Metro Group." The Shanghai metro system has been operating for 30 years. I can confirm, yes, subways in China are very nice. (My photos here and here.)

Sixth Tone also has a series of articles on the 30th anniversary of the construction of the Shanghai subway system:
Shanghai, in Motion (May 28) "'Compared with walking on the street, we feel safer and more relieved after entering the metro station. There, everything is standardized and traceable,' he said, adding that the better tactile paving in stations and along the platform edges is a crucial accessibility feature, particularly for the visually impaired."
Beyond the Midnight Hour (May 29) "Maintenance crews take over to keep the Shanghai Metro running like clockwork for the 10 million passengers who ride it every day."
Building Shanghai’s Deepest Station (May 30) "With the deepest foundation piles reaching as far as 48 meters underground, Chen and his team had no choice but to build the new station at a record depth of 36 meters so that incoming trains could make it to the station after diving under the piles. For safety and energy consumption reasons, official regulations limit subway inclination to a maximum gradient of 3%."

8. Pentecost, Resurrection, and the Chasm of History (May 25) "In terms of early sources, the only vague candidate for such a mass appearance is the Pentecost scene in Acts 2, which as we know it today is not explicitly cited as a Resurrection appearance. But as I will suggest, that is what it was originally."

9. Return of the Jedi (1983) - Ace Mini-Review (May 25) "This leads to an ending that, in its own understated way, is remarkably ace-friendly.  Cinematic and storytelling conventions tell us that the hero’s happy ending should include heterosexual marriage.  And yet Luke, the quintessential hero, ends his story single and without a romantic prospect in sight."

10. China sends first civilian astronaut to space as Shenzhou-16 blasts off (May 29) "It is China’s fifth manned mission to the space station since 2021." Cool!

If God Metaphorically Made the World in 6 Days, What Does That Even Mean?

Gif of Jonathan Frakes saying "We made it up." Image source.

The first chapter of the bible, Genesis 1, says that God made everything in 6 days. On day 1, he made light. (I'll use "he/him" pronouns for God here because Genesis 1 does.) On day 2, he made the sky. On day 3, he made the land, the seas, and plants. On day 4, he made the sun, moon, and stars. On day 5, he made birds and water animals. On day 6, he made land animals and people. On day 7, he rested.

This is not a true story. None of this actually happened.

(I used to be a young-earth creationist, and really believed this story was true. If you ever want to hear about all the fan theories that creationists have come up with to explain how this story is true and set in the same universe we live in, I can tell you all about it.)

I've been thinking about this ever since I read the book "Inspired." (My review of "Inspired" is here.) There's a section in "Inspired" about creation stories, and comparing the creation story from the bible with the creation stories from other ancient cultures. The point of the creation story in Genesis 1 was to teach people to view the world as having a purpose and an order- it was made by God on purpose, in an organized way. To teach people to view God as being the One in control of everything- God speaks, and the creation bursts into existence. To teach people to view themselves as special, the crowning act of creation, with power over the earth and a responsibility to care for it. And to teach people that it's important to take time to rest.

From what I've read about these kinds of religious myths, ancient people weren't thinking in terms of what's literally true, but they used stories as a way to create their identity. In the case of Genesis 1, they wanted to be people who believe that the world has a purpose and an order, and God is in control. (This is contrasted with creation stories from other ancient religions, which had the world being formed as a result of gods fighting with each other, for example.)

So when modern Christians say it's not literally true, but it's metaphorically true, that's apparently what they're saying. 

But let's go a little further- what does that mean? So, we want to be the sort of people who believe in the sort of God who would create the universe in an organized way over the course of 6 days. Not that God actually did do that- we know They didn't, because the universe is way older than that- but They're the sort of God who would. That's the God we want to believe in. Or, taking it a step farther, maybe it's not important whether this God exists at all- it's just about us seeing ourselves as the sort of people who believe in a God who is the sort of God who would create the universe in 6 days.

I don't know, kind of sounds like a mess. I feel like the idea of believing something is "metaphorically" true but not "literally" true just doesn't make sense. So my position is, I don't think Genesis 1 is literally true or metaphorically true, but I like it as a story. (If I said Genesis 1 is metaphorically true, I would also have to say Star Wars is metaphorically true. That seems to me to be straining the definition of "true" way too far.)

Or... actually, it's more like, people believe in some story as sort of a shortcut to believing in a more abstract idea, and this more abstract idea is a beneficial thing for people to believe in. Is it important that the abstract idea is literally true? For example, maybe the abstract idea is about having hope that things will turn out okay, and you can make an argument that even if people are in a bad situation and will end up failing, it's still beneficial for them to have that hope. (But you could also make the argument that it's not good to have false hope, and that the "abstract idea" is only any good if it's literally true.)

The danger, though, is when the story teaches us an "abstract idea" which is harmful. For example, Adam was created before Eve, therefore it is argued that men have to be the leaders, and women can't be trusted because they are easily deceived, like Eve was deceived by the snake. (Or, if you ever read stories in the bible about how this or that shady character was the ancestor of one of the nations we don't like, well, that's not true, it was just made up as a way to justify their prejudice against the neighboring nations.)

Or there might even be an "abstract idea" that modern readers are getting from the story, which has no relation at all to what the author was trying to say, or how ancient readers would have read it. So these "abstract ideas" have to be judged on their own merits; it can't just be "it comes from a bible story, therefore it must be right." I love reading feminist/queer/liberation/trauma-informed readings of the bible, and these definitely view the text in new ways that the author did not intend. The bible is living and active, and we can interact with it and make it into something new; I love that. But it's not about "I interpret this bible story to argue my point, and since it comes from a bible story, my conclusion is automatically true and you have to accept it." It's about "I have a whole ideology that I believe in [for example, feminism], and I have logical reasons to back it up (and if you disagree with me, those 'logical reasons' are the place we should work on hashing out where we agree or disagree), and I am using this bible story as a convenient tool to help people connect emotionally with the point I am making."

And actually, if people believe the story is literally true, then everyone is welcome to pull out whatever idea logically follows from the story. They would all be literally true too, if the logic works. But if the story is not literally true, then the intention is only for one specific idea to be communicated by the story, and if you say it means something different, then you're "taking it the wrong way" and "the metaphor breaks down."

Here's a related example: I remember reading an article once, about a study where American children were surveyed to see what percentage of them wanted to be the president someday. I don't remember the exact numbers, but it was found that a much higher percentage of boys than girls planned on being president. Like 60% of boys and 40% of girls, or something like that. And the article was presenting this like it was a bad thing- specifically, that the percentage of girls was too low, and this was an indication of society's sexism.

When I read that article, I was SO CONFUSED. I was like... okay, you realize that only ONE PERSON becomes president EVERY FOUR YEARS, right? (Ballpark figure of 1 president every 4 years, though sometimes it's 8 years and sometimes it's less than 4 years.) 60% of little boys and 40% of little girls think they're gonna be the president? That's just patently absurd right there. Probably none of them are going to be the president. Like why do you want more girls to have this unrealistic belief? Why would that be a good thing?

Maybe a higher percentage of girls understand the realities of politics and the pressures of being in the public eye, how many years it takes working as a politician/senator/governor/whatever before running for president, what specific personality traits are required for the role of president, other influential leadership roles that may match her own personality better, etc. Maybe instead of being concerned that too few girls want to be president, we should be concerned that too many boys don't seem to have a realistic idea of what being president actually entails, and how to judge if that's something that's really a good match for one's own personality and skills.

What's actually going on here is, it's not literally about being the president at all. That's just being used as a symbol for being ambitious and believing you can reach your goals and be a successful important person. Believing that you can follow your dreams and not be restricted to certain types of jobs based on your gender. It really has nothing to do with actually becoming the president in reality; it's about this more abstract idea. And that abstract idea is a good thing for children to believe (regardless of gender).

Believing in these stories as sort of a shorthand for believing in these bigger ideas about your own identity and how you fit into this world.

(Suddenly, it occurs to me that adults asking children "what do you want to be when you grow up?" is ALWAYS about how the child views their identity and their place in the world, rather than about what they're actually going to be when they grow up. Huh. I guess I've been "taking it too literally" my entire life.)

Here's another example: People are always saying "representation matters"- ie, it's important that fictional stories contain a diverse array of characters. For example, people might say it's important that there are some female superheroes, because it conveys the message that women can be strong and clever and be leaders and save the world. If all superheroes were men, people might believe that only men can be strong and heroic like that, and women can't. But, let's dig into this a little bit- superheroes are actually not real at all, so why does it matter what specific demographics they come from? And if a movie shows a woman being strong and a good leader... well that's not real, it's just a fictional story, but in actual reality it is literally true that women can be strong and good leaders, and the movie conveys this implicit message. But how does a fictional story make its audience believe in a related claim about the nature of reality? How does that make sense?

And really, this is also why people criticize stereotypes and cliches in movies- even though everyone knows it's fiction, there's still some aspect of it that people are going to take as a true portrayal of how reality works. (For example, movies where stalking is romantic.)

Very interesting, how the human mind creates a connection between stories and truth, in a way that isn't necessarily right.

Anyway. Getting back to the question of the creation of the world. Well, what actually happened was the big bang, and then billions of years of star formation and rocks just kinda floating in space, and then the earliest life on earth appeared 3.7 billion years ago, and from there it was natural selection and animals being vicious to each other so that the weak ones died and the beneficial mutations were passed to the next generation, etc etc, and now here we are. There is evidence for this. (Like I said, I used to be a young-earth creationist, so I know all about arguing about the evidence, but that's off-topic for this post.)

But if you want to take this actual literal reality and pull out the abstract background ideas that tell us about our identity and purpose, it's, uh, kinda depressing? All of human existence is just this tiny blip compared to the time scales of the whole universe. We are just on one planet, out of all the millions of planets in the cold expanse of space. And survival of the fittest means the universe doesn't care who lives or dies. God- if any god exists- doesn't step in and stop the strong from taking advantage of the weak.

Aren't those things literally true, since they come from a story that's literally true?

Well... Yes, it's literally true that human history is just one tiny tiny thing in a vast universe with billions of years of existence, rather than humans being the pinnacle of God's creation. But if you go from there and then make a statement like "therefore our lives are not important" that's a bit of a logical leap. (What's the definition of "important"?) And if you take "survival of the fittest" and then say that it's right for the strong to take advantage of the weak, and that we should do more of that, well, that's also a logical leap. (And actually there's a lot of game theory stuff about why it's beneficial for people to cooperate with each other. Being heartless toward others isn't the optimal evolutionary strategy anyway.)

It doesn't have to be "depressing." I've read some really good articles from humanists/atheists about finding meaning and purpose in life, without religion. (Captain Cassidy and Bart Campolo come to mind. If you have more links about this, go ahead and share in the comment section- I'm really interested in this.) Generally it's along the lines of, we have to value this life because it's all we have. And being in awe at the sheer statistical improbability that you even exist- to even exist at all is so amazing. And the ability to create meaning ourselves is way better than a god assigning your life's meaning.

As for me, I'm a Christian. I literally believe in God. But, uh... if God exists, or if God is just a concept that we project our own ideas onto... does it make a difference? I don't believe that God intervenes in the world. Is there really much of a difference between God being literally real and not intervening in the world, or God being just an idea...?

Uh. Well I don't have an answer to that. I do literally believe in God, though.

And I literally believe in the resurrection of Jesus. And that someday the whole world will be literally resurrected. My feeling is that, for the idea of resurrection, there is a difference between "this is literally true" and "this is maybe not literally true but I want to be the kind of person who believes in it." I really believe what the apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15, "And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith."

It really matters to me whether that's true. We need resurrection. We need real justice. We need it to be literally true that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." It's not enough, to me, to be the sort of person who believes in the sort of God who would raise Jesus from the dead. To believe that it's something They would do- no, I believe it's something They did.

(Here's a thorny question, though: Isn't it a bit inconsistent that I don't believe Genesis 1 is literally true, but I believe the resurrection of Jesus is literally true? Is it just because believing in the resurrection is scientifically more convenient- like, it's just a one-off miracle, not something we'd expect to have scientific evidence for, whereas the evidence for the history of the universe and how it's billions of years old is EVERYWHERE, and you really have to put a lot of work into your fan theories if you want to argue for a young earth...? So I just believe in a literal resurrection because I feel like I can get away with it, in a way I can't get away with believing the universe was created in 6 days...? Uh yeah that's a question.)

So, in summary: When people talk about religious stories being not "literally" true, but "metaphorically" true, they mean that the story itself did not happen, but there's an abstract idea that the story is meant to represent, and that abstract idea is literally true- or perhaps even if it's not true, it [supposedly] makes us into better people if we believe it. In the ancient world, their stories weren't about what actually happened, but about understanding their identity. What kind of people are we? We are the kind of people who believe in this kind of God.

I wonder whether this makes sense at all, though. It feels very human, to use stories as proxies for communicating more abstract ideas. People will always do this, and it's beautiful, but at the same time, we should be aware we are doing it, otherwise we can easily fall into believing wrong ideas.

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Related:

Sure Of What We Hope For 

An Ex-Evangelical Mom Review of "When God Made The World"

No One Can Take The Bible From Me

Animals Screw Over Other Animals and Get Away With It

"The Author of Leviticus Would Have Been Cool With It"