Don't ever tell me it was a good thing. Don't ever tell me it was God's plan.

Image text: "If this is God's plan, God is a terrible planner." Image source.

Note from Perfect Number: So I wrote this post a long time ago, but I didn't publish it back then because the whole situation sucked and I didn't want to talk about it. And it felt too personal to publish something with such strong negative emotions. Luckily, my life is much better now and I don't have those particular emotions about it, so it feels less "personal" to publish it now.

And on Monday I published my review of VeggieTales "The Ballad of Little Joe", which was a story about being disgustingly optimistic when bad, unjust things happen to us, believing those things are "God's plan" and we just need to accept the situation and trust God.

My story here is sort of the "other side" of the story we saw in "The Ballad of Little Joe."

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[content note: this is an angry post about losing my job, and Christian platitudes]

A while ago, I lost my job. And I didn't really tell many people about it, because I was afraid there would be people who wouldn't believe me- and if someone doesn't believe me, they don't deserve to hear any details about my life. And if I have to do the work of offering evidence and then waiting for whoever's listening decide if it's my fault or not, decide if they're going to be on my side or not, that's more emotional trauma that I'm not willing to put myself through.

So what happened is, the company illegally broke the contract, it came out of nowhere, and they said a bunch of lies about me. But now I'm at a different job, a much better job, and I have a higher salary now.

And I stay out of Christian culture as much as I can nowadays, so fortunately I haven't had anyone say any ****ed up stuff about how this is God's plan and everything worked out so it's all good.

See, there are Christians who would look at my old job and my current job, look at the amount of money, and say that I'm in a better situation now, so actually this was a good thing that happened to me. And God did it.

And just ignore everything in between. As if that doesn't matter. As if, because I have a better salary now, everything is fine.

I am not fine.

You think I'm ****ing fine? You think there are no long-term consequences when people that I trusted suddenly turn evil? You believe in a God who thinks that emotional damage isn't a real thing- or at least, its effects can be totally negated by a big number on a paycheck?

F*** that God.

I am not fine. Now I can't trust anyone who works in HR- are all HR people secretly evil? They act nice, but are they suddenly going to screw me over? And I feel scared I'll lose my job again- everything seems fine, but I thought everything seemed fine last time too.

Any time I'm at work and somebody says, "come here, we're having a meeting," I feel nervous.

If you think this is something that God wanted to happen to me, and it's all good because I have more money, then **** you.

I'm an immigrant. I have a residence permit which allows me to be in China legally. But that's dependent on having a job. When I lost my job, I had a few months before my residence permit would expire, and that meant I only had that much time to find a new job and navigate the sea of bureaucracy that is China- and if I'm not able to get a new residence permit in time, I have to leave the country.

A loving God does not do that to people.

It "all worked out", okay, sure, it "all worked out." I did find a better job and get a new residence permit. And Christians would tell me I should have trusted God instead of being so worried- see, it "all worked out", and that means I was wrong to be worried. Well f*** that. As if it's totally fine for God to just throw someone into an overwhelmingly stressful situation, because God knows it's going to "all work out" and there's not *actually* any danger of getting kicked out of China. Like God is allowed to just do anything they want to people, and then we're the ones who are wrong for having a completely reasonable emotional reaction to what is objectively a very stressful situation.

God knows it will "all work out" so any worry and stress we suffer is our fault, we're the ones in the wrong for not "trusting God"- yeah, f*** that. It's like threatening someone and then laughing at them because haha, what are they so scared about, they should have known you didn't really mean it. That's what all this "trust God" crap is about.

It's like hiding your friend's phone and then watching them panic about it for a few hours. You let them think it got stolen, and then after a while you give it back. See, everything is fine. You knew all along it wasn't stolen and there was nothing to worry about. Therefore you did nothing wrong and your friend was wrong to be worried.

Well, Christians would say, this is God's way of helping you leave a job that wasn't good for you and end up in a better situation. Okay, if that's true, then God really sucks at this. Why can't God just COMMUNICATE? Why can't God tell me "hey you could totally look for a better job"? Does God seriously think the best way to move me from job A to job B is to have a bunch of people that I thought cared about me suddenly turn evil and say a lot of nasty lies about me?

F*** that God. Seriously. F*** that God.

Does God seriously think that having me all worried about GETTING F***ING DEPORTED is a perfectly reasonable way to "help" me change to a better job? **** that.

It's like if you're just standing around and somebody comes up and starts hitting you, hitting you, over and over and you try to get away from them and they keep hitting you over and over, and then you see a huge truck drive past, right where you had been standing... See, this random hitting person saved your life. If they had just let you stand there, you would have been hit by a truck. You would have died. And so, even though they hit you and it hurt, they did nothing wrong because your current situation is better than what it would have been if they had not intervened at all. That is, apparently, the standard we hold God to- no matter how much pain God puts you through, as long as you end up better off than you were before, God did nothing wrong. **** that.

And I keep reasurring myself, it's okay to be angry at the people at my old job who did this. It's okay to hate them. It's okay to never forgive them. (I plan on never interacting with them ever again- if I were going to actually do something to them, then I would need to spend a lot of time seriously thinking about the difference between justice and revenge- because I believe in justice but not revenge. But I'm not going to do anything to them. Just hate them by myself, that's all.)

And you know who else can **** off? Christians who want to tell me I need to forgive, or some crap like that. **** you, and stop policing people's emotions. With an extra special "**** you" to the Christians who are like "there's a lot of misunderstanding about what 'forgiveness' means, it doesn't mean deciding what happened was okay, it doesn't mean reconciling, it means [word salad about doing it to benefit yourself]." No. "Forgiveness", as I was taught, was about policing emotions, rules about what I'm allowed or not allowed to feel when someone hurts me, and I'm not interested in reclaiming that word. And it's useless to claim a word doesn't *really* mean what most people understand it to mean. They only do that because they believe forgiveness is required by God, so then they try to change the meaning of "forgiveness" so it's not such an emotionally unhealthy thing to require from people. Yeah, how about instead you just leave me alone.

And then there are Christians who are like, "well maybe God was trying to teach you something." Well maybe **** you. If God was "trying to teach me something", God failed, and that's not my f***ing fault. In that ideology, God causes bad things to happen to people, intending that they will learn some kind of deep life lesson- and then if I end up all angry instead of learning said life lesson, it's my fault, God did nothing wrong. COME ON!

How are people getting away with this "maybe God was trying to teach you something" crap? Spinning it like "God did this thing to you, and it was for good reasons, you're the one who is in the wrong for not seeing that," when, if it really was true that "God was trying to teach me something," that would mean God really really ****ed up, because I didn't learn some nice lesson, instead I have anxiety about my job, and have a hard time trusting people. YEAH GOOD JOB GOD.

**** all that. **** those nice platitudes about God causing bad things to happen to me because of some mysterious good reason. **** all the Christians who are so attached to their "God has a plan" ideology that they don't care about my emotional health- claiming that the trauma I went through doesn't matter because I have more money now, or that I'm the one who did something wrong by not "trusting God."

I'm an optimist, okay? I can compare my current situation to my old job and see things that are better now, and choose to focus on those things. That's good, that's a strategy that people use to cope with bad things that happen to them. But that doesn't mean, in a literal sense, that what happened to me actually was a good thing. If you start claiming that, that's when you get into ideas that are really really damaging.

If "my life is better now because of events that were directly or indirectly caused by this thing happening" means that the thing was A Good Thing, then the only way that I can claim that losing my job was A Bad Thing is if my life completely and totally sucks forever after. And I do not want my life to completely and totally suck, so I'm making the best of the situation I'm in, always working toward a better future. And I will not let anyone use my success as evidence that what happened wasn't actually bad, that God did it to me on purpose in order to help me get the good things I have now. F*** all of that.

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Related:
How Suffering Did NOT Bring Me Closer To God
God of Bad Snaps

Taking the Lord's Name in Vain

A scared kitty saying "OMG!" Image source.

You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.
Exodus 20:7

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Dear Christian Magazine Advice Columnist, my friend told me she thinks Christians are "narrow-minded" for saying Jesus is the only way. What should I tell her?

Answer: A lot of people criticize Christians for supposedly being "narrow-minded" or "intolerant." But the truth is, this isn't our idea. We're just following what God says.

I've heard that line of reasoning a million times. You find it in any apologetics book which addresses the question of Christians being "exclusive" or "intolerant." First, they blame it on God. (Then they go on to give reasons why it's totally fine for God to be like that.)

Same thing goes for other beliefs which society (rightly) sees as horrible. Christians say "don't call us bigots, it's not our fault, we're just following the bible." Sometimes this is honest- they really do wish they didn't have to believe those nasty things, but they feel like they have no choice. [Note: You DO have a choice. There are plenty of non-terrible gods out there to choose from. Many of which are named "Jesus" and based on the bible. If you're into that.] But occasionally you see a Christian who seems happy to have an excuse for their hate- they love the idea that they can be super bigoted against certain demographics of people and haha, no one can get mad at them for it, they're just following the bible.

(Isn't it interesting that they never take it a step further and say, if God is really like that, then God is not worthy of worship, and the only moral thing I can do is to oppose this God? The idea that "it's not my fault, I'm just following what God said" fails because YOU CHOSE TO OBEY THAT GOD. And that IS your fault.)

Claiming God agrees with their nasty, dehumanizing beliefs is just one way that Christians take the Lord's name in vain.

Or, here's another example: Two Christians are debating about something they disagree about. Then one says, "well, you can believe that if you want, but I'm going to side with God's word on this." Oh god that makes me angry, that is triggering as hell. In other words, "God agrees with me, so it doesn't matter what you say, you're automatically wrong. I'm not going to listen to any of your reasons." They take the Lord's name in vain.

And then there's all the Christian leaders that are teaching "this is God's way to do xyz" or "this is the biblical way." Here's God's way to raise children. Here are God's rules for dating. Here is God's definition of marriage. Here is God's plan for your life. Here is God's design for sexuality. Here are God's rules for managing your money.

When people teach "here is God's way," they take the Lord's name in vain. What they really mean is "based on my interpretation of the bible and my understanding of who God is, I have come up with these rules and guidlines." Or, if I'm being more cynical, "here is my opinion about topic xyz, I will attach the word 'God' to the front of it so it sells better to a Christian audience."

It's not "God's way." It's people's opinions. And yes, sometimes those opinons are worth listening to- they are based on evidence, research, logic, and common sense. But they are not infallible. They are not "God's." And anyone who claims they have "God's way," anyone who equates their own opinion with God's opinion, anyone who uses God as an excuse to spread bigoted lies about other people ... well, the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses that name.

Blogaround

Image source.

1. God, How Could You? (posted July 30) "I used to declare my trust in God and His goodness, until mental illness made it all so brittle it was laughable. Despite my Christianity-correct words, I had not understood."

2. 101 Everyday Ways for Men to Be Allies to Women (posted July 26)

3. Hell Series: Ask a traditionalist 1 (free will, postmortem repentance)….response (posted July 30) Theologian Jerry Walls, who believes in a traditional view of hell (eternal conscious torment) but with the possibility of repentance after death, explains his view.

4. Being Confused (posted July 30) "My mother, with her incredible drive to serve, taught me that people are important. But the church taught me that to love my neighbor meant that the most critical question I could ask people was if they were saved. ... Because if they were not saved, my relationship to them was evangelistic. So much training was given on how to strike up conversations, how to defeat arguments against Christianity, how to present the Gospel in simple, easy to understand steps."

5. Why My Christian Memoir Has R-Rated Words (posted July 30) "He couldn’t have known that his choosing to say the 'unholy' word spoke God’s love to me in the only way I could hear it."

6. Five Minute Friday: STORY. (posted August 2) "Evangelicals have this idea about God’s plan and calling and blueprint in which he is pulling us one puppet string at a time to wherever he wants us to go and it’s like this thing we say as a big band-aid on any and all problems. He ordained it."

Blogaround

1. Banned Books Change Lives. (posted September 30) "If To Kill a Mockingbird (or other books that contain 'the n-word') were banned, this conversation never would have happened. If we had never brought the 'n-word' into our classroom, all those students would still not understand why their hackles raise when they hear it, or why it is taboo to say it."

2. Sensitive Scientists Report 5 in 5 Women Don't Know How Beautiful They Are (posted October 4) It's The Onion, but still, this is adorable.

3. The A La Carte Bible (posted October 3)

4. Curiosity Finds... SOMETHING... on Martian Surface (posted October 9) Looks like a little piece of metal. On one hand, I think this is so cool, on the other hand, it's a bit bizarre that a robot finding a tiny bit of metal is front-page news.

5. 'Sesame Street' Asks Obama Campaign To Take Down Big Bird Ad (posted October 9)

6. What happens when Jesus is not the answer? (posted October 9) "When William Wilberforce set out to end the slave trade, no one asked ‘how many got saved?’ Wilberforce worked for justice, to right a terrible wrong and to see people set free in this world."

7. Sex, women, and "giving" (posted October 10) A critique of the assumptions behind "why wives need to give their husbands more sex" and the statistics that supposedly support it.

8. Best Marriage Advice We Received (posted October 10)

9. Sign you might listen to a lot of Christian music (posted October 11). LOL!

10. "Boys Will Be Boys" Is No Excuse For Bad Behavior (posted October 7) "I know it's a lurid metaphor, but I taught my daughter the preschool block precursor of 'don't get raped' and Boy #1 did not learn the preschool equivalent of 'don't rape.'"

11. Treadmill Kittens (posted in 2007) Youtube video of 2 cats on a treadmill. I lolled.

12. Skydiver lands safely after historic jump from edge of space (posted October 14) Well, that's just awesome.

13. In Defense of the 4-Letter Word (posted October 3) "And upon hearing of a friend’s cancer diagnosis, I might go so far as to suggest that it’s more profane to say God never gives you more than you can handle than it is reach across the table, grab her hands, whisper the word fuck."