On ZOEgirl and saying how you really feel

Album cover for "Different Kind of Free." Image source.

ZOEgirl was a Christian band that was active in the early 2000's, around the time I was in high school. It was one of my favorite bands; my favorite song was Different Kind of Free.

Take my life, my liberty

It's all but a breath in the grand scheme of things

Oh I have found eternity

It's a different kind of free

And they can't take it from me

Big words about one's commitment to God, how it's so much bigger and more important than anything else, how it's worth dedicating your life to. 

Anyway, what are the members of ZOEgirl up to now? 

Well, Alisa Childers is an author, publishing books like Another Gospel?: A Lifelong Christian Seeks Truth in Response to Progressive Christianity and Live Your Truth and Other Lies: Exposing Popular Deceptions That Make Us Anxious, Exhausted, and Self-Obsessed. She's all about responding to progressive Christianity and telling everyone why it's bad and we need to stand firm on the truths that conservative/evangelical Christianity taught us. Uh, as a queer ex-evangelical Christian I don't really agree with her on that.

(no idea what the other 2 members of ZOEgirl are doing now- I'm just writing about this because Childers came to my attention recently)

Anyway. Apparently Childers recently made a podcast discussing Sheila Wray Gregoire's book "The Great Sex Rescue" (which I reviewed here). Gregoire wrote a blog post in response: Alisa Childers Owes Evangelical Women an Apology for Dismissing Their Pain. "The Great Sex Rescue" calls out the conservative Christian teaching that wives are required to have sex with their husbands on demand, because men need it, and the wife is obligated to do all the work to make it a good experience for the husband, and nobody cares about women's orgasms, etc. It's very good that "The Great Sex Rescue" is responding to this teaching; it's extremely messed-up that the typical marriage advice from conservative Christians says things like that. But anyway, apparently on her podcast, Childers said no one's actually teaching this "obligation sex" message, no one's telling women they need to prioritize their husbands' "sexual needs" even when they haven't even healed from childbirth, etc. (Fact check: They ARE teaching that!) And apparently the podcast also spent a lot of time wondering if it's even okay to talk about sex and orgasms.

I don't know why this bothers me so much. I sang her songs expressing my feelings about my devotion to God, and 20 years later she has bad opinions about Christian teaching on sex and marriage... Why does this bother me so much? People are allowed to have bad opinions on things; it's not like this is some kind of massive betrayal of me personally because I was a fan of her music when I was in high school.

I guess it makes me realize that... the music, and the experience of enjoying the music, was a different thing than I thought it was. Singing those worship songs, I was fooled into thinking it was an environment where I can be completely honest about my deepest emotional, intimate feelings about God. When I sang those songs, that was real; those were my real feelings. And now, 20 years later, she's the sort of Christian who would condemn me for being a queer Christian- it's not emotionally safe to tell her my feelings about God.

I don't want to show my most real and raw feelings about how I love Jesus, in front of Christians who will judge me and say I don't really love Jesus because I don't hold the "right" beliefs. I don't hold the "right" beliefs about so many things, spanning the whole range of evangelical Christianity, but we can make it simple by just saying I'm queer.

Again, this isn't really something that Childers is doing wrong- as if our favorite singers owe it to us to agree with us about all the big important things in our lives, just because we find their music to be emotionally meaningful. It's more about... like... me wanting an environment where I can express how I really feel, with complete trust that the people seeing it would accept me for who I am, falsely believing that ZOEgirl's music was that environment, and now realizing it wasn't. Realizing I should have my guard up a little more. That I always have to think about who sees me and what they think of me, and filter my expression accordingly.

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. The Long Hunt for China’s Vanishing Elephant Slides (April 16) "She often navigates narrow alleys, old residential compounds, ruins, and abandoned industrial sites, asking for directions along the way. At some point, an elephant slide simply appears — a moment Sun describes as similar to “clearing a level” in a video game." Wow definitely check out the photos in the article - all the slides are different.

2. Harvard Legacy of Slavery Initiative Releases Database Identifying 1,613 Enslaved People (May 13, via) "Harvard’s Legacy of Slavery Initiative released a public database Tuesday identifying 1,613 people who were enslaved by Harvard leaders, faculty, and staff or who labored on Harvard’s campus between 1636 and 1865." The database is here. 

3. KUA MUSIC【祢是我的一切／You Are My All In All】蔡佳靈 (2024) Mandarin Chinese cover of the worship song "You are my all in all."

4. Red vs blue button (May 16) "In other words, game theory says the correct strategy is to argue loudly and meaninglessly on the internet."

5. Unprecedented corruption and Calvinism (May 18) Linking this because I was struck by what it says about this "blessing of the bikes" event, where a Lutheran church invited motorcycle riders to "receive blessings and prayers."

These rituals can cater to a superstitious understanding of religion, with participants viewing the “blessing” as a kind of talisman against the potential danger of their vocation or avocation, and it’s important to conduct such rituals in a way that doesn’t encourage that understanding. But they can also be a demonstration of solidarity and neighborliness — a way for the church to say “You are a part of this community and we care about you.”

!!!!! Wow, this is a take I haven't heard before. In other words, we have to be careful that people do not interpret "the blessing of the bikes" to mean we are actually blessing the bikes and God will give you protection specifically because you attended this event and got "blessed." It's really striking to me that Fred frames it like 'that would be unfortunate if people interpreted it that way' [my paraphrase, not an actual quote] rather than that just being the default obvious interpretation. 

I'm over here asking "what if prayer isn't 'talking to God'" feeling like I'm breaking all kinds of rules... are there Christians out there saying, "Wow, that would be unfortunate if people interpreted prayer as literally talking to God"?

6. Results Age (May 13) "Please, we need your help. Our research suggests you're the last living descendant of the person who knew how to format this config file."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. WWND? (What would Nebuchadnezzar do?) (May 14) 

An Evangelical Case for Trump as the Antichrist (May 4) This is exactly what I'm saying! I don't even believe in "the" antichrist, but he checks all the boxes!

2. Lessons in Training, Strategy, and Discipline From the Civil Rights Movement (April 27) "With that, the civil rights movement had won. The American public had been made aware, Bevel said, 'in the most graphic way possible, that a sheriff in Alabama was beating law-abiding citizens whose only offense was asking for the right to vote.'"

3. Revealed: The Trump administration arrested the parents of at least 27,000 kids in seven months, ICE records show (May 8) "Families described scrambling for funds after a primary breadwinner was detained or deported. Teens and young adults had to drop out of school to take care of younger siblings after both parents were deported. Children were left wondering when or whether they would ever be able to see parents who had been deported back to countries where they faced death threats."

4. NYU Langone Releases Grand Jury Subpoena: Feds Want Names Of Every Trans Youth Care Patient (May 15) "In addition to the names of providers, the DOJ wants the names and medical histories of every trans youth patient who received gender-affirming care from Langone since 2020. The DOJ also asserted that “de-identified information” is insufficient." Holy crap.

Also from Erin in the Morning: Federal Court Finds Trump Admin DOJ Misled Courts To Target Trans People's Private Data (May 15) "DOJ has proven unworthy of this trust at every point in this case. It has misrepresented and withheld information to both this Court and the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas." 

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. ‘It’s AI blackface’: social media account hailed as the Aboriginal Steve Irwin is an AI character created in New Zealand (January 15, via) "The choice to create an avatar of an Indigenous person has raised ethical concerns."

2.  Because of Who You Are - Vicki Yohe (2008) I like this worship song, but in a complicated ex-evangelical way.

Same thing for this video, of the song "I Have Decided to Follow Jesus."

I like the song. I like the singer's passion. I'm really into that. But seeing the crowd of Christians participating in this worship song, I just really feel unsafe in that kind of environment.

3. Chilean Cherries: Why Prices in China Plunge Every Winter (January 16) "To reach tables in China, Chilean cherries need to travel more than 19,000 kilometers, and for a long time, air freight was the only viable option. However, with the widespread application of cold chain technology, maritime transportation has become dominant in recent years."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. A Pregnant Woman at Risk of Heart Failure Couldn’t Get Urgent Treatment. She Died Waiting for an Abortion. (January 14) "As ProPublica has reported, doctors in states that ban abortion have repeatedly denied standard care to high-risk pregnant patients."

2. Rapid Response Networks in the Twin Cities (January 15) "When ICE operations switched to fast, random street abductions and door knocks, the only possible way to predict where they would act was to identify ICE vehicles as they approached, so people shifted focus to identifying ICE vehicles on the roads and staying on them. ICE needed to rely on surprise and ambush tactics, so responders employed noise—whistles and honking—to quickly give warning across distance. ICE officers don’t like to operate when outnumbered and don’t like to be surrounded, so patrollers amass cars and form impromptu traffic jam blockades."

Judge rules immigration officers in Minneapolis can't detain peaceful protesters (January 16) "The ruling prohibits the officers from detaining drivers and passengers in vehicles when there is no reasonable suspicion they are obstructing or interfering with the officers."

It’s The Videos (January 17) "Everyday citizens all over the country are racking up hundreds of millions of views with on-the-ground videos, and seem increasingly willing to film ICE agents on job sites, at traffic stops, and even on their doorsteps—even while being threatened at gunpoint. It’s a scrappy, diffuse content campaign against the Trump media machine, which likes to turn ICE arrests into highly produced hype videos that look as if they were produced by an SEC football program."

Minneapolis church has delivered more than 12,000 boxes of groceries to families in hiding (January 15, via) 

Dispatch from the occupation (January 17, via) "All of this means that the following dystopian scenario plays out in the open dozens of times per day in the Twin Cities: Multiple masked and armed agents in combat gear amass in unmarked cars outside a house or business. A bystander notices and alerts the neighborhood. A dozen or more neighborhood residents appear within minutes to legally observe, legally film the encounter, legally make sure the targeted people know their rights, and legally warn others by blowing whistles and honking car horns."

I’ve Covered Police Abuse for 20 Years. What ICE Is Doing Is Different. (January 21, via) "The lies this administration is telling about Ms. Good aren’t those you deploy as part of a cover-up. They’re those you use when you want to show you can get away with anything."

3. Expand your vocabulary: the Dual State (January 19) "But your life goes on normally, until it doesn’t."

Michal wasn't here for David's worship, and now neither am I

King David dancing before the Ark of the Covenant. Image source.

I've been reading Wilda Gafney's book "Womanist Midrash," and it's got me thinking about the story of Michal, in the bible. Let's talk about Michal.

Specifically, I want to talk about the scene where Michal judges David for how he worships God. But, "Womanist Midrash" has made me realize we can't just look at that 1 passage by itself. We need the whole history between David and Michal, the way he treated her. So here it is:

• Michal was one of Saul's daughters. Saul was chosen by God to be the king, but later God rejected him and chose David instead. So you've got this awkward period of time where Saul is still the king, but David has God's promise that someday he'll be king, and there's conflict between Saul and David because of that.
• Anyway, Saul sees that his daughter Michal loves David, so Saul tells David he can marry her, and the bride-price is 100 Philistine foreskins (wtf). Saul hopes that maybe David will die in battle fighting the Philistines. But David succeeds and comes back with 200 Philistine foreskins (WTF). So he and Michal are married.
• Then Saul decides to kill David. He sends men to David's house. Michal helps David escape out of the window, and she lies to the men, saving David's life.
• While David is on the run, he marries a few other women: Abagail and Ahinoam. Saul ends up giving Michal in marriage to another man, Paltiel.
• Oh and at some point David married 4 additional women: Maakah, Haggith, Abital, and Eglah.
• Years later, after Saul dies, Saul's son Ish-Bosheth becomes king. There is conflict between David's supporters and Ish-Bosheth's supporters. Finally, Abner (who was originally on Saul's side) comes to David to negotiate how to make David king. One of David's conditions is that Michal comes back to him. So, she is forcibly taken from her husband Paltiel, who follows after her, crying, until Abner tells him to give up and go home.
• Even though David and Michal were "together" again, it seems he wasn't having sex with her, or acting like a husband at all really. We can infer this because he's having lots of babies with his other wives, but none with Michal.
• And then, after all this, we come to the scene where Michal criticizes David for how he worships God. Now, after establishing all this history, we can talk about that.

2 Samuel 6:12-23

Now King David was told, “The Lord has blessed the household of Obed-Edom and everything he has, because of the ark of God.” So David went to bring up the ark of God from the house of Obed-Edom to the City of David with rejoicing. When those who were carrying the ark of the Lord had taken six steps, he sacrificed a bull and a fattened calf. Wearing a linen ephod, David was dancing before the Lord with all his might, while he and all Israel were bringing up the ark of the Lord with shouts and the sound of trumpets.

As the ark of the Lord was entering the City of David, Michal daughter of Saul watched from a window. And when she saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord, she despised him in her heart.

They brought the ark of the Lord and set it in its place inside the tent that David had pitched for it, and David sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings before the Lord. After he had finished sacrificing the burnt offerings and fellowship offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the Lord Almighty. Then he gave a loaf of bread, a cake of dates and a cake of raisins to each person in the whole crowd of Israelites, both men and women. And all the people went to their homes.

When David returned home to bless his household, Michal daughter of Saul came out to meet him and said, “How the king of Israel has distinguished himself today, going around half-naked in full view of the slave girls of his servants as any vulgar fellow would!”

David said to Michal, “It was before the Lord, who chose me rather than your father or anyone from his house when he appointed me ruler over the Lord’s people Israel—I will celebrate before the Lord. I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes. But by these slave girls you spoke of, I will be held in honor.”

And Michal daughter of Saul had no children to the day of her death.

Back when I was a good evangelical, "on fire for God," I loved this passage. I danced at church when we sang worship songs, and I had complicated feelings about it... I felt good, I loved God and wanted to express it in that way, but I also felt very self-conscious and kinda embarrassed. What if everyone is looking at me and thinking I'm weird? What if I'm bad at dancing? What if this is just super awkward?

I always heard Christians say "worship is just you and God." Meaning, we shouldn't care what people think. We should just repress those feelings of embarrassment; all that matters is that in God's eyes, you're genuinely expressing your worship towards Them.

And I truly believed that was the ideal. I strove to worship God in all the big wild ways I wanted to, and to repress my fears that I was being weird and people were judging me. This passage about David was an inspiration to me. The way I understood it, David was being a role model of what worship should be like, dancing in the streets without caring about how weird he looked, and Michal was being a wet blanket and judging him. She was in the wrong, and he told her so. He even told her "I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes." That verse was one of my favorites. It's all about expressing our love for God, I thought, regardless of what other people think.

(There's even a song about it, "Undignified" by David Crowder Band.)

But now that I'm reading "Womanist Midrash," which has a section on Michal, tying together all these events from her life, giving the reader a clear picture of how David and Saul mistreated her throughout her life, now I'm seeing 2 Samuel 6 completely differently.

Now I see it like this:

When Michal judged David for how he worshiped God, it wasn't about "wow you look so weird, dancing in the streets in your underwear, you should feel embarrassed about that."

Instead, her feelings were more like this: "You love God? You love God? After what you did to me, you have the audacity to go out there in public and act like you're just so wholeheartedly devoted to God? Come on."

She had loved him. She saved his life. And he used her as a political pawn in his quest to become king. (Both David and Saul used her in their struggle for power.) He tore her away from her husband, purely as a symbol of his dominance over the house of Saul, and then he didn't even seem to want her as a wife. Just the status, no actual relationship.

You can understand how, if someone treats you like that, and then they're like "I LOVE GOD SO MUCH, I SIMPLY MUST DANCE," you might hate them.

It's like the apostle John says in 1 John 4:20, "For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen." David treats Michal this badly, and then he's all excited about worshipping God- no. Michal doesn't buy it.

It's like Jesus said in Matthew 5:23-24, "Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift." I remember reading that long ago, reading it as Here Are The Rules For How To Worship Correctly. The hoops that God has arbitrarily set up for us to jump through to get our worship to "count." But wait a minute, maybe it's not about that at all. Maybe Jesus is saying, if you've wronged someone, you need to go make it right, and that's a higher priority than coming to church to participate in "worship."

Maybe Jesus is saying, your relationships with other people have to come first, before your relationship with God. It's not "just you and God."

I think of Michal looking out her window at the way David performed his worship in front of everybody, playing the part of "a man after God's own heart," and I think of sexual abuse coverups in the modern church. Victims are told that they shouldn't speak up, because their abuser is such a good man of God, doing great things for God's kingdom, and to tell the truth about their abuse would [supposedly] be going against God's work.

She saw David dancing, and "despised him in her heart." We see an echo in the words of God, in Amos 5:21-24,

I hate, I despise your religious festivals;

    your assemblies are a stench to me.

Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings,

    I will not accept them.

Though you bring choice fellowship offerings,

    I will have no regard for them.

Away with the noise of your songs!

    I will not listen to the music of your harps.

But let justice roll on like a river,

    righteousness like a never-failing stream!

Michal was right.

Let justice roll like a river. And after that, you can dance for God.

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Posts about the book "Womanist Midrash" by Wilda C. Gafney:

Womanist Midrash 
The Slavery We Ignore in the Book of Exodus 
The Second-Worst Bible Story 
Michal wasn't here for David's worship, and now neither am I
Why did I think David was the good guy in the story of Abigail?
David's Womanizing
The Bible and "Purity"

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Related:

Why I Don't Want to be at a "Revival"

The things I've never let myself say about worship 

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

For Rizpah (or, a post about human sacrifice in the bible)

Why I Don't Want to be at a "Revival"

A group of people kneeling in prayer at the altar, at the Asbury revival. Image source.

My posts on the Asbury revival:

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

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So I've written a bunch of posts about the Asbury revival, which happened in February. My overall perspective on it is, I think to some extent it really is from God, but also I'm HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS of anyone in evangelical Christian culture who says it's inherently a good thing, and we want it to happen everywhere. And anyone who tries to tell us their opinion on "this is what it means." 

Anyway, this post is about why I don't want to be at a "revival."

So, I've seen photos from the Asbury revival. A crowd of people raising their hands, singing- man, the energy in that room must have been incredible. A bunch of students kneeling at the front, right there at the stage. Wow, yeah, I used to do things like that, and part of me misses it.

But then I pull myself back and say, no, I can't be doing things like that. This is not a safe environment for me to express my feelings about God. If these people knew what I really believed, they would say I'm not a real Christian. I can't be so open and honest about how I feel about God, I can't let them see that, they are not safe.

When I was evangelical... I was so devoted to God, so overtaken with obsession for him, so passionate, and I showed it during the worship music time at church services or Christian events. Dancing, shouting, raising my hands, kneeling. I showed everyone how I felt about God. I always heard Christians say "when you worship, it's just you and God, you shouldn't care what other people think" and I really bought into that.

And the whole time, I also bought into a Christian ideology where we judged other Christians and labelled them as "not real Christians." If they didn't believe in hell. If they interpreted a key bible verse differently than we did. If they accepted LGBTQ people. If they didn't "put God first."

I've heard other ex-evangelicals say, it's the ones who are the most devoted to following Jesus, who take it the most seriously, who end up following Him right out of the church and rebelling against the entire ideology. 

I was fiercely passionate about God when I was evangelical, and I would say I still am now. And at every step along the way. 

I didn't turn away from God; instead, I discovered that my God had been a monster all along, and I couldn't in good conscience obey him any more... But there was a better God there, once I'd hacked through the cardboard cut-out of a God I used to worship. A better God. A queer God, for lack of a better term. I use the term "queer" here because it encapsulates something very important about the difference between my Christianity now and my Christianity back then. One was about beating yourself down to stay within the rigid rules that God put you in. The other is about the amazing beauty of human creativity and the diversity of human experience, the joy that we find in discovering ourselves and our world, where God is alive everywhere, in every person- in Them we live and move and have our being. I suspect the best way to find out which side of this divide a particular person or church is on is to ask them their position on LGBTQ inclusion.

(Okay maybe I'm being a little naive there, thinking that churches that accept gay couples are perfect utopias... It's possible to accept gay couples and still have a lot of harmful anti-self and/or patriarchal ideology.)

Anyway, my point is, I worshiped in front of all these evangelical people, and then, as I followed what they said Jesus told us to do, I changed my beliefs into the sorts of beliefs that people who get branded "fake Christians" have.

Maybe it was when I stopped believing in hell. Maybe that's the first time I crossed the line into "evangelicals would say I'm not a real Christian."

It's only directly happened to me a few times- Christians saying I'm not a real Christian, I'm rejecting God because I just want to sin, etc. I'm not really bothered by those specific times. The thing that actually hurts is how I spent so many years in a Christian culture where it was totally normal to say "so-and-so is not a real Christian because they believe the wrong thing about XYZ"- that was normal, that was what we did. I don't remember anyone ever challenging it. We knew all the right answers about what God wanted and the correct way to read the bible, and, well, we're not arrogant, we're just telling the truth! 

That's the culture I was in, when I let everyone see how much I love God, and then I became the kind of Christian who's a "fake Christian" and I feel so bad that I let them see how much I love God. People are too polite to say it to me directly, but I know. I know. I used to be evangelical, so I know.

I know I'm a "false teacher" now. 

So I see the photos of the Asbury revival, and part of me wants to experience that, but part of me says, no, these people are not safe, I can't show them how I really feel about God. The pull of the light side and the pull of the dark side, so to say. The question of "which side is which?" is left as an exercise for the reader.

But, wait, I have one caveat: I would worship with queer Christians.

If it's a group of queer Christians... we've all been through some shit, we know what's what, and we still choose to follow Jesus. That is a totally different situation than a worship service at your average church. I could worship with queer Christians, because I know they don't judge me like that. Even if some of them judged me, some others would surely step up and say, no, we are not the arbiters of who is and who is not a "real Christian."

Yes, I could worship with queer Christians.

But with a group of conservative/evangelical Christians... no, I shouldn't do that. I'm not safe there. If they knew what I believed, they would say I'm not a real Christian. People like that don't get to see how I feel about God.

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Related:

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

The Christianity of GCN Conference 

My Identity was in Christ

The things I've never let myself say about worship 

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Also a few videos I need to share here:

This Chinese song is how I feel about God:

Also, God is a girl.

"There is no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred": What people do with "revival"

Image text: "Act justly, love mercy, walk humbly. Micah 6:8" Image source.

My posts on the Asbury revival:

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

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So, about what's going on at Asbury University.

Why students at a Kentucky Christian school are praying and singing round the clock (February 14)

Last Wednesday (Feb. 8), students at Asbury University gathered for their biweekly chapel service in the 1,500-seat Hughes Auditorium.

They sang. They listened to a sermon. They prayed.

Nearly a week later, many of them are still there.

“This has been an extraordinary time for us,” Asbury President Kevin Brown said during a gathering on Monday, more than 120 hours into what participants have referred to as a spiritual revival.

The revival has disrupted life and brought national attention to Asbury, an evangelical Christian school in Wilmore, Kentucky, about a half-hour outside of Lexington. Videos of students singing, weeping and praying have been posted on social media, leading to both criticism and praise from onlookers. News of the revival has also drawn students and other visitors to the campus to take part in the ongoing prayer and worship.

(I have some Facebook friends who have gone to see this revival and written about it on Facebook. A lot of people in evangelical circles are talking about it.)

See the Slacktivist's post about it: Revive us again (again), and also what I wrote in my latest blogaround.

So, first what I want to say is: I believe in God. I'm a Christian. Therefore I believe that it is at least theoretically possible that God does sometimes come and "pour out Their spirit" in a certain place, and people there do feel Their presence and have very strong emotional/spiritual experiences. Yes, it's at least theoretically possible, but I believe we should always be skeptical of any actual reports of this actually happening. Because it is much more likely to be caused by the way the music and the environment of the worship space manipulate people's emotions- and this can be used in nefarious ways by Christian leaders who know what they're doing.

So, I see articles from Christian sources about what's going on in Asbury, and I do feel like there's something real about it. Like God really has chosen to cause Their presence to be powerfully felt there. (Maybe I'm wrong though, who knows? I have ex-Christian Twitter friends who are side-eyeing the entire thing, and I get that.) My *feeling* is there really is at least a part of this that's from God- I don't think it's *all* because of someone's skill at playing emotionally-manipulative music or whatever- and I say that because what's happening at Asbury is very grassroots and student-led. 

But that doesn't mean that Christians who describe what's happening, or say "this is what it means," are right about that.

There's what God does, and then there's how people respond to it.

It makes me think about the healing of the man at the pool, in John 5:1-15. "Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. [footnote, only found in some manuscripts: and they waited for the moving of the waters. From time to time an angel of the Lord would come down and stir up the waters. The first one into the pool after each such disturbance would be cured of whatever disease they had.]" Apparently this was the way God worked at this miraculous pool.

But it's not just about how God works, it's about how people respond. Jesus sees a man who had been sick for 38 years, and the sick man says, "Sir, I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me." Like... should someone have taken charge and set up a system where new people couldn't cut in front of people who had been waiting there for years, who were too disabled to get into the water? Or... maybe not... something seems kind of wrong about people putting rules and restrictions on a miracle, setting up neat systems to make it work according to their own opinions about who God "should" heal first... but at the same time, it wasn't fair to this guy, right?

I've heard that at Asbury, some Christian celebrities have shown up, and the students there do NOT let them have the stage. The worship music on stage is student-led. Whoever is in charge there doesn't want anyone to co-opt it for their own purposes. Maybe someone should have done something like that at the pool in Bethesda.

But if you're making decisions on who can or can't have the stage, then that aspect of it is from humans, not God. But there is no alternative- if no one puts a restriction there, then inevitably some power-hungry person will use it for their own ambitions/ political goals/ etc.

There's what God does, and then there's how people respond to it.

I believe in a God who lets people have the freedom to respond- and to be wrong sometimes. God does something, and then some believer says "God did this in my life, and this is what it means" and maybe their explanation on "this is what it means" is so completely different from God's actual opinion. But what is God going to do- only allow people who are right about everything to have spiritual experiences? Mind-control people to make sure they have the correct opinion about their spiritual experience?

I believe in a God who is a full person with Their own opinions and Their own experiences, and people are created in the image of God- God wants people to all be free to have their own opinions and their own experiences. It's not about making sure everyone knows the "right answer" about every issue- that's not important to my God at all. God does things and lets people make of it whatever they want. (Death of the author, I guess.)

And maybe I have an opinion and I believe that God shouldn't do those "spiritual experience" sorts of things, because of how people take it... like taking it as confirmation that all their already-held beliefs about God are true. I think about when God rescued Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego from the fiery furnace (Daniel 3), and I wonder if there was some other friend of theirs who was also very devoted to God, and made a nuanced argument about why it's okay to pretend to bow down to the statue, and so he wasn't thrown into the fiery furnace, and didn't experience the miracle, and then... then what? What does that do to his faith? (Maybe someday I'll find the time to write a bible fanfic on this.)

For me, actually, it used to be that a big part of this was wanting "evidence" that God exists. When I was evangelical, that's what I wanted. I was always very aware of atheism, and always fighting it... wanting a "spiritual experience" because then that would be "evidence"- wanting to investigate other people's accounts of their own spiritual experiences, to prove atheism wrong. 

Now I don't care about that anymore, though- now I would say I have more in common with atheists who criticize Christianity, than with conservative Christians. I don't think being wrong about the existence or non-existence of God really matters as much. So I hear about this revival, and my concern isn't about if it's "real" or not. It doesn't matter to me if it's real or not. It matters what people do with it. Are people going to say "and this means that God is confirming I was right about how being queer is a sin/ God is confirming I was right about how being queer is not a sin" etc etc etc?

(Maybe we should say that these spiritual experiences shouldn't be used to prop up one side or the other in a culture war- but isn't that what happened in Acts 10:44-48? There was the question of whether Gentiles could be Christians, or if only Jewish people could- and the Holy Spirit came on the Gentiles and they spoke in tongues, and that was evidence for which side of the argument God was on. Couldn't a similar thing happen, where God's spirit is clearly present in queer Christians, and that's evidence that the church should be queer-affirming? To some extent I think that has happened but in a more long-term sense- there are Christians who changed their minds because they got to know queer Christians and saw that the queer Christians really are devoted to God, etc.)

And I know a lot of Christians want to have these kinds of spiritual experiences, to have that feeling, to feel God's presence. Chasing that emotion, specifically. I'm not into that anymore either. I have boundaries with God; I've decided I won't have a "personal relationship" with any god. I won't be vulnerable to any god in that way. I've had spiritual experiences like this before, but I don't feel I need that now.

Like, honestly, I'm not on board with the idea that we "need" this kind of "revival." I'm not on board with Christians who long for it (because that's often tied up with ideas about Christians getting more political power...). It's just an emotional experience. Like, okay sure it's the presence of God or whatever, but, God is always with us. Where can I go from Your spirit, where can I flee from Your presence? We don't need God giving us our own personal little emotional experiences- we need to bring justice to the earth. Act justly, love mercy, walk humbly with God.

(Also I'm giving a lot of side-eye to Christians who uncritically accept that this really is a "revival", and don't have any concerns about it, and are like "let's pray for it to happen at our church too!")

Actually, I want to say a bit about where these emotional spiritual experiences figure into evangelical culture. I've been to Christian conferences where the worship service goes on a while and people are like "God is here!" and ... I would say the result of this is the way it inspires the people who experience it. The emotions of it can be so strong, that it's something that stays with you for years, and you base your life on it. There was one conference I was at, in college, that as I was kneeling in the front, with the worship music playing, I had this idea to start 2 bible study groups. And then I ended up actually doing it, over the next few months. I was inspired, I had that emotional experience, and I went on to do it. (At the same time, I wonder about people who made these big commitments about all the things they were going to do for God, during high-emotion spiritual experiences, and then don't end up doing them- I really wonder about the statistics on that.) And... I mean, yeah, hopefully people are inspired to do things that are good, but this is limited by the ideology you already believe in. Like, in those 2 bible study groups I started, I did that because I believed my friends needed God, and needed to become Christians. I don't believe that any more.

There's what God does, and then there's how people respond.

And I've been to Urbana (Intervarsity's huge missions conference). And it is a known phenomenon, that people "get the call to missions" at Urbana- like, you're having these emotional spiritual experiences, and in the midst of that, you feel like God is "calling" you to go be a missionary in some country. Actually, when I wanted to go to China, I didn't have that experience- and I worried SO MUCH that I wasn't "allowed" to go to China because God didn't "call" me. Like it was something I can't just choose to do myself, I can't just say "here are my reasons"- it's only valid if it just pops into my head as a random thought during a very spiritual experience. It really gave me a lot of angst back then, choosing to move to China because I wanted to, not because "God" "called" me.

Anywayyyy, maybe this post is all over the place, but I just want to write these things down... My point is, I think it's real, at least to some extent, but the important thing isn't if it's real, it's what people do with it. 

---

Follow-up post: Does God Use Miracles To Take Sides?

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Related:

My Urbana 12 Commitment Card

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

When God Agreed That a Crush Was Dangerous

The things I've never let myself say about worship

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Some tweets (after the jump):

Blogaround

1. The Difference Between Mental Illness and Demonic Possession (February 1) "Yes—in the early 1990s, I think I participated in group exorcisms where the subjects were mentally ill, and not demon-possessed at all. And I wonder if I did more harm than good." An article about how to tell the difference. Personally, I believe demons probably do exist, but I don't think I believe any anecdotes I've heard from actual people about their actual experiences encountering an actual demon. Just seems so incredibly unlikely that a person would actually encounter one and also be able to figure out that's what it was.

2. Perspective: What pictures of abortions can and can’t do (February 6) This is a good article about the topic of what a fetus looks like- from the pregnancy apps happily declaring "your baby is the size of a blueberry!", to the abortion activists showing photos of fetuses after they have been damaged by the abortion process, to the women who had miscarriages and want to find the body and lovingly bury it. 

Personally, I don't like how images are used by both the "pro-life" and pro-choice sides, to either say "this is totally a baby!" or "this is just a meaningless clump of cells" because both of those are inaccurate and are trying to manipulate the images to support their argument, rather than trying to actually get at the truth of what a fetus looks like.

And I'm also uncomfortable with the idea that the physical appearance of the fetus should have any place in arguments on the legality of abortion. I think pregnant people should have accurate information- no hiding the fact that it does have tiny baby features, but also being realistic about when these things develop during pregnancy (the first trimester is completely different from the third trimester)- and then make their own decisions.

3. The Ant and the Universe (February 4) "The rubber band starts out one meter long, and stretches out one meter per second. This is one of those magical math rubber bands that can stretch indefinitely."

4. Stop praising Pastor Andy Stanley for pretending to love gay people (January 25) WELL-SAID.

I posted the link Andy Stanley's comments a few weeks ago (about how gay Christians who attend church are very committed to the church, and the church is lucky to have them, and straight Christians should learn from them). He's right, and it's something that conservative Christians need to hear- but don't take it to mean Stanley is queer-affirming or anything like that. It's quite possible he's just on the nicer end of "hate the sin, love the sinner."

Queer Christians know all about Christians who say very nice things about queer people but when it comes right down to it, you eventually figure out they don't support queer rights at all.

5. Enhanced clobber-texting methods (February 7) "A clobber text permitting torture would have been trumpeted by the advocates of 'enhanced interrogation techniques' as the definitive biblical word settling the matter beyond dispute, but a clobber text prohibiting the practice would have been relegated to endless exegetical dissection."

The Slacktivist has it exactly right. It's not just the clobber text itself- a bible verse that clearly says "don't do X", where X is whatever culture war issue is being debated. It's the whole culture around how to read the bible, how some verses are treated as more important than others because, uh, because, well, because... because... well, it's just obvious, and anyone who brings up a bible verse that says differently is "twisting Scripture."

6. Grace Community Church Rejected Elder’s Calls to ‘Do Justice’ in Abuse Case (February 9) [content note: domestic violence, coverup, spiritual abuse] "'They sided with a child abuser, who turned out to be a child molester, over a mother desperately trying to protect her three innocent young children. And that was and is flatly wrong, and needs to be made right,' Cho said to CT. 'Numerous elders have admitted in various private conversations that ‘mistakes were made’ and that they would make a different decision today knowing what they know now. But those admissions mean you need to make it right with the person you wronged; that is utterly basic Christianity.'"

7. Revival comes, again, to Asbury University (February 11) and Asbury Professor: We’re Witnessing a ‘Surprising Work of God’ (February 13) So... the story here is that Asbury University (a Christian university in Kentucky) had a chapel service last Wednesday, and people continued to stay there and sing worship songs and make public confessions and so on, for days... this chapel service is continuing for days (I am not sure if it's still going now or not- didn't find an article that said it ended...)

And yeah people are saying it's "revival" and "God is working" and all that.

So, uh, my thoughts on this:

My first question was, what sort of Christian denomination are we talking about here? What's the background? Is it in any way associated with Pentecostal/charismatic churches? Because, Pentecostal/charismatic churches are really into this kind of thing, they expect it to happen, they know how to set up their church service in such a way that influences people's emotions to make people think "God is working" and all that. So if this is somehow related to Christians who have a Pentecostal/charismatic background, I am not very impressed. But if these are Christians who come from the sort of church background where the worship services are fairly tame and they haven't experienced anything like this at all, well, now that's something. Then it's significant.

Apparently they are non-denominational or maybe associated with Methodists. So, yeah, not Pentecostal/charismatic. Okay, well then, that's unexpected- that makes me more curious about what's going on here.

Basically, I believe that it is totally possible that God does things that affect our physical reality. But, I am extremely skeptical of any actual account of any actual such events. (Oh lol this is kind of the same as what I said about link #1.) 

But hey, maybe this really is God, just deciding for some reason to be affectionate with people in this one particular place and time. 

But, uh, also a lot of it is people spreading the news "there's a revival happening" and then other Christians drive in from other places to see it and participate- so, it perpetuates itself.

I am also very skeptical about the way that people are interpreting this. Like, calling it a "revival." To me it seems more like, a bunch of people having a positive emotional/ spiritual experience- okay, but it doesn't really go any farther than that...? 

I mean, the only really long-term effect I can think of is like... maybe if you're there and you experience it, that feels like strong evidence that God exists and God can be experienced, and that would be something you remember in the future if you're considering the question of God existing/ what religion you are or are not going to identify with. (Oh lol, I just realized the Christianese term I'm looking for here is "it strengthens their faith" wow I'm really out of practice.) Uh, I hesitate about how to word this because I know I have readers who are atheists- basically, I think it's valid to dismiss other people's personal spiritual experiences as evidence for God and/or for a specific religion (because so many people have all kinds of different contradictory spiritual experiences)- but if it's your own spiritual experience, that's different.

When Christians see things like this and say "God is working," I think one of the main things they mean by "working" is "God is going to convince people to convert to Christianity." Which... I mean, that's just an interpretation. Just because a lot of Christians are having an emotional experience singing worship songs... like what does that have anything to do with non-Christians converting to Christianity? It's totally not connected- but in a certain type of Christian ideology, God being present and powerful means that God is going to convince non-Christians to believe in Jesus. In that ideology, it's connected.

One of my concerns is that when people have a spiritual experience like this, it confirms whatever religious ideology they already believe in. Who knows, maybe God is like "I choose, for my own ~mysterious reasons~ to create a spiritual experience for these people, even though they have a lot of very incorrect beliefs about me" (and really, doesn't everyone have a bunch of incorrect beliefs about God? They are beyond our understanding, that's kind of Their thing...) and then people take it to mean "oh, it really is true! All the beliefs I have about God really are true!" That's kind of a jump in logic (jump from "the spiritual world exists" to "God wants people to become Christians"- yeah, it doesn't follow).

And then I saw this tweet, which makes a good point:

I'm confused by the excitement re: the #AsburyRevival. It's a multi-day emotional rollercoaster with lots of singing. That's all.

"Revival" is happening when people start doing Isaiah 58:6-9 & Micah 6:8. Period.

Why wait for "revival" to get off your ass and do something? Go!

— Nick Laparra (@NickLaparra) February 13, 2023

YES! I think it's a little weird putting so much emphasis on emotional experiences... (Hence my side-eye towards the Pentecostal movement...) Like, I believe God is with us ALL THE TIME. And we already know what They want us to do: Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly before God. You don't need a "spiritual experience." Go do it.

Blogaround

1. All 81 Sudoku Digits Completed In 14 seconds! (2021) A 33-minute sudoku solve video- in this one, Simon fills in the ENTIRE grid with colors before even getting 1 digit. I love it.

2. Where did these guys come from? (September 16) "I’ve never heard a sermon on Ezra 10:15. There should be sermons on this passage. Lots of them. It should be the stuff of altar calls and bonfire dedications reserved for the last night of Bible camp or youth-group retreats. This should be one of those verses that appears on T-shirts and bumper stickers, inspirational posters and tattoos. It should’ve been one of the verses that Tim Tebow penciled into his eye-black."

(And, related to that, here's the Ezra fanfic I wrote a while ago: Love Wins (an Ezra fanfic))

3. Gray-Ace & Gray-Aro Survey: Results (September 16)

4. Mainland China reports first imported monkeypox case (September 17) 

5. “My Chains Are Gone”: When White Evangelicals Sing About Slavery (2021) "This is perhaps the central irony of White evangelicalism’s continued use of these images: those whose theology leads them to sing the most of enslavement and freedom as the central metaphor of Christian salvation are simultaneously the group most likely to downplay the significance of slavery’s lasting impact on the people of the United States and promote (or at least not oppose) policies that do harm to African Americans—the one group that knows the ongoing injustice and traumatic effects of enslavement."

6. Parents shocked that Christian school will kick out openly LGBTQ students (September 19) "You almost want to pat her on the head for being such a decent human being that she couldn’t imagine a Christian school doing anything this monstrous."

7. Is Joe Biden The Best President Unions Have Ever Had? And If Not, Why Not? (September 20) "The difference between Biden and most other presidents, though, is that through most of American history, the actions of presidents have been to just crush the union. In 1877, railroads forced workers out on strike in West Virginia after reducing pay for the second time in a year; soon the Great Railroad Strike swept the nation as a general protest against the dominance of the railroads over the lives of Americans — polluting them, killing them on the job and in the cities, dominating the economy through corruption, laying them off. President Rutherford B. Hayes sent the military to crush it, turning a nonviolent strike into a bloodbath."

8. The Cruel Story Behind The 'Reverse Freedom Rides' (2020) "Fuming over the civil rights movement, Southern segregationists had concocted a way to retaliate against Northern liberals. In 1962, they tricked about 200 African Americans from the South into moving north. The idea was simple: When large numbers of African Americans showed up on Northern doorsteps, Northerners would not be able to accommodate them. They would not want them, and their hypocrisy would be exposed." Relevant now because of what Texas and Florida are doing to immigrants.

Lying to people, transporting them hundreds of miles, and just leaving them there, to make a political point. Aren't these Republican politicians worried about going to hell?

DeSantis claims credit for sending 2 planes carrying migrants to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts (September 15) "'Our island jumped into action putting together 50 beds, giving everyone a good meal, providing a play area for the children, making sure people have the healthcare and support they need,' Fernandes wrote in another tweet. 'We are a community that comes together to support immigrants.'"

Migrants on Martha's Vineyard flight say they were told they were going to Boston (September 15)

I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you cared for me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.

9. Patagonia company owner gives it away to Planet Earth in perpetuity (September 16) 

10. On the Operating Table, Supply Chain Issues Can Be Life or Death (September 20) "Five cardiovascular surgeons across China told Sixth Tone that the country has been suffering a shortage of artificial grafts since early in the pandemic, aggravated by the two-month lockdown of Shanghai."

11. Data polls and money polls (September 21) "Every other month, at least, we get news articles and commentary fretting about some recent poll showing that some allegedly worrisome percentage of some group either believes in something apparently anathema or else refuses to believe in something that’s supposed to be elementary and fundamental for that group."

12. Died: Ron Sider, Evangelical Who Pushed for Social Action (July 28) "For nearly 50 years, Sider called evangelicals to care about the poor and see poverty as a moral issue. He argued for an expanded understanding of sin to include social structures that perpetuate inequality and injustice, and urged Christians to see how their salvation should compel them to care for their neighbors."

My Asexual Opinions On This Article About Prayer

A crowd of people with their hands raised in worship, in front of a cross. Image source.

[content note: NSFW]

I came across this post from 2019, Prayer and Orgasm Have More in Common Than You Think (Guest Post by Kelly Deutsch), and I have some asexual things to say about it.

First of all, I guess I'll put a disclaimer here: I'm not saying "allosexuals think prayer is like sex, and here is why I don't agree with that as an asexual." ("Allosexual" means not asexual or any of the other related identities under the asexual umbrella. Most people are allosexual.) It's not true that most people think prayer is like sex/orgasm- and this writer, Kelly Deutsch, obviously knows that; that's why she wrote a blog post to make her arguments for it. No, the part I take issue with is all the assumptions in her blog post about what sex is like. Her argument is basically "you know how when you have sex, you do X? well can be similar to doing Y during prayer" and I'm over here like "... I don't do X during sex..."

And I see this sort of thing all the time, in the way people talk about sex. The unstated assumptions about what sex is about. I felt like this article serves as a good example of it, so I'm going to blog about it here.

(Sometimes when I write a post about "people say X about sex, and here is why that makes no sense to me as an asexual", readers leave comments saying "I also think it makes no sense, and I'm not asexual." Yes! I appreciate those comments! Surely a lot of these things just inherently don't make sense, unrelated to the fact that I'm asexual. I'm really glad that IDing as ace gives me the space to talk about that, and I would love to see people who aren't asexual also talking about it.)

Okay let's start:

I can’t remember the first time it happened in prayer. But I remember the first conversation I tried to have about it.

“My prayer has been… I mean, it’s been wonderful.” My eyes sparkled, but I struggled to find the words. “It’s like… it’s spousal. It’s like my heart blooms open, to a place deeper than I knew existed—and God pours himself out there. Sometimes it leaves me breathless!”

...

Over the years, I came to learn that this kind of profound experience in prayer was not uncommon. Mystics from nearly every religion speak of the divine as “beloved” or “lover.”

Sexuality and Spirituality are a lot closer than many of us might think.

Don’t believe me? Check out Teresa of Avila’s poetry:

When He touches me I clutch the sky’s sheets, the way other lovers do the earth’s weave of clay. Any real ecstasy is a sign you are moving in the right direction, don’t let any prude tell you otherwise.

Or John of the Cross:

O sweet cautery, O delightful wound! O gentle hand! O delicate touch That tastes of eternal life…  How gently and lovingly You wake my heart…  And by Your sweet breathing, How tenderly You swell my heart with love!

Or Rumi:

The wakened lover speaks directly to the beloved, ‘You are the sky my spirit circles in, The love inside love, the resurrection place… Are these words or tears? Is weeping speech?  What shall I do, my love?’

So he speaks, and everyone around Begins to cry with him, laughing crazily, Moaning in the spreading union Of lover and beloved.

This is the true religion.

Okay, I see a lot here that is guaranteed to make a group of middle-school boys devolve into uncontrolled giggling, but in my opinion that doesn't actually mean it's sexual. Does that make sense? I don't read it as sexual. There are a few bits that mention something sexual as an analogy to what they're experiencing ("spousal", "other lovers", "prude") but I really don't see that as saying the actual religious experience is sexual. 

("spousal" is a weird word to use though, like wtf does that mean. As an immigrant I gotta say I've heard people say "spousal visa" but that's it.)

It sort of reminds me of what I wrote in my post "You Weren't There, the Night Jesus Found Me":

It's choosing to pour out worship on Jesus. I know I said I'd never worship again- which is true- but I mean this in a different way. It's choosing to do it, this one time, because of how I feel. Celebration. Love. And that's real right now, but I make no promises for the future. I've said before, I'm never going to be in a personal relationship with a god again. But I see that maybe I can worship with no strings attached. Just enjoy it for what it is in the moment. It doesn't mean I'm giving my whole life to Them, or anything like that.

...

Can I worship God when I want, without commitment, and it's more meaningful because They know it's real every time, rather than being out of obligation?

I was aware, when I wrote that, that it sounds very similar to arguments about why casual sex "no strings attached" can be a good thing. My feeling on this is basically, "Well I meant what I said. It's not a sexual thing at all. The fact that other people use that same sort of language to talk about sex is not my problem." Like, okay, if you're going to list of examples of situations where generally it's expected that something is supposed to occur in the context of a committed relationship, but some people argue that outside of a committed relationship it can also be a good and beautiful thing... in my blog post, I put "worship" on that list. Many other people have put "sex" on that list. That doesn't mean my view on worship is sexual, or some nonsense like that. 

Unless you see sex as like the default background noise behind everything. Which, well, yeah, people do, and as an asexual I hate that.

And speaking of "the default background noise behind everything"- back to Deutsch's article:

It was no secret to the mystics! Eros, that creative, life-giving energy that fuels our sexuality is the same energy within the divine. Actually, it’s the reverse: God is the wild and beautiful dance between eros (desire, longing, creative energy) and agape (self-giving, fruitful love). When we make love, we participate in that dance.

And so we do when we pray.

Umm.

Okay let's have a little reality check here. Sex- the definition of sex. Sex is getting together with another person and messing around with each other's genitals. That's what sex is. Okay? That's what it is.

Like seriously, that's what it is. That's it.

All this stuff about "creative, life-giving energy", "desire, longing"- those are very abstract things, and sex can be that, to some people, but there's an extra step in there. How do you connect the very concrete act of genital stimulation to these big abstract concepts? As an asexual, I argue that they are not *inherently* connected. I suppose it's true that, for many people, the gateway to all these big abstract ideas about pleasure and desire and feeling alive is... *checks notes* ... *checks notes again* ... doing stuff with your genitals (?????) but I don't see why those things would be inherently connected, and we certainly shouldn't assume that they're connected for everyone. 

Story time: Back when I had never had sex, I thought I really really really wanted sex, because I really really really wanted all these wonderful abstract ideas about love and emotional connection. I know that I had heard of asexuality back then, but of course I thought I couldn't possibly be asexual- I really really wanted sex! Because I viewed sex as like, this transcendent, intimate experience, where you truly give yourself to your partner, and feel love in the most direct and powerful way, and all that- of course I want to have sex! I knew that in practical terms, it was brought about by doing stuff with your genitals, but I didn't think that would be ... like... something you would need to pay attention to, as you get swept up in the romance and emotion of it.

(Wow I just realized my naive view on sex from back then sounds EXTREMELY ASEXUAL.)

But, when I started having sex, it wasn't like that at all. It was like, trying to figure out how to put our genitals together. Like, that's it. Really. That's what it was.

So I'm not buying this stuff about "Eros, that creative, life-giving energy that fuels our sexuality is the same energy within the divine". Like, okay, I can believe that there is "creative, life-giving energy". But if you want to convince me that we can access that energy through sex- which, remember, means finding a partner and messing around with each other's genitals- you're going to need to at least offer some kind of argument to make that connection. Really bizarre how the connection is just assumed.

Moving along:

Lovemaking requires vulnerability. At the very least, it requires you to bare a private part of you, physically. At the very best, it asks you to bare your most intimate parts– emotionally and spiritually.

Prayer is simply another word for “relationship with the divine.” It, too, requires vulnerability in order to be intimate. You can have a surface-level relationship with Infinite Love just as you can with your spouse. You can hide, perform your perceived duties, and live separate lives while still calling yourself “spiritual” or “holy” or “Christian” (or “married”!). Or– you can be in a rich, satisfying, jovial relationship with the divine. It is as real and nuanced as your relationship with your spouse.

Consider the amount of trust it takes to be truly naked with someone. It might be easy to take off your clothes; but how easy is it to bare your heart? To share your fears? To be seen in all your flaws and imperfections—and be loved there? It’s like your husband kissing that flabby spot you’re secretly ashamed of, or your wife revering that hairy mole you find revolting. But she loves it because it is a part of YOU.

That’s the kind of tenderness God shows us. He caresses our pride. He reveres our epic failures that spark shame in us. While we beat ourselves up (“How could I be so stupid and selfish?? How could I hurt the friend who loves me so well?”), the divine pours mercy in that spot. He soothes the shame, washing it out with the waters of tenderness. He doesn’t pour out wrath: we’re the ones who do that.

So... okay, I would say the analogy is a bit confused here because the writer is actually talking about sex in 2 different ways:

1. Sex
2. Sex when you are with a partner that you fully love and trust and that you feel safe being vulnerable with

She is saying that prayer should have vulnerability similar to item 2 on that list, and therefore prayer/spirituality can be sexual. But... uh... sex isn't always vulnerable like that. And she seems to realize this, because the section I pasted above says things like "It might be easy to take off your clothes; but how easy is it to bare your heart?"- in other words, being naked/ having sex doesn't necessarily mean you're also sharing your heart with your partner.

So it seems really weird to me that the argument is like "Sometimes sex is vulnerable and emotionally intimate, and sometimes it is not. Prayer can also be vulnerable and emotionally intimate- therefore prayer, at its best, is like sex." Like... seems like the sex is a separate thing from the concept of vulnerability. So the conclusion doesn't really follow.

My best guess is, she views this kind of vulnerable/intimate sex as the "correct" way to have sex, and therefore sex which doesn't meet those criteria isn't worth being considered as she makes her argument about how prayer can be like sex.

(I guess I'll put some examples of "less vulnerable" types of sex, in case it's not clear what I mean. Okay, for one thing, you don't have to actually be naked to have sex. You just need to expose whichever genitals you need for whichever specific sex act you're doing. If you're still confused, here is a bunch of erotica about it [NSFW], you're welcome. Also, as far as I know, if you're having sex early on in the relationship, or having a one-time hookup, or with a stranger, you won't just go ahead and let them see whatever body parts you feel weird about. You would present yourself in a certain way, specifically to reduce that vulnerability... actually, for safety reasons, I think it's important to reduce that vulnerability if you don't know your partner well enough. Also, don't tell strangers where you live, etc. I don't have experience with this, but apparently having random hookups with people you don't want to be emotionally intimate with- and actually shouldn't be emotionally intimate with, because you don't know them well enough to trust them- is a common thing.)

And for me personally, I'm not saying sex isn't vulnerable, I'm saying that it's a lot of other things too- like confusing, and it was painful when I had vaginismus... so I'm not on board with a metaphor that treats vulnerability as if it's THE most important aspect.

It's weird to me, though, that if the thing she's actually getting at is the vulnerability, then why does she seem to think that the thing she's getting at is the sex?

Oh and also, I guess I should mention, I used to have a "personal relationship with God" which was vulnerable and emotionally intimate and all that. (But it wasn't sexual, because, of course not, wtf?) And I did spend time praying and worshiping just because I enjoyed it and wanted to be with God, and did at times feel huge overwhelming mind-blowing happy emotions. But it wasn't like an orgasm, obviously, because an orgasm happens in your genitals.

But I don't have a "personal relationship with God" anymore. Actually I believe in a different God now (I'm still Christian, but a different kind of Christian than before), but I am not willing to have a "personal relationship" with Them. I'm not willing to have that vulnerability with any God at all, because of what happened with the evangelical God.

But if Deutsch's spirituality is sexual, then that's fine for her. Glad she is happy about it. I just take issue with how what she's describing as "sex" isn't what sex is for everyone. And also, honestly, I don't think her spirituality *is* sexual; I think she conceptualizes it as being *metaphorically* sexual.

Taserface announces "It's metaphorical!" (Scene from "Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol 2") Image source.

Which, yeah sure, it's fine that she wants to use this metaphor to describe her experience. I just find it weird that she doesn't realize there are many places where, for many people, the metaphor can break down. 

Let's continue reading the article!

I once was talking to a friend of mine who was having a hard time in her prayer life. I also knew that it had taken years after getting married for her to experience an orgasm. (Which is not a rare experience for women.) I asked, “What made the difference when you were finally able to come?”  She pondered for a moment. “You know,” she replied softly, “it was when I finally allowed myself to surrender. I had to let go of all my fears and rigidity. You really have to relax and let go in order for climax to happen.”

Uh. I have 1 question: WHY DIDN'T SHE BUY A SEX TOY?

Like, this strikes me as very weird, this idea that if a woman can't figure out how to have an orgasm, she needs to "relax and let go." No, you don't need to do that. BUY A SEX TOY.

[Edit: Based on the discussion in the comments section, I decided I need to make an edit here: I was working under the assumption that this woman's problem was that she had never had an orgasm before, and wanted to have an orgasm, but had no idea about the physical mechanics of it. In that case- which is probably one of the simplest cases- buying a sex toy will likely be all that's needed to solve that problem. But if it's more complicated than that, and it's a mix of conflicting societal expectations vs how you want your partner to see you vs how you feel about your own identity, etc, then maybe a sex toy won't help at all. And if she feels like "I need to buy a sex toy so I can learn to orgasm so I can perform sex correctly for my husband" then that's no good either. Your sex life should be about you first. Figure out yourself first, then you can choose to share it with another person.]

Nobody tells men to "relax and let go" in order to solve their sexual problems. But apparently it's FINE if a married woman doesn't have orgasms for YEARS, while her husband presumably DOES have orgasms. Apparently that's just the way it is, until she can teach herself to "relax and let go."

Absolutely no judgment on this woman- it's not her fault, and my experience was similar. This is a failure of the sex ed system, is what it is.

Yeah, when I started having sex, I didn't know what arousal was. I didn't know that a woman having an orgasm was supposed to be part of sex. Or, I had heard of the idea of women having orgasms, but I thought it would be just... like... you do what feels good, and then it suddenly happens. Umm, no no, I'm asexual, so "what feels good" is cuddling a lot and then falling asleep together, which doesn't have anything to do with orgasms. Okay, if you're as naive as I was and you don't know this, let me spell it out for you: To get an orgasm, you have to stimulate your genitals in ways that feel good and make you feel like "ooh I want to keep stimulating my genitals like this" so then you do just that, for a while, and that's how you get an orgasm. If you don't have the "I want to keep stimulating my genitals like this" feeling, then you are *not* on track to get an orgasm. It doesn't just come out of nowhere. It doesn't come from, like, being really "relaxed." (For the very naive readers, let me spell this out more: In this anecdote about the woman who got orgasms when she finally learned to "relax", she (and/or her husband) was definitely also physically stimulating her genitals in ways that felt like "I want to keep stimulating my genitals" but couldn't quite get the orgasm until she added 1 last component, which was the emotional state of "relax and let go." Why am I writing about this on the internet?) Here, if you still have questions, go read the Wikipedia article on orgasms. I always heard people say that an orgasm is indescribable, but that's not true; Wikipedia does a pretty good job describing it.

ANYWAY, don't try to psych yourself up into this weird, badly-defined "relax and let go" emotional state. BUY A ****ING VIBRATOR.

Okay... well... some people don't like the idea of using a sex toy. That's fine- if you don't want to use a sex toy, then don't. But it should be your decision. You should know what your reasons are, and they should be reasons that matter to you. Not because society says there's something wrong with it and it's not the "correct" way to have sex. Not because your partner doesn't like the idea- your partner, who is fine with himself having orgasms and you not having orgasms- if that's the situation you're in, and your partner is saying you "shouldn't" try a sex toy, ask yourself this question: What the f***?

Even if you want to learn how to orgasm without a sex toy, the sex toy can be a useful tool because you'll at least find out what an orgasm is, and the basic general outlines of what you need to do to get it. (Well, actually, let me add the disclaimer that not every sex toy works for everyone.) Once you have that knowledge, you'll be in a much better position to try and get an orgasm without the sex toy.

Because, if one partner has orgasms, and the other partner *never* has orgasms, that should be a red flag. Like, I don't want to say it's *definitely* wrong- I believe sex can be whatever you define it to be, and there's no "correct" way to do it- as long as everyone involved is okay with it. Sure, I can imagine situations where one partner is fine with participating in sex but not having any orgasms themself. There's nothing *inherently* wrong with that. But that's an unusual situation, and there should be a good reason for it. Not just, well, this is how it is for women, *shrug*, why can't she just learn to "relax and let go"?

(I'm also a little mad about the "relax" advice because I had vaginismus, and I asked several doctors "why is sex painful?" and they all said "just relax" which was useless because I actually HAD VAGINISMUS. Like, AN ACTUAL MEDICAL PROBLEM. And I had to figure out what to do about it my own damn self, and the answer was not "relax", the answer was very carefully and analytically trying, with lube, to put one's own fingers in one's vagina. Or, alternatively, "don't have vaginal sex" also works a perfectly valid answer.)

Anyway... wow this blog post is getting long. Sometimes I ask myself why I'm out here on the internet, as an asexual, giving sex ed advice.

Okay skimming over the rest of Deutsch's article... here's a bit at the end I have to mention:

[content note: explicit description of sex]

That is one of the simplest ways to divine union: sitting in your longing. Open up that space to the divine and ask him to fill you, much like a husband fills his wife. We are all feminine before the divine. Spread wide your cavern, your longing, and he will hasten to fill you with himself. How could he resist such beauty?

Okay, I have 2 things to say here:

1. Eww
2. My God is too queer for this heteronormative analogy

To her credit, the writer acknowledges my first objection:

If the genital analogy doesn’t work for you, leave it. But for millennia, it is the best analogy mystics have come up with to explain the delicious ecstasy found in the heights of prayer.

Yeah, I mean, if it works for you, then that's great. But it's just an analogy, not what sex actually *is*, so you have to understand that there are people whose experience of sex doesn't fit this idea.

At the end of her article, there are some practical suggestions for how to get to this kind of "orgasm" connection with God. I guess if you are interested in trying it yourself, you can go read it.

But also, I realize, I guess I have had the experience that she's talking about. As I said earlier in this very long blog post, I used to have a "personal relationship with God", and I did feel His presence in amazing ways. I kind of just realize now, as I come to practical suggestions at the end of Deutsch's article, that those experiences are (probably?) what she means by this whole orgasm analogy. Yeah, I ... back then... I did feel it, overwhelming, in my heart, passion, desire, devotion, chasing God, huge emotions that made me shout and fall to my knees and dance in worship, and I loved it, and I experienced God. 

But, first of all, just because it had those powerful strong pleasurable emotions didn't mean it was like an orgasm (wtf), and second, yeah I'm not doing that with a God ever again.

So yeah, that's my asexual opinion on that. I sometimes see people talking about sex in ways that have these hidden assumptions about what sex is- like the idea that sex is about vulnerability, sex connects us with the life-giving energy of the universe, etc. And I find it quite odd, because actually sex is about doing stuff with your genitals. If you experience sex in a certain way, and you want to make an analogy about that, then good for you, but the analogy won't apply to everyone.

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A bit of an aside: I had a similar issue with the book "Radical Love: Introduction to Queer Theology." Overall I liked it, but it definitely had A LOT of this kind of argument "you know how you do X during sex- well that's similar to this other thing, Y, related to religion" and I'm like "since when do people do X during sex???"

Here's what I wrote in my review of that book, in 2018:

Yeah, there were A LOT of places in this book where it was talking about theology and such and I was following along, no problem, and then SUDDENLY it just became EXTREMELY SEXUAL and I found myself way too asexual to even figure out what it was talking about. Like, if it says desire for God in prayer is like sexual desire, I'm like... trying to remember how allosexuals view sexual desire so I can try to figure out what on earth is being communicated with this analogy.

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Also, I just happened to remember that Rob Bell wrote a book called Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections Between Sexuality and Spirituality. 

Sex. God. You know the two subjects are connected; you just don't have the words for how they are connected.

LOLLLLLLLLL maybe if I have time, I'll review this book, asexually.

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Related:

Here's an article about evangelical women and sex

What Sex Is Like (According to Purity Culture) 

"Moon Knight" and Boundaries With God 

How Pregnancy and Childbirth Changed My Asexuality (or, actually, A Post About Vaginismus) 

The things I've never let myself say about worship