Blogaround

Merry Christmas! Image source.

1. Top 5 Snubbed Disney Princesses Totally agree. Also Esmeralda should be on this list.

2. Why Do We Humanize White Guys Who Kill People? (posted December 2) "To be sure, white men may be charged, tried and convicted; they may be regarded as brutish criminals. But they can be simultaneously understood as human beings, driven by conflicting emotions, able — even in their criminality — to have experienced loss and confusion and anger and love, emotions we do not imaginatively afford America’s poor and black, the men and women who often find their way into our news cycles simply by having the audacity to live in a world that was not built for and around them."

3. Physicians Demand End To 20-Year-Old Ban On Gun Violence Research (posted December 2) Wait, what? What? A ban on research? WTF?

4. Museum Statement on Syrian Refugees (posted November 19) From the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Which reminds me, have y'all donated to help the refugees yet? Have you contacted your local politicians? (You can do those things on the Church World Service website.)

5. Christian Terrorist Robert Dear and the Army of God (posted December 2) and also this: Planned Parenthood Worker Tweets Every Act of Terrorism She Faced Working at a Clinic

6. Can Faith-Based Organizing for Gun Control Work? (posted December 1) "The foot soldiers in this pro-life movement would stage regular protests outside gun shops and gun shows. They’d make trips to the art supply store, and come equipped with sidewalk chalk, which they’d use to draw a big heart on the pavement at the parking lot entrance, emblazoned with the words, “God loves you.” These words are designed to stop you from doing something you’ll regret."

7. #BodiesMatter: Gunpowder (posted December 4) "I could tell you what it felt like to have someone else standing to my defense with yet another gun — it did not, in any way, feel safer."

8. LifeWay Research gets it backwards on abortion (posted December 2) "Anyone who says, 'How could a third of evangelicals be pro-choice? I’ve never met such a person' is really saying, 'I’m the kind of person who has made it clear that I don’t want to hear from or to listen to anyone else, especially women.'"

9. Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Prisoner Re-entry (posted November 8)

10. So I'm in the process of watching all 6 Star Wars movies, and, you guys, Hayden Christensen is ... causing me to stumble.

Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker. Image source.

Have a good week, everyone!

The Empire Cake Strikes Back

Click image to view a larger version.

Hi everyone! I made this cake, obviously depicting the scene in Star Wars episode V: The Empire Strikes Back where Vader says to Luke, "I am your father."

Basically this:

Image source.

Turns Out I Only Speak the American Dialect of Christianese

Image description: a bunch of speech bubbles with Christianese phrases: "do life together", "felt led", "backsliding", "traveling mercies", "transparent", "praying a hedge of protection around one another", "we just want to love up on these kids", "God just laid it on my heart", "safe for the whole family", "been working on my testimony", "just not seeing much fruit", "brought the Word", "intentional", "fellowship", "Jesus agapes you", "not enough meat", "in the world, not of it." Image source.

Hey so you know that church group that I'm totally quitting? Well I haven't quit yet. (And it's NOT because it gives me such good material to blog about. That is an added bonus!) I'm working on it.

Anyway, the topic last week was "witnessing." After a bit of (very familiar) discussion about how it's bad to try to "force" people to believe in Jesus, and we should do it "out of love" instead, I asked this question to the group: "So, I want to check if we're all using the same definition here. When you guys use the word 'witnessing', do you mean that you believe people would all be better off if they became Christians, because if they're non-Christians, their lives will suck and they'll go to hell?"

I asked because this group is part of an international church here in Shanghai, and we have people from all over the world. It's the most diverse church group I've ever been in, and as a result, it's impossible for me to get a feel for the general culture of this group, what sorts of opinions I could share and everyone would be like "oh my dear goodness that is the most blasphemous and un-Christian thing I've ever heard" and which ones would be "yeah that's pretty normal."

It has such a strange feel, and I can't figure out exactly why. It's definitely different from the American evangelical bible study groups I've been in, but I can't figure out what exactly is different.

Anyway, very often I suspect that, because we have such different backgrounds, people in this group have very different understandings of what Christianity is about. We use words like "faith", "sin", and "temptation"- we all use the same words, but do we actually mean the same things? (Like, in my experience, "temptation" is most often a euphemism for "thinking about sex" or - gasp! - perhaps doing more than just thinking. Does a German Christian also think of "temptation" in this way?)

So I asked them about the assumptions behind the word "witnessing." Because if you believe non-Christians go to hell, I believe it is impossible to "witness" in a way that's actually loving. At the most basic level, you're trying to tell people you know what's best for their lives, and they'd better believe you or else they'll go to hell. It doesn't matter how polite you are or how you try to dress it up with language about "we need to do this out of love, not fear-based, not treating people like a number in our conversion stats." You're being disrespectful and unloving. I know you may genuinely feel love towards these people, and your actions are done "out of love", but your nasty, unloving theology ruins it.

But if you don't believe non-Christians go to hell, that it's perfectly fine for people to choose not to believe in Jesus, then does "witnessing" matter? What would "witnessing" even mean in this case? Now that is a question I would really really like to discuss.

So anyway, I asked the group this question, and nobody gave me a straight answer. Just some stuff about "we don't have to agree about that" like it was just some unrelated side topic, and we could go on talking about how best to "witness" without any kind of answer to this.

I interpreted this to mean "you've just said something so incredibly blasphemous, we don't even know what to say" or maybe "you're so wrong but we are too polite to tell you." (And that relates to another concern I have with this group: I'm beginning to suspect that they just want to be "welcoming" to everyone so they'll let you share whatever opinions you have, answer by saying "you made some good points", and secretly think you're wrong about everything. That's a waste of my time. I don't want a group where I'm allowed to say whatever I want and people are nice to me. I want a group where people actually understand me.)

So at that point, I was really discouraged about this group. But then later I had a conversation with this one guy in the group, from Australia, let's call him Clark. And he used the line about "we don't have to agree about all these things" and I said "I don't understand what you mean when you say we don't have to agree. Do you mean that some Christians would say 'yes' to the question of 'would everyone be better off if they became Christians?', some Christians would say 'no', and various shades of nuance between those two positions, and that's totally fine, we're all Christians and we shouldn't judge each other. OR do you mean 'obviously the right answer is yes but I don't want to say it so directly'?"

And he said, the first one. Definitely the first one.

And I was shocked.

And he said "actually my own beliefs have changed several times."

And, wow.

This is totally new, you guys.

Because every single time I've heard a Christian say "we don't have to agree about XYZ", I took it to mean "I don't want to argue about XYZ right now." Not "it is totally legitimate for Christians to have different views about XYZ."

And I interpreted it that way because on every single issue, I was taught "this is what the bible says about XYZ" and "here is God's way to do XYZ." People who teach those things always have bible verses to back it up. And they say that the people who disagree don't know or care what the bible says. (For those keeping score at home, this breaks 2 of the 10 commandments: "Do not misuse the name of the Lord" and "Do not bear false witness.")

Maybe there were times, in bible study groups in the US, when I heard someone present a view which disagreed with what I had been taught "God says" about some issue. But of course I dismissed what they said without a second thought, because I had been taught that people who said things like that were either fake Christians who just wanted to follow the world instead of what God said, or maybe new Christians who hadn't been taught the right answer yet.

Sometimes people ask me if everyone in the church where I grew up held those same "extreme views" that I did. Or they try to tell me I misunderstood what the church was teaching, because look, most people in your church didn't believe that. And yes, OF COURSE I knew that most people in my church were less "extreme" than I was. But I never took that to be a sign that I might be doing something wrong. Ha, of course not- because the church taught me not to. The church taught me to "stand up for what's right, even if you're the only one." The church taught me that there are a lot of people who go to church but they're not real Christians. So OF COURSE if I ever discovered another Christian believed something different than I did (about issues where I had been taught "this is what the bible says") I judged them to be less Christian than I was.

(There's a blog post in here somewhere about Asperger's and how I've always been pretty clueless about social interaction, preferring rigid rules instead, and how the church taught me to just follow Jesus and ignore what anybody else thinks. Yeah. That is an unhealthy intersection there.)

And in this context, the only thing that "we don't have to agree" could possibly mean is "I don't think it would be helpful to try and convince you about this right now."

(Yeah I was taught to be a sneaky and dishonest Christian. Well, you pretty much have to be, if you feel love toward people but also believe the most nasty offensive things about them.)

So anyway, about the international church group. The weird thing is, if I was a Real True Christian like I was 5 years ago, I could attend this group and never even notice that other people perhaps believed differently than I did. (And, wait a second, maybe this ACTUALLY HAPPENED at some of the groups I've been in in the US.) Because all the language they use is more or less within the range of language that the American evangelical brand of Real True Christians uses. And if anything came up that was different, I would of course judge them to be less Christian than I was. I could attend this group without having any of my beliefs challenged.

People use the same language, but mean it in very different ways. And my attempts to quantify this phenomenon have been met with resistance because "we don't have to agree."

I'm quitting this group. I'm totally quitting this group. But maybe I'll at least stick around long enough to figure out what Europeans think Christianity is. Or, if it's not good for my mental health, maybe not.

Blogaround

Image description: A huge lion sitting in a wheelbarrow like a kitty. "If it fits, I sits." Image source.

1. Cursed be anyone who deprives the refugee of justice (posted November 19) Yep.

2. Please don’t suddenly pretend you care about homeless veterans for just as long as it allows you to oppose helping refugees, because that’s hurting both veterans and refugees and it’s making you miserable (posted November 20) "As a general rule with very few exceptions, whenever you encounter someone arguing that “We [America] shouldn’t be doing X to help those people over there until we fix Y over here for our own people,” then you have also just encountered someone who doesn’t really give a flying fig about actually doing anything to fix Y over here."

3. Bible School Primer for Governors (posted November 18) "It would be shameful under any circumstances, but Pence pretends to be a defender of Christian values, which makes it all the more disgusting."

4. Young Black Men Share Heartbreaking Stories About Growing Up in the US (posted November 12)

5. Dear politicians who want to bar Syrian refugees: here are 6 ways you're wrong (posted November 17) "You are not the first person to think of vetting refugees. In fact, the US is pretty good at it."

6. Racism and the refugee problem (posted November 19) "If we let them in and generously provide for them, we would be building up a community of grateful, patriotic Americans whose presence and loyalty would undercut the message on which ISIS thrives."

7. Teacher: A student told me I ‘couldn’t understand because I was a white lady.’ Here’s what I did then. (posted November 24) "We read about the Syrian crisis, analyzing photographs of war-torn faces at the border and then wrote poetry of hope, despair and compassion from the perspectives of the migrants. Many of my kids asked to write about their own journeys across the border and their [dreams] for a better future. One child cried and told me he never had a teacher who honored the journey his family took to the United States. He told me he was not ashamed anymore, but instead proud of the sacrifice his parents made for him."

8. [Theory] Jar Jar Binks was a trained Force user, knowing Sith collaborator, and will play a central role in The Force Awakens (posted October 30) You guys. Wow. You must read this Star Wars fan theory.

9. So this happened:
boyfriend: "Do you want to go see 'The Martian' this weekend?"
me: "eh..........."
boyfriend: "You can write a blog post about what good Christians would think of that movie."
me: "...you know my blog so well."
So anyway we saw "The Martian" and it was really really good! It's a science movie! Totally recommend.

(I am not, however, going to write a blog post about "what good Christians think of it.")

Images from "Saving Private Ryan", "Interstellar", and "The Martian." Text: "America has spent so much ****ing money retrieving Matt Damon." Image source.

About the shooting at Planned Parenthood:

1. Everything We Know About The Planned Parenthood Shooting In Colorado Springs (posted November 27)

2. The Colorado Springs shooting epitomizes white privilege and the hypocrisy of pro-lifers (posted November 28)

3. Here's what I have to say:

"We literally have no idea why this guy shot ppl at PP. All we said was 'abortion is worse than the Holocaust.'"

— Perfect Number (@pnumber628) 2015年11月29日

4. And now would be good time to go over and donate to Planned Parenthood.

5. Targeted Attacks On Abortion Providers Is Domestic Terrorism (posted November 28)

6. The awkward dance of condemning violence against Satanic baby-killers (posted November 28) "Since that would mean backing down from the central, flawed premise that abortion is murder, however, I don't think they'll do it."

On "Being Thankful"

A hand turkey. Image source.

A strange thing happens whenever I teach about Thanksgiving in China.

I ask the students to discuss this question: "What are you thankful for?" After letting them talk among themselves (in English, this is in the context of an ESL class), I do a little bit of error correction. Because most of them didn't catch that being thankful for something has a different meaning than being thankful to someone.

"I am thankful for..." and then you list the good things in your life. Your job, family, home, etc. "I am thankful to..." means you want to say "thank you" to someone. Your parents, your friends, God, etc. (Somewhat confusingly, these can also go on the "thankful for" list.)

Anyway, in the end, the students come away with this message: the meaning of Thanksgiving Day is to go thank people for everything they've done for us. And indeed, this week on wechat (Chinese social media app) I saw a post in Chinese which said basically "Today is Thanksgiving in western countries. Thank you to our parents, for giving us life. Thank you to our teachers, for giving us knowledge. Thank you to our friends, for giving us friendship." and on and on and on, all the people we should thank. It was really beautiful and poetic, in my opinion.

The problem is, that's not the meaning of Thanksgiving at all. Or, at least, it's so completely different from the way I've always understood Thanksgiving.

I remember in school, we used to have to write an answer to the question "What are you thankful for?" (Sometimes this answer was in the form of a hand turkey, obviously.) And my family has a tradition where we go around the dinner table and each person says what they're thankful for. But you can't repeat what someone else said. (And then sometimes it became a game, and we just kept going and going and you're out if you can't think of anything when it's your turn. Until someone says "I'm thankful for quantum tunneling" and that prompts everyone else to quit the game because it's been completely overrun by nerdiness. Yeah that's how we roll.)

Yeah, we always talked about what we were thankful for. But did we ever think about the "thankful to" part? Did we ever think about who we were thanking?

Aha! Yes, we did! The correct answer is God.

Except, not really. The whole "it's about being thankful to God" thing is more about a culture war than about actually thanking someone. It's about Christians getting all upset about how Thanksgiving is a Christian holiday, and isn't it terrible how our culture has lost sight of that, and kids in public school are writing "I am thankful for" but the lesson never mentions the name of God and isn't that the most horrible thing, it robs Thanksgiving of all its meaning, etc etc etc.

Thanksgiving, as I learned it, was about me having a vague feeling of thankfulness. Vaguely in the general direction of God. It's about me being happy about the things in my life. It's about "being thankful." It's NOT about actually thanking anyone. Yeah, they say it's about thanking God, but does anyone actually talk about what that means? Do we believe these good things were given to us personally by God? Or just because God made a world full of good things and the potential for happiness? Did God cause those good things only in a general sense, or actually with you personally in mind? And what about the bad things in our lives, or in the world- did God cause those too?

No, the average Christian (in US evangelical culture, at least) doesn't think about those questions. "Thanking God" is just a vague label that gets applied to positive things in one's life. Does it actually mean anything?

So I'm always a little bit shocked when I teach Chinese students about Thanksgiving, and they decide they're going to actually go out and thank someone. But I never tell them "no that's not what Thanksgiving is about" because, geez, that SHOULD BE what Thanksgiving is about.

(And if you're wondering about whether I totally omit the part where "Thanksgiving is a Christian holiday" in my lessons: I tell them the story about the pilgrims, and how the pilgrims were Christians and they thanked God. I tell them that Thanksgiving is about being thankful, and so for people who are religious, they would thank God. But most Chinese people aren't that religious, so I don't present it like "this is the entire point of Thanksgiving and if you're not a Christian then this holiday has no meaning for you." That would be ridiculous. And mean. And also not an accurate representation of the place that Thanksgiving holds in American culture- which is what I'm supposed to be teaching.)

It just shows how selfish and individualistic American culture (or American Christian culture) is, that we've created a holiday all about thanks, and yet it never occurs to us to actually thank someone. It's all about you and thinking about your own life. It's about "being thankful"- just a warm feeling, but not related to relationships between people or anything like that.

My Chinese students got it right though. Go actually thank someone this Thanksgiving.

Blogaround

Image source.

1. Church World Service, an organization that helps refugees. You can go donate to them.

2. Please Don’t Deny Our Agency (posted November 16) Totally agree with this. If you are an adult, you are responsible for what you believe. No excuses.

3. Thousands Quit Mormon Church in Mass Resignation (posted November 15)

4. Stop pitting security and compassion against each other in the Syrian refugee crisis (posted November 19) Yep.

5. Why I’m Not Capable of an Equitable Distribution of Empathy for Terror Attacks (posted November 15) THIS. Go read this. About feeling more connected to victims of certain tragedies but not others, and how that needs to be challenged when it's rooted in stereotypes/racism/etc, but at the same time, we will never be able to care about everything equally, and you shouldn't judge people for their emotions in the face of tragedy.

6. Freed Slave Writes Letter to Former Master: You Owe Us $11,680 for 52 Years of Unpaid Labor (1865) (posted November 11) "Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire."

7. Podcast from the Evangelical Immigration Roundtable about the refugee crisis. This is great. See also this website: We Welcome Refugees. Americans: contact your local government officials and tell them to welcome refugees. (Their website provides a form letter using Christian language, if that's what you're into.)

8. When Courtship Means Regret (posted November 17) "Yes really—I’ve spoken with scads of homeschool alumni who regret waiting until marriage to have sex." THIS. This is the most important thing to be said about purity culture.

9. The 41 percent (posted November 15) "Trans people have to deal with telling people in those online ads, “Looking for someone who will take me out,” or “I’m not a secret.""

How NOT To Write About Phobias

Fear, a character from the movie "Inside Out." Image source.

So I came across this article: One Felinophobe Describes Life With One of the Rarest Phobias In the World. It features some quotes from a Reddit AMA ("ask me anything") from 3 years ago, where a user named panicbreakfast talks about what it's like having ailurophobia (also known as felinophobia- fear of cats).

Plus a bunch of images of cats.

Umm... does anyone see anything wrong here?

You have an article about ailurophobia- a real psychological condition in which a person may experience distress in the following situations (according to wikipedia): "hearing purring, seeing a cat in real life, imagining the possibility of a cat touching or rubbing against one, the thought of meeting a cat in the dark, seeing the staring eyes of a cat (cats have the tendency to stare at passers-by) cats in pictures and on television, and cat-like toys and cat-like fur." And your article is accompanied by several photos of cats.

What the hell.

Are you serious?

Society just wants to gawk at people with phobias. Whoever put this article together doesn't care about people with ailurophobia at all. Actually, the text itself is pretty good- quotes from a person who actually has the condition, information about possible causes from a doctor who has studied phobias- presented in a fairly factual way, without that "wow look how completely WEIRD these people are" tone. This leads me to believe that the writer did not choose the images for this article. So I don't blame the writer- the writer did a good job. Somebody else really screwed this article up, though, by adding the cat photos.

It's an article about a phobia of cats, set up in such a way that people who actually HAVE a phobia of cats would experience distress even looking at the web page. (Or at least, some proportion would be. Others experience distress when there's a real cat but don't mind a picture.)

I mean, is it not obvious how completely wrong this is? I don't even know what to say, it's just so completely wrong. It's like you wrote an article that said "Did you know that some people are bothered by swear words? Fuck them." No, it's worse than that. Having a phobia is way worse than being "bothered" by something.

But this is how phobias are treated in popular culture. People just want to gawk at it. Wow, so weird, how could someone be afraid of that? Let's laugh at them! Click here to read a list called "Top 10 Weirdest Phobias" then point and laugh and share it with your friends!

An article about cat phobia, and somehow someone thinks "What images can we add to make this article more interesting? How about some cats? And let's write captions about how they're totally plotting something evil!" Yeah! Haha, cats are evil! Look at the way they stare! LOLOLOLOL!

Are you serious. You really think having a phobia of cats is at all similar to the way people joke about how their cats are always scheming and making trouble?

But that's the status of phobias in our society. And it is not okay.

------

Related posts about my experiences having phobias:
About My Phobia (this post has a cat picture, FYI)
Phobiettes And That Time I Panicked (this post has a cat picture too)
"Homophobia" is an Ableist Term. Stop Using It.

I Deserve God's Love

Chocolate Vanilla Creme pop-tarts. Image source.

People are amazing. People are just absolutely amazing.

Is there anything better than seeing someone smile? Seeing someone genuinely enjoying life? Pleasure is wonderful. Pleasure is so important. Everyone deserves to experience pleasure.

We can think, we can feel, we can experience emotions. We can love. We can love and be loved. Isn't that amazing?

Every time I'm in the US, I fill up my suitcase with pop-tarts and bring them back to China. Then in the evenings after dinner, I say, "I deserve a pop-tart" and I go eat one and it's fantastic. And I do deserve that. I deserve pleasure and good things simply because I am a human being.

It's not about anything we've done. It's about who we are. Created in God's image, with the ability to feel and love and experience happiness. And because we can experience those things, and because they are so good, we deserve them.

I'm using the word "deserve" in sort of a strange way here. I'm not talking about something that's earned. I'm not talking about something that one person owes to another.

What I mean is, it's such a wonderful thing for human beings to experience happiness. So incredibly wonderful that, somehow, I feel this is what we are meant for. Simply because we can experience pleasure, it is right and fitting that we do.

Of course, for practical reasons, there are limitations on this. For example, if I decide I'm going to go get Starbucks because I deserve to have nice things, I still have to pay for it. I deserve nice things, but that doesn't mean anyone should just give them to me for free. No, that would be ridiculous. I have to work and earn money, and the Starbucks employees deserve to be paid for their work.

For practical reasons, we can't always have pleasure. For practical reasons, we suffer and experience pain. For practical reasons, we have to work hard. But in the midst of this reality, human happiness is the greatest good. Human happiness is the goal. We aim to create a world where everyone can have good things and be happy, because that's what we deserve.

All right, wait one second. It's great to see someone happy- unless that someone has hurt you and you believe they deserve to be punished for it. So, there's a conversation to be had about what justice looks like. In my view, there are 3 aspects: punishing the perpetrator, giving the victim whatever help they need, and preventing it from happening again in the future. Preventing someone from experiencing happiness only falls into the first of those aspects. Yes, people should pay for their sins- but that's not the totality of what justice is, and that payment is finite. It doesn't mean they deserve to never be happy again. (A sentiment which seems to me to be more motivated by revenge than justice.) If, for example, a murderer goes to jail for the rest of their life, I think that's good enough. I hope they can at least have some sort of simple pleasures in jail. I don't know, maybe I shouldn't say that because I've never been a victim/ been close to a victim of some sort of awful crime like that. But personally, I don't believe there's anything you can do to erase the fact that, as a human being created in God's image, you deserve happiness. (Again, if you happen to be a violent criminal, your freedom needs to be severely limited for practical reasons. Like the fact that victims also deserve to live happy lives free from fear. But yeah, you still deserve some happiness.)

But that's a very unique case. For most people, there's nothing they've done that raises legitimate questions over whether it's right for them to ever experience happiness again.

So the point is, people deserve to experience pleasure. That's why sometimes I stop by a convenience store on my way home and buy a yogurt for my boyfriend. He loves yogurt, and I want him to be happy. His happiness matters. His happiness is a beautiful and wonderful thing in and of itself.

My happiness matters too. And I'm saying all this because I come from a Christian culture which taught me my happiness doesn't matter. I was taught to view pleasure with suspicion. I was taught that sacrificing and suffering for the sake of God was way better and more godly than experiencing happiness. And pleasurable things like pop-tarts and yogurt may even be seen as temptations, and we are selfish if we indulge in them.

Furthermore, I believed that "justice" meant we should never be happy again. Because humans are sinners, the most fitting and right thing is that we suffer in hell forever. We don't deserve happiness, not even one second of happiness. Not even one smile, not even one pop-tart. Anytime something good happens to you, thank God for giving you what you don't deserve.

In this ideology, the complex and wonderful depths of our emotions and desires and capacity for love were never meant to be explored and enjoyed. No, because God made us sinners, we deserve nothing but trauma and agony. Because of God's grace- which, obviously, we don't deserve- people are able to experience happiness during our earthly lives. But when you die, the game is up. When you die, you finally get what you deserve. Unless you've managed to cover yourself with Christ and hide how obviously worthless and unworthy you are.

No. That's a lie from (ironically) the pit of hell. Because people are amazing. How could anyone look at a child laughing and think "this is wrong, she should suffer instead"? How could anyone look at a person resting on the couch after a day of hard work and think "no, it's not right for him to rest, he should feel pain instead"? How could anyone look at the sum of all the world's celebrations and festivals and parties and think "God's justice says this none of this is supposed to exist"?

But that's what it means every time a pastor says "God doesn't owe us anything."

No. People are amazing, and we deserve happiness. And yes, we are created in the image of God and we deserve God's love. I deserve God's love. You deserve God's love.

We deserve pleasure. We deserve to have good things. Go ahead and buy something nice for yourself, because you are wonderful and you should have nice things. Like I said, for practical reasons we can't always buy nice things. But every now and then, when there's space in the budget for it, go ahead. You deserve it.

People are so astoundingly amazing. Fearfully and wonderfully made and all that. So we deserve to be happy. We deserve to be loved. And we deserve God's love.

-------

PS please enjoy this song: "Diamonds" by Rihanna

Blogaround

Image source.

1. It sounded right in my head until I said it out loud (posted November 2) "Those misconceptions endured, unperturbed, uncorrected, almost unacknowledged, until life conspired to draw us outside of the bounds of that little world and we saw the look of confusion and consternation on someone’s face as we said those things out loud for the first time in the presence of someone who knew better."

2. T.F.: The Logic of Hell (posted November 2) "Accept that Hell is real and that it is infinitely more important than any earthly concerns and suddenly the very things that might compel you to attend to this-worldly needs and injustices — compassion, empathy, faith, hope, love — become reasons not to do so." Oh my goodness, you guys, go read this post. This is exactly everything I've been saying over and over about how HELL RUINS CHRISTIANITY.

3. The GOP primary’s theocratic X-factor: Inside the twisted worldview and junk history of David Barton (posted October 27) "He is the most influential right wing crackpot in American politics today. And that’s saying something."

4. Dear Professor: Is This Class Going to Challenge My Faith and Make Me Uncomfortable? (posted November 13) "I find frustrating the too-frequent sentiment from Christians that equates interrogating and examining the texts with destroying faith. There is a strain of anti-intellectualism in modern US Christianity that is vile, unbiblical, and deadlier to faith than scholarly examination could ever be."

5. This Children’s Book About Sex And Gender Is A Total Game-Changer (posted November 5) "Because any part of your body can be private, in this book we don't call them your private parts."

6. You Don't Need Your Moms' Permission to Have Sex. (posted November 13) "You could have the most eloquent, well-reasoned argument for why you should be allowed to have sex, and she would still say no. Because she's demonstrated that this is less about your well-being than it is her personal views about sex."

7. This image:

Image source.

Image text:

It is not Paris we should pray for.

It is the world. It is a world in which Beirut,

reeling from bombings two days before Paris,

is not covered in the press.

A world in which a bomb goes off

at a funeral in Baghdad

and not one person's status update says "Baghdad"

because not one white person died in that fire.

Pray for the world

that blames a refugee crisis for a terrorist attack.

That does not pause to differentiate between the attacker

and the person running from the very same thing you are.

Pray for a world

where people walking across countries for months,

their only belongings upon their backs,

are told they have no place to go.

Say a prayer for Paris by all means,

but pray more,

for the world that does not have a prayer

for those who no longer have a home to defend.

For a world that is falling apart in all corners,

and not simply in the towers and cafes we find so familiar.

I live in China. If it had happened in China, in some city with 5 times the population of Paris, but which most Americans have never heard of, would it be all over my American friends' twitter and facebook pages?

(On the other hand though, I'm not comfortable with the idea of policing the way people grieve or saying "how dare you care about this issue so much when there are other issues going on elsewhere in the world?!" So... not exactly sure what to do with that.)

8. One Million Moms Declares War on Children of Gay Parents (posted November 10) "One Million Moms’ claim that American Girl should have chosen another family and thus “remained neutral in the culture war” reminds me of those people who tell progressive parents that they need to force their sons to wear pants, because letting them wear dresses is “pushing an agenda.” Do you know what neutral looks like? It sure as heck doesn’t look like going out of the way to avoid stories about kids with gay parents."

9. I believe in conversion, but not in ‘conversionism’ (posted November 9) "Tell us about the moment when you got saved, the moment when you were born again, when you repented of your former life and everything changed. The problem, though, is that for most of us, everything didn’t change."

Church is Supposed to Hurt

Bad Luck Brian: Tries to have quiet time. Falls asleep. Image source.

Last week I wrote a post called So I've Discovered That (For Me) Church Culture Causes Depression, about how I've been going to this church small group for a while and it's causing me to sort-of sometimes have depression.

While writing that, I realized, why on earth am I even going to this group?

Like, I read what I wrote, and it sounds like the effect that this group has on me is all bad. I seem to be getting no benefits from it at all. And yeah, that's true. No benefits, just a small sliver of hope that maybe by meeting a ton of Christians, I can eventually find one or two who accept and understand me.

(And for this group in particular, because it's young people who come from many countries all over the world, they act very open and welcoming. But I'm starting to suspect on a deeper level, they believe that same unloving theology that I'm escaping. The theology that says non-Christians go to hell and LGBT people don't know what's good for themselves. I can't believe I fell for this. I can't believe I actually believed them when they said "we're different." And on that note, go read this post by Samantha Field: On "Different" Churches: You're Actually Not.)

So my goal is to find Christians who accept me, but I guess I'd lost sight of that goal. I guess I'd gotten into the habit of going because that's what I do on Wednesday nights. (And I'd gotten into the habit of feeling nervous all day on Wednesdays.) Well... actually this is not entirely true- I never forgot that I don't have to go if I don't want to, that this is my choice.

But the point is, I wasn't paying attention to my body. I wasn't paying attention to how I felt. My body and mind were telling me about my own needs (specifically, that it's not healthy for me to put myself in that kind of Christian environment) and I didn't realize it. (Until I actually wrote it all down.)

Because the church trains us to ignore our own needs. The church teaches that following God is supposed to be hard, and that we need to obey even though it will hurt.

For example, I was taught Christians are supposed to "spend time with God" every day. Bafflingly, "spending time with God"- you know, the God who created everything, the God who is the source of every good and perfect gift, the God in whom we live and move and have our being, the God whose presence we can never escape, yes, that God- "spending time with God" refers ONLY to reading the bible alone and/or praying alone.

Yes, we have to "spend time with God" every day. But, I was also taught, you're not going to like it at first. It's a discipline- it'll be tough, it'll sometimes be painful, but if you keep at for long enough, you'll reap the rewards. You'll be closer to God. You'll be more like Jesus.

All this talk of discipline and sacrifice would be fine if it was something we actually had a choice about. It would be great if the church presented the costs and benefits of having a "daily quiet time" and then each person could decide for themselves if it was something that would be worth doing.

But nope, that's never what happens. Sure, they talk about the benefits. You'll get closer to God. You'll develop love, joy, peace, patience, etc. You'll become like those people the church holds up as super-godly role models. You'll learn the bible really well. But really, these benefits aren't the point. Christians don't have "quiet time" because they weigh the costs and benefits and decide it seems like it's worth doing. No, Christians have quiet time because Christians are supposed to have quiet time.

(I submit that this is what legalism is.)

You want proof that it's not about the supposed benefits, it's about "you're a Christian so you HAVE TO do this"? Try going to church and telling someone "I've been reading the bible every day but it's not really helping me become closer to God or become a better person, so I'm going to stop." What do you think they're going to say? If it was about "this is something that's worth doing because of these benefits", then they would say "oh, okay, I guess in your case, you're not experiencing those benefits, so it wouldn't make sense to keep doing it." Ha. Haha. Do you think, ever in a million years, somebody in church would tell you that?

No. Haha, no. They'll say you must be doing it wrong and you need to try harder. They'll say that satan is trying to discourage you, so you need to be strong and not give in to temptation- you need to keep reading the bible every day. They'll say yes of course sometimes it feels pointless to read the bible, we feel like we're not getting anything out of it, but we still need to do it.

In other words, you should ignore what your mind and emotions are telling you. (In fact, your thoughts and emotions may even be considered "temptation.") You don't know what's best for you. The church has a one-size-fits-all teaching which is definitely way better.

So Christians go to their weekly small group and "confess" to each other "I haven't been reading my bible." But maybe they haven't been reading the bible because they've never actually thought about if they wanted to read the bible. They've heard so many times that this is a thing that Christians need to do in order to become closer to God, but have they ever been free to make a personal decision about whether it would be useful for them?

I'm saying that on some level, they don't actually want to do it, they don't actually see it as something worth doing. And I'm aware that this kind of language is commonly used by the church to make us feel guilty- we skipped our quiet time because our rebellious sinful nature doesn't actually WANT to do it, and this is a terrible thing that must be conquered. No, I don't mean it that way. Your mind and body are trying to tell you that it's not a healthy or worthwhile thing for you, but you've bought this line that a "daily quiet time" is ALWAYS a good thing, a necessary thing in the life of every Christian, and any evidence to the contrary is chalked up to your "sinful nature."

People come to small group and say "I haven't been reading my bible because I wanted to sleep instead" or "because I wanted to watch TV in the evenings" and they feel as if those things are shameful and selfish. NO! Listen to your body. You need sleep. You need to do relaxing things like watch TV. We've created this culture where people claim to believe "spending time with God" is the most important thing, but then they don't do it because their mind/body/emotions tell them it's not actually worth it, and they can't be honest about it. They feel bad and come to small group and talk about how weak and selfish they are, how they have to work harder in the future to ignore their own needs and do what the church taught them is the right thing for all Christians to do.

The same thing is true about going to church. Samantha Field's post, the not-so-ridiculous reasons people leave church, does a great job with this topic. She writes about the memes and blog posts that get shared by Christians, mocking the reasons that people quit going to church. Those awful posts are all about how pathetic and selfish you are if you stop going to church because you don't like it, or because it wasn't actually a good thing for you, or because people judged you, etc.

Reality check: If you don't like something, why on earth would you do it? But the church teaches it doesn't matter how you feel- if you're a Christian, you HAVE TO go to church. And if you don't, you'd better have a damn good excuse, or rather, haha no excuse is good enough, you're just being selfish.

Because we're taught that our own feelings and our own needs don't matter. If the church is hurting us, or if every week we think "this is pointless, why do I keep coming here?" it doesn't matter. You have to just keep doing it, and eventually God will help you learn to like it.

Which is why it's taken me so long to realize that, hey, since this church group is pushing me toward depression, I should stop going. I have an exit plan now. I've gotten familiar enough with a lot of the group members, so it's time to track people down individually and ask very pointed questions about what they believe. If I'm not satisfied with any of their answers, I'm quitting the group. (Does this sound mean? If I treated them badly because they believe differently than I do, that would be wrong. But nobody is entitled to be part of my life- I absolutely have the right to quit interacting with people whose beliefs hurt me.)

I'm done ignoring my own needs. I'm done believing that it's somehow virtuous to dedicate myself to something that hurts me.

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Related:
Christians Are Supposed To Feel Bad Over Not Reading the Bible Enough (and Here Are the Receipts)