I Figured Out What The 1-10 Pain Scale Is Actually About

Pain scale chart, with facial expressions. Image source.

[content note: mentions of physically painful situations and speculation about how bad they are compared to each other. No graphic details though.]

Okay, you guys, big revelation here. You know how when you go to a doctor for some pain problem, and they always ask you "how would you rate your pain on a scale of 1 to 10"? And this is always super confusing to me, because how am I even supposed to know how this scale is calibrated? 

Like, the obvious questions that I want to ask are, what are the endpoints of this scale? What do 1 and 10 mean? Also, is this a linear scale, or...? (And, can you believe, many doctors have thought it was kind of funny that I asked these questions? What??? Funny? Why would this be funny- these are the key pieces of information that are needed in order to answer this question correctly. Like, "don't overthink it, just answer the question"- like how am I supposed to answer it if you haven't even told me the parameters of this scale???)

And if I ask for clarification on it, the doctor always says, "1 is only a little pain, 10 is the worst pain you can imagine." Oh gosh, the worst pain I can imagine? Uhhh, okay... well let's see, giving birth without anesthesia is apparently painful. Breaking a femur. Root canal. Let's see, what else? Stab wound? Water boarding? Foot binding? Crucifixion? Getting eaten by piranhas? Getting lost in the wilderness and you need to amputate your own hand without anesthesia? Giving yourself a C-section?

Like, geez, I just want to see the doctor to get some help with whatever little problem I have, and when I walk in the door I'm immediately expected to have a good understanding of how painful crucifixion is compared to a root canal. As if there is one standard scale for these things, and everyone knows what it is so it can be easily used as a reference when you want to describe your problem to your doctor.

This is why it wouldn't make sense for this pain scale to be a linear scale, actually. Suppose that crucifixion is 5 times more painful than giving birth without anesthesia. Okay, so, we have to put crucifixion at 10, and giving birth without anesthesia at 2. Yes, I know people who have given birth with no anesthesia/ no epidural/ nothing- this is a thing that some women do. So, the 2 on the scale will be experienced by some women/ people who give birth, but the majority of people will never experience anything at all in the 2 to 10 range of the scale. Most of the scale is unusable, if it's calibrated like this. Most people's entire life experience would have to be squeezed into the 0-2 range (yeah I put 0 on it because if we're talking about something being 5 times worse than something else, it makes sense to start at 0 rather than 1). 

Basically the issue with the linear scale is, there are a lot of painful experiences that some humans throughout history have had- painful experiences which the overwhelming majority of people will never ever experience, thank goodness, but which are very different from each other, and some are very much worse than others. So if the scale is really linear, then most of the scale ends up being used to differentiate between these extreme rare excruciatingly painful experiences that the overwhelming majority of people will never ever have to go through, thank goodness. So the scale's not very usable then.

What would make more sense, is to calibrate the 1-10 (or 0-10?) pain scale so that 9 is the worst pain that most people in our current society will experience in their lifetime. From 1-9 (0-9?) the scale can be linear, and then 10 can be used for anything beyond that. If something is greater than 9, it's not really important to know exactly how bad it is compared to a 9. It's already really really bad and should be taken as seriously as you possibly can take it- it doesn't matter whether it's as bad as crucifixion or whatever.

ANYWAY, years ago I was having some health problems, and every time I went to the doctor they asked me about my pain on a scale of 1 to 10, and usually I said something around 3. You know, out of respect for my ancestors who were mauled by saber-toothed tigers or whatever- I wouldn't want to act like my pain is anywhere close to that.

It just always felt very weird to me, that in order to get the doctor to help me, I needed to have an understanding of how much pain a human being has ever experienced. And an understanding of what 50% of that amount of pain would feel like. And 10%, and 20%, and so on.

Like, what does that have to do with anything???

This is already such a difficult question, but doctors treat it like it's very simple, like everyone understands where their pain fits on the scale of all pain ever felt throughout human history- so simple and easy to understand, in fact, that this is the primary way that we can communicate to each other about how bad our own personal pain is, and everyone will clearly understand it.

Like, what? This makes no sense.

Well, guess what. I finally figured out what this 1-10 pain scale is actually about. It is NOT about "the worst pain you can imagine." It is NOT about objectively comparing your pain to some standard. It is actually not about measuring your pain at all.

Here's what the "scale of 1 to 10" question is actually asking: What is your opinion of how bad your pain is? In the context of your own life, how much of a big deal is it? What do you want to communicate to the doctor about how seriously they should take it?

WOW.

I KNOW! This makes so much more sense as a question that a doctor should ask, right? Because really, does it matter that my health problem is, for example, 25% as painful as foot-binding? I mean, that doesn't seem like useful information at all! What would you even do with that? But if what they're actually asking is, how much of a problem is it for me, well that actually makes sense!

So really it has nothing to do with measuring pain at all. It's more about, what are my feelings about how much of a problem the pain is. So 1 doesn't mean "10% as bad as getting crucified" (??? why would you even have a scale for that, how would this ever be useful information???); instead, 1 means something like "it kind of bothers me but not really a big deal."

And 5 means something like "yeah it's pretty bad" and 10 is like "OH HOLY CRAP THIS IS SO BAD I CANNOT EVEN THINK ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE RIGHT NOW, HELP." You can be at that point even if it's not "the worst pain you can imagine." Even if your own situation is very obviously not as bad as some torture victim from medieval history, or whatever.

(And back then, when I said my pain was a 3, now I'm realizing I should have said 8. Now that I have figured out what this scale was actually supposed to be measuring. And, I should note, I actually have seen some versions of the 1-10 pain scale which defined each number in terms of how much the pain interferes with your life- which makes sense and is a lot more useful than measuring your pain as a proportion of "the worst pain you can imagine.")

So, I mean, wow. This isn't about measuring your pain against some objective standard, or anything like that. It's asking what your opinion is about how much of a problem your pain is. It's a way to communicate to the doctor how seriously they should take it. That makes so much more sense, because that's something that you can actually easily know about yourself, and is useful information for your medical treatment.

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Related:

2 Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me About Job Interviews 

Doctors (part 3 of Autism & Teaching Kids to Protect Themselves)

Blogaround

AI-generated image of white Jesus and the disciples taking a selfie at the Last Supper. Image source.

1. Christ is Risen - Matt Maher - Lyrics. One of my favorite Easter songs.

Readers, do you have any favorite Easter songs?

2. How Much Does Superhero Destruction Actually Cost? An Insurance Lawyer Reviews | Vanity Fair (January 20) I CANNOT EVEN TELL YOU how much I love this video. This is the EXACT CONTENT I want to see. This is what's missing from all the superhero movies- what happens to all the buildings/cars/etc that get destroyed? What happens in the aftermath of these big "exciting" superhero battles? Who pays for the damage? Do the Avengers have insurance? 

3. How Can This Puzzle Possibly Exist?? (March 19) 52-minute sudoku solve video.

4. Holy Saturday (April 7) "But that’s Sunday language and Sunday certainty and it doesn’t make much sense here on Saturday. Here on Saturday, we can hope it’s true and we may even try to believe it’s true, but we can’t know 'in fact' one way or another. Not now. Not on Saturday."

5. Chris Hedges: The Hypocrisy of the Christian Church (April 8) "Is Black Lives Matter a commodity, a piece of branding, or does it mean we will stand with those Black and Brown and Asian and white bodies in our prison gulags and internal colonies? This seminary may have removed the name of Samuel Miller, a slaveholder who used the gospel to perpetrate and defend a crime of Nazi-like proportions, from the seminary chapel, albeit only when students protested, but it embraces a billionaire who makes his fortune fleecing incarcerated men and women who work 40 hour weeks in prison and are paid, when they are paid, little more than a dollar a day."

6. Why AI isn’t an oracle of truth (April 10) "They’re the Platonic example of what philosopher Harry Frankfurt calls a bullshitter: a person who says whatever suits them in the moment, without regard to whether it’s true or even consistent with their past statements."

Blogaround

1. ASCII art by chatbot (March 31) "The use of slashes and backslashes to represent the shape of the shark is effective, and the bold letter 'O' for the eye is a nice touch. The overall composition feels well-balanced and the shark's menacing presence is conveyed effectively." I laughed SO HARD.

2. Sharing Space - Episode 1: Daniel Radcliffe (April 1) "The first episode of 'Sharing Space' features six trans and nonbinary young people who sit down with Radcliffe to have a candid, vulnerable, and illuminating conversation about their unique lived experiences."

3. The swagged-out pope is an AI fake — and an early glimpse of a new reality (March 27) I saw that image shared on Twitter- the pope in a giant puffy white coat- and I thought it was real. A few days later, I saw a comment online that said it was AI-generated. Yeah, it's not real.

4. Solitary Confinement: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (April 3) "Solitary isn't something we do to people behind bars. It's something we do to them forever." Having flashbacks to the Shanghai lockdown now- and wow, obviously solitary confinement is even worse than that.

5. Heaven’s ATM: How Chinese People Have Been Sending Money to the Afterlife For Centuries (April 4) "In rural China, these forms of ghost money are still in use today as people continue to wish their deceased loved ones a good life that is free from hunger and cold in an underworld with sky-high inflation."

"Winners Take All": Businesspeople Only Want To "Change The World" If It Makes Money

Book cover for "Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World" by Anand Giridharadas.

Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World is a book about how rich and powerful people want to make the world better, but only in ways that don't threaten the systems that made them rich/powerful in the first place.

This is a good book, though it kind of made me feel overwhelmed and pessimistic about the state of the world. But it's important to be aware that this is how the world works.

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Overall message

You always hear ambitious and successful people talking about how they want to make the world a better place. And in particular, nowadays people talk about using tools from the business world for this (whereas in the past, people were more likely to view political activism as the way to do it). The book refers to this culture of people who want to use business strategies to solve the world's problems as "MarketWorld."

Basically, there are people who really genuinely do want to make the world better, but they find that in reality, they need to limit their efforts to only things that rich people will accept. Things that make rich business types feel like they're doing something good, without changing the overall systems that gave those people their success in the first place.

Before I read this book, I was looking at the summary and I thought, "oh... well I've never thought about it that way before, but yes, that must be true. That's... disappointing..." Powerful people want to help others, but only in ways that allow themselves to continue being the powerful people in the world. Not in ways that actually make society truly fair for everyone. When you think about it, you realize it must be true. There's something kind of survival-of-the-fittest about it. Whatever works to give people more money and power, they will continue to do, not because it's "right" or "fair" or "good", but because it gets them more money and power. And even in the realm of charity and changing the world, that still applies.

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Win-win vs win-lose

The book talks about how entrepreneurs trying to solve society's problems have a "win-win" mindset, but what is really needed is "win-lose."

"Win-win", in this case, means you see a problem in the world, and you find an aspect of it that can be a business opportunity for you. (The book talks about finding the part of the "venn diagram" where there's money to be made from helping people.) You start a startup that will address the problem. You make money from your startup, and other people benefit from the work that your startup is doing.

The example from the book that really stuck out to me was the "Even" app. The book describes it as an app created to address the difficulties that workers have if they are paid on irregular schedules. Sometimes they get a large paycheck, but in a different season of the year they might get a much smaller paycheck, and this makes it difficult to manage their money. So, the Even app puts their paychecks into a virtual account, and then transfers a fixed amount of money from that account to their actual bank account at regular intervals. So they get paid the same amount every time.

When I read this, I was like, "WTF, can't you like, just set up 2 bank accounts that literally do that exact thing for you? Instead of paying money for this Even app. This is a scam."

I've googled it and found the website for the Even app, and it turns out it also has some features about keeping track of what bills need to be paid and when, how to take those things into account when figuring out how much extra money you have, etc. It seems like it could be a useful budgeting tool. (I personally wouldn't pay money for it though.)

So I think if you view it as "this app going to solve the world's problems" then it's awful. Clearly, the actual problem here is that people's wages are too low, so they aren't able to save up extra money to deal with the irregularities of their payment schedule, and/or the problem is that companies should be paying people more stable wages instead of having weird payment schedules in the first place- the employees shouldn't have to be the ones directly affected by the fluctuations in seasonal demand for things. The app doesn't have any effect on the companies that are not paying their workers well. It lets them continue to do that, while trying to make things at least a little better for the workers.

But if you view it like "for people who are in that situation, this is a useful tool to have" then it seems good in my opinion.

But anyway, yeah, it seems obvious to me that looking for "win-win" opportunities and thinking that's going to be an effective way of bringing real change is just ridiculous. No, that will never work.

The book says that instead, we need "win-lose." This means, for example, that companies who have gotten rich off of exploiting workers need to STOP EXPLOITING WORKERS. This is a "lose" for the company, so obviously a company will never agree to it. So you can't get there through business practices; the only way to get there is if the government makes laws forcing companies to change.

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Trump supporters, and the idea that companies should be invested in the local town

There's also a section in the book about businesses that have a "globalist" mindset, and therefore believe they have no responsibility toward the people who live near them. In the past, businesses didn't have access to international markets or the ability to outsource labor to other countries, and so they really had to focus on their own local area. If they didn't help make people's lives better in their own local area, it would affect their potential customers and employees, which would end up being bad for the business itself. But nowadays, companies can calculate the costs of producing part of their product in one country and part of it in some other country, and expanding to markets in even more countries, and it's all about what makes more money for the company, rather than having a responsibility toward the people near you/ people affected by you.

When Trump supporters complain about "globalism" and "taking away American jobs", well my first instinct is to roll my eyes at it (please note that I'm an immigrant in China)- but actually, there's something to this. If "globalism" means changing from "you have a responsibility to care about and benefit the city that your business is located in" to "you have a responsibility to no one, just do whatever makes the most money for you" then yeah that is NOT COOL. (Or, perhaps in reality, it would be "do whatever makes the most money, and then sponsor some charity project that makes you look good." Also NOT COOL.)

And the existence of very powerful businesses can undermine local government. It can undermine democracy. This is a problem.

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Hooters and the excuses that we make

The book talks about a woman named Kat Cole, who worked at Hooters. She started out as a waitress when she was in high school, and says she found it "empowering" to be making money. Eventually she moved up to a management role. She believes Hooters supports and benefits its female employees, and she rejects the idea that they "exploit" women. She knows many women who have successful careers in management for Hooters. (Important background info: Hooters is a restaurant that is known for having waitresses with big breasts. Like that's their whole company image. Like men should come and enjoy staring at the waitresses.)

So, the book says this is an example of the "rationalizations" that people make for participating in harmful systems. And... yeah... I don't know what to think about this, because I have also thought along similar lines. Like you recognize that the larger system that you're in is doing harm in the world, so why are you letting yourself be part of it? Because you need a job? Because there's no alternative- all companies have their flaws? Because if it wasn't you doing it, it would be someone else who is less moral than you? Because you are donating some of your income to charity?

How much of that is valid, and how much is not?

The writer, Anand Giridharadas, seems to have a very negative view of these "rationalizations." He seems to be saying that the only moral thing to do is just completely refuse to participate in these systems at all. However, in the "Acknowledgements" section at the end, he talks about his own experiences in this "MarketWorld" culture, and how he also thought along the same lines as many of the ambitious would-be world-changers he mentions in the book. Many of them are his friends or people he knows personally.

So I feel like, I don't necessarily think we can dismiss Cole's views (for example) as just "rationalizations" that are automatically wrong. I think it's a hard question. And I think the author, Giridharadas, has also struggled with this.

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"Power pose" / changing your message so people can accept it

The book talks about Amy Cuddy, a "social psychologist at Harvard Business School who had spent more than a decade publishing papers on the workings of prejudice, discrimination, and systems of power." She was invited to give a talk, and chose to pick 1 small thing related to her research, which she could easily convey to an audience. She talked about the "power pose"- women can stand like Wonder Woman for a few seconds in order to give themselves more confidence before going into a big meeting or something like that.

Well, people loved this "power pose" thing, and she was later invited to give a TED talk about it. Powerful businesspeople loved the idea that individual women could just do 1 little thing differently, rather than challenging the big overall systems of sexism and the real reasons why men don't listen to women in business meetings. I think eventually Cuddy was unhappy with this, because she is a feminist and a researcher and she knows the problems go much deeper than that- but this 1 simple "power pose" trick was what everyone wanted to talk about.

And there were a few other examples in the book of people who knew they had to say things in a certain way to get powerful businesspeople to accept them. Don't talk about how your audience played a role in creating the problems. Don't blame them. There's a certain kind of story they want to hear, and if you tell a different story, and they don't like it, they won't fund your charity project.

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So what's the answer?

The book doesn't really give a solution for this problem. There are a few times that it hints that big government is the solution- it mentions that in the past, people would have viewed political activism as the way to solve problems, it says that the problem with democrats is they view big government as a bad thing, etc. Probably this is right- businesses aren't going to choose to do things that benefit society and make themselves less money- it will only happen if the government forces them to.

At the same time, though, government also has problems. I don't think it's the magic solution. I'm sure government also has a lot of the same survival-of-the-fittest dynamics which incentivize people to do things which give themselves the most power, rather than things that benefit society (though it would play out in different ways than the business world).

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Summary

The book Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World is about how people try to make the world better using the tools of the business world, but this can never really work. I think it's important that we are aware of this dynamic. Even though it's really discouraging. I felt like a lot of it was very relateable- about people who are trying to make a difference, but keep running into the reality of how things really work in the world. How some solutions aren't even going to be tried because rich people don't want to try them.

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Related:

Animals Screw Over Other Animals and Get Away With It

Blogaround

1. TANF: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (March 13) "The wild thing here is, our current system was created under the assumption that poor families simply couldn't be trusted to collect welfare honestly. But the past couple of decades have proven that it's actually politicians and government officials who've been relentlessly abusing this system."

2. Asexual Advocacy in India: An Interview with Dr. Pragati Singh (March 27) [content note: mention of rape] "And there were so many such things being shared by people that I realized in my country, for my people, asexuality is not just about a flag, right? Or microidentities, or a label, it's not about that. It's about people literally making life and death decisions. People going through severe depression because they're being raped, or because they're being forced into a marriage. And you know in my country, unfortunately, marital rape is not even recognized as rape. It's legally not recognized as rape."

3. What If All the Men Around You Have Lust Problems? (March 24) "I have never, ever heard any of these pastors or authors talk about how women are whole people and we shouldn't objectify them." Wow, very good post. Sheila Gregoire says that it's NOT true that all men "struggle" with "lust", and if a man has lust problems, that man should not be allowed near young girls, until he gets himself under control. This is completely different than what I've always heard in Christian culture, which is that it's normal for men to "struggle with lust" and so women have to dress modestly to help them out.

She says if you're in a church like that, LEAVE THAT CHURCH. Wow. I'm really surprised to see her saying that, since as far as I know, she is evangelical.

Also this was a good line from her post: "It’s terrible to say, but non-Christian families have far less problems with lust than Christian ones. Even if porn use is just as high, objectification of women is more often seen as anathema, rather than as normal."

But, also, I think we need a better definition of lust, otherwise people will think that simply being attracted to people is a serious issue that means that church should bar you from interacting with people, etc... Gregoire is aware of this problem, and does provide a better definition- she says noticing is not lust; it's when someone dwells on those thoughts, that's lust. Or when you see someone as a sex object rather than as a person. I personally don't want to define it in terms of policing thoughts, because I'm ex-evangelical (lol there is a lot more that could be said about that). How about this: What if we say "lust" means you're being a creep/ aren't treating someone with respect/ aren't viewing them as a whole person. And so, to not lust, it's not about "don't think about sex, don't think about sex!" because we all know that if you say "don't think about [something]" then everyone will naturally think about it- what if we define "not lusting" in a more positive way, where you make sure to respect them and treat them as a whole human being, not a sex object, regardless of what sexy thoughts you may or may not have about them.

But what do I know, I'm asexual.

4. Cops Sue Afroman For Sharing Video Of Their Unfounded Raid Of His House (March 24) "Above and beyond that, alleging a privacy right over the conduct of a raid ostensibly on behalf of the public amounts to a face-melting level of stupidity. This is basic constitutional law. There’s no undercover work here, these are cops taking actions that they would have gladly blasted to the whole world if they had found any evidence."

5. Kansas City Cop Blows Whistle On Department's Jim Crow Policing (March 28) "Williams's suit further claims that officers were told to meet their ticket quotas in minority neighborhoods because it would be 'easier to write multiple citations on every stop.' Noting that minority residents might feel cranky about all the over-policing, the command staff allegedly advised to 'approach every car with the mindset to be ready to kill everybody in the car.'"

And another one from Wonkette: Sixty-Three Years Later, White Mom Finally Gets 'Ruby Bridges' Banned From Elementary School (March 27) "Every teacher but Barbara Henry, who had been hired specifically for her previous experience teaching in integrated schools, refused to teach her. But she went back and sat alone in that classroom as Henry's only student. Every day. For a year. At the age of six."

6. Tamping alone (March 29) "I try not to use phrases like 'America’s declining social capital' when talking to customers who are buying things like tampers, but I do ask whether they might just want to  borrow one from a neighbor or from their brother-in-law or somebody. That’s usually a better solution for them, for their budget, for neighborliness and social capital, for America, and for democracy in general."

7. It’s Time to Change My Pseudonym (March 15) This is a post from "Jackson Wu", a blogger at the Patheos Evangelical channel, about why he's not going to use the pseudonym "Jackson Wu" any more. Long story short, he's a white guy (but he worked as a missionary in China for 15 years, and he speaks Mandarin Chinese), and he's gotten a lot of backlash recently for using a Chinese-sounding name on his blog. (Especially after he published a post that strongly criticized a book by an African writer about the problems in Western missions.) And then, someone posted his real name on Twitter, so he has decided to use his real name (Brad Vaughn) on his blog now.

I live in China, so I have some thoughts on this.

First of all, I've followed his blog for a while. I like it. (If I had to guess, I would have guessed that he's a Chinese American who moved to China and lived there over 10 years.) He's evangelical, so I don't agree with a lot of his beliefs, but I appreciate him discussing Christian concepts from a more Chinese perspective. And, giving up your own culture to go live as an immigrant on the other side of the world, well, I admire that. To have that lived experience is a very significant thing. 

About having a Chinese name: Well, yes, I think if you come live in China, you should choose a Chinese name. I have a Chinese name. Mostly I use it for things like signing up for food delivery apps. It's not "cultural appropriation," it's "making life easier for the delivery drivers who don't know how to read English." And Vaughn says that Chinese people in China think it's great that he uses a Chinese name- and yes, I can confirm that. It communicates that he really wants to learn their culture and be like them.

It's, uh, a bit weird that he's responding to his critics by talking about how useful/good/etc it is to have a Chinese name in China. I don't think anyone was criticizing him for using a Chinese name in China. The issue was that he writes a blog, in English, so that means it's for a mostly-western audience, where he uses a Chinese-sounding pseudonym, and one of the main topics he blogs about is discussing evangelical Christian beliefs from a Chinese perspective. (And then he criticized a book by an African writer talking about her experiences as an immigrant in the US- to make that criticism as a white person is a different thing than making that criticism as an Asian person.) I mean, it's fine that he wants to discuss Christianity from a Chinese perspective- but to do so as an ethnically Chinese person is a different thing than to do it as a white person who has a lot of experience in China. So yes, I do think it was a problem that he was misrepresenting himself.

As for the part about the Chinese government persecuting Christians- yes, I believe him there, but I think American readers will get a skewed picture of the actual situation. Vaughn is specifically talking about house churches in China. There are also churches in church buildings in China. You can search on any map app and find a church near you. You can walk up to the building and there will be a sign posted that says what time the service is on Sunday. I've done that. American Christians have this impression that Christianity isn't allowed at all in China, but that's just not true. The thing is, these churches in church buildings are monitored by the government, and there are restrictions on what they can say. (Though I've been to services at Chinese government-approved churches and they seemed like pretty normal Christian churches to me- whatever restrictions there are, they are not obvious to the average churchgoer.) The house churches are a totally different story. House churches do what they want, but then they have to worry about persecution.

8. Getting to ‘No’: How I Negotiated My Bride Price Away (March 24) "But she remained unconvinced. 'If a man doesn’t pay a financial price to marry you, he won’t value you as much in the marriage,' she replied."

Like I said before, I married a Chinese man and nobody gave me any money. (We got some cash as a wedding gift, but nothing like this asymmetrical "bride price" thing.) This is more of a tradition in the countryside rather than in big cities.

9. Donald Trump indicted by Manhattan grand jury on more than 30 counts related to business fraud (March 31) "Donald Trump faces more than 30 counts related to business fraud in an indictment from a Manhattan grand jury, according to two sources familiar with the case – the first time in American history that a current or former president has faced criminal charges."

"To Glorify God"

Fire. Image source.

I wanna tell a little story about when I started this blog, back in 2012. Specifically, I made a deliberate decision that I was *not* blogging "to glorify God."

Yeah... so... back then, I was very evangelical, and so of course everything I did was supposed to be "to glorify God." What does that mean, exactly? The best I could tell was, it means people see something that I do, and they think, "Wow, God is even more awesome than I thought!" Whatever I do should serve the purpose of showing how amazing God is. Or, to interpret it a bit more loosely, I have to do my best to make sure that everything I do is what God would want me to do.

I used to post a lot of Christian things on Facebook, back then. Writing long Facebook posts where I shared my testimony, having arguments about why I believed it's a sin to "act on" one's feelings of same-sex attraction, whatever random thoughts I had about my obedience to God, etc etc etc. And whenever I wrote some big long thing on Facebook, I very carefully prayed over it. I checked over every single part of my writing, because I really really wanted to make sure that every single sentence was what God wanted me to say. 

If I wasn't sure if some little phrase "glorified God", I deleted it. I remember one Facebook post I wrote, which in an early draft included the phrase "if we can't figure this out, we're screwed" or something like that. During the editing process I stopped there and wondered if it was really okay to use "screwed" like that. Isn't that kind of a bad word? I felt that emotionally, "screwed" conveyed what I was trying to say, and no other word could quite capture the same feeling, but still I wasn't sure if God was really okay with me saying that. And since I wasn't sure, I eventually decided I couldn't in good conscience publish the Facebook post with that phrase in it. Everything I wrote needed to glorify God. Everything needed to be what God would want me to write. I finally changed the word "screwed" to something else, and published that post.

That's what I mean. Whenever I wrote some long post about God, I made sure to think through everything very carefully, to pray about it, until I was sure that it was really what God wanted me to write.

When I started this blog, I asked myself, "Am I blogging to glorify God?" And I decided, no. I remember that it was an actual question I had to think about, and an actual decision I made. This blog would be different from all my previous writing on Christianity. This blog would be about saying what I needed to say. Asking the questions I needed to ask. Even if I wasn't sure if God was okay with me asking.

I decided I wasn't going to get stuck, asking myself "does God really want me to say this?" before I hit "publish" every time. You can't get anywhere, if you do that. The conversation can never even start, if I have to make sure I'm really really confident that it's a conversation that's going to make God look good, before I even say anything.

I decided the purpose of my blog was not "to glorify God."

The 5th post I published was God kills Uzzah (2 Samuel 6). (If you don't know this story from the bible- it's about when God killed Uzzah for touching the ark of the covenant, because it was falling off a cart and Uzzah tried to catch it.) And yes, there are things in that post that I would not have said, if I had wanted to make sure that every single thing I said "glorified God."

I love God and I trust God and I'm gonna call it like I see it: God is being really unreasonable here.
...
People always say "God loves everybody" but I don't know if it's true.  Did God love Uzzah?
...
In conclusion, I don't like it and it's not fair.  But God can do whatever he wants so... whatever.  I guess.  I'm still not okay with this.  Anyone have any insights to add?

I read that and I'm like, damn, shots fired. Look at what little Perfect Number comes up with when she says what she really thinks, rather than limiting herself to what "glorifies God." This is a great start. (Also, it's normal to cringe when you come across something you wrote 10 years ago, right? That happens to everyone, right?)

I believed that there was a way to ask questions and express doubts and still "glorify God." But, it was tricky. I would have to come to a conclusion first, and then based on that, I would decide how to frame the story. For example, one acceptable "doubt" narrative in evangelicalism might be "I had doubts about [whatever] and I thought God was not being fair. But then I realized the bible says this because [some reason] and I was not able to see it because [some sin or weakness that I have]. So now I see that yes, this belief about God is right."

At our bible study groups in college, I felt like I could ask any question at all about the bible and how certain parts of it seemed wrong. But, we couldn't just leave it there- we couldn't conclude the bible study still believing "this seems wrong." We had to come up with some explanation to convince ourselves that it made sense- or at least to convince ourselves that even if we don't understand the reason, obviously God is always right, so we can trust that it does, somehow, make sense.

When I stated this blog, I didn't have a "conclusion." I just had my questions. And without the conclusion, how do I know if me posting these questions is going to make God look bad? 

So I deliberately made that decision, and this blog has never been about glorifying God.

Instead, I blog because I have a "fire in my bones" like the prophet Jeremiah:

But if I say, “I will not mention his word
    or speak anymore in his name,”
his word is in my heart like a fire,
    a fire shut up in my bones.
I am weary of holding it in;
    indeed, I cannot.

I have things to say, and I just need to say them, so here we are. That's what this has always been about, for the past 10 years.

At the beginning I wondered if, in a roundabout way, I would end up "glorifying God." I don't really care about that anymore, though. God doesn't need me to do PR for Them. If They didn't want people to talk about, say, the problem of evil, maybe They shouldn't have made a world that has evil. I just call it like I see it.

So... I used to be very very careful about making sure everything related to Christianity that I posted publicly was approved by God. Spent a lot of time praying, so I would be confident that it was really what God wanted me to say. When I started this blog in 2012, I decided it would NOT be like that. I wouldn't blog "to glorify God"- I would blog because I had things I needed to say, and some of those things didn't have a neat, tidy conclusion about why God/the bible is always right. I blog because I have a "fire in my bones." I still do.

---

Related:

They Prayed About It (a post about the #NashvilleStatement) 

Accepting Myself (or, I'm Great, and It Doesn't Matter What God Thinks) 

Katy Perry's God-Given Freedom

Blogaround

1. Journal Club: LDS Aces (March 22) "For example, churches generally don’t have any official policy on asexuality, so it tends to be a mixed bag based on local leaders. There are also a lot of practices surrounding reproduction and marriage that don’t explicitly refer to asexuality but have profound implications."

Another post also from Siggy: Three arguments on AI Art (March 25) "If one person looks at AI art, and thinks about how it’s eliminating artists’ jobs and violating consent, that’s what the art represents to them, and that makes it ugly. Likewise, if someone else looks at AI art and thinks of the new possibilities and increased accessibility, they will have a higher opinion."

2. A Chinese City Offers Free High School Tuition for Third Child (March 23) China's one-child policy ended in 2016, and now the government is panicked about the low birth rate and trying to get people to have more children. (It's not really working.)

And another one from Sixth Tone: How an Army of Elderly Influencers Took Over China’s Instagram (March 21) "During the lockdowns, millions of over-60s downloaded and learned to use food delivery, payment, and health apps for the first time. They often did so out of necessity: It was difficult to buy groceries — or complete mandatory COVID tests — without them."

3. Extremism leads to more extremism (March 22) Oh, yikes. Answers In Genesis has been featuring articles by "Harry F. Sanders" which is a pseudonym. Here's a youtuber who tracks down "Harry F. Sanders's" other online postings and it's all extremist anti-semitic conspiracy theories and the like.

4. The kingdom of heaven is like: Minnesota House passes "trans refuge" legislation after late-night debate (March 24) "Democrats pushing the legislation forward say it will protect trans patients and providers of gender-affirming care from legal action in other states where such care is banned or restricted, creating a safe haven in Minnesota. It's structured similarly to a proposal that passed the House earlier this week that's works as a 'shield law' for people seeking and providing abortions at a time when laws vary after the fall of Roe v. Wade."

5. Distributor, newspapers drop 'Dilbert' comic strip after creator's racist rant (February 27)

6. After Utah lawmakers allowed book banning, one parent went after the Bible (March 24) 

7. Cakes and ale (and drag queens) (March 24) "That all had another layer of complication in Shakespeare’s day, when only male actors were permitted on stage. That meant the part of Olivia was played by a man dressed as a woman who was falling in love with a man dressed as a woman dressed as a man."

8. GOP rep suggests replacing libraries with ‘church-owned’ alternatives (March 24) "As conservative politics has become more extreme, libraries have become more common targets."

I need to talk about this "selfish and small" nonsense

Image text: "Love yourself." Image source.

[content note: this is about patriarchal Christian men talking about sex. first paragraph is sexually explicit.]

So, on March 1, The Gospel Coalition posted some, uh, Christian patriarchal smut, about how a man pouring out his semen during penis-in-vagina sex is the ultimate example of generosity, and a woman allowing it is the ultimate example of hospitality, and this shows us the gospel, and Jesus also penetrates the church. (Yes really, that's what it said.) This was, uh, quite possibly the most WTF thing I had ever heard, and I wrote my response here: This May Be The Most WTF Christian Article On Sex I've Ever Read. My entire Twitter feed was full of people talking about TGC's article. It was such a terrible article.

Anyway, on March 6, Denny Burk (a big-name complementarian Christian) published a post, saying that he didn't agree with the explicit sexual language in TGC's article, but still, a correct Christian approach to sex should place a higher priority on procreation than on pleasure. Here's the excerpt that has people mad, from his post Taking a Dog by the Ears [archive link]:

The egalitarian rejection of asymmetry necessarily backgrounds procreation and foregrounds pleasure and physical climax. Physical climax becomes the necessary focus of egalitarian sex because it’s something that, at least in principle, can be mutual. This is the entire point of books like The Great Sex Rescue. Perhaps there is a place for focusing on such things, but when you do it to the exclusion of procreation, you turn sex into something that’s finally selfish and small, because it’s focused only on the couple, and not the bigger world that together they can create.

UGHHHH.

So, he's saying, sex is supposed to be about procreation, first of all. We shouldn't focus on pleasure, that would be "selfish and small." By some WILD COINCIDENCE, men's orgasms are a key part of this "procreation" aspect, but if we want to say "women's orgasms are just as important as men's", well, that's selfish and small. If procreation is the most important, men get to have orgasms, and women get to throw up a hundred times and get all their internal organs smushed during pregnancy. Just a total coincidence that it worked out that way. Not misogyny at all.

(As an aside: I gotta say, I was very surprised to see Burk saying sex has to be about procreation. I've never heard that idea from anyone in evangelical culture [complementarians like Burk are part of evangelical culture]- isn't that more of a Catholic thing? In my experience, evangelicals are like "there's this stereotype that Christians think sex has to be just for procreation, with the lights off and get it done as fast as possible, but that's not right! Actually sex is a beautiful gift from God and it's supposed to be fun!" Though, to be fair, I don't think Burk is saying that literally every time you have sex, you have to have the possibility of getting pregnant, you can't use birth control- I don't think he's saying that. I think he's saying something more along the lines of, you have to have sex in a way that resembles the way that people get pregnant, though you don't have to literally not use birth control etc. Similar argument to how anti-gay Christians say marriage has to be a man and a woman, because that's where babies come from, and then people respond by asking "so, you wouldn't allow an infertile straight couple to get married? You wouldn't allow a straight couple that's, say, 60 years old get married?" and the anti-gay Christians respond, "well it's not like *every* couple has to literally be able to have babies, but they have to at least be different genders, to point to the idea of having babies." I am very curious about whether he believes, as many complementarian men do, that a wife should do oral sex or a handjob on her husband when her vagina is not available [having her period, just gave birth, etc] because men "need" it. That would not be consistent with the idea he's presenting here, that sex should at least have the appearance of the kind of sex that leads to pregnancy.)

Ugh, okay. Ugh. Usually my approach is to present some logical arguments about why some idea is right or wrong, but I'm not going to do that here. Instead, I just want to talk about why this makes me so mad.

Okay, so, here's why it makes me so mad: There's no way to argue against this "selfish and small" idea, from within the evangelical ideology that I used to believe. It's a whole logically-consistent system, where one of the foundational axioms that it's built on is that we can't just enjoy things because we want to. That would be "selfish." If you're doing something that makes you happy, you have to have a more holy-sounding reason than just "it makes me happy, and that is a good thing in and of itself." No. That's "selfish." Maybe even sinful. 

Your happiness can only be a byproduct of obedience to God. You seek God first, you obey God, and as a result, you have a happy life- but of course that's not the motivation, that would be selfish, of course the motivation is that we obey God's rules simply because it's the right thing to do and we love God so much, and then as a cool side-effect, it makes us happy.

It really is an entire system where people are not allowed to listen to their own feelings and their own desires about what they want. You're not allowed to pursue what you want unless you have a sufficiently religious-sounding reason why it's what God wants you to do.

So... why would female orgasms matter, in that system? Simply because a woman wants to have an orgasm... no, that's not a good enough reason. That's "selfish and small." And for cis men... I mean, they do have a "good enough reason" why they need to be having orgasms, it's because it's necessary for pregnancy. But cis women... sure it's fine if the orgasm happens as a side effect of your very godly hetero having-sex-in-the-way-God-intended, but you can't prioritize it.

My point is, the reason this makes me so mad is that you can't argue with it, from within that system. Makes me feel trapped, just thinking about it.

All you can do is fall into depression, and then go to therapy, and have your therapist tell you over and over that you have to accept yourself, you are good enough in yourself, you can't base your self-worth on anyone else's opinion (not even God's). Until you finally believe it. 

And then you come out of it mad as hell. When you realize for the first time what they took from you. You weren't allowed to want what you want. You weren't allowed to feel your feelings. You weren't allowed to enjoy things simply because you enjoyed them. You had to be suspicious of everything that made you happy, because it might be a sin.

Scene from "The Avengers" where Bruce Banner says, "That's my secret, Cap... I'm always angry" before turning into the Hulk. Image source.

This isn't about orgasms. (I'm asexual.) This is about an anti-human ideology where you have to "put God first." Has to be in this order- "Jesus, others, yourself." You can't just be happy. You can't just pursue what you want- you have to make yourself believe that "God called me" or whatever.

I'm angry because Denny Burk said "selfish and small" and I know I have no answer that would mean anything at all from an evangelical perspective. It's an ideology that does not consider human happiness to be an inherently good thing. The only good thing is following God.

---

Related:

Christianity and "Selfishness": Here are the Receipts 

I Deserve God's Love

Accepting Myself (or, I'm Great, and It Doesn't Matter What God Thinks) 

Honest Lent: "Seek First God's Kingdom" Doesn't Work If You Have Autism

On Telling My Chinese Husband What I Want For Christmas

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"

---

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.

---

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 

---

Also a few videos I need to share here:

This Chinese song is how I feel about God:

Also, God is a girl.

Blogaround

1. After 3 Years of Lockdowns, a Chinese Border City Struggles to Rebuild (March 14) "After COVID hit, however, the city’s frontier location became a liability. With China wary of infections spreading across the border, Ruili faced a string of weekslong lockdowns. From early 2021, the border was sealed entirely, and surrounding neighborhoods were evacuated. Undocumented migrants from Myanmar were rounded up and forced to return home."

2. The Story of Lazarus and the Making of the New Testament (January 19) "It is possible that Jesus on one occasion told a story about a poor man called Lazarus, and on another day, by remarkable coincidence, he actually raised a man of the same name from the dead. But other interpretations offer themselves."

And another from the same blog: How the Churches Forgot the Amalekites (2022) "The last Christian who will seek to exterminate another nation on the pretense of killing Amalekites has not yet been born." This is a really important point. There are passages in the bible where God commands his people to commit genocide. In western culture in modern times, churches tend to just awkwardly skip over those passages. But throughout history, Christians have literally used those passages to justify genocide- and this continues to happen in some parts of the world. If we just don't talk about those passages, that's not good enough. We have to engage with them and answer them.

3. Belinda Carlisle - Heaven Is A Place On Earth (Official Music Video) I'm sure I've posted this before, but here it is again. This is actually my religion. Just like Jesus taught us to pray: "Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

4. The Biblical Case for Affirmation (w/ Matthew Vines) (March 13) A 1-hour-45-minute podcast. I am and will always be a bible nerd, so I loved this. My position is different from Vines's, though, because I don't think we need to carefully study ancient Roman history in order to find out if we're allowed to treat queer people with basic human decency. (Or, in evangelical language, I reject the authority of Scripture.) But wow, I am so impressed by how much of a bible nerd he is. Like, chapter and verse.

5. A distinction without any meaning (March 19) "Biologists have managed to reprogram stem cells taken from a male mouse into female oocytes, then fertilized them with sperm from another male mouse, and produced healthy offspring — that is, they’ve made mice with two fathers. ... The creationists at Answers in Genesis are made somewhat uncomfortable about this, since it violates their fantasies about the rigidity of sex determination, and recruited their tame in-house crank with a Ph.D., Nathaniel Jeanson to write a rationalization for them."

Also from the same blog: Why would Tim White and UC Berkeley hoard old bones? (March 14) "It’s just the weirdest defense: our bookkeeping is so bad and ignorance is so great that we have no idea whose remains these are, therefore we ought to be allowed to keep them."

6. And here's another worship song I like: My Deliverer - Rich Mullins

7. Everyone’s asking if Joel made the right choice. But Joel didn’t make one choice. He made many. (March 15) [content note: spoilers for "The Last Of Us"]

8. Idaho hospital to stop labor and delivery services citing "political climate" and doctor shortages (March 18) "'The Idaho Legislature continues to introduce and pass bills that criminalize physicians for medical care nationally recognized as the standard of care. Consequences for Idaho Physicians providing the standard of care may include civil litigation and criminal prosecution, leading to jail time or fines,' Bonner General said in its news statement."

9. Minnesota Republican Unable To Stop Communist Governor From Giving Kids Food (March 15) "'I have yet to meet a person in Minnesota that is hungry,' Drazkowski said, in front of other people who could see and hear him."

10. HPV and Purity Culture (March 17) "To these individuals I say, 'I am sorry. Your virginity is not and will never be more important than your physical health.'" AMEN TO THAT.

I also did not get the HPV vaccine... it was very new and controversial when I was a teenager... Thinking about it now, it strikes me as odd that the response wasn't "wow great news, a vaccine that prevents cervical cancer" but instead more like "this is a vaccine for sluts? eww how could a good parent let their daughter get that?"

11. There is a God, But I Do Not Believe In Him (March 14) "God would have us know that we must live as people who manage our lives without God. The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us." Yeah this... this is very close to what I believe.