Boundaries in Dating: Preferences and Red Flags

A forest of red flags. Image source.

Well guess what. I'm very excited to tell y'all about chapter 6 of Boundaries in Dating: How Healthy Choices Grow Healthy Relationships, because it's a bunch of really good advice that everyone should be taught about relationships. The chapter is called "What You Can Live With and What You Can't Live With," and it's about the standards we have in choosing a partner to date.

Here's the beginning of the chapter:

In the book Safe People, I (Dr. Cloud) told the story of being asked to speak to a Christian college group on the topic "How to Pick Someone to Date or Marry." It was a mixed group and a topic that was certainly on their minds. I opened the talk with a question: "What do you look for in a person to date seriously or marry?" Here were some of the responses that I got:

• Deep spiritual commitment to God
• A person who loves God's word
• Someone with ambition
• Someone fun
• Attractive
• Smart
• Witty
• A leader in their field
• Likes sports

"Great list. I like people like that too," I told them. "But let me share something with you. In all my years that I have done marriage counseling, I have yet to meet a couple who was ready to divorce or having significant problems because one was not witty enough, or did not read their Bible as much as the other wished, or was not a leader in their field. But I have met hundreds of couples who are about to end their relationship who say things like this:

• She's so controlling that I feel smothered all the time.
• He doesn't listen to me.
• He is so critical. I never feel like I'm doing anything right.
• He is so irresponsible. I never know if the bills have been paid or if he has taken care of the things he promised to do.
• She overspends all the time. She agrees to a budget, and then I get all these bills.
• He can't connect emotionally. He doesn't understand how I feel.
• She is such a perfectionist. I with she could just accept herself as she is and not be so down on herself all the time.
• His anger scares me.
• I never can believe her after the affair. She lied so much that I have lost all my trust.

These are two very different kinds of lists. The point is, it's good to have preferences and ideas about what kind of person you're looking for- like the first list- but you should also be educated about how healthy relationships work so that you can recognize problems and not end up in a relationship with someone who has very serious character issues.

This is really great, healthy advice. In purity culture, we used to make lists of what we were looking for in our "future husband"- of course, the first item on the list had to be "he loves Jesus more than anything" ("loves God more than he loves me" was also acceptable). It was all dreaming about an ideal, godly man- but they never taught us anything about how to actually get along with someone when you're in a relationship, how to deal with conflict, how to tell if the problems are big enough to be deal-breakers. All I knew was "pray about it." It was way too theoretical and idealized- nothing about what it's really like to be in a relationship with a real live imperfect human being.

"Boundaries in Dating" continues by giving us an overview of this chapter:

There are basically four areas we want you to examine in dating:

1. Some of your preferences might be too limiting, and you need to be more open.
2. Some preferences are more important than you might realize, and you should value them.
3. Some imperfections are minor, and you might have to learn to deal with them.
4. Some imperfections are major, and you should not ever have to live with them. They are totally off limits.

Sounds great!

The first section is about not limiting yourself- you might as well go on dates with lots of different people, just to try, no commitment. In the process, you'll learn more about yourself and what kind of person you want. And who knows, maybe you'll end up loving someone you never thought you would.

The strange part is that they bring God into this.

We have heard examples like that as people opened themselves up to date people who initially didn't seem to be 'their type.' God showed them that they really did not know what they needed to begin with, and oftentimes that what they thought they wanted would have been bad for them in the end.

This is ... weird. Yes, I've read purity culture books that say this same thing- the whole "be open to whoever God wants to put you with- maybe God knows better than you do." But in purity culture, that means you have to pray a lot and not listen to your own emotions telling you you're not really interested in someone- if some godly guy claims he's prayed about it and God said you're his wife, then you should at least give him a chance. It definitely DOES NOT mean you should go out on casual, no-commitment dates with anyone and everyone- oh dear goodness, how slutty!

Like I said last week, this section shows how "Boundaries in Dating" was written for adults. When you're a teenager or in college, it's easier to make friends and meet people- you don't have to actually go on one-on-one dates in order to get to know a potential romantic partner. But as an adult, honestly I'm not really sure how dating is supposed to work- it seems like you'd have to be a lot more direct and intentional. You'd have to be pretty clear about "let's go on a date" because it's not like you just happen to always hang out in the same place as potential friends/partners and get to know them without really putting in a ton of effort.

It seems that this is the definition that "Boundaries in Dating" is working off of- that "dating" starts out with no commitment, you just go out together and maybe you also go on dates with other people, it's no big deal, and then if you like this person enough, the relationship develops into an exclusive thing and then you're boyfriend/girlfriend. (Or girlfriend/girlfriend or whatever other combinations. "Boundaries in Dating" is so heteronormative, but this blog is not.)

Like I've said before, this is unintelligible nonsense to someone who believes in purity culture. How on earth could it be a good thing to go on dates with lots of different people? All romantic experiences erode parts of your heart- which is supposed to fully belong to your future husband. (Or future wife, but who are we kidding, it's the girls who get most of the "you'll be damaged goods" warnings. And purity culture thinks everyone is straight. How strange.) And if you have any skin-to-skin contact with a member of the opposite sex in a romance-related context, wow, you just lost some of your purity. Better hope your future husband is kind enough to forgive you.

Ugh, this book continues to frustrate me, because it's SUCH GOOD ADVICE, but COMPLETELY USELESS to anyone who buys into purity culture. Seriously, what would happen if you're a good purity culture girl and you read "we suggest you be open to casually dating anyone of good character" [an actual quote from "Boundaries in Dating"]? You would be HORRIFIED. It's too terrible a thought to even consider- all the danger that comes with dating- and to imagine that you would do it multiple times, with so many different people, and get your heart all torn up... Oh what an awful thing, quick, just skip past it, let's not think about that. Such terrible and terrifying advice.

They would just block it out because it's too scary. At best, they would be incredibly confused at how a "Christian book" could advise something so impure- and "Boundaries in Dating" offers no help in resolving that confusion.

Like, if you want to actually convince a purity-culture follower that it's good and healthy to casually date many different people, you're going to have to start at the very foundation of purity culture- the idea that experience is impurity and decreases your chances of having a good marriage- and work your way up. "Boundaries in Dating" doesn't do any of that. It assumes that its readers don't see romance as a horribly dangerous thing, with the potential to tear your heart into tiny pieces that can never be healed. It assumes that its readers will readily accept statements about how dating can be fun and is a good way to grow- that such statements are pretty unremarkable and don't need much explaining.

Ai ya. All right. Let's continue.

So then there's the bit about how some of your preferences are actually important, so don't pretend they're not. Specifically, it's essential to have common interests, common goals, and common values with the person you're in a relationship with. It's surprising to me that this section doesn't say anything about "the most important thing is that you're both totally devoted to Jesus." I mean, we did have a whole chapter about that, so maybe they figure they've talked about it enough? Ehhhh, from an evangelical perspective, this is really suspicious though. Looks like they're treating the spiritual component as separate- like, it just goes in its own chapter and then we never mention it again. If both partners being 100% devoted to Jesus really is the most important thing in a relationship, shouldn't it keep coming up, over and over, in every aspect of relationships that gets discussed? (Apparently, the writers of "Boundaries in Dating" DON'T believe that both partners being fully devoted to God is the most important thing. How scandalous.)

Seems kind of like the old stereotype about people who go to church on Sundays but then don't care about God at all for the rest of the week.

To be clear, "Boundaries in Dating" does have some Christianese in this section on common interests, common goals, and common values. Little phrases here and there, like "Your goals will affect where you live, what career you choose, how you spend your time and money, and even how you develop your character and walk with God." Like, definitely written in the context of Christian culture. They even have a bible verse- Matthew 7:18, "a bad tree cannot bear good fruit", to tell us how character is really important. But nothing about "THE MOST IMPORTANT THING is you both love Jesus."

Weird. I mean, obviously I agree- I very much DO NOT think the most important thing is that you hold a particular set of religious beliefs- but... how is this a Christian book?

The next part is about your partner's imperfections. Some imperfections are minor, and you learn how to deal with them and keep the relationship going. But some are huge, destructive problems that you should never have to put up with.

Well y'all are going to be shocked at the complaint I have in the next section...

Here are the traits of someone who demonstrates the ability to work on their imperfections:

• A relationship with God
• Ability to see where one is wrong
• Ability to be honest
• Ability to see the effects of the wrong on the other person
• Ability to empathize with those effects and be truly sorry for the other person as opposed to just feeling guilty for themselves
• Motivation to repent and change
• Ability to sustain repentance and change
• Commitment to a path of growth, a system of growth, and the involvement of other people in the growth process
• Ability to receive and utilize forgiveness

[cue Sesame Street music] One of these things is not like the others...

Ironically, I'm about to complain about how "a relationship with God" is on this list, even though I just got done complaining because it wasn't mentioned in the previous section. Really, I wish they would just pick a side. Either put in all the Christian supremacy, like all the other advice I heard in church, or don't put it in and PLEASE TELL US WHY. I just cannot figure out what kind of Christianity this book represents, and as a former evangelical, it reads as very fake to me. Like people who call themselves Christians but basically just do their own thing- they live in Christian culture, so they use the language, they reference bible verses and mention having a relationship with God- but it's not the central force driving them, it's not fierce devotion that motivates everything they do, it's not an obsessive love they can't stop talking about. It's just something they mention sometimes, but mostly they just live a normal life and give common-sense advice that's not really rooted in Christianity at all.

Now that I'm a former evangelical, it's very important to me to never accuse people of being fake Christians. I'm not saying they are- really, I'm just really curious. What type of Christianity is this? How does it justify not coming across as super obsessed with God? And I would like a better explanation than "that's too extreme" because I strongly believe that "extreme" is not a bad thing in and of itself. It only becomes bad when going too far in one area causes problems to arise in another area. And I guess that's what I would say, for why I'm a Christian who's not "coming across as super obsessed with God"- because I used to live that way and now I know the problems that it causes.

Ai. Anyway let's get back on track. So they talk about the minor imperfections which are okay- things like being a little impatient sometimes, or a little disorganized, or having trouble opening up about your emotions- and then they talk about the huge red flags that you should never have to put up with in a relationship.

But not all sins are in the yellow category. Some are bright red- as in stop! I have often heard people say, "All sin is sin." If by this they mean there is no difference among sins, nothing could be further from the truth, and that is not what the Bible teaches. It does teach that all sinners are equally guilty before God, and that we all stand in the same state of guilt before him, but not that all sin is equal. Some sins are more damaging than others. As Jesus said clearly, there are "weightier" aspects of God's law, and those are the ones that destroy relationships and hurt people, things like the lack of justice, mercy, and faithfulness (see Matthew 23:23). These sins are inherently destructive, and are more hurtful than the "yellow" sins. (Being messy or impatient with someone can hardly be compared to lying about an affair.)

YES. THANK YOU. This is SO important- and I've actually never realized how Jesus' use of the word "weightier" there means that some sins are worse than others. Excellent. (But I wonder if they believe that we all deserve to go to hell, and that's infinitely worse than anything in this world- if so, they can't really make a logical argument that the difference in earthly consequences of sin actually matter... Add that to the list of things I'm confused about concerning their flavor of Christianity.)

It's really really good that they talk about this. They give examples of the "yellow" kids of sins or character weaknesses, and then examples of the "red" ones. Don't be in a serious relationship with a partner who has the "red" problems- like dishonesty, being controlling, being unwilling to admit their own problems, etc.

And that's all I have to say for this chapter. Overall, really good advice. Be flexible about your preferences. But also be aware of what kinds of behaviors are massive red flags that are completely unacceptable in a dating relationship.

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A blog series reviewing the book Boundaries in Dating: How Healthy Choices Grow Healthy Relationships (introduction post is here)

Previous post: This may be the most un-purity-culture thing I've ever read

Next post: This psychology stuff is all new to me

Searching for a Less Terrible Way to Express Your Hateful Theology Doesn't Count as "Love"

Two fancy cups of coffee. Captain Cassidy says, "Sinners just love coffee. And wasting weeks of their time." Image source.

Captain Cassidy, who writes the blog Roll to Disbelieve, has been reviewing the book People to Be Loved: Why Homosexuality Is Not Just an Issue (by Preston Sprinkle), and her posts are defnitely worth reading. She has a lot of insight about how conservative Christians struggle with their fundamentally nasty and unloving view of LGB people, how these Christians try so hard to present that hateful theology in a way that's loving, but they fail, and they fail SO HARD.

Here are some excerpts from her posts:

Rescuing a Sinking Ship: People to Be “Loved.”

They can’t pull back on the hate-and-smearing throttle because they’ve been busy teaching their flocks that doing that would be”compromising,” and “compromising” is the worst thing any Christian can possibly do. If they let up on their smear campaigns and fearmongering, they will be seen as “condoning” sin.

It gets even worse, though, for them. If these leaders magically find a way to twist Bible verses to support the idea of LGBTQ rights, the flocks–having been taught to do exactly this–will howl about “evil liberalism” and immediately fire those leaders or flee to churches whose pastors teach what they have been taught is TRUE CHRISTIANITY™. Any conservative Christian who dissents from the party line can expect the tribe to react with shocked disapproval (and abuse).

That is why one cannot possibly expect a fundagelical leader to “prayerfully examine” the question of LGBTQ equality and come out with a markedly different position than the one he started with–not if that leader wants to keep his job, his reputation in the community, and a private life that is blissfully free of violent threats. After years spent as part of the apparatus ensuring that change cannot possibly happen, such a fundagelical can hardly be expected to suddenly experience a change of heart.

If it wasn’t resulting in so much cruelty against innocent people worldwide, there’d be something comical about where Christians find themselves nowadays thanks to their ceaseless demonization and harassment of LGBTQ people. I’m sure they thought this was one culture war guaranteed to shock Americans back into churches nationwide; the people responsible for the hatred probably had no idea in the world that anything could go wrong with a smear campaign against that group. The whole thing probably felt like a total slam-dunk. And now it’s all gone hideously pear-shaped.

Starting from Wrong Assumptions: People to Be “Loved.”

He decides that the real problem here is that people don’t know exactly what the Bible says about same-sex relationships. Once they know exactly what it says–either condemning or embracing these relationships, or even being totally silent about them–then they’ll obviously fall into line by becoming loving, gracious Christians just like he is.

He’s not asking “Why does my tribe’s doctrinal stance keep erupting into terrible treatment of the very people we should be embracing the most?”

He’s asking “Am I totally correct with my theology?” because he assumes that if he gets that answer correct, then he can teach his people to “responsibly address” all the questions his tribe asks about same-sex relationships. As we will see, his idea of “responsibly addressing” these questions consists of how to show bigotry without being outright labeled a bigot, and how to gain control of other people’s lives and express condemnation of them in a way that they won’t resent and reject.

People to Be “Loved” and the Failure of Literalism.

If someone cannot be loving without carefully studying the Bible, that person is doing humanity all wrong and is not a moral or good person. It doesn’t speak very highly of fundagelicals’ insistence that a real live god inhabits them when they can’t be loving without knowing exactly and precisely what the Bible says about a topic. (How universal can this “traditional morality” be if it requires this kind of scholarship before it can be trusted?)

Loving behavior makes people feel loved afterward–not judged, not condemned, not strong-armed, not manipulated, not rejected, and not coerced. It is a two-way street, not the one-sided show of force that evangelicals often envision it as. If someone can’t figure out how to make another person feel loved, the answer to that question is not “needs more cowbell Bible.” The answer is “needs to become a more compassionate person and grow a sense of empathy.” And those will not come from the Bible.

Listening But Not Really to People to Be “Loved.”

After spending pages and pages telling people about the terminology that gay people use, something weird happens in his head. (Again.)

He decides to use the hurtful terms his tribe demands people use, even though those are terms that gay people have rejected and have explicitly told everyone they find hurtful.

If that’s his idea of listening to gay people, then maybe we were better off with Christians who didn’t even pretend to be listening.

The False Third Way of People to Be “Loved.”

In the end, he decides after much turning around and around that churches that regard the Bible as authoritative (like he does) and agree that right-wing Christians’ idea of sexual immorality is correct (like he does) must reject people who engage in what he calls “same-sex relations.” He definitely hates to say it. He even says it’s super-painful to come to that conclusion, so we can totally tell he means it. He tries to salvage his view by saying that to be consistent, churches that go this route would also have to eject a number of straight people who engage in other forms of immorality–such as the folks who “drop unchristian bombs” in the comment sections of blogs just like his, as he himself puts it! (I guess he doesn’t mean that part, since he is doing nothing whatsoever to rein in exactly those people on his blog.)

He tries at length to make this exclusion sound grudging and sad rather than the foregone conclusion it always was. He declares that he won’t “demonize or condemn” Christians who disagree with his conclusions (as long as they prayed very very hard about it and studied the Bible a lot). But in the end, he must follow orders! As long as it’s done in what he calls “the context of love and tears and truth,” this rejection is divinely-mandated and demanded of Christians. The only real question for him is how exactly to follow orders.

A Coffee Date with People to Be “Loved.”

Instead of saying yes or no to this concerned mother, he advises the pastor friend to invite her and her daughter out for coffee to talk about the whole situation. Oh sure, he concedes, this mother might well think “he’s blowing off her question and would move on to another church.” (Ya think?) But he optimistically declares that maybe, just maybe, she’d accept the offer and “end up encountering the scandalous grace of God from the heart of a pastor who cared enough to listen to their story.”

He thinks that he is describing “scandalous grace” when really he’s just found yet another way to be dishonest with others–and to express the current boilerplate fundagelical position. He thinks that avoiding people’s honest questions is better than just answering them plainly and risking their rejection.

He thinks that people will be willing to spend hours and hours and hours getting to know him and his completely by-the-book, by-the-numbers fundagelical indoctrination. He is certain that they will be so fascinated by his new (#notnew) method of rejecting LGBTQ people that they will be drawn in to his glowing aura and not realize he actually condemns them and is going to make demands of them that are every bit as dehumanizing and cruel as what his more loudmouthed peers do.

But in order to get LGBTQ people to the point where they might listen to the demands and condemnation he will issue, they have to sit still long enough to hear it all. So he’ll pretend to listen to them, while not in the least intending to change a single thing about what he thinks, so that they will be more inclined to listen in turn to him and then change their minds to agree with him. And all the while he’ll be feeling smugly self-congratulatory for his “scandalous grace.” (We’ll be turning our steely gaze to this laughably lame phrase soon, too, don’t fear.)

The Three Deceptions Found in “People to Be Loved.”

One of the unhealthiest messages about love that I absorbed while Christian was the idea that if you really, really love someone, you want to change that person for the better–and even have an obligation to do so. By the same token, if someone really, really loves you, then you have an obligation to let them change you for the better. Love meant that each person is trying to fix the other and thus achieve a state of perfection.

It amazes me now that I ever bought into something so patently unhealthy and so easily prone to abuse. This mindset made it all but impossible for me to distinguish, set, respect, or enforce boundaries in either myself or anybody else.

The Really Scandalous Part of “People to Be Loved.”

And after a couple hundred pages, what exactly are we left with about this “scandalous grace” that so impressed this learned Christian leader? What is the totally new message he dresses up in this new oxymoron?

1. The culture war is totally correct in basis. Same-sex relationships are sinful. Jesus gets mad. That’s all settled. Except for all the Christians who don’t think so. They’re just wrong.

2. Right-wing Christians need to be a lot nicer and a lot less direct about communicating their disapproval of same-sex relationships. They still need to disapprove of them, however.

3. If you’re super-nice to people, they’ll want to change without you having to say they must, except when they don’t. Being totally loving will stem the tide of people abandoning Christianity. But eventually if sinners want to keep going to your church, you’re gonna hafta enforce a “traditional sexual ethic” and, as one Christian in the book puts it, “1-Corinthians-5” that sinner by tossing them out on their ear. Otherwise you’re totally sinning by condoning sin. (And that’d be totally sad. And remember, this applies to straight people too, except we both know that fundagelicals are not about to start throwing out divorced people, adulterers, liars, or stingy, uncharitable misers.)

4. Love the sinner, hate the sin. Just do it over coffee over a period of weeks. That makes it okay. Sinners just love coffee. And wasting weeks of their time.

5. Reparative therapy does too work. Lookit all these ex-gay Christians!

How exactly is this mess “scandalous” in any way, shape, or form? Aside from a few very slight cosmetic improvements to the fundagelical culture war, how is this different in the slightest from the rhetoric they’ve put forth over the last few decades? How is this anything at all but business as usual? How is this supposed to improve anything?

[And check her blog again in the next few days, there will probably be more posts on that book.]

I love Captain Cassidy's posts- especially A Coffee Date with People to Be “Loved.”- because I am a former evangelical and this is SO EXACTLY how it worked. Not just with the question of same-sex relationships, but with evangelism in general. We knew our "gospel" didn't sound like good news. We believed that we knew the correct behaviors and beliefs for everyone, even if they were total strangers, and our mission was to convince them that we were right. But obviously, if you just directly tell people "you need to become a Christian" or "you're going to hell" or "you need to break up with your same-sex partner", of course they're not going to listen. You have to be more sneaky about it. You have to build a friendship first. You have to get close enough that they'll trust you. We all knew it was a tricky game to play, and at evangelism training, people often talked about being reluctant to "share the gospel" because it might ruin the friendship. We knew it was hard to get our "gospel" to come across as good news. (The pro-life movement practices this same kind of deception.)

I really, truly, genuinely cared about my non-Christian friends. I believed they were in danger of going to hell- and if that's true, then the most loving thing I can do is coerce them, by any means possible, into agreeing with all the correct beliefs on the checklist to get into heaven. I really did love them- or rather, I had emotions of love and was trying my best to express love, but because it filtered through this unloving theology, it never could actually manifest as love.

And that's exactly what I see in Captain Cassidy's review of Preston Sprinkle's book. (I haven't read the book though.) I totally believe that Sprinkle genuinely cares about LGBT people- or at least, he's trying. At least, he cares as much as it's possible to care while refusing to question the conservative Christian "sexual ethic." He really really believes that "acting on" "same-sex attraction" is a sin, but he knows that if he actually says that to a gay or bi person, they'll never listen to anything else he has to say. And he believes that would be unfair of them. His view is totally different than whatever hateful view they have experienced in the church before. If only he could develop a friendship with them first, get them to trust him, show them that he really cares about them- then maybe they'd realize that his anti-LGB views are actually good and loving.

Yeah, that's what evangelicals are trying so hard to find- a way to rephrase the same hateful, anti-human, anti-image-of-God theology so that their targets will understand that they're doing it out of love. They look for exactly the right words- how many times have I listened to Christians discuss how we "love" and "accept" LGBT people but we do not "affirm" or "endorse" them? As if it matters what kind of polite phrasing you invent for "I don't actually know anything about you, but I'm 100% sure that your identity/marriage/etc is bad and sinful and you need to change."

We don't care how "nicely" you express your hateful theology. We don't care how much "love" is in your heart while you tell us that we're obviously wrong about our own personal lives.

But I will say this: If you're going to believe in the "traditional sexual ethic", this is the least terrible way to do it. If you're going to "hate the sin and love the sinner", this is the least terrible way to do it. It's not good, it's not loving, it's not Christ-like, it's not okay, but it's the best-case scenario if you're stuck in that worldview.

Listening and not saying a word about "it's a sin" is a good first step. Because hopefully, by listening and genuinely wanting to love, you will realize that your beliefs are terrible, and you will change them. That's what happened to me.

But if you think you're going to be able to put a nice spin on "your very identity is wrong, random person I don't know" and then they'll finally understand that you really love them and that's why you're condemning them and advocating against their rights, nope. It ain't gonna happen. I know you're trying to love, but you're not succeeding.

Real love means you ACTUALLY listen. And you BELIEVE people when they tell you what they've experienced and what they need. It means you recognize that you are not an expert on somebody else's personal life. It means questioning the evangelical party line- questioning the bible, even- when you realize it does actual harm to actual people.

I think I read somewhere that "love does no harm to its neighbor." Maybe try doing that instead of this "hate the sin, love the sinner" crap.

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Related:
Unaffirming Church Bingo

Blogaround

Two adorable baby huskies are hugged by people. Image source.

1. Love and solidarity on tap for Pulse workers in Orlando (posted June 17)

2. Yes, the Bible Does Say to Kill Infidels (posted 2015) Apparently somebody at the American Family Association said Christianity is way better than Islam because "There’s nothing like that in the Bible, that tells the Christian to go out and decapitate the infidel." At which point everyone who has ever read the Old Testament was like LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL and fell out of their chair.

3. Almost 170 Members Of Congress Participated In The House Sit-In For Gun Control (posted June 22)

4. The Toast Looks Back: The Best Of Two Monks (posted June 15) Oh my goodness all of these are so funny! "MONK #1: how best to depict the suffering of the Crucifixion
MONK #2: Jesus with one shoe off, one shoe on"

5. The Unbelievable Tale of Jesus’s Wife (July 2016 issue) Journalism is like detective work. This is a really cool story.

6. Killing Us Slowly (posted June 15) "To the denominations, the pastors, the churches, the Christian magazines who remain silent when men like Kevin Swanson call for our deaths—I’m looking at you OPC, and you, WORLD Magazine—who treat it as a mere theological disagreement, you’re killing us."

7. The Terrifying Effect Brexit Could Have for Mixed-Nationality Couples (posted June 24) "According to the British Office for National Statistics, there are more than 100,000 couples in London where a British national is dating someone of another EU nationality."

8. The GOP’s War on Abortion May Have Cleared the Way for a Zika Disaster (posted June 14) A virus that specifically poses a risk to fetuses- wow, the pro-life side is going to do everything they possibly can to fight Zika, right? Because they really really just want to "save babies", right?

9. Can Toys DIE?! (posted June 23) Ooooh. Massively over-analyzing "Toy Story." I love it.

10. Hillary Clinton's Planned Parenthood Address (posted June 10) Wow. This is an amazing speech.

11. An Open Letter to the Female Hat-Wearing Dog From “Go Dog, Go” (posted June 15) "Forget this dude who isn’t into your hats! It shouldn’t be hard—he is so completely and totally forgettable because P.D. Eastman draws all dogs more or less identically. And yet like so many cartoon female dogs, you only have eyes for some generic nobody who can’t see how freaking fantastic you are. You confront this guy a third time, desperately searching for the hat validation that since childhood you’ve been told you need."

12. Jesse Williams’ BET Awards Speech Is Everything You Need Right Now (posted June 26) Yes. Watch this.

13. #IfTrumpWereEvangelical makes Twitter great again (posted June 27) "#ifTrumpwereevangelical he'd "have a heart for" the United States" LOLOLOLOLOLOL

14. James Dobson is reliably untrustworthy (posted June 27) "So the idea of a “secret” born-again Christian is weird and the idea of Donald Trump keeping a secret is even weirder."

15. Can queer pride save the American church? (posted June 28) "The most powerful spiritual transformation occurs when I hear God say to me: you don’t need to do that anymore because who you really are is beautiful."

16. Istanbul Terror Attack (posted June 28) Noooooooo

17. Trump Evangelical Advisory Board Stacked with Anti-LGBT Activists (posted June 22) This is my shocked face. Oh, nope, it's not.

Shanghai Pride 2016

Rainbow flag which also has the Shanghai Pride logo.

June is Pride month for the LGBTQIA (and possibly other letters?) community, and I was very happy to attend some Pride events here in Shanghai. There was a huge variety of events, organized by a group called Shanghai Pride. Talks and discussions, parties in bars, performances put on by local acting groups, an art exhibition, and a weeklong film festival.

Let me tell you all about it. It was very cool.

First, some background about me.

This was my first time attending events that were part of Pride month. Actually, in college I joined the campus LGBT group- this was at the very end of college, after I had become a feminist and decided I 100% support all the LGBT rights, none of this "try to befriend them so they'll listen to me when I tell them their whole lifestyle is wrong" Christian crap. I was in that group for probably less than a year, then I graduated.

Besides that, I don't really have any real-world experience with the LGBT community. I just read a ton of blogs, and write a ton of blog posts- I feel like I'm very educated about it (and I have a lot of insightful things to say about how evangelical Christians are totally Doing It Wrong) but in a practical sense, I really don't know anything.

So. Hoping to change that.

Western influence

We're in China. The overwhelming majority of participants at all the events were Chinese. But you can tell there's a lot of western influence. Almost everything was presented in both English and Chinese- announcements, subtitles in movies, posters advertising the events, etc.

Also, I was very intrigued by LGBT cultural markers that are the same in both China and the US. I'm talking about things that don't intrinsically follow from the concepts of sexual orientation and gender, but at some point in history became associated with those things. The rainbow flag. The letters "LGBT"- this exact acronym is used in Chinese too. People will say a complete Chinese sentence, and you hear "LGBT" in the middle of it, amongst the Chinese words. (Actually, in general in China, there are A LOT of abbreviations from English that don't get translated at all, they just say the letters directly.) The word "queer" is translated to "酷儿" [kù er, or if you're unfamilar with Chinese pinyin, it's pronounced like "coo-arr"] just based on pronunciation. The term "come out of the closet" translates literally to "出柜[chū guì]". All of these examples are things that didn't just arise independently from China's LGBT community- they must have come from western countries.

Additionally, the US struggle for LGBT rights is very important to China's LGBT people. I heard people talk about when same-sex marriage was officially legalized in the US, and how that's a big deal. And also the attack in Orlando, and how it's an example of the violence faced by LGBT people all over the world. (There was a candlelight vigil held at a gay bar here in Shanghai.)

So. All this western influence strikes me as very similar to the topic of spreading Christianity to other cultures. It's very easy for Christians to see mission work as "oh those poor people are so lost and not-white, we need to help them", like Christians just need to go teach them the right way, rather than actually trying to understand their culture. I believe that Chinese Christianity should be thoroughly Chinese. It shouldn't be foreign leaders teaching that the correct way to do Christianity is the way we do in this or that particular denomination in the US. And in the same way, it's not necessarly true that China needs to adopt the exact same policies that US LGBT advocates are fighting for. Or rather, we can't know what China should do until we learn about actual Chinese LGBT people.

So, on seeing the same cultural markers that I've seen in the US LGBT community, I was a little concerned- is this something that western countries are forcing on China, the way that western Christianity tries to force its church culture on "unreached people"?

But I think the key here is that Chinese LGBT people should be directing the LGBT movement in China. Maybe the US has set a good example in some areas, and they can choose to copy that if they want, if it's helpful to them. If, for whatever reason, Chinese LGBT people didn't want to use the rainbow flag, that would be fine. It wouldn't make them any less LGBT. If, for whatever reason, Chinese LGBT people didn't advocate for same-sex marriage to be legal, that would be fine, and wouldn't make them any less LGBT. (There are LGBT-rights advocates in the US who don't advocate for same-sex marriage- because they believe the concept of marriage is too flawed and they don't want to be part of it, because they believe other LGBT issues are more important, etc.) (These are just hypotheticals- in reality China's LGBT community does use the rainbow flag and advocate for same-sex marriage.) Basically, the LGBT movement in China should be based on the needs of Chinese LGBT people. Some of those needs are the same as LGBT people in western countries, some are not.

Things that are the same: Being ashamed and afraid to come out. Discrimination at work. Advocating for legalization of same-sex marriage. Advocating for trans people to be able to change the gender marker on their ID.

(One gay man told about a time when the company where he worked was interviewing candidates for a job opening. Someone was like "oh, this woman has short hair, maybe she's a lesbian, let's not hire her." Wow, that's awful. And he didn't really know what to do- he didn't want to speak up and out himself at work. In my opinion, this is EXACTLY the type of situation that allies should handle. Allies have much less to lose.)

Things that are different: Loyalty to parents is a super-huge-big-deal in China. According to the personal accounts I heard this past week, many Chinese LGBT people don't want to come out because they don't want to upset their parents. Now, yeah, that can be true in the US, but EVEN MORE in China. Also, because of the one-child policy (which has ended, by the way- as of January 2016, Han Chinese people can have 2 kids), the overwhelming majority of Chinese people my age don't have brothers or sisters. So if you're gay and you can't get married and have kids, then your parents will never have grandchildren. There is a lot of pressure to get married, and sometimes a gay man and lesbian woman will get married, just to make their parents/society happy.

And also, there are stories of Chinese people subjected to reparative therapy. Apparently it is still a thing here.

Sexualization

I was a little freaked out by stuff that was maybe too sexualized. There was the occasional comment about "most of us had never met other lesbians before, so when we met, we totally had sex." There was the gay bar which had the words "shirtless bartenders" printed very large on their advertisement for an event- kind of like that was the entire point of the event... (That event was not part of Shanghai Pride. I did go to a Shanghai Pride event held at that bar, and it was pretty much what I expected, not sexualized or anything.) (Wait, should I say "gay bar" or "LGBT bar"? Let's be real, it was mostly gay men.)

I remember when I went to the LGBT group in college, there were also sexual comments that I was uncomfortable with. (Not like, creepy/harassment comments, but like, joking about scissoring. Really freaked me out, because to me, sex was just not a thing that people did.) At the time, I figured it was pretty much the normal rate of sexual comments that can be expected from college students, and I was just not used to it because I hung out with a lot of "sex is a sin" Christians.

But now I think that the rate of sexual comments in LGB-friendly places is higher than in society in general. Because, straight people have tons of opportunities to give their opinions about liking sex. But if you want to joke about how it's fun to have sex with a same-gender partner, there aren't many places you can do that. They can't express this part of themselves as freely as straight people can, so when they finally do find a place where it's okay to talk about that, it ends up much more concentrated. (This is based on my own limited observations- correct me if I'm wrong.) And don't misunderstand me- the sexual stuff was a very small proportion of what was talked about at the Pride events. There were a ton of other topics- acceptance and identity, history, politics, personal stories, family, wedding photos, etc. The sexual stuff was a very small part- but higher than the rate I'm used to in the rest of my normal life.

I really don't believe LGB people are *more* sexual than straight people. Among LGB people and among straight people, you have some that like to joke about sex, and some who aren't comfortable talking about it. Anti-LGB people often believe the stereotype that LGB people are more sexual (and that bisexuals just want to have orgies all the time), even though the anti-LGB people are the ones that tend to come across as OBSESSED with gay sex. (Remember the "gag reflex" article? The one that was basically like "whenever people talk about gay rights, remind yourself of how gross it is when two men have anal sex." I won't link to it, but I'll link to my response here.) So.

I personally don't think there's anything wrong with people wanting sex, even casual sex, but I don't really want to hear details, that's all. (I will, however, read ALL THE FEMINIST BLOG POSTS about sex ed, consent, purity culture, etc etc etc. To me, it's a fascinating topic to think about, but kind of disturbing to be aware of the fact that most of my friends/coworkers/family members/random acquaintances have had sex and like it.)

Persecution

I learned about the history of the LGBT movement in China, and how activists would get arrested back in the 90's, how the Chinese media would say that LGBT is "a western problem" that doesn't exist in China, and one speaker mentioned that just within the last few weeks, a lesbian advocacy group on WeChat (social media app) was banned.

It sounded EXACTLY LIKE how Christians talk about being persecuted. (Err, rather, how American Christians retell stories of persecution they've heard second-hand from missionaries. Which, yeah I believe persecution of Christians does exist in China, but it's not anything like what the American church thinks.) I'm kind of curious about the similarities. Hmm.

Also, that was one of the few times I've heard Chinese people in China mention, ahem, Tiananmen Square, ahem, 1989. And other things the government probably doesn't want you to say.

Miscellaneous

A few different people asked me if I was a lesbian. I was like, "no, I'm just an ally I guess." Kind of felt weird. But LGB people have to deal with EVERYONE IN ALL OF SOCIETY assuming they're straight, so, not a big deal that I can choose to go to these kinds of events and people wonder if I'm a lesbian.

Pride month is for all of LGBTQIA and any other letters I missed, but really it seemed like only L, G, and T were covered in the events I went to. I would love to get to know more people in the group and ask them about the other letters. Are the bisexual people in the group? Are there asexual people? Etc.

In Chinese, "跨性别[kuà xìngbié]" means transgender. "性别[xìngbié]" is gender, and "跨[kuà]" is like, stepping over something or stepping across something. I met some Chinese transgender people, at which point I realized I'm too socially oblivious to ever notice if anyone's transgender- the only reason I noticed was because they were staffing the trans advocacy table. SO BASICALLY I've probably met lots of trans people during my life and just had NO IDEA.

Anyway, overall I was really excited to be able to participate in Shanghai Pride. I'm hoping to learn more about the LGBTQIA community in China. It's really interesting, but there is definitely a long way to go in terms of achieving equal rights.

"The Genderbread Person" diagram (which can be found here) in both English and Chinese.

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Also: Ian McKellen visited Shanghai recently, and made this video to show his support for Shanghai Pride. Awesome!

Boundaries in Dating: This may be the most un-purity-culture thing I've ever read

3 post-it notes. They say "Past", "Now", and "Future." Image source.

Chapter 5 of Boundaries in Dating: How Healthy Choices Grow Healthy Relationships is called "Don't Repeat the Past," and it's about taking an honest look at your past dating experiences to see what mistakes you made, what emotional issues you may need to work on, and addressing those things so you don't have the same problems in the future. Sounds good and healthy, right? Yeah! Sounds like the opposite of purity culture.

The chapter kicks off by talking about why it's important to learn from the past. Check out this mind-blowing statement:

No one enters the dating world competent and ready to go. You may come from a good family and relational background. You may be a well-rounded person. These are certainly advantages. But, even given these advantages, the specific arena of dating, like any other relational undertaking, must be experienced through hours and hours of trial and error.

WHAT.

Wow. Every single thing about this is the complete opposite of purity culture. The ENTIRE PREMISE of purity culture is that if you're just prepared enough, if you pray enough, if you're devoted to God, if you work really hard to keep yourself pure and you never have a sexual thought, then you can find your marriage partner successfully (through dating or courting), without ever being hurt emotionally. "Boundaries in Dating" says you can never be fully prepared for dating- you just have to experience it, and then learn from those experiences and the mistakes you make. Wow. In purity culture, any mistake means that you've lost some of your purity and you're not good enough for your future husband. To learn through "hours and hours of trial and error" would be way too risky. No, purity culture claims that if you just follow the rules well enough, you'll find your spouse with no mistakes, no heartbreak, and no risk.

The entire point of purity culture is that, if you have a past at all, then you're impure, unworthy of marrying a good person, never again capable of real love towards a marriage partner. If you have a past, well Jesus can forgive you, but you'll never be as good. And purity culture advocates have to really emphasize the "you'll never be as good" bit- to scare people enough that they'll never do any of those "impure" things.

In contrast, the authors of "Boundaries in Dating" are psychologists. Their goal is to help people deal with their emotional issues- deal with their past- and get better. It's about hope. It's about your ability to take control of your life, and when you discover the reason for your problems, you can change and get better. That's what psychologists do. None of this "but you'll never be as good" like in purity culture. Probably because the "Boundaries in Dating" people don't see the "impure" things as terrible sins that should be avoided at all costs- instead, it's more like "okay this is a thing that happened, it wasn't good, but it happened, and let's see what we can do to help you get better." No judging, no shame, no "this was a sin, and now you've screwed over your future husband. And God."

As an example of what it means to learn from your past and make a change, let's read Jim's story:

Jim had been a happy-go-lucky man in his twenties. He dated quite a bit, but nothing ever came of the relationships. However, Jim wrote it off to bad luck and comforted himself with the knowledge that he had lots of time to find someone. He never really sat down and wondered what was going on. Time, however, caught up with Jim. By his midthirties, he became concerned. He had always wanted to be married by then. Jim became anxious that he might never get married at all.

At this point, the older, wiser Jim slowed down a little and began seriously thinking about his dating pattern. He finally figured it out. Jim tended to go after women who wanted him more than he wanted them. The main thing he was attracted to was that a woman really liked him. It was less risky for him. However, once the relationship became more involved, he would quickly lose interest, as they were not what he desired in the first place. Almost every past relationship has this same clear progression. Jim was amazed when he put the pattern together. I was proud of Jim, because he worked very hard to diagnose the problem.

By this time, Jim had been dating two women, Robin and Jenny. He was honest about this with both women, and was not deceptive. Robin was very interested in him, which normally would initially render her more interesting to him. Jenny, on the other hand, liked Jim but wanted to keep dating other people. This was a struggle for him. The old Jim would have never pursued Jenny after a couple of dates, so great was his insecurity about taking risks with women.

Fortunately, Jim had been pondering his pattern of low-risk dating, and was willing to use his knowledge of the past. What Jim did was to bring his loneliness and insecurity out of his dating world and into his friendships. He opened up to his safe cluster of friends about his feelings, and took risks with them about how afraid he was of committing to them or anyone else. They stuck with him and supported him.

Eventually, Jim became more able to be honest and straightforward with people, secure in the knowledge that he had a solid foundation of relationship between God and a few good folks. In other words, Jim was growing. He got honest with Robin and told her he just didn't have enough interest to continue dating. And he pursued Jenny, though it almost gave him panic attacks to go after such an unsure deal.

As it happened over time, Jim did lose Jenny to someone else, and that was also very painful for him. The good news is that he found that he could survive losing. This foundation of growth is what made it possible for Jim to do the right thing with Robin, and establish the relationship with Jenny. Things then played out as they were supposed to, unhampered by his insecurities. It is much better for a dating relationship to end due to healthy differences than to unhealthy ones.

In time, Jim went for another woman, Samantha, in whom he was genuinely interested. And this time, he was attracted to her character and values, not her interest in him. Pursuing her was a real risk for him. But in time, Samantha loved him back. They are now happily married. Had Jim not dealt with his past dating approaches, who knows what might have happened instead? The past's examples and warnings (1 Corinthians 10:11) proved a helpful ally for Jim.

On first reading this story, I really liked it. But then I realized, I don't really know how to evaluate this- is it realistic? Is it a healthy way to view relationships? I like this story and it seems like it all makes sense, but it feels very strange to hear relationships talked about in this way. About risk, about choosing to take risks, about surviving a breakup and taking that as confirmation that the risk was worth it. Wow.

To a reader who believes in purity culture, this story is unintelligible. It's not that they would disagree with it, it's that they wouldn't even be able to understand it. If all you know is purity culture, and then someone talks about how isn't it great that Jim learned to take risks in relationships and then everything worked out, it would make no sense to you. What about purity? What about how everyone in this story lost pieces of their heart? Because the authors of "Boundaries in Dating" come from a completely different perspective than purity culture, with completely different assumptions about what dating is, a purity-culture reader would be literally unable to understand this story. They would learn nothing from it, because it comes across as complete nonsense if all you know is "breaking up will make you impure, so GUARD YOUR HEART!!!!"

And even for me, like I said, I like this story but honestly I don't have the tools to really understand and evaluate it. It includes big, abstract concepts like taking risks and learning it's worth it to take risks, even if you break up- and I don't know if I've ever heard dating discussed in those terms. Actually, if I think about my experiences rather than abstract ideas I've learned about dating, I can sort of understand the part about being more willing to date someone I'm less interested in, because then it's less risk. Yeah, okay, so one time there was this guy, let's call him Pat, and I wasn't attracted to him AT ALL, and sometimes he used to sit next to me and lean against the back of the couch in such a way that he was almost leaning on me, and I liked imagining that he liked me and we were dating, in my head it was fun to pretend because he didn't actually matter to me so there was no risk of me losing part of my heart, and we weren't actually in a relationship or anything, so no risk of me losing any purity.

See, yeah, I need to think of a really specific example that I've experienced, because these concepts feel so foreign to me. (And actually, a purity-culture follower might even reason that they should be in a relationship with someone they're not terribly interested in, as a way to guard their heart.)

Next, there's a section in this chapter called "Be Afraid of Your Past", about how not evaluating and learning from your past can cause problems in your current or future relationships, so it's good to have "a healthy fear" of repeating the past. I'm not really comfortable with how they use the terms "afraid" and "fear" because purity culture was ALL ABOUT FEAR for me, and I am so done with that. Really, though, what they're talking about here is being aware of possible consequences that could realistically happen, and working to prevent them. It's not some huge unknown, vaguely-defined, infinitely-horrible thing that just hangs over you all the time, like in purity culture.

The most interesting bit of the "Be Afraid of Your Past" section is this:

As in Jim's case, most people have some sort of age deadline in their head by which they would like to marry. In reality, you can't wait forever, because you don't have forever. There is such a thing as "too late." So many people who have dreamed all their lives about being married will, in ignoring their pasts, lose their married futures. Get to work on the past!

This is pretty shocking to me because purity culture is all about how you should keep waiting and trust in God's timing. If God has ordained that you meet your husband at age 41, then that's the way it is and there's nothing you can do about it. Yes, purity culture does pressure people into marrying young, and generally church people act like you're a problem that needs to be solved if you're still single in your late twenties or thirties- but at least in the form of purity culture I followed, you can TOTALLY wait forever and it's wrong to have an "age deadline."

This is a good illustration of the fact that "Boundaries in Dating" is definitely written for adults, whereas purity culture is generally directed toward teenagers and college-aged people. As for the "age deadline" concept, my opinion is that you have to be reasonable. My parents got married right out of college, so I always thought I would too, and I felt like a failure when I didn't. And I still sometimes feel like I'm going so slow, when it seems like everyone on facebook is getting married and having babies. But in reality, it's totally fine and normal to not be married or have kids at my age. Just because a lot of people on facebook are doing it doesn't mean they're winning and I'm losing. Realistically, you can have biological kids in your late thirties or even older (I'm not totally sure when, but I think it's much older than whatever mainstream culture is telling you) or you could even adopt kids. At different ages, you'll have different life circumstances and different options available to you, some of which are better than others, so it makes sense to have a preferred age when you want to get married, but I'm not sure I can say there's some point after which all hope of getting married and having children is lost. (Or rather, since I'm young, I don't know enough to be able to speculate on that.)

The point is, if you're in college and you think your life is ruined because you don't have a "ring by spring", then calm down, it's okay, you have a lot of time. But maybe, at some point, years and years and years later, it's no longer true that "you have a lot of time." Sort of a strange new concept for me. But yes, it shows "Boundaries in Dating" was definitely written for adults.

So. In summary, this chapter is about learning from your past. There's no judgment, there's no "now you're impure and you can never be fully healed." These authors are psychologists; their job is to help people get better, not to tell them they're permanently damaged. Pretty much the complete opposite of purity culture.

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A blog series reviewing the book Boundaries in Dating: How Healthy Choices Grow Healthy Relationships (introduction post is here)

Previous post: Without using the word "idol"

Next post: Preferences and Red Flags

Blogaround

A photo of a cat and a mountain lion staring at each other through a glass door. The cat is thinking, "This mirror makes me look ripped." Image source.

1. Yes, you hate me: Christians and homophobia (posted June 15) "They’re just so very confused when they look at me and say 'I disagree with your very existence because of my pet biblical interpretation, but that clearly can’t be hate.'"

2. The 'Trump Effect' in Schools: How Trump's Hate Speech Is Traumatizing America's Children (posted April 14) "Another educator from a Tennessee school says a Latino kindergartener was told by his peers that he will be deported and barricaded behind a wall. “Is the wall here yet?” he asks daily."

3. A Renegade Kitten Survived A Cross-Country Road Trip By Clinging To A Car (posted June 15) YOU GUYS this kitten is adorable.

4. Baylor University’s culture of sexual assault is real and it doesn’t surprise me. (posted May 27) "But cultivating a culture in which consensual sex is a punishable offense and students who do have sex are too ashamed to talk makes it extremely difficult to simultaneously cultivate a culture that exposes and punishes sexual abuses."

5. 'Star Trek' actor Anton Yelchin dies in freak car accident (posted June 20) NOOOOOOOO

6. We’ve gotten better at mourning. That’s a sick form of ‘progress’ (posted June 14) [content note: anti-LGBT violence] "And knowing the role they have played, it’s a wonder that all of these steadfastly anti-gay church leaders didn’t choke on their own words as they all, in turn, offered their lovely, duplicitous statements of grief and sorrow."

7. These Social Media Posts Offer an Important Reminder (posted June 15) "I crossed two streets, by myself, while cars rushed by, and I didn’t panic."

8. Needed: A New Conversation on LGBT in the Church (posted June 22) "This is why we have to have a different conversation about gay people in the Church. Because even the ones who are there–who are doing their best to live faithfully to the scriptures as your church understands them–don’t feel welcome, loved, or safe in your community."

9. Terrorist Attack, Mass Shooting, or Anti-Gay Hate Crime? How We Talk about Orlando Is Important (posted June 16)

10. You Are Better Than Fred Phelps (and that’s why he was so dangerous) (posted 2014) "I’ve heard people insist on using the word “homosexual” to refer to all LGBTQ people, because calling gays and lesbians “gays and lesbians” allows them to normalize their perverted lifestyle, and because bi and transgender people don’t really exist anyway. But they would never say “God hates fags.”"

"Rubbish"

Batman and Alfred. Image source.

When I first started studying Chinese, I was in college in the US. I made friends with lots of international students from China, and practiced Chinese with them. I really admired the international students- they were so awesome and courageous, moving to a whole new country, a whole new culture, having to learn how things work in the US. I wanted to be like them.

Their English was very good, but I noticed they had weird words for things like trash cans and bathrooms. Bizarre, creative terms like "dust bin" or "wash room." I'm sure the first time someone said to me, "Can I take the rubbish?" I had NO IDEA what they were saying- both because of their accent and because who even uses the word "rubbish"?

As it turns out, the answer is British people. British people use the word "rubbish." Apparently, it just means trash. (I moved to China and taught English for 2 years, and I learned more British English in that time than I had in my entire life before. Chinese students all walking around saying cookies are "biscuits"- it's just madness over here.)

All this talk of "rubbish" reminds me of a sermon I heard many years ago, on Philippians 3:7-11.

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

(The above excerpt comes from the ESV. The current NIV version uses the term "garbage" rather than "rubbish" in verse 8 there, but the one I read growing up, the 1984 NIV, said "I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ." And I'm pretty sure that was the version used in this sermon.)

The speaker- an American, giving a sermon to an American audience, in the United States- pointed out that word, "rubbish." She said, wow, such a unique word, we rarely use it. When you think of "rubbish" you think of a British butler with his nose turned up, holding a trash bag at arm's length, like he's so high-class and these things are so beneath him.

Her point was, the apostle Paul felt such disdain for his "gains" in his life before Christ, that he needed to choose a special word to properly convey that feeling. The apostle Paul wanted the Philippians to know that his feeling was the same as that of a proper British butler.

And like, when I phrase it that way, the anachronism is pretty obvious- like obviously Paul didn't hold stereotypes about what British butlers are like. Actually, the speaker was just trying to tell us that the word "rubbish" has a different feel than "garbage", like it's a term reserved for especially awful garbage. And that's true, in American English, but only because of American culture's idea of British butlers. It's still an anachronism.

If you're a British person reading "I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ," there's no shockingly unique word that stands out and demands us to question why it was chosen. It's just the same thing as if an American read "I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ."

(And I won't even go into how, if you look at the actual Greek word that Paul used, it should probably be translated more like "shit" or "crap.")

That sermon is a good example of how Christians of the "bible is inerrant" persuasion put so much emphasis on every individual word in the bible, and they find meaning that isn't even there. It's a translation of an ancient book- you can't take the individual English words too seriously. I often have to write English translations of Chinese documents for my job, and, you guys, translation is hard. For some reason, four sentences' worth of stuff somehow becomes all one sentence in Chinese. I have to decide where to break it up. And sometimes there's a word or concept that doesn't translate directly into English, because you'd have to understand some Chinese culture in order to get it. I have to decide whether to preserve individual words or just write a completely new sentence that gets the same point across and sounds much more natural to an American reader. And there's no "right" way to do it.

When you read an English version of the bible, you can be pretty sure the English translation matches the general idea of what the passage said, but oh my, DO NOT get stuck on individual words. (Maybe the best way to avoid this problem is to read several different translations- if a specific word gets translated in a few different ways, maybe don't put too much emphasis on that exact word and how it feels to you, a native speaker of American English [or whatever your language background is]). Really, it's kind of deceptive how the bibles we read are full of English words we understand and sentences that make sense to us. It hides how completely foreign the bible truly is.

Here's another way that Christians get stuck on individual words in the bible: I've often heard people say things like "This bible verse has the word 'trust' in it, so I looked up 'trust' in the dictionary, and one definition was [definition that isn't the one being used in this verse], and wow, isn't it amazing to think [whatever the conclusion would be if that was the definition that the writer meant, rather than the definition that's more likely based on the context]."

So bizarre. The translator just chose the word "trust" because it was the English word with the closest meaning to what the writer was saying. That doesn't mean every possible definition of "trust" in Webster's dictionary applies to that verse.

Or there's this: "The word that's translated as [whatever English word] comes from the same Greek word they used for [some interesting imagery about farm animals or whatever]. So really, the writer meant that we [do whatever thing] in the same way that [a donkey pulls a cart or whatever]."

Uh, not really. (This is really the same mistake as the "I looked it up in an English dictionary" thing, except you used a dictionary from the original language instead.) Just because the same word is used in multiple circumstances doesn't mean that, when we use it in one context, we're always thinking about how this situation is similar to another context where that word would also be used. It would be like if someone read "we were kicked out" and started teaching that "this word 'kick' is the same word they used in their sports games, so the original audience would have imagined big, strong athletes when reading this." Yes, in some cases it's true that a word has a certain special "feel" because of the other ways it can be used, and that affects its meaning- but sometimes it totally doesn't. (This is especially true in Chinese, where more complicated words are often made of smaller, simpler words, but nobody is thinking of the meaning of those smaller words when they say them. Like "小心 [xiǎo xīn]" means "be careful"- but "小 [xiǎo]" means "little" and "心 [xīn]" means "heart." Why on earth do they mean "be careful" when you put them together? Who knows? But when you tell someone to be careful in Chinese, you don't involuntarily think of little hearts.) You really have to have a deep understanding of the language and culture to know when those other situations would affect the meaning or "feel" of a word, and when they wouldn't.

Don't take individual words in the bible so seriously. It's just a translation, and maybe they picked the best English word but that doesn't mean it has the exact same meaning as the original Hebrew or Greek. Translation is hard.

Boundaries in Dating: Without using the word "idol"

An illustration of a golden calf. Image source.

Chapter 4 of Boundaries in Dating: How Healthy Choices Grow Healthy Relationships is about when people get into bad relationships just because they are lonely. This fear of being alone is a problem that must be addressed first, before you'll be able to find a healthy dating relationship. The book says this:

If you must be dating or married in order to be happy, you are dependent, and you will never be happy with whatever person you find. The dependency will keep you from being selective enough to find the kind of person who will be good for you, or will keep you from being able to fully realize a relationship with a healthy person.

I like this chapter. It's really interesting how purity culture also talks about this problem, but in a very different way. "You must get to a place where you are happy with your life apart from a dating relationship in order to be happy with one." That's a line from page 76 of "Boundaries in Dating," but that exact same sentence could appear in a purity-culture book.

But it wouldn't mean the same thing. Not even close.

This section of "Boundaries in Dating" is all about loneliness and our need to connect with other people who can support us, and how it's not healthy to try to meet that need solely through dating relationships. In contrast, purity culture says it's a need for God- your relationship with God must come first, and any other thing in your life that you "put before God" is a idol.

Take a look at this bit from "Boundaries in Dating":

How do you cure your aloneness without a dating relationship?

First, strengthen your relationship with God. Make him your first priority so that you are not trying to get God needs met by a relationship with a person.

Yep, so far this is pretty standard Christian advice. Heard it a million times.

Second, strengthen your relationships with safe, healthy Christians. Make sure that you are not trying to get your people needs met by a dating relationship, or by God. Yes, you need God. But you also need people.

WHAT? What? Christian book say what? There are needs that can't be met by God? WHAT IS THIS BLASPHEMYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

Okay but actually I agree with them. Well, actually I would word it differently- I agree that you need to have connections with people, and you can't get this need met just by sitting alone and reading the bible and doing those individual activities that evangelicals refer to when they talk about "working on your relationship with God." BUT we don't find God only in those personal, individual things. God is everywhere, the source of everything good. I fully believe that God's love is like sound waves- it can't exist in a vacuum. It needs a medium to travel through. You don't just believe some abstract doctrine about God's love- that's not enough. You experience God's love through the good things in life. Through friends. Through cats. Through pleasure. Through living with your awesome boyfriend.

So in a practical sense, I completely agree with the authors of "Boundaries in Dating" in this section here. (The difference seems to be only in how we define "getting needs met through God.") But I would never say we have other needs besides God, because that is a surefire way to guarantee that no evangelical will take seriously anything you say, ever again.

"Boundaries in Dating" talks about this feeling of "needing" a relationship in purely psychological terms. In church, I've always heard it discussed in purely spiritual terms. This is a huge difference- and the psychological approach is MUCH better.

In spiritual terms, the logic goes like this: Everyone has a need for God. God must be first. If there's something else in your life that's massively important to you- more important than God- then that's an idol and you're sinning.

But what exactly does it mean to believe that God is more important than ANYTHING else, ALL the time? Doesn't it mean that, if at any point you believe "I need this thing", then at that moment, that thing is more important to you than God? So that thing is an idol.

And really, this extends to any desire. You want something, you think "if I had this, my life would be so much better." Oh, so you're not perfectly content now, you think you need something else in order to have a better life? You can't just be content with God? Wow, that's an idol.

Because this line of reasoning is based on something so abstract and intangible- "you have to love God more than anything else"- there's nothing reality-based to anchor it so it doesn't go into that extreme where all desires are "idols."

Back in my most "devoted to God" days, I really believed that it was always wrong to imagine "if only I had this thing, then my life would be so much better." I thought in all circumstances, you have equal access to your "personal relationship with God", and nothing else matters. So you should always be 100% content. God is all you need.

Obviously, that's not true. Some life changes really do make everything way better. Getting a new job, moving to a new home, starting a relationship, getting out of a bad relationship, etc- all of these things can cause massive improvements in one's quality of life.

The problem with "if only I had this thing, then my life would be so much better" is when your expectations are unrealistic. If you find a really great romantic partner, you can start a relationship where you love and support each other, and that's wonderful and it will improve your happiness level. But that doesn't mean they can meet all your needs, you don't need to have friends, you should spend all your time with your romantic partner, you're never going to fight, etc.

The problem isn't having a desire, it's when you believe that thing is going to totally change your life in ways that, really, it won't. In that case, you probably have some other psychological issues to work out, but it's easier to just tell yourself that you can get this one thing to solve all your problems, rather than honestly face your issues.

But nobody ever talks about that in church. It's always "if you think that getting what you desire will finally make your life better, then that's wrong, that's an idol, nothing can meet that need except God."

Furthermore, this whole "if you think you need something besides God, that's an idol" makes it really easy for people who already have all their needs/desires met to judge those who don't. I've blogged before about how I always took it for granted that I would get a college education, and I judged my classmates who worked so hard doing homework and not coming to Christian events- they were making education an idol. And this can turn into ableism very fast. Oh, you need to take medication for chronic illness/ depression/ etc? You "need" it in order to live? Well if you were a better Christian, you would believe God is all you need.

But, surprisingly, "Boundaries in Dating" takes a completely different approach- a healthy approach. It's about the need to connect with people. This book does NOT say that if you think you need ANYTHING, then that's an idol and you're sinning. No, nothing like that at all. The word "idol" does not appear once in this chapter. Instead it says if you think you NEED a dating relationship, then it's probably because you're lonely, so you should focus more on your friendships and doing things you love, so you're more emotionally healthy and better able to evaluate potential romantic partners.

This is wonderful. And, of course, shocking.

Here's another interesting difference between "Boundaries in Dating" and purity culture. Check out this paragraph:

Have a full life of spiritual growth, personal growth, vocational growth, altruistic service, hobbies, intellectual growth, and the like. The active, growing life does not have time or inclination to be dependent on a date. The more you have a full life of relationship with God, service to others, and interesting stimulating activities, the less you will feel like you need a relationship in order to be whole.

This exact paragraph could appear in a purity culture book. But it would be about how, before God brings your predestined spouse into your life, you have to wait, and you should spend that time becoming a better person for your future spouse. You know, the whole "don't focus on finding the right person, focus on being the right person." Oh and also, here's how you should use your time as a single person to serve God. The point of having a full, active life while single is to serve God and your future spouse.

But in "Boundaries in Dating", that's not the point at all. It's about your own emotional health- helping you to have a happy life and not be lonely. So you won't be desperate for a relationship, and make bad decisions because of that desperation. The point is to help YOU.

So, mostly, this chapter is pretty great. Totally shocking to me, of course, and I'm still baffled about how this passes as a "Christian book." But this stuff about loneliness and the need for human connection makes a lot more sense than anything anyone's ever said about "idols."

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A blog series reviewing the book Boundaries in Dating: How Healthy Choices Grow Healthy Relationships (read the introduction post here)

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