Trans Theology on Binaries and Genesis 1

Photo taken at dusk, showing some buildings' silhouettes and red-tinted clouds. Image source.

This Advent, I'm supporting trans people financially and encouraging other cis people to do so too. And today I want to share some transgender Christian theology with you. ^_^

Here's an excerpt from Nonbinary gender and the diverse beauty of creation, by Austen Hartke:

Because the ancient Israelites tended to separate their world into binaries (take a look at the kashrut laws that govern acceptable and unacceptable foods, for instance), it’s not surprising that Genesis 1:27 breaks humans into two groups as well—male and female. But I’ve also concluded that this verse does not discredit other sexes or genders, any more than the verse about the separation of day from night rejects the existence of dawn and dusk, or the separation of land from sea rejects the existence of marshes and estuaries.

United Methodist deacon M Barclay, who identifies as neither male nor female but as nonbinary, puts it this way: “This chapter talks about night and day and land and water, but we have dusk and we have marshes. These verses don’t mean ‘there’s only land and water, and there’s nowhere where these two meet.’ These binaries aren’t meant to speak to all of reality—they invite us into thinking about everything between and beyond.”

Just as we call God the Alpha and the Omega, implying all things from first to last and in between, the author of Genesis 1 is using a poetic device to corral the infinite diversity of creation into categories we can easily understand.

...

When we attempt to box God’s creation in by looking to Genesis 1:27 and expecting every person on earth to fall into line, we’re asking the text the wrong question. If Genesis 1 was meant to describe the world as it is, the biblical authors would have needed a scroll hundreds of feet long. Thank goodness we don’t have to slog through verse after verse that reads like a biology textbook on taxonomy, naming creature after creature from the elephant down to the paramecium. Just as we wouldn’t expect astronomers to cram things like comets and black holes into the categories of sun or moon, we shouldn’t expect all humans to fit into the categories of male and female. Instead of asking the text to define and label all that is, we can ask God to speak into the space between the words, between biblical times and our time, and between categories we see as opposites.

(Go read the whole thing. It's good.)

I love this. Back when I was a good evangelical, I thought I knew everything about the bible. Turns out I only knew one narrow interpretation. It's so valuable to read theology from writers from diverse backgrounds. The image of God lives in all people, and if our theology only comes from white, straight, cis, abled, conservative Christian men, then we're missing a lot. (I've also been reading Hartke's book, Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians, which I highly recommend.)

Anyway, let's keep on supporting trans people by giving money to people in need on the #TransCrowdFund hashtag, or to Trans Lifeline.

Have a good Advent, everyone~

Blogaround

Doge and a wreath of Advent candles. Image has a bunch of text phrases like "very anticipate", "much candles", and "such Advent." Image source.

1. TMI: Vaginismus, Me, and Why We Need to Talk Abut Female Sexual Dysfunction (posted 2015)

2. Three decades later, men who survived the 'gay plague' speak out (posted 2017)

3. Dutch church holds 800-hour service to save family from deportation (posted November 29) I posted a link about this last week. As of this November 29 article, it's still going.

4. Dumbledore's Dark Twin: Aurelius Explained | Fantastic Beasts Theory (posted November 29) [content note: spoilers for "Fantastic Beasts 2: The Crimes of Grindelwald"]

Tipping, Fruit, and Jesus

An away team on "Star Trek: The Next Generation" beaming down. I'm thinking about that episode where Troi tells Riker to walk behind her because they're on a planet where women make the deals and so women walk in front of men. So they do that, as if that's all they need to do to fit in to a foreign culture and be unnoticed. LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL. Yeah for all the "seeking out new life and new civilizations" that happens in sci-fi, I don't think I've actually seen one that realistically portrays cultural differences and culture shock. Image source.

So I want to continue my blog series on the gospel of Matthew. The next section to read is Matthew 22:15-46. Go ahead and skim over it~

This passage is about Jesus answering tricky questions:

1. v 15-22: The Pharisees and Herodians ask if they should pay tax to Caesar
2. v 23-33: The Sadducees ask, in a thought experiment where a woman is married to a series of 7 different men who all die on her, whose wife she will be "at the resurrection"
3. v 34-40: A Pharisee "expert in the law" ask Jesus what the greatest commandment is
4. v 41-46: Jesus brings up the question "whose son is the Messiah"

So... I'm reading this, and having thoughts about it, but the problem is that I'm missing a lot of the cultural context here. What did it mean, back in the time of Jesus, in ancient Jewish culture, to ask tricky questions like this? Yes, I have reactions to these passages based on what it means in my own culture, but maybe none of that is valid. Maybe what I think isn't actually what is happening in this passage at all.

When I was growing up, I always heard people in church talk about how we need to be aware of the context and the culture the bible comes from. Sermons would include some facts about their culture, in order to help us understand the bible passages better. But now I realize that's not enough, wow that's nowhere near enough. There I was, in my comfortable church, surrounded by people who all had the same cultural background as me. My whole life was full of people from my own culture, who understood my culture, who treated this culture as so normal and obvious that it wasn't even worth mentioning. I read the bible from that context- of course I did, it was unavoidable.

You think 2 sentences of cultural background in each sermon is enough to change that? Ha. Basically I read the bible as if it was something familiar and easily-understandable to me as a modern American, unless the pastor mentioned that we needed some extra cultural background information to understand a specific passage. As if missing things because of cultural differences was the exception, rather than the rule.

The truth is, the bible is something completely foreign. And even though I know these little tidbits of information about their ancient culture, that's not enough for me to actually *get* it. I now see- because I've been living in China for 5 years- that you can't understand a foreign culture by hearing little soundbites about it from the comfort of your home. There are some things you can't *get* until you've actually lived them.

As an example, let's talk about tipping. In China there's no tipping. Furthermore, the sales tax is already part of the price on the menu/ price tag, so- get this- the amount of money it says on the price tag is literally the amount of money you pay. WOWWWWW. Like, totally blew my mind the first time I came to China. Like, I was used to going out to dinner with friends, and something on the menu is $10, and mentally calculating "okay add about $1 for tax, about $2 for tip"- in China it's not like that. The amount of money it says is actually the amount of money you pay. WILD.

Hendrix (my husband) is Chinese, and last time we were traveling in the US he was constantly confused about how to tip. He kept asking me for clarification on what he was supposed to do. Yes, he knew in the US we have to tip at restaurants, but wasn't confident he understood what that actually meant in a practical sense. It's one thing to know something because someone tells you information about it, it's a whole different thing to actually understand it.

I remember when I was an English teacher (in China), sometimes I would do classes about what restaurants are like in the US, and trying to explain to the students "you have to tip, well you don't 'have to', like nobody is going to chase you down and force you to, but if you don't tip then you are a bad person- so, you HAVE TO." The cultural nuances of this... you can't understand it from just sitting in a classroom and learning about it. Just like I now realize we can't understand what the biblical writers meant just by hearing a few facts about their culture.

Imagine a group of people completely unfamiliar with what tipping means in American culture were reading a story (set in the US) about somebody who didn't tip. An expert in their group explains to them that, in that culture, you need to tip or it's a pretty big slap in the face. The rest of the group members try to accept that fact and understand it and figure out its implications in the story, but they can't *really* understand it. They wonder why a tip would be such a big deal. How can it be expected if it's not part of the price written on the menu? If the issue is that the waiter's salary is too low, then isn't it the employer who's in the wrong? Why would anyone be mad at the customer- seems like it has nothing to do with them, right?

And even their resident American culture expert has never actually been to the US. They've never tipped. They've never had the experience of being handed a receipt and a pen at the end of a meal- they probably don't even know the "receipt and a pen" is the practical means by which the tipping actually happens.

And that's what it's like when we read the bible, and then a pastor comes and gives a little two-sentence explanation about some ancient middle-eastern cultural practice, to help us understand what we're reading. Yes, the information they give is true, but it's not enough for us to actually *get* it.

Here's another story, something that happened to me last week at work. One of my colleagues was like "we are ordering fruit, pick what kind of fruit you like" and handed me his phone, which had an app for a fruit delivery service. Apparently the company is buying us free fruit as a reward for some project? I don't know, it wasn't a project I was actually on, but I guess since my desk is right there in the same room, my colleagues decided to include me in the fruit-buying.

All right so I picked a little box with 6 kiwis in it. I was envisioning the situation as everybody picks one kind of fruit, and then we each take home whatever we ordered. I imagined that when the delivery came, somebody would look through it and sort out "okay this one is yours, this one is yours," and so on.

Ha. I was wrong.

So maybe a half hour later, our fruit delivery shows up. (Getting stuff delivered is MIND-BLOWINGLY CONVENIENT in China. Like, they have this DOWN.) And everyone is like, yayyy fruit, and people started gathering around. I kind of decided to wait a bit, not go over and claim my kiwis right away, wait and see what everyone else would do.

Because, oh. It turns out the intention was that we all share all the fruit.

There's a container with pineapple chunks already sliced up, and somebody picks up a chunk and starts eating it, and encourages me to take one too. There's a box with a LOT of oranges, and people are talking about "should we slice up all the oranges right now? maybe not all of them?" and somebody goes off and finds a knife and plate, and we end up with all these orange slices on a plate, and people start helping themselves and eating the orange slices. And other people are taking some of the fruit off somewhere to wash it and bring it back for us all to share.

Chinese people love fruit. As for me, well, uhh I feel like it's more trouble than it's worth, washing it, peeling it, spitting out the seeds, maybe it drips juice... I don't really want to get into all that at my desk at work. I'd rather do it at home where I have access to my own plates and knives and sink and dish soap.

For kiwis, I usually cut them in half, then use a spoon to scoop out the good part and eat it. There's a knife at the office but I don't think we have spoons? I don't know, when I picked kiwis I totally wasn't thinking in terms of "what fruit can we eat in the office?"

When people started cutting up the other fruit to eat it right there, I kind of figured that wasn't really going to work out for the kiwis and I would just end up taking them home. But I left the box of them next to the other fruit- if any of my colleagues devise a way to eat a kiwi at one's desk, they can have at it. I don't want to give the impression that I don't want to share and be part of the team. Nobody ended up eating a kiwi though, so I just took them home at the end of the day anyway.

Like, yeah I totally misunderstood the fruit. When he said "pick out what kind of fruit you want" I took it to mean "each person can order 1 box and take it home" but it really meant "we are ordering a bunch of fruit for us to share, what kind do you like?" It was very nice and friendly of them to include me in the fruit-ordering, and it would have been easy for me to accidentally come across as rude by treating the kiwis as "mine."

It's an example of how American culture is more individualistic and Chinese culture is more focused on the group. And also, Chinese people LOVE FRUIT. And I knew all that but I wasn't really thinking about it, which is why it took me by surprise when they started cutting up the fruit for all of us to share right then and there.

Which makes me wonder how many bible verses I'm also taking completely the wrong way.

Like, I read Matthew 22, about Jesus answering/avoiding tricky questions, and I think about politicians dodging questions from reporters. I think about a public figure issuing an "I'm sorry if you were offended" not-pology. I think about Christians pretending to be "welcoming" while hiding their anti-queer beliefs. Those are things I understand from my own culture- but who knows whether there are any similarities to what's actually going on here with Jesus?

What I'm trying to say is, I used to think I could basically understand the bible, and every now and then needed a bit of supplementary information, like "what is unleavened bread?" or "what is an Asherah pole?" But wow, I had it completely backwards. The bible was written thousands of years ago, in an ancient language- and there are even some words NOBODY understands now- in an ancient culture completely foreign to us modern readers. I believe we can understand the overarching themes, but for something with as many layers as "Jesus dodges the tricky questions the Pharisees are using to trap him"... I wouldn't even know where to start.

I don't want to say "well we have no hope of understanding the bible, let's just give up on it." I love the bible, but in a different way than I used to. I want to read and appreciate it and learn about it- and I now think the first step is to accept that it's something completely foreign and alien to us. Cultural differences are a BIG DEAL. They're not something you can really understand by reading a little bit about them while you're safely surrounded by your own culture.

-------------------

And one more thing: I want to give a shoutout to the Greatest Commandment, in verses 37-40, because I love this:

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Yeah. That.

-------------------

Related:
"The Author of Leviticus Would Have Been Cool With It"
Why on Earth Did I Ever Expect the Bible to be Anything Other Than Incredibly Weird? 
I Didn't Know I Had a Culture Until I Lost It

-------------------

This post is part of a series on the gospel of Matthew. 

Previous post: The Parable of the Wedding Banquet is Extremely WTF (Matthew 21:28 - 22:14)

Next post: On Not Being A Whitewashed Tomb (Matthew 23)

Click here to go to the beginning of the series.

Evangelicals Agree With What Chau Did (And It Makes Me Angry): Here Are The Receipts

Clip-art image of an island. Image source.

Last week I published This Is Exactly the Martyr Fairy Tale We Aspired To, about John Allen Chau, a missionary who was killed by the island tribe he was trying to "reach." I wrote:

Chau is going to be seen as a hero and a role model. There is absolutely no part of this story that will come across as a cautionary tale for evangelicals, nothing that will serve as a warning that other people should NOT do what he did. It's perfect, and that scares me.

Right now, I'm so freaking angry about being proven right.

Well, the evangelical blogosphere got right to work, publishing posts about how Chau was doing a good thing and he just loved Jesus so much and loved the Sentinelese people so much, etc. All of which COMPLETELY MISS THE POINT, which is THEY DO NOT WANT CONTACT WITH THE OUTSIDE WORLD. LEAVE THEM THE **** ALONE. Evangelical Christianity doesn't understand the concepts of boundaries and consent. They think if a missionary *feels* loving toward a group of people, and works hard for years to prepare to live among them, that gives him the right to go and do it whether that group of people likes it or not.

Receipts, receipts, receipts, I got your receipts right here. Let's start with this podcast from Christianity Today, What John Allen Chau’s Missions Agency Wants You to Know. It's an interview with Mary Ho, the international executive leader of All Nations, which is the missions agency Chau worked with. Ho talks about how Chau prepared for years for his trip to North Sentinel Island:

He first contacted [All Nations] about two years ago, and he's a very interesting young man, very focused. Since he was about 18 years old, I believe, he took a mission trip. And on that mission trip, he really felt a call to be a missionary. And around that time, he started researching on the different people groups and he came across the North Sentinelese people. He really felt that this was his life call. That his life call was to take the love and the goodness of Jesus Christ to the North Sentinelese. Since then, every single decision he has made has been to thoroughly prepare himself for this life call, and to prepare him to love and care for the people well. As you pointed out earlier, All Nations missionary John Chau, he graduated from Oral Roberts University. He majored in sports medicine, in health, in exercise science. Later he got trained as a wilderness EMT, worked at a national park, got trained in linguistics by SIL, which is probably just about the best place to get trained in linguistics. He became acquainted with all the writings on cultural anthropology. So, this young man, he was intent on fully equipping himself, and I think he knew what his life purpose was about.

She talks about how All Nations requires their missionaries to go through training, and even sometimes advises someone not to go if they don't believe that person is prepared enough. She says Chau knew about the risks of introducing diseases to the Sentinelese, so he was vaccinated and he quarantined himself for several days before he went to the island.

Well whoop dee doo. I guess the point is, if you assume Chau was just some random guy who woke up one morning and decided to illegally go to North Sentinel Island, you would be wrong. Instead, he worked hard for years to prepare to illegally go to North Sentinel Island. We are supposed to be like "ah, I see, that makes it okay."

Like if you work hard enough, you can earn the right to violate other people's boundaries. What? No, reality does not work that way. The Sentinelese have made it clear they do not want outside people on their island. And that should be the end of the discussion. Their island, their choice.

Oh but he worked hard for yearssssssss! Maybe 5 or 10 years! Well guess what, the Sentinelese have worked hard for thousands of years living on their own. The idea that some American gets to override that because he worked so hard and really really wants it and has good intentions- no. See this is what I mean when I say evangelical Christians don't know what boundaries are.

Ed Stetzer, dean of the School of Mission, Ministry and Leadership at Wheaton College, also seems to think that Chau's preparedness somehow completely changes the story. Here's Stetzer's article for the Washington Post: Slain missionary John Chau prepared much more than we thought, but are missionaries still fools? (I highly recommend Chris Stroop's "translation" of Stetzer's evangelicalese into English. For example: "I am having to do way too much damage control for evangelicals this year. Please clap.") Stetzer writes:

While both Christians and non-Christians have raised profound questions about the biblical and ethical appropriateness of pushing into places where you’re not wanted, much criticism of Chau has focused on what appeared to be his lack of preparation.

Umm. Did it though? Personally, because I have been part of that Christian missions culture, from the moment I heard about Chau I assumed he had some kind of backstory about how he was "called by God" and "loved" the Sentinelese people, and spent years telling all his American Christian friends about how obsessed he was with "reaching" people "for the gospel", and had a well-thought-out plan about how he wanted this whole thing to go, and prayed over every single part of his mission efforts, and so on and so on. People don't do stuff like this because they're "crazy" in some weird, impossible-to-understand way. No, people do stuff like this because they live in a culture that sees it as good. They pray about it and think about it logically, and because they start with certain assumptions about how the world works, they end up quite reasonably coming to these kinds of conclusions.

When I say "assumptions about how the world works" I mean things like "all non-Christians are living sad, meaningless lives" and "people who don't believe in Jesus go to hell" and "God calls us to take risks and make sacrifices, but it is SO WORTH IT, even if we die."

Stetzer then says the real question is about the concept of missions itself. Obviously, he is in favor of it. He says:

For some, the very idea of trying to convert others to a certain faith and taking any risk to do so is simply abhorrent. But Christians worldwide genuinely believe that people who hear and respond to the gospel are better off when they do.

In other words, when he's writing for a "secular" audience, he does this "oh but you gotta understand, we REALLY DO think people are in danger of going to hell, and we REALLY DO believe we are helping them by evangelizing, so you can't criticize us" routine. (He made the same argument in a post for CNN back in 2017.) And, ughhhhhh. UGHHHH. Okay, the reason this makes me mad is because HE'S RIGHT. Like if you really do believe that non-Christians go to hell, and you really love them and want to save them, then logically, you should become a manipulative creep that puts on a show of being kind and loving in order to coerce people into changing religions. And that's how I used to live when I was an evangelical.

Basically, Stetzer is right about that, and therefore we don't really have any common ground to work from, if I were trying to convince him that it's, you know, *bad* to be a manipulative creep who coerces people into changing religion. (He also wrote an article for Christianity Today, elaborating on this point. "I actually believe what is offensive to many today— I really believe that the world needs Jesus. And, I am OK that you think me a fool for believing that." All right, what do I even say to that... I got nothin'.)

But he seems to think non-Christian readers will be like "ohhhh, okay, I didn't realize that, okay that totally excuses this kind of Christian behavior, so I will not criticize them." HAHAHAHAHA yeah right. My feeling is more along the lines of "we can't reason with these jerks, so let's not even try."

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Belief in hell completely ruins anything good about Christianity. (Note: I am a Christian who does NOT believe in hell.)

Stetzer then goes on to talk about 2 things he thinks Chau should have done differently. To me, this reads as "I totally agree with what Chau did, but people won't like it if I say that, so I'm going to pretend to criticize a few small aspects so that I end up looking 'reasonable.'" Like, to me, neither of these read as real objections.

The first so-called objection is that Chau should have gone with a group, rather than alone. Just like Jesus sent the disciples two-by-two. Stetzer is acting like this is some well-known, universal, biblical command. Ha, watch this, I can come up with some biblical-sounding arguments for why it's totally legit to go alone. Hmm, remember the bible story about Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch? God told Philip to go do missions alone, so that's what he did. Maybe God told Chau to go to North Sentinel Island alone. Also, Chau probably had a lot of Christian friends back home praying for him. Maybe they supported him financially, and he sent out email updates about how his missions work was going. (I haven't heard anything about that in any of the news stories, but I will be 0% surprised if it's true.) See, he wasn't *really* alone. And also, for practical reasons, he is less of a threat to the Sentinelese people (in terms of spreading disease, and also in terms of how they perceive him) if he's just 1 person, rather than 2 people or a group.

I just find it bizarre how Stetzer seems to be claiming "see, Chau's problem was that he went there alone, when every missionary KNOWS you should NEVER do that." Ha. Yeah right. Yes, I am sure that missionaries believe it's generally better to go with other missionaries, rather than alone, but hey, if that's what God told you to do... well maybe it's not ideal but you gotta do it anyway, for the sake of the gospel.

As for Stetzer's second pretend-criticism:

Also, in regard to people’s choices, Jesus makes it quite clear in Mark 6:11, saying, “And if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, leave that place.” It appears that Chau returned to North Sentinel even after being shot at with arrows, one of which, according to his journal, stuck in his Bible.

Well I would laugh out loud if this whole situation wasn't so sad.

Like, oh, Christians are supposed to give up and go home if their evangelism targets aren't interested in being evangelized? SINCE WHEN? This is very much NOT what I was taught in church.

I was taught if people weren't interested in hearing the "gospel", that just meant it was "harder", that it was more of a "challenge"- not that you should leave them alone and stop trying. You shouldn't give up- you should "pray for God to soften their hearts" and "look for opportunities to start spiritual conversations."

Also, I would like to know why the Indian government's decision to stop trying to contact the Sentinelese, after decades of trying to send them gifts every now and then, and being rejected over and over, is somehow NOT enough of a sign that Chau was not "welcome." Apparently, it took Chau actually going there and getting shot at on his first attempt- that's when he should have known he was "not welcome" and he should leave, according to Stetzer. Well that's rich. Kind of seems like Stetzer is inventing rules after-the-fact and then claiming that CLEARLY this is what JESUS SAID and so THAT'S where Chau went wrong.

But do you want to see THE WORST article about Chau? It's this one, from Desiring God, and oh it is bad: What God Might Do with Satan’s Arrows (written by Garrett Kell).

Kell seems to completely buy into the whole "God totally called Chau to go share the gospel with these sad lost people" nonsense. But it's worse than that:

Questions have emerged about John Chau’s zeal, training, prudence, and legacy. But another even more important question sits under the surface of such a tragedy: What is God doing in all of this?

How is God working to reveal his glory to the Sentinelese people? Could he bring them forgiveness for their murder and freedom from their own pain? How will he bring healing to the heartbreak of the Chau family? Could our God be using injustice, arrows, and a fallen missionary to make his reconciling grace known to the entire world?

What? NO, no no no nonono. "What is God doing in all of this" oh god no. As if, just because someone got killed while "obeying God's call", that means there's some huge grand purpose to it, oh this is bad, this is bad. Okay, the Sentinelese DO NOT WANT contact with the outside world. LEAVE THEM THE **** ALONE. But Kell sees them as nothing more than characters in his imagined story about "God's glory" and "the gospel"; it doesn't matter what they want.

(Also, Kell takes the Lord's name in vain by assuming that God will side with him rather than with the Sentinelese people.)

Then Kell tells the story of John Williams and James Harris, missionaries who were killed by the people of an island called Erromango. Apparently, this is a beautiful story with a happy ending because years later, other missionaries came and succeeded in getting the islanders to become Christians, and then there was a big ceremony where the islanders apologized to Williams's descendants, and isn't that just great. On Twitter, Jesse T. Reese said "This article is an unbelievable piece of #ChristianAltFacts propaganda that sanctifies genocide, and it only gets worse if you dig a little" and wrote a thread about how ACTUALLY missionaries have caused a lot of harm to the people of Erromango. Go read it.

Oh, but Kell's article gets even worse:

We cannot know for sure what God is doing. But might he be stoking the hearts of his church with a fresh fire to reach the unreached peoples of the world? Could God be using the death of John Chau to stir the souls of more missionaries to take the good news of Jesus to the Sentinelese people? Could he be stirring you? Is it possible that God might be working to bring them the message of forgiveness for killing the missionary as well as healing from the injustice done to them generations ago? Could God be plotting a reunion of forgiveness in months, years, even centuries from now that will magnify his mercies before the world? Can you picture that moving ceremony on the shores of North Sentinel Island?

John Piper’s call from five years ago in the wake of another martyred missionary is just as relevant today: “I call thousands of you to take [their] place. Let the replacements flood the world. We do not seek death. We seek the everlasting joy of the world — including our enemies.”

God can spark a movement from a martyrdom. He’s done it before. Let’s pray he’s doing it again.

HOLY CRAP. NO. LEAVE THEM THE **** ALONE.

No. NO NO NO NO NO. That is the WORST possible outcome of this: that more missionaries would be inspired to go and barge in on the Sentinelese people. Kell waxes poetic about how wonderful it will be when someday there is reconciliation between Christian missionaries and the people who killed Chau- SEE, THIS IS WHAT I MEAN WHEN I SAY EVANGELICALS DON'T BELIEVE IN CONSENT. The Sentinelese have made it clear they DO NOT WANT this fantasy that Kell is imagining. But does he care what they want? Ha. Nope.

(See also: White Christian saviorism is a helluva drug, by seelolago.)

Also, remember a minute ago Ed Stetzer was claiming that JESUS CLEARLY SAID you should leave people alone if they make it clear they don't want to hear your "gospel", and then I said hahaha nope that is EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of what I was taught in church, but good try Ed Stetzer? See this is what I mean. Garrett Kell very much does NOT believe Christians should just give up and go home because the Sentinelese do not "welcome" them. He thinks that just makes it a better story, a more amazing victory when the missionaries finally succeed, some time in the future. If they kill one missionary, well that means we/God should respond by sending "thousands of you to take their place." The Sentinelese are just playing hard-to-get, as it were.

Ughhhhhhh. This is very not okay. Just LEAVE THEM ALONE. I've never been so angry about being proven right. I knew that Christians of the "unsaved people go to hell" persuasion would love this story and see Chau as a great role model driven by love for God and love for people. Those of us who live in reality see that historically, this kind of missions has done a lot of harm to indigenous people. But evangelicals imagine that they are the heroes of some grand story that God is writing, a myth that says hard work earns them the right to override other people's consent, and actually consent doesn't even matter in the first place- what really matters is that in the end, more people become Christians.

----------------------

Related:
This Is Exactly the Martyr Fairy Tale We Aspired To 
Because of an Idea
Runaway Radical: The Stories You Can't Tell In Church

This Advent, Let's Give Money To Trans People

Transgender pride flag. Image source.

For Advent this year, I've decided to give money through #TransCrowdFund. This is a hashtag that trans people use on twitter when posting their fundraising needs. Go over there and pick one and donate~

J. Skylar, the creator of the hashtag, said this about the economic violence that trans people face:

Some trans people face economic violence in the form of employment discrimination. Others face housing discrimination. Numerous trans people suffer health care discrimination and many trans people face these injustices simultaneously. The “Fight For $15” doesn’t mean much to a trans person who can’t find employment or is terminated without legal recourse. Maintaining a full-time job isn’t exactly easy if you’re homeless due to housing discrimination. Many trans people have to rebuild their entire lives after coming out as trans, which can include losing financial assets after a divorce or leaving the family home. Trans people of color run a higher risk of facing these issues than our white counterparts. Many trans people, especially trans women of color, are dependent on sex work for survival, which inherently runs the risk of racial profiling, incarceration, and legal fees. Trans people who make sex work their career of choice face these hurdles as well.

Additionally, cis people tend to assume trans people have only themselves to care for, but many trans people are financially responsible for children and extended family. As you can see, there is a never-ending myriad of ways trans people face economic violence.

Every week during Advent, I'm going to look through the #TransCrowdFund hashtag and pick a few to donate to. If you have money to give, you can do it too~

If you don't like the idea of giving money directly to strangers on the internet, you can donate to Trans Lifeline. Or any of the other organizations mentioned in this article: How to Help Transgender People Fight the Trump Administration's New Policy Memo.

Personally, I have questions about the effectiveness of giving money to individual people rather than organizations- seems like just a temporary solution; it won't change the system that creates these problems in the first place. And I have thoughts about my own tendency, when looking through the various posts on this hashtag, to judge who is "really" in need. Related to that, it's quite messed-up that people are required to perform their neediness for strangers on the internet in order to get enough money to survive.

But for now I've decided to do this and think of it as a Christmas gift. We can help a few individual people with their immediate needs right now. Let's do it~

--------------------

Related:
Dear Christians: Here's how to ACTUALLY love transgender people (A post with lots of links to information about trans people and the discrimination they face)

Blogaround

Baby goat. Image source.

1. Cold Reading, and the Christians Who Told Me All the Things I NEVER Did (posted November 13) "I had a strong reputation for spouting remarkably-accurate cold readings of people. None of us called it that, of course. We called it prophecy."

2. Why Most of America Is Terrible at Making Biscuits (posted November 22) "If you’re on the West Coast, forget it. Displaced southern bakers have been known to stuff a bag in their suitcases when visiting home. You can order the flour for delivery on Amazon, but it’ll cost you anywhere from $10 to $15 for a bag, many times the in-store retail price of around $2.50." Ha this reminds me of living in China and having SO MUCH TROUBLE finding "normal" things like vanilla extract or a meat thermometer.

3. The obsession with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s finances only amplifies her power (posted November 21) "After her win in November, Ocasio-Cortez said she couldn’t pay for a Washington, DC apartment until her congressional salary begins in January."

4. Science Stopped Believing in Porn Addiction, You Should Too (posted August 21) "In fact, they cite numerous studies showing that even feeling like you struggle to control your porn use doesn’t actually predict more porn use. What that means is that the people who report great anguish over controlling their porn use aren’t actually using more porn, they just feel worse about it."

5. 3 Children’s Books about Thanksgiving from Native Perspectives (posted 2017) Cool!

6. Why You Should NOT Choose Operation Christmas Child (posted November 26) Good post- and the point about kids in other cultures literally not knowing how to play with some of the toys blew my mind. I can't believe I never thought about that before. Simple little objects that are so familiar to us and immediately bring up feelings of childhood nostalgia may be completely unknown to people in other cultures.

I'm in China, and recently somebody from the US visited the company where I work and brought candy from the US for everyone. There was a big pile of mini Reese's cups. I wasn't even aware of the steps my mind went through to identify them as Reese's cups- little foil-wrapped things in that certain shape, obviously they are Reese's cups, I didn't even need to think. But then some of my Chinese colleagues came and were looking at them curiously, absolutely no idea what kind of candy they were. I said "it's chocolate and peanut butter" and they were like "ohhhhhhhhhhhh" like this is completely new information for them.

Same thing must happen when kids get their Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes, with little toys we think are so normal that of course everyone understands how to play with them and no explanation is needed. I never realized that before. Back when I lived in the US, I couldn't *really* understand what cultural differences were.

And another thing: Chinese culture doesn't celebrate Christmas. The concept of a huge gift-giving holiday just completely DOES NOT EXIST in Chinese culture. So if Operation Christmas Child is running ads about "isn't it SAD how these kids are too poor to have Christmas gifts", well, no, maybe it's not sad. Maybe they don't feel bad about not having Christmas gifts because there was never any cultural expectation that such things should even exist.

7. Party Rock Anthem = Trading My Sorrows Wow what a fun video!



8. The kingdom of heaven is like: A Dutch church has been conducting religious services for 27 days to protect a refugee family (posted November 21)

9. Unheard, Unimportant, and Untreated: Why We Need to Talk About Vaginismus (posted November 22) "I went to several doctors for help with my problem, feeling stupid, and got palmed off with a number of excuses: that it was normal for first-time penetration to be painful for people with vaginas, that I was probably just inserting the tampon wrong. That the fact that it felt like someone was trying to prop me open with a brick was normal, somehow."

10. The COMPLETE Pixar Theory (posted October 30) Personally, I don't believe in the Pixar theory, but I LOVE it because this is EXACTLY how apologetics works. Take a bunch of different works, produced for different reasons over a long period of time, claim that all of them are happening in the same universe and telling one giant logically-consistent story, spend tons of time and energy making up convoluted explanations for the contradictions, absolutely refuse to abandon your theory no matter what new evidence comes out, and end up with a bizarre understanding of the material that the creators certainly never intended... all the while believing you understand it better than anyone else because you got there by treating every single tiny detail as irrefutable fact.

So I Watched Josh Harris's Documentary

A sheep outside the fence looks at the group of sheep inside the fence. Image source.

Hi everyone! So, if you've been following news about Joshua Harris, author of "I Kissed Dating Goodbye," you have probably heard that he has apologized for the harm done by his book and has stopped publishing it. Also, he's been "on a journey" to learn about where he went wrong and how his book affected people, and he has made a documentary about it.

I watched his documentary, "I Survived I Kissed Dating Goodbye." On the one hand, I feel like I should blog about it because I'm known for being an ex-purity-culture blogger, but on the other hand, like... I'm over it. So Harris has figured out it's bad that teenagers are terrified of having crushes, and Christian young people won't ask someone out because a first date is basically the same as getting engaged. He realizes that he was wrong to say that dating is always bad. But he still believes unmarried sex is a sin, and he still believes everyone is supposed to be heterosexual. There, I basically just summed up the whole documentary. You don't need to watch it.

Ah geez, should I say more? I'm like, really over it, you guys. I really don't care what Joshua Harris's opinion is about my sex life and my queerness. I'm glad I'm no longer part of a Christian culture that holds him up as a role model. This documentary might actually be really good and helpful for people who buy into "I Kissed Dating Goodbye" ideology. Help them start to take their first steps out of that. But I'm not there any more, and I can't seem to summon up the energy to re-imagine what that's like.

It feels so good to be free from those restrictions. I'm free from the idea that sex before marriage is a sin, and that opens up whole new worlds to explore, learning about myself and my own desires. I'm free from the belief that everybody is only attracted to the "opposite" gender, and only in specific ways, sexual attraction and romantic attraction that connect with the concepts of love and commitment in some correct, God-given, one-size-fits-all way. Leave all that behind, and there's a whole big beautiful rainbow world out here. But Harris is over there discussing the nuances of what specific location he now occupies inside the don't-have-sex-til-straight-marriage fence, and I just... I'm over it.

Maybe I'll just leave a link here, to something else I wrote, and that'll be the final word from Perfect Number: I’m Really Really REALLY Glad I Had Sex Before Marriage. Like, that's the nail in the coffin. There's no more debate about "is premarital sex a sin" for me after this. After years of being completely terrified of sex, I finally had sex, before I got married, and it was extremely GOOD for my mental health. And wow I am SO GLAD I did not "wait" another 2-ish years for my wedding night, only to find out actually sex is fine and not a big deal of life-changing magnitude, and all this time I had been scared for nothing. Oh and also, surprise, I'm asexual.

I'll just share one quote from Harris's documentary, because it perfectly encapsulates how he still wants people to be stuck in this limited space where you're only allowed to be heterosexual. At timestamp 1:01:40, Harris says:

I was really challenged because [author Debra Hirsch is] admitting things will be messy, but don't be so afraid of the messiness that you don't press into relationship and press into community and acknowledge that you're a sexual creature and you have desires and longings. And you're interacting with men and women, and sometimes you're a man or a woman and you have same-sex attraction, and so you have to honestly deal with that before God and deal with that in community. And it's that messiness in which you're actually going to grow.

Wow amazing how he managed to pack it into one little soundbite. "you're a sexual creature"- in other words, you can't be asexual. "sometimes... you have same-sex attraction, and so you have to honestly deal with that before God"- in other words, you can't be LGB. Like, now that I'm no longer in this ideology, I'm astonished at how bizarre it is. These people really believe everyone occupies one little tiny section of the Kinsey scale- you have to have sexual attraction, but only toward the correct gender.

(Also, guess what? Not everybody is "a man or a woman." Nonbinary people exist!)

And on top of that, supposedly the point he's trying to make is that it's okay if things are "messy." Yeah, I guess what he means is you can be "messy" as long as you stay inside one little box.

I can't be bothered with refuting this ideology any more. It just feels so old and tired and unnecessarily restrictive. Come live in the big queer world where you get to have emotions and desires. Learn about yourself and your body and how to handle your feelings in a healthy way.

----------------------

Related: 
I’m Really Really REALLY Glad I Had Sex Before Marriage
Miss me with your "we are all sexually broken" hot takes. I'm asexual.
Wishing the Best to Josh Harris and His Ex

This Is Exactly the Martyr Fairy Tale We Aspired To

Aerial photo of North Sentinel Island. Image source.

In the Christian culture I was part of in college, there were 2 types of people:

1. Those who were totally willing to be "martyrs"- to die for Jesus if that's what Jesus wanted. Willing, and maybe even excited about the possibility.
2. Those who were NOT willing to "follow the call" and die if that's what God wanted, and they felt guilty about that.

Feeling confident in one's unwillingness to die for Jesus was not an option. We couldn't "count the cost" and then decide "no."

Last week, I read the news about John Allen Chau, an American missionary who was killed while trying to "bring the gospel" to an isolated tribe off the coast of India. It's sad, it's terrible, and everything about it feels so familiar to me, as an ex-evangelical. Familiar, but also not. Familiar because what Chau did was exactly what we were encouraged to do, when the church taught us about missions. But not familiar, because I don't know anyone who actually literally went and died like that. It feels surreal and jarring and heartbreaking to see that ideology collide with reality like this.

Every detail I read about this feels like "yep, that rings true with my experience of Christian missions ideology" but also I cringe so hard seeing how completely wrong and destructive the outcome is when that ideology is applied to the actual real world.

So... Chau was killed by Sentinelese people- who are they? All right, a bit of history: This is a group of people completely isolated from the rest of the world. They live on an island that is part of India. Historically, when people on other islands in that area have been visited by outsiders, it hasn't gone well. Survival International says, "The tribe have made it clear that they do not want contact. It is a wise choice. Neighboring tribes were wiped out after the British colonized their islands, and they lack immunity to common diseases like flu or measles, which would decimate their population." Decades ago, the Indian government used to periodically send gifts and attempt to contact them, but they stopped because the Sentinelese seem fine on their own and don't want to be contacted.

It's an uncontacted tribe, that doesn't want anything to do with the rest of the world, but do you think that matters in American evangelical missions ideology? HA. Hahaha. No. Nope, evangelicals know what everybody else needs. Evangelicals know that if a group of people have never heard about Jesus, well that's a PROBLEM that needs to be SOLVED.

It just makes me sick, remembering how we took it for granted back then... the idea that it's so SAD that people somewhere far away have never "heard the gospel" and somebody needs to go tell them. Oh god, I feel disgusting thinking about it... the term "unreached people group." Uh, yeah let me define "unreached people group." So the idea is that people typically only have close interactions with other members of their own culture, their own "people group." So it's not necessarily useful to talk about being a missionary to a certain place, because you might go to a place and only interact with people from one certain subculture- one "people group"- and even if people from that group "get saved" that doesn't necessarily help the other "people groups" living in that area because they aren't likely to interact closely enough that "the gospel" would be transmitted from members of one group to another.

Take a look at what Chau wrote: "I DON'T WANT TO DIE. Would it be wiser to leave and let someone else to continue. No I don't think so." He's thinking along these exact lines. Somebody needs to "reach" the Sentinelese people. He's willing to do it, even if it costs him his life. This is exactly what I was taught in church.

The Joshua Project is a Christian missions group that keeps track of all the "people groups" in the world, and the "progress" that has been made with "reaching" each group with "the gospel." (This isn't directly connected to Chau's story; I have no idea if he was influenced by the Joshua Project or not. I am talking about it here to show how normal this way of thinking is for American evangelical Christians.) Oh god, it's gross, it's so gross. Using terminology like "progress" to indicate what percentage of each "people group" are evangelical Christians. "Progress"- as if changing the religious beliefs of strangers around the world is a project we are working on, an objectively good goal to work toward. Ewww. Actually, the Joshua Project has this phrase written right across the top of their website: "Bringing definition to the unfinished task." See that? "The unfinished task", ie, making sure every person in the world has an opportunity to hear about Jesus, which is realistically only going to happen if a good enough percentage of each people group is evangelical. (I love the trying-to-be-subtle language on the Joshua Project website, basically saying that real Christians are evangelical- even if a large percentage of the population identifies as Christian, well, that doesn't necessarily count. BARF.)

The Joshua Project... yep, back when I was a good evangelical, I had heard of them, and definitely believed they were doing a good thing. I remember I was at a Christian conference and representatives from the Joshua Project were giving out fliers with little descriptions of specific "unreached people groups", to prompt us to pray for them every day. Look at their website- there's even an app you can get that will tell you a different "unreached people group" to pray for every day. Predatory Christian-supremacist bullshit. Grossssssss.

Take a look at the Joshua Project's page about the Sentinelese. Look at this disgusting bit:

What Are Their Needs?
Sentinelese people need to know that Creator God exists, and that He loves them and paid the price for their sins.

They need basic medical care.

Prayer Points
* Pray that the Indian Government will allow Christians to earn the trust of the Sentinelese people, and that they will be permitted to live among them.
* Pray that God will open doors to Sentinelese people to receive the gospel message.

I am angry, because this is crap. "Sentinelese people need to know that Creator God exists-" no, stop right there. Who the **** are you, person writing this page. How can you claim you know what they need? They do not need our help, they do not want our help, leave them the **** alone.

Furthermore, it is DISGUSTING to pray that God would violate these people's wishes. What is this crap- pray that the Indian government would allow Christians to go live among them. Pray that God would force people to do things they don't want to do. Because CLEARLY God agrees with us- God's going to side with us, American Christians, and do what we want instead of what the Sentinelese want.

When ex-evangelicals tell you that in church we never learned about consent and boundaries, this is the kind of shit we're talking about.

Yeah, I used to participate in that. I used to pray that God would manipulate people into changing religions. Gross.

I remember back then, sometimes we would express concern over how "arrogant" we seemed, like we were just barging into other people's personal lives and telling them they had to change. We felt a little weird about that, like it wasn't right. But... we believed in hell. We believed that everyone who didn't believe in Jesus was going to hell. (Maybe if someone has really never heard of Jesus they might get a free pass, maybe, but let's not bet on it.) So yes, I understood that I might come across as arrogant for my belief that I knew the correct things that everyone else needed to believe, but... if it's the truth, if I REALLY DO know the correct things that everyone else needs to believe... or else they go to hell, well... then I'm not wrong to barge into people's personal lives and tell them what to do.

And we called that "love."

In an Instagram post from Chau's family after his death, they wrote that he "had nothing but love for the Sentinelese people." I believe it... or rather, I believe he "loved" them in the way that Christians "love" their evangelism targets. The way Christians talk about "having a heart for [whatever place]." Seriously, this is language that missionaries (including kids who just go on short-term mission trips) use- they "have a heart for Japan" or "have a heart for Africa" or whatever. It means they see that place as needing help, and they love those people so much that they simply must go and help them.

For what it's worth, I very much rejected this kind of language back when I went on a mission trip to China and then ended up obsessed with it and wanting nothing more than to move there. (Ahem, here. I live in China now.) I did NOT say "I have a heart for China." I was evangelical, and people all around me used that language, it was the normal thing that you say about Christians who travel to non-western countries, but to me it always felt objectifying. Viewing a country with one billion people as if it's some kind of little hobby of mine, some special interest I have... eww, nope, I never liked that.

Chau "loved" the Sentinelese people... but how can you love someone you've never met or communicated with at all? If they don't want you to be there, but you go there anyway... how is that "love"? No, he "loved" them in the sense that he really believed they were in danger of going to hell because they didn't believe in Jesus, and he wanted to help them escape that fate. But it wasn't love in any sense that applies to the actual real world.

Over here in the actual real world, it's dangerous for isolated island people to come into contact with outsiders. Because of disease. But does that matter, in this evangelical missions ideology? Ha, do you even have to ask? No, of course it doesn't matter. If God "calls" you to go to some certain place, if God "gives you a heart for" that place, then you just go. You don't worry about those details, silly little details like diseases which have, historically, wiped out significant proportions of island societies. God will handle that. God will make sure that doesn't happen.

I'm serious, that's what I really believed back then. That's what Christians taught me. God might call you to do something risky. God might call you to do something that "the world" will think is a bad idea. But if God called you, then you have to do it. There were stories told in church, of people being told by God to do all sorts of things that seemed doomed to fail, but they just obeyed God and had amazing success and everything was great. That's what faith is, they said- doing stuff that God tells you to do, even if by all accounts it seems like a really bad idea. That's what Christians are supposed to do.

Another extremely familiar part of Chau's story is this, a statement from Dependra Pathak, director general of police of the Andaman and Nicobar islands:

"We refuse to call him a tourist. Yes, he came on a tourist visa but he came with a specific purpose to preach on a prohibited island," Pathak said.

Ah yes, the missionary on a tourist visa. That's the oldest trick in the book. When you go on a mission trip and you apply for your visa, you don't tell them the purpose of your trip is missions. You say you're a tourist, or whatever. When I came to China on a short-term mission trip, years ago, I was on a tourist visa. My whole group was. We made sure to never ever use Christian language in public, so that if we were being watched in China they wouldn't know we were there on a mission trip. Even in our emails, we avoided certain words- instead of "pray", we said "talk to Dad."

I've heard of long-term missionaries in China playing the tourist-visa game. They get a multiple-entry tourist visa, which means you can enter China as many times as you want, but each time you can only stay 90 days. So they live in China long-term, but they make sure that once every 90 days they go down to Hong Kong for the weekend. (Easiest way to do something that will count as "leaving the country.") That's how the game is played.

Oldest trick in the book.

Does it matter to Christians that it's sort of dishonest to hide one's real purpose in entering the country? LOLLLLL nope of course it doesn't matter. We are saving people from hell! God told us to come here! So what if some *earthly* government has *rules* against what we're doing? We follow God's rules instead.

Speaking of governments and rules: it is illegal to go within 5 nautical miles of North Sentinel Island, where the Sentinelese live. Am I shocked that Chau was willing to break the law in order to "bring the gospel to them"? Ha. Silly little things like laws- nope, Christian missionaries don't have to follow those. Obeying God is more important, no question about that. Like, of course it's a risk, of course we don't want to get arrested, but if you're a good enough Christian, then you're willing to take that risk for God.

Seven local Indian people who helped Chau get a boat and get to the island have been arrested, because yes, what they did was illegal. See, over here in the real world, breaking the law is a very serious thing and people get arrested and it's not pretty. I don't know if Chau thought about how his actions would affect them. But I can easily imagine a Christian believing that God's "mission" was more important, so it's okay to get other people to help you break the law.

You know what else isn't glamorous, here in the real world? Death. See back then, in church, Christians talked about dying for God like it was so cool. Obviously we don't want to die, but those stories about martyrs amazed us. Those people were the best Christians. Obeying God so much that they even died for it.

When I was at Urbana (InterVarsity's huge student missions conference), there was a speaker who told us it was worth it to die because of obedience to God's "call." I wrote about this in a post last year:

I remember one speaker at Urbana who talked about how her husband was murdered while working as a missionary in the Middle East. And she said even though it's very tragic that he lost his life, it would have been even worse if he hadn't obeyed God's call and hadn't become a missionary. He was living according to God's amazing plan for his life, and that's better than any alternative.

And we all nodded along and "amen"ed and wished we could be courageous enough to die for God. I didn't even question it- I totally believed her claim that it's better to die while obeying God's call than to live a long life and miss out on God's plan for your life. Thinking about this now, I feel sick. I can't believe I have to say this, but: Death is bad. Death is serious. It's not something we should just casually throw around, or aspire to... but oh god, we did aspire to it, back then. We wanted to be martyrs. (Well, we either wanted to be martyrs, or we felt guilty for not wanting to...)

This is a tragedy, and I really feel bad for Chau. And disgusted at the Christian missions ideology that caused this. It's not glamorous to suffer and die "for God." It's just ... heartbreaking.

What really bothers me is how perfect Chau's story is, from an evangelical perspective. This is the perfect fairy-tale martyr story. We all know that it's more godly to be a missionary than just a "regular" Christian, and being a missionary to an unreached people group is even better. And wow, the Sentinelese people are basically as "unreached" as you can possibly get. That is the very very best way to be a missionary! And he broke the law to get to their island, ooooh how exciting! (Chau wrote "God sheltered me" when he was able to get to the island without being stopped by Indian authorities.) He finally got there, and told them, "My name is John, I love you and Jesus loves you." And then they killed him. Seriously, you could not make up a martyr story that sounds better than this.

From an evangelical perspective, it's perfect. But I'm not evangelical anymore, so I'm looking at this from a new angle and I'm horrified. The belief that a group of strangers on some faraway island need us to come and teach them our religion. WTF? Contacting an uncontacted tribe that wants to stay uncontacted. Breaking the law. The risk of infecting them with deadly diseases. The idea that it's fine to do dangerous and illegal things if that's what "God called" you to.

Chau is going to be seen as a hero and a role model. There is absolutely no part of this story that will come across as a cautionary tale for evangelicals, nothing that will serve as a warning that other people should NOT do what he did. It's perfect, and that scares me.

Do y'all remember Jim Elliot? Okay, here is the story of Jim Elliot- or at least, here's the story I heard in the evangelical church: Jim Elliot was a missionary who wanted to "share the gospel" with a remote tribe in South America, back in the 50's. But they killed him. He is a martyr! Then, years later, other missionaries went back to that same tribe and were able to "share the gospel", and some of them accepted Jesus! Hooray, it's a happy ending! Because of what Elliot did, those people were more "open" to "the gospel" and isn't that just great.

Christians LOVE this story. There was a movie about it in 2005, "The End of the Spear."

But now that I'm reading the news about Chau and seeing what this actually looks like in reality, how much of a mess and a nightmare it is, I'm starting to suspect maybe the story of Jim Elliot wasn't actually so perfect and wonderful either. Hmmmmmmmm...

So that's the sum of my thoughts on this. As far as I can tell, Chau was following the exact same evangelical missions ideology that I was taught. Back then, we talked excitedly about God "calling" each of us to some specific faraway place. We prayed for "unreached people groups"- prayed that God would send a good evangelical Christian to coerce them into changing their beliefs. What those "unreached people groups" actually wanted didn't matter- of course it didn't! We talked about giving everything for Jesus, and the most ultimate way to do that was to go get killed while obeying God's "call." Everything that Chau said or did feels so normal and familiar to me, like a perfect role-model missionary that everyone at church would admire. As if the only reason the rest of us Christians aren't doing the same thing is that God didn't "call" us- not because it's dangerous and illegal and a bad idea and does more harm than good. If God "calls" you then none of those other concerns matter.

It's the perfect martyr story. But now that I'm not evangelical anymore, now that I no longer see "God's plan" as more real than the actual reality of the actual real world, I'm horrified. This whole thing is just bad.

------------------------------

Related:
Evangelicals Agree With What Chau Did (And It Makes Me Angry): Here Are The Receipts 
Because of an Idea
Runaway Radical: Radical Christian Missions 
Runaway Radical: The Stories You Can't Tell In Church
On Zebedee's Sons and Counting the Cost 
Renee Bach, who had no medical training, opened a clinic in Africa. Just like missionaries are supposed to.

Blogaround

Image text: "When trans lives are lost, Christ is crucified again. Trans Day of Remembrance. Remember the dead, fight like hell for the living. queertheology.com/tdor" Image source.

1. Mississippi Senator In Runoff Jokes About Sitting In ‘Front Row’ Of ‘Public Hanging’ (posted November 11)

2. Don't Ask Your Pastor These Questions (posted November 9) "If there is a “women’s retreat,” specifically ask if trans women can attend or if it’s only for cis women. Clarify if the policies differ for gay, celibate folks as opposed to non-celibate, gay folks."

3. Sex-Positive Christianity (posted November 15) "Though my ethic regarded these things as sin, I’d convinced myself they weren’t really that bad because they had to do with men–not women."

4. There’s More Evidence That Welfare Work Requirements Don’t Lift People Out of Poverty (posted November 13)

5. Dear @BrianZahnd, Let's get clear about something |theKevinGarcia (posted November 17) "And that's when our queer spidey-senses started to tingle..."

6. The Husband Hunt: An Evangelical Horror Story (posted October 23) "In this case, Christians live in a culture full of people pretending that there’s some vast spiritual component to their spouse hunts." This post is so spot-on, about how Christian women buy into this mythology about God magically bringing them a husband. I'm sharing it even though I don't agree with Cassidy's claim that ACTUALLY Christian men marry women that are conventionally attractive and that's all there is to it.

7. Brian Kemp’s Lead in Georgia Needs an Asterisk (posted November 7) "If the governor’s race had taken place in another country, the State Department would have questioned its legitimacy."

8. We try to control forgiveness because we know we need it (posted November 5) "The miracle of forgiveness is that it inverts — it corrects — the prior power dynamic. The process of forgiveness acknowledges that the wronged party, the victim of an injustice, now has a kind of power over those who wronged them — the power to grant or to withhold forgiveness. This inversion of power is intolerable for The Powers That Be." Wowwww I've never heard anyone connecting forgiveness to power in this way.

9. The Voluntary Damsel in Distress (posted November 15) HOLYYYY SHIT, World Magazine posted a vile, misogynistic, rage-inducing trashfire of an article, and Libby Anne has ALL THE RECEIPTS. Wow. World Magazine- my family subscribed to this when I was growing up. I saw it as a good Christian resource. I was about to say "I just lost all respect for World", but hey, does anyone remember this blog post I wrote back in 2015, in response to another disgusting hateful World article (from the same writer!!!)? Grosssssss gross gross gross, how will I explain this to my hypothetical children.

10. Is Crimes of Grindelwald Awesome Or Awful? | SPOILER REVIEW (posted November 20) [content note: spoilers for "Fantastic Beasts 2: The Crimes of Grindelwald"] "At this point, if you think about it, you're two movies into a spinoff series based on a fictional author of a fictional book inside of a fictional universe. You're pretty deep."

Gotta Love That Full-Blown Atheism

Fruit growing on a tree. Image source.

All right, I want to talk about this bad article from The Gospel Coalition: 3 Beliefs Some Progressive Christians and Atheists Share. The writer, Alisa Childers, says that it's common for ex-evangelicals to go through a progressive Christian phase and eventually become atheists, and therefore progressive Christianity is verrrrry suspicious and bad.

All right, I'm a progressive Christian. (I don't typically use that label for myself, but okay, sure. I actually prefer "Christian feminist.") I'm not an atheist. Let's take a look at Childers's 3 beliefs here, and see if I have them:

1. They May Adopt a Belief That the Bible Is Unreliable
2. They May Have an Unresolved Answer to the Problem of Evil
3. They May Affirm a Culture-Adapting Morality

Well for #1, yes there is stuff in the bible that's just not true. For #2, umm well I think Christians who have a resolved answer to the problem of evil are SHADY AS HELL. Because I used to be like that, and my answer was "we all deserve to die and go to hell and suffer torture forever and never experience anything good, so when bad things happen on earth, well we deserve worse anyway" which is heartless and terrible. Like if you think it's 100% fine and dandy that God is all-powerful and all-loving but horrible tragedies happen in the world... ewwwww not really okay with that. For #3, umm sure I have what they call a "culture-adapting morality" but I very much DO NOT call it that. That's sort of a straw man. And I think it's quite hypocritical that Childers claims her brand of Christianity is just plainly following what the bible says rather than "picking and choosing." LOLOLOL yeah right.

But that's not really what I want to talk about in this post. I want to talk about how she seems to think atheism is some horrific thing we should all be scared of. She uses the phrase "full-blown atheism." Ohhhhhhhhkayyyyyyyy. (Ahem, this is Christian supremacy.)

Like... atheism is fine. Like I really don't care what people believe; I care about their actions. By their fruit you will know them. If there's good fruit, then I'm cool with whatever their underlying beliefs are.

I would say that's an important part of progressive Christianity: the concept that IT'S FINE for people to not be Christians. So this "oh noes, what if people become ... *GASP* ... atheists!!!!" fearmongering is a bit lost on me.

Whatever. I'm over it. Yep, TGC is over here claiming they are doing Christianity the correct way and they're the ones who are *really* following the bible, and us progressive Christians are just following morally-suspect ideas from "the culture." It's not true, but that's old news. Evangelicalism is all about bearing false witness against one's neighbor, misrepresenting and demonizing other people's beliefs. I'm over it.

------------------------

Longtime readers of my blog may know that God has laid a burden on my heart to respond to bad theology from The Gospel Coalition. You can find all my posts about them here.