A Matter of Faith

Honestly, kind of a sweet poster.

          Netflix suggested “A Matter of Faith” (alternate title: “So Much Secondhand Embarrassment,” alternate title: “Too Complex; Therefore, God,” alternate title: I Eyerolled Too Hard And Now My Face Is Stuck Like That”), since I had watched “American Bible Challenge.” Obvs, I didn’t feel like I should anger the Netflix Gods, who bestow "Orange Is The New Black,""Stranger Things" and "Call The Midwife" upon my undeserving self, so now I’m watching it. It’s your standard “Girl goes to Not-Christian College, loses her way because of that dirty seductress, science, and then gains it all back and also gets a Good Christian Guy (TM).” In other news "Call the Midwife" is my new favorite show, and you should all watch it. Set in 1950s England, they have cool skirts, cool accents, and even cooler pathology. 

1.       Little girl starts throwing rocks into a river next to little boy who is also throwing rocks into a river. She finds a fifty-cent piece, but he takes it from her, and she is mad. That’s right, girl, boys are the worst. The sooner you figure that out, the less disappointed you’ll be.

2.       Little girl is now College Girl, and she’s leaving for college. Sad Dad tucks a $50 bill into her Bible for her to find. She won’t, though, because college makes you a godless lefty liberal lesbian as soon as you walk through the door, so she’ll never read her Bible again. Nice use of mirroring as a plot device, though. As an aside, I went to a liberal college, and became a liberal, and then my parents thought I was a lesbian for a few days, and boy, was THAT a fun time. 

3.       College Girl at a dance party acts like me at a dance party. Totally lame, and no fun at all, in other words. And then she goes outside with Sleazy Dude, who is the first random bozo who says she “looks like she needs a friend.” Girl, no. You do not need a friend that bad.

4.       Apparently the college she’s going to is a Not-Christian College. OMG. She is DEFS gonna get turned into a godless lefty liberal lesbian.

5.       College Girl is a biology major, and loves her Derpy Biology Professor, who rambles about the idiotic "chicken vs egg" argument while flopping a rubber chicken around. Not Christian College + Derpy Biology Professor = Godless Evolutionist, always.

6.       College Girl hasn’t found a church yet. Also her dad found the $50 still in her Bible, so obvs she has not been prioritizing her daily Jesus time. Sad Dad is sad, and puts the money back in his pocket, which is what Jesus would have done, I’m sure.

7.       Sad Dad googles Derpy Biology Professor, and zoinks, “he’s an evolutionist, and a big proponent of it.” No shit, Sherlock. It’s kind of hard to be a biology professor without believing and teaching one of the more fundamental tenets of biology.

8.       Sad Dad goes to Sad Pastor and complains about how “’there’s nothing in the course description that even lists biblical creation as a plausible alternative!” Gosh, I wonder why that might be. 

9.       “The war over Genesis is a real battleground.” Wut. As a Biology major AND ALSO a Bible and Religion major, I am uniquely qualified, as one of three such dual-majors in the recent history (25ish years) of my college, to say that YOU CAN DO BOTH AND IT’S FINE. Genesis is figurative, Biology is literal. Easy.

10.   Derpy Biology Professor states that a kid who runs a 4:04 mile could have won the 1894 Olympics by 30 seconds, but now that it’s the present day, he’d lose to about 30 guys, and that’s evolution. No………… it’s not? That’s better training regimens, and better shoes, and better coaching, and better gait analysis or whatever. It’s not evolution. Obviously, Science People did not write this film.

11.   Sad Dad goes to Derpy Biology Professor’s office and STRAIGHT-UP HELICOPTER PARENTS about how he’s concerned she’s being taught evolution and critical thinking, which is apparently contradictory to everything they’ve been teaching her over her lifetime. Also, “it’s against Christianity.” OMG. Jesus never said a damn thing about evolution. On the bright side, if they all focus on evolution, they can't focus on slut-shaming single moms or yanking funding from Planned Parenthood. On the dark side, it's a slippery slope from "evolution is against Christianity" to "women's bodies have a way of shutting that whole thing down."

12.   Trolling epicly, Derpy Biology Professor invites Sad Dad to publicly debate him on Evolution vs. Creationism, because “it’s such a GREAT learning opportunity for these students, and… you DO believe in your viewpoint… DON’T YOU?” College Girl looks like she wants to absolutely die.

13.   Apparently, back in the day, Derpy Biology Professor got a colleague fired because they refused to teach “evolutionary lies” in their class. Um. Ok. I’m sure this will not become a relevant plot point.

14.   Completely irrelevant to the storyline, but Basic Christian Mom is using THE LARGEST POSSIBLE KNIFE to chop carrots.

15.   “God created the chicken first, so it could lay the egg, just like the Bible says! Derpy Biology Professor doesn’t believe in the Bible, so he says the exact opposite! Just tell me – did God create the world, or was it created through evolution?” Um, ok, first of all, that first statement is BAD AND WRONG. Second of all, the second statement creates an either/or dichotomy with which I think a lot of people would be uncomfortable. God and evolution are not two mutually exclusive categories, and it is harmful to both biologists and the religious when it is suggested otherwise. Also, WHY TF ARE WE ALWAYS FOCUSING ON DUMB THINGS LIKE EVOLUTION WHEN “KIM, THERE'S PEOPLE THAT ARE DYYYINGGGG.”

16.   Sad Dad doesn’t think he knows enough about creation vs evolution to be able to debate Derpy Biology Professor. Gee, idk why that might be.

17.   Sad Dad also parked right under the overhang at the entrance of the church when he met Sad Pastor. Like a jerk. That parking spot is for old people or something. You have two legs, use ‘em!

18.   So I didn’t mention it before, because it’s not interesting, but there’s been this whole sub-plot with some Jock-Ass Dude that’s tryna get with College Girl. “She is NOT too religious! Next week, at our flag football game, that’s when I’m gonna make my move. THEN we can see just how religious she is.” OMG SIR YOU ARE A CREEPY RAPEY-SOUNDING DUDE STOP IT NOW. Also, your friends suck, because they didn’t sit you down and say “Bro, make sure you obtain enthusiastic consent before you ‘make your move,’ and make sure that no one is under the influence of any substance, because that negates consent. Also, be aware that if she is under 18 and you are over 18, it is considered statutory rape and you could go on the Sex Offender list.”

19.   Sad Dad goes to visit Wise Black Professor, who is the colleague that Derpy Biology Professor got fired for not teaching “evolutionary lies.” He refuses to help Sad Dad, and turns into another common media trope of the Angry Black Man. Sad Dad tries to convince him, by insinuating that he’s a bad Christian for refusing to help, which I’m sure really is a slam-dunk of an argument.

20.   Some Dumb Kid tries to embarrass College Girl for Sad Dad’s debate with Derpy College Professor, and then Good Christian Guy (TM) (who, with the exception of a chinstrap, looks and acts like a good friend I had in high school, who was also a Good Christian Guy (TM)) sails in to save the damsel in distress - “Does your mom look like an ape? No? How about your grandmother? What about your great-grandmother, did she look like an ape? So if Derpy Biology Professor says we all come from apes, who in your family was the ape? Apes come from apes, and humans come from humans.” OHHHHH MYYYYYY GODDDDDDDDDDDDDDD WHO WROTE THIS SCRIPTTTTTTTTT I AM DYYYYYYYYING OF SECONDHAND EMBARRASSMENT. Worst part is, Some Dumb Kid just accepts that this is totally sound logic, and walks away, defeated, while Good Christian Guy (TM) smirks self-righteously. Honestly, what are they teaching kids in college, anymore?

21.   Jock-Ass Dude’s Dumb Friends casually advocate rape culture while within hearing distance of Good Christian Guy (TM), who frowns and looks troubled, and then goes to talk to College Girl and tells her that “Derpy Biology Professor pushes his evolution agenda to get kids to doubt their faith and the Bible.” Bro, ok, you can believe in evolution and also Jesus, ok? Good Christian Guy (TM) does eventually warn her about Jock-Ass Dude’s casual rape-comments, which is good, and meritorious.

22.   Why are there TWO posters of the periodic table in the biology classroom? One isn’t enough?

23.   And suddenly College Girl has changed her tune, dumped Jock-Ass Dude, and is super happy that her dad is gonna debate creationism and evolution. Awful quick transition, but whatever makes you happy, girl.

24.   Sad Dad starts out by saying that the theory of evolution can’t be REAL science, because science deals with stuff that can be directly observed. OMG. Literally just slammed my head into a wall.

25.   Derpy Biology Professor is smirking like a cat eyeballing a really slow and fat canary. Sad Dad is gonna get eaten for breakfast. Heck, *I* could eat Sad Dad for breakfast, and I’m not a Ph.D.

26.   STOP CALLING THEM EVOLUTIONISTS, THEY’RE CALLED “SCIENTISTS”

27.   “Evolutionary worldview is clearly as much of a religion as any theistic worldview. Not only does evolution a direct attack against the first words of the Bible “in the beginning, God created…” but it also directly undermines the authority of God.” Ok. Bro. Slow your roll. Not everyone believes what you believe, and that is JUST FINE.

28.   Derpy Biology Professor says “well done!” but it wasn’t. It was actually really, really terrible.

29.   Ok, Derpy Biology Professor, this is so easy, but you’re somehow doing a terrible job. Lemme step in here – when you argue with people of faith, stick to arguing facts. Don’t try to run down their faith. It just makes them really defensive, because you’re attacking a core part of their identity. And then nothing is ever solved. Argue facts, because facts can’t be disputed. And DON’T, for the LOVE OF GOD, call faith “wishful thinking.” Bro. You’re looking like a huge douche right now, and this is why Christians get mad at biologists.

30.   Derpy Biology Professor, when asked by Sad Dad to “explain away God,” goes on a whole rant about how man created God because man felt alone, and scared, and defenseless, and wanted to believe that something bigger than himself could save him. It is certainly a compelling argument, and I’m not going to disagree with that particular interpretation.

31.   Now they’re arguing about an afterlife, and I’m sorry, but how is this relevant?

32.   Sad Dad is getting eaten for breakfast, when SUDDENLY, ANGRY BLACK PROFESSOR SHOWS UP OMG PLOT TWIST

33.   Wise Black Professor taps in and Sad Dad taps out, because honestly, he was hardcore losing.

34.   Derpy Biology Professor doesn’t see anything worth refuting in Wise Black Professor’s 10-minute preach about Jesus and evolution. C’mon, bro, a child could do this. You’re an embarrassment to the Wizarding world.

35.   College Girl and Good Christian Boy (TM) go to the same place where she picked up a fifty-cent piece, at the beginning of the movie and re-enact it, and College Girl has no freaking idea what he’s talking about. OMGGGGGGGGG GOOD CHRISTIAN BOY (TM) WAS THE TERRIBLE LITTLE BOY AND BECAUSE HE WAS SUCH A LITTLE DIRTBAG, HE WAS CONVICTED BY FAITH AND HIS DAD LED HIM TO JESUS OMGGGGGGGGGG PLOT TWISTTTTTTTT. They most certainly dated for the rest of college, then promptly married the weekend after graduation and started boinking immediately, and then had about 5 children in 6 years. WHICH IS FINE, if that's your thing. 

          Ugh, thank goodness it’s over. Honestly, these dumb movies about how evolution is Satan’s theology are all just so dumb. And all their arguments are the same – carbon dating! you can’t see it, how do you know?! god is dead, and faith is stupid! and it just makes everyone look dumb, all around. Also, all of these movies about how Good Christian Girl goes off to Not-Christian College and becomes Leftist Liberal Lezzie, because elitist liberals or some nonsense, it’s just really frustrating. When did intellectualism become a bad thing, anyway? When did it become the enemy of religion? The number of times, when I was at Bethel, that I’d say “Oh, I’m a dual Biology/Bible major,” and people would be like “WHOA JUMP BACK, ISN’T YOUR SOUL BEING TORN IN TWO, LIKE VOLDEMORT?!?!?!” was just ridiculous. And it was always from religious people, never the sciencey people. And I just don’t know why that is. Sure, science is hard to understand, if you’re on the outside looking in. And religion is hard to understand, too, especially if you weren’t raised that way. Both of them are “belief in things unseen,” in a way, and honestly, could stand to learn a lot from each other.

          Also, WHY ARE WE FOCUSING ON STUPID THINGS LIKE EVOLUTION WHEN LIKE, PEOPLE ARE ACTUALLY LEGITIMATELY DYING OF HUNGER IN AFRICA AND ALSO THE UNITED STATES. It’s just the stupidest thing to argue about. Probably, we do it because it is an easy distractor, and it's easier to latch on to attacking each other's interpretations of abstract thought than go out and get our hands dirty with doing actual work.

The Rest of the Story

Usually this is a movie-review blog. However, I preached a sermon today, and people wanted to see what it was, and since I have no other platform by which to share large blocks of texts, since Facebook notes have fallen from favor, here we are:

One of my favorite ways to pass the time while driving to and from work at various far-flung doctor’s offices is to read the marquee signs put up outside churches. Most of them list the times of their Sunday School and worship services, others offer a nice “Jesus Loves You” or “Have a Blessed New Year.” But OTHERS give their opinions on the political or cultural topic of the hour. Some of my “favorites” have been “Stand for the national anthem” during Colin Kaepernik’s protest, “X belongs in Texas not Christmas,” and on a particularly warm August day, “Oh, so you think it’s hot HERE?” However, my #1 personal favorite has to be “Which lives matter? Jesus answered by dying for all,” because much like a tweet, conveying a brief yet catchy sentiment often sacrifices volumes of relevant backstory, a phenomenon I like to call “Well, yes, but…”

In this particular case, according to the beliefs of conventional Christianity, Jesus’s intent was to die as the ultimate sacrifice to God, assuming the weight of all of humanity’s collective sins, and negating the ritual animal sacrifices made by the Jews as penance for their sins. The focus on Jesus’s death and eventual resurrection is undoubtedly important – without the bold proclamations of the resurrection story and the hope it gave to his followers, it seems unlikely that the impact of his radical message would have survived long enough to assemble new leaders and grow to be an entirely new religion.

However, the often laserlike focus on Jesus’s death as the end-all-be-all of his story negates the times when, throughout the gospels, he singled out marginalized demographics as mattering in particular, which is the backstory that the church marquee sacrificed for the sake of brevity. It is important to realize, in this era of increasing political discord, that while, according to our beliefs, Jesus was a savior to all, he was also a savior to ALL, equally, without prejudice.

During the course of his ministry, Jesus healed unclean lepers, defended and elevated women, elevated the reviled Samaritans over religious leaders of the day, and used shepherds, children, and the poor as subjects of his parables and teachings. There are dozens of examples, but I’m going to highlight 3 in particular, as examples of times when Jesus might have said something like “Samaritan lives matter,” or “women’s lives matter,” or “the lives of lepers and those with chronic illnesses matter” rather than the conventional wisdom of the day, which was “male Jewish lives matter.”

During the early first century, tensions between Samaritans and Jews were high. The first-century historian Josephus indicates that during Jesus’s life, the Jews destroyed a Samaritan temple, and a few years later, the Samaritans retaliated by destroying a synagogue. Combined with the Jews looking down on the Samaritans for being what they termed a “mixed-race people,” and it’s fairly easy to see why the two groups were not on good terms. However, Samaritans are the group that Jesus uses to illustrate one of his best-known stories – a story about a man left for dead on the side of the road, who was passed over by a priest and a Levite. The book of Leviticus and the Jewish Talmud both contain laws regarding cleanliness and dead bodies. More specifically, they state that a dead body is considered unclean, and that anyone who comes into contact with the body is similarly unclean, for an entire month, which would be really inconvenient, if one’s primary job were working in the temple. So it may be that the priest and the Levite were avoiding the man because they didn’t want to become unclean – they were following the religious law of the time, and for them, the hassle of potentially becoming unclean while checking to see if the man was dead or alive outweighed their need to know if the man was actually dead or alive. The Samaritan, however, had no such law, but was also a member of a racial group that was oppressed by the Jews, so seeing a mostly-dead Jew by the side of the road might not necessarily raise a whole lot of concern.

However, Jesus says, the man was overwhelmed with pity. He bandaged up the man’s wounds, loaded him up on his donkey, and we all know the rest of the story. Jesus could have used a regular garden-variety Jewish laborer, or someone else that wasn’t part of the religious elite to illustrate his disgust with the dispassionate and overly-pious religious leaders. But he didn’t. He took the culturally-unusual step of holding up a Samaritan’s example as one to be emulated – after all, they were considered to be of a different, lesser race than the Jews, with different customs, who were largely reviled by the majority-Jewish citizenry. Jesus, through his parable, reached out to an oppressed minority, and elevated them above the religious leaders and teachers of the day. In doing so, he implicitly states that “hey, Samaritan lives matter.”

In several instances in the Bible, Jesus uses lepers to make a point. Lepers, in that time, were considered unclean, and their disease was been seen as an outward manifestation of inward sinfulness. Lepers were often grotesquely disfigured due to leprosy’s penchant for causing pigmented lesions all over the body, as well as sensory loss of peripheral nerves, meaning that a sore on fingers or toes might not be noticed for days, until it had become infected and gangrenous, and then eventually fall off. In addition, leprosy was a chronic disease – a death sentence in those days. According to Levitical and Talmudic law, they had to live away from the rest of society, and were not allowed to approach or touch others, out of fear of contagion. The book of Matthew, in chapter 8, tells a very brief 4-verse story of a leper approaching Jesus to ask for healing. According to Matthew, Jesus met with the leper, and then broke the religious laws when he touched him and cured him of his leprosy. Most times, when this story is told, it centers on the compassion Jesus had for the man, and “oh, wasn’t that a nice thing that he did.” But it misses the point that Jesus intentionally broke the law by touching the man to heal him. In this case, he chose to depart from the traditional approach to lepers, which was to stay as far away as possible. Instead, he reached out in an act of defiance and protest and subversion of the law and said “Hey, your life matters, too.”

Jesus was also a feminist in his time. Sure, he walked all over Palestine with 12 men, but that’s according to the gospels, written by men, and the apostles, all of whom were men. Reading between the lines, however, one can see several instances in which Jesus said “You know what, women’s lives matter.” He uses women to illustrate many of his parables and teachings – The parables of the persistent widow, the lost coin, the ten virgins, and the metaphor of the childbearing woman are all used to illustrate his various teachings. All of these stories portray women in a positive light, which was unusual compared to teachings by other rabbis and religious leaders of the same time. In addition, there are no recorded instances in the gospels where Jesus personally belittled, disgraces, or stereotypes a woman, or encourages another to do so on his behalf - an action that, again, was out-of-character for rabbis and religious leaders of the time.

The Samaritan woman at the well is a great example of Jesus ignoring the social conventions of the time in order to reach out and elevate a person of the opposite gender and nationality. In this story, Jesus approaches a Samaritan woman while she is drawing up water from a well, and asks her for a drink. She expresses surprise that he, a Jewish man, would first of all talk to her, a Samaritan woman, and second of all ask for a drink of water from her bucket, which, according to Levitical laws, was ritually unclean. He then goes on to introduce a teaching metaphor for the well water as representative of the eternal life that could be had by following him as the Messiah, and encourages her to recruit more followers for him. Normally, in that time, a man would not openly discuss theology with a woman, and it was even more unconventional that a rabbi was discussing theology with a woman. In addition, the woman was also a Samaritan, a nationality of people who, as previously stated, were looked upon unfavorably by the Jews. She was ALSO a woman who had been married and divorced five times, and was living with a sixth man to whom she was not married. The book of John indicates that Jesus knew all of this when he approached her, and yet he did it anyway, a move that was incredibly unconventional for a male Jewish rabbi, as evidenced by the reactions of the disciples, who are described as “shocked, or surprised.”

However, Jesus went even further than openly discussing theology with a female and a non-Jew. In in chapter 4 verse 6, he says “Those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I give them will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life,” and with this statement, offers Jewish salvation to a Gentile woman. The woman then goes to her town and recruits more followers – becoming the first evangelist mentioned in John’s gospel. This was an unprecedented event. The idea that a woman, who had been married and divorced five times, and was a Samaritan, would become a disciple of Christ, and an evangelist was simply unheard-of. Jesus, however, saw the multitude of ways in which this woman was oppressed. He also saw her potential, and rather than telling a man to go be an evangelist, as would have been the accepted action of the day, said “you know what, women’s lives matter - it’s time to let a woman lead the way.”

So in this time of women being told to sit down and be quiet, of minorities being unconstitutionally deported back to their countries of origin, of walls, and executive orders, healthcare reform, and tweets, ask yourself - whose lives matter? Jesus answered by reaching out and lifting up those who were oppressed and discriminated against, and only then, did he die for all. And that, in the words of the late, great Paul Harvey, is the rest of the story.