The Good Place reminds us of the offensiveness of afterlives.

Note: This post contains spoilers for the Good Place. They are pretty incidental to the piece so you wont need to watch the show to understand anything but if you are planning to watch the show then come back and read this after you’re done. I loved the show myself and the twists in the show are worth not spoiling.

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Recently the series “The Good Place” came to an end. For most of the series audiences seemed happy to laugh along with it as it depicted a flawed system of determining who dies and ends up in the bad place, the good place or somewhere in between.  “The judge” character came closest to some kind of God for the series and they were pretty much an object of good humoured ridicule but this was still not a problem for theists I know. The final episodes however rankled some commentators. I think this was because the whole series, despite being ostensibly set in the afterlife, played like its plot was a continuation of life. The real afterlife, meaning that which happens after the drama of life is complete, is only glimpsed at the very end and, as I’ve titled this piece, descriptions (and depictions) of the afterlife have the capacity to offend us.

Afterlifes are often but not always systems of reward and punishment. When they are set up like that what they reward or punish is potentially offensive even if we don’t believe in the afterlife. If you were sitting down your children and telling them that only the eldest would get into heaven and the other would go to hell I would be offended by the injustice of this and as a second child some of that offence would be personal too. It is as if somehow I was going to go hell because of what you said, even though I don’t actually believe I will. My thinking here is not foolish. Even if I only believe in this mortal world the impact of such an afterlife description on your second child is real in this world. Calling it emotionally damaging seems too slight. Spiritually damaging seems fairer. I am right to be somewhat offended.

This offence of injustice can work many ways. We can be offended if justice is too soft so that the experience of victims means nothing. Versions of an afterlife in which George Pell flies to heaven on the basis of his recitation of the Apostles Creed would fit such a description. We can be offended if the circumstances around a persons life are not taken into account so that a person who steals out of hunger is treated as someone who steals out of greed. We can be offended if justice is arbitrary or cruel such as punishing same sex relationships that bring joy to all involved. We can be offended if justice is so complicated, that everyone is set up to fail and face an eternity of "spiders up the butt", for drinking cows milk, or soy milk, and twice as many spiders for almond milk. This is the system that the characters in the Good Place must challenge and eventually overturn.

In its final season The Good Place replaces that punitive system with what is essentially a therapeutic model. Instead of the old bad place, people go through scenarios run by rehabilitated demons in which they grow past the reasons why they caused harm with their lives. Its not so much punishment as it is treatment for human toxicity. The conclusion is “universalist” in the sense that everyone eventually gets into the Good Place. As we hear Brent arguing with his spiritual coaches we realise though that this is a longer journey for some than it is for others. Nobody is being tortured though. Nobody is forever excluded from the Good Place either. Judgement isn’t behind those participating in this system.

Christian Universalism is a belief within Christianity that everyone will be reconciled with God at some point. While it has a very long history in the church it leapt into prominence again in 2011 with the publication of Rob Bell’s book Love Wins. Due to influential commentary on the book Rob Bell gained the title of heretic in some circles and was bid goodbye by people who act as guardians of the evangelical faith. Universalism seems to me to offend people’s need for good to be seperated eternally from evil at a singular judgement point. As I don’t have that need I don’t fully understand it.

Perhaps the anxiety is that Hitler will be given a house in heaven under this system that they don’t deserve – the offence of too soft justice. However no universalist afterlife (and certainly not the one in the Good Place) suggest this is possible without Hitler first transforming into someone who any Jew would be happy to live next to. I think more likely it is offensive to people trying to get others to turn to salvation right now to suggest that there is no absolute deadline to secure salvation by. Evangelism in particular loses its bite if our death itself doesn't bring on our final judgement.

Issues of injustice centred around punishment and reward are not the only ways that afterlifes can offend us. The offence that the Good Place provoked in some commentators in its afterlife was the final obliteration of self-hood in the souls journey. At the very end of all things (serious spoiler alert...) the individual ceases to be the individual. The selves we came to know as Eleanor, Tahani, Chidi and Jason concluded their stories as they met their need to grow past self-interested survival or petty competition or paralysing doubt or simply an inability not to combine matches and petrol when left alone with them. They then, after all the time they need and by their own choice, end. This idea of an ultimate end to our self is as offensive to some people as an unjust afterlife.

Like the offence of universalism this is not an offence I particularly understand. I take solace in the line from Take this Waltz by Leonard Cohen: “Take this Waltz, It’s been dying for years.”; as a reminder that I am familiar with my own ending. The two year old me is in my past. The six year old me is in my past. The 20 year old me is in my past. And so on.  They ended and so too will I. I’ve been dying for years. One day finally the last me will die but by then they will probably be unfamiliar in many respects to the me of today.

Is this sad? Sometimes I find it terribly sad. Not only will I end but all the wonderful people I love will one day have no more versions of themselves in this world. You’d better believe that’s sad. But is this bad? I don’t think so. I come down on the show creators side that death, including ultimate soul death, is essential to valuing life. It is why “every human is a little bit sad all the time, because you know you’re going to die. But that knowledge is what gives life meaning.” (Series 4 Episode 12). I accept though this may just be a rationalisation of an unavoidable reality that I and others will die. If someday we can actually cure death or if an eternal afterlife actually exists I will be interested to see if that does actually turn life into a prison (with or without harps). I do think it might.

Recently I listened to a podcast in which two very different Christian spokespeople both agreed that from a Christian perspective death is bad. They argued that biblically death is not a part of the world until sin wrecks it and that the right way for the world to be is without death. Therefore they believed all death should be railed against and a world without any death at all should be longed for. From this perspective it is actually an end to the soul that is unnatural. This belief in our eternal identities is not always extended to people who go to hell. Their eternal existence is supposedly tortuous and given that non-universalists hold out no hope for their redemption, essentially pointless.  Some therefore conclude that denizens of any Bad Place will be annihilated rather than barbarically burnt without dying for ever (a theory called Annihilationism) but that those who are saved by God will live for ever.  Whether annihilationist or not the idea is that we are supposed to be eternal and an afterlife with a positive ending of ourself is a depiction that offends against that idea.

There are any number of additional ways that an afterlife depiction can offend us. I suspect the Trumps of the world would be offended by an afterlife in which there are no walls between rich and poor. People who have prided themselves on knowing theology will be offended by the lack of a doctrinal entrance exam at the end. The Good Place showed us that it is a topic people are interested in enough to devote ourselves to four seasons to. It also showed us that even when nobody is pretending its the truth the afterlife can still offend.

Who can we count on?

Recently I got into an argument. I suggested there was only a minority of people who would economically discriminate against same sex couples if emboldened by a government that permitted them to, but that they existed. When pressed on exactly how many people I thought there was who would do such a thing, I said perhaps more than 5% but less than 10%. I was told I was being ridiculous to think there was so many.

Since that argument I have been pondering. And pondering. When I was in my all boys high school about 30 years ago, a student gave a talk to the class. It was in legal studies and they had to argue for a law that should be changed. They argued that we should be allowed to murder gay people. (Little did they know that the homosexual panic defence as it was called, virtually gave them that licence back then.) The class applauded and the teacher did nothing. I got in trouble for provoking the student who spoke when I blew them kisses as an act of juvenile trolling. It’s a story I’ve told before and it sticks with me. It affects my estimates of the world around me.

I believe that every student there wasn’t really a killer at heart. Most will have forgotten the event all together by now. Some will be leading happy lives as members of the LGBTIA community. Even the homophobes probably wont want to see gay people murdered. But such belief is not certain. All the evidence I have is my memory of that day and the few students who I have kept up with since then or met long afterwards (and they are fine). Based on that day what percentage of people would actively discriminate against same sex couples if they had a chance? Upwards of 80%. But I believe without evidence that that high an estimate would be ridiculous.

We all carry around in our heads similar sorts of estimates about our peers. The Security chief at ASIO recently said that organised right wing violence in Australia is a growing threat. But how many people are really neo-nazis in Australia? When Australia exported that shooter to New Zealand we were partly shocked that they came from here and we were partly, sadly, not shocked at all. Egg-boy spoke for the majority of us when he egged the Senator who suggested the victims of that massacre were at fault. But that Senator spoke for some people. What percentage? Go on, have a guess.

Sometimes we get to know people as reasonable, likable and intelligent and then we discover that they think gay people shouldn’t be near kids or that #Metoo is an over-reaction or that the massacres of Aboriginal Australians didn’t happen. We wonder whether our radar that tells us how many people around us think these things is on the blink. We are left suspicious that we are assuming too few people we already know are homophobic, misogynistic, racists. We think we should adjust our estimates upwards.

This has happened to me recently. I am still processing the details and while it would benefit me to write about them I am not yet ready to. Does it mean that I should dismiss my own estimates of 5-10% homophobes as an over-reaction to recent events? Does it mean that my previous low estimates of homophobia, misogyny and racism  in the community around me were too low?

People who hold homophobic, misogynistic, or racist opinions aren’t even necessarily going to act in those ways. Holocaust denial doesn’t exactly equal a willingness to commit anti-Semitic violence but the two are linked. One is a stepping stone to the other. A boss that thinks #Metoo has gone too far is  more likely to let their workplace become unsafe and traumatic for female employees. A community that uses the phrase gay-agenda a lot is more likely to treat a gay person with hostility. At least this is what I think. I rely on this but I don’t know this. This theory of attitudes linked to behavior builds my estimates of who is likely to act in certain ways. I hear homophobic comments from about 5% to 10% of the population so I think about that many people might discriminate against same sex couples.

This question of what percentage of people are likely to be perpetrators of horrible acts (discrimination right up to murder) is too important to answer in this haphazard anecdotal inferred way. But we just don’t have good research to turn to instead. Consider sexual harassment. Most women have experienced this. In fact I am probably being overly cautious by not just saying all women have experienced sexual harassment. Many men have experienced it too. But what percentage of people, by gender as that would be relevant, commit sexual harassment? Or have committed it at least once? We have much better statistics and research answering how many people have been victims than questions about the number of perpetrators.

More than one in 20 Australians have been physically attacked because of their race. That is a shocking statistic and comes from the Australian Human Rights Commission. In 2019 the ABC Australia Talks survey found 75% of respondents thought Australia was racist. But being racist isn’t necessarily physically attacking and how many Australians did those people mean were racists? Consider a specific pragmatic question; If someone was perpetrating racist violence I think 99%, maybe 99.9% of people could be relied on to support the victim in some way (call the police, if not intervene). I think we should be shocked by anyone choosing to support the perpetrator. But I am guessing. I am not basing this on any facts.

If I was one of those one in 20 Australians who had copped an assault based on my race, guessing that most people around me aren’t like my assailant (even if they are a little bit racist) is a tough ask. Someone who hasn’t experienced such violence certainly shouldn’t be insisting upon such an attitude. It might even be that those of us who haven’t experienced such violence have a very false sense that the willingness to support such violence is rarer than it is. I don’t really know.

Christian thinking is sometimes quite pessimistic about human nature. When the traveler in the parable of the Good Samaritan lies wounded, three people pass before one stops to help. Some Christian thinkers have gone on to claim humans by default are inherently rebellious and selfish. In other places though the Bible assumes basic human goodness. “Which of you,” Jesus asks rhetorically, “would give your child a stone when they ask for bread?” Psychology offers us better tools for understanding whether people have a dominant tendency for good or ill but the answer is complex and dependent on many factors. Sometimes evil is just people fitting in with the crowd, like those high school boys who applauded that legal studies talk 30 years ago. And the crowd can go either way.

We are all guessing in the dark about how scared and how trusting we ought to be of each other. So here is what we can do; we can advertise where we stand. Returning to the original discussion which was about the Australian governments religious discrimination bill, if Churches want people to know that they have no interest in discriminating against same sex couples, stick a rainbow flag in your window. Its not novel. I'm a little over rainbows graphically speaking. But people know what the rainbow flag indicates. If you don’t want to do that don’t get all huffy if people who have experienced homophobia from churches are suspicious of you. You can’t even put a sticker up.

Likewise if a boss wants their employers to know that sexual harassment is not tolerated then this should be said. It should be said a lot. Of course words must be followed up by actions when harassment occurs but lets not assume that victims know their bosses are on the same page as them. How would they know? Likewise for schools that want Aboriginal families to know their culture will be accommodated and celebrated; stick a bloody poster up saying exactly that. No that’s not the last thing to do but its an obvious start.

You will hear online a lot of criticism of “virtue signalling” when people advertise their progressive attitudes in lieu of doing anything else for others. But virtue signalling is only that when it is fake and hypocritical and when its purpose is to make the speaker feel good even at the expense of the experiences of victims. Advertising where you stand is something valuable when it takes into account the needs of victims for reassurance. It relieves those who have the most to lose from doing some of the initial mental work of figuring out if they can count on you.

True story: I knew someone who was very white. He shaved his head because he liked having a shaved head. Then Romper Stomper, the movie about racist white skin-heads in Melbourne, came out. He noticed people were anxious around him especially anyone who looked Asian. So he bought a t-shirt that showed someone binning a swastika and bore the slogan “No Racism”. He was a very wise guy.

The World We Resist.

A long time ago I went to a wedding. As I recall it, the minister who officiated stood aside for the sermon to let a younger hipper minister take over. Although we were Catholics by upbringing on the grooms side and the bride was an evangelical Christian I guess they presumed that many in the audience were un-churched or de-churched or in some way not particularly Christian. This young hip minister knew exactly how to reach us though. The gospel was relayed to us using the timely (this was back in the 90’s) analogy of Liz Hurley and Hugh Grant’s split.

Now if you have no idea about that split spare yourself the details. It’s just celebrity gossip and now terribly dated as well. I mention the story because it represents a misunderstanding that can occur in church cultures about the irreligious or even just those they think are slightly less religious.  People can think we are into the most superficial crap they can imagine. Celebrities. Selfies. Not having babies so that we can have fame and material success. They presume we are both very casual about sex and yet obsessed by it. We are secular culture or sexual culture even.

To understand this we need to look at the underlying myth of “the world.” The world, from which we get the negative descriptor of worldliness, has a particular meaning in Christian thinking. It is not merely the same as the earth – a planet we live on. The world is human society but not exactly. Human societies can be distinguished by their differences. Human societies have conflicting values across time and place and even in the same time and place. The world is either a reduction, or a projection, of diverse human societies into one consistent phenomenon shaped by inherent selfishness and a desire to rebel against God.

Let me explain what I mean by a projection. By projection I’m allowing for the possible meaning of the world to be a potential future or even a primordial past that is present as either destiny or cause of human society but is not the sum total of what human society is presently. With this description it is still possible to recognise both the good and bad and diversity of human societies because all present societies are becoming either more or less like the world and potentially in different ways.

I want to be as fair as possible to the Christian concept of the world. In doing so I must also note that there are echoes of this concept in all heroic imaginings. The rationalist who views critical thinking and hard evidence as the cornerstones of progress will contrast their own cause with a world that is shallow in its thinking, motivated largely by the pursuit of comfort and conformity. Although they might not use the term they are saying something similar to “the world” when they describe the Dunning Kruger effect or confirmation bias. Here the rationalist may view themselves as having escaped the world fully but the more critical will be aware that they share its weakness and try to police them.

This rationalists translation of the Christian world however might be better called psychology. Like the Buddhist idea of the human dilemma there is no sense that walking away from crowds will diminish the problem of mind the rationalist wants to overcome. By contrast the Christian notion of the world is social. For the Christian there might be a human psychology (or inherent sinfulness) that cannot be withdrawn from, that recreates the world, but there is also a sense that the flaws of individual psychology are amplified in the world or that the world manufactures flaws that a solitary human could not.

This resembles more closely Marxist ideas of how people are alienated within economies and how dominant ideologies in society become paradigms that we can’t even see. For example everything is reduced to property under capitalism so that perceiving land without an owner (even a state owner) becomes impossible. When such a system produces injustices it can be difficult to identify anyone who is responsible. Certainly the landlord who rents a house at unaffordable rents is not held responsible for homelessness when they are simply following the market rate. Neither is the train station guard who tells the homeless person that they can’t sleep in the doorway they’ve chosen. Everyone is simply complying with the dictates of property. This sounds very similar to the Christian concept of the world ; a totalising cultural phenomenon that is hard to resist. The world can be a useful concept for naming the “water we swim in” culturally.

As much as the world can help us bring to light unseen cultural trends it can also be a concept that goes sour very easily. This occurs when the world and the church are understood as two distinct spaces in their current form. The church then becomes code for us (if you are a believer) while the world is them. Us and them. So let’s look at the ways that Us and them thinking about the church and the world goes wrong.

1. It misses a call to deeper difference with the world.
Churches which hold to us and them thinking about the church and the world need to focus on superficial matters where they can draw clear distinctions. Once upon a time they might have used divorce or sex before marriage as a mark of distinction but increasingly they can’t because there are unmarried and remarried parents in their pews. Instead now they might talk about hook up culture or porn use or acts of piety like church attendance. Meanwhile the church and its’ members accumulate property, and otherwise live as parts of the political economy just like citizens of the world. On average church attendees give more to charity but as they pursue political and economic power and security with the excuse that they have the right to like any other group, the way they distinguish themselves from the world is a missed opportunity for challenge.

2. It at least appears to be astonishing in its ignorance of church failure.
Our Prime minister, Scott Morrison, made a big deal of his Christian faith in the lead up to the election. He is defending the most blatant practice of pork barrelling by any Australian government as I write this. Of course child abuse in the church has been a national scandal with our highest profile sex abuser, Archbishop Pell, being defended in character by our most well known Methodist, Ex-PM John Howard. The notion that the church and the world in their present forms are the contrast between Gods way and the highway cannot be believed. I believe Christians who make that sort of claim generally mean the Church as it should be rather than how it is, but if this is not made clear the effect is to seem blind to injustice enacted by their own tribe.

3. It is astonishing in its ignorance of what is happening outside the church.
When Church voices draw a distinction between church and world as two separable places in their current form they have to paint the secular world as devoid of hope and virtue. This is the concern that prompted my writing. I am so tired of people in church talking about secular people as “the selfie generation” without any irony. It honestly feels like the authors of those comments caught an ad for a mainstream television reality show and figured that’s what everyone outside the church is like.  Their benchmark for assessing popular culture is the Kardashians. But if you are generally concerned with opposing vapidity in culture how is it that you haven’t found any of the allies in all the spaces outside of church? Just talk to young people themselves and you will find many who don’t want mobile phones or are unimpressed with social media and celebrity culture. In another example every Christmas there are numerous voices from Christians and non-Christians wanting to simplify and move away from consumptive consumerism, and seeking to make the season kinder to planet and the poor. But to hear some Christian speakers use of the world, its as if secular society is all lining up for the sales while in contrast Christians reflect on the incarnation. What a missed opportunity for alliances.

Even worse is the attribution of millennial frustrations to selfishness and cultural priorities. Why aren’t non-churched people having kids? It would have to be a desire for fame, fortune and freedom instead... and a lack of hope. It couldn’t be a decline in real wages and a housing market that is an investors playground. Could it? OK Boomer.

4. It’s vague as all hell and can easily be an excuse for blind bigotry.
The call to be unlike the world can be misapplied to suggest that any compromise of rigid fundamentalism for compassion or common sense is a compromise with the world for worldly gain. Zippers on pants instead of good honest buttons? Contraception? “Secular” movies and music? Women priests? Blessing same sex relationships? Anything can be worldly if you don’t like it.
If a person wants to argue against those things then they should develop arguments unpolluted by just labeling something worldly.

Worse still the term worldly can be used to dog-whistle one’s prejudices without actually having the courage to express them or to sound like you mean different things to different audiences for maximum appeal. The hypocrisy of this frankly cowardly approach to preaching is that it uses the rhetoric of radical bravery as it makes supposedly challenging calls to reject the world. Meanwhile everybody gets to decide what that means for them while looking down on others who decide differently.

I hope some of what I’ve written inspires the Christians I know to challenge how the concept of the world is used in their own and their peers rhetoric. To non- Christians reading this please know many Christians are not actually like the preacher from Footloose, there are Christians I know who are ACDC fans, avid board-gamers, into musical theatre, or complete nerds about anime, but it can be hard to confront how the world is used negatively by Christian leaders and teachers particularly when it is all dog-whistle and lack of detail.

Lastly this isn’t just a problem for Christians. The idea of the world can take many forms. From my own left wing perspective I should be critical of what I see as the path capitalism paves for our culture without needing to think every participant in it is corrupted by it and that every product of capitalism is entirely destructive. The four errors I mentioned above can easily be made  by me. In a sense the world is always both present and being resisted at the same time and moving beyond simplicity is necessary for us all.

In Solidarity with Myself: A Reflection on Passing as a Catholic Teacher.

I am a teacher. I currently travel an hour down country roads to work as a casual relief teacher at a public school in a small town. I would like to work closer to home so as to be more present for my family. Many people ask me if I have looked for work at the local Catholic high schools. I did once a long time ago but I haven’t since my last period of employment.

I would, for the most part, enjoy working at a Catholic school. I often mention how Catholic schools are ahead of public schools in terms of incorporating Australian Aboriginal perspectives in their curriculum. I believe education is a part of our fulfillment of our duty to the needs of others, not just a ticket to our own increased personal income and broadly speaking that is the Catholic ethos too. Lastly I like teaching kids in any environment. I could focus on them and not on all the policies of the church running the show.

But if I went for a job at a Catholic school I would have to accept a certain level of discrimination in my hiring and my retention of the job, discrimination that would be illegal in the public school system. This means that effectively in regards to employment at a Catholic school I will get preferential treatment for my heterosexual marriage compared to anyone who is gay or in a defacto relationship. Due to my Catholic upbringing I could also pretend to be Catholic. I look like a married Catholic man with kids – just the sort of person that would appropriately reflect the values and tone of the school.

This picture isn’t telling you my truth. I am married, now. We had our two children first, “in sin” and married when it felt right for both of us. So you know that I had sex outside of marriage. Some of that sex was also with other blokes. I’ve also comfortably been an ex- Catholic for a long time. I can still recall most of the prayers but I parted company with the church when it struck me that I wouldn’t even join a stamp collecting club if it only allowed men in its government let alone a world religion. About the only time I rediscover my Catholic identity is if someone generalizes unfairly about Catholics and I feel a need to rebut them. “We don’t actually eat babies”, I say, arms momentarily linked with my Catholic kin.

To take and hold a job at a Catholic school would necessarily involve “passing” as someone I am not. I want to discuss this concept of “passing” in depth. For some of you it’s a familiar concept and this essay probably isn’t for you. For others it may name clearly something that pervades your life that you’ve lacked a word for. For others still you may have only a limited experience of passing and little idea that it can be harmful. I first heard the word passing when it was used to describe when transgender people successfully convince society that they are a cisgender member of the gender they are transitioning to. In my early twenties I myself could cross dress to pass, meaning I could convince people that I was a biological woman by simply changing my appearance. Passing is also used when older people try to look younger. Passing could be used in the context of prosthetics to describe a limb that looks like one of flesh and blood. People with mental illnesses often find sophisticated ways of passing as well in order to avoid medical interventions or social stigma.

Passing generally operates inside social hierarchies as a way to gain social benefits. An older woman may try to pass as younger to avoid age discrimination in a job interview. A young person may mask their disability to avoid social stigma and pity. Gay men might pass as straight to avoid homophobia. Failing to pass means failing to obtain the rights and privileges of passing. At the pointy end this means safety from violence – to pass as cisgender is decidedly safer in our world than to be noticeably transgender. Passing is often not that hard because passing is fitting in with the expectations of a society that doesn’t want to notice your complexity, or difficulty or sadness or uniqueness or “wrongness” in their eyes. Passing is the culturally smoother outcome for everyone.

We all pass, or try to. We do it strategically and yet as easily as paying someone a basic courtesy. We smile when we are down. Doing so allows us to breeze through an interaction at the checkout counter. We don’t have to deal with other people’s concern for our welfare and they don’t have to deal with their concern either. It’s handy. We gain the benefits of everyone thinking we’re ok. Passing doesn’t necessarily make us a victim of oppression or bound by the shackles of society. It can just be a way to navigate social environments simply and to choose when to be open and with whom.

We are also however obliged to pass and that is much more toxic to tolerate. Women in particular can be told to smile as they walk along by complete strangers. Is the male issuer of this decree asking the woman to pass as the pretty young thing he would like to see rather than her actual self? I doubt its been reflected on that deeply, but the effect is the same. Thank goodness for all the women who don’t try to “fight ageing”, fake a smile and laugh off harassment or for that matter eliminate body and facial hair. By refusing to pass as someone else’s ideal they open up space for every other woman not to.

I want to stress that when we make efforts to pass, even in capitulation to others threats or demands, it is not fair to say that we are closing off space for others. The people who oblige passing do that with their commands and their criticisms. The people who threaten violence or discrimination to those who don’t pass or try to pass do that. People attempting to pass are simply living their lives as strategically as they can, perhaps even with safety in mind. Still, if we are successful the consequences of not passing will pass over us and hit others who are less successful. This is why in oppressed communities people who can pass as not belonging to that community are not always trusted as allies. They possess a privilege that isn’t healthy to use and might only work partially but is still real.

I could easily pass as someone who holds Catholic values about the expression of sexuality and the meaning of marriage (although curious minds might wonder how we stopped at two kids). I could mention my family to my students without concern. In fact, for me, it takes extraordinary effort to not pass. I have to pretty much “come out” as not who I look like if I want people to know. But I think its important to do this. Boringly, I have probably “come out” as having a queer past on this blog more times than I remember. That is me trying not to pass as what I look like. That is me trying to hold open the spaces for others and myself to be different. It’s healthy for me to do this but I’ll concede it becomes a tad repetitive.

There’s also a complex space I inhabit where my queer past isn’t really my true self either. I would feel wrong if I placed myself on a panel as a queer speaker. I don’t feel I can claim to speak from that position. I am married, in a marriage that doesn’t have to argue with anyone for recognition. Holding hands with my partner doesn’t put me at extra risk of violence. This is not because I am passing as straight but because my current expression of my sexuality is straight. In all this talk of passing in order to work at a Catholic school I don’t want to understate my heterosexual priveleges (or desire) or deny the oppressions of others. Sometimes it can be hard to divide what priveleges we obtain by virtue of who we are, and what privileges we obtain by passing as something we are not. Men after all gain privileges for being men but often only if they can pass as what society values men as (masculine, brave, tough) which is never really their whole truth.

There are many critical responses to “passing”. For example, there are transgender theorists who argue “passing” only reinforces gender based oppression. To pass as a woman one needs to embrace the icky politics of narrow definitions of visually being a woman. When I passed as a woman the easiest way to do this was to remove any facial, leg and underarm hair. These cues, plus socks in a bra, was enough for a young man with longish hair in dim light to pass as female. What does this say however about women’s body hair? Why couldn’t I have been read as a woman with unshaved underarms? To do so would have risked not passing. I made a choice to pass first. And then later I didn’t by embracing they style of “Gender-fuck”.

Within transgender politics one expression of gender identity has deliberately tried to challenge the value of passing. “Gender-fuck” is the colloquial term for transgressing gendered appearance rules in order to show them up as arbitrary and even to highlight their absurdity. The goal of gender-fuck is to create confusion in the reading of the person as male or female rather than to be successfully read as either one. There have always been spaces in culture for people playing this role – The bearded lady in the circus or the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. If punk is a movement fueled by positive rebellion  Gender-fuck is when Punk meets drag. I remember my days at uni in an a-frame frock with ripped up sleeves and facial hair as more freeing than dressing in any other way. I’ve yet to find a place of employment where this exact outfit would feel appropriate though. What I really enjoyed was abandoning the goal of passing as anything.

I want to be clear that I’m not saying every dress choice we make is either an attempt to pass or a rebellion against passing. A lot of our self representation choices have no relationship to passing as anything. Nowadays I wear a tie to work almost every day. This is my way of reminding myself that the students I work with in an underprivileged state school deserve as much professionalism as those at the local hoity-toity private school which would require a tie of me. I don’t think this choice can be understood through the lens of passing. I’m not trying to pass as a guy with my tie. I have a moustache that genders me perfectly well on its own and my reason for keeping that has its own story. I hope I haven’t held up passing as the way to understand all choices about appearance.

When we do attempt to pass the effect can be toxic. This is because when we aspire to present an image for others we can internalize the message that our truth is something to be ashamed of. I don’t want to generalize too much here. I think I personally have a very low tolerance for passing. I am inclined to interrogate myself as to why I might be keeping anything private from my friends and I don’t enjoy the suspicion that I am doing so in order to avoid their judgment. Other people I know seem to have a higher tolerance for passing. They like their privacy. They don’t mind wearing a mask to maintain it. I found being a waiter the hardest job because even when you are having a lousy day you are supposed to convince customers you are totally loving your job. As a teacher or as a drug and alcohol worker or as a school cleaner I have never felt the same pressure to pass as happy. This doesn’t make me better than people who can cope being a waiter. Frankly I think they have wisdom I lack.

My intolerance of passing is a key reason why I don’t want to work at a Catholic school. In the public system I don’t burden my current co-workers or employer with my life story but I don’t have any fear of them finding out. I don’t feel like mentioning my wife in the staff room is part of a ploy to fit in. I believe in public secular education for a lot of reasons but I don’t think the Catholic education system is bad by comparison. At a state school I don’t need to pass to work there though. At a Catholic school I would feel like I need to out myself constantly or be taken for someone I’m not.

Missing Church

Lately I have had a falling out with Christianity. Not a falling out with Christians, family or friends, but a grumpy disappointment with the theology of it. This is a not new cycle for me and not especially unique to Christianity. I’ve invested in and then fallen out with Buddhism and the Tarot in the past. It seems like I put a lot of hope into something being the something that makes sense of everything and then, crash, it fails to support the weight I’ve given it. I then resent the philosophy for fooling me about its flaws when I know, to be fair, I fooled myself.

Non-Christian friends have asked me in the past why I put so much effort into understanding Christianity. Part of it is that I am not an ideologue about religion – despite how I may sound at times. When my partners parents are over I like to remember to offer that we say grace before dinner. And in return they have never batted an eyelid when we don’t. I don’t get angry at people who express thanks to God for saving them from a hurricane the way some non-believers do because I don’t think that person is really saying God blessed them and cursed others. I think they’re just grateful –as I would be if a flying car missed my head and my partners head and my kids heads. I also think a lot of religious concepts – even hell – are useful philosophically – even if I don’t think they are physically real. I don’t, as I have said many times, think whether a person believes in God or not matters that much. I don’t think our opinions on God’s existence need to divide us or can meaningfully unite us either.

On top of this I believe in community. I believe our society is stupidly atomized into nuclear families which are themselves disintegrating in favour of the individual. There are positives to individualism, don’t get me wrong. I think certain calls for a return to the glory days of arranged marriages as a fix to individualism are bound up in those speakers blind privilege. Long live individualism in romance. Go for it Jack and Rose (Titanic movie reference). But economic individualism is something else. When you can find families where one sibling is wealthy while another is in crushing debt, what hope do we have of ever reducing the chasm between rich and poor in wider society? Wealth inequality is the worst it has ever been in human history and getting worse. I believe it is, on a structural level, threatening our planet and all life on it. We need to all get in the same boat economically or more and more people will keep drowning.

So when I’m not an ideologue about religion and I believe in community why wouldn’t I go to church? Churches are one of the few remaining non-capitalist spaces left – ignoring for a second the huckster variants with their miracles for sale. In a church you can’t buy anyone’s approval and you can’t not afford to attend. There is a general inclination towards collectivism. When a church holds a lunch its not usually bring your own or sausages for individual sale. The food is on the table for everyone and the costs are covered by donation. If the dishes need doing then everyone can pitch in and while this can lead to women pitching in more than men that’s a charge that can be leveled at any community and it can be challenged at church. In some churches at least, there is a strong desire to tackle decisions collectively, and powerful checks on ego and hierarchy. I don’t bother with churches with a clerical authority. My time in the Catholic tradition is done. But there are those that rotate worship leaders and value discussion over preaching at a congregation. It’s like a commune of like minded people.

The dilemma is, that I am not so like-minded as the rest. Lot’s of churches include a diversity of views. Some church goers were among those who recently voted yes for same sex marriage while others voted no. All Churches with  male only clergy would include some members for women’s ordination.  Not every Christian has the same attitude to the bible. Not every Christian has the same idea of the afterlife or how prayer is supposed to work or what a Christian life should look like. But generally every Christian has a respectful attitude towards the Bible, as a place they want to return to for inspiration, if not instruction. Generally every Christian believes in an afterlife and with that an eternal nature to the soul. Generally every Christian considers Jesus uniquely special, not just part of a pantheon of good guys along with Robin Hood and Jim Henson. Generally every Christian wants to check their life in with a being or at least force they call God so that they can be living on the right track, either through prayer or biblical study or reflecting on God or some combination of these. I don’t.

The one hesitation I feel when writing “I don’t” to the above generalities about Christians is that I would like to  check in with God. And by God I mean a loosely fluid concept representing “goodness”. Checking in with goodness to see if I am doing good in the world is certainly one reason why I have gone to church in the past. I am inclined to laziness and self-importance. I need to check in somehow. But checking in with goodness is fundamentally not the same as checking in with God. Or maybe it could be but while it has felt similar enough in the past to make attending church useful it now feels different enough to make sharing that checking in with Christians not helpful. I’m not so sure God, real or not, is so good.

All of this might change. I might go back to church next week and if I did I know I would be welcomed without question. There would be a morning tea of shared food and if I brought something it would be accepted and if I forgot to bring anything it would not be thought of. A group of people I count as friends would be there, noticing if I was down or bringing their own need to the group. The Bible would be consulted to seek out God’s loving plan to restore a just world. Connected to this there might be a chance to reflect on how to be a part of that plan in relation to refugees, or the environment or the neglected and isolated people in our community. Songs would be sung, lamentations over injustice, or praises of a sacrificial God. Maybe a collection plate would be passed around but without obligation or even pressure. People would ask the group to pray for themselves or for others and the group would do so without haste.

Sometimes I think some of my atheist friends think that church is where Christians go to hang out and loudly judge those who aren’t there, especially atheists. I think some services in some more fundy churches I have attended in the past resembled that but its truly not a common form. The church I have attended till recently (can I still say “my” church?) has never, ever done that. People value their time there, for themselves, as a place to challenge their own flaws, way too much. Likewise it isn’t because I think I am flawless that I haven’t been attending church. I don’t feel that church is currently the best way for me to check those flaws but if you, whatever your beliefs, think joining a church community might be for you, I would definitely recommend St. Matthews in Long Gully, Bendigo. You might see me there, but I currently wouldn’t expect to. Enjoy the morning tea.

Against whom have I sinned? Part 2.

In my last post I presented the problem of how a particular Christian understanding of “sin” can be used to overlook victims. The specific sins I am considering here are those with human victims; murder, assault, unjust incarceration. I claim that it is necessary within Christianity to rationalize God as the sole or primary offended party when people commit such sin, in order to give God, through Jesus, the prerogative to forgive such sin completely. I concluded however with the recognition that many passionate Christians do acknowledge human victims indicating that they have an understanding of sin and of God’s offence that overcomes the problem I outlined.

A recent news event and its discussion is worth mentioning here. Rachael Denhollander was a victim of Larry Nassar’s sexual abuse while a young girl. She was also the first to publicly accuse him. At Larry Nassar’s sentencing hearing Denhollander gave a powerful impact statement which “went viral” in Christian media circles. Rachael expressed in a follow up interview how she knows first hand the glibness that the Christian doctrine of forgiveness can express towards victims and even how it can be used as a weapon to minimize their abuse. Rachel Denhollander is clear that her own understanding of forgiveness “means that I trust in God’s justice and I release bitterness and anger and a desire for personal vengeance. It does not mean that I minimize or mitigate or excuse what he has done. It does not mean that I pursue justice on earth any less zealously.”

When I read Denhollander's words and when I learn of her actions in bringing Nassar to justice as well as exposing other abuses and supporting other victims, I feel like its better for anyone to read her words over mine on this matter.

I’ll go on though, because I want to outline very clearly an alternative understanding of the mechanism of sin and forgivenenss that Christians can take up. Denhollander has reinforced for me how relevant this is to changing how churches respond to institutional abuse. Firstly it is not necessary to consider God’s forgiveness as sufficient for all matters. A person who kills another person may be forgiven by God for the pertinent offence to God (harming their creation or disobeying God’s laws), but this does not remove their obligations to the victim, the victim's family or their community. To express this it is important to avoid language suggesting that, through contrition before God, a person “wipes their slate clean” or in any similar metaphor renders their situation as if the sin had not happened. This is not the situation for victims. It could even be stated that a consequence of being right with God would be a desire of a perpetrator to meet their obligations to any victims.

Some objectors to this might raise passages such as Psalm 41 which led me to this topic in my last post, as if they “proved” God is the only offended party to sin. A careful reading however reminds us that Psalm 41 is simply a prayer made by King David. King David’s self-serving belief that God is the only one he has sinned against should come as no surprise from such a flawed character. It is an example of an appeal to cheap grace from someone who consistently tries to play God like a slot machine. In 2 Samuel:12 we see David employing contrition towards God in a frankly cynical way (while sadly God in patriarchal fashion punishes David through his child). David is supposed to be read as a dick and there’s no reason even a biblical fundamentalist has to assume he gets God perfectly. 

No biblical Christian is justified using Psalm 41 as instruction over the more relevant Matthew 5:23-24. Here Jesus separates out making oneself right with God, through temple sacrifices, and making oneself right with another person. Jesus puts the latter first as a requirement of the former, reversing the normal hierarchy of importance. It is presented as if approaching God for forgiveness of sin makes no sense while in conflict with one’s “brother or sister.” This is a position that is radically at odds with David’s God-alone strategy of seeking forgiveness.

“Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.”

What does this say about the nature of God and sin? I find the idea of a God who refuses to be used to clear someone’s slate while they continue to offend others a powerful one. It is certainly an empowering one for victims.

One of the recommendations of the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse is that the Catholic church removes the promise of secrecy from the rite of confession in matters involving child victims. This has been initially rejected by the Church hierarchy in Australia. If we accept that genuine forgiveness of sins requires the victims engagement and in cases of child abuse the community is also the victim, then the position of the Catholic church should be that absolution is always withheld unless a confession of sexual abuse is also made to the police. It follows then that, even if the secrecy of the confession is held to by the church, priests can be prevented from practicing as priests after confessing to sexual abuse. They either accept criminal prosecution or they must be considered unrepentant of a mortal sin by their peers and cannot officiate mass.

This may seem like an unnecessarily convoluted thought process to reach a simple conclusion; You can’t just go to God (or God’s representative), obtain your forgiveness and then your victims must catch up to the new reality of your sinlessness. Any path to atonement with God is rather through a genuine encounter with the reality of your victims and all the resulting consequences of that. Anything else is cheap grace at their expense. At times I have felt that discussing the theology of how this works is more words than needed but I have had the words of Denhollander in mind:

“But often, if not always, people are motivated by poor theology and a poor understanding of grace and repentance and that causes them to handle sexual assault in a way where that (sic) a lot of predators go unchecked, often for decades. When you see a theological commitment to handling sexual assault inappropriately, you have the least hope of ever changing it.”

And so we must first change the theologies of sin and forgiveness that don't put victims first.

Against whom have I sinned?

Psalm 51 is a prayer of the Jewish King David. His rule, if such a person existed, would have been about 1000 BCE and is considered a Golden Age of ancient Jewish civilization. This is the same David who, in his most famous legend, slays Goliath with a sling. In Psalm 51 (included below) he prays to God for mercy. As he does so David expresses particular views about sin which I heard quoted by the contemporary theologian D.A. Carson, causing me to revisit this psalm.

D.A. Carson stated that in every occasion of sin, God is the primary (David says only) offended party. As the primary or only offended party (and this distinction in effect isn’t clear)  God has the moral right to punish sinners and the capacity to pardon them independently of any human victims. King David in Psalm 51 asks God to be cleansed of his sin like contemporary Christians are invited to do, with the full confidence that this is God’s prerogative. God could not do this unless they were functionally the only offended party; another could still righteously pass their own judgment.

The first point I want to make about this theology is that much depends on what is meant by “offended” when we say God is an offended party to sin. One way this has been understood is that sin is a breaking of God’s rules and that this offence of disobedience is the way in which God is offended. If this is the way God’s offence is understood then it should raise some questions. How could the person of God be more offended for having their commands disobeyed over the direct victim of an assault for example? If sexual harassment occurred in a workplace would we say that the boss, whose rules for workplace conduct have been transgressed, is the most offended party? Imagine such a boss informing the victim that they have forgiven the perpetrator so everything is good now. We would understandably balk at this. Even though we should recognise that the boss has independently been betrayed by the harassing employee and could independently insist on punishment they are certainly not the only offended party. The victim of the harassment has an independent claim for restitution or punishment.

Another way of understanding God as the offended party is to state that we, along with all creation, are God’s property. Thus any transgression against us is against our author/owner rather than ourselves. If I enter your house and destroy your couch there can be no sense that the couch is an offended party. Only you are. Consistently if a person decides to destroy their own couch then there is no offence at all. To accept this paradigm, where God is the functionally only offended party by virtue of our possession by God, is to deny our personhood. (Moral personhood is a term for how  a person is delineated from a thing in morality.)  I condemn as barbaric when harm to children or wives counts only as harm to their patriarch (and owner) in some cultural circumstances. I insist upon the moral personhood of all. Are we supposed to accept via an analagous patriarchal logic that as children of God we have no independent personhood?

It should be acknowledged that to say we are not people in relation to another human person, is not the same thing as saying we are not a person in relation to God. God is not a citizen and can only symbolically inhabit a human throne. There is a kind of political equality in declaring that all, rather than just some, human beings are not moral persons. It is however a political equality of tenuous security. The offence of killing us is only dependant on God being offended by that killing. Large sections of the human population believe in a Bible that proclaims men who have sex with men, practitioners of witchcraft and children who disrespect their parents as right to be killed according to God. If we accept the paradigm of sin in which we are God’s property then any argument against such murder (even that it should be called murder) can only be an argument over whether that is actually what God wants. Which of us wants to go toe to toe with a fundamentalist to assert our humanity with no avenue to our inalienable personhood?

God as the functionally only offended party to sin is not peripheral to Christianity. The complete forgiveness of sins by the cross depends upon it. We have seen two ways Gods' position can be understood that should disturb us. Neither honours the victim with their full self-worth. It is reasonable to wonder whether these understandings of sin and God contributed to the catastrophic failure in some church institutions of their responsibility to young people in their care. Did they simply forget the victim was an offended party? Did they seek forgiveness from the boss only? It is also pertinent to ask, as a society with largely Christian roots, whether these understandings have expressions in our broader politic. The violence of colonization is sometimes excused by the greater glory of the nation. The cruelty of offshore detention is unseen because its victims are nobody’s property. How do we all under represent the victim in our understanding of wrong doing?

When we look at Christians practicing their faith we find many who recently exposed their churches corruption and have stood up for victims of abuse. We find a great number of the people who condemned and punished the violence of Australia’s colonization in our history were driven by their Christian faith. We find many Christians today at the forefront of trying to inject some compassion into Australia’s immigration debates. This leaves us with our last question, worthy of its own separate discussion; Are these Christians simply avoiding the logic of their own faith or do they have a different understanding of God as the only offended party of sin which doesn’t diminish the human victims? Is it possible that through an understanding of incarnation perhaps, these Christians avoid treating human people and God as separate persons who compete for our attention when addressing sin. Do they conceptually combine God and victim into one? I suspect this is so and I hope to find the opportunity to present this possibility to my Christian friends. I’ll tell you what they say. Hopefully they can give me the language to express their understanding to you.

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Psalm 51

1 Have mercy on me, O God,
    according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion
    blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash away all my iniquity
    and cleanse me from my sin.
3 For I know my transgressions,
    and my sin is always before me.
4 Against you, you only, have I sinned
    and done what is evil in your sight;
so you are right in your verdict
    and justified when you judge.
5 Surely I was sinful at birth,
    sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
6 Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb;
    you taught me wisdom in that secret place.
7 Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean;
    wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.
8 Let me hear joy and gladness;
    let the bones you have crushed rejoice.
9 Hide your face from my sins
    and blot out all my iniquity.
10 Create in me a pure heart, O God,
    and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
11 Do not cast me from your presence
    or take your Holy Spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation
    and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.
13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
    so that sinners will turn back to you.
14 Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God,
    you who are God my Savior,
    and my tongue will sing of your righteousness.
15 Open my lips, Lord,
    and my mouth will declare your praise.
16 You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
    you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
17 My sacrifice, O God, is[b] a broken spirit;
    a broken and contrite heart
    you, God, will not despise.
18 May it please you to prosper Zion,
    to build up the walls of Jerusalem.
19 Then you will delight in the sacrifices of the righteous,
    in burnt offerings offered whole;
    then bulls will be offered on your altar.