I am at a loss how the last post went so awry. A lot of you DID read it as I meant it: those were the “Ha ha ha!” comments. Some of you “agreed with me”—but about things I definitely wasn’t saying. Some of you “disagreed with me”—but about things I definitely wasn’t saying. And my guess is that there were tons of people who didn’t like the post but didn’t leave a comment.

I come from a Christian family and was myself a Christian until I was 21. Many of my dearest friends and relatives—people I love and respect—are Christians, and I wrote the post keeping their feelings in mind. Most of the things in the post are jokes I’ve cracked to MY MOTHER, who is the Christianyist Christian I know, and she LAUGHED. I mean, “resenting” God! Ha ha ha ha ha!! That title CRACKS ME UP! Like saying an ant resents our town’s planning committee’s zoning decisions! Ha ha ha!

I went to a Christian college that thought it was not only right but GOOD to discuss (and even joke about) the things in the Bible that are incompatible with what the majority of the world’s population would EVER sign up for if it were in the Christianity contract. On paper, looking at the Old Testament, I doubt any of us would join. “Hey, would you like to this religion? God is running on a platform of virgin rape, civilization destruction, and sending bears to massacre little children!”

Er, no. And so my assumption is that Christians DON’T have those stories as part of their belief system, and so those stories are safe to make jokes about. If I make a joke about a story in which God sends bears to maul children for teasing a prophet, I’m assuming that doesn’t attack ANYONE’S personal belief system. And if it DOES attack your belief system, uh…..I mean, I guess I want it to, then, just as I would if your belief system involved bombing daycare centers. At my college, the discussion usually ended up with us trying to figure out what was true and what was a parable, and where the line could be drawn between scripture being inspired by God but written down by men, and how much we felt we could chalk up to the human mind not being able to understand the mind of God.

In the family I grew up in, too, discussion and frank talk and jokes about “women not talking in church ha ha ha” were allowed and encouraged. My dad was a minister and a Hebrew language scholar, so he had many excellent explanations for how parts of the Bible had been mistranslated or taken out of context. Blind, unquestioning acceptance of every word in the Bible was not considered part of being a thinking Christian. The conclusion of a hard discussion about, say, killing children for teasing a prophet, was that we DON’T like that and we DON’T understand it, but that not liking/understanding some part of the Bible, or feeling like we don’t like/understand a way God did something, doesn’t make us bad Christians or non-Christians. What it means is that we have to wait until we got to Heaven to understand the big picture—or to find out how something was mis-recorded.

NOTHING I wrote in that post criticized CHRISTIANS. And I apologize to those of you who thought I shouldn’t write about just one religion, but like most of us I’m only FAMILIAR with one religion. I’d write about the others if I knew any others. It’s not like I’m a world religions scholar but am singling out Christianity to pick on.

NOTHING I wrote in that post was intended to MOCK anyone, even though the word “mock” came up again and again and again in the comments. “Criticize”? Sure, you could call it that, if you don’t think it’s okay to joke about anything in the Bible. But “MOCK”? To quote The Princess Bride, I do not think that word means what you think it means. How is it “mocking Christians” to discuss the problems in the story of Job? Don’t Christians think there’s a problem there too? I was assuming they did. I guess I might have mocked someone if I thought they didn’t think there was a problem—but since my assumption was that everyone agreed there WAS a problem, I didn’t get around to doing any mocking.

NOTHING I wrote said or implied that Christians were dumb. I don’t even understand how anyone could have gotten that. I didn’t discuss Christians AT ALL. And again: my assumption is that Christians DON’T think it was awesome when God authorized the rape of virgins. If you thought I was saying Christians DID think it was awesome, I guess you could say I was criticizing Christian beliefs, but saying Christians are DUMB? Whuh?

I don’t mind telling you it made me both hurt and angry that a few of you said you were ditching me because of that post. That makes me feel like you expect me to be perfect: one screw-up and I am WORTHLESS and you are GONE. I make mistakes. Sometimes I might do a poor job of communicating what I mean, or sometimes I might make a joke you don’t think is in good taste, or sometimes I might have an opinion you disagree with. But if I’m not perfect, or exactly as you want me to be, you’re taking off. That’s not a fair standard to hold me to, and it’s not a standard I hold you to.

Edit: Because of a misunderstanding, I’m editing to add that comments are closed on this post to avoid splitting the discussion into two discussions (one on the previous post and one on this one), which gets confusing for everyone and means that I’m answering/clarifying things in two locations.