annegreen

How would you react if you found out a family member walked in on you and saw you naked while you were passed out drunk?

I imagine I would be embarrassed and would make a mental note to hold back on the beers next time.

Most characters on a sitcom would probably conclude that to restore balance to the relationship, they’d need to see their family member drunk and naked.

Apparently, Noah’s (yes, the same guy who built the ark) reaction is to curse his family member’s son, and all of his descendants.

Genesis 9 contains one of the most interesting stories I think you can find in the Old Testament. Regardless of whether you read this story as historical or legendary, it doesn’t feel like all the pieces in this story add up. The punishment does not seem to fit the crime. For many readers, we’re left wondering: what exactly happened in Noah’s tent?

Reading 1

The first possibility is that what’s written in the text is really all there is to it. Noah gets drunk on home-brewed wine, falls asleep naked in his tent, and Ham (Noah’s son) goes in, sees Noah naked, and tells his brothers, who walk in backwards and place a blanket over their father. When Noah learns what Ham did, he curses - not his son Ham, but Ham’s son and Noah’s grandson - Canaan to be a slave to the descendants of his uncles.

It’s definitely possible that this is the full story, and for many modern readers, that’s the default reading of the text. But if that’s the case, it feels like Noah’s reaction is both unnecessarily harsh and misdirected. A lifetime of slavery for his grandson because his son caught a glimpse of his penis? Come on. But there are other interpretations of the text which choose to read between the lines a little bit more.

Reading 2

One ancient rabbinic reading of the text is that when Ham entered Noah’s tent, he didn’t just see his father naked - he sexually assaulted him. This certainly escalates the seriousness of Ham’s crime and makes Noah’s furious response a bit more warranted. However, it still feels misdirected. Why curse Canaan instead of Ham?

Reading 3

Another ancient rabbinic reading is that Ham actually castrated his father while he was drunk and unconscious. Yikes. Again, if this is the case, Noah’s anger is now warranted, and there’s a stronger reason for cursing Canaan rather than Ham. Canaan was Ham’s fourth son, and by castrating his father, Ham robbed Noah of his own fourth son. However, it feels to me like this reads heavily between the lines. There doesn’t seem to be any kind of euphemism indicating that this is the case.

Reading 4

A more modern reading of the story compares a verse in this story with a passage in Leviticus.

“And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside.” Genesis 9:22

“You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's wife; it is the nakedness of your father.” Leviticus‬ ‭18‬:‭8‬

Leviticus uses the same phrase found in Genesis as a euphemism to mean having sexual intercourse with your own mother. So, this reading concludes the Ham raped not his father but his mother while Noah lay drunk and unconscious. Again, this would make Noah’s anger more warranted, and could explain the curse on Canaan - if Canaan was born to Ham by his own mother.

What do you think? Do you buy any of these interpretations? Or do you think something else happened entirely?

If you were to try to boil the gospel message down to one sentence, what would it be?

For me, it’s: “Christ participates in our humanity so that we can partake in his divinity.”

Here’s an overview of all the fees you can expect to pay to Wealthsimple, ever.

Commission Fees

None. Wealthsimple has zero commission fees. This means that you can trade stocks back and forth all day, without paying a dime.

For comparison, Questrade’s direct investing platform charges a fee of $0.01/share… with a minimum charge of $4.95. So, you’re really paying $4.95/trade unless you’re trading more than 495 shares in a single transaction. There’s also an upper limit of $9.95. Questrade lets you buy ETFs for free but applies the same fees as above to selling ETFs. At RBC Direct Investing, you’ll pay $9.95/trade, or $6.95/trade when you make at least 150 trades/quarter (an average of 1.6 trades/day).

Foreign Exchange Fees

Whenever you convert CAD to USD, or USD to CAD, you’ll be charged a 1.5% conversion fee. For comparison, the typical foreign transaction fee on a credit card is 2.5%, though some don’t charge any foreign transaction fees at all.

USD Subscription Fees

If you’re a Wealthsimple Core client (meaning you hold less than $100,000 in assets with Wealthsimple), you’ll pay $10.00/month if you choose to open a USD account with them. This is completely optional. If you’re a Wealthsimple Premium or Generational client, the USD account is free.

Management Fees

Wealthsimple charges a management fee for their managed accounts - they do not apply to self-directed accounts. The fee is 0.5% if you hold less than $100,000 in assets with Wealthsimple, 0.4% if you have $100,000-500,000 in assets, and as low as 0.2% if you’ve got at least $10,000,000 in assets (hey, good for you). This management fee is on an annual basis, so if you had a managed portfolio of $10,000, you would pay Wealthsimple $50/year.

For comparison, Questrade has a management fee of 0.25% for accounts with less than $100,000, and 0.20% for accounts with more than that. RBC has a management fee of 0.5% for their managed portfolios, regardless of account balance.

Options Fees

Whenever you create an options contract, you pay $2 USD. For comparison, Questrade charges $1.00/contract, in addition to a $9.95 commission fee. RBC charges $1.25/contact, plus a $9.95 commission fee.

Instant Withdrawal Fees

Normally, Wealthsimple takes a few days to withdraw your money to an external account. If you choose to do an instant withdrawal, you’ll pay 2.5% on the amount you’re withdrawing.

Crypto Trading Fees

You’ll pay 1.5-2% fees whenever you trade crypto.

Bonus: Management Expense Ratios

These fees aren’t dictated by Wealthsimple, but I thought I’d add them for completeness. Individual stocks don’t have any fees associated with them, but when you purchase an ETF, there’ll be a management expense ratio (MER) attached to it. You’ll have to investigate the ETFs you intend to purchase to find out what this fee is. Like management fees, an MER is an annual fee.

Very broadly speaking, there are two basic approaches to investing: active and passive. So what’s the difference?

What it’s not

Some people might (incorrectly) suggest that an active investor is someone who makes frequent trades (up to multiple times a day), while a passive investor is someone who makes infrequent trades (once a month or less). But frequency of trades really isn’t the best way to understand active vs passive investing.

Others might (also incorrectly) suggest that an active investor is someone who handpicks their stocks based on market conditions every time they buy, while a passive investor is someone who buys the same securities repeatedly. This, also, isn’t the best way way to understand active vs passive investing.

What it is

In simple terms, an active investor is someone who is trying to beat the market, while a passive investor is someone who is trying to replicate the market (or a market segment). The movement of a market is measured by weighing all the individual stocks in that market and averaging out their direction. So when you hear that the TSX is down 2%, it means that while some of the stocks may have gone up and others gone down, overall, the average stock price fell 2%.

As of writing this post, the TSX is up 4.61% compared to a year ago. A passive investor looks at that number and says “yeah, I could settle for that.” An active investor says “nah, I could do better.”

How it works

Again, the key to all of this is that a stock market’s average return is literally just the combined return of all the stocks on that market. This means that if you bought a portfolio 1 year ago of all the stocks on the TSX, weighted by their market share, your return over the past year would be 4.61%. It’s really just junior high level math.

So, a passive investor chooses to guarantee themselves a return equal to the average market return. An active investor attempts to predict which stocks will outperform the market average. If the average return of their portfolio is higher than the average return of the market - boom, they won.

This is why the first two definitions of active vs passive investing are faulty. An active investor could buy $10,000 worth of a few stocks and hold for a year, in the hopes that they outperform the market, while a passive investor could buy $20 worth of the market every day for a year. Frequency doesn’t matter.

Similarly, an active investor might keep buying Tesla over and over, while a passive investor will continually rebalance their portfolio to align with the market.

So which is better?

The answer is a little bit complicated (but only a little bit). If you want to get rich quick, passive investing ain’t gonna do it for you. But for my money, I’d choose passive investing over active investing any day. And that’s because it turns out humans are awful at predicting what stocks will over-perform. In fact, over the past 20 years, about 90-95% of active investors failed to beat the market.

The situation gets even worse when you consider that a lot of active investors are actually paying someone else a management fee to pick stocks for them, which takes even more off the top. On the other hand, there are plenty of low-cost ETFs which attempt to replicate segments of the market, like the well-know-and-loved VGRO or XGRO. (portfolios like these are called “index funds”).

Of course, the real answer is that we should all just keep buying GameStop.

I can still vividly recall my elementary Sunday school teacher teaching us a “kid-friendly” definition of sin:

Sin is anything you think, do, or say that makes God upset.

As a young child, this notion filled me with a sense of dread. What if I unintentionally said or did something that upset God? And for years this fear lingered because the reasons behind God's displeasure seemed more or less… arbitrary.

Traditional Western Christianity usually defines sin somewhere along the lines of transgression against the divine will. But what does the divine will entail? Are certain actions arbitrarily placed on a naughty list? Levitical laws, such as those prohibiting the mixing of fabrics or trimming beards, can contribute to this perception of arbitrariness.

But to me, the idea that sin is arbitrary ultimately means that there is not such thing as the Good, which I reject. So, I propose a different perspective — a perspective that views sin as dehumanization. I hold the belief that sin does involve transgression against the divine will, but that God's will is to redeem creation and restore true humanity, where every person bears the image of God.

For this reason, I propose that we can assess an act's sinfulness by examining whether it humanizes or dehumanizes individuals.

Let's consider examples: Acts of compassion, empathy, and justice affirm the dignity and worth of others, nurturing their humanity. In contrast, actions rooted in prejudice, discrimination, or oppression strip away the humanity of others, dehumanizing them.

Now, some people may prefer to view sin through the more “objective” lens of biblical commandments over the subjectivity of humanizing vs dehumanizing acts. However, I am confident that viewing sin through the lens of dehumanization brings us closer to the divine will, because we acknowledge the transformative power of our actions and our responsibility to foster the flourishing of all.

By embracing an understanding of sin as dehumanization, we embrace the ideals of justice, love, and the restoration of our shared humanity.

To say that the Christian church has a checkered past with the indigenous people of North America would be putting it lightly. Inter-generational trauma caused by the church lingers in many indigenous communities today.

As a non-indigenous Christian living on treaty land, I want to take this opportunity to say a few things.

First, the actions of many members of the church towards indigenous people - both historically and today - have been nothing short of abusive, spiritually, emotionally, and physically. To deny that is to perpetuate a cycle of abuse. The church has largely failed to serve as a representative of Christ to indigenous people.

Second, I believe that the Christian church has much to learn from the spiritual practices of our indigenous neighbours. While I personally hold to the belief that Jesus Christ is the only image of the invisible God, I also believe that there is a multitude of ways of pursuing God. In particular, I believe that many indigenous communities depict a far more Christlike vision of communal, self-sacrificial life. In addition, I believe that the relationship indigenous peoples have with nature is much closer to the idyllic picture of Adam and Eve’s stewardship of creation than most western cultures.

So today, I acknowledge that I live on treaty land, the traditional and ancestral home of the Cree, Dene, Blackfoot, Saulteaux, and Nakota Sioux. I choose to honour the lives and stories of the indigenous peoples who came before me. And I claim my responsibility to foster healthier relationships with my indigenous neighbours today.

Wealthsimple now has FHSA’s! Even if you don’t plan on buying a house immediately, you should open one soon, so that your contribution room begins growing.

The second campaign I ever ran was the Lost Mine of Phandelver (the first campaign was a homebrew that lasted exactly half a session and ended in a TPK). At the time, I was but a foolish DM who was still trying to remember the difference between an attack roll and a damage roll, gave players far too many actions during their turns, and played with awful homebrew like crit tables.

My party had made it to the ruined village of Thundertree. After the rogue snuck through some ~~bushes~~ twig blights and died, I had to introduce a Druid character to cast reincarnation on him so that we could keep momentum going.

As the Druid was bringing the rogue back to life, the monk decided to explore the village some more. He enters an abandoned home.

You look around you and see furniture weathered and worn, strewn about the room. Plants are growing up from cracks in the floor. There’s nothing of interest here.

The monk decided to climb onto the roof. With a great acrobatics skill, that’s easy. He asks to roll a perception check.

You see the decimated village of Thundertree all around you. Most of the buildings are falling apart. The only building that looks to be in moderate repair is a tower on a hill.

“What else do I see in the distance?”

Umm, let me check a map… Well, the town is surrounded by neverwinter wood. It’s autumn, so the leaves are an array of red, gold, and orange. You can see a river winding through the woods, and near the horizon where it enters the sea, with the city of neverwinter sparkling like a jewel in the setting sun.

…

“I take 5 turns to admire the view.”

You pause and appreciate your surroundings, letting yourself burn this image of beauty into your memory. Now what?

“I jump down into the bushes below.”

As you descend, you realize these are not bushes, but twig blights. They attack you - and get a critical hit! Let me roll on the crit table to see what happens to you.

…

They’ve gouged out your eyes.

You are now blind.

Well at least the last thing you did with your sight was admire a scenic landscape.

That was the day we stopped using crit tables.

Some verses from “that all shall be saved,” by David Bentley Hart, in support of universal salvation:

Romans 5:8-19 | So, then, just as through one transgression came condemnation for all human beings, so also through one act of righteousness came a rectification of life for all human beings; for, just as by the heedlessness of the one man the many were rendered sinners, so also by the obedience of the one the many will be rendered righteous.

Titus 2:11 | For the grace of God has appeared, giving salvation to all human beings …

Matthew 18:14 | So it is not a desire that occurs to your Father in the heavens that one of these little ones should perish.

1 John 2:2 | And he is atonement for our sins, and not only for ours, but for the whole cosmos.

1 Timothy 4:10 | we have hoped in a living God who is the savior of all human beings, especially those who have faith.

I’m a Canadian, so all of this has been happening at a distance for me. That being said, my heart breaks for all the people affected by this decision.

Holding to male-only leadership as being ordained by God has become an untenable perspective: biblically, logically, and experientially.

First, let’s ask the question - assuming that male-only leadership is God’s will - is there a functional difference between men and women which justifies this hierarchy?

If no, then we are left with the conclusion that God has arbitrarily created a hierarchical division between humanity. Personally, I don’t see how one can defend this view in light of the major biblical theme of equalization - that hills will be made low and valleys filled in, the wise will become foolish, and the foolish will be made wise.

If yes, then this functional difference must be in their ability to lead. If it’s anything else (e.g., the quality of having a penis), then it’s the same as being arbitrary.

So then, are women incapable of leadership?

It seems impossible to me to answer “yes” to this question. Clearly, there are plenty of women with the ability to lead. To deny that is ignorance.

Obviously, women are capable of leadership.

Of course, proponents of male-only leadership may argue that, on the whole, men are typically better at leadership than women, just as men are generally taller than women, though not every man is taller than every woman. But this completely breaks down, because it means that gender isn’t the difference after all - it’s simply ability. And if this is the case, then regardless of generalizations, individuals with the ability to lead should lead, whatever their gender.

There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female; since you are all one in Christ Jesus.

To all of you who are fathers: I wish you the best today! And for those of you who have complicated/toxic relationships with your fathers: my thoughts are with you. ❤️ I know that this can be a tough day.

I once heard somebody talk about how one of the big reasons deconstruction can be scary is that it feels like you have to let go of all your beliefs at once, which is an extremely difficult thing to do. He talked about how we chose one core belief to be his “life raft” and gave himself permission to question everything else, but to accept this one thing at face value.

As I’ve deconstructed, my life raft has been that God is love, and that Jesus is God incarnate. It was incredible to me how much easier it became to process the rest of my questions when I had permission to just accept and believe that Jesus is the God who loves us.

Has anyone else heard of this idea? If so, or if not, what is/would be your life raft?