From time to time I read a post that is equally smart as mine are… what an arrogant statement I hear you say, but read on… and I often read posts that are way smarter than mine. (From time to time probably means inside my little head.) Here is one that is way smarter than one I could write by Tim Suttle who pastors a church in Kansas, USA.
A couple of quotes in there, one from Stanley Hauerwas that was a bit of reminder to me:
Anytime you think you need to protect God, you can be sure that you are worshipping an idol.
Then in the article itself he critiques the use of the word ‘deconstruction’, simply suggesting that
Deconstruction, in the popular sense of that word, should be a normal aspect of growth toward maturity. In a less insecure era we would just call it: discipleship.
Delegation… Not always bad, certainly a lot better than holding it all to myself. But sometimes we have to go beyond delegation and then the dangers arise, for we enter the world of ‘oh no I have lost (quality) control’.
The next day Moses sat as judge for the people, while the people stood around him from morning until evening. When Moses’ father-in-law saw all that he was doing for the people, he said, “What is this that you are doing for the people? Why do you sit alone, while all the people stand around you from morning until evening?”… Moses’ father-in-law said to him, “What you are doing is not good. You will surely wear yourself out… You should also look for able men among all the people, men who fear God, are trustworthy, and hate dishonest gain; set such men over them as officers over thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens… Let them sit as judges for the people at all times; let them bring every important case to you, but decide every minor case themselves. So it will be easier for you, and they will bear the burden with you. If you do this, and God so commands you, then you will be able to endure, and all these people will go to their home in peace.” (Exod. 18:13-26).
Good practical advice, delegate the work load to competent people, maintain the quality control… maintain the centre also?
Delegated authority, and a component part of many organisations, understandably so.
Jethro’s advice comes from someone who is outside the community that has travelled and is pre-New Testament. Maybe the New Testament takes it a level further, beyond delegated authority to distributed authority?
‘All authority’ was given to Jesus and that authority is at a very serious level distributed to those who ‘go’. Distributed with all the possibilities of it being abused (the post before this one).
At the ‘last supper’ Jesus distributed the bread and wine as a symbol (sign – contains / draws the reality it points to into the situation) and invited all to take. There is an implication in it that the answer to where now is Jesus has to be wherever anyone who took that bread and wine has gone. There was a distribution of authority from Jesus to the community. Surely that is behind the ‘whose sins you forgive will be forgiven’ (Jn. 20:23). Strange that that is a Scripture that is harder to swallow while ‘touch not the Lord’s anointed’ is fairly easy to quote.
On the day of Pentecost (a ‘new’ creation day, complete with day, wind, sound, speech) the Spirit comes to all equally at the same time. There was no order of gift (first Peter, on this rock) and then he could pass the Spirit on to some others who passed the Spirit on… The tongues of fire were distributed to one and all equally. [And a challenging day, for they spoke, presumably to speak into the chaos rather than create a whole lot more chaos?]
If I just take a little aside to at least put out there my wisdom that I could offer at this point to the God of all creation. Delegation would work better. Check out how we behave, take it back if the behaviour is bad, hire and fire, make sure it all matches up to the standard required. And I offer a humble observation we might not have created the mess we have.
However, God seems to work through distribution much more than delegation. S/he goes where we go; the abuse tarnishes his / her character. (Pronouns do I use a plural? Maybe OK if our Trinitarianism is close to Tritheism… not settled on this yet.)
Distributed authority can always be misused; it also leaves an awesome responsibility with us. God will go where I go, standing behind what I do and say. I can evangelise but fail to witness, fail to testify to who God is. I can say – don’t look at me look at Jesus; Paul said follow me as I follow Jesus (and by implication, at least my implication, and kick me up the proverbial where I do not).
Ownership does not stack up. In the New Testament there were no streams, the apostles / apostolic teams did not own churches. There might have been relational priorities, but no ownership. The apostolic distributed what had been granted to them, and in that distribution they declared that all ministries were ‘servants’ of the body; they belonged to the body, not vice-versa.
In this next messy phase (and very aware of this in this season between 12/12 and 21/12 for personal reasons) apostles rising who will be faceless, working in… God knows where! Not owning, many not visible, but a trademark will be much more distribution than delegation. Delegation produces what can be replicated and predicted. Distribution what can be multiplied, and even like a virus mutate (for good and bad) and is certainly less predictable.
We are in touch with a number of situations where health is being threatened, ‘accidents’ seem to happen too often.
All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Matt. 28:18.
Those are strong words… not a lot of authority, nor more authority than anyone else / any other power. ALL authority. The context indicates that what follows, at some level at least, that the authority is with those who go. [An aside – probably more we go (and by this a term more than geography is meant… Peter went to Cornelius, not vice versa) the more authority.] Authority – the challenge is what do we do with it?
If, as parents, you were to end up living opposite an active group that targeted your family that would be a challenge. BUT if one were to teach and act that the one in you was greater, and that we bless anyone that curses us, the result would be that your family would actually become more mature. The intended curse would prove to be a blessing!
However, if as parents, you were to talk down your kids achievements, and always be on their backs the effect on them would be ever so negative. They would need to be set free from that – from your actions. You, as nice beautiful Christians… and a anti-Christian group in opposition. One would definitely cause a bondage, the other could even turn round to be a blessing. The difference?
The level of (relational) authority.
We affect one another. Many times we have seen people healed physically once we have broken the spirit of jealousy that has come against them from with the household of God.
Offences will come. Betrayals take place. That is life. I love the phrase in Paul that ‘it was on the night he was betrayed that he took bread…’ What a context. How we respond to offences and betrayals is important. But if we are unawares those ‘curses’ can really stand.
Pray for those who curse us. Take the low path, but be careful about making an apology simply to bring about peace, for such apology might not bring freedom; an apology that is not thought through can simply re-enforce the authority of those that have cursed us. If so, it will not bring freedom but strengthen the hold.
Time for breakthroughs. Contributions from both ‘sides’ of the equation. Slow, ever so slow to criticise. ‘Are you for us or for our enemy?’ kind of makes sense, but ‘Are you for me or for those (brothers / sisters) who take a different view?’ really does not cut it. Clarity of praying blessing, not responding with self-justification.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see the ALL authority releasing an increasing level of blessing, and pushing back the curses that seem to be so prevalent.
In the new year I am inviting anyone who wishes to come join me on a zoom link that will work our way through the first book I have written ‘Humanising the Divine’. No need to be smart (I am hosting!) and I will cover a little bit more than just what is in the book, so some material on how the Bible can (should: my bias!) be read as narrative and in its history; in the light of that a bit of material on the history that Jesus entered into; the unlikelihood that the message from an obscure part of a world-dominated landscape should ever have gained traction.
Honestly, no need to be smart / theological / no need to have read the Bible through forward and backwards… no need to agree with me… but I think it will be pretty good!
My plan would be to start in February. If interested it will help me if you simply drop me a line, saying ‘Interested, Mondays work for me at 12:30(UK time) and also Thursdays at 8.00pm’… or whatever days / times work – after all I would never want to put words in your mouth / email!!!
I was involved in hosting a small group on zoom last night where, with our combined wisdom and knowledge of everything important, we took on a look at Luke and his political emphasis, with a ‘so what does this mean?’ kind of tentative conclusions. I enjoyed and benefitted from it, though cannot speak for the others who were involved.
Before my very clever post for today, just a note that when we use the word ‘political’ in the context of above / the Bible we are not thinking of political party, nor of focusing the word into politics as we know it today – national, regional or local. It really is the whole of a contribution to how society is and interrelates. In the context of Luke (and so of Paul) it is seeking to discover the vision they had to see a one-world dominating system be transformed into a society where one and all can prosper in their humanity.
The title of the post? Yes… seems that’s the way round we get it. Only the gifted will prosper, and the vision extends to… but never extends to the whole world being transformed, or at least the whole world being transformed through the honouring of the other, the promotion of ‘love your neighbour’. No I am not talking of the ‘social gospel’ but of the political gospel that proclaims a re-ordering of the whole world, through a core who are living from heaven, those who are ‘like the wind’, unpredictable.
I am convinced the title is wrong. It should be something like crazy, totally unrealistic, are you really out of your mind, level of vision, and who do you think you are. Are you serious? Maybe your much learning has driven you crazy (that was addressed to Paul, not the rest of us!!)…?
I cannot read the NT without thinking, hold on a minute I am not sure I can go there. Certainly I don’t think someone could make it up, or if was made up it would never have legs to travel anywhere. It really blows a hole in the whole pessimism that so often the eschatologies we grew up with / read books on. Seems rather than a message of antiChrist coming in to Christ’s space, we really have Jesus as Messiah came into antiChrist’s space. I think a little better / a lot better approach.
And then it is small people. Now I can breathe. Me / you. And the whole of life is political – I sow where I want the world to go… How I treat the guy I met on the street this morning sleeping in his cardboard box, who does not know where he came from – Russia or Ukraine he told me. What can I do? Small people, like me, feel disempowered as we do not know what to do. But maybe I can start with ‘humanising’ him. Political.
In the hearing of all the people he said to the disciples, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honour at banquets. They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”
He looked up and saw rich people putting their gifts into the treasury; he also saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. He said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; for all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on.”
When some [Matthew indicates this at least includes the disciples] were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, he said, “As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.”
Luke 20… 21, with comments and emphasis added.
What a passage! Take out the chapter division and here we have a few interesting developments:
Religious leaders, who (by default / design) devour widows’ houses.
He also saw a poor widow.
The impressive temple – occupying around 1/4 of the land that made up the city of Jerusalem, and even among the elite of Rome it was marked as being full of splendour and glory.
A remarkable prophecy!
I actually consider that the prophetic was released by what Jesus saw, released by the widow’s act. To prophesy the end of Jerusalem as was might have been expected. John the Baptist was certainly on track with that, the High Priest was worried about that, after the time of Jesus, the historian Josephus was well aware that this was a distinct possibility… but not one stone on another? That really pushed it, but here it is ‘adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God‘ and those beautiful stones were going to be totally dislocated.
We love to be in the know! Making a prophetic act of ‘I will put my 2 coins in here as a sign and then make my declaration’ cos I know what I am doing. Or as per the widow, probably not even thinking for a minute that her act was significant, innocuous, small… Small people, clueless people. Unknowingly political.
A little footnote… these scribes were those were ‘loving honour at the banquets‘ (deipnon: same word Lord’s Supper, also the banquet meals to honour the empire in the Imperial world of Rome, etc) . Banquets were a big part of holding the Empire together. Who one invited and where they were seated was really important. By so doing you were showing your allegiance to the way things were. Contrast, Jesus’ instruction to invite those who cannot invite you back, that instruction was hugely political and disruptive to society’s status quo; or James’ instruction not to give the person with the rich clothes the best seat – no he is not thinking the ‘best pew’, or sit near the elders!!! It is a meal setting. The Lord’s Supper, so political! And when it was not expressing something that was anti-Imperial-order Paul said ‘in the following (your behaviour when you eat together) I can give you no praise at all’. When you eat, you proclaim the Lord’s death till he come… death of all imperial power and a proclamation of one’s non-allegiance to it. Till he come, the true Prince of Peace.
Jesus warned that the path to destruction was broad and easy.
Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it (Matt. 7:13,14).
Absolutely true. So why the title? I have been drawn back again and again to the creation narratives. Tempting people to become like God when they were created in the image of God is as crazy as suggesting to someone who is sitting at the wheel of their car, pulled up at the traffic lights, that if they ate a specific fruit they could drive on once the lights changed. A simple reply with ‘You had better come up with something else, for that one will definitely not stick!’ Though stick it did.
The part that has stood out to me about the garden has been the generosity of God. Eat whatever you want. It’s easy, the path is broad. All the fruit is for you. Enjoy. Ah… don’t eat of that tree over there. What just avoid one tree and its fruit? Yes the path to death / destruction is narrow, narrowed down to one tree in the whole garden, or to misquote the words of Jesus (or really simply quote Jesus but in a different context) ‘for the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to death’.
What a change eating from that one tree made. Overnight the motorways / freeways became dust tracks, and the dust tracks became highways. Not only that but where those original routes led to was changed.
Let’s jump forward though. Redemption changes everything. Conversion is no small thing. Paul moved from being ‘righteous’ pre-conversion, and not righteous through some kind of good works, but through allegiance to Scripture, to (a post-conversion) understanding that all that time he had been a blasphemer, someone who misrepresented God, acting on God’s behalf, in line with his Scriptures and in doing so taking God’s name in vain. Little wonder he had a few years in the desert working through the implications of his conversion. Peter moved from having clarity on what was clean and unclean to a few days journey trying to reconcile how he had made the mistake of thinking he had just passed the test that he had revised for all his life to realising he had turned up in the wrong exam room, and that the old exam was redundant. Redemption transforms!
I am convinced that when our ancestors left the garden, trudging eastward that Someone went with them. Many times unseen, for if one loses sight that they are in the image of God it is then very difficult to see the Invisible. [Ezekiel saw this, with his vision of the water flowing eastward from the Temple (the Garden of Eden was a Temple) and wherever that water went it brought life.] Cleopas and Mary on the road to Emmaus eventually saw that he was with them, once they ate (of the tree of life, for Jesus is the bread of life). They were a visible ‘incarnation’ (not literally) of those first couple. En route the God who trudged with them from the Garden, carried the death sentence, from there to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, to the cross. They knew what they were doing, or so they thought. They released Cain (Barabbas: ‘son of the father’) and sentenced Abel (Jesus) to death. The leaders, the crowd, the Romans, the ‘you’ and the ‘me’ we knew what had to be done, for we also had eaten along with all those before us of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In so doing we killed the ‘author of life’. But God raised him up… raised him up for all of us, who truly did not have a clue, for ‘we did not know what we were doing’.
What were we doing? We thought we could be like God because, first we would decide what God was like… A distorted view. A God who is above life, above struggle, above… A God untouched, unmoved. A God who rules all and every situation with power, a click of the fingers and it is all done. Now the temptation has some traction, for we want to be like that god. You will be like ‘the god of your imagination’ once you eat of this tree. The tree of… but they don’t have a clue what they are doing. It’s not really about the fruit, it’s about pausing when coming close to that tree, and then saying ‘no need for that fruit’. No need to settle on one fruit, all, ALL the others are there for us.
Conversion does not seem to be a one off experience, in the sense of turning and being changed. Every time we approach or are tempted to pull from that tree we can pause and find a conversion moment.
So back to my title. I need to make sure I am on that broad road, the one that leads to life. If I am going to stay on it it probably means I need to check I have the right view of myself.
Moving away from the safe territory of the previous set of posts I thought I would jump into a little foray on sects and cults. The post is a little (but only ever so little) provocative.
‘Sectarian’ although strictly just meaning to belong to a particular sect often manifests in prejudice, discrimination and hatred. Sects can breed sectarianism in this sense of opposition to others, but a sect does not necessarily have to mean that is the outcome.
A sect is recognised as a sub-set within a broader classification (more later on this). A cult though is viewed as having deviant beliefs (or behaviour / practices) and therefore not true to the core beliefs of what it is loosely connected to. Traditionally, for example, Mormonism has been viewed as a cult, with sufficient beliefs that made it different to ‘orthodox’ Christianity. Some ‘cults’ are later rehabilitated and accepted (and maybe if we have a particular political allegiance and someone from that former cult is running for a position of power that just might influence the push for acceptance?).
There are three core monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. All three connect in some way to the biblical stories. Judaism has the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (although this latter term is late, originally it was known as the Mikra, meaning that which is read). The Tanakh, we can say, corresponds to our ‘Old Testament’, and Christians add a ‘New Testament’ (and of course within the big Christian traditions there are different authoritative writings (canons)). Islam has the Quran and holds respect for prophets such as Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus; Muhammad being the final prophet. The Quran being the words from Allah that he communicated to Muhammad via the angel Gabriel.
Islam, the most recent of the three monotheistic faiths, has an interesting beginning. The context is of Arabia where Muhammad receives a revelation in a cave. In an animistic / polytheistic culture he proclaims there is one true god (Allah being the Arabic word for ‘god’). Into that context that is quite a proclamation.
Was his revelation from heaven? Was there any part of it that came from heaven? Or was it simply ‘demonic’?
A sect is a distinct grouping within a wider context; essentially believing that they are more faithful to the worldview and beliefs of the wider group they belong to. In the Jewish world there are, and certainly were in Jesus’ day numerous Jewish sects. We come across two main ones in the NT, with the Pharisees and the Sadducees. There were others, certainly the Essenes (maybe they based themselves at Qumran with the Dead Sea Scrolls being related to them); the Herodians might be more a political distinction than religious; and likewise the Zealots might be a term more related to their proposed methodology than to their religious party affiliation. It is for this reason we cannot really say ‘the Jews believed’. In the time of Jesus the Sadducees were the dominant group inside the Sanhedrin. They were less in favour of oral tradition than the Pharisees, who in turn were further divided dependent on which of the Rabbis was viewed as the one to follow (in Jesus’ day the schools of two rabbis, Hillel and Shammai were well established and their different views on divorce lay behind the question posed to Jesus about divorce, a question that was intended to set him up). Pharisees believed in resurrection, the Sadducees did not (which shows how much we read into Scriptures when we insist that such beliefs are there in the Old Testament). Probably the Pharisees carried greater weight among the people and influenced the common understanding; and certainly post AD-70 it was their approach that became the dominant one, with Rabbinic Judaism becoming mainline Judaism.
Paul was a Pharisee, and he excelled within that. He was righteous, zealous for the Law, such zeal being in line with Old Testament action, such as the ‘righteous’ actions of the sons of Levi who slaughtered 3000 fellow-Jews, in order to keep the people pure. (Did the later Paul have the same interpretation of their action as he would have held before his conversion?) He persecuted followers of Jesus… Jewish-followers of Jesus as there were no other kind of ‘Christians’ at that time. He would not have been interested in whether a bunch of renegade Gentiles developed some kind of faith in Jesus, for after all they never were part of the chosen people. I think his attitude would have been ‘believe what you want, you’re damned already’. On the other hand if Jews were to proclaim that Jesus (crucified and therefore evidently cursed and not the son of God) was the Messiah that would only provoke God to anger. Paul knew that he and his fellow Jews were already in trouble, so to prevent compounding the problem, he being devoted to the law, was motivated to persecute any unfaithful person in Israel. He went house to house to cleanse the people.
His own reflections were:
He was righteous according to the law and his traditions.
He now understood that he was a blasphemer (he had been misrepresenting God),
and was formerly ignorant (so says Mr Highly Learned Saul of Tarsus!).
His conversion was no small thing. It was more than a tweak, and perhaps there is real value in suggesting that he found the solution (Jesus) so had to then work backwards to find out what the problem was.
We could describe Christianity (followers of the way) as another Jewish sect, though perhaps Paul would have seen them as a cult.
Here are a few wacky suggestions.
Maybe Islam is a non-Jewish Jewish sect / cult, with a belief in Abraham et al.
Probably Islam drinks from the well that much of Christianity became, the Christianity of power, control and Christendom.
The revelation that is in Jesus of who God is (and also who humanity at core is) positions faith in Jesus in an interesting place. Islam the god of power, sovereignty… I pause for a moment, so how different is that from the god of much of Christianity / certainly the god of Christendom?
Maybe Islam (some forms of) and Christianity (some forms of) even go beyond that of a Paul-as-Pharisee response to not only purifying the people of faith, but wanting to purify one and all, and produce a Christian (or Islamic) nation. Shock… I don’t see that as being very smart. Going beyond the one who claimed his behaviour was blasphemous?
Jesus, the Incarnation, the humility, the eternal servant-nature. Scripture does not suggest the Incarnation is a temporary revelation, for we read that ‘being in the form of God’, Jesus, being God, acts in a God-like way and empties himself.
Maybe there are forms of Islam, Judaism (the one that Paul adhered to that later he said was a misrepresentation of God) and Christianity that are all from the same well. Do they have a revelation from heaven… in part?… or simply demonic? That well being ‘God sovereign over all, and we live from that basis’?
What if we are all sects of the big worldview that there is only one true God? All thinking we represent the God we believe in just believing we are doing it better than all other sects.
I used to think I was part of a sect (Protestantism is full of sects) that was pushing to be true to what Jesus had revealed (centred on ecclesiology: the right form of church). I wonder if I should push it wider and ask if we are all just a variation, a sub-set of a bigger monotheistic belief, and perhaps we would do well to seek avoiding crossing the line and becoming a cult. And finally how deviant do we have to be (belief and / or behaviour) to no longer be a sect but to become a cult?
Our beliefs about God change, and change they must as we understand something fresh about the ‘mystery’ that is God. I from time to time listen to Peter Enns and his podcasts. Peter describes himself as a ‘German left-brained’ person, and he has both a serious intellect and an honesty that led him to resign from a career position. This podcast is worth listening to in its own right and in the light of the previous posts I think it carries a relevance here. I pick up on one aspect:
[John Wesley] He’s the 18th-Century founder of the Methodist movement. And the Quadrilateral is, I mean one way of putting it, it’s a way of explaining how we arrive at our beliefs about God. And quadrilateral, there are four things that sort of work together and they’re scripture, our tradition that we’re a part of, our reasoning ability, and our life experiences. So, scripture, tradition, reason, experience. And these four things, they’re always influencing each other, or better, they interpenetrate each other. None exists in isolation from the others, and none can just survive on its own.
For example, if we’re trying to understand whether, say, let’s just pick a totally hypothetical scenario, if we’re trying to understand whether one can be gay and a Christian, what are you going to do? Well, one is certainly going to engage scripture, that’s part of the church’s tradition, the church at large, you don’t ignore the Bible, you’re always dealing with it somehow. But how one engages scripture is informed by, well, the particular Christian tradition that we might be a part of. It’s also influenced by our ability to reason through things and discern. And it’s also influenced by our experiences as human beings. The life of faith involves not just reading the Bible and like getting objective truth from it, but rather, it involves our whole being, our traditions, our reasoning and our experiences. That’s why people who differ can actually enlighten each other. We bring different things to the table, different angles from which to look at something very complicated.
Another aspect that I found interesting in the podcast was his consideration that historically evangelicalism grew as a reaction to fundamentalism, and that evangelicalism has in many parts collapsed into fundamentalism, so much so that he maintains that there are numerous people on the ‘born again’ side of things who could not be described historically as evangelical.
In response to the millions who have requested the recent posts in one place here is a pdf of the posts. For those who want to take it further I also recommend that stories are listened to, that we hear what is being said before we seek to push back.
(I owe some of the material here to Greg Hartington who presented a number of us with a paper that helped us get some understanding of the terms, and then helped us discuss some of the issues.)
The world of hetero-sexuality is not monolithic, neither is the world of homo-sexuality, and we should not try and place transgender somehow under any ‘homosexual’ heading. In this section I will simply add a few comments, given that the Bible does not cover this area directly. Transgender is not a sub-section of ‘gay’, but in as much as it does not line up with the binary categories some of the principles of interpretation from the previous sections will also apply.
It is important to grasp the definitions that are in common use so that we can navigate what is being discussed with some measure of understanding.
Gender Identity: how I think of myself; my psychological sense of gender. What I think. (So much of which is formed in the womb.)
Gender expression: how I live, how I behave, what I wear. How I look and act.
Biological sex: genitalia, body shape, hormones, chromosones, brain structure. What I have.
A trans-woman:
Assigned male gender at birth
Biological sex gender at birth
Gender identity is female
Has transitioned to female expression, and may also have had physical surgery.
Likewise a trans-man is the reverse of the above description of a trans-woman.
Sexual Orientation – another element: to whom a person is attracted romantically and / or sexually (and the attraction romantically and sexually might not be the same). Who I love.
The table that follows indicates factors that seem to determine male / female.
♂
♀
XY Chromosones
XX Chromosones
Hormones: androgen, testosterone
Hormones: progesterone, oestrogen
Male genitalia, body shape
Female genitalia, body shape
Male Brain Structure
Female Brain Structure
Male Identity
Female Identity
Usually, all of these line up neatly. For example, someone with XY chromosomes gets hormones for male development in the womb, and then is born with male genitalia, and grows up through puberty into a typical male shape, with a male brain structure and who thinks of themselves as male. And vice versa for women. (The brain structure is somewhat debated as to whether there is a clear difference, but it seems there is considerable weight of opinion that favours this distinction.)
BUT NOT ALWAYS.
(There are cases of Intersex… where it is not clearly defined as above table shows. The biological markers not fitting the binary approach.)
And some people have a deep-seated, permanent sense that their gender identity is different from the one assigned at birth. There might be many diverse factors in this, but there are in some cases at least some biological cause.
Is gender reassignment surgery necessary? Not all wish this. And it is NOT the same as surgery for (e.g.) cancer, as any surgery is related to identity and seeking to bring the ‘felt’ identity, the gender that is identified with and the biological sex in line. There are those who wish to suggest that the emotional identity should therefore be re-aligned (healing, therapy, counselling?). This can be argued for but a strong counterpoint is ‘WHY should emotional realignment take priority over the physical?’ Rather than home in with a view that we have a situation of gender confusion we could be better involved in seeking to give support to the person who is actually seeking to correct any confusion!
Other notes:
Conservative Judaism
An influential body of rabbis of Conservative Judaism in the USA (less strict than the Orthdox wing of Judaism, is the second-largest denomination in America. The largest, the more liberal Reform movement, passed a similar resolution previous year, and the small Reconstructionist movement is similarly supportive) passed a resolution 2016 calling for synagogues to be ‘explicitly welcoming’ to transgender people.
The rabbis’ resolution began by stating, ‘Our Torah asserts that all humanity is created b’tzelem Elohim, in God’s Divine Image.’ It discusses historical evidence of ‘non-binary gender expression’ in Jewish texts dating back to the third-century Mishnah, and points out current-day discrimination against transgender Americans in employment, medical care and voting rights.1
‘Cross-dressing’?
In the Babylonian Talmud (Nazir 59a), the (Jewish) Sages argue that it is not plausible to read the verse in Deuteronomy literally, since wearing the clothes of another gender could not possibly be seen as an abomination. Instead, the Talmud understands the Torah prohibition this way: wearing clothes of another gender in order to falsify your identity, and infiltrate spaces reserved for the ‘opposite’ sex, is what is forbidden. The key point here seems to be that cross-dressing is only prohibited when there are ulterior motives involved—in this case, the violation of another person’s space and therefore trust. When it comes to cross-dressing in and of itself, the Talmud is crystal clear: ‘There is no abomination here!’
Deuteronomy 22:5 ‘A woman must not wear men’s clothing, nor a man wear women’s clothing, for the Lord your God detests anyone who does this.’ The word translated as ‘clothing’ here, keli, is translated elsewhere as ‘armor’, and the word translated as ‘man’, geber, normally means ‘warrior’. This implies a prohibition against intent to deceive by pretending to be a warrior, or for a warrior to deceive by disguising himself as a woman.
Examples to consider
Jacob preferred to be with his mother at home, enjoyed cooking and was smooth-skinned, in contrast to his brother, who was hairy and preferred to hunt and be outdoors. (Genesis 25).
Joseph, Jacob’s son, was given an ‘ornate robe’ by his father (Genesis 37:3); the Hebrew word used here for the robe (ketonet passim) is used elsewhere to mean ‘the kind of garment the virgin daughters of the king wore’ (2 Samuel 13:18). This is the only other biblical example of this word.
Coat of many colours / long sleeves / or…
Gen. 37: 3
(ESV) Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his sons, because he was the son of his old age. And he made him a robe of many colors.
(NIV) Now Israel loved Joseph more than any of his other sons, because he had been born to him in his old age; and he made an ornate robe for him.
(NRSV) Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his children, because he was the son of his old age; and he had made him a long robe with sleeves.
2 Sam. 13:18
(ESV) Now she was wearing a long robe with sleeves, for thus were the virgin daughters of the king dressed. So his servant put her out and bolted the door after her.
(NIV) So his servant put her out and bolted the door after her. She was wearing an ornate robe, for this was the kind of garment the virgin daughters of the king wore.
(NRSV) Now she was wearing a long robe with sleeves; for this is how the virgin daughters of the king were clothed in earlier times.
The Resurrected Jesus & Eschatology
A further question is not how these situations relate to Creation but what sign might be within them with regard to something eschatological. In the series of books ‘Explorations in Theology’ I suggest that the Incarnation is located in the very sharp end of human failure, the world of the male and the Jew, and that as a Jewish male Jesus died. His death is not to demonstrate Jewish male supremacy, but to nail those to the cross. If we follow that trajectory I posit that Jesus, not as Jew nor as male, but as the firstborn of all those who are to follow is raised; no longer Jewish… no longer male.
Perhaps spiritually (culturally, emotionally and inter-relationally) the insistence by the binary-only advocates and the insistence of the transgender advocates could be suggesting that in the very conflict of opinions we have a sign that our world is pushing toward something that is not yet visible, to a gender-free new age. If that be so, we focus on (as we always should) seeing each other no longer after the flesh, but in the light of a new creation. In order to live at peace with one another we would then need to give space for people to express themselves gender wise in the way that is most comfortable for them, in the temporary season before the parousia when (as I see it) gender and biological sex becomes something of the past.
Some pastoral / practical notes
In suggesting that the Bible does not condemn all forms of homosexual relationships, nor that of the transgender community, we should first be very careful about placing on anyone who identifies in some way within that community a burden that is too heavy to bear. Our first response should be one of acceptance and embrace.
In the same way that God does not approve of all heterosexual expression we do not assume that God approves of all homosexual expression. What is done sexually is important.
Although we can critique an agenda that some carry of pushing a freedom of experimentation, we also need to understand that this can be seen as a minority voice pushing back against what has been oppressed, where there was an implicit restriction and only one path (binary). Perhaps an over-reaction and one that carries an agenda… but that will always be a perspective held by the majority.
Damage can be done by a climate that pushes a direction where, for example, one undergoes surgery to regret it later; however, one has also to acknowledge that an insistence on ‘therapy / deliverance will cure’ can cause huge damage.
Given that the Bible can be made to (almost) say whatever we want it to say, we have to respect those who take a different view to ourselves. What cannot, though, be respected is any hate or dehumanisation.
There will always be a variety of personal stories. They help educate and can even persuade us of a position that might or might not change our previous perspective. However, we should not take a story that defends our position as therefore the only authentic story that can be universally applied to anyone whose (e.g.) sexual orientation was the same as the story-teller.
We probably have a tendency to want neat lines that can be drawn that gives us some simple principles to apply. Given the deep core identity issues that are within us when we explore sexuality along with the strong views and pressures that are within society, we have to readily accept that there will be situations that do not work out as easily as we would like. In those situations we are willing to journey with people and try to help find the most redemptive path forward. That path might differ from person to person.
Thanks for reading these posts. I have no intention of offending anyone. My plea is not that anyone agrees with me. We have to live with our own conscience and integrity. I think we benefit enormously when we hear those that we disagree with also… and that stories are so important. My journey is not that of someone else. We journey uniquely, seeking to discover what ‘pleases the Lord’. The video below is of a baptist pastor from Dallas and his journey of discovery.. His integrity, openness and honesty is without question… again this does not make his path the right one, but I suggest a more than informative and challenging listen.
