This is interesting logic, but I’m not convinced that logic, faith, and religion go hand in hand. However, I think she is 100 percent correct when she says, “They shout about God not making mistakes, as if God only works in binaries and anything falling outside of black and white cannot be from him. But we don’t have a black and white God; creation is so full of color and variation that it’s incomprehensible how we Christians struggle to pare him down to the limited palette of our individual expectations.” God created a rainbow of people with a rainbow of personalities and sexualities. There are definitely a few things in the Bible that are black and white, such as in Matthew 22:36-40 (NRSV):
“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
Jesus is pretty clear with these words and it’s something many Christians forget. On other things he is less clear, but what “Christians” who worry about bathroom access forget is what Paul said in Galatians 3:28 “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (emphasis added)
Jesus: The First Transgender Man
The current flap in conservative Christian circles about bathroom access is a bit baffling. They shout about God not making mistakes, as if God only works in binaries and anything falling outside of black and white cannot be from him. But we don’t have a black and white God; creation is so full of color and variation that it’s incomprehensible how we Christians struggle to pare him down to the limited palette of our individual expectations.
The worst offenders are the Christian’s who claim to take the Bible literally. Of course they don’t actually do that; they impose their own filters on stories and phrases to fit their particular ideology. If they really did as they claim to do, they would quickly see that Jesus must be, by their own exegetical rules, the first transgender male.
Let’s take a look at what the Bible and Christianity tell us.
The teaching of the church from ancient days through today is that Jesus received his fleshly self from Mary. The church also teaches that Jesus is the new Adam, born of the new Eve.
Now Eve is a fascinating creature for many reasons. The Bible tells us she is the first example of human cloning, which I touched on in this post. But the fun doesn’t stop there. If we take the Genesis account in it’s literal meaning, as conservative Christians demand that we do, she is also the first case of a transgender woman. God reached into Adam, pulled out a bit of rib bone, and grew Eve from that XY DNA into Adam’s companion. She was created genetically male, and yet trans-formed into woman.
Then along comes Jesus and the whole pattern is both repeated and reversed. The first couple’s refusal to cooperate is turned around by Mary’s yes, and the second act of cloning occurs. The Holy Spirit comes upon the second Eve, and the child takes flesh from her and is born. Born of her flesh. Born with XX chromosome pairing. Born genetically female, and yet trans-formed into man.
States that do not support trans persons’ right to choose the restroom that fits their identity demand that bathroom usage be based on a person’s “biological sex.” One can imagine a future in which state licences require not only a vision test, but also a genetic test so that bouncers proofing at bathroom doors have something tangible to review. And that means that if Jesus and Eve were walking around today, perhaps shopping at the mall for a Father’s Day gift, they’d have to swap restrooms. Now Jesus could surely manage to finesse his way around a woman’s room, but poor Eve…
A quick look at the dictionary for the prefix “trans” tells us that it means “across,” “beyond,” “through,” and “changing thoroughly,” all of which are great terms for the person of Christ. He cuts across all boundaries. He is beyond our understanding. He is through all and in all. He changes us thoroughly into new creations.
In his person, and in his salvific actions, Jesus is truly the first and forever trans man.
The man above is bodybuilder and model Ben Melzer went down in history as the first transgender man to appear on the cover of a European men’s fitness magazine.
2 comments:
I was recently listening to a series of lectures about evidence that our genetic makeup seems to predispose us in certain psychological ways (for lack of abetter term), including things like optimism and pessimism. Among the qualities that have been gene-linked is a distinction between people who are absolutists (the world is black and white) and people who are contextualists (the world is a rainbow and the colors vary depending on context.) The lecturer pointed out that this does mean absolutists and contextualists may have difficulty communicating and seeing another point of view, but it does not mean that our genetic makeup is the only determinant. I think I was born absolutist -- it is still a sort of default on many issues. (Liberals and progressives, as we well know, can be absolutists!) But my life experiences -- including living in many places, spending significant time in other countries and cultures, friendships with people who are different from me in color/language/race/sexuality -- have helped me grow a bit in a contextual direction. I have been more fortunate than many, though, in having had the opportunity to be exposed to all those differences. People like many members of my family have spent their entire lives in one place, knowing one group of people in one small faith tradition and of uniform race, speaking one language, and today watching one news outlet for all their information about the rest of the world. Whatever their genetic code, they are circumstantially stuck in a black and white world. They may be absolutists, but that is their context.
Do you suppose the tendency of conservative Christian artists to paint Jesus as a somewhat androgynous person is significant???
My only wish, Joe, is that your wonderful blog pieces were being read by the so-called conservative Christian masses. Sadly, I cannot imagine any of them as regular readers here. It reminds me of all the evenings I spend watching commentary on MSNBC knowing no Trump supporters are tuning in.
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