Considering God and the Transgender Debate

I’ve been swamped with reading lately, and this has meant too many books in process. My brain has been pulled in too many directions. To top it off I decided to preach on a series of “hot button” issues from Genesis. This meant reading a bunch of new books to prepare for these varied subjects.

In one case it meant picking up one of those books that I had started but had been languishing in the cabinet in our kitchen in which I keep my Bible and the books I’m currently reading at home. When God and the Transgender Debate: What Does the Bible Actually Say about Gender Identity? (GTD) by Andrew T. Walker came out I bought it and started to read it. After a few chapters, it sat there waiting while I focused on other reading that was more pressing.

Since I was preaching on gender last Sunday, I resumed my reading of GTD.

The book has evangelical & Reformed street cred with a forward by Al Mohler and book cover blurbs by Rosaria Butterfield, Russell Moore, Sam Allberry, Trevin Wax and (oddly) Rod Dreher. Walker will express a conservative and compassionate perspective on this issue. He avoids extremes that can so often be a trap for us. We tend to pit truth against love. He wants to uphold truth AND express love toward people who experience gender dysphoria.

He begins with Compassion and refers to Jesus’ quotation from Isaiah: “A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not quench.” Jesus is the Truth and therefore spoke the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Yet, Jesus was also compassionate toward the suffering. His is the example for ministry we should follow, but often don’t. In the Gospels we see Jesus healing people with no hope for healing, giving strength to burdened people, and engaging with the outcasts of society (due to disease or sin).

Walker wrote this book because of the cultural changes in the West. “Society is now attempting to help people who experience doubts and struggles with their gender identity, rather than push those people to the margins.” I’d go farther- they are pushing those people to the center. But I won’t quibble too much. He wants to help us think through these issues biblically, and love our friends, children or neighbors who experience these doubts and struggles.

“… remember that the God who speaks to you in the Bible is the same God who loves you so much that he came, lived, and even died to strengthen bruised reeds and fan flickering flames.”

Bringing up Bruce Jenner, Walker then addresses How We Got Where We Are. Due to his cultural & historical stature, you couldn’t avoid media coverage of his dysphoria and going further to transgender. A public discussion ensued that was not limited to adults. Children, thru bathroom laws and sex ed courses, were being dragged into a discussion they are not able to process intellectually and ethically. Relativism has burrowed deep into our cultural understanding so that people with “narrow views” are pushed to the margins. Ours is now a post-Christian culture that doesn’t understand the Scriptures and wants to marginalize those who are still connected with this former majority worldview. Radical individualism and the sexual revolution are turning ethics upside down. We also see the influence of Gnosticism as the body becomes meaningless both in what it says (as part of the Book of Creation) and what we do to it. The person, their feelings or sense of self, matter more than the body (Nancy Pearcey explores this Cartesian dualism in post-modernism in her recent book Love Thy Body).

He then moves to The Language. He provides the working definitions he will use in the book for:

• sex
• gender
• gender identity
• gender dysphoria
• transgender

This helps dispel any confusion about what he means going forward. I wish more people would do this. I was frustrated yesterday with a page in Rosaria Butterfield’s Openness Unhindered where she didn’t define a key term in a discussion of temptation & sin.

The next chapter, On Making a Decision, focuses on how we can or should sort thru these issues by asking three important questions.

• Authority: who has the right to tell me what to do?
• Knowledge: who knows what is best for me to do?
• Trustworthiness: who loves me and wants what is best for me?

Relying on ourselves is not the best answer to these questions. We have all followed our hearts (desires, feelings, great ideas) into disaster. He points us to the Bible which tells us a different, better, all encompassing Story that makes sense of our stories.

“A crucified Creator is a God who has the authority to tell us what to do, who has the wisdom to know what is best for us, and who has proved that he can be trusted to tell us what is best for us.”

He then discusses creation in Well-Designed. He covers the Story in declaring us made in God’s image, made with care. The blueprint for humanity is two complementary genders. God had a good purpose in created humanity this way. Our bodies, as part of creation, declare His praises (Ps. 19). He does caution us against baptizing cultural stereotypes in our discussion of gender. Sometimes we create dysphoria because of extreme views of masculinity and femininity. There will always be outliers. They don’t cease to be their biological gender. Jesus affirmed the creational design in a discussion of divorce in Matthew 19.

Due to the fall & curse we see Beauty and Brokenness. We are glorious ruins, as Francis Schaeffer said. All of creation is a glorious ruin. Therefore we are beautiful but also broken. Adam & Eve’s Story is ours as well. We suffer from darkened understanding, futile thinking and disordered desires. We also suffer from broken bodies. There are people with genetic disorders. There are also people who due to darkened understanding experience real distress about their gender identity. “But experiencing that feeling does not mean that feeding it and acting on it is best, or right.” (pp. 67) In other words, some experience dysphoria, but some who experience it also act on it and try to live as the opposite of their biological sex. Dysphoria is a manifestation of our brokenness just like the rest of creation. We leave out God and creation from our thinking and people can live as if the dysphoria is speaking truth instead of lies to us.

Jesus offers us A Better Future than following our sometimes shifting and creation denying feelings and thoughts. Faith in Christ as our Savior unites us with Jesus who makes us a new creation. In sanctification we are renewed in God’s image, a process which is not completed in this earthly existence. Therefore we all wait for freedom, including many who struggle with gender dysphoria. With all of creation, we all groan. In Romans 8 the Spirit of Jesus groans with us in prayer as we struggle with the futility of creation due to the curse. We have the hope of the resurrection, the redemption of our bodies, when the futility will be removed from creation and our  bodies.

He then shifts to Love Your Neighbor. We should not use the truth as a club. Our attitude toward those who experience dysphoria or are transgender matters. Just like us, those people are made in God’s image and have dignity. We are therefore called to love both our neighbors and our enemies. We are to love truth and people. Often we love truth but are motivated by self-righteousness, pride, fear or a desire to win.

Walker admits that there are No Easy Paths for those who are transgender or experience gender dysphoria. The more boundaries you’ve broken, the more difficult it will be. Some are content to change clothing and names. Some use hormones to change themselves. Others change their body with surgery. Coming to faith and sorting out what next becomes increasingly complex. They require great wisdom and a loving community of faith. There are two aspects to this. First, all Christians will bear crosses. Some are heavier than others, but all are to deny themselves as part of the ordinary Christian life. Second, this cross bearing is not forever. The resurrection will resolve all these outstanding issues we experience in an already/not yet salvation.

This is Challenging to the Church. We will need to face our own self-righteousness and fear to become welcoming toward people who believe but still struggle. They don’t want to. Just like we may not want to struggle with anger, pride, passivity, pornography etc. While set apart and devoted to Christ, we are not perfectly sanctified. We will need to listen to other people’s struggles and groan with them. We bear their burdens with them.

Walker continues with Speaking to Children, and then Tough Questions to wrap up the book.

This is a readable book. It is not overly technical but accessible to people who aren’t scientists or doctors. He offers clear, biblical truth. He also calls us to compassion in how we speak to people. This is not a “these people are bad” book. But one that wrestles with the reality of our fallenness (original sin), and the sufficiency of Christ. He unfolds this in a Creation-Fall-Redemption-Consummation paradigm. This is a book deserving to be read by pastors and laypeople alike. I bought an additional copy for our library. Perhaps you should too.

Here is the sermon on the subject.

 

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Considering 2000 Years of Christ’s Power, Volume 1

Last year I came across Nick Needham’s 4-volume series, 2000 Years of Christ’s Power. I thought it would be an interesting read, and one I could possibly use with my kids in the high school years.

Needham used to teach church history in Nigeria. He longed for a readable, well-rounded textbook for his students. So he wrote one.

For 2018, I decided to read the set. One volume per quarter should make for relatively easy reading. The opening volume has 12 chapters, so I read a little more than a chapter per week. I would generally read in the morning after my time in the Scriptures. It was a reasonable goal, and for the first volume it worked quite well. At 400 hundred pages, I averaged about 50 per week. This was fairly easy since I like to break at the end of a section, and he divided each chapter up into around 4 sections.

The first volume is entitled The Age of the Early Church Fathers. The chapter listings are helpful to see the scope of the volume. It has a strong commitment to Eastern Christianity, as well as a chapter on African Christianity, focused on Alexandria and Carthage. Due to the time frame covered here, there is plenty of focus on heretical movements and Christological development. There is a progression from persecuted minority to Christianity as a dominant but divided faith in the Roman Empire.

Designed for education, each chapter has a list of key people and then a sampling of writing from some of them. At times he used footnotes to point you to more detailed information in the series about a person to whom he refers. He has a glossary of terms in the back of each volume.

He begins with historical information about Rome and Israel. The globalism movement of today isn’t new, but is an echo of the Roman Empire. He mentions the common philosophies of the time. In Israel, he summarizes the various groups exerting influence on the people.

From there he moves into the spread of Christianity from Jerusalem to include Gentiles and eventually be dominated by Gentiles. The Jewish War saw the fall of the Sadducees from power and influence, the Zealots and Essenes essentially wiped out, and the Pharisees left as the controlling force of post-war Judaism. They condemned Christians and Christianity became almost entirely Gentile in make up.

Needham moves into persecution and the Church’s response in a series of Apologists defending the faith. This includes information about early worship services.

“For it is through faith that Almighty God has justified all people that have ever lived from the beginning of time.” Clement of Rome

The rise of the Gnostic heresies lead to the development of symbols or creeds. He also discussed the Apologists who responded to Gnosticism. The faithful church so separated itself from the Gnostic “Christians”, calling themselves Catholic or universal. The emphasis was on the same faith they held in contrast to the idiosyncratic faith of different (often small) Gnostic groups claiming to be Christian. At the same time, another group arose known as the Montanists, which believed God had sent a new wave of prophets who spoke mostly about the nearness of Christ’s return. They were a proto-Charismatic group focused on dreams, visions, speaking in tongues and a strict lifestyle including fasting, celibacy and martyrdom. At a time when the Catholic Church was seeking greater unity due to Gnosticism, the Montanists created further division and often condemned those who didn’t embrace their teaching.

You can’t discuss the early church without discussing the influence of Alexandria and Carthage. Needham introduces people to Clement, Origen, Tertullian and Cyprian. These men would exert a great influence over the Church for hundreds of years. It was not always for the better, but they certainly left their mark.

Soon the Church wouldn’t be fighting for its life as toleration grew and eventually Constantine legalized Christianity. Now the Church began to focus on theological formulation. Most of this centered on Christ. Initially it was the problem of Arianism (Jesus was the first created Being). Needham also brings in developments in Church leadership, organization and worship. There is also some discussion of the Canon of Scripture. With legitimacy came laziness and the response of monasticism to escape the worldliness that entered the Church.

There is a whole chapter on the Arian Controversy that he mentioned in chapter 7. One of the strengths of the volume is its tracing Christological developments in the Church. While not as deep as it could be, he brings in a broader depth then I’ve seen many books on Christology. They usually end with Chalcedon, as if that answered all the questions. When Needham gets there, he addresses how the Eastern Church was still divided in their understanding of Chalcedon. These theological differences often included political components as dissent from Constantinople blended theological disagreement and the push for independence which would foreshadow the Reformation in some ways.

Tucked between the Arian Controversy and the post-Nicene Christological controversies is a chapter on John Chrysostom, Jerome and Augustine of Hippo. Both John and Augustine were children of privilege (Jerome as well) with loving, faithful mothers who doted on them. John represented the Antiochene method of biblical interpretation which focused on grammar and history rather than the more allegorical Alexandrian method. Like Augustine and Jerome, he struggled with sexual temptation. Rather than get a wife, he also fled from close relationships with women (with one exception later in life). His time as a hermit with fasting and sleep deprivation did great damage to his health. Known for his preaching, he was essentially kidnapped by imperial forces to become the Patriarch of Constantinople. He didn’t fit in well there and angered many of the political elites. This is one of the passages that gives us insight into the worldly political games that entered the Church. His enemies got the authorities to stop the annual baptism service on the eve before Easter. 400 soldiers entered the church and mayhem and bloodshed ensued. Eventually Chrysostom was exiled to a remote, inhospitable fortress town. The escort was instructed to give no regard to his well-being. He would never make it to the fortress as the scorching sun and hard rains brought him to his death on the journey.

“Glory be to God for all things.” The last words of John Chrysostom

Jerome was a scholar schooled in philosophy who traveled throughout the East, spending time in the Syrian desert avoiding women and learning Hebrew. Jerome brings us into a discussion of the Apocrypha. Jerome advocated for following the Jewish canon. Others included books found in the Septuagint. The Church remains split on the Apocrypha to this day. The Roman Catholic Church and the Greek Orthodox Church receive them, while Protestants and the Russian Orthodox Church view them as less than Scripture.

As I noted, one of the strengths of this book is the focus on the Christological controversies. Needham returns to them in the struggle between the theologians from Antioch and Alexandrians. Some of their differences resulted from the different methods of biblical interpretation, some from different use of technical terms and some from different emphases. Antioch emphasized the two natures of Christ, while Alexandria emphasized the one person. Sounds overly reductionistic but I’ve noted that in disagreements we tend to harden our positions and get more extreme. Both schools of thought had their extremes which seem to be mistaken at times for the norm. The charge of being Nestorian is still tossed out by Eastern Orthodox to Protestants, Lutherans to Reformed regarding our views of the Supper, etc. We easily forget that distinction is not the same as dividing. We can easily forget that all Jesus does He does as one person, so we can speak of Mary as the theotokos or sing that “that Thou, my God, shouldst die for me.” And so Needham brings us from Nicea to Chalcedon.

He then interrupts the Christology to talk about the Germans, or the Germanic tribes pushed out of eastern Europe by Attila the Hun. They were largely Arian Christians and Pagans. They spread to the West and a number of them sacked Rome, North Africa and Gaul. He delves into the contrast between Celtic and Roman Christianity and how the latter finally prevailed through the British Isles.

He then returns East with a focus on the on-going post-Chalcedon Christological controversy and the political fall out. Much of this will likely be new to Western Christians for whom Christology was generally seen as resolved at Chalcedon. This can help them in their interacts with Eastern Orthodox Christians.

This was a very readable and helpful volume. Needham struck a good balance between depth and breadth in what he communicated. It was not dry as some church histories can be. The larger type also means it seems less intimidating despite the 4 volumes. I look forward to reading the rest of this series over the coming months.

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CT: Mere Mission, an Interview with NT Wright

Tim Stafford wisely avoids the issue of justification in this interview.  This makes for a less controversial, and more accessible interview.  The impetus seems to be his new book, Simply Christian.  This book is something of a Mere Christianity for our time.  Where Lewis wrote to communicate with Moderns, Wright writes to communicate with Postmoderns.

This leads to an interesting discussion of the appeal of Gnosticism, and the way in which we have tried to tame Jesus and the implications of the Gospel (something I can agree with NT on).  We turned a faith that turned the ancient world upside-down into a status quo, boring faith.  Gone is the faith that inspired martyrs to face certain death from Roman authorities (and in some place in the world still does inspire martyrs).

But in the West, Christianity has been seduced into becoming a more nominal, uninspiring sort of thing. On the Right, he points to the idols of War & Money.  I’m not so sure I agree on the first one.  I don’t think Conservative Christians are war mongers.  But we have been seduced by money and power.  To maintain them, we lose the focus on sacrifice and personal holiness for the sake of mission the New Testament clearly teaches.  One the left is, according to Wright, love/sex.  I think this idol crosses all lines, and is not the sole or primary problem of Liberals or Liberal Christianity.  Just as many Liberal Christians are also consumed by money and power.

“Because the great emphasis in the New Testament is that gospel is not how to escape the world; the gospel is that the crucified and risen Jesus is the Lord of the world.  And that his death and Resurrection transform the world, and that transformation can happen to you.  You, in turn, can be part of the transforming work.”

Yes, we evangelicals focus so much on ‘heaven’ we neglect the reality of the kingdom that is present and seeks to transform cultures through the gospel (not law or politics).  We neglect the fact that God is up to something awesome as He continues to apply the work of Jesus to people in this world, and uses believers to do it.  We have so privatized and individualized faith that our faith is not a danger to anyone, including ourselves.

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