Open Mic: A Prolegomena of Transgenderism (pt.ii)

Yesterday, I started a little miniseries on Transgenderism in response to a question a friend sent me. They were wondering how Christians are supposed to look at this particular issue. Yesterday I laid out the questions and definitions involved here and asked for feedback. Today, I’m talking about a “Prolegomena of Transgenderism”. “Prolegomena” is just a big (but appropriate for this context) word that basically means talking about all the things that must be kept in mind before trying to answer questions. In Systematic Theology, it’s when we lay out the very foundation of our knowledge about the given topics and the presuppositions that will guide us through the rest of the endeavor. That’s what this post is. I want to explore a couple of perspectives that have driven a lot of the answers I’ve seen about this. Also, in light of the comments I received yesterday, I want to repeat that this was already written before I posted the prior post. I say this because I don’t want people to think I’m taking their ideas without giving them credit, nor do I want people to think I am specifically calling them out in what I’m writing. So let’s get started…

Looking at this issue from a systematic theological perspective, I would first turn to Genesis 1:27 which says: “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he female he created them.” It seems that gender is unique in that it seems like it is more fundamentally inside-out rather than outside-in. Gender, according to this passage is rooted, primarily, in the “image of God” within us. Gender is an expression of that image and our physical embodiment is meant to be an expression of that gender. Now, we live in a fallen world, so anywhere in that process, something good can (and probably will) get twisted in some way. In Romans chapter 1, when it is recounting the story of the Fall, the first part of humanity that gets twisted, before anything else, is our sexuality. That seems to be the most fundamental basic level at which the Fall has affected us, therefore we should expect much abnormality and improper expressions and tendencies therein (hetero-, homo-, and trans-sexual alike).

But, as I said, that is using a systematic theological approach. Using a biblical studies approach (taking into account original audiences/context), one has to admit that neither the original writer nor the ancient audience of Genesis would have read that verse and taken it as some sort of ultimate statement about a modern conception of “gender “identity/expression”. It was probably a poetic statement going in line with the sexual imagery of the poetry of Genesis 1 where the Creator God is creating “mini-Creators” that will continue to fill the earth through “pro-Creation”. How do we harmonize this inevitable tension between these two approaches to Scripture? I don’t know. I’ll leave it up to better men and women than me. And all of you in the comments.

Further, even as I wrote and thought that section on gender being “inside-out”, I had two little voices ringing in the back of my mind. The first was whispering that this principle could be used to justify a whole host of other things I clearly think God does not approve of. People could sexually act however they pleased in the name of “I’m merely giving the proper external expression to my inner sense of sexuality.” The second was the voice that thinks that nearly every problem the church has ever known can go back to a Platonic dualistic view of the world that imagines a huge gulf between material/immaterial, expression/form, accidence/substance, physical/spiritual, earth/heaven and then (often) elevates the spiritual and abstract aspects over and above the physical and material parts of creation, calling us to cast off the material for the sake of some spiritual “ideal”.

I think this is so utterly wrong, damaging, and harmful to theology and the world. All these seemingly separate things actually overlap in very real and profound ways. There’s an almost “transubstantiated”, sacramental aspect to all parts of this life and world. The physical has been made and designed to reflect, hold, contain, partake in, accomplish, and put forward the divine. So how do we do this with our sense of gender? If there is a mysterious union between our physical and psychological selves, how do we approach those with Transgender issues? It seems the fundamentalist would say to them “God made you a certain way physically. That’s who you are. So try and fix the internal aspects” (that’s the conclusion of this essay by a Christian Ethics professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary sent to me yesterday). The “liberal” would say “God made you a certain way internally. That’s who you are. So try and fix the physical aspects.” I don’t think it’s that easy. Both of these are wrong. There’s something much more mysterious, beautiful, and difficult happening in all of us dealing with our sexualities and gender.

Any account we try and give as Christians must bear all this in mind and not fall to either extreme. We must take very seriously both our individual personhood and our embodiment, because God has. The Divine Personhood became embodied in order to redeem it and make it worthy and able again to contain the divine once more. And while we’re talking the redemption and ushering in of New Creation, let me ask all of you this: when time has ended, creation restored, and we have all received our glorified bodies, what kind of body do you think the Christian Transgendered person will receive? Will their external form finally match the internal, thereby giving them a fuller sense of identity; or will their minds be changed in such a way that they finally feel a harmony with the physical gender they originally born with in this life?

Tomorrow I’ll give my proposed answers to many of these questions, but like I said, these will reflect where I’m at right now. I’m very willing to be swayed in other directions. I just wanted to write this post to give people a framework. Any answers we try and give must take all of these things into account. Real hearts, lives, and souls are on the line in this issue and we can’t afford to offer simplistic, naive, knee-jerk “solutions” to the people that need to hear them the most. This does injury, injustice, and insult to the Gospel–a Gospel that promises to adequately address all issues of life and salvation with nuance, care, grace, and sufficiency.

So what do you think? How would you harmonize the tension between the conclusions of systematic theology versus biblical studies? Do you agree that both the Fundamentalist and liberal approaches are inadequate? If so, what “third way” might you propose that might be more nuanced?

[painting by Sandorfi]

Open Mic: The Question of Transgenderism (pt.i)

UPDATE: Part 2 of this series is up now.

A couple of days ago, a friend of mine shot me a facebook message asking me for a Christian perspective on, of all things, transgenderism. For many reasons that will be explained later, this will be a topic of increasing pertinence that the Church will have to give a theologically-informed account for at some point. We need to have answers for questions like: “Did God make them that way?”, “Are they just confused?”, “Should we support many people’s desire for surgical alterations?”,”What hope for ‘healing’ can we expect in this life?”,”Is it something that needs to be ‘healed’ in the first place?”, “Is it a sin?”, “What does a Christian with transgender issues look like?”, “Is that even possible?”, among others.

To be honest, I don’t feel like I have a rock solid answer to any of these questions. Every time I feel like I do, I talk to someone and they show me a new dimension I hadn’t seen before. So, I’m very open to ideas, which is why I’m writing this on the blog. I would love everyone’s feedback and opinion as to how one should answer these questions.

But first, what are we talking about? Technically speaking, transgenderism is different from transexuality. A person is considered “transgendered” when their personal gender identity does not match the gender that was assigned to them at birth–that’s it. A person is considered a “transexual” when they actually seek to change their physical gender through surgery or hormone therapy. Individuals can be transgendered based on genetics (genetically they’re one gender; physically they’re another) or psychology (their gender identity does not match the gender role assigned to them by culture and society based on their physical gender; they don’t “feel” like the gender they physically are). I’m not sure if my friend was asking about both these issues or if they were in fact, drawing a distinction, but many of the same issues are involved in both.

By the time I was done writing out my whole response to these questions, the essay was about six pages long. It’s done, mind you, I just don’t want to throw all of that at all of you at once. So I’m going to spread it over the next three days in three separate posts. Then, next week, I’ll probably put them back together into one long article and post it on Reform & Revive. But please respond to this post and this series. I would love all of your thoughts. Below you’ll find the schedule and topics to be addressed. Look at what I’ll be talking about in the next couple of days and see if your comment or question might be more appropriate in the days to come.

• Today: The Questions of Transgenderism
  • some questions, definitions, and all of your thoughts
• Tuesday: A Prolegomena of Transgenderism
  • how others have approached this and what we need to remember (but often forget) when trying to address this
• Wednesday: A Theology of Transgenderism?
  • a brief theology/history of gender and sexuality and how do we deal with this theologically and practically in the Church?

Your Turn

So, what are your thoughts on this? If you’re not a Christian, how do you think Christians should approach this issue? How have they not done a good job in the past? How do you approach it? If you are a Christian, what’s your immediate gut reaction to this issue? Is it reasonable? Does it follow the other aspects of the Gospel that you know? How do you think Jesus would approach this? How were you raised to approach this topic?

John Piper on Porn, Wives, & Marriage

I try not to bash pastors that I know have good intentions.  Those pastors that have demonstrated a desire to be biblically sound and pastorally sensitive, usually get the benefit of the doubt from me, even when I don’t think they are at the moment being biblically sound and pastorally sensitive.  I also know that well-known pastors probably get far more useless and inane criticism from young twenty-somethings that think they know everything (myself included, far more often than I’d like to admit).  But this went a bit too far.  Tonight, John Piper put up the following tweet:

Really?

First, the medium.  You’re really going to put up — of all means of communication — a tweet?   Not knowing how many women might have sat down at their computer after having been told of the marital infidelity of their husbands in front of a computer screen for the millionth time, you’re going to tell them that if they watched a movie recently where there was nudity in it, they shouldn’t complain?  Using 140 characters or less, with no space to add nuance or pastoral care,  you’re going to make a statement that will inevitably make many women internalize on themselves the feelings of hurt they may be feeling?  To make such a loaded statement over such a “micro” platform is the height of thoughtlessness, callousness, and insensitivity.

Second, the message itself.  The Bible is sexually charged at times.  Sexuality can be beautiful, even necessary, to push forward a narrative (as we see in the Bible).  This means that there are movies where sexuality (yes, even nudity) can be beautiful, purposeful, and not simply gratuitous acts to keep men engaged.  So just the simple act of watching of these movies is not tantamount to navigating your husband to a porn site and then telling him to have fun.  Does the same go for art?  Would Piper say “Wives, if you see art with him containing bare breasts and fondling, don’t complain when he does porn by himself”?

Also, nudity and sex scenes (that are gratuitous and unnecessary) are found in nearly every movie adults watch nowadays.  You can try and filter the bad ones out, but inevitably a few will get in.  Should the wife “not complain” if her husband does porn after that? I’m sure Piper’s not saying this.  It’s just that this is subtle legalism at work, where the problem with the sin and the struggle is something that they’re doing.  Struggling with porn? Stop doing this, doing that, and start doing this, doing that.  It’s a subtle works-based system of sin and righteousness.

He has probably counseled countless couples struggling with this very issue.  Surely he doesn’t say this in counseling sessions, does he?  There has to be better ways to say the little bit of truth in this: Perhaps, “don’t be surprised when he…”; “try and help your husband by not watching movies containing…”; “if he does porn by himself, ask if you two are watching movies with…”?  These are more helpful ways of saying the kernel of truth in there.

Ever since becoming increasingly theologically egalitarian (I’m not all the way there.  I call myself a “progressive complementarian”), I have struggled with the hardcore complementarians out there like Piper and Driscoll.  I’m quite confident that it’s bad biblical exegesis, but I have really tried to believe that it doesn’t inevitably lead to chauvinism and insensitivity toward women.  And I know Piper doesn’t advocate for that.  But this tweet scares me.  I’m angered by this and I hurt on behalf of all the women out there that should be appalled by this.  There should be no circumstance that you should not feel the freedom and right to justifiably “complain” about and hate the sin of your husband for his online marital infidelity toward you.  It is not your fault in anyway that would remove your right to do this.  I really hope Piper gets a lot of criticism over this, such that he is able to publicly apologize for this.  He’s done it before for other things he has said.  I hope this is one of those times.

What do you all think?  Was Piper off-base?  Why or why not?  How would you phrase this differently?