Shabbat shalom y’all,
There’s been a recent story circulating through Adventist Twitter of a German pastor coming out as a celibate bisexual. The GC responded as you would expect. The zeitgeist of transphobia in the US is a serious concern with future implications that need to be considered. But first, I’d encourage you to watch this video on the nonexistence of biblical literalism…
The church’s statement on transgenderism cites a variety of verses, including the following verse, saying “The Bible inextricably ties gender to biological sex.” That is truly an unimaginative and limited view of scripture and identity.
Gen 1:27; 2:22-24– So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them… Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man. And Adam said: “This is now bone of my bones And flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, Because she was taken out of Man.” Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
One could make the argument that God creating man in “His” image as “both female and male” would mean that God contains the whole spectrum of gender and imbues his creation with that same diversity. It’s not that we’re created as a man or a woman, but that we are created, in the image of God: man and woman.
God’s first act to a man is revealing the woman inside of him.
Am I projecting my own worldview into the Bible? Less than anyone arguing this is about gender/biological sex.
In this interpretation, I’m even being more literal than the literalists! I am not saying these words demand being interpreted literally in this way. I am reading this text with the joy of play. In doing so, I find an interpretation that resonates with my own lived experience.
If we take gender expansive identities as an authentic part of the human experience (a position which is historically supported) and see a concretized gender binary as the more recent fad in identity, our capacity to relate to others blossoms with resilience rather than fragility. What happens when we describe ancient Hebrew texts with words like “biological sex” and “psychosomatic unity”? What are we projecting onto the Bible?
Some Christians argue that transgenderism inherently argues that God made a mistake. That interpretation reveals more about those Christians and their fragile theology than it does about the experience of gender. Does getting braces mean God made a mistake when he made your teeth? Doesn’t Jesus already encourage body modification for the benefit of the whole? Or was that a metaphor? For what? And what establishes literalism versus a metaphor?
All of these arguments reveal the lack of imagination we have when it comes to relating to each other in a wholesome and healing way.
Would you support gender reassignment operations if it reduced the risk of suicide? How many suicides would it have to prevent for you to consider it as a viable public safety measure? Do you have a number? I imagine an adventist or other conservative Christian might offer an alternative like a rigorous battery of bible studies. But have bible studies been as effective in reducing suicidal ideation and tobacco use as gender affirming surgeries? Maybe for an elect few, sure. But who would want to go anywhere that sees them as a project rather than an equal seeking community?
There is a lot more to write about protestantism’s challenge with sexuality and gender, but I’ll leave it here for this week.
Thanks for reading.