Preston Sprinkle's Blog, page 2

The following post is written by Dr. Joey Dodson

The day after Thanksgiving , my wife pulled out our Christmas decorations as usual. In response, I trumpeted to my children: “Come on, it’s time to deck our halls with boughs of jolly.”  Disgusted, one of my kids asked why we would adorn our halls with bowels. “Is that like a Passover thing?!”

For those of you not from the South, you may be surprised how many misunderstandings result from our accents. For instance, having grown up in the Deep South during the 80’s, I could not understand for the longest time why in Acts 2 the Lord sent a mighty Russian wind at Pentecost. On some level it made more sense in light of the end of the chapter: “All the believers had everything in common; they sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. (Acts 2:44-45).” You can imagine my relief, then, when I first realized it was a “rushing wind” instead of a communist one.

Along those lines, I attribute Caspian’s (6yo) fascination with Peppa Pig as having something to do with my being an Arkansas Razorback fan. After all our team’s battle cry is “Woo Pig!” (Because Arkansas does not already have a backwoods reputation!) Anyways, once my wife pulled out our nativity, my six-year-old dashed to his room, grabbed his Peppa figure and deftly placed it beside, in his words: “the bed of Sweet Baby Jesus.” Disturbed, one of my pharisaical, know-it-all, home-schooled teenagers blurted: “You c’aint put Peppa in the manger: Jews hate swine!”

Crestfallen, my little Caspian began to fight back the tears welling up in his eyes. After casting a scowl at said-teenager, I rushed to provide a theological rational for why Peppa would have indeed been welcome in the stable. I started to borrow from Preston's blog and argue that it was not a “stable” in the first place, but I thought that would have merely confused my son all the more. So, at the risk of being anachronistic, I told him the story of Peter’s vision about “dirty” animals, which surely featured pigs on a blanket. I told him God’s command to Peter: “Do not call anything God has made unclean!”

On beat, the preacher-scholar in me took over so that I began to explain that the Lord’s command had more to do with people than it did animals and barbeque. I shared how the vision set up Peter’s visit to the “unclean” Gentile, Cornelius, whom God wanted to incorporate into His Kingdom. In full sermon, I declared how Jesus came in a manager so that poor and disparaged Gentiles and “pigs” would be welcome in the Kingdom of Heaven. I punctuated my eloquent waxing by saying, “So basically, if Peppa ain’t welcome in the presence of Jesus, nobody is.” 

Pretty satisfied with how I diffused the situation, I looked at Caspian for affirmation. In turn, he opened his mouth and said: “Umm, can I have some hot chocolate now?” 

I’ll wrap of my review of Jonathan Grant’s Divine Sex by looking at how he articulates a Christian vision for sexuality. As with any review, there’s always a danger of truncating the author’s argument due to the nature of picking out which parts to emphasize. I hope I’ve represented Jonathan’s argument well, and I know there’s many things I had to leave out. That’s why I want to give you one last encouragement to buy and read Jonathan’s book.

 

Jonathan devotes half of his book to articulating a Christian vision for sexuality. The first half focuses on the culture’s vision for sexuality, which emphasizes individual freedom and the individual’s right to express themselves sexuality as they want. Be true to yourself; make sure it’s consensual; avoid suffering; and don’t hurt anyone else. These are the core values of a secular sexual ethic.

 

Grant argues that a Christian vision for sexual flourishing looks quite different from a secular one. His argument weaves in an out of several different questions and themes for about 100 pages, but there are at least four salient points he highlights that I found to be challenging and thoughtful.

 

First, Christian discipleship, of which our sexuality is a part, is intrinsically eschatological. That is, a Christian vision of “the good life” is always oriented toward the future. We should never expect to find full satisfaction in this life. Everything about Christian obedience has an already/not-yet shape to it, and we must view our sexuality along similar lines. This is not some hope for a pie-in-the-sky future devoid of earthly materiality that we used to sing about in Sunday School. That’s not Christian eschatology; it’s neo-Gnosticism. The eschatology Jonathan’s talking about is a Christian life oriented toward a new creation where our fullest human potential will be realized. The apostle Paul “consistently contextualized the purpose and form of Christian living”—of which sexuality is a significant part—“within the greater arc of God’s cosmic story of redemption” (p. 148). Again:

 

When properly focused, the biblical vision of our ultimate future is an empowering one in which our present sacrifices and struggles are put into proper perspective. Only this stunning reality can give direction and genuine significance to the cost sand consolations of our present sexual lives (pp. 149-150).

 

Jonathan’s not saying that this life will bring nothing but suffering and pain. “We cannot encourage people just to cling to the wreckage of life because of a future hope. On the contrary, the core of the Christian vision is that our lives now can enter into and reflect the realities of heaven” (p. 150). The current demand for “fulfillment now” is not a Christian demand. “Those who demand fulfillment now, as though it were a right or a guarantee, are living in a state of adolescent illusion.” Viewing our sexuality through a Christian, eschatological lens “lies in working out how to live lives free from bondage to sin without presuming to be translated prematurely into a condition that is free from ‘the sufferings of this present time’” (p. 149 citing Richard Hays, Moral Vision, 393-394). Put simply, humans will never be fully satisfied (sexually, or otherwise) this side of the new creation.

 

Second, and related, suffering and incompleteness is part of every relationship—even sexual ones.  “Christianity takes suffering seriously and treats it as an important, inevitable, and even necessary part of our spiritual and moral development” (p. 53). Since all sexual longing is part of a greater human longing that will only be fully satisfied in the new creation, we cannot idolize sexual fulfillment or expect to experience it fully in this life. Or as Paul says: “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rom 8:18). Much of our current conversations about sexuality, even within the church, either does not believe what Paul says to be true, or they think that sexuality is not part of “the sufferings of this present time.”

 

This life is defined incompleteness. “Our sexuality in its fullest sense—that is, its spiritual, emotional and physical aspects—plays an essential role in the relational vision of the kingdom of God because it speaks of our ‘incompleteness’” (p. 146). “Jesus’s announcement of the kingdom puts our present desire for sexual and relational fulfillment in tis ultimate context” (p. 147).

 

Third, sex is connected to our relationship with God—hence the title of his book, Divine Sex. The title “Divine Sex reminds us that in sex within marriage, we express something essential about God’s won relationships within the Trinity, as well as point to the age when we will participate in these relationships directly” (p. 152). “Our experience of romantic love, sexual desire, and all forms of beauty…is testimony to our ultimate desire for God” (p. 153). Pastors and leaders throughout church history understood this well. This is why there have been more commentaries written on the Song of Songs than any other book of the Bible, and almost every one of those commentaries viewed the human expression of sexual intimacy as a metaphor for our intimate relationship with God. Now, recent commentators argue that it’s not an either/or; the Song probably includes both human sexual relations and our ultimate relationship with God. And, of course, Paul twisted the two together so that our marital unions and our union with Christ are inseparable (Eph 5:22-33).

 

To separate sex from divine union is to sever sex from its Christian vision.

 

Sexual intimacy in marriage gives us something like a momentary glimpse of our future ecstasy. It is a fleeting and shadowy foretaste of the social intimacy we will experience in the age to come, even though sex itself will pass away…This new emphasis in the New Testament relatives the importance of marriage and sexual intimacy because our future destiny so completely overwhelms all of our present sexual longing. (p. 147)

 

Thus, any vision for sexual flourishing that seeks to satisfy our sexual longings in this life—free from suffering and incompleteness—is also not a Christian vision. Christians shouldn’t be shocked when our sexual lives don’t bring the full satisfaction we’ve been programmed to expect. They were never meant to.

 

Fourth, sex is designed to belong in the context of marriage and family. Only recently has sex been completely separated from procreation, and this recent separation is a movement away from a Christian vision for sexual flourishing. “Sex within marriage, at both the symbolic and practical levels, is essentially an expression of our openness to new life beyond our exclusive relationship as a couple” (p. 155). Early on in the book, Grant argued that the sexual revolution was able to catch on only after contraceptives were introduced. Severing sex from its procreative potential is the foundation for sexual freedom and expression.

 

Now, as I said in my first blog, I’ve been trying to get inside of Grant’s argument so that I can understand it. I’m not necessarily agreeing with everything he says, and his argument on procreation is a bit underdeveloped, in my opinion. For instance, Grant says that “if we use contraception or are unable to have children for other reasons, we are symbolically open to the possibility of children and the responsibility of providing a stable context for them” (p. 155). This sounds good, but it’s not clear what he means by “symbolically open to the possibility of children.” It’s also unclear whether Grant thinks that every sexual relationship (or sexual act) should be oriented toward procreation. His section certainly raises a lot of questions about infertility, sex in old age, couples who chose not to have biological children or a limited number of children.

 

However, I would say that at the very least, the modern evangelical church has often wrongly severed sex from its procreative design too quickly, and I’ve been challenged on the sex and procreation question by Protestant scholars like Wes Hill and Steven Holmes, along with the Catholic tradition. I’m not convinced that all legitimate sexual relationships must be oriented toward procreation. But I’m also not convinced that sexual relationships, if we follow God’s design as revealed through special and general revelation, can be understood apart from procreation. It is interesting that it was a secular project that first separated sex from children in an effort to ensure more individual freedom. Severing sex from procreation doesn’t have roots in Christian thinking, even though it’s been baptized by popular Christian marriage gurus in the late 20th century.

 

As you can tell, I’m currently working through my own view on sex and procreation, and I found Grant’s discussion to be thoughtful and compelling.

 

If I had more time, I would love to dive into other interesting aspects of Grant’s book, such as singleness, same-sex relations, and sex difference in marriage—all of which Grant considers. But I’ve already written more than I had planned. I hope you enjoyed the series, and I hope you enjoy the book!

 

I’ve now moved on to Dr. Dale Kuehne’s book Sex and the iWorld: Rethinking Relationship beyond an Age of Individualism. Once I finish it, I’ll write up another review. 

In my last post (part 2 of the series), I looked at Jonathan Grant’s argument that “expressive individualism” has had a destructive impact on our culture’s sexual ethic. The frequency of sex outside of marriage, serial monogamy, widespread and increasingly hard core pornography, and high-divorce rates are all evidence of a culture that lacks, indeed mocks, almost all moral constraints on sexual expression. Our culture sees “sexual expression…as a fundamental right” (p. 140) and tempers it only with consensuality and a be-true-to-yourself ethic. It promises the good life, but by various scientific measurements—rates of depression, loneliness, addictions, anxiety, sexual addictions, and sexual dysfunctions—it hasn’t delivered it.

Along with expressive individualism, Grant also considers how consumerism has shaped our culture’s sexual ethic. Consumerism considers nothing but the individual and isn’t concerned about the unforeseen ramifications of making, selling, and buying a product. As Rob Bell rightly says:

Just convince people they need to buy it, not if it’s good for them, or good for the world, or if the employees who helped make it—it’s a fair and equitable wage—or if it’s good for the environment, or what it says about what it means to be human, or what it does to other tribes who produce it so this tribe can consume it; just tell them they need it (Robcast episode 123 “Wisdom Part 7: The Simple and the Subtle”).

Our consumeristic and hypersexualized cultures are not kissing cousins but incestuous lovers. Or in Grant’s words:

Modern consumerism both exploits and distorts our sexual natures, making consumerism and sexualization powerful partners. Within this nexus, promises of sexual fulfillment sell almost everything by evoking our longing for transcendence and then, in a move of substitution, channeling that desire into a consumer product. This formative process affirms us as sexual beings but turns us into sexualized consumers (pp. 76-77).

Grant identifies two specific areas where consumerism and sexuality plays out. First, through consumerism, sexual relationships have become detached from their original design as interconnected with other relationships, marriage, and children. Sexual expression and fulfillment are viewed as ends in themselves—just be true to who you are—rather than a part of a greater and more beautiful network of relationships.

Second, consumerism fosters “serial monogamy.” Most people still believe that having multiple partners at the same time is wrong and that being faithful to one is praiseworthy. But the number of faithful relationships is largely irrelevant.

This clearly lines up with the disciplines encouraged by our culture’s consumerist matrix. Within this environment we are trained to desire things but also to remain aloof from the very products and services that promise us fulfillment…We salivate over the latest smartphone, but only until it is usurped by a slimmer and more loaded model. And so with relationships. The consumerist self is taught to seek the most features for the lowest price, as well as to hold open all future options. (p. 81).

Somewhat related to consumerism’s influence on modern sexuality is the surprising influence of technology. Grant explores the pros and cons of the online dating phenomenon (pp. 88-95), but the most interesting section in Grant’s book (maybe “interesting” isn’t the best word) is his section: “Embracing Erotic Robots: The Future of Technological Intimacy” (pp. 84-88).

Basically, sex with robots.

In 2008, David Levy published a book with HarperCollins called ove and Sex with Robots. In it, Levy argued that by 2050 sexual intimacy with robots will be just as common as sex with another human. And Levy doesn’t see this as a bad thing. Having a sexual relationship with a robot can produce a more creative sex life, it can enhance our human relationships since we can practice with a robot, and robotic relations avoid the risks of a human relationship: infidelity, illness, conflict, and the possibility of unwanted children (p. 84). “For Levy, the only question we should ask is, ‘Does the robot make me happy?’” (p. 84).

No risk of infidelity, heartache, pain, suffering, children, conflict. Our culture’s sexual values are directly transferable to having sex with robots.

MIT sociologist Sherry Turckle wrote a critical review of Levy’s book and received some angry responses by other readers who criticized her of “species chauvinism” (p. 84). (No, seriously.) Turckle expressed her disagreement with Levy at a conference, and one audience member candidly disagreed with her saying that she would love to trade in her boyfriend for a Japanese robot, since she was looking for a “no risk relationship” and a “responsive robot, even one just exhibiting scripted behavior, seemed better to her than a demanding boyfriend” (p. 85). Turkle thought the girl was joking around with her. She wasn't. 

I don’t think Grant’s point is to be unnecessarily provocative or to imbibe his discussion with freakish extremes. I think he’s simply trying to show how shallow and inconsistent our culture’s sexual ethic really is, and how it cannot deliver the flourishing life it promises. At least—a flourishing life with a fellow human.

I’ve mentioned several times in this blog series that consensuality is an inadequate moral guideline for sexual expression. Grant says: “The only moral constraint our culture seems to accept in this area is that sexual expression between ‘adults’ should be free and consensual, without any force or manipulation” (p. 98). But consensuality alone is an inadequate guide for sexual flourishing. Let’s explore this a bit further before we log off.

Of course consensuality is part of God’s design for sexual relations. No one should have sex with another human against their will. Consensuality isn’t wrong; it’s simply unable to provide the moral framework to produce true human flourishing in sexuality, since even our individual choices and desires are shaped by our complex and not-so-moral environment. Two porn stars (or three, or four) can have consensual sex (see page 62 for a gritty example). A prostitute and her buyer can have consensual sex, but that doesn’t mean their sexual expression has no impact on themselves or on society. An insecure 16 year old girl may consent to sex with her boyfriend for all the wrong reasons. A faithful wife my submit to her husband’s request, or demand, for anal sex for wrong reasons too. We live in a complex web of influences and psychological pressures. No decision is made in a vacuum. Consensuality isn’t bad; it’s just not enough. And it doesn’t provide the moral framework to say that having sex with your robot—or both of them if you can afford two—is wrong.

Consensuality is one leg of the sexual-ethic-stool that leads to the good life. All good sex should be consensual, but not all consensual sex is part of human flourishing. 

The fact is, the Christian story integrates more than consensuality in its vision for sex and human flourishing. In our next post, we’ll articulate what this Christian vision is—according to Jonathan Grant. 

In my last post, I began a multi-blog review of Jonathan Grant’s book, Divine Sex: A Compelling Vision for Christian Relationships in a Hypersexualized Age. Grant’s book is “an attempt to describe the significant ways in which our cultural lens is shaping our identity and relationships and how we can refocus the church’s vision through the lens of the gospel” (p. 24). Christian formation must include cultural counterformation—undoing the cultural script that’s kidnapped our desires—since we’re all shaped by our cultural on some level.

 

I ended the post by mentioning one of the values of a secular sexual ethic that offers an empty promise of human flourishing. Grant calls it: expressive individualism (or sometimes called a culture of authenticity).

 

Grant explains: “The strong tradition of individualism in the Western world has led to placing person freedom at the core of personal identity” (p. 32).

 

Within this culture of expressive individualism, each person seeks his or her own unique core of feeling and intuition…Despite the importance of relationships, the focus and priority is always the journey of each individual self…This culture of expressive individualism has become the moral wallpaper of the modern world” (p. 32).

 

Perhaps for the first time in history, people (in the West) no longer looks outside themselves for their identity and authority (God, the gods, holy writings, prophetic teachers, etc.). Now, we simply look within ourselves to find out who we really are, and consequently we become our own determiners of identity and authority.

 

Modern authenticity encourages us to create our own beliefs and morality, the only rule being that they must resonate with who we feel we really are. The worst thing we can do is to conform to some moral code that is imposed on us from outside—by society, our parents, the church, or whoever else. It is deemed to be self-evident that any such imposition would undermine our unique identity (p. 30).

 

The primacy of the individual and the individual’s uniqueness shapes our quest for meaning, authority, and identity. “The authentic self believes that personal meaning must be found within ourselves or must at least resonate with our one-of-a-kind personality. We must, as we often hear, ‘be true to ourselves’” (p. 30).

 

The modern fixation on the individual shapes our sexual ethic in profound ways. “Our society generally believes that ‘being true to ourselves’, especially in our sexual lives, is critical to living full and happy lives. Much of this is taken for granted and goes unquestioned” (p. 37).

 

Our most intimate relationships are looked to by each partner as a primary source of happiness and self-actualization, measured in the narrow terms of personal Gratification. Am I getting what I need from this relationship? Does it make me happy? Do the benefits to me outweigh the costs? (p. 38).

 

Any concept of commitment is intrinsically tied to whether the relationship continues to produce the expected level of happiness and fulfillment. When the happiness fades, so does the relationship. Or if the relationship challenges the “authentic self,” preventing the individual from being “true to themselves,” then the relationship is seen as a roadblock to personal happiness—the sacred cow of the post-modern age. As one twentysomething interviewee said: “Morality is how I feel…You could feel what’s right or wrong in your heart as well as your mind…And if it feels good, then I’m going to do it” (p. 31)

 

Expressive individualism has become an unquestioned truth, the DNA of a secular sexual ethic. Grant argues, however, that even though this secular ethic clashes with the Christian narrative, Christians have largely adopted it. “Christian tradition emphasizes courage and perseverance in the face of suffering, but even within the church, seeking happiness and avoiding emotional pain have become our highest virtues” (p. 49). Or as C. S. Lewis says:

 

Our whole destiny seems to lie in the opposite direction, in being as little as possible ourselves, in acquiring a fragrance that is not our own but borrowed, in becoming clean mirrors filled with the image of a face that is not ours… . The highest good of a creature must be creaturely—that is, derivative or reflective—good” (p. 51, citing Lewis, “Christianity and Literature,” 6).

 

Part of the problem is that when the church speaks into areas of sexuality, our teaching has been limited to an ethic that’s only a sneeze away from a secular one. Fall in love with the right person—translated: the one who will make you happy—and don’t have sex until you’re married. We haven’t carved out the cancerous cultural ethic that’s deep within our bones. “We in the church have not spoken and ministered effectively into our culture’s prioritization of authenticity above all else in matters of sexuality and relationships. When a marriage ceases to make us happy or the traveling becomes heavy going, we have no other master story to navigate us through the storm” (p. 49).

 

For example, the church’s response to suffering is almost identical to our culture. It’s difficult to know whether Grant is describing the church or secular culture in the following:

 

[W]e are increasingly becoming an anesthetized society that will do anything to avoid pain. We have many ways of self-medicating the physical, emotional, and spiritual pain in our lives—compulsive behavior, consumption of food, sexual encounters, highly dependent relationships, pornography—although, inevitably, we find that these false comforts send us further into hiding, increasing our sense of shame and isolation. Ironically, beneath the assured culture of authenticity we find a generation of people unsure of their right to exist” (pp. 51-52)

 

Among the many pieces of evidence, Grant points to “[t]he epidemic use of prescription and over-the-counter painkillers—especially antidepressants” as “startling testimony to this phenomenon” (p. 52). Anecdotally, I’m not sure if the church looks very different from the world in its quest to avoid pain and suffering, even though suffering is an essential part of the Christian story. 

 

Grant also spends a good deal of time examining the pornography epidemic (pp. 103-113) as another piece of evidence that personal gratification and happiness is seen as the end goal of sexual desire. If you desire it, it's who you are; and if it's who you are, you must be true to yourself. Pornography appears to be a free, easy, seemingly harmless way to satisfy your personal sexual urges. And it’s destroying society and human relationships—not to mention, hindering real sexual relationships. The statistics of porn use are staggering:

Married men outnumber single men in porn use. (p. 109)56% of divorce cases involve one party having an obsessive interest in online pornography. (p. 109)Men look at online pornography more than any other subject. (p. 105)66% of 18-34 year-old-men visit a pornographic site every month. (p. 105)According to one study, 2/3 of men and ½ of women between 18-26 agreed that pornography was “generally acceptable.” (After all, it’s consensual and it doesn’t appear to hurt anyone.) (p. 112)In an insolated survey of a suburb in the U.K., 100% of the 14 year old boys and 50% of 14 year old girls have viewed pornography. (p. 113)

The destruction that porn breeds is equally staggering:

Men who are addicted to porn are often no longer aroused by their wives and lose the desire to be intimate with them. (p. 110, 175).Porn use causes erectile dysfunction (i.e. you can’t get it up) and fosters premature ejaculation, leading to a snow-ball of frustrations among both partners.The addictive nature of pornography trains the viewer to desire more explicit and hardcore content; they become dissatisfied in what appears to be mundane sexual expression. One-third of heterosexual Americans experience anal sex by the age of 23, even though only 15% of women say they enjoyed it. (p. 122)

Now, all of this is old news. But Grant’s point is that the modern push for expressive individualism in sexual relationships—be who you are, just don’t hurt anyone else—has fueled the pornification of the Western world. “Those who become addicted to ‘risk free’ sex face the ultimate risk: the loss of love” (p. 110).

 

When consensuality and individual happiness become the primary virtues in sexual expression, human flourishing is stunted. “Indeed, the modern self sees sexual expression as a virtue that lies at the heart of human identity. We can only be fulfilled, happy, and mature when our sexuality is set free” (p. 137). What is needed is an explicit, indeed unashamed, countercultural Christian vision for sexual flourishing—one that doesn’t avoid suffering, but includes it into the narrative; one that takes seriously the Christian eschatological hope of resurrection and new creation; one that sees “the self” as derivative of and dependent upon a Creator in whose image we bear and whose instructions we follow.

 

The life, death, teaching, and eschatological hope of Christ should shape the church’s vision for human flourishing, even—or especially—in our sexual relationships. 

In my last post, I began a multi-blog review of Jonathan Grant’s book, Divine Sex: A Compelling Vision for Christian Relationships in a Hypersexualized Age. Grant’s book is “an attempt to describe the significant ways in which our cultural lens is shaping our identity and relationships and how we can refocus the church’s vision through the lens of the gospel” (p. 24). Christian formation must include cultural counterformation—undoing the cultural script that’s kidnapped our desires—since we’re all shaped by our cultural on some level.

 

I ended the post by mentioning one of the values of a secular sexual ethic that offers an empty promise of human flourishing. Grant calls it: expressive individualism (or sometimes called a culture of authenticity).

 

Grant explains: “The strong tradition of individualism in the Western world has led to placing person freedom at the core of personal identity” (p. 32).

 

Within this culture of expressive individualism, each person seeks his or her own unique core of feeling and intuition…Despite the importance of relationships, the focus and priority is always the journey of each individual self…This culture of expressive individualism has become the moral wallpaper of the modern world” (p. 32).

 

Perhaps for the first time in history, people (in the West) no longer looks outside themselves for their identity and authority (God, the gods, holy writings, prophetic teachers, etc.). Now, we simply look within ourselves to find out who we really are, and consequently we become our own determiners of identity and authority.

 

Modern authenticity encourages us to create our own beliefs and morality, the only rule being that they must resonate with who we feel we really are. The worst thing we can do is to conform to some moral code that is imposed on us from outside—by society, our parents, the church, or whoever else. It is deemed to be self-evident that any such imposition would undermine our unique identity (p. 30).

 

The primacy of the individual and the individual’s uniqueness shapes our quest for meaning, authority, and identity. “The authentic self believes that personal meaning must be found within ourselves or must at least resonate with our one-of-a-kind personality. We must, as we often hear, ‘be true to ourselves’” (p. 30).

 

The modern fixation on the individual shapes our sexual ethic in profound ways. “Our society generally believes that ‘being true to ourselves’, especially in our sexual lives, is critical to living full and happy lives. Much of this is taken for granted and goes unquestioned” (p. 37).

 

Our most intimate relationships are looked to by each partner as a primary source of happiness and self-actualization, measured in the narrow terms of personal Gratification. Am I getting what I need from this relationship? Does it make me happy? Do the benefits to me outweigh the costs? (p. 38).

 

Any concept of commitment is intrinsically tied to whether the relationship continues to produce the expected level of happiness and fulfillment. When the happiness fades, so does the relationship. Or if the relationship challenges the “authentic self,” preventing the individual from being “true to themselves,” then the relationship is seen as a roadblock to personal happiness—the sacred cow of the post-modern age. As one twentysomething interviewee said: “Morality is how I feel…You could feel what’s right or wrong in your heart as well as your mind…And if it feels good, then I’m going to do it” (p. 31)

 

Expressive individualism has become an unquestioned truth, the DNA of a secular sexual ethic. Grant argues, however, that even though this secular ethic clashes with the Christian narrative, Christians have largely adopted it. “Christian tradition emphasizes courage and perseverance in the face of suffering, but even within the church, seeking happiness and avoiding emotional pain have become our highest virtues” (p. 49). Or as C. S. Lewis says:

 

Our whole destiny seems to lie in the opposite direction, in being as little as possible ourselves, in acquiring a fragrance that is not our own but borrowed, in becoming clean mirrors filled with the image of a face that is not ours… . The highest good of a creature must be creaturely—that is, derivative or reflective—good” (p. 51, citing Lewis, “Christianity and Literature,” 6).

 

Part of the problem is that when the church speaks into areas of sexuality, our teaching has been limited to an ethic that’s only a sneeze away from a secular one. Fall in love with the right person—translated: the one who will make you happy—and don’t have sex until you’re married. We haven’t carved out the cancerous cultural ethic that’s deep within our bones. “We in the church have not spoken and ministered effectively into our culture’s prioritization of authenticity above all else in matters of sexuality and relationships. When a marriage ceases to make us happy or the traveling becomes heavy going, we have no other master story to navigate us through the storm” (p. 49).

 

For example, the church’s response to suffering is almost identical to our culture. It’s difficult to know whether Grant is describing the church or secular culture in the following:

 

[W]e are increasingly becoming an anesthetized society that will do anything to avoid pain. We have many ways of self-medicating the physical, emotional, and spiritual pain in our lives—compulsive behavior, consumption of food, sexual encounters, highly dependent relationships, pornography—although, inevitably, we find that these false comforts send us further into hiding, increasing our sense of shame and isolation. Ironically, beneath the assured culture of authenticity we find a generation of people unsure of their right to exist” (pp. 51-52)

 

Among the many pieces of evidence, Grant points to “[t]he epidemic use of prescription and over-the-counter painkillers—especially antidepressants” as “startling testimony to this phenomenon” (p. 52). Anecdotally, I’m not sure if the church looks very different from the world in its quest to avoid pain and suffering, even though suffering is an essential part of the Christian story. 

 

Grant also spends a good deal of time examining the pornography epidemic (pp. 103-113) as another piece of evidence that personal gratification and happiness is seen as the end goal of sexual desire. If you desire it, it's who you are; and if it's who you are, you must be true to yourself. Pornography appears to be a free, easy, seemingly harmless way to satisfy your personal sexual urges. And it’s destroying society and human relationships—not to mention, hindering real sexual relationships. The statistics of porn use are staggering:

Married men outnumber single men in porn use. (p. 109)56% of divorce cases involve one party having an obsessive interest in online pornography. (p. 109)Men look at online pornography more than any other subject. (p. 105)66% of 18-34 year-old-men visit a pornographic site every month. (p. 105)According to one study, 2/3 of men and ½ of women between 18-26 agreed that pornography was “generally acceptable.” (After all, it’s consensual and it doesn’t appear to hurt anyone.) (p. 112)In an insolated survey of a suburb in the U.K., 100% of the 14 year old boys and 50% of 14 year old girls have viewed pornography. (p. 113)

The destruction that porn breeds is equally staggering:

Men who are addicted to porn are often no longer aroused by their wives and lose the desire to be intimate with them. (p. 110, 175).Porn use causes erectile dysfunction (i.e. you can’t get it up) and fosters premature ejaculation, leading to a snow-ball of frustrations among both partners.The addictive nature of pornography trains the viewer to desire more explicit and hardcore content; they become dissatisfied in what appears to be mundane sexual expression. One-third of heterosexual Americans experience anal sex by the age of 23, even though only 15% of women say they enjoyed it. (p. 122)

Now, all of this is old news. But Grant’s point is that the modern push for expressive individualism in sexual relationships—be who you are, just don’t hurt anyone else—has fueled the pornification of the Western world. “Those who become addicted to ‘risk free’ sex face the ultimate risk: the loss of love” (p. 110).

 

When consensuality and individual happiness become the primary virtues in sexual expression, human flourishing is stunted. “Indeed, the modern self sees sexual expression as a virtue that lies at the heart of human identity. We can only be fulfilled, happy, and mature when our sexuality is set free” (p. 137). What is needed is an explicit, indeed unashamed, countercultural Christian vision for sexual flourishing—one that doesn’t avoid suffering, but includes it into the narrative; one that takes seriously the Christian eschatological hope of resurrection and new creation; one that sees “the self” as derivative of and dependent upon a Creator in whose image we bear and whose instructions we follow.

 

The life, death, teaching, and eschatological hope of Christ should shape the church’s vision for human flourishing, even—or especially—in our sexual relationships. 

I recently finished Jonathan Grant’s book Divine Sex: A Compelling Vision for Christian Relationships in a Hypersexualized Age (Baker, 2015) and I must say that I’m tempted to buy a new pack of highlighters and send Jonathan the receipt. His book cost me a lot of yellow and orange (and sometimes green) ink. Looking back over my copy of his book, I wonder if it would have been more efficient to highlight the few portions that I wasn’t particularly challenged by and just let the rest of his prose lie untouched. This certainly would have saved me some money.

 

Okay, let’s ditch the colorful hyperbole (see what I did there?). Put simply: Jonathan’s book is gold, pure gold. It should be read 2-3 times by every pastor and Christian leader. It’s incredibly relevant, insightful, pastoral, and clear. I’ve read few books that blend rich theological and philosophical thinking with pastoral concerns, all packaged with engaging and accessible prose. Jonathan’s book is a must read.

 

I want to write a few blogs (not sure how many yet) summarizing, explaining, and interacting with Divine Sex (killer title, by the way). Part of my motivation is that writing a multi-blog review will force me to go back through his book to synthesize and summarize his main points. If you’re anything like me, it’s super easy to blow through a great book, only to forget what you read 2 weeks later. This is why it’s always good to interact with a book through writing and dialogue to help solidify the content in your own heart and head.

 

As I interact with Grant’s book, I will quote extensively from the book. I normally don’t like to write with long blocks of quotes scattered throughout, but I wanted to let Grant speak directly as much as I can. Also, for the record, my own summary of Grant's arguments will appear to be in full agreement. But it isn't necessarily. I always say that the best way to understand an author is to inhabit their argument; swish it around and savor it, before you digest it. So my voice in the following blogs is my attempt to understand and tease out Grant's voice. But yeah, like a good glass of wine, I doubt I'll spit much out at the end. 

 

So here goes. My review of Divine Sex, take 1.

 

Grant’s book draws on the work of Charles Taylor, Christian Smith, Mark Regnerus, and James K. A. Smith (who wrote the forward) and applies it to contemporary Christian sexual ethics. As Smith says in his forward, “We are creatures of habits, and such habits are formed in us by the rhythms and rituals we are immersed in, even (indeed, even more so) if we don’t realize it” (p. 10). And “our loves and longings and desires—including our sexual longings—are not just biological instincts; they are learned” (p. 10). The question isn’t whether our view of sex, sexuality, marriage, and relationships have been shaped by our culture, but how much. Grant’s book “helps us understand how and why the world that forms us has changed—and hence what effective Christian counterformation would look like” (p. 11). In Grant’s own words: “this book is an attempt to describe the significant ways in which our cultural lens is shaping our identity and relationships and how we can refocus the church’s vision through the lens of the gospel” (p. 24).

 

Both Smith (in his forward and in other works) and Grant point out just how much the church’s recent sexual ethic is almost indistinguishable from our post-sexual-revolution secular culture, and how far it has strayed from a truly Christian, countercultural vision for human flourishing. Grant isn’t an alarmist; at least not in the end-times-prophesy-preacher sort of well. But he does highlight (or maybe I highlighted…) the obvious point that the church has pretty much dropped the ball nurturing a Christian sexual ethic among its people. Even though humans are affected by sex, sexual desires, sexual relationships, sexual longings, sexual temptations, sexual pain, and sexual frustrations almost every hour of every day, the church’s focus on sex and sexuality is usually limited to a one-off sermon or sermon series here and there with no room for congregational response, dialogue, or dispute. The yawning gap between how much time humans spend being affected by sex and sexuality, and how much time the church spends addressing it, is astounding (see p. 18-19).

 

Moreover, when the church does address sexuality, it’s usually limited to monological teaching, which may shape our beliefs but often leaves our desires untouched. Rather than just teaching, the church needs to adopt and model a Christian vision for human flourishing and invite people to participate in—and desire—this vision. We need to present, through teaching but not just through teaching, a holistic vision for sexual wholeness that’s different from, and counter to—and more beautiful than—the dominant cultural script that most people habitually absorb every day. We cannot just rely on “God says this and God says that” Bible verses; we need to cultivate a countercultural set of affections and desires that are oriented toward new creation, yet still living in the suffering of the old creation. (A distinctively Christian vision for human flourishing includes suffering as part of its script; in this way, it’s profoundly different from a secular vision for flourishing that avoids suffering at all cost.) We need to create communities that celebrate a subversive sexual zeitgeist, one that clearly resists a secular sexual ethic, yet invites others to participate in the resistance.  

 

Back to his main point about the power of cultural formation. “Many Christians,” Grant argues, “believe they can simply build their self-identity entirely on Scripture over against, and parallel to, secular culture. Such confidence is deceptive” (p. 21). The “Christian faith and secular culture exist in complex interrelationship” (p. 25). According to sociologist Robert Wuthnow:

 

The basic premise of social science research is that religion is embedded in a social environment and is thus influenced by this environment [so that] broad social trends do define how people think about themselves (p. 21).

 

This is something that Charles Taylor and, more recently, Jamie Smith have proven over and over. Again, it’s not whether our beliefs and desires are shaped by culture, but how much.

 

The “desire” component is important. Sure, many Christians say they believe this and that about sex and relationships, but our behavior proves otherwise. It’s one thing to believe the truth; it’s another to desire it. Grant points out that even though most young evangelicals believe sex outside of marriage is wrong, “fully 69% of unmarried evangelicals…said they have had sex with at least one partner during the previous 12 months” (p. 22). Grant concludes:

 

The common approach of teaching people to live according to Scripture, without giving due attention to the formative influence of our cultural context, unwittingly and ironically succumbs to the modern illusion that we can choose our own reality, largely free from external influences (p. 23).

 

Any Christian formation that draws on Scripture without the corollary counterformation of the culture is doomed to failure. Even though the church has largely been silent in cultivating a sexual ethic, the world hasn’t.

 

So what is this cultural boogey man saying about sex? And do we really need to be that resistant to it? After all, not everything in cultural is intrinsically opposed to Christian values. For instance, the people who constitute “secular” culture often care more for the poor and oppose racism with more vigor than Christians do. The doctrine of general revelation allows us to see sparks of the divine will embedded in every person and throughout every culture. That’s why each cultural value should be weighed against the Christian narrative to see if there’s correlation or opposition. While there may be some aspects of a secular sexual ethic that resonates with some aspects of the Christian story (e.g. consensuality), there is much more divergence than agreement.

 

Over the next couple blogs, I’ll discuss some of the cultural sexual values that Grant examines. The first one is: expressive individualism. We’ll tease this out in the next post. 

 * The following is a rough draft of a paper I'm giving at the Evangelical Theological Society's annual meeting in San Antonio, TX, on Tuesday Nov 15th. Some of the notes in this paper (at the beginning and the end, especially) are "notes to self" that I will summarize in the session. The paper as a whole is a rough draft; please excuse its incompleteness. 

 

“A Biblical and Compassionate Response to Transgender People”

ETS 2016

Preston M. Sprinkle (Ph.D.)

 

 

Introduction

 

-       Lesli’s story

 

-       “My pastor began a sermon series that included the evils of homosexuality. He condemned all homosexuals to hell. God had no forgiveness for such deviants. Even worse was the mentally ill trans community…We must protect our children from their evil ploys. My friends shouted “Amen” and showed appropriate levels of disgust…I was ashamed that I was such an abomination to the God that I adored.”

 

I do not personally experience any level of gender dysphoria. But since I have good friends like Lesli who do, this topic is much more than an issue to debate. It’s about dear people in my life and therefore it is deeply personal.

 

So it with friends like Lesli in mind that I reflect on a “Biblical and Compassionate Response to Transgender People.” In my reflection I want to make 5 observations about what the Bible says about gender, the transgender experience, and a gospel-centered pastoral response to transgender people.

 

 

1.    The Bible affirms a gender binary[1]

 

While I cannot give an exhaustive treatment, I will make 3 brief observations that support my first point.

 

First, Genesis 1-2 presents humanity as a male/female binary (Gen 1:26-27; 2:18-25). There’s no evidence in the creation account itself, or in any other passage that alludes to it, that a person’s gender identity should be separated from their biological sex. We will explore questions related to transgender persons below. But for now, a plain reading of Scripture reveals that one’s biological sex is inextricably bound to one’s gender identity.

 

Second, Jesus highlights and affirm the male/female binary when he reflects on marriage.[2] For instance, in Mathew 19 Jesus argues against the Pharisees about divorce by citing Genesis 1:27 and 2:24 to say that divorce is wrong.

 

Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning “made them male and female” (Gen 1:27) and said “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh” (Gen 2:24)? (Matt 19:4-5).

 

Jesus only needs to cite Gen 2:24 (“the two shall become one flesh”) to support his claim that marriage is permanent. But he goes out of his way to affirm the duality of sex difference for marriage by citing Gen 1:27: “He who created them in the beginning made them ‘male and female’.” The logic of Jesus’s dialogue about divorce rests on the assumption of the duality of sexes. That is, the “two” that “will become one flesh” (19:5) are the “male and female” of God’s created order (19:4). Jesus’s vision for monogamy is inextricably bound to the duality of a gender binary.[3]

 

Third, whenever Scripture mentions crossing gender boundaries, it speaks negatively. For instance, Scripture prohibits cross-dressing (Deut 22:5), condemns the malakoi (1 Cor 6:9)—“men who fundamentally confused gender distinctions”[4]—upholds culturally appropriate expressions of gender difference (1 Cor 11:14), and critiques cultic practices which probably included blurring gender distinctions (Deut 23:17-18). Paul’s entire discussion about the order of public worship in 1 Corinthians 11:2-26 is predicated on the assumption that the male/female binary is part of God’s created order.[5] And the biblical prohibitions against same-sex sexual relations, most notably in Romans 1:26-27, are rooted in God’s creational design for humanity as sexually different persons (cf. Lev 18:22).

 

In short, a basic reading of Scripture suggests that it assumes and affirms a sex and gender binary. Some pushbacks to this conclusion will be addressed under points 3 and 4.

 

 

2.    Arguments from Scripture that challenge this binary are not convincing  

Everything I said about the sex and gender binary under point 1 has been disputed. Some of these challenges aren’t even worth the time it would take to address them. But there are two particular challenges that Christians should consider: First, that Genesis 1 presents creation in terms of minimalistic binaries that allow for hybrids and some sort of “in between-ness.”[6] (There is day, and night, but also dusk and dawn; there is male and female, but perhaps something in between… .) And Secondly, Jesus’s acceptance of the Eunuch.

 

 

Minimalistic binaries of creation

 

While it is true that statements like “heaven and earth,” or “land and sea,” and “alpha and omega” include the sense of “and everything in between,” assuming an in between-ness, each statement needs to be weighed on its own and cross-checked with other uses of the same phrase. That is, we cannot just assume that every such statement includes hybrids and in-betweens.

 

As far as the phrase “male and female,” it’s only used a few times in the Bible: Genesis 1:27 (cf. Matt 19:4) and 5:2, in reference to the creation of human as male and female, and in Genesis 6:19; 7:3, 9, 16, referring to animals going into the ark “two by two.” In every case, the duality of the sexes is explicit. It wouldn’t make sense for the animals to go into the ark “two by two” and have some sense of 1.2 or 1.46 to be included. The author is not including everything in-between 1 and 2. The male and female duality is just that: a duality. Two. Male and female. A sex/gender binary.

 

Eunuch

Eunuchs were a diverse group of people. The term eunochos is used in Jewish and Greco-Roman literature to cover broad range of individuals.[7] Some were considered asexual,[8] and therefore served as reliable guardians of the king’s harem (or daughters),[9] or as focused military leaders unhindered by sexual distractions.[10] Others were viewed as feminized men, who often lacked secondary male sex characteristics (facial hair, deep voice, etc.). It wasn’t uncommon for such persons to play the passive role in same-sex sexual intercourse. Still others were viewed as sexually charged men, who were infertile but not impotent, capable of sexually servicing wealthy women (or in some cases, their husbands as well) as the active partner, though without the risk of pregnancy.[11] In some cases, Eunuchs were considered neither masculine enough to be male, nor feminine enough to be female.[12] Such blurring of gender distinctions was perceived (and pursued) among Eunuchs who served as cultic priests or functionaries to gods and goddesses of the ancient world (e.g. Ishtar, Cybele, Atargatis).[13]

 

Eunuchs were a diverse group of people in ancient history. But the most basic meaning of the term eunouchos is a male who is infertile.[14] Some were born this way, others were made this way.[15] Some were impotent (e.g. they couldn’t achieve an erection),[16] while others were very potent though infertile. Some received sex from men, while others gave sex to women. Most eunuchs were considered biologically male, even though they fell short of cultural standards for masculinity.

 

Now, some interpreters of Matthew 19:12 want to read the passage through the narrow lens of a particular type of eunuch. For instance, some say that Jesus’s eunuch refers not to the sexually pure, but the sexually promiscuous—since some eunuchs were sexually promiscuous. Others argue that the eunuch refers to those who had an ambiguous biological sex (intersex), or those who blurred gender boundaries. But given the diversity of eunuchs in the ancient world, and given Jesus’s lack of specific details about which kind of eunuch he has in mind, we are left to the context of Matthew 19 to figure out what type of eunuch—if any—Jesus has in mind.

 

The eunuch statement of Matthew 19:12 comes on the heels of the discussion about marriage and divorce (19:1-9). In particular, it’s the disciples statement, “it is better not to marry!” (19:10), which triggers Jesus’s eunuch logion in 19:12. As most commentators recognize, the naturally born eunuch is a male who was incapable of having children.[17] And in a Jewish culture, this would be synonymous with a male who was incapable of getting married, since procreation was believed to be the purpose of marriage. Was he infertile? Or impotent? Or both? Or intersex? Or born with some malfunction in his equipment? Jesus doesn’t say. The point is: The naturally born eunuch was an outcast due to his inability to produce offspring—the raison d’etre of Jewish manhood.

 

An infertile male would be the object of scorn/shame among Jewish men, and in some cases, he’d be considered less masculine than other fertile males. But, except in cases where the eunuch was intersex, he’d still be considered a biological male. There’s no evidence that Jesus intends to open up and expand the sex/gender creational binary when he holds out the eunuch as a model of faithfulness.

 

Jesus accepts “the other,” but doesn’t redefine the ethics of marriage and gender based on “the other.”

 

 

3.    Trajectory arguments are weak in light of the background of the Bible 

Some argue that while the Bible condemns crossing gender boundaries, it isn’t prepared to speak to modern questions related to a transgender experience. Therefore, we must identify the trajectory where the sex/gender binary is beginning to crumble, where gender expression is becoming more open and inclusive of others who do not identify with the binary.

 

I disagree, however, with the claim that the Bible is not able to speak to modern questions related to gender dysphoria. While it is true that we know much more about gender dsyphoria today than the leading voices of the ancient world, it’s also true that we know much, much less than we will in 20 or 30 or 50 years. Mark Yarhouse, one of the leading psychologists researching the fields of gender identity and gender dysphoria, says we have such little research to go on to make definitive claims about causes and cures, nature and nurture, psychological and pastoral responses to those who experience gender dysphoria. It would be scientifically and historically naïve for anyone to begin with definitive and universal truth claims about gender from modern science—for there are none—and then use these claims to evaluate the legitimacy or relevancy of Scripture’s perspective on the topic. Even if I were an atheist and hated the Bible and Christians and church and ETS, I would still advocate for much more caution and humility in relying on modern gender-studies to become the authoritative voice on the complex topic of gender dysphoria.[18]

 

But that’s not even my main point. My main point of disagreement with the trajectory argument is that the biblical writers were living in a world not too different from our own. The ancient world was filled with well-known and very public figures who were biologically male yet expressed their gender as females (or vice versa).

 

For instance, we know that in ancient Mesopotamia there were cult functionaries known as the assinnu, kurgarrû, and kulu’u, who blurred gender distinctions. They were “men…by birth as regards their physiology, but their appearance either was feminine or had both male and female characteristics,” which corresponded to the god(des) of their worship, Ishtar, who was known for “transgressing conventional gender boundaries.”[19] Fast-forward two millennia, and we see similar cult functionaries known as galli, who served the goddesses Atargatis and Cybele. Galli were typically castrated men who dressed up as women and were known as a virtual “third gender” among the populace.[20]

 

But crossing gender boundaries was not limited to cultic practices. We see evidence in popular literature of stories that resemble to some extent modern transgender experiences. Writing just prior to the birth of Christ, Ovid tells a tale about a biological girl, Iphis, who was raised as a boy by his mother (Metamorphoses 9.669-797).[21] (Somehow, the mother kept the secret from her husband, who desperately wanted a boy.) As she grew older, Iphis found herself sexually attracted to Ianthe, a female, and her future bride to be. Iphis finds her same-sex attraction to be unnatural (757-758) and therefore prays that the gods would transform her into a boy—a wish that is granted just prior to her wedding: “until this very moment, you were a female, and now you’re a boy” (791-792).

 

Ovid’s tale is not just about same-sex sexuality, but about a girl who wanted to become a boy and got her wish.

 

Other examples could be explored,[22] but suffice it to say, it is likely that the biblical authors were well aware of biological males identifying as, expressing themselves as, or longing to be, females (or vice versa). While our modern knowledge of gender dysphoria (which is still in its infancy stage) is discovering the psychological complexities with much more depth, it would be wrong to say that the biblical authors were completely unaware of anything like what some people experience today.

 

 

 

4.    The Fall allows us to affirm the real experience of Gender Dysphoria  

While Scripture presents humanity as embodied sexual beings, it also maintains that sin has disrupted all facets of humanity’s life on earth. When we consider our bodies, minds, wills, emotions, desires, behaviors, identities, social structures, and every other aspect of our creational existence, it’s empirically and biblically clear that things are “not the way it’s supposed to be.”[23]

 

For instance, the fact that some people are born intersex—that is, with some sort of ambiguity with regard to their biological sex—shows that sin has disrupted and blurred the sexual binary in some people.[24] While some have argued that this opens up the possibility of a third or other sex,[25] I would maintain that intersex persons are experiencing an aspect of what it means to be born into a world tainted by sin.

 

Likewise, some people may experience gender dysphoria, which is also “not the way it’s supposed to be.” And theologically—because of the Fall—we cannot minimize the real, complex, isolating experiences of people who experience such dysphoria.

 

Pastorally, we face many challenges when it comes to understanding and ministering to the transgender experience with the fall. I will briefly explore two.

 

First, if we believe that the mere experience of gender dysphoria is a result of the fall and not the result of a willful act—like my friend Lesli and many others—then we should consider this experience similar to other disabilities that are part of living in a fallen world yet not in themselves morally culpable sins (e.g. blindness, deafness, or experience a serious physical disability).[26]

 

But any pastor worth his salt is going to go beyond simply acknowledging that disabilities are products of the fall; rather, he will instill in the sufferer a sense of vocation, a calling, a means by which they can use their disability as a platform for the gospel. Nick Vuvijec, for instance, was born with no arms and no legs—a disability that’s a result of the Fall. And yet Nick views his disability as part of his vocation. Joni Erickson Tada is a quadriplegic and she stewards her disability with profound faithfulness as well. Unless we’re going to label gender dysphoria itself as a morally culpable sin (I know few Christians who would say this), we also need to see people who experience gender dysphoria as unique players in the expansion of God’s kingdom—a kingdom filled with and fueled by unlikely heroes of the faith.

 

The power of the gospel enables us to stare the Fall in its face, to hijack its attempt to destroy God’s creation, to spin it around, redeem it, and use it—in this case, gender dyshporia—as a conduit to instill hope in the broken and glory for the redeemed.  

 

Pastorally, people who experience gender dysphoria need something more than a vocation of “no.” They need to be shown how God’s unexpected grace works in and through the suffering of the marginalized.

 

The second pastoral (and ethical) challenge comes with the fact that gender expression and expectation is intrinsically related to culture, and since culture itself is tainted by sin, it would be expected—indeed, it is true—that cultural expectations of gender expression are also damaged by the Fall.

 

For instance, the Bugis people (an ethnic group in Indonesia) recognize 5 different genders including the bissu, a highly respected group of androgynous shamans. I would argue that this cultural view of gender has been tainted by the Fall. The cultural standards of gender expression do not reflect God’s design for gender expression, which, again, is confined to a male/female binary.

 

I would also argue, however, that Western culture has its own fallen expressions of gender. The rugged, individualistic, athletic, meat-eating, football-throwing, militaristic, “take no lip from no one” model of masculinity embedded in the American narrative has more in common with the Marlboro man (or perhaps our president elect) than with Jesus. If Jesus’s expression of masculinity means anything, then there is little in common between the self-made American man and our celibate masculine savior—who cried, showed compassion, loved his enemies, turned the other cheek, let women fund his ministry, and ultimately was beat up by people much weaker than him.

 

So it gets messy, and profoundly so, when we talk about legitimate ways in which men and women should faithfully express their gender identity. We need work extra hard, as pastors and leaders, to make sure we’re promoting counterculutrally Christian expectations of gender. 

 

 

5.    A Christian response must include the scandalous compassion of Christ 

A holistic Christian response to gender dysphoria must include a reflection on our posture toward transgender persons. Because how we believe might be just as important as what we believe.

 

I’ve argued that a male/female binary is rooted in Scripture and part of God’s design for humanity. I want to now argue that the posture in which we hold on to this truth has often fallen short of the scandalous compassion and stubborn love of Christ.

 

According to the largest scientific study done on the religious background of sexual minorities, 83% of LGBTQ people were raised in a Christian church. And more than half (51%) of them left the church by the time they were 18 years old. What’s most fascinating is that from their own words, only 15% of LGBTQ people left the church primarily for theological reasons (e.g. same-sex sexual behavior is sin).

 

The main reasons why they left are relational: they did not feel safe, or they experienced a relational disconnect with leaders, or they got tired of the hypocrisy (e.g. gay people were viewed as sinners, while greedy people got a free pass), they experienced an unwillingness to dialogue, or they were simply kicked out of church. This means that 85% of LGBTQ people who have left the Christian church did not leave primarily for theological reasons, but for relational reasons—lack of compassion and pastoral care as they were wrestling with their faith, sexuality, and gender identity.

 

Now, despite the dehumanization, isolation, and abuse that many LGBTQ people have experienced in the church, 73% who have left express a desire to return to church—if the church would make some changes. But according to their own words, only 8% of LGBTQ people said that the church would need to change their theology for them to return. That means that 92% of LGBTQ people who want the church to change, are simply wanting the church to change its posture.

 

It’s not our theology, but our posture that has driven many LGBTQ people from our churches. Because how you believe is just as pastorally important as what you believe.

 

Evangelical churches desperately need to cultivate safe and loving environments, where people who wrestle with their faith, sexuality, and gender can receive the relational and pastoral care they need.

 

Jesus was a demanding ethical teacher. The Sermon on the Mount is one of the most stringent ethical speeches in all religious history. Jesus sets the moral bar impossibly high—so high that he had to walk out of a grave for us to attain it. Jesus didn’t soften his ethical stance in order to reach people.

 

At the same time, when Jesus reached people who fell short of that ethical standard, he most often extended love, not law. In Jesus’s encounter with Zacchaeus, for instance, he never once gave his stance on tax-collector. He didn’t open up the relationship with sermon on the Roman agenda and the tax-collecting lifestyle. Jesus didn’t lead with the law. He led with love. The only thing Jesus said prior to Zaccaheus’s repentance was: “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down because today I must stay at your house” (Luke 19:5). To middle-eastern ears, staying at someone’s house was a sign of love, relationship, care, and acceptance. Jesus humanized Zacchaeus in front of a religious crowd that only dehumanized him. And it was this extension of grace that led to Zacchaeus’s repentance. 

 

As far as we can tell from Scripture, there is not a single tax-collector in heaven who’s there because Jesus gave his stance on tax-collecting. “It’s the kindness of God,” Paul says, “that leads to repentance” (Rom 2:4). Certainly Jesus had a stance. But it was his extension of love and relationship that set the repentant heart on fire for the gospel.

 

I agree that we are facing a transgender revolution. Our secular culture is seeking to destroy the biblical binary of male and female, and we must resist it. I would suggest, however, that tomorrow’s gender revolutionaries are today’s junior highers wrestling in private with their faith and gender, and they have no safe place in the church to struggle out loud and in community.

 

Some transgender revolutionaries are loud and proud; others are silent and scared. And tomorrow’s loud and proud revolutionaries are today’s silent and scared—crawling deeper and deeper into the pit of despair and confusion in the corner of youth groups across America.

 

The "loud and proud" may never return to our churches. But our heart's desire is that the "silent and scared" would never want to leave.

 

As we resist cultural pressures against a Christian view of gender—and resist, we must—let us remember that silent strugglers are listening on to the tone of our resistance.

 

Conclusion

 

·      Return to Lesli’s story.

 

It was the kindness of God embodied in the stubborn love of this pastor that lead to Lesli’s repentance and salvation.

 

 

[1] I’ll be assuming the following definitions given by Mark Yarhouse: sex refers to “the physical, biological and anatomic dimensions of being male or female;” gender “refers to the psychological, social and cultural aspects of being male or female;” gender dysphoria is “the experience of distress associated with the incongruence wherein one’s psychological and emotional gender identity does not match one’s biological sex;” transgender is “an umbrella term for the many ways in which people might experience and/or present and express (or live out) their gender identities differently from people whose sense of gender identity is congruent with their biological sex” (Understanding Gender Dysphoria, 16, 20).

[2] See my paper, “Jesus Was a Jew: Understanding Jesus and Same-Sex Marriages in His 1st Century Jewish (Not Our 21st Century Western) Context,” presented at ETS in November, 2015.

[3] See Robert Gagnon, “The Gospel of Jesus on Sexual Binaries,” First Things 4/4/16 https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2016/04/the-gospel-of-jesus-on-sexual-binaries

[4] Sprinkle, People to Be Loved, 106

[5] “[T]he references to hair and head coverings assume our creational responsibility to find cultural forms that signal our maleness and femaleness to one another and that honor relationships built on the distinction of maleness and femaleness (most notably, marriage)” (Stephen Froehlich, Gender Dysphoria: A Pastoral Letter,  23.

[6] The first time I considered this argument was in a conversation with Roy Ciampa. For brief discussion in the literature, see Lewis Reay, “Towards a Transgender Theology: Que(e)rying the Eunuchs,” in Althaus-Reid, Marcella and Lisa Isherwood (eds.), Trans/Formations (London: SCM Press, 2009), 148-67 (152-53); Megan DeFranza, Sex Difference in Christian Theology: Male, Female, and Intersex in the Image of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015), 177.

[7] The word is only used in two passages in the New Testament (Matt 19:12 and Acts 8:27ff). In the LXX, eunouchos translates the Hebrew term saris 31 times (see TDNT “eunouchos, eunouchizo”).

[8] Xenophon Cyropaedia  7.60-65; Cassius Dio, Roman History, 75.14.

[9] Esther 1:10, 12, 15; 2:3, 14, 21; 4:4-5; 6:14; 7:8; Cassius Dio, Roman History 76.14.4-5.

[10] 2 Kings 25:19; Jer 39:3, 13

[11] Juvenal Satire, 6.366-378; Martial, Epigram 3.81; 4.67; 6.2, 21, 39, 67; 10.91; 11.81; Hieronymus, Adversus Iovinianum 1.47; Tertullian, Ad Uxorem 2.8.4; Claudian, In Eutropium 1.105-109.

[12] Lusian of Samosata, The Eunuch, “a eunuch was neither man nor woman but something composite, a hybrid, and monstrous, alien to human nature” (cf. Claudian, In Eutropium 1.468; see Hester, “Postgender Jesus,” 20). Augustine said that castrated Eunuchs were “neither changed into a woman nor allowed to remain a man” (City of God, 7.24; cited in DeFranza, Sex Difference, 69).

[13] See Nissinen, Homoeroticism, 31-32.

[14] Is 56:3-5; Wis 3:13-14; implied in Philo, Jos 153.

[15] The rabbis distinguished between srys ḥmh, “a eunuch of the sun” (a eunuch from birth), and a syrs ʾdm, “a eunuch of man” (one made a eunuch by others).

[16] Sirach 20:4; 30:19-20

[17] This is especially true if Matt 19:12 alludes to the Eunuch prophecy in Isa 56, which clearly highlights infertility: “let not the eunuch say, ‘Behold, I am a dry tree'…I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off” (56:4-5).

[18] For such caution from a secular perspective, see Cecilia Dhejne, Paul Lichtenstein, et al., “Long-Term Follow-Up of Transsexual Persons Undergoing Sex Reassignment Surgery: Cohort Study in Sweden,” PLoS ONE 6.1 (Feb 2011); Lawrence S. Mayer and Paul R. McHugh, “Sexuality and Gender: Findings from the Biological, Psychological, and Social Sciences,” The New Atlantis 50 (2016). Both studies warn against encouraging transgender people to seek sex reassignment surgery in light of the fluidity of gender identity (i.e. how you feel and identify today may not be the same in years to come).

[19] Nissinen, Homoeroticism, 30.

[20] Nissinen, 31-32.

[21] Ovid’s story, of course, is a mythological tale. But ancient myths often mirrored and made sense of real life experiences.

[22] As far as we can tell, the emperor Elagabalus (reign: A.D. 218-222) was transgender. Dio Cassius tells us that he had sex with women so that he could learn how to act like a woman in bed. He would go to the taverns and dress up as a barmaid and pick up men. He would also work the brothels and service men as a woman. When he got married to Hierocles, a Carian slave, Elagabalus dressed up as a bride as gave himself away as a “wife” and continued to live out his identity as a woman (Dio Cassius 80.13.1-17.1; cf. Aelius Lampridius, SHA Elagabalus 8.6-7, 10.5-7, 11.7-12.2). For other comments about transgender women, see e.g. Martial, 7.67, though it’s difficult to know whether writers and poets like Martial thought that all lesbians were simply wanting to be men.

[23] The phrase is from the title of Neal Plantiga’s well known book on sin.

[24] At least 1 out of every 2,500 people are born with some level of sexual ambiguity (see Susannah Cornwall, ed., Intersex, Theology, and the Bible [New York: Palgrave, 2015], 1; cf. Megan DeFranza, Sex Difference in Christian Theology: Male, Female, and Intersex in the Image of God [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015], ch. 1; see also the detailed breakdown of different intersex conditions from the Intersex Soceity of North America [http://www.isna.org/faq/frequency]). The commonality of an intersex condition is widely disputed, since there are various degrees in which one’s sex may be ambiguous—not all of which make it impossible to identify whether the person is male or female.

[25] E.g. DeFranza, Sex Difference, et al.

[26] I’m indebted to my friend Nate Collins for this first point. 

The Prince of Peace was born into a world drowning in violence. The years between the Old and New Testaments were anything but silent, as kingdom rose up against kingdom, nation warred against nation, and the Jewish people hacked their way to freedom with swords baptized in blood.

About two hundred years before Christ, the Greeks who ruled over Israel banned the practice of Judaism and slaughtered those who resisted. But the Jews wouldn’t give in so easily. Led by Judas “the Maccabee” (literally, “the hammer”), zealous Jews donned the sword and threw off the yoke of their Gentile overlords, massacring thousands in their wake. A few decades later, the Maccabees reclaimed their religious and political freedom and set up a quasi-messianic kingdom through violent force. The success of Maccabean swords would shape the way Jewish people in Jesus’s day would understand—and inaugurate—the kingdom of God.

Enter Jesus. The Prince of Peace talked often about establishing God’s kingdom. He also talked about loving your enemies, doing good to those who hate you, and giving your left cheek to the one who hits you on the right. Even Pilate was confused when the Jews accused Jesus of being a nuisance to Rome. The Roman governor must have laughed to himself when Jesus talked about setting up a kingdom without fighting. Every kingdom ever established has always been set up byfighting—and, of course, winning the fight. This foolish Jew is out of his mind, Pilate must have thought. “I find no guilt in him,” he declared (John 18:38). But as it turns out, the Jews turned his hand and got their wish. Jesus received the death penalty for treason.

It is through being defeated by earthly powers that Jesus conquered the spiritual forces of evil and set up his kingdom. It’s an upside-down kingdom where leaders are servants, neighbors and enemies are loved, and poor widows give away half their money. Under the Lordship of King Jesus, humility is exalted, the first shall be last, offenders are forgiven 70 times 7, and ethnic outsiders kneel down to help ½ dead strangers lying in a ditch.

The way of Jesus is countercultural. It is upside-down and inside-out—a kingdom, where weakness is power, power is weakness, and suffering leads to glory.

 

My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world (John 18:36)

 

I originally wrote this blog for Sword of the Spirit ministries. Check out their website for some awesome recourses! 

For most of my Christian life, I never questioned it. Even in the last 5 years, I did it without reservation. As I reflect on why I used to do it, my reasons were always social, political, and cultural. They were never theological or ethical.

So as of a year ago, I stopped doing it. I no longer pledge my allegiance to the nation that I’m living it. And, to be consistent, I no longer look down upon my African, Asian, European, and Middle Eastern brothers and sisters in Christ who also find it hard to pledge their allegiance to the nation they are living in.

We're all citizens of another kingdom which is fundamentally at odds with other kingdoms seeking to rule the world, or part of it. We are outposts of heaven living as strangers and foreigners among the nations. And we need to be reminded of that identity every single day.

Christians too often ignore questions related to national allegiance, or they get mad when people raise them. Try blowing up your next Bible study by asking the question: Should Christians stand for the national anthem or recite the Pledge of Allegiance? You might just start a brawl.

The first Christians, however, would have gladly wrestled with these questions—and they did. The early church’s relationship to Rome was a pressing issue, and Scripture speaks to it with profound clarity. Paul says that Christians should submit to the State (Rom 13:1-4), obey its laws (Titus 3:1), and pray for its leaders (1 Tim 2:1-2). Peter says the same thing (1 Pet 2:13-14), and Jeremiah encouraged Jewish exiles to “seek the welfare of Babylon” where they were living in exile (Jer 29:7). Christians are to be good citizens.

Christians are also to be subversive citizens, political prophets who boldly live out a narrative of weakness, suffering, sacrifice, and death. And this narrative subtlety dismantles all other narratives of citizenship and allegiance.

The apostles publicly refused to submit to all other laws when they conflicted with the way of Christ (Acts 4:19; 5:29), and Israel’s wild-eyed prophets denounced the nations—including their own—for violence, oppression, and mistreating the marginalized (Amos 1-2). The fulcrum of the biblical story hinges on a revolutionary peasant-King who received the death penalty for treason.

It’s no wonder the Roman authorities felt threatened by the rise of the Christian movement, which “turned the world upside down” by “acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus” (Acts 17:6-7). The Christian proclamation that Jesus is King is an inherent political protest. It’s a declaration that all other rulers are unworthy of our allegiance.

There’s another king, a different ruler. And His name is Jesus.

No one said it as clearly as John in his political tract called “The Apocalypse of Christ,” otherwise known as the Book of Revelation. It’s unfortunate that this subversive piece of literature has been hijacked by contemporary newspaper theologians who use it to predict the end of the world in bewildering detail.

The book of Revelation is an aggressive critique of the government, written by a pastor imprisoned for his lack of patriotism. John boldly lambasts Rome for its immorality, greed, pride, excessive luxury, and an addiction to military might that stained the world with blood to secure its interests (Rev 17-18).

Rome believed it was the hope of the world, the founder of peace (the pax Romana), and the savior of those who pledge their allegiance. All of these, of course, are religious statements—an affront on God’s reign over the earth. “Come out of her, my people!” cries the angels of heaven, “lest you take part in her sins!” (Rev 18:4).

Even one of Rome’s own senators exposed their charade: “To plunder, butcher, steal, these things they misname empire: they make a desert and they call it peace” (Tacitus, AD 56 – ca. 117).

The Christian identity has always been a quiet threat to the way of Rome. Submit to the State? Yes. But submission must come with a confident grin that a better way, a superior narrative, a crucified empire is peacefully crashing in on the empires of the world.

When governments pitch themselves as the hope and savior of the world, Christians must expose the fraudulent claim, not celebrate it. Our hope is not in making America great again. It’s in making the name of Jesus great, regardless of whether we prosper or suffer, live or die.

No Christian in the first 300 years after Jesus would have pledged allegiance to Rome during a church gathering. Roman flags didn’t stand next to Christian flags in first-century house churches, and followers of Jesus viewed themselves as citizens of One: One Lord, One baptism, One kingdom of sojourners scattered across the earth as colonies of heaven. Christians in America are more like Israelite exiles living in Babylon than Jewish kings reigning in Israel.

While Christians should submit to the State, pray for its leaders, and render qualified obedience to its laws, to pledge allegiance is a profoundly religious act. No Christian should simply assume that pledging allegiance is a good Christian thing to do. Quite the opposite. Pledging allegiance to anything or one other than Jesus is a religious statement infused with divided loyalties and borders on syncretism.

I think the burden of proof rests on those followers of the crucified Lamb to show that citizens of heaven can truly pledge allegiance to anyone other than Christ.

When Jesus was born, Caesar Augustus had recently ushered in a time of unprecedented peace and prosperity that would make the Reagan years look like the Great Depression. Roads were built, robbers were kept at bay, the military was invincible, luxury was all around, and distant nations that would otherwise pose a threat kept to themselves. This was the Pax Romana—the “peace of Rome”—and Jesus was born smack dab in the middle of it. 

When Jesus was around five, Augustus celebrated his twenty-fifth year as emperor, which happened to be the 750th anniversary of Rome’s foundation. Augustus had risen to godlike status, and the people eagerly hailed him as “Savior,” “Lord,” “King of Kings,” “Prince of Peace,” and “Son of God.”

Meanwhile, back at the farm wailed a baby born out of wedlock to a teenage girl in a small village in Judea—a backwater province nestled between the Mediterranean Sea and the desert sands. No pomp or prestige, parades or accolades. The Son of God entered human history in a whisper—through the virgin womb of a young Jewish girl. Shame, scandal, and humility clothed the birth of Christ. In the flurry of power and violence, religious pride and unprecedented economic success, the Creator of the universe descended from His glorious throne and thrust Himself into a feeding trough.

“And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross (Phil 2:8).”

Augustus was a tough act to follow. So when Jesus’s followers hailed Him as “Savior,” “Lord,” “King of Kings,” “Prince of Peace,” “Son of God,” Roman citizens certainly raised an eyebrow and, if need be, a sword. It made no sense to the Roman worldview that a suffering, humiliated, crucified Jew would rule the world. 

But He did, and He does, and He always will. Our cruciform Creator-King attained unprecedented glory because He first served and suffered. He was exalted because he first descended. And this suffering King invites us to journey with him—all the way to Calvary. 

Christians who wish to imitate their Lord and Savior must follow the downward trajectory of humility. Our glory begins in a feeding trough. It is energized and validated by the crucified power of servitude and suffering.

"You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had. Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to." (Phil 2:5-6 NLT)