Chasing Rainbows 1: The local church and the LGBTQI+ Community

 Under Pressure - LGBT and the Local Church

I acknowledge much of my sourse material is from these two books: Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say; Preston M. Sprinkle, Kindle Edition; JK Balswick and JO Balswick, Authentic Human Sexuality, (IVP, Downers Grove, 3rd ed.,) 2019.

Billy has spoken about sexuality in the traditional, Christian context. Next week we will share the platform to continue this subject. At the end of the month we will have a Q&A session via technology, but that Sunday will not be livestreamed. We will provide details then. Today we are going to consider a minefield of a subject: LGBTQII++ and the Local Church.

We will address the following:

• What Does it Mean to Be Trans?
• What the Bible says about this.
• What Our response should be towards the LGBT Community?

Before we go there, let’s say a few things by way of introduction:

I’m not going for cheap amens! 

My concern in sharing these thoughts today is not to demonise or dehumanise anyone. Above all, we must remember we are talking about people, fallen people just like you and me, and whilst some of what I say will be fairly forensic in nature, let us remember that all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23)

Also, there are two extremes in churches when it comes to talking about trans people:

• The first trend is to become a culture warrior in all things trans*. These soldiers couldn’t care less about actual trans* people.
• A second trend is to react against the first trend and become a lover instead of a thinker.

In other words we come across as haters who judge or lovers who ignore the need for a sinner to change.

Sometimes compassion without critical thinking can move you to do things that make a person feel good in the short run but cause harm in the long run.

And one more thing to say before we delve into the meat of the subject. It is my hunch that most of our response as Christians has been defined for us by our workplace and the media, rather than what the Bible actually says.

I hope by the end of this morning we will have a better idea of what the Bible, the source of our authority and ethics, has to say on the matter and that we will be better equipped - not just to speak but to listen:

“Even while acknowledging differences of opinion in our community, we listen with open minds and open hearts to all who enter our doors as a testimony of Christ’s love and grace. The moral mandate of Matthew 22:34-40 is to be Christlike in loving practice toward our neighbours”.

What does is mean to be trans?

Language is essential to the transgender conversation. But trying to understand the growing number of terms in this conversation can feel like fixing a flat tyre on a rolling car. 

The terminology shifts almost daily. Once we think we have a grasp of what is being said, then things change. Its shifting sands as people try an define and accommodate everyone’s individual feelings into the narrative.

How many gender identities are there? Given the definition of gender identity, this is like asking, “How many internal senses of selves exist?” Two? Ten? Fifty? At one point, Facebook allowed for seventy-one gender identities and now has the option of a “custom” gender. Perhaps there are ten thousand gender identities—or more.

If you have met one trans person, you have met one trans person (Sprinkle).

Christian psychologist Mark Yarhouse, 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. The “umbrella” nature of this term; that is, it covers many different kinds of experiences.).

To be clear, all non-intersex persons (and most intersex persons) are biologically male or female, regardless of how they identify (Sprinkle).

Transgender typically refers to a biological female who identifies as a male (or vice versa), while non-binary refers to a person who identifies as neither male nor female (Sprinkle).

• Trans and Mental Health

Gender dysphoria is a psychological term for the distress some people feel when their internal sense of self doesn’t match their biological sex.

Not everyone who identifies as transgender experiences gender dysphoria. And not everyone who experiences gender dysphoria identifies as transgender. Gender dysphoria and transgender aren’t synonyms.

It’s really important to understand that Gender Dysphoria is a recognised psychological condition, which is debilitating and has many physical as well as mental symptoms. It is also vital to realise the most people presenting as a different gender have not been diagnosed as suffering from Gender Dysphoria, and wish to self-identify. 

Some say you don’t need to have Gender Dysphoria to be trans*. “[M]ore and more people who identify with the label of transgender have also found they haven’t ever felt any dysphoria at all,” says trans* writer Jessie Earl. “[W]e cannot let dysphoria be the only path, the price of entry, into our community."

This “self-ID” perspective—if you say you’re trans*, then you’re trans*—has sparked a growing feud within the trans* community. There are those who believe a medical diagnosis of Gender Dysphoria is necessary to truly be trans*, while others think a self-declaration is all you need.  Still others argue that acting as a woman (or a man) is enough to be trans*.

In other words, self-identification has won the public debate

Transition can include three different levels: 

• social, 
• hormonal, 
• and surgical. 

It’s worth keeping in mind, though, that most trans*-identified people have not transitioned surgically and never will.

What Does the Bible Say?

We need to first understand who we are (ontology) before we know what it means to become who God wants us to be (discipleship). Ontology is integral to discipleship, because discipleship means living as we were designed to live—living as divine images.

Jesus is building an upside-down kingdom where outcasts have their feet washed, the marginalised are welcomed, and dehumanised people feel humanised once again. Where truth is upheld, celebrated, and proclaimed. Where those who fall short of that truth are loved. (Sprinkle)

1. Image Bearers

The Human Body is Essential to our Image Bearing Status. In the Bible’s opening moments, Genesis 1 declares the most fundamental truth about human identity: we are created in God’s image. 

Genesis 1:27: So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

Old Testament scholars Karl Löning and Erich Zenger write, “According to the meaning of the Hebrew word tselem, which stands for ‘image,’ humans are to be in the world as a kind of living image or statue of God.”

Now, I just want to say as an aside here, we value everyone we meet as image bearers of God, every human being has an intrinsic value. But not everyone is a child of God, for that a person must be born-again (1 John 3:1; Romans 8:14-19).

2. Boy Meets Girl

Sexual identity is clearly depicted in the Bible, although not gender per se

The categories of male and female in Genesis 1 describe biological sex, not gender identity or gender role. The biological nature of “male and female” appears clearly in the very next verse, where God commands the male and female to reproduce: 

Genesis 1:28: Be fruitful and increase in number…

Biological sex is “an essential datum in any attempt to define the human being.”

Genesis 1:27 is one of the most powerful, provocative, and even progressive statements in all of Scripture. To a world where women are often viewed as lesser beings, God declares that his image is borne not only by males but also by females. The claim is radical precisely because it is a claim about the nature of our (sexed) embodiment.

3. Sacred Bodies

Adam and Eve’s bodies are viewed as sacred.

The word “rib” translates the Hebrew word tsela. Despite the familiarity of this translation, tsela probably doesn’t actually mean “rib” here, since tsela occurs more than forty other times in the Old Testament and it never means “rib.”

In almost every other usage, tsela refers to the whole side of a sacred piece of architecture like the tabernacle or the temple.

In other words, the bodies were sacred elements of the creation architecture that God had designed.

4. Jesus is Silent on it, Right?

Jesus Did not Overturn Genesis.

Matthew 19: 4-5  “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

Jesus views Genesis 1–2 as the way things should be.

What can we draw from Jesus’ words as they pertain to the trans* conversation? 

At the very least, it appears that Jesus considers God’s original creation of humans as male and female to still be normative thousands of years later. 

The idea of “male and female” is not just relevant for the beginning of creation. Jesus operates with the conviction that “the created order” as expressed in Genesis 1–2 “is a guide for the moral order.”

We need to be careful, however, not to read into Jesus’ statement more than he intended to say. He’s assuming a rather simple point—taken for granted in Judaism at his time—that marriage is a union between two people of different biological sexes, male and female.

5. Paul Agrees with Jesus

Paul sees the body as significant for moral behaviour and correlates the body with personhood.

Paul seems to agree with Genesis that our bodies are “very good” (Gen. 1:31) and sacred (Gen. 2:21–23). 

He demonstrates his agreement particularly clearly in 1 Corinthians 6:12–20, referring to the body (soma in Greek) eight times and viewing it not only as good but as an essential part of personhood.

1 Corinthians 6:12–20: 12 “I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but I will not be mastered by anything. 13 You say, “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy them both.” The body, however, is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. 14 By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also. 15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! 16 Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.” 17 But whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit. 18 Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. 19 Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honour God with your bodies.

Paul urges his hearers to continue to flee from sexual immorality (1 Corinthians 6:18), and provides several reasons for sexual purity. Sexual sins are especially sinful because they are inherently self-destructive (Proverbs 6:23-35). 

Paul rejects the notion, held by sophisticated pagans in his day and ours, that what one does with one’s body is one’s own business. On the contrary, he reminds his readers that their bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. Unlike 1 Corinthians 3:16, here Paul refers to the individual bodies of his hearers as dwelling places of the Holy Spirit, whose holy presence demands individual lives of sexual purity (see also 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8)

Paul didn’t think that what we do with our bodies is morally neutral. Personhood is a body. We are not souls with bodies, but embodied souls.

Wrapping this up:

Next week we will pick this up again. You do not want to listen to this, or any of the messages, in isolation.