I watched some of the video clips of the parents on the news
in the UK. I was struck by their confusion and inability to articulate their
concerns. They appeared petty, arbitrary and unprincipled. Perhaps they're
timid? I don't know. Perhaps they fear the ferocious backlash were they to
speak out in a more direct fashion.
If they were trying to take an easy road, they have certainly
learned by now that it didn't work.
Welby was supposed to be a semi-conservative prelate. Many
were relieved when he was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury. I hope by now
they've realised how misguided those hopes were.
Christians need to quit dancing around this issue. Even many
Evangelical voices are not being as clear as they could when it comes to these
issues.
This behaviour is sin. Dancing around questions of
orientation, genetics and the like miss the point. The Scriptures are clear.
People once brought into Christ leave off both the behaviour and what today is
called the 'identity'.
It is not akin to race or skin colour. The equation of gender
identity and sexual orientation with intrinsic empirical markers is a fallacy.
Even the secular medical community is expressing doubts about
the nature of this great social experiment. These kids have been confused and
have been shaped by the culture to think in categories they would have never
even dreamed of unless someone told them.
As I think I have mentioned previously when watching some
documentaries that's one of the things that really struck me. Listening to 10
year old 'trans' kids articulate their feelings was surreal. They've been
taught to think about things that the ten-year-olds of previous generations
wouldn't have even entertained, considered or grasped.
One wonders if these kids today really grasp it or if they aren't victims of a great charade.
One thing I can say. The parents of these kids who believe
they are courageous and loving, standing with their children in the face of
social ostracisation and their hopes and expectations are not great or even
good parents. They have abdicated the basic role of a parent. They are not
shepherding and guiding their children. They are not protecting them and
keeping them from childish foolery. They are indulging them, pandering to them.
They negligence is criminal and of a hitherto unimagined magnitude. They are
literally destroying the lives of
their children.
The parents of so-called trans children are without a doubt
or qualification some of the worst
parents in the history of the world.
And society is going to reap the whirlwind.
The technology and cultural milieu has created a unique
opportunity in history. Never before have parents had the opportunity to be
this wicked, this negligent. They are monsters perhaps only superseded by the
Baal worshippers who overtly sacrificed their children. While murder is worse,
what this generation is doing... destroying their lives and identity is pure
torture. Their misguided sadism can be said in some ways to be worse than
merely killing them. I suppose one could argue that in being allowed to live
there's still hope for repentance. I'm not sure what can be done at that
point... how such shattered lives can be remedied.
While the United States is not quite where Britain is at on
this issue, if the past is precedent the British are but twenty years, a
generation ahead. And I'm not sure if that twenty-year marker is accurate
anymore. American society is rapidly catching up to Britain. It's going to take
a different form here but the morality, given the American tendency toward
extremes will likely take this society in a direction unprecedented and at this
point beyond what we are even able to imagine.
Some will find it ironic that Christian America will become
Fortress Satan. It already is in my opinion and has been for a very long time
but one need only look to Puritan Massachusetts to begin to grasp this oft
repeated historical trend. There are some very pernicious forces at work and
while there's plenty of blame to go around there are some at fault (especially
within the Church) that will deny their role and contribution in this
degenerate catastrophe that is Western Culture.
Perhaps to put it in a greater perspective: if one of the castrati of Cybele in Africa became a Christian, how would he live? What kind of perverse family does one come from to promote joining the cultic festivities?
ReplyDeleteOutside of the ideology and charade of medical tech, transgenderism is a kind of neo-pagan sacral castration and/or mutilation. If a church is to be faithful, it ought to begin to consider Christ's words for those who were born eunuchs or were made eunuchs as citizens of the kingdom of God. The concept of eunuch has faded from use, but perhaps it ought to be brought back to make sense of the madness.
However, it's quite possible something as indefensible as the court eunuchs of Byzantium could return.
Great points.
ReplyDeleteHow would they live? Well, there's no reversing the tragedy but I think this modern notion of 'identifying' as a gender other than what one is born with is out-of-bounds. Don't you think?
I think at that point the ruined male needs to return to being male (as much as possible) and obviously will be celibate. With females who have been modified... I don't know. This sort of gets into crazy categories.
I realise there are also hermaphroditic people, truly born that way. While I don't mean to sound flippant with regard to their dilemma it would seem that in most cases (at least) there's a dominant anatomy.
The creation groans.
While it's not a conversation I relish, I'm open to suggestions on this one. It would seem some situations cannot be fixed.
That's why I think there's wisdom in refreshing the concept of eunuch. As you said, the damage varies. For those whose gender is hard to determine due to the ambiguity of sex, whether due to birth (hermaphrodites) or action, we should conceptualize what life for a eunuch should be. The scars, physically, psychologically, and spiritually, speak to the madness of the world as well as the hope for redemption.
DeleteOf course, denying yourself and living as a witness doesn't fit well with an "empire of desire", no?
Do you think a eunuch is genderless?
DeleteI'm trying to understand where you're going with this.
Not genderless, but gender ambiguous. Defining my terms, gender is to sex as dexterity and skillfulness is to a hand. There's a distinction, but it's one where the former is natural mastery, not arbitrary. Thus, one is born male, but must mature into a man. Almost all societies recognize this fact, and if they don't (like the modern West), it's in bad faith. Hence, these societies segregate space and labor for gender, to various degrees, and there are regulations to how one interacts with the other.
DeleteEunuchs typically defy these categorizations. A Eunuch is male, but he is only a quasi-man. Eunuchs have been barred from political office, warfare, and hunting, all of which are men's occupations. And sometimes eunuchs occupy gender ambiguous space (e.g. eunuch attendants to royal women). The eunuch is such because he lacks the means to engage in marriage, the primary gender distinction.
Ironically, as you've noted elsewhere, transgenderism hyper-intensifies gender distinctions, but ones that are mostly arbitrary. Mutilated men begin to act incredibly dainty and become a stereotype of the princess, while mutilated women begin to act with machismo and cartoonish gruffness. I think it's all overcompensation for some imaginary, gnostic, view of the Human body. They deny sex for a view of gender that functions like play-pretend, following an inner voice that is purported to be who they really "are".
The point is a category of eunuch rejects transgenderism's not only fluidity of gender, but also its commercialized, glamorized, and hyper-distinction. In the Christian church, Christ retools the concept of the eunuch, away from a traditional Jewish sense of monstrosity. The eunuch is not a freakish outcast condemned, but stands to hope in the Kingdom of God and the redemption of the body. Since the sex is at times confused or ambiguous, so too can the gender. It's not that the mutilated are not male or female, but weak/faint men or women. The degree may differ, dependent on the level of damage, whether from birth or from surgical knife.
The category of eunuch can be a conceptual place for such people. Physiologically, eunuchs may lack distinctive masculine or feminine features. I'm wary of merely trying to patch over this fact through cultural exaggeration. The concept can help recognize both the tragic differences honestly (i.e. "I'm not a man like all the other men"), and the hope for healing and restoration in Christ and through the church. There ought to be ways for eunuchs to pursue their upwards calling with support. It can be alienating to remain celibate and single for a lifetime, especially if churches don't provide the tools to think through how it's possible. Appeals to heroic, do it yourself, self-denial are insufficient. Reintroducing the concept may help to make sense of what has happened and maybe offer potential ways forward. Of course, admitting one is deformed or has been mutilated is a bitter truth, but one that churches ought to help work through with compassion patience, and most importantly perhaps, companionship.
Anyway, that's some elaboration and food for thought.
An interesting argument but I think you may be reading a little too much into Christ's words. I don't think he was endorsing Origen's choice or some variant of it. Nor is he trying to provide guidance to the question of the eunuch as such.
DeleteGiven the context I would be reticent to 'read in' Hellenistic norms or attach them to his statement.
Rather I would say that in v.12 when referencing the eunuchs made for the Kingdom's sake, he's speaking metaphorically regarding singlehood. For the Jews a non-married man was half or less than a whole person. Foregoing marriage (virtually unthinkable) was to embrace a life in which you were something less than a man... like a eunuch.
With regard to those made by men and those from the womb, I don't think he's really saying anything. He's making a point about living a celibate life... in light of divorce or choosing not to marry at all.
I'm not sure how you got that I was endorsing Origen's supposed self-castration. Yes, those who become eunuchs for the kingdom is a metaphorical interpretation of single celibacy, but his reference to the latter two were less metaphorical. All three categorizations have to do with forgoing marriage, which as you say, had to do with growing up into a full adult man.
DeleteThe category of eunuch refers to people who've, for whatever reason, been cut off from forging a family. In the Kingdom, such people also have a place at the table. The point is that recognizing someone as a eunuch is to not try and pretend nothing has happened, but to incorporate them into the church in a way to recognize an eschatological hope. A repentant transgender ought to walk in light of both the loss and the hope found in the resurrection of the body.
I presume the couple you mention in your first two paragraphs are the ones who pulled their child out? It's a real mess and a bad witness, what with their lawsuit against the school.
ReplyDeleteYou may well have read, but in an interview by Alastair Campbell, of all people, Welby was asked the British media inquisition's favourite new heresy-hunting question: 'Do you think gay sex is a sin?' He said he doesn't know. Hopefully the final nail in the coffin for the conservative Anglicans who haven't quite had the courage to leave yet.
I hate seeing Christians respond to troubles by filing lawsuits. When they do that... even if they win, they lose.
DeleteRomans 12 (for a start) is just not understood.
No I wasn't aware of Welby's very blatant capitulation. Well, that's sort of the heart of Establishmentarianism. You have to be able to represent the culture or be willing to crush it. That debate pretty much ended with World War II. Obviously it was social battle that had been taking place for several hundred years. If Canterbury can't beat them (literally) then it must join them or die.
I'm sure you've been following all the battles over women bishops. It's amazing how they keep trying to contort the system to accommodate the liberal and Evangelical wings. I think it has reached the breaking point. The liberals may allow it to survive a bit by simply insisting that all newly ordained clerics support women bishops. If they do that, the conservatives will be forced out in a generation. They won't be able to cobble together these (what we would gerrymandered) dioceses in order to accommodate the congregations that reject female authority.
Just give it up and move on. Why would they even want to provide financial support to this monstrosity. Are the buildings that important? Sometimes I wonder if that's what it's all about in the end. I understand, if I was CofE I would certainly want to the tactile experience of worshiping in a old historic structure. That's sort of at the heart of it all, but at some point you have to face reality, you know?
It's true... Perhaps also there's a sense that, by leaving the C of E, you're leaving the most prominent platform of influence... stepping out of the limelight and into the shadowy back alleys of non-conformism where the public won't pay as much attention to you.
DeleteMaybe also it's bound more into the 'Christian nation' ideal. One of the only signs of theonomic type thinking I've seen in modern UK evangelicalism is from Rev David Fields who teaches at Oak Hill, perhaps the last conservative Anglican seminary in the UK (although lots of non-conformists go there too). He's very keen on Rushdoony and Rutherford. That 'holy society' ideal was probably why I considered being a vicar once, madly enough...