Several years ago I recited a poem to Susan that I knew she would like. I knew why she would like it. The poem is by Yeats, The Lake Isle of Innisfree. I recited it again in my Eulogy at Susan’s funeral mass.
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, And live in the bee-loud glade.*
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
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Well it wasn’t the Lake Isle of Innisfree, but it was a small cabin. On the north shore of Lake Oneida in Central New York State. It was the family camp. Susan’s family would spend entire summers there. Card and board games. Tea kettles and cups. Sunbathing. Laughter. Fishing. Food. Family. I knew this poem would bring those memories flooding back. That’s why she would like it so much.
We visited the camp on every trip to see the family. Susan loved it there. I said to her once;
“You know why you love coming here so much, aside from the obvious reasons, why you long to see this place when you are away? There is a deep primal need in all of us to get back to the garden. To get back to a place of peace. A place of recreative silence. Joy. The unencumbered embrace of family. But most of all, so that we might, at the time of the evening breeze, in the cool of the day, walk with our God.1 Genesis 3:8 (NRSV): They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze.
“That’s what we want. That’s really what we want.
“You believe in that garden don’t you sweetheart?” “Yes,” she said, “I believe.”
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We thought and studied about other gardens too. Gardens of the past, present, and future, for all who believe.
One garden in particular, in the distant future, spoke to us like never before.
You can read about it in the last book of the book of books we call the Bible. John wrote it as an exiled prisoner of the Roman Empire on the Isle of Patmos (about 35 miles off the coast of south-western Turkey). We know it as the book of Revelation. Otherwise known as “The Apocalypse of John.” Apocalypse comes from a Greek word meaning to uncover, unveil, reveal. Thus “Revelation.” It’s a book about Last Things. And things in between too. Fittingly, the final two chapters reveal the destiny of the people of God. Two chapters that give meaning to all that has gone before. Both in the book of Revelation and all of Scripture.
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Although many naturalists yearn for it, there will not be a return to Eden. The human couple began in a garden paradise, but the final scene is that of an enfoliated, fruitful city, and the unencumbered embrace of a very large family, from every tribe and nation. 2 Rev. 21-22, but there should be plenty wide open spaces inside & outside of the city! . The Tree of Life will be there. The River of Life will be there. All suffering and evil banished forever. But the most important part of living in the Garden is seeing, walking, talking with our God. That’s the longed-for future. For all who believe.
Oh happy day.
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The first reading at Susan’s funeral mass was from another book. The book of Job. A book about great suffering but unlike Revelation, the problem of evil remained unresolved. And yet, yet, incomprehensibly3 If you know the story of Job you know what I mean., Job, a man who suffered much, could say:
“But as for me, I know that my Vindicator lives, and that he will at last stand forth upon the dust; Whom I myself shall see: my own eyes, not another’s, shall behold him; And from my flesh I shall see God; my inmost being is consumed with longing.”
At the end of her mass, I finished my Eulogy with…
“Sleep for a season sweetie. I can’t wait to walk hand in hand with you into the light and life giving presence of a loving God. My inmost being is consumed with longing.”
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“You believe in those gardens don’t you sweetie.” “Yes”, she said, “I believe.”
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This post is a shortened version of a longer post entitled “Two Gardens.”
As a Christian I outlined some basic theology in my “Big Picture” post. One very important creational concept may be summarized by the word ‘integration.’ God’s bi-natured world was originally designed to be an integrated whole with the Living God residing at the center point of that integration. God designed Heaven and Earth to interlock and overlap in the temple garden. Temple theology in both the Jewish and Christian sense teaches that the life giving God powerfully dwells at the place where Heaven and Earth meet. Analogous to this, God created “fruit-producing” Male and Female imagers as God’s creative representatives on Earth. But for this to work as designed, Female and Male must act as God’s imagers (representatives) and live according to God’s Triune likeness, which is to say, as a loving community of equal persons. (This is where Christian Theology branches off from Jewish Monotheism).
Integration of God’s bi-natured world is key. Marriage, in other words, is vital to God’s creational project. It is a creational necessity. But as we all know, the world is out of joint, broken. At the personal level, our minds and bodies are often disconnected in practice. Promise made is not promise kept. We may know the right thing, but not do the right thing. Intention and Action are often divorced. To be God’s Wholly People, mind and body must work harmoniously to extend God’s purposes. The good news is God’s eschatological1Eschatology is the study of God’s future for the Creation. goal through Christ is to put this fractured “world organism” back together again. The two halves of God’s created order will retain their difference and yet be united in the purposes of God. As originally intended. Unity with diversity. Spirit and Matter, Soul and Body will coexist in loving, fruitful harmony. Heaven and Earth with be joined. That’s Christian Creation Theology. What God has purposed to be joined, let no one seek to separate.
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Morning Sun, Blue Ridge Parkway blueridgemountain_man
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Now let’s discuss some science.
I’ll need to bring up something surprisingly controversial these days, the male – female binary. But first let’s briefly discuss organisms.
The most salient feature of an organism is its organization. The various parts must integrate for the good of the whole or the organism will have a very short life, if at all.
As a complex organism, humans have a variety of systems all designed for the purpose of promoting & sustaining life. For example, we have a cardio-vascular system, each part of which must work cooperatively to supply the rest of the body with a much needed resource, oxygenated blood. If one part of the system breaks down because of disease, we don’t call it a difference, we call it a problem. But when the system is working as designed the different parts interact for the welfare of the organism as a whole. The cardio-vascular system works in concert with the oxygen gathering respiratory system to bring about human well-being.
Like many of God’s creatures, humans are dimorphic, which means morphologically we exist in two distinct forms. We have little difficulty speaking about other dimorphic species. Farmers and breeders easily distinguish male and female bovines or canines. But recently some of us get tongue tied when it comes to human morphology rendering them incapable of stating the obvious; we were created male and female.
Why the different forms? In a word, reproduction.
Each half of the female-male binary makes up just one half of a total reproductive system. When the scripture writers say, the two become one flesh, that’s what they are referring to. The two halves of one reproductive whole come together sexually for the purpose of making more imagers of God. Not to be entered into lightly, this creative act is an awesome and noble responsibility! In the modern world, the casualness with which we regard this noble God-like creative responsibility is surely a symptom of a deeper malady.
You can’t explain maleness or femaleness without reference to the other. They are inter-defined. And you won’t have a species without reproduction. These integrated parts must operate for the sake of the whole or the reproductive system breaks down and the species doesn’t replicate.
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Ok. Let me bring in the experts here. Lawrence Mayer, scholar-in-residence in the Department of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University and Paul McHugh, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who was for 25 years the psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital and the man called by the editor of the New Atlantis, “the most important American psychiatrist of the last half-century” reviewed the scientific literature on sexuality and gender identity and wrote the following:
The underlying basis of maleness and femaleness is the distinction between the reproductive roles of the sexes; in mammals such as humans, the female gestates offspring and the male impregnates the female. More universally, the male of the species fertilizes the egg cells provided by the female of the species. This conceptual basis for sex roles is binary and stable, and allows us to distinguish males from females on the grounds of their reproductive systems, even when these individuals exhibit behaviors that are not typical of males or females.2“Lawrence S. Mayer, M.B., M.S., Ph.D., and Paul R. McHugh, M.D., “Sexuality and Gender Findings from the Biological, Psychological, and Social Sciences,” Special Report, New Atlantis 50 (Fall 2016): 89.”
There is no other rational, objective way of classifying the two sexes than this.
In biology, an organism is male or female if it is structured to perform one of the respective roles in reproduction. This definition does not require any arbitrary measurable or quantifiable physical characteristics or behaviors; it requires understanding the reproductive system and the reproductive process. Different animals have different reproductive systems, but sexual reproduction occurs when the sex cells from the male and female of the species come together to form newly fertilized embryos. It is these reproductive roles that provide the conceptual basis for the differentiation of animals into biological categories of male and female. There is no other widely accepted biological classification for the sexes.3“Lawrence S. Mayer, M.B., M.S., Ph.D., and Paul R. McHugh, M.D., “Sexuality and Gender Findings from the Biological, Psychological, and Social Sciences,” Special Report, New Atlantis 50 (Fall 2016): 90.”
Males donate genetic material. Females receive that material and gestate the resulting offspring. Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner could never produce an unfertilized egg or gestate offspring and so was never a female. Nor ever could be. Bodies organized to perform specific reproductive tasks reveal what sex you are. Not your mind. Or your deepest desires. Your sex is not assigned. With rare exceptions, every cell in your body is “sexed” with either an XX chromosomal structure or XY. Biological processes “sexed” you. And, as a Christian I would add, those processes were guided by God, mediated of course through your biological parents. For as I’ve said many times during weekly bible study at the church I attend, “God does not dance alone.” Humans participate in the unfolding purposes of God.
For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
Psalm 139:13 (NRSV)
The male gamete (sperm) is either a Y sperm or X sperm and at fertilization the female gamete (egg) receives an XX (female) chromosomal composition if it was fertilized by an X sperm or an XY (male) chromosomal composition if it was fertilized by a Y sperm. Only in rare cases, due to a chromosomal or hormonal defect, does this finely tuned system break down.
Assuming normal development about six weeks later the human embryo starts to develop gonads. If the embryo has an XX genetic structure, gonads called ovaries develop. If the embryo has an XY genetic structure, gonads called testes develop and begin the male/female differentiation process in earnest. There is no third gonad. Only two. One set takes the human down the female development path. The other set takes the human down the male development path. These are the only two biological “regulators” of sexual differentiation. Ovaries and Testes secrete sex-specific hormones that further differentiate female from male. The creation of sex-specific reproductive organs come next. Then what is known as “secondary sex differences” begin to develop through birth and on to puberty where differences of size, shape, bone length and density, fat distribution, musculature, etc., become pronounced. Men and women are different from the cellular and molecular level up to the most obvious physiological level.
And it’s a beautiful thing.
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Unfortunately some people are born with less than 10 fingers. Or with muscular dystrophy. Or any of a number of birth defects due to genetic mutations, or prenatal environment abnormalities. We don’t say these are merely differences, but we say these outcomes resulted from a breakdown in human development. We don’t have a problem saying so in these areas, but somehow today when it comes to sex or gender we have a huge problem stating the obvious.
We should respect and care for those who have these disorders but let’s not ignore the obvious. We should embrace them and recognize their often heroic efforts and celebrate the tenacity with which many of them live their lives, but we should not lie to them or pretend that they don’t have a problem. Any common sense understanding of human flourishing tells us that a person with 6 fingers or someone confined to a wheelchair for the rest of their life will live, however heroically, with many more difficulties than normal.
Correspondingly, the rare person with a Disorder of Sexual Development (DSD) for example, someone born with malformed or ambiguous genitalia, should not be told this is just a difference. And to use those disorders as evidence to justify a Gender Fluid, Non-Binary “Queer” philosophical agenda masquerading as a civil rights crusade, a crusade that leads you to shout “smash heteronormativity” is beyond absurd.
A physical inability to accomplish an essential reproductive task is not a difference. It is a biological disorder of the reproductive system. And now speaking as a Christian, an unwillingness to acknowledge God’s bi-natured creational design is a spiritual disorder. All of us are unaligned with God’s purposes to some extent, which is to say we are all spiritually disordered, but some disorders are more obvious than others. An unwillingness to recognize maleness and femaleness as normal, as part of God’s original design, is one of them.
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Many years ago I was listening to a radio talk show when an elderly man called in to ask a question. For some reason the host asked the guy how old he was and he said “87 years old” at which point the host sidekick, a young woman of maybe 25, interjected with typical youthful exuberance: “you’re 87 years young!” Without hesitation the old curmudgeon responded: “kiss my ass.” Now that wasn’t very nice of him. Especially when speaking to a woman. But it was honest. He knew he was no longer young and vibrant. No matter what he desired or how he might express that desire, every passing day, every sudden movement, every memory, every forgetful moment, told him who he was. He wasn’t buying the “you can create your own reality” the giddy sidekick was selling. Trying to make him feel better she only revealed youthful naivety and perhaps a shallow subjectivism. But he knew better. The undeniable disorder we call death was crouching at the door.
Life happens. And then life breaks down. Disorders develop, sometimes slowly over a long life, sometimes quickly, as in the womb. And death happens. If not physical death, death of possibilities, death of a fully formed human life where an integrated body and mind operate at peak efficiency, at least for many seasons. Ignoring this reality is unhelpful, unhealthy and delusional.
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So what is “sex”? Sex is the biological classification of an organism according to its reproductive role. There are only two, male and female. Sex is determined at conception and recognized not “assigned” at birth. We distinguish between the sexes based on the bodies we were given by our parents (and God). It is not just certain parts, like genitalia, but every cell in our body is “sexed” either male or female and cannot be changed by hormone therapy or surgery. Swapping out a body part doesn’t change who you are. We are who we were created to be. We ignore that reality at our peril.
Gender Ideology (i.e. radical disembodiment ideology) is in direct conflict with biology & Christian anthropology.
So why do Gender Activists and astonishingly some medical organizations say that “sex is assigned at birth?” I’ll take a closer look at their rationale in an upcoming post.
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I’m a Classic Christian and think Gender Ideology is anti-creational to the core. This blog is about “God’s Good Creation.” That’s why I’m writing about Gender Ideology. And “speaking up” as I’m confident Jesus would.
"Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning 'made them male and female.'" [Matt 19:4]
If you would like more detail on how my Christian worldview informs my understanding of Sex and today’s Gender Ideology please read the following posts.
This post is primarily for my Christian Brothers and Sisters. Obviously all are welcomed to read.
From my Classic Christian point of view let me briefly lay out the big picture. This will give theological context to my writings about today’s Gender Identity Moment. You can find more detail about this big picture in my previous posts. Especially, “But, I Love That Body.” And “He Told The Women to Go Away.”
God created a bi-natured world of these constitutive parts, Heaven & Earth, Spirit and Matter, Soul (mind) and Body, Male and Female.
[I’m not forgetting all the other beautiful creatures great and small, nor the sun and the moon, or the land and the sea, but these are the major categories.]
It may seem counter-intuitive, but, yes, Heaven was created too. Classic Christianity maintains that the Triune God existed before the creation of Heaven and Earth.
Before going further, let me clear up what may be puzzling to some. By juxtaposing Heaven and Earth, Spirit and Matter, Male and Female, Soul and Body, as I have done am I not saying that maleness corresponds with Heaven, Spirit and Soul and that femaleness corresponds with Earth, Matter and Body and isn’t that dichotomy more than slightly demeaning? Some might say, objectifying?
Well, first of all, the main point is the union of each pairing, or the complementarity of each pair and not the correspondence between the different pairings. For example, both males and females are a mysterious unity of spirit and matter, or if you prefer, soul and body.
Second let me question a further assumption that many make here, an assumption made especially by disciples of Plato (It’s possible to be a disciple of Plato and not know it!) That assumption is something I’ve called, unequal dualism. Unequal dualism regards the second place position in each pairing as inferior to the first. For example, Plato linked the irrational and physical with the female sex, and the rational and spiritual with the male sex. Making males superior to females in his mind. And only in his mind! Unfortunately his was a very influential mind.120th Century Mathematician & Philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead, once said the safest way to characterize Western Philosophy “is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”
But with respect to the great Plato, I reject unequal dualism on biblical grounds. And also from the personal experience of knowing my wife and all the other great women in my life. (Not to mentioned throughout history).
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I maintain that both parts of God’s bi-natured world were created EQUAL. But equal does not mean same. In the beginning Earth was created equal to Heaven and likewise Matter was created equal to Spirit. Just like God’s earthly family, humans, were created equal to God’s heavenly family, angels.2Revelation 22:8–9 (NRSV): I, John, am the one who heard and saw these things. And when I heard and saw them, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who showed them to me; but he said to me, “You must not do that! I am a fellow servant with you and your comrades the prophets, and with those who keep the words of this book. Worship God!” Maybe you’ve not thought of God’s two families before, but according to Scripture, God created two Image-Bearing families. Equal yet different. One family of spiritual beings, (angels) and another one of embodied souls (humans).
I view Equal Dualism as a crucial interpretive key in Christian Theology.
For example, you can think of heaven as being another dimension of God’s created order. Don’t be thrown off by spacial metaphors, though the scriptures sometimes suggest those metaphors. Heaven is simply another dimension where God “resides” for the time being. Which means heaven, like our God, is not far off, but very near.
Because of “The Fall” the bi-natured world has been separated, first from God, but also from intended creational integration. However, here comes the Good News, God’s Big Picture plan is to bring the two parts of the created cosmos back together again in a holy marriage. At the center of the original cosmological marriage was a Garden, Eden, in the book of Genesis. At the center of the future cosmological marriage, is a Garden City, New Jerusalem, found in the book of Revelation. These are the Two Garden bookends of Holy Scripture.
I know what I’m writing sounds Freudian. But I don’t care. This is the biblical witness. And it preceded Siggy Freud by thousands of years. God’s interlocking and overlapping bi-natured world has, at its united center, a Garden of Life. A place where life happens. And the Living God dwells.
Gardens in the Ancient Near East were often regarded as Temples. That’s the case here. The temple garden is the place where heaven and earth overlap, interlock and come together. Hopefully forever. The living God meets with the people of God in that sacred area of overlap. It might help to think of a simple Venn diagram to picture what I mean. As one would expect, the Garden-Temple is a place where life happens. From this Garden Center the dominion mandate of scripture to “be fruitful and multiply” and “take dominion” i.e. spread the rule and reign of God’s kingdom to the rest of the planet is inaugurated.
The first commandment in scripture was to have sex and make babies. The objective was to spread God’s kingdom rule by multiplying God’s Earthly Image-Bearers, God’s representatives, across the entire planet. This Big Picture, bi-natured fruit-producing forward-looking existence makes abundant sense to me. Anthropologically. Cosmologically. Soteriologically. Eschatologically. It all fits together as part of The Big Picture design and plan of God.
How about you? Does that make sense to you? Given what you know of the biblical story? Of God’s creation?
Unfortunately down through the ages, Christians have gotten themselves into trouble by disregarding the importance of either side of God’s bi-natured creation. God created both the invisible world and the visible world and called both of them “good.”
Visit my post “But I Love That Body” to get more detail on how and why Christians have gone off track. Hint: Plato and other Plato-like worldviews, unequal dualisms that elevate the spiritual and denigrate the material realm.
In the story handed down to us, when human’s came along, especially after the ladies arrived, God declared that what he had just done was “very good.” Up to this point in the story, after creating different parts of the bi-natured world, the biblical text said: “And God saw that it was good.” But then after the crowning achievement of earthly creation, the creation of male and female humans, the text for the first time says: “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.”3Genesis 1:31
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The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise – Benjamin West – 1791 Courtesy of TheMetropolitan Museum of Art
But as you know disobedience crept in and a breach occurred between God and God’s Image-Bearers. This resulted in the bi-natured parts being separated, parts that were originally designed by God to harmoniously overlap and interlock. Everyone is somewhat familiar with what Theologians call “The Fall.” There was also a fall in heaven as well as one on earth. A fall before the human fall. This explains the crafty evil serpent in the story, who was more than just a serpent. We know much more about the human fall, but according to Scripture both Image-Bearing families fell. Creational brokenness, pain and misery have been the sad result. But because of the Risen Christ, who was broken on our behalf, wholeness will finally return to God’s good creation.
Our job now is to align ourselves with God’s plan for creational wholeness.
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The trouble is that some on the Theological “Right” and the Theological “Left” have been tricked into abandoning God’s bi-natured creational intent. They do this by denying one part, the material part, of God’s good creation. It is an “overspiritualized” anti-creational theology.
On the Right you often encounter the “I’ll Fly Away” mentality. This ol world is not my home, they say and sing. One day Jesus will come and rapture us from this earthly coil and we will live with God eternally in heaven. This view sometimes reduces Christian witness to the “saving of souls.” Less care for the rest of God’s earthly order, ecological life, cultural life, etc., naturally results from this reduced theology. Why polish brass on a sinking ship, some say. Rescuing souls, that’s our business.
On the Theological Left you often find a disregard of one particular bit of matter, the most important human body ever created, and then recreated, the Risen Body of our Lord and Saviour. Many on the Theological Left deny the central event of our Faith, the risen body of Jesus. For various modern reasons they “spiritualize” the event. Jesus and what he stands for has been “raised” in our consciousness, they say. But the apostle Paul is clear on this point, if Jesus’ body remained in the tomb then we are pitiable fools to believe the Gospel message that “Jesus is Lord” for he has not conquered Sin and Death if his body did not rise. Since only the body dies, if the body remains dead, then death has not been defeated, only accepted. And Jesus is NOT LORD.
To “overspiritualize” in this way is to preach a false Gospel.
1 Corinthians 15:16–19 (NRSV): If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.
We might as well become hedonists. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die, Paul says, if Jesus’s body stayed in the ground.
Also the denial of bodily resurrection means bodily life has no Transcendent meaning.
But that’s not what the Scriptures teach or the Church Historic.
My friends on the Theological Left who are willing to discard the bodily resurrection of Jesus and view the Christian Faith in more “spiritual” terms have grossly misconstrued Biblical Spirituality. True Biblical Spirituality, holistic spirituality includes the rescue and reconciliation of God’s bi-natured creation.
Heaven and Earth. Soul and Body. All of it. Rejoined in an unbroken state of holy matrimony.
Jesus’s bodily resurrection was “the first fruit” of a new creation begun on Easter morning.41 Cor 15:20 (NRSV) But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. A new creation, a new Eden, to be fully consummated at the reconciliation of all things when Heaven and Earth are finally remarried. “I saw a new heaven and a new earth.”5Revelation 21:1
This is the Big Picture celebration that is in our future. And marriage between God’s bi-natured creation is the interpretive key to understanding our past, present & future.
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Let me bring this post back to our current concerns. Some of my friends on the Theological Left, especially many members and leaders of the Episcopal Church USA, have jettisoned creational Truth and the transcendent value of our bodily life in favor of an unbiblical spirituality. When they affirm today’s various Gender Identities as just another expression of God’s diverse world they have opposed creational Truth. In so doing, they have “privileged” the invisible inner life over the visible life of the body, effectively separating body from soul. Never God’s intent. They do so ostensibly for the purpose of loving everyone and welcoming difference. A notable goal.
But it is our loving Lord who taught us we were created “male and female.” There are no other options. Not for those who confess a belief in a Creator.
"Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning 'made them male and female,..for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate." [Matt 19:4-6]
Analogous to this is the marriage of Soul & Body. I believe Jesus would also say about this marriage “what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
Episcopalian “affirming love” which seeks to affirm the self-assertion of confused individuals, individuals who regard their biological sex, their God-given body, as a material mistake, a mistake that must be corrected and remade in their preconceived image, is a direct consequence of having deemphasized, doubted, & disbelieved for decades the essential doctrinal truths of the Historic Faith: Creation. Incarnation. Bodily Resurrection of Jesus. Bodily Ascension of Jesus. Bodily Return of Jesus. And Bodily Resurrection of Believers.
It is all there in The Ancient Creed’s that most Episcopalian’s still affirm every Sunday. But do they still believe them? If our affirmations of difference don’t align with Truth they won’t be loving. They can’t be.
Because these theological errors have led many on the Theological Left to believe that bodily life has no Transcendent value, they are uniquely susceptible to the arguments of today’s Gender Identity Moment.
Do you see how someone with my theology simply cannot in good conscience disregard bodily life? I can’t accept that only my internal disposition, will or desire, my invisible nature, determines who I am as God’s created being. For God made me body and soul. Today’s Gender Identity Moment runs afoul of God’s creational design. Therefore it must be rejected.
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God’s creational design and plan to rescue the creation from its fallen disordered state must be our loving message to anyone who doesn’t identify with their biological sex. (People with gender-dysphoria). And we must not be intimidated into silence because of a spurious understanding of what it means to love my broken neighbor. Love divorced from Truth will be fruitless.
And I must also lovingly say, for I know many Episcopalian brothers and sisters, the affirming stance of your denomination on this issue is one reason why the Episcopal Church USA is dying. A recent report by your denomination reveals that if current trends continue then by 2050 there will be no one sitting in your pews. No one. That’s just 29 years from now. [This survey was conducted in pre-Covid 2019.]
Marriages and baptisms have dwindled well below replacement levels. Other mainline denominations show similar trajectories. One Episcopal priest called the results “dire.”
“The overall picture is dire – not one of decline as much as demise within the next generation unless trends change significantly,” said the Rev. Dwight Zscheile, an expert in denominational decline and renewal. An Episcopal priest, Zscheile is vice president of innovation and associate professor of congregational mission and leadership at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. “At this rate, there will be no one in worship by around 2050 in the entire denomination,” Zscheile told Episcopal News Service.
Hollowed out places of worship could be the result, if changes don’t happen quick. The Flight from Orthodoxy coupled with a desire to follow “the fresh winds of the Spirit” are the culprits here. Proclaiming “inclusion” as an organizing principal has led, ironically, to including fewer people in the life of Episcopal communities. Conceding to a culture of “personal autonomy” and “self-creation” such as we find in this current Gender Identity Moment will not end well for Episcopalians. Or any other Christian denomination that follows their lead.
