A disturbing trend has been happening for quite some time and with the 2016 election season, it has now reached a feverish pitch. That trend is pastors and preachers putting God dead last in their personal holy trinity.
Oh I know, it’s supposed to be Father, Son, Holy Spirit. The Bible says that, these preachers say that, but that’s not what’s happening in real life.
Interpretation of the bible is their real God at the top of their trinity. Their understanding of God is finite, yet they claim to know much about topics they never encountered before…such as transgender people. Or gay Christians. Rather than diving deep to understand the issue from one of experience and grace, these preachers and pastors filter what they know and the political winds of the day through their own minds. And whatever verdict they reach is God’s truth.
For example, they have said that living the transgender lifestyle is incompatible with God’s teachings.
Really? Where does it say that in the bible?
It doesn’t.
They quickly point to Deuteronomy 22:5, the “crossdressing” verse, as ample evidence for their finite conclusions to become law over others.
Problem is, that rule was made 3,000 years ago so men wouldn’t dress as women to get out of serving in the theater of battle. Or for looking for illicit sex by posing as females of the night. This law has nothing to do with honest hearts and people, aka, transgender people.
Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Convention wrote a 7 page “John or Joan” article in 2009. Sadly it was highly influential on SBC churches on how to handle transgender people when they come out: make them stop taking hormones, show them that God’s “real plan” for John was really John all along and that through prayer and repentance, God can make John a whole John again!
This article Russ pens shows how woefully out of touch he is with the reality of trans folks. Transgender people have amazing results with hormones clearing up lifelong depression, anxiety, emotional numbness, etc. According to Mr Moore’s plan, he insists that John’s hormones be immediately stopped so that the person reverts back to their depressed, anxiety-ridden state of being where he consumes mass quantities of alcohol to kill the pain. This only shows how Moore doesn’t understand the transgender condition whatsoever. But those in such churches, they insist that God only made man or woman (Genesis 1:27). No, read that again, God made man AND woman. And with the trillions of transactions that happen in the womb, often times things don’t go as you expect them to turn out. This is a system (the SBC) placing it’s views and replacing God’s views on the subject. SBC, you’re not God.
What Mr. Moore fails to understand is what we have told you all along, we are different. No document you create will change the biology in our brains.
No amount of prayer fixes transgender people.
None.
Not even prayers or burnt sacrifices offered to God by Dr. Paul McHugh himself will cure a single transgender person.
Self-acceptance is what saves us from the suicide attempts. Having community that loves us and wants to see us flourish is the other key factor. Since you insist on taking away the hormones that help us tremendously and take away the community of church from us as most times we are kicked to the curb as you and all the pastors downstream insist trans people change or get out of their churches, you offer us no other choice: go out into the world alone and emotionally broken.
The exact opposite of what Jesus would have done.
You see, “living the transgender lifestyle”, as you say, isn’t incompatible with God’s teachings. No, your Pharisee, separatist, closed-hearted ways are incompatible with the saving grace of Jesus Christ. He saves us no matter what we look like.
Then, the topic will change and will insist, that gay people cannot enter into heaven unless they stop being gay. God can and will deliver them from being homosexual!
This too…really? Where in the bible does it say that?
They reply: It’s in 1 Corinthians 6:9 and Romans 1:27, it clearly states that the Lord sayeth that homosexuals can’t entereth the kingdom of God!
It doesn’t. Again.
Oh it does in English translations from King James and newer, but a more involved study of this topic when looking at the original words of the bible and cultures that the author Paul was looking at paint an entirely different picture…
In the first chapter of Romans the word homosexuality was never there until 1946. We are taught to never change words of the bible but for this word, it was given an obvious exemption to this rule. The root word was pederasty or where we get pedophile from, not gay or homosexual. The reason why pedophile was there is because in the Roman culture it was normalized for men to have sex with young boys. It was very usual and customary thing. Something our culture does not do at all obviously. The word was changed last century for unknown reasons to homosexuals. In a flash back in 1946, every gay person was a pedophile all of a sudden. Which is a sick and wrong view of gay people, but that’s exactly many view gay people now.
These days, ask any veteran of a recent war about the Middle East and how that exact culture still exists in many areas, yes it is unusual for a boy to get past puberty not having been molested by a man. That is the culture there. That was the culture 20+ centuries ago and has not changed.
That is the context of what Paul wrote about Romans, Corinth, etc. And likewise in the Old Testament that is the culture was that was there a thousand years before Christ ever walked on earth. Given that we can see this culture 20+ centuries later, there’s no excuse for pastors and preachers to be preaching false, graceless interpretations of God’s Word.
God doesn’t give a crap about gay marriage, or any of that. He cares about human hearts. He cares about young boys being molested by men (Romans 1:27), he cares about young girls being also molested by church leaders and men and even older women of course. That’s why it’s in the Bible. We are to protect the children.
I wish people would read the Bible it in the proper context, not just the context of King James and newer.
Jesus came to free us from the system we are in, not put us in another one.
Tragically, they’ll preach this false doctrine of legalism from the pulpit anyway. They will claim an evil agenda is out to devour people and make them gay. They’ll insist and thus continue blabbering on and on about how bad being gay is, while the few young gay kids in attendance at their services are inching towards deeper depression and suicide attempts because they are shamed into not talking about who they really are. And this is OK with you because you believe “God can heal you of your sin of being gay!” Which doesn’t happen. How quickly they have forgotten Exodus International.
To these closed-hearted preachers and pastors, the death of an LGBT kid is greater than having an LGBT person in your congregation. The proof: there is no celebration of a gay person’s passing in one of these churches.
The third leg of their personal trinity is politics. By aligning themselves with a political movement, they now have power nationally to continue their proven-false views of scripture, all while hurting others in the process. They can look at other preachers down the street pointing to Romans 1:27 as “truth” and yell it from their pulpits in confidence they are “right” and any other viewpoint is “wrong”. Thus, they set themselves up as the “humble voices for God in a rotting culture”. Ugggh!
See, they are right and you are wrong! Trust in them, they have all the answers!
Not happening.
It would be laughable if so many people weren’t so emotionally hurt by their off-base finite views being sold as truth.
This Toxic Trinity is like a modern day plague, young whipper-snappers flying out of Seminary school ready to take on Satan in the world, fired up for the Lord but must follow the corporate line of their denomination. By the time they are in their early 40’s they are worn down, they don’t believe in all the legalistic, denominational junk they were taught in school as real life and God Himself has proven to them that much of the other two legs of their Toxic Trinity is worthless.
Those that still find value in the two worthless legs of their Toxic Trinity continue on their Jaded Jesus Journey from the pulpit and the ballot box using fear in their congregations against LGBT folks at any cost.
The economy? Not as important as keeping gay people from marrying.
Abortion? Not as important as keeping transgender people out of bathrooms.
National security? Not as important as making sure disastrous conversion therapy is law.
Keeping government small? Not as important as being vindictive to political opponents.
I’m convinced a majority of Christian preachers and pastors do not know the true, non-filtered, Bible themselves in regards to these key issues of our time. They only know the legalistic interpretations that match the political power grab of 2016. The plaque on their office wall showing their doctorate degree in theology is more important than loving people like Jesus did. And true interpretation of God’s Word and loving others is cut off in the name of politics and being “right” about the issues of our time. Mix all this with politics and we now have the Toxic Trinity owning a plank of the GOP.
The real moral decay is happening in the selling out of the Republican party to a powerful faction of the GOP of those who claim to be “right”.
The one person who is “right”? History is showing us that his name is Barry Goldwater.