book report: She's my Dad by Jonathan Williams 2018

-
Amazon link
One reaction to a transgender person in my former fundagelical approach to the world is to believe such a person is deceived by the devil if not fully cooperating with Satan. In fact, it is such a demonic act that one should not even participate in using the person's new name. The observational, scientific understanding of sex, gender, genitalia, and brain structure are not yet allowed to disagree with Moses's binary assertion that in the beginning God created them male and female. Compassion is not allowed to overrule bronze age judgments, the very issue Jesus fought against in his interactions with his contemporary Bible-thumpers.

Experience forces us to reconsider the primacy of scripture. For Jesus, it was an encounter with a Gentile woman. For Peter it was a dream about eating non-kosher food. For me it was the coming out of a family member. For Jonathan Williams, it was his dad, a successful leader of a large fundagelical church planting organization, admitting he's always known he was not a man despite his genitals. These guys knew their Bibles thoroughly. They had pastored churches. They had baptized disciples. They had preached the good news. But did the good news stop at a man in his 60's who had faithfully served the Lord for decades who was now attempting to align his external life with his internal life?

In 2012, I might have said yes. But like the author of this book, I've made a painful discovery, to believe that God is indeed love. It's a beautiful discovery, but painful when your religious community turns against you for believing this verse over all the others in the Bible. For Jonathan's father, Paula, it was being fired from the church planting organization she headed for 20 years, and losing all the friends made over that time frame. For himself, it was a loss of the father he thought he knew, and as his theology changed, the loss of the same church network.

Paula was born again when she transitioned. Jonathan's faith was born again when he embraced a theology of original blessing and inclusiveness and love. But new birth is painful and Jonathan writes honestly and unflinchingly about the pain. I devoured this book and I hope this book is a lifeline to those christians who are LGBTQ and in non-affirming communities.

Thanks to Netgalley and Westminster John Knox Press for a complementary review copy in exchange for my honest review.

Please watch this excellent TEDtalk by Paula.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why did Peter put his coat on before jumping in the water? John 21:7

-
I have the great pleasure of facilitating every week a Bible discussion group with several high school students. We've been discussing the Gospel of John  this past year, and we finally finished tonight. We enjoyed the humorous scene John writes about in this last chapter. The great apostle John can't help himself when it comes to embarrassing his fellow inner circle apostle; the denial of Christ, his slowness in getting to the empty tomb, and this event in the last chapter. John 21:7 That disciple whom Jesus loved therefore said to Peter, "It is the Lord!" When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on his outer garment, for he was stripped for work, and threw himself into the sea. What's the joke? Well John is the first to realize that Jesus is on the beach, #humblebrag, but then Peter puts ON his coat before jumping out of the boat? I've seen some academic ink spilled trying to explain this weird behavior on the part of this fisherman ( good one
Read more

christians should be the biggest supporters of the trans community

-
I read with joy and anger the comments under Gabrielle Union's tweet introducing the world to her gender non-conforming child Zaya. Meet Zaya. She's compassionate, loving, whip smart and we are so proud of her. It’s Ok to listen to, love & respect your children exactly as they are. Love and light good people. pic.twitter.com/G2lLVdD2VT — Gabrielle Union (@itsgabrielleu) February 11, 2020 I wish every kid could have such supportive parents. But out came the bible verse quoting trolls among others. But don't christians believe in an immaterial soul? That the mind is greater than the brain? That there is a spirit as well as a body? If people are truly materialists, then certainly they can make the argument that chromosomes determine who Zaya is. But christians do not tend to be materialists. So if Zaya asserts her identity as distinct from her chromosomes, wouldn't this be a proof for christians to say, "there is something more to us than our materials and
Read more

The near sacrifice of Isaac and bad religion

-
Image
Bad religion asks parents to sacrifice their children. Bad religion is cultural. Bad religion looks for scapegoats. Bad religion always find scapegoats in those with less power. Bad religion kills kids. Abraham's story in Genesis 22 is a story of good religion prevailing over bad. image source    Abraham lives in a culture which not only approves of child sacrifice, but even encourages it for assistance from the deities. Abraham believes his deity wants him to also perform this act of devotion. But after he ties his son up, he has an encounter with God unlike any previous one. It appears God changed his mind.  More likely, Abraham changed his mind about God. Evangelical and fundamentalist christians also live in cultures where they think their deity asks them to bind their children, to not let them live in truth their sexual identity. Hence, these children who normally benefit from the protective effects of religion on suicidal thoughts and tendencies actually experience it worse a
Read more