Trans Theology on Binaries and Genesis 1

Photo taken at dusk, showing some buildings' silhouettes and red-tinted clouds. Image source.

This Advent, I'm supporting trans people financially and encouraging other cis people to do so too. And today I want to share some transgender Christian theology with you. ^_^

Here's an excerpt from Nonbinary gender and the diverse beauty of creation, by Austen Hartke:

Because the ancient Israelites tended to separate their world into binaries (take a look at the kashrut laws that govern acceptable and unacceptable foods, for instance), it’s not surprising that Genesis 1:27 breaks humans into two groups as well—male and female. But I’ve also concluded that this verse does not discredit other sexes or genders, any more than the verse about the separation of day from night rejects the existence of dawn and dusk, or the separation of land from sea rejects the existence of marshes and estuaries.

United Methodist deacon M Barclay, who identifies as neither male nor female but as nonbinary, puts it this way: “This chapter talks about night and day and land and water, but we have dusk and we have marshes. These verses don’t mean ‘there’s only land and water, and there’s nowhere where these two meet.’ These binaries aren’t meant to speak to all of reality—they invite us into thinking about everything between and beyond.”

Just as we call God the Alpha and the Omega, implying all things from first to last and in between, the author of Genesis 1 is using a poetic device to corral the infinite diversity of creation into categories we can easily understand.

...

When we attempt to box God’s creation in by looking to Genesis 1:27 and expecting every person on earth to fall into line, we’re asking the text the wrong question. If Genesis 1 was meant to describe the world as it is, the biblical authors would have needed a scroll hundreds of feet long. Thank goodness we don’t have to slog through verse after verse that reads like a biology textbook on taxonomy, naming creature after creature from the elephant down to the paramecium. Just as we wouldn’t expect astronomers to cram things like comets and black holes into the categories of sun or moon, we shouldn’t expect all humans to fit into the categories of male and female. Instead of asking the text to define and label all that is, we can ask God to speak into the space between the words, between biblical times and our time, and between categories we see as opposites.

(Go read the whole thing. It's good.)

I love this. Back when I was a good evangelical, I thought I knew everything about the bible. Turns out I only knew one narrow interpretation. It's so valuable to read theology from writers from diverse backgrounds. The image of God lives in all people, and if our theology only comes from white, straight, cis, abled, conservative Christian men, then we're missing a lot. (I've also been reading Hartke's book, Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians, which I highly recommend.)

Anyway, let's keep on supporting trans people by giving money to people in need on the #TransCrowdFund hashtag, or to Trans Lifeline.

Have a good Advent, everyone~