You Can Read Yourself Into The Bible

When I first started to think about bringing my whole self to the Biblical text; my whole queer and trans self, I didn’t know where to start.  I had read a lot of books about “What the Bible said” about homosexuality and trans identity and it seemed like in each book there was a slim chapter, at the very end, where they talked about how some folks had seen gay people in the Bible.

Inevitably I would read that slim chapter about gay Ruth and Naomi, gay David and Jonathan, gay Jesus. And think “meh”. It didn’t resonate. I didn’t feel seen. I didn’t feel comforted. 

On the one hand it seemed I had to use the Bible to defend my identity with existing texts. Reading marshes into Genesis as a proof that existing between binaries was possible, or endless prooftexting around the “clobber passages”.

On the other hand, reading the Bible from a gay perspective meant jamming my identity into the existing texts. It felt like square pegs into round holes. It felt awkward and unwieldy. But I already felt awkward and unwieldy when I read the Bible and I wanted to feel better. 

I wanted something better. I knew there had to be a better way to read and engage with the text that allowed me to bring all of myself to it. 

What about you? What’s your relationship with the Bible? Are you using it to defend yourself? Do you see yourself reflected in the texts or does it all feel written about people you can’t relate to? 

But more importantly…

How do you want to feel when you approach the text? Pause for just a moment and actually write down your answers before you continue reading.  

There is a better way to queer the Bible. A way that is both faithful to the text and that has space for all of the nuances and gradients of your entire life and identity. A way to queer that text that encompasses your family history, your body, your sexuality, and all of your various identities (race, ability, neurodivergence, all of you). 

It starts with naming the events and experiences that have made you, you. For me it means talking about my transition, about my surgery scars, about growing up and coming out in the evangelical church. 

And then, with all of these stories from your life, you approach Scripture and see what connects. It’s not about making something fit, it’s about seeing what’s already there. When I think about my scars and read the story of Jesus post-resurrection, suddenly I notice that he has scars too. And I begin to wonder what my scars and Jesus’s scars might have to say to each other. Or maybe when thinking about my transition and running into someone that I knew who, for the first time, didn’t recognize me it makes me curious about Jesus and Mary’s encounter in the garden where she mistakes him for the gardener. 

As we wonder we ask questions and allow those questions to deepen how we read the text. We pay attention to what’s already there and notice details we didn’t see before. It’s faithful interpretation. It’s holy work. 

What would it look and feel like for you to do this work? How would your relationship to the Bible change? How might your faith change? You can bring all of yourself to the text. You can relate the text to your whole life and find new connections and meanings in both. It’s powerful, life-giving, and soul enriching work. 

You can start now by paying attention to what comes up as you read, paying attention to connections between your story and the stories in Scriptures. You can do it on your own without any other tools. Just start wherever you are. 

But we can also do this work together.  In Queering The Bible we walk through a whole system of mining your own life for stories that hold meaning and then connecting them to the Biblical text. The course is not only exercises and methods, it’s also sharing your story with the community and hearing their stories as well and allowing the intermingling of stories to make even more connections. 

There is something powerful when we do this vulnerable and truth telling work together. It changed my life and it can change yours, too. Whether you do it alone or with this group, make sure you do it. Your life and your faith will never be the same. 

Internalizing the World’s Messages

I grew up with purity rings and True Love Waits, with Rebecca St. James preaching that good, “stay pure” message. I heard how sex was dirty and sinful (until you were married), how our flesh was weak and would lead us astray. And as someone growing up in a trans body without language for my identity, it was easy to conflate my feelings of dysphoria with the messages of purity culture. 

I tried to avoid thinking about my body as much as I could and I considered that holy. After all, we were to keep our mind on things above!

Later on, after I came out as queer I did a lot of work to unpack purity culture. I got more in touch with my body. I figured out some of my sexual ethics. I figured out what I believed was required of me from God in regard to my body. I thought I was done. I was at peace. I had it sorted.  

But when I came out as trans, something else happened: I got a whole new set of negative body messages:

• “No one will love you because you’re trans.”
• “Straight women won’t want to be with you. Gay men won’t want to be with you. Queer women will only be with you if they can see you as a woman.”
• You will never be enough for anyone.

Everywhere I turned, from the queer community, to the straight world, to the church, told me that my body was unlovable. And because I had been primed by purity culture it was easy to let these new messages slide right in behind the old messages and put me back in a place of shame and misery. When someone treated me badly, instead of believing it was their issue, I took it on and said “Of course they think that. My body is unlovable.” 

When my partner at the time no longer found me attractive, I thought, of course she doesn’t. I am unattractive. My trans identity makes me unlovable. 

Purity culture and transphobia coalesced into a toxic stew of body negative messages. 

Can you relate to this feeling? The feeling of internalizing harmful messages from the church, or media, or even family about your body? 

I want you to think for just a moment about those messages that play on a loop in your head. 

When you hear those negative thoughts, who’s voice do you hear them in? Is it your pastor’s voice? Your mother’s voice? Your own voice echoing something you read in a magazine or saw in a movie? 

We repeat these messages because we heard them somewhere. Even if we hear them in our own voice, they didn’t come from within us, at least not at first. 

Once you identify where the voice comes from you can start to dismantle it. You can start to record other messages and voices over the negative ones. 

The first word humanity heard about their bodies was from their Creator. God looked at the human God had made, the human that was genderless, the human that was created in the image of the Divine, and God said, “This is very good.” Not just good like the rest of creation, very good. 

Throughout the Scriptures, in both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Scriptures, we see messages about the goodness of our bodies. Yes, really! From the creation story, to the raising of those in exile in the book of Ezekiel, to the concern expressed over and over again that bodies have enough to eat, that bodies not be oppressed, that bodies have a home. 

In the Christian Scriptures we see a Jesus who walks in a human body. Who gets his hands dirty healing people, who provides for their physical needs. Jesus’ body is resurrected with scars and his body is still considered complete and perfect. 

And even Paul; Paul who seems uncomfortable with bodies and sex calls our bodies a temple. By calling them a temple he is asking us to treat our bodies with care. To worship with our bodies, but also in our bodies. To consider our bodies as holy and good. 

That is a hell of a different message than the one I got growing up!

It totally changes the way we relate to our bodies. Instead of seeing them as outside of us (we have a body.) we start to see ourselves as integrated with our bodies. We are spiritual beings in bodies. Our bodies and our spirits are joined. Which means every time we use our bodies we are engaging in spiritual acts. 

Changing the way you think about our body means you can build a life giving relationship with your body. You can overcome the messages in your head. 

While we can’t escape the culture we live in, while we will still hear transphobic messages and while some will try to bend us into purity culture, that doesn’t mean that we have to internalize those messages or believe them about ourselves. We can begin to rewrite the messages that we’ve been given into ones that are healthy and life-giving for us. 

First we identify where the messages we’ve internalized come from.

Every time they come into our mind we name them for what they are: Something someone else told us. Name what the message is and who it came from. 

Next we start to replace those old messages with new messages.

We reclaim the messages in our head with something new. 

Finally we begin to walk in our new truth. 

For example: I look in the mirror and I think “My trans body is unattractive.” I stop. I name that message as negative and that it came from my ex. Then I reclaim that message with this one: “Your body is loved and lovely.” If I interrupt those patterns enough times, then eventually the positive messages will come more often then the negative ones and I’ll start to think in a different way. 

Every time we think something negative we name that that’s what’s happening, we name where it came from, then we reclaim it with a new message, and then we walk in our new truth. 

Let’s dream for just a minute, shall we?

I want you to think for a moment:

• Imagine what it would feel like to move past purity culture and transphobia.
• Imagine what it would feel like to think about your body with positive and loving messages.
• Imagine what it would feel like to love and luxuriate in your body. Can you imagine that?
• Can you feel it, even just a glimpse of it? What’s it like? Do you feel more ease in your shoulders? Does your jaw unclench? 

More ease in our bodies means more ease with other’s in their bodies.

This is the first step in moving past shame and being able to connect with others, not just sexually, but in all intimate ways. 

This is the future we are building in this moment of moving past shame and toward wholeness. Past negativity and into health. Past isolation and into connection. 

Your body is a temple.

You are very good.

The Divine has created you in their image.

What a powerful, life giving message. Hold on to it. Embrace it. Believe it. 

When We Call Abuse Love

The intersection of evangelicalism and queer issues continues to take up a lot of real estate in my mind. Not only because it shapes the context of my life but also because it still has such an impact on the world around me and the work that I do. I spend a lot of my time fielding messages from people who are trying to make sense of their own identities in the light of the teachings of their families/church.

I’ve said before that I think evangelical theology is toxic from stem to stern. There is nothing in it that is redeemable and it kills the people it touches. Harsh? Yup. Because I have spent years seeing the damage inflicted.

But I think what’s so harmful is how that damage is cloaked in language of love.

The other night my partner and I were watching an episode of “Buffy”. It’s an episode called “Family” from season six (spoiler alert). This episode is the first that revolves around the character of Tara, Willow’s new girlfriend. Tara is about to turn 20 and she has a secret that she is trying to keep from her girlfriend and her girlfriend’s friends. Her family has told her for years that when the women in their family turn 20 there is a demon part of them that gets awakened (stay with me here, there are metaphors afoot). So Tara, who seems to be one of the first in her family to move away and have her own life, is trying to figure out how to keep this part of her from burgeoning. Her family shows up and tries to take her home.

On this rewatch I was really struck by the father’s language. He says to Tara that no one will ever love her like her family. That these new friends of her won’t really love her when they see what she really is, but that her family will take her back in spite of it.

This is straight out of the evangelical playbook.

No one will love you like your family/church/God even though you are so filled with sin that we can’t stand looking at you. But, really, we love you. No one will love you like we will. No one will love you enough to tell you just how sick and sinful you are and how you need to get right with God. No one will be that truthful with you. So come on back to the fold. So repent. So be straight. So just stay in the church.

Turns out that Tara’s family had been lying for centuries to keep the women in line. (AHEM.) She’s not a demon after all.

But there is another powerful moment: As the father tries to take her, Willow’s friends stand in his way. They claim Tara as family. The reason this is so powerful is because one of the other threads of the episode is how they don’t really understand Tara or know what she likes. All they know is that she’s important to Willow.

And in the end they claim her as family and they defend her. They don’t need to understand her or get her, they just know that she belongs and that she has a right to be safe and protected. They also know that she has the right to chart her own life journey.

Evangelicalism says that you are accepted only if you don’t ask any questions. Only if you toe the line. Only if you look and talk and act and believe exactly as you have been taught to. Evangelicalism says that you are loved only if you do what you’re told. Love always has conditions on it in the evangelical church. There are always strings. You know how I know? Because when I asked questions, when I changed how I thought, when I came out and was unashamed the love was withdrawn. All that remained was the judgement. The admonitions.

This is also why this notion of family as something that you cannot choose and you cannot leave; the idea that even if you don’t agree you still need to love and respect your family is so damn toxic because it never allows for abuse or for the setting of boundaries. You have to love you family even when they tell you you are going to hell. You have to love your family even when they tell you that your love is disgusting and sinful and wrong. You have to love you family when they tell you that you’ve mutilated your body by transitioning.

No. No you don’t. You do not owe anyone your love.  Family are the people who show up for you when no one else will and will have your back no matter what. Family are the people who make sure you’re not homeless and that you have enough to eat. Family are the people who love you even when they think you’re screwing up. Family are the people that allow you to be yourself even if it’s not the person they expected you to be. Family isn’t always the people who birthed you.

But more than anything: love doesn’t come with strings. It doesn’t demand you fit into boxes. It doesn’t tell you that you are sick and sinful because of how and who you love. And anything or anyone that does say that isn’t love its abuse.

Evangelicalism is abuse. It’s toxic, not just to queer people but to all people. There are healthy ways to read Scripture. There are healthy ways to understand God. But Evangelicalism isn’t it.

It’s clear in this episode of Buffy who the bullies are even when they show up with smiling faces. It can be less clear that you’re being bullied when your pastor says in a nice and kind tone with a caring look on his face that they are just “concerned about you and want what’s best for you as you reveal your gender identity or your new love, but make no mistake; anyone who tells you that you can’t be around children, or lead in the church, or sing in the worship band because of who you love is bullying you. Anyone who wields theology to keep you from living an abundant life is bullying you. Anyone who extends love with strings isn’t loving.

And it’s time to stop accepting abuse and calling it love.

You Have To Choose Healing

At some point you have to choose healing.

I’m not talking the miraculous “positive thinking” or saying that everything will get better overnight. I’m not saying you don’t need therapy or medicine. I’m not saying it will be easy. I’m not even saying what healing looks like.

But I am saying that at some point you have to choose healing. To want it. To move toward it. To desire it. To reclaim your life apart from the things done to you.

I get it. Sometimes I am angry at the harm that has been done to me. The ways that I was mistreated. The trauma that was inflicted upon me by a fundamentalist church and family. The trauma that continues to be inflicted upon me by a hostile world. And sometimes I just want to stay in that anger and trauma. I want to rage at everyone. I don’t want to do the work of healing because it’s hard. Because it’s unfair that I have to do it at all. Because why should I have to do all of this work when the people who did this to me just get to move on with their lives as if nothing has happened? Why is the burden on me to heal and to make the world a better place? Why is it always the oppressed folks who have to save everyone else? It’s not fair! I don’t want to do it! I want to just be angry and mad because anger sometimes feels good. It feels good to yell and scream about harm done. To tell other people exactly where they can go. Staying in the anger feels safe. Because it’s what I’ve known. Because it’s comfortable. Because it allows me to place all of the burden on other people. They did this to me so I get to act however I want. I can inflict harm on others, and take up space, and make other people do the work because I have been hurt, damn it!

And so the cycle of trauma continues. The cycle of rage and hurting continues. And I don’t get any better.

But then what if I chose healing for myself? Just for me. Because I want it. Then it’s not about them anymore. I’m choosing wholeness because I want to be whole. I’m choosing to work for healing in my life because I want to be healthy. I want to have healthy relationships. I want to be a healthy person. I want to break the cycles of trauma in my life.

This isn’t about forgiveness, even. (Though for some people forgiveness is part of the healing process.) This is simply about not allowing my entire present and future to be centered on the things that happened to me in the past. It’s about not allowing my regret over what I missed out on to cause me to continue to miss out on things. My healing doesn’t have to be dependent on other people getting their act together. Or apologizing for me. Or even stopping the hurt that they are causing. My healing is for me alone. Certainly, my healing also benefits other people and my community, but first and foremost it’s for me.

Look, sometimes I wish I hadn’t grown up in the evangelical church. I wish I hadn’t been indoctrinated with purity culture, with terrible theology about well, everything. I wish I had gotten to grow up as a boy. I wish I had transitioned earlier. I wish I had waited to get married or not gotten married at all. I wish I had left earlier. I wish I had done a ton of things differently. I regret the wasted time. I regret the unnecessary pain. I regret the damage done. And yet I want to choose healing.

Can I stay angry? Sure. Can I refuse to ask for help? Yup. Can I continue to rage over and over and over again at what happened to me? I can. But is that the person I want to be? No. It’s not.

I’ve been in settings where the entire conversation has focused on past hurt. On what someone missed out on. On what so and so did to them. On how they have been cheated and robbed. And there is certainly a place to share those stories (though I would like to say that often that place is with a licensed therapist). But when you ask them “What is giving you life now?” “How are you using your gifts now?” “What are you doing to give back to your community now?” And they can’t answer but instead launch into a new litany of harm done I just feel sad. Because they are continuing to allow these past circumstances to rob them of their lives. They rage about not having transitioned earlier, not having been allowed or able, but yet they aren’t enjoying their lives now. And I get it. It sucks to think about all of the time you missed out on. But you are continuing to miss out on your life.

As people and as communities we can’t move forward or change anything until we choose to pursue healing. On an individual and communal level. This isn’t about cheap forgiveness or even forgetting the past. But it is about not allowing the past to continue to rob us of our present and future.

You might need to see a therapist or to be on medication. You might need to do some intense healing work. You probably can’t do it alone. And no one else can do it for you. You have to do the work yourself. But at some point you have to choose to move toward healing.

You Do Not Have to Stay in a Place that Does Not Love You

“My church isn’t affirming.” “My dad won’t use the right pronouns for me.” “My pastor keeps preaching anti-gay sermons on Sundays.” “I’m not allowed to be in leadership at my church.”

I hear some version of these four comments several times each week. People are writing and asking for advice. They are struggling with what to do. They are in pain. And I empathize. It’s really hard to be in a situation where you are not being affirmed, where people are refusing to respect your identity, where you are hearing toxic theology preached over you week in and week out.

I usually offer some form of the same advice: “It might be time to think about leaving. ” Immediately the excuses start up:

But, you know, they are really great in other ways! But I can’t just leave home! But if I don’t stay, how will they change? But I really want to stay here because I have so many friends!

And I sit there and shake my head because I know that in three months or six months or a year, after nothing has changed, they will leave. But in all of that extra time they will continue to be beaten down, hurt, disparaged, and preached at. They will continue to internalize all of those awful messages. And it will seriously damage them.

Now, I know that sometimes you literally cannot leave for a multitude of reasons: You are a minor who lives with your family. You don’t have the financial means to go out on your own. Your parents pay for a significant part of your schooling/bills and you need that in order to survive. You are dependent on their insurance/care taking, etc. You are the caretaker for your parents. Any number of reasons might exist that prevent you from leaving a non-affirming place. That’s not what what I’m talking about here.

I know from my own experience that it is very easy to convince yourself that you don’t have a choice. It is easy to tell yourself that you are in a position of not being able to leave when the reality is that you could leave you just don’t want to or aren’t ready to yet. I lived at home for a long time. I told myself that I had to because I didn’t have the money to live on my own. But I could have. It would have been tight, I might have needed a roommate or three. I would have had to eat some ramen noodles, but I could have gotten out.

You can leave your non-affirming church. Even if it means not having another church to go to. You can listen to sermon podcasts online, find affirming Christians from other areas to Skype with and pray with. You can listen to worship music and sing in your car.

You can set boundaries with your parents. You can tell them they need to use the right pronouns or you’re not coming over any more. You can correct them over and over again. You don’t have to just sit there and take it.

You can go to a place where your leadership will be welcomed.

How long have you been at the church you are trying to change? Are they listening to you? Do you even ever get to speak to them? How long has your dad been using the wrong pronouns? Have you bothered to correct him?

You do not need to stay in a place that does not love, welcome, and affirm all of who you are. You do not have to be a martyr. Not for your family, not for your church, not for God. Not in this situation. You do not have to listen to toxic theology. You do not have to be insulted day in and day out.

There is no shame in leaving a place that can’t love you.

There is no shame here. There is courage in leaving. There is courage in saying “I will not stay in a place that harms me” even if that harm is coming from your own family. Even if it comes from the church that raised you and baptized you.

It is painful? Hell yes. Does it suck that you even have to consider it? Absolutely.

But you are worth it. Your spiritual and mental and physical health is worth every bit of the pain that leaving will cause. Because on the other side? On the other side is life.

Choose life.

The Temptation of Apologetics

The other night I shared my story with a local organization. At least some of the folks considered themselves religious and some evangelical. When it came time for the Q&A at the end the questions, as they usually do, turn toward apologetics.

(A brief note for those who might not be familiar. Apologetics is the idea of making a case for the faith and in the context of specific issues (like homosexuality or being transgender) making a defense, based on Scripture, for or against such people and actions. It usually involves verse by verse examinations.)

I’ve written before about how evangelicalism is a house of cards. Every piece of what you believe rests (however tenuously) on the pieces below it. Which means if you pull one card out of the stack, the whole house comes tumbling down. So I understand the drift toward apologetics. I understand because, when I was first coming out, I was addicted to apologetics.

I thought if I could just craft the perfect argument then people would have to believe me. If I could understand all of the Greek and the Hebrew, the historical contexts, the ways those verses have been understood throughout history, then I could convince the person I was talking to (and convince myself) of my humanity and right to exist.

It didn’t work. Not because there aren’t good arguments to be made or different understandings of the text but because the people who were most attracted to apologetics had already made up their minds. They had already decided that I was a sinner, that my “lifestyle” was sinful, that being queer or transgender was incompatible with Scripture. (They also, no matter how much they said they weren’t, continued to conflate sexuality and gender identity.)

Apologetics are a temptation. They tempt us with promises of clear understandings and no questions. They tempt us with promises of easily understood ideas. They tempt us with promises of having it all figured out, leaving no room for doubt. They tempt us because they can line up with whatever we already believe about those people who are not like us. They tempt us because they erase ambiguity.

Evangelicals are uncomfortable with ambiguity. They need things to line up. They need those beliefs to stack. Because when something doesn’t stack up, the whole house is in danger.

But life? Life doesn’t stack up perfectly. There is no moment when we have all of the answers when all of the questions are erased. Life is ambiguity.

Honestly, if all of your questions are answered and everything lines up perfectly you don’t actually have faith. You have a system that works for you. And I get it. It’s nice. It’s comfortable. It’s clean. But life isn’t clean. It’s messy and disorganized. It’s filled with questions and setbacks and moments when you have to rethink everything.

But evangelicalism doesn’t have room for that. Folks are fond of saying, “If one thing is wrong in the Bible then we just have to throw the whole thing out.” They say it with their feathers all ruffled up as to show you how ludicrous it is to pick and choose what you believe (even as they already pick and choose what they believe). It’s amazing how the doctrines they are willing to discard line up along a perfect scale of their “ick factor”. Meaning white people know it’s no longer okay to consider Black people icky (even though we did in the past) so we throw out justifications of slavery and say it was a different time and place. Some people no longer think women are icky and so they let them preach (but the churches and people who still think women are icky keep the doctrine about women preaching firmly in place). But gay people, especially gay men? Gross. So they are still condemned. It all comes down to people’s anxiety. And evangelicalism is built on anxiety.

Which is why apologetics will never be the answer. It’s a no win conversation for anyone. And no one I have ever talked to has been swayed by a perfectly crafted argument.

When I realized that faith didn’t need to line up perfectly, that I could still have questions and doubts, and yet still follow Jesus, when I realized that I didn’t have to take the Bible absolutely literally but could still take it seriously, my faith opened up. And it also matured. Because finally, I was reading the Bible without anxiety. I was wrestling with my questions and, with the help of the community, finding answers. This was different than the days when I was told not only the answer but the question as well. In those days there wasn’t room for anything. My faith was what the adults in my life told me it was. I was a child because I was treated like a child.

It was only when I was able to ask my own questions, grapple with my own answers, that my faith matured. That it became something that was rooted deeply in my heart and soul instead of something that was crammed into my mind from some authority figure. And it was only when my faith matured that I had room for ambiguity, for the humanity of the people around me, for the messiness of life. And honestly? It was only when my faith matured that I had room for love in my heart.

When you are simply trying to convince or convert someone, or when you are convinced that no one who believes differently than you do can possibly be correct, there is no room in your heart for love. Not really.

So apologetics are a temptation to have it all figured out. And they are also a barrier to love. They are a barrier to true connection. They are a barrier to conversation.

It’s time to let them go, once and for all, and actually live life together. It’s scary. It’s messy. There will be questions and not a lot of answers. You’ll have to sit in ambiguity. But it is so worth it.