Trans/cending Belief

My closest friends are trans-men and lesbians, along with a few "normal" straight people and a gay guy or two. I write that partially out of disbelief, partially out of pride. One of the most difficult things since moving to Berkeley has been attempting to navigate queer culture. I am from the Midwest, after all, where there are males and females and most people are straight, though some are not. It was all so much simpler back home. You are, more or less, what you look like--if you look like a man, you are a man; if you look like a woman, you are a woman. Here, though, looks are often deceiving. The binaries which are so ingrained in me that I don't even think about them--male/female, straight/gay--are essentially meaningless. Instead, I am learning, and often stumbling over, a whole new vocabulary--straight, queer, gay, lesbian, trans, intersex, cis, they (as a single pronoun) and so on and so forth. It has been, in many ways, more overwhelming than being a PhD student. 

And I have been struggling with it. A LOT.

I joke about being from the Midwest, but it really does explain so much about me. I mean, I grew up in an area where no one was gay, or at least no one was willing to admit to being gay because we all knew that homosexuality was one of those deadly sins that sends you straight to hell. The first gay person I ever (knowingly) met was my freshman roommate in undergrad, and that was a bizarre experience--she told me the first night she was gay and that thirty second conversation was the longest conversation we ever had. It was not until I got to seminary that I encountered and became friends with gay students. It was at that point that I had to rethink my understanding of homosexuality and its relationship to sin. It also helped that I was taking Greek, where we specifically learned about the Greek behind the passages that are (mis)used against homosexuality. But here these people were, my friends, who are just like me, good and God-loving people. How could I determine that they were hell-bound? And so my theology changed.

Of course, being gay or a lesbian is different than being queer and it is most definitely different than being trans. I had no conception of what it meant for someone to be "queer," and, well, weren't transgender people essentially saying that God got it wrong? I mean, doesn't God know if you are meant to be a boy or a girl? But then I moved to Berkeley and actually met people who are trans, and lo and behold, they too are just like me, good and God-loving. Once again, I am left asking myself how they could be excluded from God's family. Once again, my theology is changing.

These past couple of weeks, since I took the Greek exam, I have spent a lot of time pondering questions of what it means to be trans or queer or gay or lesbian or even straight. And I have been talking to my friends about it, especially my trans friends. I want to know how to talk about these things without making ignorant and unintentionally hurtful remarks. Because I am still figuring it out. And I have a feeling I will continue to be figuring it out until I get a chance to ask God face-to-face. Does God get it wrong sometimes? Or have we gotten it all wrong with our strict binary system? Did God make them, male and female, or did God make them ha'adam, gender-less and gender-full? Have we complicated things by trying to reduce everything to two simple options--male/female, straight/gay, right/wrong?

I tell my mom stories about my friends and my experiences, and she says, "What is the world coming to?" I say, "You can't judge something you don't know." 

Talking to a friend today about gender identities and all the variations, I finally asked, partially out of frustration, partially out of a deep longing, "Can't we all just be people?" Trans, female, straight, male, gay, queer, intersex, lesbian, cis--whatever "label" one is--aren't we all still people? Are any of us any less made in the image of God because our sexual or gender identity doesn't align with what someone else thinks it should? God breathed life into ha'adam, that mysterious creature whose gender is indeterminate, and so regardless of who you are, regardless of how you identify, I am discovering that the breath of God in me longs to meet and know the breath of God in you. 

Still a Christian, Still an Academic

I grew up in a pretty conservative area, in a really conservative church. I tend to use phrases like "essentially fundamentalist" to describe the church I grew up in and, in fact, am still a member. And, as a teenager, I was hardcore into all of it. It's all I knew, and (so I thought) I knew it to be true.

Then I went to a liberal arts university to study the Bible academically. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that meant reading the Bible as if it were literature rather that historical fact or through the lens of faith! I struggled a lot, especially that first semester, but I grew and I came to realize that my faith transcends the words on the page. Truth is not always dependent on historical fact. When I was able to let go of my need for the Bible to be the literal Word of God and literally true, I came to realize that my faith really isn't dependent on much of it being historically factual at all. In fact, sometimes my faith is better off if it is in fact not historically factual! Like that whole God as an abusive husband thing...I mean, seriously, if God really told the prophets that God was gonna beat wife-Israel/Judah and leave her for the other nations to rape, what kind of God am I serving?!?!

This is the journey I have been on for the past eight and a half years, navigating between truth and fact, faith and reality.  If you would have told me ten years ago I would be where I am today, I would have laughed at you. But here I am.

I mention all of this because my brother came home last weekend and for some reason decided to ask me all sorts of questions about the Bible. He's part of this men's group, and he decided to do the One Year Bible thing. And I tried to be good and give him an academic answer that still allowed for faith, although it was pretty clear on which side I came down, but I was trying to let him know that it was okay for him to choose faith over my academics (which I really do believe--just because I love the academic side doesn't mean everyone has to or even that they have to agree with it). But by the end of the conversation, my brother asked me, "Do you even consider yourself a Christian??"

I said yes, of course, but his question kinda threw me off guard. I know in seminary we always joked about how I was more Jewish than Christian and some people really thought I was going to return from Israel a Jew (and, in fact, I went to synagogue nearly every week but only went to church on Christmas and Easter). But at the end of the day, I have always been and still am a Christian. I mean, last semester, it was church on Sunday morning and Taize Wednesday evenings that kept me sane. I may not be orthodox. I believe that the Bible contains stories rather than history. I believe that some of those stories might not necessarily be applicable to us today, no matter how hard we try to make them be. But I believe that those stories are powerful, and they are powerful because they contain some sort of inherent truth (even if that inherent truth may not transcend time and space). I believe in God and in doing the right thing, in love and truth. I believe that being a Christian means something, that being a Christian makes me a different (and better) person than I would otherwise be. And I believe I can believe all these things and still be an academic, that in fact my beliefs in many ways allows me to be a better academic because I understand what is at stake.

I am, at the end of the day, both a Christian and an academic. Whether I am a Christian academic or an academic Christian, the fact remains that I am both.

Just Another New Day

The whole New Year's Day thing has always been lost on me. Is there really anything magical about the start of a new year? Is it really anything more than one day ending and another one beginning? And what's the point of making resolutions that you never really intend to keep anyway? Maybe it's because I am a perpetual student and therefore my year corresponds with the academic year, beginning in late August/early September and ending in May. (Don't ask me what happens to poor June and July!) The excitement (and fear!) for me is with the start of a new school year, or a new semester, not when the calendar returns to Jan 1. For me, today is just another new day.

I spent last night (and all day) studying Greek, just like every other day of the break, just like I spent today, just like I will spend the next two weeks until the exam is over. Studying Greek until I can't distinguish it from English. And then some more. Passing the exam means I don't have to take the class. And not having to take the class means I can dedicate the necessary time and energy to my classes, well, at least in theory. Maybe I will even have time to do something other than study? Not likely.

At least I get to spend some time at home, in the midst of all this Greek. Of course, "home" is a relative word. My parents are doing crazy renovations, and of course, everything is going crazy wrong, which means I have no access to any of my stuff (other than what I brought home with me) and I'm sleeping on a mattress on the floor. Half the time plastic is hanging everywhere, including the doorways, turning the house into a maze and making me feel like we're in quarantine or something. And no TV to alleviate the Greek. And contractors coming and going and making all sorts of noise. So I go to the library, to the coffee shop, sometimes even the bookstore or mall food court, wherever I can get some work done.

No one ever said the life of a PhD student was very glamorous. In fact, I'm pretty sure cruel and unusual self-induced punishment would probably be more accurate. We could all use a good dose of therapy, and perhaps some strong drugs. In the meantime, I am running on stress and caffeine. And chocolate, always chocolate!