Not another Bruce Jenner blog - GBC Pastoral Column #76

I would not be at all surprised if more has been said by Christians on the subject of transsexuality in the last week than in the past decade. Countless blogs, podcasts, Facebook posts, and tweets can be verified, no doubt there have been a good number of personal conversations, and who knows how many related sermon illustrations are in the pipeline for this Sunday. Some spit moralistic fire about ‘perversion’. Others drip honey about ‘love’ and ‘compassion’. Somewhere, I’m sure there is a balance: some gospel minded person who uses current events to proclaim God as “just and the justifier of the one who has faith” in Christ (Romans 3:26).

God must be impressed by these people ‘taking a stand’, ‘letting their light shine’, 'going on a roll', ‘dropping truth bombs’, ‘bringing it’, and whatever else sycophants say. Transsexuality hasn't been an issue till now and whether the world agrees with Christian beliefs or not, surely this week's faithful Christian responses demonstrate that they are in touch with and genuinely relevant to the culture. Or maybe not, to all of the above. Perhaps Christians could do with an alternative, more self-examinatory narrative.

There is nothing new about some men in a society wanting to act like women or some women wanting to act like men – it is quite ancient and has always been displeasing to God. For example, Deuteronomy 22:5 is a reference to transvestitism given as early as the time of the Exodus. There is nothing new about people assigning themselves with a psychological gender other than their biological sex and living out the resulting lifestyle. Males who did this were called “effeminate” and are distinguished from homosexuals in the Greek text of 1 Corinthians 6:9 - on a list of people who will not inherit the kingdom of God so long as they continue in their sin. There is nothing new about mutilating the flesh to more closely resemble that of the opposite sex, although somewhat more recent are sex reassignment surgeries (SRS) and hormone replacement therapies by which transgender people can take that extra step and become transsexual. Since the 1960s thousands of SRSs have been performed every decade – in the USA alone there were an estimated 14,000 to 20,000 such surgeries from the 90s to 2002. Globally there are not only thousands, but millions of transgender and transsexual people. Studies suggest that the global prevalence rate of transsexualism is much higher than previously thought given the relative statistical invisibility of certain subsets of the transsexual community – one (albeit somewhat biased) prevalence figure places it as high as 1:250.

Growing prevalence aside, most professing Christians in the West seem to have said very little on the subject (which is different from though related to homosexuality) over the years. Possibly because they have never thought about it. If they have not thought about it, it could be because they do not know about it. If they do not know about it, it might be because they do not care. If Western Christians do not care about the horrific plight of the world around them, it might be because they are quite comfortable living in an insular castle of naïve stupidity where the most probing questions are where to eat, what to watch, and whether a trip to the gym can be squeezed into the 126 hours remaining after their 42 hour working week. The between 10,000 and 300,000 Thai 'Ladyboys' can go to hell, to say nothing of Jessica who used to be James down at the local grocery store.

Then 1970s athlete, B-list actor, and reality TV personality Bruce Jenner turns up on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine in a corset asking people to call him Caitlyn, and everyone loses their minds! I mean, who cares about the 1,000,000 to 2,000,000 ‘hijra’ in India, this is Kim K’s step-father we’re talking about...

By trying to appear in touch and relevant, I fear many Christians have revealed how out of touch and irrelevant at a gospel level they really are and how enamoured with celebrity culture they remain. They may talk about sin but do they really know what it looks like and do they see how devastatingly powerful and pervasive it is? Why then do they act so surprised when sinners by nature have sinful desires and commit sinful deeds?  Why do they react as though Jenner's particular sin is new? Why the focus on one man now, when millions of others have been ignored for years? "Pray for Bruce", the polite say. "Someone needs to tell Bruce the gospel" the more forthright exclaim. I do not disagree, I am just wondering why they waited for Jenner's particular sin to get celeb-cred before they said anything about it. I guess now that it's plastered all over the tabloids and fashion mags for the further confusion of a leaderless and lawless generation, it's apparently time to be heard. Presumably we will wait till Shia LaBeouf intentionally cuts off an arm before we say anything about transability (look it up).

By decades of silence punctuated at best with vague references to 'sin' and (if we dare be more specific) a nebulously defined 'sexual immorality', Christians have lost their savour as the salt of the world and are now being cast out and trampled on by the raving masses of our debauched society. We have shown ourselves adept at letting the world start our conversations and shape our witness, moderating our message and modulating our tone. There was a time when Christians talked about Christ Jesus and the world was turned upside down. Now the world talks about Caitlyn Jenner and Christians act like their world has been turned upside down. Instead of servants proactively proclaiming God’s will, we have become spectators, reactively reflecting on humanity’s wickedness. We are not prophetic. We are pathetic.

Biblically, transsexualism and all related desires and behaviours are immoral and perverse, unnatural distortions of God’s good plan and creative design for male and female. The good news is that God loves people, and has provided salvation for them in Jesus Christ. What makes this love so remarkable is that it is directed to immoral and perverse sinners of all kinds, none of whom are remotely deserving of it. This means that God loves transsexuals enough to cleanse them of their sin, consecrate them as his own children, and count them as righteous if they turn away from their sins and trust in Christ, who becomes their new identity (1 Corinthians 6:11).

I’m not sure just how strongly we believe in the power of God to save. When over the years I’ve occasionally asked pastors what practical counsel they would give to a transsexual who professes faith in Christ, it is not something they've previously given any deep thought. Because they've not personally encountered transsexuals in any meaningful sense, they apparently see no need to anticipate what they would do if they did. So much for pastoral preparedness. The truth of the matter is, transgenderism, transsexuality, and other deviant patterns of human feeling and action are much closer to home than Bruce Jenner - it is personally inept and pastorally irresponsible to assume otherwise. Who are we to think that sitting in the congregation on Sunday there is not a young lad who says he feels more like a girl than a boy, a wee lass who says she wants to marry a woman when she grows up, a homosexual couple flirting on the back row, a professing Christian girl in an inappropriate relationship with a non-Christian guy, a woman who is cheating on her fiancé with a man she met at the gym, a middle aged single dabbling in pornography, or an old man who earlier in his life had inappropriate contact with minors? Each of these, and more, are people who have sat under my own preaching at some time or other - in churches, particularly my own. The gospel that saved me can save them. I therefore can't afford to be a mere preacher - I must also be a pastor. Not someone who hides behind the authoritative safety of a pulpit or the anonymous strength of a pen, but someone who openly, honestly, and personally speaks compassionate truth and convicted love not at hypothetical unknowns or absent celebrities but into the lives of the real people with real problems around me.

We are told "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation", but Western “Christianity” has been too busy keeping up with the Kardashians to carry out Christ’s command. A morbid fixation on Jenner's morals will not change that. A meaningful focus on Jesus's message, "Repent and believe in the good news!" (Mark 1:15) will.

This pastoral column was distributed to the congregation of Grace Baptist Church (Wood Green) in the week following Sunday, 31 May 2015