Response to Catholic Exchange

This whole article/article defense makes my head hurt just trying to wade through it. Not because of any conviction I feel after reading it, but from the poor science, questionable logic, and religious zealotry that is being passed off as objective journalism. As an editorial piece, which seeks to create an emotional response in favor of the mother church, this is pretty well written.

I contend, however, that once it departs from emotion it runs into trouble on Biblical as well as scientific grounds, and because the logic is flawed at key points. I am addressing just the theological issues I see as most pressing. The science has been addressed quite sufficiently, and the logic flaws are too much for this response.
At the outset, let me address the issue of titles and title usage to the author and the editor. Ms Kochan and Ms O’Leary, in my research into your backgrounds and positions, I have seen that you both identify as Catholic Apologists and journalists in the vast majority of the public record. That there is precious little in the way of biographical information, or professional credentialing is cause for concern, but there is a lot to be said from honest self education, so I will accept your self-identification as such. That is what you would want me to do, is it not?
In the same way, I and others like me who were assigned male gender at birth but have always known we were women, identify ourselves as transgender women (and the man who is pregnant identifies himself as a man). You do not like that, and you would prefer to call me a misguided, or surgically mutilated man, and the gentleman in Oregon a woman, but you have to know that there are also many who object to your calling yourselves journalists, they would rather call you political hacks, religious bigots and drivel merchants.
Do you think they have the right to call you those things? No, they do not. No more than you have a right to disrespectfully address us in the way you have in this series of articles/defenses. Changing the words does not change the issue. Showing respect is not a sin, but not showing respect is.
If this was an objective piece, rather than an editorial camouflaged as journalism, as the editor and as the author, you would not have felt a need to defend, quite vehemently in some cases, the veracity of the piece. To paraphrase the Bard, “The ladies doth protest too much, Methinks.”

Our Lord made no response in His own defense at any point in his life. In addition, he reserved his harshest rebukes, in fact His ONLY rebukes, while on earth, for the leaders of what constituted the equivalent of the church in that day. He did not push anyone away, he did not deny anyone comfort, he did not speak condemnation to anyone save the religious leaders.

I say this as a lead in to my point…it seems clear to me that the underlying premise to this article is the theological belief that there is a basic immorality in transgender people that makes them unclean and necessitates your efforts to get us to clean up our act or we can never come to Jesus. The truth is, I do not need to clean up my act and come to Jesus. I already came to Him, and He is cleaning up my act as a result, more some days than on others, but that is my fault. He is doing this in the order he sees most fitting, and he has not said anything about my gender change yet. IF that IS something on His list, then there are currently more important things that He is working on, and we have not gotten around to that one yet.

The part of this piece that bothers me the most is not the factual error, or the logic flaws, or the use of discredited pseudo research. It is that those who represent my Lord feel that they have to hide behind legal and scientific mumbo-jumbo. I see it in a lot of stuff the church does.

It has a name.

Hypocrisy.

Speaking the truth in love is a funny phrase, when you are using people like NARTH, Bailey, Dreger, and Lawrence for your sources. It is unfortunate that the only thing resembling scientific work you could find in support of your position is of highly questionable veracity.

I learned a long time ago to vet my sources, and make sure they don’t come back to haunt me and let me down when things get hard.

The American/western church has adopted a very bad habit. In order to keep our desire for a dominant church morality, those who call themselves our leaders have opted to frame every moral issue as a scientific or sociological issue. That is not what proclaiming the gospel is about. It is, in fact counterproductive. Jesus said, “Come unto me ALL who are weary and I will give you rest.” He did not say clean yourselves up, He did not say those of you who have been good this week, He said ALL who are weary and heavy laden. Prostitutes, come. Drug dealers, come. Junkies, Come. Gay people, Come. Transgender people, Come. Bankers, y’all must be worn the heck out, come. Priests and clergy, Come, but it is my way or the highway. AND I WILL GIVE YOU REST. Rest from having to sell yourself. Rest from having to sell drugs. Rest from whatever is wearing you down. Come ahead. We will figure it out, cause my yoke is easy, and my load is light. HE will change those who need to change in the way HE wants them to. No other man has that right to decide for me what I need to change, only Jesus.
Speaking the truth in love means being willing to tell the hurting that there is rest, in Jesus. That is the truth. It is judgment to tell those in pain they need to change anything before they come to Jesus. Maybe they don’t need to change their life like you did, because they may have junk you know nothing about that will kill them if they do it your way. IT IS GODS JOB to make those changes, and He is a whole lot better at it than you or some old white German guy. And as I read my Bible, He has reserved that task to Himself. He is patient and merciful now because He wants to give as many people as He can the opportunity to bring their burdens to Him and rest.

This is the age of grace, a time when God has ordained mercy through the cross. You cannot show mercy with a club.

It is just about time to end my response. I am not to address the remaining points, that has been done eloquently by others, and the pearls have been trampled, but you need to hear this little factoid I discovered:

2001, Dr. Bailey co-published a paper advocating abortion as an ethical means to terminate the pregnancy if the child was determined to be homosexual while still in the womb. It appears from that same paper that Dr Bailey believes that homosexuality is an evolutionary product and is inherited rather than a choice. (Parental Selection of Children’s Sexual Orientation, Aaron S. Greenberg, JD, and J. Michael Bailey, PhD Archives of Sexual Behavior, Vol. 30, No. 4, 2001)

In the same paper, Dr. Bailey states, “playing God is a theological objection that derives its force, if any, from religious doctrine. It has no place in a secular moral and policy analysis.” It appears that in your efforts to show that the devil is at work, you embrace the devil himself. You are quoting people who think you have no place in their discussion.

SINNERS IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY GOD? -- NOT SO MUCH

(NOTE: I recently had a conversation with a friend who said that Christians made it impossible for him to accept Christianity. I had to agree with him, and told him that for me, I ignore the salesmen, and look past them to the product. And from that perspective, the product needs no selling. This is the perspective from which I view Jesus, God and the Holy Spirit)

At some point we all make a decision to accept the manure that lands in our lap, or we choose to do something about it.

When we are at that point in our lives, we all too often find that pile of manure was deposited there by judgmentalist Christians (that is my term for fundamentalists who leave the fundamentals in the bathroom toilet). At that point, the only reasonable voice we hear may be the one we have long been told is neither reliable nor reasonable—the still small voice in our spirit that is God’s presence in us, the Holy Spirit.

Our government is based on a principal that the majority rules, and so this pollutant has infiltrated the church. But with God, that is not the case, the only voice that SHOULD matter is His, through the Holy Spirit who dwells within us. He wants us to live by faith in Him, and that faith means we should listen to His voice alone. Fear, on the other hand, sends us careening around the planet looking for a majority consensus to tell us we are doing okay, or at least okay enough that God is not going to smack us down and grind us to powder. I know all about this, I have been there, and sometimes still stop there for a while, hoping that I will somehow find someone to tell me I am okay.

Many, way too many, Christians live in this fear based belief system without being aware of it. It is what we have been taught by our traditions. It is a belief that says, “God’s gonna git ya” unless you follow the rules. The “sinners in the hands of an angry God” philosophy.

So, why don't we just take a close look at this “Angry God” to see if this true…

This angry God, while we were still His ENEMIES, while we were still AGAINST Him, sent the ONLY SON He ever sired to be the recipient of His judgment and wrath, so that I WOULD NOT HAVE TO, so that YOU WOULD NOT HAVE TO. And Jesus stretched out His hands WILLINGLY so that He would be the recipient of that wrath. WILLINGLY! INTENTIONALLY! AS PLANNED for eons. WITHOUT HESITATION. I fully believe the Bible shows us that Jesus fought to make sure he lived through all of the torture prior to the cross so that He could willingly be nailed to the coss. He did this for every one of us.

Angry hands? not so much.

The images of this "angry" God in the hours prior to the crucifixion are clear...JESUS praying, sweating drops blood, before God in Gethsemane; at once pleading to let the moment slide by and committing Himself to it; Jesus silent before the Sanhedrin…before Pilate… in the face of Roman whips and Roman fists; Jesus struggling along the path to reach the summit of Golgotha; Jesus, suspended in agony on the cross, in anguish crying out, “WHY have you forsaken me?; Jesus, God in the flesh, outstretched hands clearly demonstrating the true nature of Gods “anger.”

Angry hands? Not so much

And then He said, “IT…IS…FINISHED!!!!!!!!!!” God’s anger was fulfilled.

He was buried.

And then, by the power of the Holy Spirit, HE ROSE FROM THE GRAVE. He is ALIVE.

Because HE LIVES,

I can face tomorrow.

BECAUSE HE LIVES

ALL fear is GONE

Because I KNOW

HE HOLDS the future,

MY life is worth LIVING

BECAUSE HE LIVES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(Gaithers)

And because He lives, I need never fear an Angry God.

An angry, judgmental world? Certainly.

Gods angry hands? Not so much

A world that is hell bent for election on rebelling against Him? YEP, and as often as not that includes me.

And what is it that awaits me when I recognize the error of my ways? If it is God’s anger, it is an anger that takes the form of the atoning and cleansing blood of Jesus and the forgiving and restorative grace of God that surpasses even his perfect mercy.

Angry hands? Not so much

His hands…

…reach out to me,

…lifting me and

…consoling me.

Are they angry hands?

NOT SO MUCH as a speck of anger is in hose hands. The nail scars are ample proof of that.