Jesus Was Non-Binary

ChristA re-post from our comrades at Friendly Fire Collective (11/27/18):

“So God created human beings, making them to be like himself. He created them male and female, himself.”

All people are made in god’s image. The vast variety of human souls are all a little reflection of rich, deep, complicated god.

In his piece “Is God Transgender?” Mark Sameth writes about the “highly elastic” language used to describe gender in the Hebrew bible. As an example, he describes how Adam is referred to as “them” and Eve is referred to as “he” in Genesis 3:12.

The first people, made in god’s image, switching between pronouns from sentence to sentence.

And Sameth clears up the waters: this isn’t just a fluke. He gives example after example of our favorite characters from the Hebrew bible (Noah, Rebecca, Mordecai, and more) who are described with pronouns and images different than what we would assume based on the binary genders we’ve boxed them up into.

So if we believe Jesus is god incarnate, and we believe people of all genders are a little reflection of our big big god, then what does that make our male-assigned Jesus?

Jesus was vast god-universe. Feelings and thoughts like an ocean swelled and dropped in those 24 little god ribs.

Us christians need to quit waiting for explicit scriptural validation to stand up for people who say they are oppressed. But us christians also have more responsibility than anyone to fight for our trans and non-binary siblings– our god was a body that was coded in ways that couldn’t capture the vastness of god’s person-hood.

From Trump’s disgusting erasure of trans lives to Bolsonoro’s terrifying anti LGBTQ rhetoric, from our churches to our schools, our trans and non-binary comrades are suffering. As christians, we have an obligation to honor the divinity in all people, to fight for it at all costs.

So check in on your trans and non-binary friends. Listen to them. Give them material and political support.

This is how we worship jesus.

Jesus we repent for the ways we have neglected your trans children. We rebuke the churches and the stale, lifeless christianity that doesn’t acknowledge their divinity. Save us from our sinfulness.

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