Are You Being Straw Manned?

It’s a straw man inside of a straw man argument…

Because, the point of us as Christians, labeled as progressive, giving so much platform towards the transgender community is to purposely shine light upon an otherwise overlooked, and therefore, many times, [un]intentionally oppressed community.

The suicide rates and mental illnesses attached to this community many times has to do with the stigmas our world has previously attached to their identity. Yes, it’s completely relatable. And, as individuals who identify as LGBTQ it’s personal.

“I believe that the trans community is vast and varied, with all manner of perspectives were presented. the main thing they all share is the struggle to be authentic, to be known, to be heard and received. it is truly a civil rights struggle, and in the larger frame, the paradigm change for the way we think about gender.”

– Dr. Maureen Osborne

Thing is, far too many of us miss this. As one of the innovations of culture is that anxiety left unprocessed too easily turns into fear. An irrational form of unnecessarily being afraid.

If you want to follow Jesus, fear is something you’ll have to consciously face and overcome on a daily basis…

Perhaps we feel paralyzed by all of the brokenness in our world we’ve lost hope; maybe it was that we’ve no clue what information is actually true and what information is political misdirection; or, maybe we’ve become poor ourselves and are facing economic struggles of our own…

I mean, when was the last time you literally clothed the poor, fed someone who was hungry, provided shelter for the homeless…?

The one thing I’ve learned from the past three years of my life is that no matter how racist, bigoted, or authoritarian-ly abusive corporations and, even many of our Christian institutions have been repeatedly proven to be… without hope there’s only despair.

We get energy from meaning. And, by “energy” I mean, life. It’s when we can’t find meaning that we then succumb to settling for pleasure; to feel something, anything at all…

• Poverty.com says that an “estimated that a person dies of hunger or hunger-related causes every ten seconds.”
• “more than 3 billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day. More than 1.3 billion live in extreme poverty — less than $1.25 a day.” https://www.dosomething.org/us/facts/11-facts-about-global-poverty

We live in a society inundated with meaningless forms of energy. If we want to reorient our lives and fill them with meaning, I’ve never been more convinced of the fact that we then need to, eventually, stop “deconstructing” and transition into rebuilding, creating, and re-communing.