God Without The Sacred
From my helpless beginning I am acted upon, the text and stage directions of gender are constantly rehearsed into me. I am taught mu part so completely that I begin to believe that it is no longer a play, but is in fact natural.
For both Freud and Lacan, the child is at first ignorant of sexual difference and so cannot take up a sexual position
“The use of either of these passages in this way is in fact odd and indeed rather comical, for there is a Rabbinical gloss on Genesis 1:27 which suggests that “Adam”, at least, most certainly did not have a clear and unequivocal gender identity, and indeed that Adam was an hermaphrodite.”
one of the many features of being a child in the eyes of lacan is that the child has no ability to determine the difference between its own gender and that of the other. for all intense purposes, the world is genderless. when the world takes on gender that it is when power, control, and colonialism begin to help identify how relationships should be treated. this is so interesting because christ seems to capitalized on the notion that to be a part of the kingdom, to participate in the perpetuation of this new reality, we must become like children. ultimately, genderless. but let’s be honest our society has quite a sordid history when it comes to the sexualization of gender. there have been periods in our history when women were marginalized, beaten and even killed at the hands of men simply because they did not fulfill an anticipated role.
religion has sadly played a role in perpetuating myths that should have never existed. i think the mythology of gender has only been enhanced by christian interpretations of god. for some, god refers to a being that inhabits the male psyche and claims his dominance over humanity through his gender. for others god is female and embraces all with her loving touch. (these are mere generalizations to make a point that we try to understand god the only way we have been taught to, through the sexualization of holy objects).
we attempt to understand that which is impossible to understand and by claiming that god holds a gender transforms god into nothing more than a subject submerged through category. when we dissect reality into categories and cannabilize existence into over-sexualized socially constructed roles we do nothing more than just that. we leave reality and enter into the constructs that have been created for us.
there is this one point where jesus is sitting with a woman in a room with some pharisees. the posture he was taking was one of extreme radicality, the implications were astounding, not to mention her role in that society and how others would have received her naturally. but jesus doesn’t seem to be caught up too much with the social mores or even categories. its not that he never addresses someone by their gender, but he doesn’t seem to let their gender dictate to him how they should be treated. paul** does the same later when he states that there is neither ‘male nor female’. he dissolves gender roles into the christ element.
now, one of the most controversial issues right now in christendom is the role of women in church and even society. when so much energy is spent on trying to define the role of a socially constructed signifier what happens is the myths are perpetuated and people are forgotten. in the moment that we allow our fictions to take control is the moment we begin to think we can be the only right one’s in the room. in the most perverse way when we agumentatively define gender roles we are violently participating in a form of slavery. and so ultimately to be a person who is inhabited by the christ nature is to liberate people from our need to over-sexualize our existence.
it is our addiction to definition that has drawn boundaries that should have never been there. it is in our pure intention to understand that we have come to misunderstand one another. the gospel seems the very object intent on rectifying that by promising a new kind of social redemption, the kind where people are people who have value regardless of social signifiers.
gender too easily falls into the dualistic interpretations of reality. good/bad. black/white. subject/object. gay/straight. and the list goes on and on. when we no longer decide to subscribe to the rhetoric of the day, namely male and female, we then begin participating in the scandalous thing referred to as existence. we get to revel in the art of our being rather than attempt to combine scientific rigour to the way we define roles and relationships which seem to be a destructive after-effect of enlightenment***.
the more time we spend on defining one another is time spent hiding from the anxiety of silence. we fear not knowing who we are. we have been made to believe that what is true of us from birth (i.e., we are male & female; we are sinners, we are ‘children’ – as true as the last one is, it is not the title that defines us, but it is merely a way to interpret our relationships).
this is why paul says what he says, he is trying to restore the mystical element to our existence that is hidden in the universal kernel he refers to as ‘christ’. all are hidden in this. all signifiers, all roles, all ways of being are redeemed in the christ element. no longer do they exist. i would also add to this list that there is neither homosexual nor heterosexual but all are hidden in the universal kernel of christ. it is not that we all lose distinction here, on the contrary, in christ we gain all of the distinction because it is in christ where all of these distinctions exist. this space is a radical one.
but, when we participate in socially colonizing gender roles we abuse & neglect one another. isn’t the orthodox gospel that thing that rescues us from our former oppression? wasn’t this the heart of passover, god rescuing people from those others that try to dictate to them their identity. if we readily accept labels and gender roles, it would be like asking for egypt again as the former jewish slaves occasionally did. but to chart new territory seems to be the role of hope, the impossible awaits us.
let’s use a simple example to see what i mean. modern chivalry. as well intentioned as this perspective it is, it rests on the notion that women must be in distress, a good book to read on the christianization of chivalry is by author John Eldredge in Wild at Heart, where he dedicates one whole chapter to the role of women as princesses who need to be rescued. the intention might be pure, but nonetheless demonstrates the destructive nature hiding behind binary oppositions.
** paul at times seems to deal with gender roles in some of his letters, but these letters do not seem to be congruent with the nature/person of paul as understood by current scholars, a good book to read would be Rediscovering Paul – follow this link: http://www.westarinstitute.org/Polebridge/rediscoveringpaul.html
***the enlightenment is not the first time that these roles erupted on the scene, but it is in the enlightenment where the science of knowledge became central to the way in which approach epistemology.
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