Tell No More Lies

Totally meant to blog yesterday but got distracted doing other kinds of work. So this morning I will do this first before I do other things. Also, it is gray and rainy and I’m pretty sure I can take a walk tomorrow. So this seems to be an exciting week. There’s lots going on out there. But first, I forgot to link this podcast I did about Lent. The article will be along at some point. It’s not too late to observe Lent!! This may be the perfect day to even remember that it is a thing.

Let’s see, on Twitter at least, the chatter this morning seems to be all about the polarizing issue of the Judge Brown Jackson hearings. I didn’t have a chance to watch them, and so had to content myself with all those clips cut out of context, and the inevitable heapings of memes that filled up my feed. The thing that people seemed most worked up about is that when asked to say what a woman is, she said she can’t because she isn’t a biologist.

All this is, according to Twitter, important for two reasons. The first is that the LGBTQ movement, in a chaotic kind of way, is trying to say that biology is not the thing that determines what someone is. A person can be biologically one way, but that would not be the true nature of that person. A man who “feels” like a woman could be a woman even if nothing about his biological experience makes him a woman. So, it seems, that Judge Brown Jackson did not give the right kind of answer to help that movement along, though it seems that she was trying to do that very thing. The second reason it is important is that of course she does know what a woman is. She is one. She was chosen for the court because she is a woman.

I’m pretty sure I’ve said this before, but I wasn’t a feminist in any meaningful sense of that word before a few minutes ago. It was only when high profile men like La Jenner came along and won Woman of the Year awards for being better women than women that I suddenly decided to care about the Biological Realities of Women TM. I mean, I did care, before, but not in a worked-up way. Similarly, I wouldn’t have called myself a complementarian two years ago. The question has always been profoundly uninteresting to me. This is the freest, most delightful time to be a human person–man or woman. As a woman (no scare quotes) I got to go to a wonderful university without having to pretend I was a man. I was taught to read and write without being told it would be impossibly hard because of being a woman. I have had interesting jobs and wonderful relationships with all kinds of people. Along the way, no one told me I wasn’t allowed to do the things I wanted to do because of my biological sex. So for some people to come along and tell women now that they are oppressed, and in the same breath splain to them what makes them who they are (their biological realities) are not what make them who they are…well, I am digging in my heels.

Feminism over the last two hundred years is obviously a mixed bag. Some good. A lot of bad. And complementarianism in the church is likewise a mixed bag. Some people are jerks about it, or think that it is literally everything, privileging their ideas about how it works out over even the gospel. But reasonable people should be able to talk about it without losing their minds. Men and women are different. It is not bigoted to say this. They are the same in their humanity, but different in the biological expressions of that underlying sameness. In the Bible, the sameness and differences strangely and mysteriously pertain to the gospel. Does this upset a lot of people? Yes. But it is not upsetting, any more than the rotation of the earth is upsetting. It is a livable and kindly truth, one that men and women have enjoyed since God first took it in hand to save his creatures from their sins. What is unkind, and, dare I say it, wicked, is to lie and say you don’t know what men and women are, or that they are the same, or that they are not both human. The more you lie, the less livable and comfortable everything becomes. If men and women would read the Bible and try to muck along with each other in obedience to God and kindliness towards each other, they would find that being men and women together in the Kingdom of God is a pretty happy experience. Uncomfortable sometimes, but more usually a gracious and satisfying time.

Have a nice day!