God Peed and Pooped Too

Yesterday the Departments of Education and Justice issued a joint letter directing public schools to allow students to use bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity, providing guidelines that will ensure “transgender students enjoy a supportive and nondiscriminatory school environment.” This is the latest round of the increasingly divisive national debate about LGBTQI rights.

As a youth pastor I saw firsthand how challenging it is for young people and families to experience gender nonconformity. If you are a youth worker who has not yet encountered this situation, it’s just a matter of time so you better get yourself ready. Children and youth on this journey need supportive families, schools, and faith communities. Positive messages and support from religious leaders is critical.

Perhaps it is appropriate that the front line of our current struggle is the bathrooms of our students. It reminds us of an important, if rarely considered, historical fact: Jesus of Nazareth peed and pooped. I don’t suppose we know where or how he did it, but there is no doubt that as a human being Jesus engaged in these basic human activities.

If we believe in the mystery of the incarnation—that in some special way God was present in the life and being of Jesus of Nazareth—then we have a theological fact to consider as well: the God of creation peed and pooped too. Nothing—including our peeing and pooping—is beyond the redemptive love of God revealed in Jesus. God cares about peeing and pooping. I can’t resist the pun: God gives a shit.

So don’t think for a second that this bathroom issue is below us or unworthy of public discourse. For our students—including the ones who experience gender and sexual identities outside of the cultural and scientific limitations of the Bible—the basic human acts of peeing and pooping matter.

And rest assured: the God of love is right there in the midst of it.