Tag: Desiring God

Captain Marvel and dragon slaying

“Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon. Exactly what the fairy tale does is this: it accustoms him for a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear.” — G.K Chesterton

Captain Marvel is the most powerful superhero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Captain Marvel is a woman. Captain Marvel is a human woman named Carol Danvers whose origin story is the latest instalment in the MCU because she’s going to be a major player in the next instalment of The Avengers. You can’t go far in a review or commentary on Captain Marvel as a cultural text without referring to Wonder Woman, the comparisons in terms of the function of these movies and these characters within their respective comic universes are obvious. We saw Captain Marvel yesterday, and Robyn’s analysis of this comparison was that Wonder Woman was a better movie (and funnier), and perhaps because it came first it felt more revolutionary — but that doesn’t mean Captain Marvel is not the sort of empowering movie we’d want our kids to see. Much of what I wrote in a review of Wonder Woman can be said about Captain Marvel.

Stories are powerful, and super hero movies, like it or not, are our modern myths, so stories that provide representation for people who aren’t used to seeing heroes who look just like them are powerful stories (think Black Panther). They don’t teach us that we need superpowers to save the world, because most of us know superpowers, outside of science (hello Iron Man) are unlikely to happen; they do teach us that evil can be overcome though, by good, often by love. And that’s a wonderful thing.

Stories that feature women as heroes have, until recent times, been exceptionally rare. Especially women that aren’t sidekicks. Back in 2016 I went looking for stories where women undertake what has been called ‘The Hero’s Journey’ (following a guy named Joseph Campbell) in a Facebook thread— there aren’t many, even though that thread had hundreds of comments. Finding stories with strong female characters who exist in their own right, not as trophies for men, is tricky. Which is why Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel are such powerful texts — but I’d argue they’re more powerful because despite the godlike powers of Wonder Woman or Captain Marvel in these movies, they don’t function independently but in cooperation with supportive men. They aren’t stories of independence but interdependence, in a way that very few movies with male heroes pull off. There’s a danger with any super hero story that peddles a myth that individual heroism will destroy dragons (and this is where I think Jordan Peterson’s use of mythology to promote individual heroism miss fires, even if he wants a balance of “feminine chaos” (emotion) and “masculine order” (reason)). I want my daughters to watch this movie for the same reason I want them to read Rosie Revere, Engineer, or to watch this astronaut, a real life Carol Danvers, Kate Rubin, read Rosie Revere from space. Representation is powerful and it helps girls imagine their place in the world counter to the myths that come from curse.

It’s too early in the piece for substantial spoilers of Captain Marvel, but I’ll just say, as you watch it, pay attention to the way the evil empire tries to control Carol Danvers by limiting her ability to embrace her emotions — she’s basically told the same thing as Elsa in Frozen — ‘don’t feel’ — she’s told that reason will be her greatest weapon, and that her head, not her heart (or not the combo of both) is what must guide her and restrain her use of power. This is wrong. It’s when she embraces her emotions, driven by love and a pure hatred of evil and injustice, that she becomes the most powerful figure in the MCU; that’s when she escapes the voices that want to control her (embodied by the Kree General Yon-Rogg). Yon-Rogg, her malevolent mentor, wants to harness her power for himself and his ends, he’s contrasted with Nick Fury, the future leader of S.H.I.E.L.D, who’s happy to wash the dishes with Carol, to empower her, and take her lead on saving the world and beating the bad guys.

The moral to this story is that if you have great powers — like the ability to blast energy from your hands, and fly — and you have a good heart and mind — you should use them to fight against evil, joining other people who want to fight against evil.

Of course, our ‘friends’ at Desiring God didn’t see the movie this way. The man who brought you ‘effeminate men use plastic forks’ (which I responded to here) now brings you this hit piece on Captain Marvel and all it stands for. In an earlier edition he bemoaned the loss of trophy-princess role models like Sleeping Beauty (that’s been edited because someone must have pointed out the problems inherent with a story where a princess is kissed without her consent by a strong man she didn’t know she needed). This one scored a positive retweet from John Piper too. So there’s that. Here’s a few choice quotes.

“I do not blame Marvel for inserting the trending feminist agenda into its universe. Where else can this lucrative ideology — which contrasts so unapologetically with reality — go to be sustained, if not to an alternative universe? Verse after verse, story after story, fact after fact, study after study, example after example dispels the myth of sameness between the sexes. The alternative universe where an accident infuses the heroine with superhuman powers, however, seems to stand as a reasonable apologetic for the feminist agenda…”

“As I consider Disney’s new depiction of femininity in Captain Marvel, I cannot help but mourn. How far we’ve come since the days when we sought to protect and cherish our women.

The great drumroll of the previous Avenger movies led to this: a woman protecting men and saving the world. The mightiest of all the Avengers — indeed, after whom they are named — is the armed princess turned feminist queen, who comes down from the tower to do what Prince Charming could not.

Am I nitpicking? It is a movie after all. I wish it were. Instead of engaging the movie’s ideology as mere fiction, a fun escape to another world, we have allowed it to bear deadly fruit on earth. Along with Disney, we abandon the traditional princess vibe, and seek to empower little girls everywhere to be strong like men. Cinderella trades her glass slipper for combat boots; Belle, her books for a bazooka. Does the insanity bother us anymore?”

Now, there are some bits to what Greg says that I’m sympathetic to — I do think there are physical differences between men and women that play out in the world as we experience it; unlike Greg I think these differences, when met by the cursed pattern of relationships in Genesis 3:16, create a world that is harmful for women in a way that it isn’t for men (though it is also harmful for men). This is what terms like ‘toxic masculinity’ and ‘patriarchy’ are describing — a world where men use their power to dominate and control women. Greg wants men to be men — for us to step up, not armed with plastic swords or forks, but real metal ones, to slay dragons on behalf of women everywhere. I do think men have a particular responsibility in a cursed world to choose to not benefit from the cursed status quo, but fight against it… Greg Morse is big on dragon slaying. It came up last time — and fair enough, because the story of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation is the story of the slaying of a dragon; but I fear Greg misses the point of that narrative. Especially, I think he misses the point that the dragon is slayed not by metal swords or heroism, but by a wooden stake (or cross), and that the design for men and women is that we take part in battle together, just as Jesus and his bride do…

“God’s story for all eternity consists of a Son who slew a Dragon to save a Bride. Jesus did not put his woman forward, and neither should we. Where Adam failed, Jesus succeeded. He is the Good Shepherd who laid his life down for his people. Even from the cross, God’s wrath crushing him, he saw to the welfare of his mother (John 19:26–27). Should we so cowardly send our women to protect our children and us? Protecting our women with our very lives is not about their competency, but their value.”

Greg wants men to fight battles and it seems that while he sees ‘laying down his life’ as a paradigm, he kinda wants men to do that while holding on to swords.

“Where can we more clearly display our ultimate resolve to love our women as queens than to step into hell on earth as sacrificial pawns in their defense? Generation after generation has mobilized its men to be devoured — that its women might not be.”

If a man with a sword (or gun) comes knocking on our door, I’m not going to send Robyn to face him alone… but I do wonder if there’s a better picture than the ‘solo warrior’ that Greg Morse might be blind to with his emphasis on individual heroism. I think he’s missing a vital part of the dynamic of Adam and Eve’s failure in the garden. Let me recast that story somewhat…

Genesis 1 tells us that God makes humanity — male and female — in his image; not just males, with females as trophies to be protected and kept at home. He tells us humans to ‘fill the earth and subdue it’ — it’s clear that both males and females are involved with filling the earth with living images of God in procreation, why then do we think the ‘subduing’ or ‘ruling’ — as God’s regents, his living representatives — is suddenly the man’s domain? Not a thing we do together?

Genesis 2 tells the story of a particular relationship — within God’s garden sanctuary — a heavenly place where God dwells with people that Adam is told to ‘expand’ (he’s told to cultivate the garden and keep it, following Genesis 1’s instruction to ‘be fruitful and multiply’. Adam can’t do this alone neither the expanding or guarding/keeping. So God makes him a ‘helper’ who completes him. They become one. There is no heroic individual in Genesis 2, but an heroic pair. Interdependent. The word ‘Ezer’ which is translated as ‘helper’ (Genesis 2:18) is used in places like these, in the name of one of Moses’ sons after God rescued Israel in his might:

“and the other was named Eliezer, for he said, “My father’s God was my helper; he saved me from the sword of Pharaoh.” — Exodus 18:4

And, as Israel is about to enter the promised land…

Blessed are you, Israel!
    Who is like you,
    a people saved by the Lord?
He is your shield and helper
    and your glorious sword.
Your enemies will cower before you,
    and you will tread on their heights. — Deuteronomy 33:29

In both these cases ‘ezer’ is used of God and is used in a military sense; a helper is involved in the combat.

Adam and Eve were made to fight a dragon — the serpent — just as Jesus was — and they were to do that together; exercising God’s rule over the world — his dominion even over serpents. And they failed — because they failed to cooperate. And the price for their failure is that rather than cooperating and ruling together, they (or we) compete for rule over one another, the sort of male heroism Desiring God describes is cursed not blessed.

Your desire will be for your husband,
    and he will rule over you.” — Genesis 3:16

The thing about Desiring God and its battlefield mentality in framing gender roles is that they’re focusing on ‘battles’ and missing the real war — the war we’re all called to fight as redeemed humans.

Note, that in Ephesians, Paul doesn’t say ‘finally, men’… but ‘finally,’ note also that he sees our enemy not as soldiers with guns but the devil and the ‘spiritual forces of evil’ — dragons are real. Note, that he also doesn’t expect women to sit behind enemy lines, but rather, to be dressed for battle. The real battle. The battle he doesn’t expect ‘the bride of Christ’ to sit on the sidelines for, but to be fighting — even as we know the real victory has been won.

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armour of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armour of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people. — Ephesians 6:1–18

In Revelation, John draws all this together for us, the real battle and the real victory — a victory that is secure not because Jesus took the sword, but because he went to the cross.

Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon,and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.

Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say:

“Now have come the salvation and the power
    and the kingdom of our God,
    and the authority of his Messiah.
For the accuser of our brothers and sisters,
    who accuses them before our God day and night,
    has been hurled down.
They triumphed over him
    by the blood of the Lamb
    and by the word of their testimony;
they did not love their lives so much
    as to shrink from death.
Therefore rejoice, you heavens
    and you who dwell in them!
But woe to the earth and the sea,
    because the devil has gone down to you!
He is filled with fury,
    because he knows that his time is short.” — Revelation 12:10-12

That’s our paradigm — that’s our  truth, our readiness, our shield, our helmet, and our sword — that Jesus has won the victory. That’s what men and women co-operate with as we bring this message of victory to the world and so see God’s image bearers spread across the face of the world in opposition to Satan. Heroic independence is result of the curse — thinking that we should maintain that approach to this real battle is a lie of the Devil. Our inter-dependent following of the example of Jesus, together, one in him because the victory is won in him is what sees the devil and his schemes defeated, and the blessing of the new kingdom coming here and now.

The Desiring God piece cites C.S Lewis as an example for why women shouldn’t go into battle — and yet, C.S Lewis gets it — he gets the power of stories, or myths, that they don’t teach us just about heroism in real world conflicts, but about the enchanted world we live in and the Spiritual battle. This is the point of the Narnia series; you know, that series where a group of brothers and sisters — Peter and Edmund joined by Lucy and Susan — go to battle, armed, against the White Witch (the serpent figure), behind Aslan (the Jesus figure), their victorious leader who wins a victory by death.

This quote is, unfortunately for the purpose of this piece, from an era where the most frequent pronoun for talking about an individual was ‘he’ — but it applies to the power of stories in all our lives, and it’s why we need Captain Marvel, and Wonder Woman, and the Chronicles of Narnia.

“…the fairy tale stirs and troubles him (to his life-long enrichment) with the dim sense of something beyond his reach and, far from dulling or emptying the actual world, gives it a new dimension of depth. He does not despise real woods because he has read of enchanted woods: The reading makes all real woods a little enchanted.” — C.S Lewis

I want my daughters, my wife, my sisters, and my friends who are women to see and be inspired by Captain Marvel. I want them to be inspired by Lucy and Susan (though not, ultimately, Susan — who ends up choosing “feminine” things like lipstick and stockings (you know, what the princesses Desiring God misses would spend their time pursuing in order to not accidentally be masculine), rather than the ‘last battle’ and Narnia — the things of this world rather than the kingdom). I want my daughters to read stories and watch stories where there are brave heroes who represent them so they take up their place in the real war. Fairy tales are powerful not because they teach us how to navigate a world where bullets fly, but how to face the one who drags us in to curse and away from blessing.

When I don’t Desiring God

Of all the commentary about Gillette’s recent video essay on toxic masculinity/razor advertisement the one that left me scratching my head the hardest was this piece posted on Desiring God.  Now, I’m not unbiased. I’ve long grown weary of John Piper and his troupe of culture warriors. As I’ve packed my books into boxes for an upcoming (temporary) house move, Piper’s books haven’t been going in the keep, giveaway, or sell piles. I find the vibe of Piper and his merry men’s take on manhood and womanhood hard to take (toxic even). But this piece lacks the nuance Piper brings to his own cultural analysis. And that’s saying something.

I didn’t write about the piece at the time because to write about things like this is to give them oxygen, and clicks.

And look, off the bat, I’ll say that the way adjectives work is to qualify nouns, so I have no problem with ‘toxic masculinity’ describing a certain sort of masculinity in the same way that ‘poisonous water’ tells me not to drink water that will be bad for my health and ‘ridiculous article’ describes the both the first of this now two part series, and its follow up. As a result, I’m more likely to be drawn to the Gillette ad than the Desiring God ‘think piece’ (and I use that adjective not to describe actual intellect, but to describe a certain sort of genre of blog post, and I use ‘blog’ there to differentiate a written article from a piece of wood in the ground, because this is how language works and that is important to understand).  Here are some of the more head scratching moments from the original post.

Too often we swing from decrying chauvinism and abuse to producing a society of plastic forks, nonfat lattes, and men who don’t mind going to church because of the free babysitting. When our children look at men today — the kind in television shows, homes, and the classroom — what do they see? What is this masculinity of tomorrow we are all concerned with?

I don’t know if it’s ironic that the guy gets on a soapbox about pendulum swings and over-correcting and then creates, ex nihilo a set of weird, extreme, measures to determine whether or not the man in your life is not quite man enough.

“Just having returned from a visit to “the greatest place on earth,” my wife and I were shocked at how many men boldly acted like women. Lispy sentences, light gestures, soft mannerisms, and flamboyant jokes were everywhere to be seen — on display for a park flooded with children. No hiding it. No shame. No apologizing. This perversion of masculinity warranted no commercials.”

Yes. We must certainly never let a real man make flamboyant jokes. Especially not in parks where they might accidentally groom children with a Gillette razor and no apology. What’s even more bizarre is that while creating this rod, and using it to measure someone’s manhood, or, er, masculinity, the author returns to his rod in the follow up. But there’s a couple of other points that merit some deeper critique. One, the author supplies a series of ‘dragon killing’ non-passive examples of masculine manhood from the Bible, lionising David for his ‘manly’ courage (and ignoring that when he didn’t go to war he decided to send armed men to ‘take’ Bathsheba so he could sleep with her… which has absolutely disastrous results for the next generation of his family, especially his sons). That sort of ‘morality tale’ thing is not how Bible characters work, they’re much more complicated and three dimensional than black and white caricatures allow… if it was one might make the following observation from Genesis 25, where we meet two brothers of whom God later says “Jacob I loved, Esau I hated” — ask yourself which of these brothers embodies a more ‘Desiring God’ style masculinity?

 The boys grew up, and Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the open country, while Jacob was content to stay at home among the tents. Isaac, who had a taste for wild game, loved Esau, but Rebekah loved Jacob.

Once when Jacob was cooking some stew, Esau came in from the open country, famished. He said to Jacob, “Quick, let me have some of that red stew! I’m famished!” — Genesis 25:27-30

Jacob, at home, smooth skinned (thanks Gillette) cooking with mum… or Esau the hairy meat-eating hunter…

Now, there were many other awful things about the first Desiring God piece (the bit in the heading, that brought in some double entendre to compare Gillette’s ad about personal grooming with the way adults prepare children for abuse was, I thought, beyond the pale); but it seems the worst of all the bad things is that the editorial team at Desiring God believed it worthy of a sequel, and not the sort of sequel that brings clarity, it’s simply a double down. It’s a piece that assumes not just the doubtful the exegetical bona fides of the first, but it also  quotes, and argues from the authority of the first piece and its ‘rules of the faith’ in order to make even more ridiculous qualifications — while also acknowledging that gender norms (the things we describe as ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ are culturally constructed. Anybody who dares question his adroitly observed and official list of effeminate qualities is on #teamSatan.

“But as it pertains to today, Satan whispers confusions into modern ears. If one should give such traits to effeminacy as “lispy sentences, light gestures, soft mannerisms, and flamboyant jokes,” Satan immediately suggests a handful of men who, not having these qualities in the aggregate, have one individually. He lisps, but he isn’t effeminate; he just has a gap in his teeth. He has a softer demeanor, but he isn’t effeminate; he just is introverted and weak in tone. Instead of simply concluding (rightly) that such people aren’t effeminate, we conclude that these traits don’t really characterize effeminacy. We deny the existence of forests by examining each tree individually.”

But effeminacy stands as an obvious forest to all honest men and women. The deception became clear to a friend recently when, after he nitpicked each individual trait, I asked plainly, “So you are saying that you cannot tell when a man lives an effeminate lifestyle?” Of course he could.”

Of course. Then he argues for these ‘tells’ being culturally constructed.

“God also gives us a culture to live in, which assigns masculine and feminine to certain amoral things like speech, objects, and behavior. American culture associates pink with women, as it does dresses (contra Scottish culture and William Wallace’s kilt), and expects heterosexual men not to walk down the street holding hands with another man (as heterosexual men often do in other cultures).”

So if it’s about how a culture understands things like speech, objects, and behaviour — what is wrong with a culture redefining the symbolism of different colours, items of clothing, or styles of speech? How does this work in an increasingly multi-cultural world where not only are people from different ethnic backgrounds and nations coming together in public places, but sub-cultures exist that interpret different symbols differently? Perhaps his rod isn’t a great measuring stick at all?

There is half a point buried in the dross about what happens when we moderns de-couple our personhood from a sense of ‘givenness’ — including of our biology — where there are things that are essentially and physically true about who we are that come from a creator and define us externally. Without our personhood being given to us we’re left constructing an identity and wondering what, if anything, is ‘essential’ and out of reach of our imagination. This is one of the reasons why identity, built on personal autonomous choice, is a thin concept — but you won’t find that analysis (or acknowledgment of complexity) in the Desiring God pieces. The closest we get is:

Sex, in this modern chaos, means little more than body parts. Males happen to have male genitalia — but that need not lock them into expressing their sexuality in any particular way. They can “marry” either a man or a woman, and even decide to keep their male members or not. Fluidity is one of Satan’s new favorite words. In this view, man, enthroned as his own maker, chooses who he (or she or they or “ze”) will become.”

Perhaps, really, this is just a Centre for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood piece on the perils of egalitarian theology masquerading as biting cultural commentary.

All around us, mountains of God’s glory carved into the landscape of his world are eroding. Homosexuality and egalitarianism flatten distinctions between husbands and wives. Androgyny and effeminacy flatten vital sex expressions between men and women. But God made us distinctly male and female, and gave Eve to Adam (not vice versa), because he already conspired in his eternal plan to give the church to his Son. Our distinct manhood and womanhood, our marriages, and our human nature itself guide us to properly reflect the most precious reality in the universe: God’s glory shining forth in the good news of his Son.

Look, this last sentence is absolutely true.  The telos of heterosexual marriage and sex is the heavenly marriage between Christ and his bride, the church. But, I’d humbly suggest two things. First, the author of these pieces should grapple with a masculinity that also allows us blokes to be united, in the church as the bride (which is presumably feminine, right?). Which, along with a little humility around the area of cultural construction of ‘norms,’ makes space for slightly more nuance than black and white proclamations of ‘shoulds’ and ‘Satans’… Second, the author might like to consider how people, both as individuals and cultures, might be more complicated than his biting cultural analysis and wit allows, and how his ‘norms’ might ‘flatten distinctions’ between men or women who are different to other men or women… He might work a little harder to not impose a one size fits all rod on different people, not just because some men have high pitched voices or a gap between their teeth that creates a lisp, but because biology, itself, isn’t as straightforward as he’d like it to be… which isn’t to say that there aren’t essential, rather than constructed biological realities, but rather that those essential realities are less polarisingly binary than he might think (or argue).

What’s interesting in this particular cultural moment is that there are, in the complexities, fascinating opportunities to paint a different and compelling picture for how different experiences and physical realities can be accommodated in loving union — not through an open slather approach to marriage, but in the body, or bride, of Christ. Instead of rod-beating calls to arms, we Christians might engage in careful listening to, and observation of, the stories being lived out by our neighbours. We might notice fracture lines appearing within modern coalitions of interest, around competing accounts of identity, and stand by with compassion, a better story, and more radical inclusion of difference. We might read a piece like this recent article by gay, conservative, blogger Andrew Sullivan and ask if his utopian vision might be best satisfied in union with Christ, and inclusion in the church — in a way that helps people order their lives, and loves, around his love (rather than around rod-whacking, line-drawing, and graceless posturing). Sullivan identifies a trend within the trans- movement (as opposed to the trans- experience) that seeks to eradicate biological sex (something essential) as a factor in one’s personhood, in favour of gender (something constructed). He, like Desiring God, is trying to articulate what is contested about masculinity and femininity in this cultural moment. He says, of a piece of legislation in America that is seeking to replace biological sex with a broadened category of ‘gender identity’ which includes “gender-related identity, appearance, mannerisms, or characteristics, regardless of the individual’s designated sex at birth…” this redefinition has the same issues as the Desiring God insistence that gender-related identity, appearance, mannerisms, and characteristics are essential to personhood and the performance of our particular sex/identity. Sullivan points out that this view is a regressive move that reduces us humans to stereotypes awaiting normalisation and classification:

“It implies that a tomboy who loves sports is not a girl interested in stereotypically boyish things, but possibly a boy trapped in a female body. And a boy with a penchant for Barbies and Kens is possibly a trans girl — because, according to stereotypes, he’s behaving as a girl would. So instead of enlarging our understanding of gender expression — and allowing maximal freedom and variety within both sexes — the concept of “gender identity” actually narrows it, in more traditional and even regressive ways. What does “gender-related mannerisms” mean, if not stereotypes?

Sullivan is worried that this will ultimately mean a gay identity — built on attraction to physical realities about another person, rather than simply ‘gender expression’ — will be flattened out into a ‘trans’ identity (because their attraction is about something more nebulous and quasi-spiritual than about the relationship between sex and gender being held together in a particular person). He says:

“This is the deeply confusing and incoherent aspect of the entire debate. If you abandon biology in the matter of sex and gender altogether, you may help trans people live fuller, less conflicted lives; but you also undermine the very meaning of homosexuality. If you follow the current ideology of gender as entirely fluid, you actually subvert and undermine core arguments in defense of gay rights…

Transgender people pose no threat to us, and the vast majority of gay men and lesbians wholeheartedly support protections for transgender people. But transgenderist ideology — including postmodern conceptions of sex and gender — is indeed a threat to homosexuality, because it is a threat to biological sex as a concept.”

Then he says:

“There is a solution to this knotted paradox. We can treat different things differently. We can accept that the homosexual experience and the transgender experience are very different, and cannot be easily conflated. We can center the debate not on “gender identity” which insists on no difference between the trans and the cis, the male and the female, and instead focus on the very real experience of “gender dysphoria,” which deserves treatment and support and total acceptance for the individuals involved. We can respect the right of certain people to be identified as the gender they believe they are, and to remove any discrimination against them, while also seeing biology as a difference that requires a distinction. We can believe in nature and the immense complexity of the human mind and sexuality. We can see a way to accommodate everyone to the extent possible, without denying biological reality. Equality need not mean sameness.

We just have to abandon the faddish notion that sex is socially constructed or entirely in the brain, that sex and gender are unconnected, that biology is irrelevant, and that there is something called an LGBTQ identity, when, in fact, the acronym contains extreme internal tensions and even outright contradictions. And we can allow this conversation to unfold civilly, with nuance and care, in order to maximize human dignity without erasing human difference.

Let me just pull out a little bit of that pull quote so that you can mull over how much it is actually arguing for something Desiring God both says it wants when it comes to the difference between men and women, while also trying to eradicate difference under the subsets ‘male’ and ‘female’…

“We can see a way to accommodate everyone to the extent possible, without denying biological reality. Equality need not mean sameness.”

What if that vision for freedom and accommodation and acknowledgment of biological reality actually comes from a church upholding the givenness of our personhood, and the discovery of our purpose according to that givenness, rather than the cultural norms around us? What if we discover that personhood in Jesus? What if this happens not in a way that insists we conform to norms, or ‘sameness,’ but that acknowledges that our persons find their purpose not in expressive individualism, but in reflecting the glory of God as his image bearers, in community and relationships, through the redemption of our bodies in Jesus and our transformation into his image by the Spirit?”

These pieces double down on weird, culturally constructed, visions for manhood and masculinity from a previous cultural moment, instead of finding positive things to say in the face of poorly articulated cultural constructions. They co-opt the image of Jesus to advance this cause instead of thinking carefully about masculinity, femininity, and about how biological realities shape and inform both created patterns and sinful distortions of those patterns. They fail to find the antidote for cursed toxic masculinity in the curse-breaking life and death of Jesus — for example how his strength plays out in the defeat of Satan at the cross, and how Jesus’ life models a counter-cultural approach to a toxic masculinity that is big on violence and power, rather than wanting a sea of unshaved mini-Samsons to punch out the Philistines…  but more than that, they exclude from the body those who belong. They double down on Esaus at the expense of Jacobs.

The tragedy of these two pieces from Desiring God is that they do the over-correcting opposite of the cultural wave it seeks to defend against. In a way that is every bit as damaging as the ‘eradication’ of anything essential about our personhood. If nothing is free to be constructed, intentionally, by us, as a sort of cultural expression or performance of character, or at least if the construction is only done at a cultural level then you’re in big trouble if you sit biologically or experientially outside the norm. There is no space for an intersex individual to navigate the world on their terms, let alone those who like Jacob, simply prefer a performance of their biological sex, or gender, that others might deride as weak. There is no space for a masculinity (or femininity) as a deliberate counter-cultural construction that deliberately, consciously, and individually, communicates one’s particular story (even if it is that our story is of being reconnected to the givenness of things), the only way to articulate a Biblical manhood or womanhood is to see our lives as combative performances in a culture war. There is no place for the subjectivity of aesthetics or experience (and taste) to be accommodated in neighbourly difference and love within communities. It robs us of the very personhood it seeks to establish, and the richness of life together.