Disregarding The Body – Podcast
The Crisis of our Time
Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art
Companion Posts
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Starting Again
I was born in the sixties. But I am not a child of the 60’s. My family was lower-middle class, and by the standards of the time, traditional in most every way. Dad was a minister. If he or mom had lived into their 90’s they would not have imagined the social changes we have witnessed in the last 20 years. It would be too easy to say the sexual revolution of the 60’s caused all this change, as some conservatives maintain. But the roots of this change go back much further than the swinging 60’s.
So I’m embarking with some misgivings on a survey of cultural history. There are deep intellectual and cultural traditions that have shaped our everyday lives. We’ve come to a point in the Western world where the statement “I’m a woman trapped in a man’s body” is comprehensible to many public leaders, at least in public. That phrase would be completely incomprehensible to my parent’s generation, in public or private, not to mention every preceding generation. It is still incomprehensible to many, if not most people today. But if you express your bewilderment in public, say at many workplaces in the Western world, increasingly the odds are you will be regarded as stupid, immoral or worse. You may be reprimanded for your irrational “phobia.” You might even have your career derailed. If you broadcast your view on a public forum, say Twitter, expect the Twitterati to pounce with the ferocity of a caged unfed Tiger. In certain parts of the world you may even be charged with a hate-crime for your expressed incredulity at the latest massive cultural shift. (See the following posts, here & here.)
As a 60’s poet might say, “The times they are a changin.”
The tectonic cultural shift in the last 20 years is quite breathtaking. Regardless of what you think about gay marriage, we have gone from year 2000 where the majority of Americans were opposed to gay marriage to today where normalization of Transgenderism is fast approaching.
A long and winding road brought us to this point. I want to offer a thoughtful and hopefully generous exposition, from a Classic Christian point of view, of how we got here. As I go, I’ll be documenting some disturbing current events. (Read my next post). I hope that even those who disagree with Classic Christianity will find here a fair and readable assessment of our state of affairs. (post continues page 2)
Embrace, Don’t Affirm
(Originally posted June 18, 2021)
I ended the last post with a stat from Facebook. That statistic came from 2016, so perhaps the number is even higher today.1I just found out the number is over 70 today! Of course, this is Facebook. Young people left Facebook a long time ago (in internet time). Tumblr, Reddit, Tiktok, YouTube, Instagram & Snapchat are more their style. And the gender categories celebrated there are head spinning. Let’s just say “gender fluidity” is the norm. Here are a few:
- Agender
- Asexual
- Bigender
- Binary
- Bisexual
- Cisgender
- Gay
- Genderfluid
- Genderqueer
- Lesbian
- Non-binary
- Pansexual
- Polysexusal
- Third gender
- Transgender
- Transexual
- Trigender
- Two-spirit
Facebook, today’s hangout for “ole fuddie duddies” had 56 of these in 2016.
56.
Staking out your territory on the gender map has the feel of a competitive sport. Young people have always tried to carve out a niche for themselves, even though, truth be known, they tended to fall into congregational coolness. But today, because of the Internet, their potential universe of “friends” has grown exponentially with increasing variety. Finding someone “just like you” on the Internet is relatively easy. In the past, as a group young people weren’t all that different. Just different from their parents. But today the difference is dangerous in a way that a tattoo, a piercing, or the “Goth” look never was.
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I do want to be clear about this. Gender dysphoria2Gender Dysphoria — formerly known as “Gender Identity Disorder” is characterized by a severe and persistent discomfort in one’s biological sex. is real. A very small number of people suffer from it. They need all the help we can give them.
If you know someone with gender dysphoria, or even if they just think they have gender dysphoria (most), you should become their friend. Don’t avoid. Embrace. I have atheist friends who are, in my opinion, mentally and morally confused about God. And they know that I believe that about them. We are still friends. Unlike what happened to Rev. Randall, they won’t report me to the authorities because my view of their Atheism makes them uncomfortable. Or attacks their dignity. Or their sense of self-worth and well-being. I still treat them with respect. I still love them. And they know it. They think I’m wrong. And I think they are wrong. But we are still friends. I embrace but I don’t affirm.
Now, of course, gender dysphoria is psychologically debilitating for those who really have it. And, unlike my Atheist friends, someone with gender dysphoria suffers mental anguish. They need a different kind of help. But, as a Christian it would not be loving to affirm what I believe is mental and emotional confusion.
I can love someone with anorexia nervosa3An emotional disorder characterized by an obsessive desire to lose weight by refusing to eat. (another dysphoria) without affirming her body destroying behavior. It would be wrong of me to say, “you’re looking good girl, keep going! I affirm your desire to be more comfortable with your body.” It would be wrong and unloving to do that. She hates her appearance and is slowly killing herself. No matter how strongly she feels about it, I will not affirm that belief.
But also as a Christian it would be wrong to exclude her from my peer group simply because she is suffering and different. Exclusion may be more “comfortable” for me and my peers but it would be unloving. We must lovingly include her and ask God for practical wisdom as we live together. There are few “hard and fast” rules here. Reaching out and embracing is the overarching rule. The details of how we interact will no doubt vary from situation to situation.
Still a Christian mustn’t lie. A “trans-man” is not really a man. A “trans-woman” is not really a woman. But you don’t need to say everything all at once. Presenting a “solid argument” to someone who is hurting won’t work. Putting your arm around them, walking with them, listening to them, ironically, offering your embodied self to them will work much better. Paul’s great chapter about love in 1st Corinthians, the one you hear at weddings all the time, describes love first and foremost as “Patient.” And then “Kind.” So, by all means, a Christian should patiently, prayerfully embrace. It won’t be easy. But it could work wonders.
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The comparison between anorexia nervosa & gender dysphoria is appropriate because “transitioning” via puberty blockers, cross-sex hormone treatment and sex-reassignment surgery does real physical and irreversible damage to the body. Believing in a Creator should keep Christians from affirming those who deny the body God gave them. We certainly can’t affirm their desire to do damage to that body. There are some clinicians and surgeons, Christian and non-Christian, who are getting out of the specialty they trained for because they can’t advise or perform double mastectomies on perfectly healthy breasts. This is not what they “signed up for” they say. They entered their professions to be healers.
Some conscientious professionals who subscribe to the Hippocratic oath, “first do no harm” are being asked to go against their conscience or leave their chosen professional field. Surgeons in the Western world are being told that if they perform double mastectomies on cancer patients then they must perform the same surgery on the perfectly healthy breasts of a young woman who claims she is a man trapped in a woman’s body.
I repeat the question from my post about Rev Randall. Is this the world we want to live in? We need to come up with some answers quick. Things are moving swiftly.
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A sword of Damocles hangs over many heads now. Professionals are being told they must agree with the patient’s self diagnosis. Those who counsel otherwise, and advise young patients to “wait and see” may lose their license or be fired. I’ll blog about one notable person soon. They are wrongheadedly called “conversion therapists.” Some 19 U.S. states at last count have banned mental health professionals from engaging in so-called “conversion therapy” at the risk of losing their license. The U.K., Canada, and Australia have anti-conversion therapy laws. Conversion Therapy has been used in the past to “convert” homosexuals so the concept packs quite a rhetorical punch when used by Transgender Activists today. However, homosexuals don’t deny their biological sex. This is different.
There are more than a few adult homosexuals, some professional clinicians, who openly thank “their lucky stars” that they were not born in this generation. Had they been, their “gender non-conformity” may have taken them down the Trans path of irreversible bodily alteration.
Apply your practical wisdom to this question, who is the conversion therapist?
Is it the one who is trying to help a person align their thoughts and feelings with the body they were given at birth or the professional who disregards the body and proposes irreversible radical surgeries combined with life-long hormone treatments in hopes of aligning that outer body with a patient’s inner desires?
Who is the conversion therapist here?
Quite an Orwellian twist, don’t you think?
Increasingly the only acceptable approach is the real conversion therapy resulting from the “affirmative care model.”
We are told we should begin our interactions, whether social or professional, with the conclusion. And that conclusion must be that a person has gender dysphoria if they say they have it. Using this “affirmative care model” clinicians are placing our teenagers on an irreversible path after a single counseling session. I’ve lost count of the stories I’ve read or seen in the last 9 months of young people who have come to regret their decision to transition (they are called de-transitioners). They tell stories of how after a single session, a one hour meeting(!) with a clinical therapist they were prescribed puberty blockers and/or cross-sex hormones. As I mentioned in my last post, Oregon’s “age of consent” for certain healthcare services means a self diagnosing 15 year old girl can walk into a Planned Parenthood clinic and receive a dose of Testosterone 40 times the natural female level. A note from a therapist or mom is not required. She just has to sign a consent form (which no doubt has been cleared by lawyers in case a 15 year old regrets her decision and thinks about suing later in life.) After taking “T” for three months her body is forever changed. Double mastectomy is the next step of her transition, halted only by legal-age requirements which are country and state specific.
For natal females in almost every case the combination of puberty blockers to halt natural biological development and treatment with Testosterone causes infertility. And often an inability to experience orgasm in the future. There will be no going back. This is lunacy masquerading as “compassionate patient-centered care.” How many young people do you know who could wisely decide something as monumental, as life altering, as this? But parents are letting them make this choice at earlier and earlier ages because they are being told by health care professionals that their child’s well-being depends upon it. [See this post which rebuts the Suicide Myth.]
Because of the affirmative care model co-morbidities of depression, severe anxiety, autism, are largely ignored and prescribed medical treatments (testosterone or estrogen depending on the natal sex) begin these patients down an irreversible path. This is not how medicine and therapy have ever been practiced.
De-transitioners, those who regret their adolescent choice, and the body disfiguring path they’ve been on, are beginning to cry out. Like Cari. They need to be heard. Sometimes they are mocked by the online Trans community as never being Trans in the first place. Mockery is an art form on the Internet, even by those who claim to be the most tolerant and open to difference. But in spite of the obvious embarrassment of having made such a life-altering decision, de-transitioners courageously step forward to tell their updated story. I’ll highlight some of them in a later post.
We need to listen.
For it is heartbreaking.
I believe most young people claiming gender dysphoria are simply misdiagnosed. And this mad rush toward transition is disfiguring our confused young people. It is hurting them beyond physical repair. For their sake we desperately need to pay attention. Embrace. Don’t affirm.
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Here’s where I put on my Christian hat again (actually, I never took it off).
Virtually every parent that contacted author Abigail Shrier about their concern for their daughters would self identify as “progressive” or “liberal” on the political spectrum. In telling their stories Shrier hints at the possibility that a lack of boundaries, that is to say a certain “post-modern fluidity” may contribute to their daughter’s initial confusion. She only hints at the possibility. I would do more than hint. Teenagers test boundaries. They press limits. They need guidance from the adults in the room. Unfortunately for some confused teens
What they lack in life experience, they make up for with a sex-studded vocabulary and avant-garde gender theory. Deep in the caverns of the internet, a squadron of healers waits to advise them. - Abigail Shrier, author of Irreversible Damage.
They need guidance and healing from their Creator in the bodily form of those who know and represent that Creator.
Let me finish with a quote from an influential non-Christian. 20th century Psychologist & Psychotherapist, Carl Jung, discovered the consequences of a fluid outlook on life. Here’s how he puts it:
“I have treated many hundreds of patients, the larger number being Protestants, a smaller number of Jews and not more than five or six believing Catholics. Among all my patients in the second half of life [that is, over 35], there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age had given their followers and none of them has really been healed who did not regain his religious outlook” (emphasis added). --Carl Jung, Swiss Psychologist and Psychotherapist.
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Jung’s practical wisdom aligns itself with a Classic Christian’s understanding of our Created yet broken world.
The Flaws in Defining Personhood: A Critique of Warren’s Five Traits
In the ongoing debate about abortion and personhood, the criteria for defining who counts as a person is crucial.
Mary Anne Warren’s1 Mary Anne Warren was an American philosopher and professor renowned for her work in moral philosophy, particularly in the field of bioethics. She earned her Ph.D. in Philosophy from Harvard University. ‘five traits of personhood’—consciousness, reasoning ability, self-motivated activity, communicative capacity, and self-awareness—provide a framework that some use to argue for the permissibility of abortion. However, Christopher Kaczor,2Christopher Kaczor is an American philosopher and professor specializing in ethics, philosophy of religion, and bioethics. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame and has held academic positions at various institutions, including Loyola Marymount University. in his book “The Ethics of Abortion: Women’s Rights, Human Life, and the Question of Justice,” offers a compelling critique of this framework, exposing its significant moral and logical flaws.
1. Consciousness and Self-Awareness: Not All or Nothing
Warren’s first two traits, consciousness and self-awareness, suggest that only beings who are aware of their existence and can perceive their environment are persons. Kaczor points out that many human adults, such as those in a comatose state or suffering from severe cognitive impairments, would fail to meet this criterion. These individuals lack self-awareness and, at times, even basic consciousness. If we accept Warren’s criteria, we would be forced to conclude that these individuals are not persons, which is a morally untenable position.
2. Reasoning Ability: Excluding the Vulnerable
The requirement of reasoning ability further complicates the definition of personhood. Many adults with severe intellectual disabilities or those experiencing advanced dementia cannot engage in complex reasoning. According to Warren’s criteria, these individuals would also be excluded from personhood. Kaczor argues that this exclusion is ethically problematic as it devalues the lives of individuals based on their cognitive abilities, rather than their inherent human dignity.
3. Self-Motivated Activity and Communicative Capacity: Unrealistic Benchmarks
Self-motivated activity and communicative capacity are traits that not all humans possess at all times. For instance, infants, who are undeniably human, do not yet exhibit significant self-motivated activity or sophisticated communicative capacity. Similarly, individuals with severe neurological conditions may lose these capacities. Kaczor highlights that defining personhood based on these traits is flawed as it fails to account for the inherent value of these individuals’ lives.
4. The Arbitrary Nature of Birth as a Marker
Warren and others often argue that birth marks the beginning of personhood because it is the point at which a fetus gains independence from the mother. Kaczor critiques this view by noting that the transition from the womb to the outside world does not suddenly endow a fetus with new capacities that confer personhood. The developmental changes that occur at birth are gradual, not instantaneous, making birth an arbitrary and insufficient marker for personhood.
5. The Dangers of Functional Definitions
Kaczor’s central argument is that functional definitions of personhood, like those proposed by Warren, lead to morally arbitrary exclusions. By tying personhood to specific capabilities, we risk dehumanizing those who do not meet these standards. This approach has historically led to grave injustices, such as the exclusion of slaves and victims of the Holocaust from being considered full persons.
Conclusion: The Need for an Inclusive Definition
Kaczor advocates for an inclusive definition of personhood that values all human beings regardless of their functional abilities. He suggests that personhood should be inherent to all members of the human species from conception. This approach avoids the ethical pitfalls of excluding vulnerable groups and recognizes the intrinsic worth of every human life.
In conclusion, while Warren’s ‘five traits of personhood’ attempt to provide a clear framework for determining personhood, they fall short by excluding many individuals who undeniably possess inherent human dignity. Kaczor’s critique invites us to reconsider how we define personhood in a way that respects and includes all human beings, emphasizing the need for a more compassionate and just approach.
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Celebrate & Defend Life
May Day, May Day, Balloon Day
Originally posted Oct 5, 2019
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Shall I compare thee to a summers day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May
And Summer’s lease hath all too short a date. - Shakespeare
Rough winds. In the month of May.
When I was 19 my brother who was 21 at the time, died of heart failure. May, 1980.
A decade later I got a substitute brother, a brother-in-law. Great guy. In May of 2006 he was diagnosed with a rare form of liver cancer. He lived four more years.
During those four years, my dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer in May 2008. A year later my mother, terminal cancer, in the month of May.
And now finally, my sweet Susie.
It was May 1st when we got the news of how bad this could possibly be. Naturally, her first thoughts turned to her girls. “They need me,” she said. “Yes, sweetie, they do. Perhaps more than they know.”
Then she thought of her mother. Susan adored her mother. There was a lot to adore. “This is going to kill her,” she said to me.
“Yep.”
One of the reasons she was so distraught over her girls was because she couldn’t imagine living most of her adult life without having Mom around. To receive advice from, to get support, or just to hear her voice. She couldn’t imagine that, and she hated that for her girls. I hate it for them too.
Then she thought of her sisters. What a special relationship they had. In all the years I knew Susan, I think she talked with one or both of her sisters at least once every other day. Talked, not texted.
[Nancy came down with only a few days left. When she got to Susan’s bed, she sat on the edge and reached out to hug her little sister. Susan was very weak. But she managed to reach up and wrap her arms around her big sister’s neck. It was so precious. I’ll never forget that moment.]
Then, (back to May 1st,) she thought of the rest of her family.
Finally, she looked at me. “Mr. Johnny Come Lately.” (We met just a few years before this ‘May Day.’) The first thing she said to me that day, knowing about my rough winds, was, “Oh, Honey! I don’t want you to go through another one of those.”
That was my sweet Susie.
On a day that most people would consider one of the worst days possible. A day when Cancer enters the room. Up close and personal. My sweet Susie was thinking of others. She was thinking of me.
Six and a half years later on another difficult day, Susan was falling fast, and she thought of me again. I was taking her from the bathroom to the bed for almost the final time. I had my arm around her, and in what became our last conversation, she looked up at me and said, “I’m sorry.”
“Sweetie, what do you have to be sorry for?”
“That I didn’t write you a letter to tell you how much I love you and how much you mean to me,” she said.
“Oh Susan, you wrote that letter every day. I read that letter every day.”
She was the most beautiful, most unselfish, sweetest human being I’ve ever known. And she was my wife. God’s gift to me.
*****
Sign Three. (Signs One & Two are here & here)
It was May 23rd, 2012. Thirty-two years and a day after my brother’s death. Two weeks after Susan’s surgery. And two weeks before our marriage. I needed to clear my head, so I took off for a while. Driving my truck to a spot just over the Wake-Granville county line, I parked in a large field off the beaten path. I had visited this secluded spot in Granville County before, and today seemed like a good time to revisit and reflect.
One apparent problem, though. On May 23, 2012, northern Wake County was the unhappy recipient of a strong wind and hail storm. But having been “off the grid” for a few weeks, both literally and figuratively, I was oblivious to mundane matters like the weather. So, ignorantly, I headed out to clear my head on an increasingly unclear day.
I don’t know if you’ve ever sat in front of a fast-moving wind and hail storm, but it is captivating. (Before the rain and hail arrive!)
The darkening sky raced toward me as I sat there in reflection mode. My truck was turned perfectly to watch the approaching weather, and it was mesmerizing. I can’t explain in weather-ese what I was seeing, but it looked like someone had grabbed a giant paintbrush and stroked charcoal gray semi-circles across the sky. Row after row after row. Like Roman legions marching across a battlefield.
The rain had not arrived yet, but the 20-mile-per-hour wind had, bringing the gray legionnaires above. The wild fescue swayed to and fro, wave-like across the meadow. Trees danced in the distance on grassy hills crowned with oak and beech. I sat watching, awed by it all, taking it in.
Then, about 100 yards in front of me, slightly downhill, a flash of light appeared just above the grass line. And it was rising. A few moments later, against the dancing leaves as a backdrop, I made out what it was. It was one of those metallic-looking helium balloons you see at the checkout line in the grocery store, the ones with long ribbons attached, that you or I would ignore but any four-year-old would not.
And there it was, flashing brilliantly and heading straight for me. A grieving husband-to-be, out here in the middle of a hilly pasture, on a dusty road, as the gray sky angered to black. A hurt with a long history surged up inside me. And that’s when I knew. This inexplicable “ball of light” rising in front of me—I could hardly think it—was my darling bud, my sweet Susie, shaken loose by the May storm.
I knew. And I began to weep like a four-year-old in a grocery store parking lot who had just lost his grasp. “No, no,” I cried. “Stay. Don’t leave me.”
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Helplessly I watched as she made her way toward me.
Gaining speed. Climbing higher. 50 yards out. 25. More brilliant than ever against the maddening sky.
Soon she would be right above me. So I lowered the window and quickly stretched through, fearful of losing sight. The air was cooler now. I felt the winds of time against my face and breathed desperately the smells of this all-too-short season as I watched my sweetie pass by.
Turning to keep her in view, I saw the reason for her brilliance, her captivating presence, the striking vividness of this entire scene. Behind me but in front of her, bright and beckoning: Clear, Blue, Sky.
She was headed for blue sky, my darling bud, as fast as she could go, higher and higher. And now, well out in front of the storm.
I began to weep again. But this time…as a man.
“Yes.” (Was I saying it?)
“Yes” (I could hardly believe I was saying it.)
“You go girl.
You go.”
Frozen in the moment, I watched until she was shielded from my sight.
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Still no rain or hail. The hail never did reach me. I saw drifts of hail on the side of the road as I made my way back home, but thankfully, my truck escaped a beating.
I didn’t.
But before leaving the scene of battle, one more thing—a significant thing.
In mentioning this, I’m asking you to trust that I wouldn’t trade on the death of my wife to make up a fantastical story for the purpose of eliciting sympathy or impressing you with my spiritual connectedness. Nor to leave the equally false impression that I’m especially favored by God. Something so baldly untruthful would dishonor her memory. I couldn’t do that. Plus, I know, God is watching as I relate to you the following scene, a scene straight out of a Spielberg movie.
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Still hanging out the driver’s side window, I felt a warming presence above me. So I looked up. A small hole in the darkness had opened. The merciless marauders were gone. The dark sky had an altogether different aspect now. The rigid, war-like brush strokes had smoothed. What I was witnessing now was more like the pupil of an eye slowly dilating, letting in a widening circle of light for the viewer and projecting a widening circle of warmth and illumination on the broken object below. Beyond that opening: clear, blue, sky.
In all directions, the entire, I repeat, the entire visible sky was dark gray except for this one incomprehensibly beautiful blue hole directly above me. Directed at me. Warming me up. Taking me in. It opened like the aperture of a camera in slow motion, gauged the needed illumination, and captured an unforgettable moment in time. Then it closed.
The encounter lasted about one minute, but the experience was longer. Much longer. For time had shifted, slowed, expanded. It was as if Barber’s 8-minute “Agnus Dei” had been compressed into a single minute without altering the composer’s intent—one dramatic phrase, one exquisite line. A time-stretching, heart-lifting, mind-blowing, world-shaping, space-altering minute. On wind-swept, cloudy days, if I take the time and am sufficiently attentive, time folds back in on itself, and I see it still. A stationary bright blue eye hole in a dark moving sky.
Rational explanation? I’m going with the God Hypothesis. I’m hanging my hat on a memory peg given by a Master Communicator, a character-forming Anchoring Presence, a Loving Lord who gathers up the faithful and comforts the broken-hearted.
The data supports it.
Sure, I know. It’s unrepeatable, unfalsifiable, and therefore unverifiable. But I’m a living and, hopefully for you, a trustworthy witness that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our scientific methodology.
This is the first and most dramatic in the sequence of three signs I’ve shared with you in the last month. Signs that give witness to a compassionate God, the Source of our everlasting Hope, who looked down one stormy May Day and said,
“I see you. I am near. Protecting you and Susan. Now, wherever you go, see me.”
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I rushed home to tell Susan the whole breathtaking, uplifting story. Balloon Day, we tagged it. From time to time in remembrance of that day we would break into the old Irving Berlin song:
“Blue skies, smiling at me.
Nothing but blue skies do I see.”
And mostly laugh. But sometimes cry. I would kiss her on the cheek or neck and whisper into her ear, “God’s gonna take care of us, honey, I know it.” “Me too,” she would echo. “Me too.”
Blessed with the eyes of Faith we could sing these words.
“Never saw the sun shining so bright.
Never saw things going so right.
Noticing the days hurrying by.
When you're in love, my how they fly.
Blue days, all of them gone.
Nothing but blue skies from now on.”
In singing this happy tune, ironically set in a minor key, we were not whistling past graveyards, or through deadly storms. We were not denying their reality, just their staying power.
Balloon Day, May 23rd, 2012 became a sustaining story for the months and years to come. Food for our journey. A sign of God’s good keeping. God’s watchful presence. For those who leave. And those who stay.
May the Faithful departed,
Through the Mercy of God,
Rest In Peace,
And rise in Glory.
My Sweet Susie
Gone for a Season
October 6
In the Year of Our Lord, 2018
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