I established this blog to be a place where I can write about TV and movies with the hope that maybe a few people will care to read it. This week I feel the need to address the much more significant and controversial topic of Caitlyn Jenner. Please note that I do not pretend to be an expert on anything, but I have been attempting to follow the story and feel I have the right to say my two cents.
As background, Bruce Jenner was an Olympic superstar back in the seventies as a icon of sports prowess and masculinity. And honestly I think that's the problem. As a society we built Jenner up as some pillar of hyper-masculinity which he (and almost everyone else) is not. I think most fundamentally, this is a conversation about identity. Gender Identity Disorder (recently termed Gender Dysphoria) is a "condition" you've probably heard a lot about this past week. Basically it means that you feel like woman or man when biologically speaking you are the opposite. I don't have this, but I imagine it would not be fun to have your identity diagnosed as a "disorder". For a long while homosexuality was "treated" in the same way which, thankfully, we have moved past now (but not without creating the horror stories of Alan Turing and others in the process).
Identity is a REALLY important thing to us as human beings, and I think that's the part of this discussion that is largely lost on people. Most of the voices I've heard in this conversation have come from Christian sources, which is great, but I think these Christian voices have largely overlooked the issue of identity. I am a Christian and as such (ideally) find my identity in Jesus. However, even this is really hard to do all the time. My church once did a 16 week sermon series on finding identity in Christ in just the 6 chapter book of Ephesians! He preached to us about identity for four straight months and I still forgot the message a week later! The phrase "in Christ" appears a TON of times in Pauline letters because it's something we as Christians just don't get very well.
Because we, like non-Christians, want to find our identity in the world. We want who we are to be based on our income bracket, material possessions, perfect wife and kids, social status, gender or anything else in the world. But here's the difference: as Christians we are called to find our identity NOT in those things but in Christ and love everyone. Our job is love in hopes of sharing Jesus and thereby eventually changing the heart desire to WANT identity in Christ. But if that person is non-Christian, that's our only job.
The actions of Caitlyn Jenner are not what I believe God's perfect world was all about, but we aren't in God's perfect world. We're in a world where giant countries don't have clean water and millions of babies don't even see their birth. Our world is very, very broken and a "disorder" of feeling like a woman when you are biologically a man is just another part of that brokenness but no more significant than any other elements of our broken world.
Actually, that's not true. It is more significant that other elements because this situation is public allowing us all to expose how judgmental and proud we really are. It gives us the chance to stand tall and point the finger at someone else ranting about how it "defames the image of women" when we don't realize that EVERYTHING around us has completely screwed up masculinity and femininity.
Which brings us back to this issue of identity and where it is found. Very few individuals take the time to actually think about what it is to be man or woman and consider the implications. When I started doing that, everything in my life changed.
I have seen enough of the tabloids and Keeping up with the Kardashians to be reasonably certain Caitlyn Jenner is not a born-again Christian which means that I have one and one place in this discussion and that is to love. Even if she professes to be Christian (as 90% of Americans do), that doesn't change much and it certainly doesn't give me the "right" to be judgmental. I'm happy this made so many headlines because it allows the cause of LGBTQ and such to move forward, and forward is always the right direction to be going. Because forward moves us toward a place of greater understanding, greater love and less judgment.
Christians, if you see headlines about Caitlyn Jenner and get more disgusted than when you think of people participating in porn, cheating on their spouse or ANY of sexual sin, then I think Jesus has major heart work to do with you. I've lived on this earth long enough to know we all sin sexually in one way or another, so signaling out any one "variation" of that sin over any other is a problem that is only hurting and hindering yourself. Caitlyn Jenner is not an insult to women, but every Christian who judges her identity issues or sexual sins more harshly than their own is an insult to the Gospel. I'm guilty of this as well; no one's perfect except Jesus so we should keep being like Him.
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