So what does the BIBLE tell me?

A few weeks ago I took out a trial subscription to Netflix.

To be honest, mostly I’ve been watching Andromeda.

I have, however, also watched for the BIBLE tells me so.

I was very moved by it. If you get a chance to see it then I highly recommend it.

There’s a trailer for it here:

 

The synopsis on the web site says:

Does God really condemn loving homosexual relationships? Is the chasm separating Christianity from gays and lesbians too wide to cross? Is the Bible an excuse to hate? These questions and more are answered in this award-winning documentary, which brilliantly reconciles homosexuality and Biblical scripture – and reveals that religious anti-gay bias is based almost solely upon a misinterpretation of the Bible.

Through the experiences of five very normal, Christian, American families – including those of former House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt and Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson – we discover how people of faith handle the realization of having a gay child or family member.

Offering healing, clarity and understanding to anyone caught in the crosshairs of scripture and sexual identity, this landmark film “boldly takes on a loaded topic and examines it both intellectually and emotionally; the result may well leave you blinking away a few tears.” (Seattle Times)

Some words of Desmond Tutu here:

 

I can't, for the life of me, imagine that God would say:

“I’m going to punish you because you are black. You should have been white.

I will punish you because you are a woman. You should have been a man.

I punish you because you are homosexual. You ought to have been heterosexual.”

I can’t. I can’t for the life of me believe that that is how God sees things.

If you read the comments that people have left along with the above video clips there are the usual polemical attitudes.

Some blame every problem in the world on religion. Some remain adamant that if a person is gay then they are hell bound.

I think the same people might well say the same kinds of things apply to transgendered people.

And of course, I think that life isn’t so simple.

Rome, freedom, power and persecution. Churches and Jesus. Matchsticks and premature ejaculation. Priests, sexuality and disaster. Art, porn and hermaphrodites.

We recently spent four days in Rome, doing the regular tourist kind of things. I was a really great time.

At the Coliseum there was an exhibit about the emperor Constantine which mentioned the Edict of Milan which was drawn up 1,700 years ago in the year 313 AD. It includes this kind of stuff:

Therefore, your Worship should know that it has pleased us to remove all conditions whatsoever, which were in the rescripts formerly given to you officially, concerning the Christians and now any one of these who wishes to observe Christian religion may do so freely and openly, without molestation. We thought it fit to commend these things most fully to your care that you may know that we have given to those Christians free and unrestricted opportunity of religious worship. When you see that this has been granted to them by us, your Worship will know that we have also conceded to other religions the right of open and free observance of their worship for the sake of the peace of our times, that each one may have the free opportunity to worship as he pleases; this regulation is made that we may not seem to detract from any dignity or any religion.

There are, of course, a lot of potential reasons as to why this religious freedom was being offered to people within the Roman empire. It’s strange though that, 1,700 years later, there are large chunks of the world that don’t do this.

It’s strange also how a part of Christianity developed from being a persecuted group of people, into a group that was tolerated and then accepted, into a group that was in power into a group that persecuted others.

There seems to be an almost inevitability in that wherever religions, of any type, gain a position of power then members of other religions end up being persecuted.

I remember many years ago being at an event where Tony Campolo was speaking. He said that he thought that the only churches that had never gotten heavily into persecution were the ones that had never had any power.

On another day, sitting in St Peter’s Basilica I was left wondering if it was the kind of lace that Jesus would have spent much time in.

Sitting in a metro station I watched a video featuring two match sticks in bed. I’ll leave you to work out what the video was advertising. 

I still find it strange that the churches are full of nude statues and paintings, but very fussy about bare shoulders and legs. It’s quaint that most of the nude statues in the Vatican Museum have been given plaster coatings to protect their genitalia and our modesty.

There were many very young looking priests around Rome. I’m not a psychologist or psychoanalyst. I don’t know if the sexual needs that I have are similar to those experienced by other people. But my guess would be that putting men into positions where they are forced to repress whatever sexuality they have, is a recipe for disaster. 

And wow. Guess what?

Speaking of nude statues. I kinda liked this one:

She must be art and not porn because she’s in the National Museum of Rome.

You need to see her from a different perspective to see what makes her special.

Matthew Chapter 1: Family history, prophecies and a virgin birth

Here is the beginning of my account of revisiting the Bible.

As I’ve mentioned previously, in my early youth I was an atheist. At the age of 18, as a student, I became a born again evangelical Christian.  More recently I’ve become more of a sceptical kind of agnostic. I’ve also reached a position in my life where I’ve been able to accept and enjoy my own trans or mixed gendered-ness. My opinions and feelings on male and female sexuality have changed a lot.

For a year or more now I’ve been meaning to see if Jesus, Christianity and the Bible still have things to say to me.

As a start I’ve spent some time reading and thinking about the first chapter of Matthew’s gospel. There’s a copy of it here.

In a way it’s tricky.

Who wrote it? What motivated them? Is it trustworthy or true?

Different people say different things about this. I’ve read things that have discussed this.

Like many things in life, there’s no absolute and incontrovertible proof one way or the other.

I’m going to try to read the whole gospel without worrying too much about who wrote it or what their motives might have been. I’ll try and just read the words to see what they have to say to me.  

It begins with a list of what it says are the ancestors of Jesus.

Actually they are ancestors of Joseph.

Soon after the list of Joseph’s ancestors it goes on to say that Joseph wasn’t actually the father of Jesus.

So it’s strange that the ancestors should be classed as ancestors of Jesus. According to this passage at any rate, they aren’t biological ancestors.

The list of ancestors is interesting. Some well known and revered names … Abraham, David, Solomon. None of them perfect. All fallible. A name that seems is given prominence is David and mention is made of Bathsheba.

The story of David and Bathsheba is almost like a soap operatic tragedy. I just read through that again … it’s here and continued here. It’s hard not to get side-tracked from looking at Matthew’s gospel at this point. David did such an awful thing. And it’s hard to understand what God was up to in it all … it seems that God punished David by killing an innocent baby.

Then there is the story of the virgin conception. Joseph didn’t believe it until an Angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream.

It’s the kind of thing that doesn’t generally happen, so I can understand why he’d find it difficult to believe. And so do I.

I suspect that most Christians that believe in the virgin conception do so because they are Christians rather than the other way round. People don’t usually become Christians because they got convinced about the virgin conception. It was something else that convinced them about Christianity.

So it was with me when I believed it.

To some … to many… it’s a critically important truth. The thing that allows Jesus to be both Divine and human.

There’s mention that the birth of Jesus came about the way that it did in fulfilment of prophecies made in the Old Testament of the Bible.

To me at the moment, the genealogy isn’t so important. Nor the idea that the birth of Jesus was in fulfilment of prophecies. Nor the concept of the virgin birth.

The passage maybe raises more questions than it gives answers. Life seems to be like that as well. It seems to be there to set the scene and define the credentials of Jesus.

I’ve read that Matthew’s gospel was especially aimed at a Jewish audience for whom all of this would be significant. But is it true? Did it happen that way? Does it matter if it did or didn’t? If it didn’t happen that way … did the person that wrote it know … what does it say about their motives and integrity?

It would be kind of nice if an angel were to come along and explain some of it to me. Or just say to me that it’s how things are. Or that God is there and that all will be well. So far, at least as far as I know, this hasn’t happened to me.

I’ll try and be open to the possibility … but it’s not difficult to be sceptical.

It’s encouraging, in a strange sort of way, that some of the people mentioned in the genealogy are as noteworthy for their shortcomings as they are for their successes.

Calvinists, Christian Soldiers and Jesus

Over the weekend I was talking with Amanda.

Once upon a time she used to go to a Calvinist chapel, though now she has no belief in God.

I don’t know her well, but she really does seem to be a lovely, honest, genuine kind of person.

She was saying that although she has left the chapel behind, it had some good points. No super expensive extravagant buildings. An emphasis on the simple and the sincere. A bit like the feeling you get about Jesus if you read the gospels.

Of course … Calvinists have issues of their own to contend with.

Last night for some reason the tune of Onward Christian Soldiers came to mind. And the thought … how could anyone come up with lyrics like that from reading the gospels? I find it impossible to imagine Jesus singing a song expressing those kind of feelings.

It makes me think of some of the passages from A New Kind of Christianity that Dani recommended. The idea of understanding the Bible through Jesus in the gospels rather than interpreting Jesus through the letters in the New Testament.

It’s really hard to imagine Jesus fighting in a war. Any kind of a war.

I think the only people that Jesus really criticised were the leaders of his own religion. He didn’t get angry about the Romans or the Greeks. Or adulterers. Or sinners really. But about Scribes and Pharisees. I think that the thing he really didn’t like was hypocrisy.

It’s hard to read many of the things that Jesus is reputed to have said and disagree.

But the things that the churches say? Well. That's a different kind of story.

On Casting Stones

A little while ago on the TV news there was an item about two people being stoned to death in Afghanistan. There’s information about it here and here. 

I found it saddening. Appalling.

I know that this personal face-to-face kind of violence isn’t the only way that people hurt people.

Societies hurt whole societies as described here. And when a society hurts another society …. really it is people that are hurting people. But in an impersonal kind of way.

Today while I was walking at lunch time I was thinking about the casting of stones. Of the way that at times it’s easy to pass judgement upon others and exact some kind of punishment.

I then thought of this story written in the New Testament:

Early the next morning Jesus went back to the Temple. All the people gathered around him, and he sat down and began to teach them. 
The teachers of the Law and the Pharisees brought in a woman who had been caught committing adultery, and they made her stand before them all. 
"Teacher," they said to Jesus, "this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. In our Law Moses commanded that such a woman must be stoned to death. Now, what do you say?" 
They said this to trap Jesus, so that they could accuse him. But he bent over and wrote on the ground with his finger. 
As they stood there asking him questions, he straightened up and said to them, "Whichever one of you has committed no sin may throw the first stone at her." 
Then he bent over again and wrote on the ground. 
When they heard this, they all left, one by one, the older ones first. Jesus was left alone, with the woman still standing there. 
He straightened up and said to her, "Where are they? Is there no one left to condemn you?" 
"No one, sir," she answered.

"Well, then," Jesus said, "I do not condemn you either. Go, but do not sin again.

The story is in video here:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k0RzhVJSxE

I was struck by one of the comments left there:

“ive made fun of jesus b4 i feel kinda bad now hes way cool for doing this, if only the religious nutters like the westboro baptist church wud follow his true beliefs”

It sort of fits in with the idea that to be like Christ isn’t necessarily to be like people at some churches at least.

Life is so much more than following a set of rules in a book.

On a different, but related theme, I discovered this as well:

 

Have a listen. What do you think? Wow.

Christlike transvestites

Happy 2011!

Christmas time was good … in a secular kind of way. The past few days we’ve been in Llanbedrog – a small village on the Lleyn peninsula in North Wales and 2011 was seen in at the Nefyn & District Golf Club just a few miles away.

A few days ago I stared reading the book A New Kind of Christianity by Brian D McLaren which was recommended to me by Dani a few weeks ago.

I’m at the end of chapter 19.

And I’m surprised.

Very surprised.

I had thought that there was no way for me back to any kind of faith.

And now I’m not so sure.

I’m not there yet. But I can almost see the possibility.

I’m not really going to write a book review here right now … maybe one day. But I want to capture some of the thoughts and feelings that it has evoked in me … and that requires some mention of what the book says … or at least what it is saying to me. I sense though that there will be some rambling around in this posting.

In my born again days I would have viewed Brian McLaren as a liberal kind of theologian … roughly translated it means I’d have classed him as not really being a Bible Believer.

There are quite a few reasons why my involvement with Christianity terminated. I think that really it began with personal kind of issues. One of these was pornography. I’ve mentioned this issue in previous postings. There was a time when a minister at the church that I attended took me along to a service at another church. Afterwards he asked me if I hadn’t felt inclined to step forward when everyone was invited to … for prayer and healing. I said that I hadn’t. And then he asked me about pornography … which my wife had mentioned to him … or perhaps it was to his wife for her to mention it to him so that he could mention it to me.

We prayed and he gave me a book to read. The book had an unbalanced view of pornography … the kind of thing that gave the impression that all users of porn become child molesters. You know … in the same way that everyone that owns a kitchen knife ends up stabbing naked ladies in showers.

In those days the porn was something I felt guilty about. In the same way that I felt guilty about lingerie.

But the prayers didn’t help that much really. Not for more than a few months.

There was never a real discussion – just an assumption that all pornography in all circumstances is always wrong. And other assumptions – it always degrades the people involved in it – always results in men seeing women as objects to own rather than as people – always exploits people … perverts people.

I’ve said this before … and no doubt will again if I get the chance … I know that porn can do all those things. But … you know … if your honest about it … some brands of Christianity and Islam do all of those things as well. Only its much worse when when you feel that it’s God that is involved because you have no right to complain about it.

Anyway … I’m mentioning this here now because it was a factor that made me feel uncomfortable in a church kind of environment.  And I was growing tired of the discomfort and the pretence that I felt obliged to make that everything was ok.

There were other things as well. I spent a while in secular counselling sessions … alone and also with Sally.

These provided an opportunity to talk about things that had only been secrets before. I think prior to that time I’d never really understood the value of counselling. But to be able to say what you think and feel without the risk of someone wanting to lay hands on you and cast out demons is somehow liberating. In all my years in church I’d never felt that. The dressing thing didn’t crop up. At the time I didn’t know that I was a transvestite … only that sometimes I likes to wear lingerie.

During this time I began to withdraw from church and began to think about what I believed and why I believed it.

I remember thinking things like:

• Did I really believe in a universe or a God where the vast majority of people that had ever lived were going to end up in hell?
• Did I believe in a God that sanctioned genocide .. I guess a holocaust … perpetrated by the Hebrews in the Old Testament against other groups of people in the middle east?
• Did I really believe in a God that disliked same sex relations so much that they were condemned to hell?

The problem was that I’d always been a Bible Believing Christian. And my understanding of the Bible led to those kinds of conclusions.

Mostly I think I’d glossed over them up to then … thinking that well … God is good and God loves people … and He’ll see that the right thing happens and maybe explain it all one day.

But I had reached a stage where these questions … and others … and my own experiences and feelings meant that I needed to discover a different kind of God.

But I couldn’t see any way of doing this without taking out the scissors and cutting out lots of verses from the Bible that I had, up to that point, believed.

And how do I decide which bits to cut out – or to re-interpret. If I just cut out the bits that I don’t approve of or that are inconvenient to me then don’t I end up with a God that I invented for myself?

So … in the end … I put the entire book away.

Of course … even most Bible Believing Christians re-interpret things in the Bible every so often. What once was bad is now ok. Some things that were once ok are now bad. And some bits are just ignored because … well … Jesus couldn’t actually have meant what he literally said could he … so he must have actually meant something else. If you’ve been to church you know what I mean.

Having said all of that … not everything that happens in Churches is bad. Not at all. I’ve tended here to simply focus on things that contributed to me leaving.

So … back to the book A New Kind of Christianity.

For a long time I’ve been pretty sure that I can never go back to the beliefs that I used to have. And I had thought that meant that there was no way back to Christianity.

The book that Dani recommended has changed the second part of my thinking.

Maybe there is a way back to Christianity … maybe what I had been experiencing previously hadn’t actually been the entire thing.

I know that some people (and I would once have been one of these people) will say that what I’m doing is attempting to re-invent God in a way that fits me. They will say that I have to accept God as God … and then do as I am told.

But really … even fundamentalists … pick and choose things. The KJV 1611 people that I corresponded with a while ago have picked a specific Bible version and decided that this is the one … the literal and absolutely only English language version of the Bible … that anyone should believe. But they still decide on how things should be interpreted and understood.

Emily Saliers (an Indigo Girl) penned the following, and I think she’s right:

And as we sat stuck
You could hear the trash truck
Making its way through the neighbourhood
Picking up the thrown out
Different from house to house
We get to decide what we think is no good
We're sculpted from youth
The chipping away makes me weary
And as for the truth
It seems like we just pick a theory
And it's the one that justifies
Our daily lives
And backs us with quiver and arrows
To protect openings
Cause when the warring begins
How quickly the wide open narrows

So … I know I am open to the criticism that I’m re-inventing God in an image that fits me.

Back to the book again.

Brian McLaren sets out to respond to 10 questions that he feels are important with respect to Christianity and people. He says he’s not offering answers to the questions … rather they are responses to them that represent the beginning of a dialog rather than the end of one.

One thing that struck me is that the doubts and questions I had about the do I really believe that God kind of things I mentioned earlier aren’t all that unusual. It’s just that people in Churches often don’t have a chance to air such doubts.

Another thing is the way that he presents Jesus within the context of the Bible. He feels that what you need to do is take the person of Jesus as described in the Gospels and then interpret the Bible through Jesus … rather than the other way round. So … in responding to the question Is God Violent? Brian McLaren starts with Jesus and then looks at some of the passages that seem to paint a violent picture of God … mainly in the Old Testament. The book doesn’t provide any “once and for all” answer or a set of proofs for this. Just the beginnings of a discussion. But the starting point of a definitely non-violent Jesus provides a totally different perspective on the whole question. And … it’s so obvious that this is the right starting point it left me wondering how come I hadn’t realised this before?

The third (and biggest and most important) thing for me is that in summing up what Christianity is all about he puts it very simply.

Being a Christian is about being Christlike.

Nothing more.

Nothing less.

It’s strange how sometimes the bleedin’ obvious gets buried beneath so much other stuff that when it gets re-stated it’s like a breath of fresh air and a revelation.

It’s not about church meetings … nor understanding theology nor having correct doctrine.

And … you know … even people who are not Christians can be Christlike.

And Christians … well … they can be non Christlike.

In a way I knew all of the above.

But in a way I never thought of what it means. A whole lot of what I believed has been turned upside down and inside out … and I’m amazed that it’s giving me a feeling that maybe there is a way back for me. Though really it’s not a way back … more of a way forwards.

I know that some people will say it’s not a way forwards at all. It’s heretical. It’s wrong. Blasphemous. Untrue. An abomination. And that I am headed for hell.

I know also that to some of these people … the concept of a transgendered Andrea is also an abomination.

But maybe some people with thoughts like these will try to see beyond the skirts and dresses that I wear.

I’m not sure yet … but I see possibilities where I previously saw none.

So … if I were to want to be Christlike … well … would Jesus have dressed as a girl? How can I be Christlike and also be a transvestite?

I think my response … and no .. it’s not my final answer … is that the question itself is perhaps missing the point.

Being Christlike isn’t about growing a beard and letting my hair grow longer (assuming that Jesus did these things). Or wearing a robe. Or being a man. Or being Jewish. Or being born of a virgin. Or not wearing a dress. Or avoiding lipstick and earrings. It’s not even about being what is conventionally called a Christian.

Being Christlike is about loving other people in the same kind of way that Jesus did.

It’s more about how I deal with people that are transvestites than whether or not I am a transvestite myself.

It’s not about whether I am heterosexual, bisexual or homosexual. It’s not about the colour of my skin. It’s about how I interact with other people.

Sally is keen that I pop along to a Contemplative Fire get together with her one day – she says it would be ok to appear there as Andrea. So perhaps that will happen at some point – she has asked before but I never saw the point before. It’ll make for a different experience than Pink Punters and Candy Girls, I expect.

I have a lot more to (re)discover.

As I mentioned earlier … I am very surprised.

Thank you Dani.

Weddings, Transvestites and Jesus

Last weekend was the occasion of the wedding of my niece … or one of them at any rate.

It was great to see family and friends … and the whole occasion was wonderful.

My rather long and shiny fingernails were commented upon.

During the evening Jan … a close friend of Sally’s sister and someone that we’ve known for many years … though not very closely said to me …

“Can I ask you a personal question?”

“Sure … go ahead.”

I’m not sure of the exact words that followed on from here. But Jan was interested in the state of my faith … relationship with Jesus.

We had first met Jan at church … and she and her husband are still actively involved in things … Jan’s husband is closely involved in a well known Christian organisation in the UK.

She was interested in how and why I had got to where I am.

I talked about my questions … my doubts. And Jan answered them in the way that I might have answered them a few years ago.

We sat hand in hand and talked and talked.

“Jan … I’m a transvestite.”

It was a simple statement.

We talked some more … about gender … marriage … sexuality.

Who do I think about having sex with? Am I gay?

Jan’s husband dropped by as well and we talked some more. Sitting hand in hand.

It’s still true that I don’t really understand transvestism. But I know that, for me at any rate, that it isn’t just a sexual thing. It’s an expression of who I am. Andrea isn’t just someone that I dress up as. Andrea is me.

Jan and her husband pointed me in the direction of Jesus. But they didn’t see Andrea as an abomination. They didn’t talk about being prayed over …. being healed … or being possessed.

I know though … from experience … that diplomatic Christians will sometimes say “talk to Jesus about it and see what He says” … as an encoded way of saying “read the Bible and you will find that it says you better change your ways or else!”.

I don’t know for sure if that is what they were saying. And it’s possible that they weren’t.

Just as I would have done in the past, though, they pointed towards Jesus rather than to the church. The church … just like people … is full of contradictions and flaws.

So … can Jesus accept Andrea? Is the question meaningful? If I decided that He can … how do I square that with the people that say He can’t because the Bible says that He couldn’t possibly.

I know that at the moment at least I couldn’t accept a Jesus … a God … a church … a religion that couldn’t accept Andrea. And even if I could it would make no difference because such a religion … church … God … Jesus would be incapable of accepting me.

You see, it’s not that Andrea is a fetish thing. When I talk with people about Andrea I’m talking about me. I think that’s why I was hand in hand with both Jan and her husband at times as we talked. It was personal.

I don’t know where the conversations and thoughts will lead.

But it’s good to be able to talk with other people … and to discover … again … that people cope surprisingly well with accepting me.

Zo, Larry Norman and Jesus

In the early hours of the morning a message pops up on my screen.

>Hi

I say Hi and we talk a while.

She is Zo. Though when all you know about someone is the words that they type you may not actually know anything about them.

Early twenties. Unhappy.

She mentions suicide.

Kits.

Bags of Helium.

I know it’s not easy to know how seriously to take people during online chats. It hard enough face to face sometimes.

But she seems to mean what she is typing.

> takes just a couple of minutes not too painful if at all

> yet there is pain for other people

> my family understand I’ve tried a few times before and in the beginning I was trying to get help

> there would still be great pain

> then to be shut away in hospital again now I just don’t want to be here my family have said they would do anything to get me to stay but they wouldn’t make me stay in a world I couldn’t understand be a part of or be happy in i know I’m going to hurt them but I wouldn’t do it unless I really felt I needed to

> you don’t need to … there are alternatives and choices

> I’ve made my choices I’ve tried everything else over the 8 years I’ve been ill

> there are always other things

> time, therapy, counselling, confidence building courses, family bonding groups, medication, the lot

> at the heart of it all though is you … maybe you just need a way to rediscover yourself somehow

> I know who I am I’m the person who looks in the mirror and sees every bad persons hand that’s ever been on her, the person who has so much sadness in her eyes she’s ashamed of herself, the person who can’t walk past her front door, who is frightened to live, too scared of failure of pain who has medication just to keep her calm because anything scares her now

> I think the person you see in the mirror isn’t you … the real you inside is different than that

> the person inside is hateful, scared, kind yet still sad

>the person inside … deep inside … is beautiful

We talk a while longer.

Circles.

Zo disconnects.

Today whilst walking at lunchtime I thought of Zo.

I don’t know if she is real. I don’t know if what she said is fact or fiction. But I can live with the possibility of being duped.

Her words remind me of what I wrote of Paulo Coelho just yesterday.

He wrote:

"There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.

This isn’t the whole truth, of course. There are many other things that can make a dream impossible to achieve.

And yet … fear of failure is debilitating. If it even stops the attempt at the dream, then the dream is doomed.

There was a time when my instinct would have been to pray for Zo.

Prayer offers a sense of doing something positive. Of helping.

In my agnostic days prayer no longer is an instinct.

But I did pray … as best I could.

Zo had a lot of questions about life.

And the answers aren’t easy. I’m not so sure exactly what they are.

I thought of my pre-Indigo-Girls, pre-Agnostic, post-Atheist life. My favourite musician of the time was Larry Norman. Christian but unconventional. The words of a song of his that I liked a lot at the time buzzed through my mind.

It’s here:

And the lyrics:

Sipping whiskey from a paper cup,
You drown your sorrows till you can't stand up,
Take a look at what you've done to yourself,
Why don't you put the bottle back on the shelf,
Yellow fingers from your cigarettes,
Your hands are shaking while your body sweats,

Why don't you look into Jesus, He's got the answer.

Gonorrhoea on Valentines Day,
And you're still looking for the perfect lay,
You think rock and roll will set you free,
Honey, you'll be deaf before your thirty three,
Shooting junk till your half insane,
Broken needle in your purple vein,

Why don't you look into Jesus, he's got the answer.

You work all night and then you sleep all day,
You take your money, throw it all away,
You say you're going to be a superstar,
But you've never hung around enough to find out who you really are.

Think back to when you were a child,
Your soul was free, your heart ran wild,
Each day was different, and life was a thrill,
You knew tomorrow would be better still,
Things have changed you're much older now,
If you're unhappy and you don't know how,

Why don't you look into Jesus, He's got the answer

Of course, to think back to when you were a child isn’t a happy thing for some people to do. In the same way that talking about God as being a father doesn’t help everyone.

There was a time when I thought Jesus had the answer. Was the answer.

And still, maybe for some people, in some places, He still does and is. There are times, I think, when people just need a reason to keep going. To keep trying. To have a reason to be able to face their fears and not be overcome. And maybe there are worse reasons to keep going.

While I’m in a Larry kind of mood … the first song of his that I ever heard is here. I still find it moving.

 

A friend, Rob Wilson, played it for me having sussed out that Larry Norman might appeal to me more than did the Glorylanders. He was right.

And then there is this … written so long ago … and yet … it’s absolutely up to date. Protest kind of songs seem to be timeless. Listen to it all the way through if you can … it’s worth it … honest.

 

What do you think?

Tonight … early tomorrow … I’ll go online a while.

Perhaps Zo will be there.

Really I don’t have much to say.

But I’m happy to listen.

Ponies, people, the Bible, Jesus and me

Recently I spent a while chatting with someone using the nick ponygirl in a chat room. For over a year now she explained that she has lived as a ponygirl.

She has an owner … who owns five pony girls at the moment. Some of the things that she has mentioned:

• It’s not a sexual thing.
• She hasn’t been forced into it.
• She is happy.
• The ponies spend a lot of time restrained in various ways … mostly, I think, in ways that make it feel more like being a pony
• They don’t talk
• The ponies are trained
• They are disciplined
• They are well cared for
• The pony that I talked with has access to the internet once in a while
• Her family visit her every so often. They don’t find it easy … but they accept her choice. She doesn’t speak to them when they visit, but they do communicate by email

She said that the thing that she likes most is a sense of belonging.

In some ways, it’s not easy to understand why anyone would want to do this.

I think that quite lot of people would also find it hard to understand what it is that makes a guy want to wear makeup, a wig and a dress.

It’s not natural I’ve heard people say. I’ve even heard myself say it.

But is clothing natural? Plastic? Automobiles? Aeroplanes?

Maybe it’s really more about acceptability than it is about naturalness?

And different things are acceptable to different people.

Plastic, aeroplanes and just wars are acceptable to many people.

Pony girls and transvestites, gays and lesbians maybe to less.

There was a time when the Bible helped me decide what was acceptable and what wasn’t.

I was more of a “hate the sin but love the sinner” kind of person - as opposed to the “fire and brimstone” variety.

Nevertheless, the Bible was the final arbiter when it came to acceptability.

And yet looking back at those times, it was really my interpretation of the Bible that was the arbiter.

And my interpretation of the Bible was always flawed.

I think, in a way, everyone’s interpretation is flawed.

I mean … is it acceptable for women to speak in church? To commit genocide if God tells you to do it? To work on Sunday – or maybe that should be Saturday? To speak in tongues without an interpretation? To use contraceptives? To kill? To be gay? Lesbian? Transsexual? Transvestite? Pony girl? To manufacture weapons? To trade unjustly? To have two coats while someone else has none? To respond to one slap in the face with another?

Different Bible believing people have different answers to these questions.

Back in 1973, just after being Born Again, I remember reading a book Genesis in Space and Time by Francis Schaeffer. Even then it seemed odd to me that the author was adamant that the existence of a real Adam and Eve were fundamental beliefs, but that the story of creation in six days and the eating of the fruit of knowledge could just be viewed as allegories.

And I have had conversations with people that find it easy to own a whole collection of coats and yet condemn, absolutely, a whole series of perversions.

I know, for sure, that I am far from perfection. A little like Amy Ray’s friend:

My friend Tanner she says,
"Y'know me and Jesus we're of the same heart
The only thing that keeps us distant is that I keep fuckin' up"

And I do.

Back at Sparkle, I remember the policeman saying that his view of bad-mouthing members of the trans-gendered community was that it was similar to the racist comments that people make.

Not so very long ago, a man that lived in a Bible believing God-fearing part of the world had a dream:

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

Y’know. I think that pony girls, gay, lesbian and transgendered people are mostly just wanting to be free to be themselves.