Repentance from the perspective of a transvestite

The third chapter of Matthew’s gospel says a lot about John the Baptist.

It sounds as though he was a guy that said thins pretty straight as he believed them to be. Of course, this doesn’t necessarily make him right about everything.

People flocked to him and confessed their sins and repented and were baptised in the river Jordan.

There’s a whole lot of stuff packed into the words sin and repent.

What is sin? There’s a whole article about it here. It says for example:

Sin is the breaking of God's law. If God says "Do not lie" and you lie, then you have broken His law and sinned.

This, though, seems a very black and white view of life in a world which is full of colour.

Is there such a thing as a white lie?

• Is telling the truth always better than not telling the truth?
• Should doctors always tell people everything … regardless of the individual persons needs at that moment in time?
• Is knowingly withholding the truth the same as a lie?

I think, I’m not certain, but I think, that anyone that has the idea that it’s easy to define what sin is, really is over simplifying things.

The article also says:

The Old Testament contains the Law of God. It is a perfect standard because it is God's standard.

And this leaves me stupefied. The law as dictated by the Old Testament ranges from the reasonably sounding Ten Commandments to quite a lot of not quite so reasonably sounding stuff. There’s a lot of this recorded here … the tone of which is over-aggressive for me and demonstrates what I think, is a misunderstanding of what Christianity is. The author has some big problems. But it illustrates the point that working out what’s right and wrong can be a tricky business.

And still … I remember back in early 1973 when someone asked me if I thought I had ever sinned. Even by my own subjective definition of right and wrong … I knew I’d done things that I was ashamed of. I remembered people at school that we’d teased and made fun of. Horrendously. For no good reason.

And sneaking a peak ahead into chapter 20 of Matthew’s gospel, the following story is recounted:

… a teacher of the Law, tried to trap him [Jesus] with a question.
"Teacher," he asked, "which is the greatest commandment in the Law?"
Jesus answered, " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.'
This is the greatest and the most important commandment.
The second most important commandment is like it: 'Love your neighbour as you love yourself.'
The whole Law of Moses and the teachings of the prophets depend on these two commandments."

 

The first of these is difficult for an agnostic or an atheist to understand, let alone to put into practise.

But the second could provide a starting point for anyone.

But even then it’s complex. I’ve heard it said that we have to learn how to love ourselves before we can really learn to love other people. And that fits in pretty well with what Jesus said. If a person doesn’t love his or her self, then it makes no sense at all to love other people in the same way.

Maybe the main thing is to not do things that hurt yourself or hurt other people. And major on things that are good for you and for others.

Maybe any kind of commandment that doesn’t influence these things is something that doesn’t really matter. And any command that goes against these isn’t really a commandment at all.

It gives a starting point for definitions of what’s right and wrong.

And also hints at the possibility that what might sometimes be right in some circumstances and for some people, might be wrong in other circumstances for other people.

Then there is repentance. I think this means accepting and understanding what you’ve done that is wrong and committing yourself to change, be different and not do it again.

And so … even in the agnostic world that I inhabit these days … if I define sin as the things that I’m uncomfortable about doing because I feel that they are wrong … maybe because they aren’t good for me or for someone else … repentance seems like the right thing to do. It makes sense.

There’s some nasty sounding stuff in Matthew chapter 3.

Every tree not producing good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire

…

He [Jesus] will clean up his threshing floor and gather his grain into the barn, but he will burn the chaff with inextinguishable fire.

It sounds bad for trees that don’t produce the fruit and for the chaff.

Some interpret this as meaning that people that do bad things end up in hell. Or maybe it’s people that don’t do good things.

I’m not at all sure about heaven and hell.

Then, John baptises Jesus and it says:

When Jesus had been baptized, he immediately came up out of the water. Suddenly the heavens opened up for him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him. 

Then a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, whom I love. I am pleased with him!"

If I could believe in God, it would mean a lot to me. There was a time when it did.

Even for an agnostic transvestite, though, there is something of meaning in this chapter.

• An encouragement to think about what I feel is right and wrong and why I feel that way about things.
• A call to repentance … which I think just means to live honestly with my own feelings. To try to not do stuff that I feel is wrong, and to do the stuff that I think is right

That makes sense to me. It doesn’t seem unreasonable.

In the past when I tried this it was within the constraints of an evangelical Christian view of right and wrong. And this included a lot more than loving other people as I loved myself. And it relied on a subjective understanding of the Bible … as all understandings of the Bible inevitably are.

And I failed.

Over and over.

And some of the failure had to be kept secret. I didn’t understand the part of me that is feminine. Actually, I still don’t. But I don’t need to understand. I am learning to accept and enjoy. I don’t have to repent from being a transvestite. I don’t have to deny my femininity or my masculinity. I don’t have to deny the person that I am. I can love myself.

There was a time when I needed some kind of a totally objective view of right and wrong.

These days I think it’s not so easy as that. There’s an element of subjectivity in everyone’s views. I’m happy to start again with an aim at working towards loving other people as I love myself.

So, the positive thing I’m taking from Matthew 3, with a bit of help from Matthew 22, is that the idea of repenting from a subjective kind of badness … which seems somehow more possible and sensible than anything I’ve tried before, and it’s something that I can work on.

More from Matthew and the Pickiness of Believing the Bible

It’s been a long time since I looked at Matthew Chapter 1.

But here goes with chapter 2.

This talks about wise men visiting the place where Jesus had been born.

They travelled from the east to Jerusalem and asked where they could find the king of the Jews who’s star they had seen.

This upset King Herod and the people of Jerusalem.

Herod seems to work out that they are looking for the Christ, God’s annointed one, and decides to to take on God. So, I guess, Herod either didn’t really believe in an all-powerful God or he was a fool.

The religious people expected the annointed one to be born in Bethlehem. But not any time soon, I guess.

Herod seems to be happy to tell lies … though maybe he told the lies because he felt more frightened and threatened than happy.

The wise men follow the star until it stops over the house where the annointed one is. No mention of a stable. And it was an unusual star to be able to guide them like that.

They give their gifts and don’t tell Herod where they found the child because of a dream.

Another dream and Joseph, Mary and Jesus head for Egypt.

And then Herod has all the 2 year old and younger children … boys? … in and around Bethlehem murdered. It seems that this would likely have been twenty to thirty of these.

Eventually Herod dies. And another dream and Joseph, Mary and Jesus head back for Israel. Another dream and they settle in Nazareth. No mention that Joseph originally came from Nazareth.

There are things here that surprise me.

The way that dreams are so important.

The death of innocent children.

I read a little additional background here. This says some odd things and makes some illogical assertions. And is biased in a different way than I am. It also includes the following awful statement:

In Deuteronomy 17, God commands his people to execute all astrologers by stoning. Jean Dixon wouldn't stand a chance in such a theocracy! The fact that she--and others like her--are so comfortably tolerated--even well respected!--in modern America ought to show us that the U.S.A. is a post-Christian country--at best . . .

Makes me glad that the author isn’t a man or woman with any real power and also glad that the USA is post-Christian. I’m certainly not a reader of stars, but stoning seems on the extreme side.

It makes me wonder about the kind of person that can think that kind of stuff and write it. The stuff is awful.

And this leads me on to memories of when I’ve heard people say something like “it’s not what I think … it’s the Bible that says it … so that’s what I say as well.”

Tonight Sally and I had a meal at Cafe Rouge and talked a bit about this. I mentioned my new perspective on life … about it not being just a lot of black and white issues … and not just shades of grey … but a whole spectrum of colours. She asked me if some people wouldn’t say that not having definite black and whit views was some kind of a cop out.

But thinking about it, it seems much more of a cop out to say “this is the way it is because the Bible says so” without taking the time and trouble to think and feel about an issue.

I just discovered this:

 

I discovered it here.

I don’t agree with the all the sentiments expressed at the web site, but there’s more than a grain of truth expressed in the cartoon. We are all picky about what we believe and why we believe it.

The original of the cartoon is here.

I don’t think that the second chapter of Matthew’s gospel is something that makes it any easier to be a believer. I’ve heard it said that Matthew’s gospel is written especially for a Jewish readership … hence all the references to fulfilled prophecies from the Old Testament. The first two chapters seem to fall into that kind of category.

It’ll get more interesting a little later.

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.