The Queer New Creation. . .

The conversation began over the issue of the ordination of women.  The other party was an 80 something fellow who spent his whole life in Lutheran education, from childhood through most of his career as an educator.  The passage in question was, of course, Galatians 3:28.  The question on the table was how this elimination of distinctions accorded with God's new creation and the once assigned roles in creation.  

Another conversation began differently but ended up at the same passage.  In this case a person was lamenting how a family member had been secretly cross-dressing and is now more openly coming out as transgender and how to deal with it all.  Again, the individuals involved were well schooled in Lutheran educational circles from childhood through adulthood.

Now it would seem that one of the drumbeats of the Queer Crowd is the whole idea that gender as a construct of the old creation is being replaced in Christ by the new creation of fluidity and change that no longer gives deference to such things as genes, chromosomes, or reproductive organs.  Again, the passage cited is Galatians 3:28.  Transgenderism is itself the mark of the new creation of Christ's promise that is just now being set free across the landscape of God's creation.  It is then no misreading of Scripture nor does it need any exegetical assist but the full embrace of God's new thing that now replaces the old.  Indeed, the redemptive message of Christ is queerness.  Released from the constraints of the old creation the spirit of the person is set free to embrace their identity without conforming either to society or Scripture's old laws and is finally at liberty in Christ to embrace their full, new identity -- wherever that leads.

I guess it sort of explains how the sex issues took over the agendas of the progressive churches, doesn't it.  But the whole focus on identity and gender in particular is now being taken up as the Gospel focus.  Queer theology is therefore no longer seen as a specialty or speculative theology but a liberating theology and, perhaps, the primary liberation of the Gospel.  Christianity has always been queer but the liberation of the old barriers of freedom placed upon humanity could not be cast off until Christ came.  He is then not simply the Messiah but the androgynous and trans prototype of the new humanity.  The church then becomes the means by which the people of God both acknowledge and explores queerness as sacred.  Queering the Bible aims to create biblical commentaries through the lens of queerness and transness.  Lest you think I am speculating here, I got much of this from denominational websites, like the Presbyterian Church!  

This alternative telling of the Gospel is not seen by progressives as an option but as the main thrust of what the Gospel itself is.  According to this narrative, God created queer people first and women before all others. It was a straight man who first ate fruit from the Tree Of Phobos, starting a generational cycle of phobia and hate. The church was founded as a social tool to control the masses, teaching people to be innately ashamed and afraid of their own basic natures. In an act of infinite love, God sent Their only child to cleanse the earth of confusion and fear. Jesu, the genderqueer Messiah, has come to save the straight phobes from their wicked and hateful ways. 

My friends, the very Gospel of Christ's death and resurrection for the forgiveness of our sins, for the end of death's claim upon us, and for the promise of new and everlasting life is being replaced by this gospel of queerness.  It is not that we can remain silent and simply let bygones be bygones because the very Gospel itself is being replaced with this invention of the autonomous self and the individual and their feelings as the only barometer of truth and reality.  It is not simply a question of allowing such folks space and room to exist but of the way this queer gospel has already taken over many churches and not only supplanted but ended the voice of God speaking His Word to His people.  For those churches, we orthodox and traditional Christians who listen to the Scripture as the Word of God are already marked as the antiquated dinosaurs of the old creation who must be silenced first and eradicated from respectability so that we become the pariahs of our day just as they felt they were in theirs.

Christians need to pay attention to this.  As I began, it was Lutherans who had already been influenced and led away from their solid foundation by the prospect of one single verse, ripped from its context, and robbed of its intended meaning.  Scroll down the pages of Christian social media and you often find people questioning or challenging what they were taught and what they once confessed as truth from God's Word even to the point of suggesting that what they were told was never actually true and that the queer gospel, even in its remedial forms, was legitimate though repressed through the ages.  This is not about hate nor robbing anyone of their civil rights but the hijacking of the Gospel itself, thus depriving the people for whom Christ died of their salvation, comfort, and hope.  The cause will not surely be aided by becoming the very hateful people these progressives are now labeling us as but neither will the cause of Christ be advanced by being silent about what is at stake.