Personhood

Sometimes in matters what order we ask questions in.

If 'What is the Church?' as a question is asked after 'Who is Jesus?' You tend to get a better answer to both questions. It grieves me the number of people I know who have not had a chance to ask 'Who is Jesus?' before being confronted with the question 'What is Church?' and all evidence being available to them not being that positive (of course there are people who ask the questions this way round and get the right answer, but it's more risky).

There's another set of questions the order of which is highly important to the answer and no prizes for guessing where this is going, 'What does it mean to be human?' and 'What does it mean to be a woman or a man?' I am deeply concerned about the number of Christians and Christian books that attempt to answer these questions the wrong way round; or only briefly skim over the first with a nod of courtesy and move on to the latter.

Can I make a plea that before you decide what it is to be your particular gender, you spend sometime deciding what it is to be human and also what it is to be 'in Christ'

Here's a great little clip:


I think this clip is so powerful and articulates graphically what I sometimes struggle to get across.

The Bible has a great deal to say about being human and I can't begin to summarise it but here are some thoughts for starters:

God made man and woman in his image and named them Adam (Gen 5:2).

There is nothing as far as I can tell in the Genesis account or anywhere else in Scripture to imply that the image was split in two and I do not believe that this is the most obvious reading either. It is something that has been read in.

Almost everything I have heard about what biblical womanhood or manhood is has a demonstrable biblical example of someone not conforming (often Jesus himself); and I know a great many godly people who don't conform either.

Sometimes when I have pointed out that Jesus was a man and that he didn't fit into our masculine box, I have been told that he was in touch with his feminine side. I find this offensive both to the person Jesus and to women in general. Jesus did not welcome children, show care for the sick, feed the hungry, wash his disciples feet, he wasn't gentle or meek because he was in touch with his 'feminine' side but because he was the only fully human human to have ever lived!

It is also an offence, I believe to Him, to suggest that women are any less than fully responsible for themselves before God....

1 Timothy 2:5

5 For there is one God and one mediator between God and human beings, Christ Jesus, himself human,

1 Peter 2:9
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light

So no men as priests of their households please, interceding between humans and God... that is arrogant and idolatrous.

'But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.'

Except the law of gender conformity?

Why are we all building cages of constraint around ourselves? Please, please make sure you have answers to at least these questions: 

Who is Jesus? 

What does it mean to be human? 

What does it mean to be in Christ? 

Then you can ask what a man or a women is.

Also if you have the time you might want to ask 'How can I judge what is good empirical science?', 'What is a double blind randomised control trial?' and 'Can I be sure that average differences in adults are a result of nature and not nurture?'

If anyone fancies it, send me some qualities that either you believe to be, or people have told you are particular to one gender and we'll thrash them out.