- Hello world, it's Austen.
Let's talk about being
transgender and Christian.
(upbeat music)
Alright, so if somebody told
you your body was a temple,
what would that mean to you?
What do you think about when
you hear the word temple?
Do you immediately think Indian Jones?
Because I kinda do.
When I think of the word
temple I usually think of
like an old stone or brick
building covered in vines
holding something really
important or valuable.
When somebody tells me my body is a temple
my first thought is "a
temple of what? Of doom??"
What's being kept inside this temple?
Well, this metaphor of
our bodies as a temple
is used twice in the Bible,
both times by the Apostle Paul
in the book of First Corinthians.
The first time in chapter
three and the second time
in chapter six.
And the reason I'm
talking about this today
is because transgender people
often hear this theology
of our bodies as temple as a reason
that they shouldn't transition,
or renovate this temple.
So let's take a look at what
Paul says in these passages
and we'll start with First
Corinthians chapter three.
Paul's talking here in
chapter three about laying
the foundation for the church in Corinth
and how the foundation of a church,
like the foundation of a
building needs to be strong.
Paul says that the
foundation of the church
is always Jesus, but
then he goes on to say
that other people are gonna
continue to build on the church
once he leaves and the
rest of that building
needs to be just as
strong as the foundation.
Then in verses 16 and 17 Paul says
"Do you not know that you are God's temple
"and that God's spirit dwells in you?
"If anyone destroys God's temple,
"God will destroy that person,
for God's temple is holy
"and you are that temple."
The interesting thing about this passage,
which doesn't really come
across in the English,
is that when Paul says
"you are God's temple,"
he's using the plural for you in Greek.
Paul is saying YOU ALL are the temple.
The church is God's temple, communally.
God dwells within the whole community
in the church of Corinth
and in every church.
So Paul isn't saying that
each individual person's body
is a temple.
He's says that communally
we are the temple of God.
Verse 17 then is really
an admonition against
somebody who would try
to destroy the church
or to break it up for the wrong reasons.
So what about First
Corinthians chapter six then?
Does that talk about our
bodies in an individual sense?
Well yes it does in verses 19 and 20,
but in order to get the real
context for those verses
I'm gonna start reading at verse 12.
Paul says, "All things are lawful for me,
"but not all things are beneficial.
"All things are lawful for me,
"but I will not be dominated by anything.
"Food is meant for the stomach
and the stomach for food
"and God will destroy
both one and the other.
"The body is meant not for
fornication, but for the Lord
"and the Lord for the body.
"And God raised the Lord and
"will also raise us by his power.
"Do you not know that your
bodies of members of Christ?
"Should I therefore take
the members of Christ
"and make them members of a prostitute?
"Never.
"Do you not know that whoever
is united to a prostitute
"becomes one body with her?
"For it is said that two
shall become one flesh,
"but anyone united to the Lord
becomes one spirit with him.
"Shun fornication.
"Every sin that a person
commits is outside the body,
"but the fornicator sins
against the body itself.
"Or do you not know that
your body is a temple
"of the Holy Spirit within you,
"what you have from God and
then you are not your own.
"For you are bought with the price,
"therefore glorify God in your body."
That is a lot to unpack.
But what we find here is that the metaphor
of our bodies as temples
comes in the context
of the purity codes found
in the Hebrew scriptures
or the Old Testament.
Paul is concerned here
that his new teachings
about the freedom we find in Christ
have been taken a little
bit too far in Corinth.
So the Corinthians were
saying well everything
is lawful for me.
I can do whatever I want, right?
Paul says here that just because something
isn't against the law, doesn't mean
that it's necessarily good for you.
Paul seems to be most concerned here
about the members of the church in Corinth
hiring sex workers and because
Paul sees that as a sin
and your body is a temple,
you essentially are getting
the temple dirty.
So I think there are three
things that we need to remember
when we're reading this passage.
The first thing we need to remember
is that this passage is not
about shaming sex workers.
Paul is not talking about
what sex workers should
or shouldn't do here.
He's talking about what
the people of the church
should or shouldn't do.
And sometimes sex workers are
part of our church communities
and that makes them just as much a part
of the body of Christ as anyone else.
Confusing I know, but Jesus
didn't have any trouble
hanging out with sex workers
and we should probably
learn from that example.
So secondly, let's talk
about the part of the verse
that says "Do you not know that your body
"is a temple of the
Holy Spirit within you,
"which you have from God and
that you are not your own?"
Let's note that this verse isn't saying
that your body belongs to
every person on the street
and every politician
that wants to regulate it
in a certain way.
It says that your body belongs to God.
So does this mean that trans people
have no business transitioning
to alleviate dysphoria
and become more of themselves?
Well, do we use this verse to keep people
from getting laser eye surgery
or having their tonsils out?
Do we have to ask God
and wait for an answer
before we get our ears
pierced or dye our hair?
I would argue that
that's a bit unrealistic.
Of course we should look to scripture
for what we should do or
not do with our bodies,
but we do tend to skip over big passages
that talk about exactly that.
We tend to ignore the passages about
not getting tattoos and
about how men shouldn't shave
the sides of their hair or their beards.
What Paul is saying here
is that theologically
all things are lawful for us, which means
that nothing can keep us from God.
But that doesn't necessarily
mean that everything
is good for us.
So what is the new means of determining
what is beneficial then if the old law
no longer really has that for us?
Well, we can begin by looking at what Paul
and the other New Testament writers say,
and we can definitely
look at what Jesus did
and what Jesus said we
should and shouldn't do.
Overall though, we don't really
seem to have an answer yet
about how we determine what's
beneficial and what's not,
especially in a world that is so different
from the world that the
Bible was written in.
But here's the thing, when
something like transition
helps you stop worrying about yourself
and turning in on yourself and instead
lets you concentrate more on other people
and on your relationship with God,
I would definitely say
that that is something
that is beneficial.
Okay, so the third thing.
Let's talk about how we can glorify God
in our bodies, as it says
here in the end of this text.
There seem to be two schools of thought
on what glorifying God and your body means
and not to name names or anything,
but there's kind of the John
Piper school of thought,
which is you need to stay
as sexually pure as possible
and there's the sort of Rick
Warren's school of thought,
which is glorifying God and your body
is all about exercising and eating right.
Maybe one of these things really is
what Paul is talking
about when he talks about
glorifying God in your body,
but when I think about
it, I tend to think about
Paul's other analogy of
the body as different
members of the church and
different parts of your body
having different gifts.
So let's break it down a little bit.
How might I glorify God with my hands?
Maybe by using them to
distribute warm coats
to refugees in the winter.
How might I glorify God with my feet?
Maybe by marching in solidarity with
the Black Lives Matter protestors.
How might I glorify God with my stomach?
Maybe by eating things
that are sustainably raised
and traded fairly.
How might I glorify God with my brain?
Maybe by becoming my best,
most honest, most selfless self
and might that include transitioning?
Well for me, it definitely does.
I think at the end of the
day what Paul is trying
to get across in these verses
is not that we are old,
stone, unchanging buildings
that just sit there and grow moss.
Instead, we are living, breathing, moving,
changing, growing bodies,
growing vessels for God's spirit.
And we should honor and remember that.
And transitioning for
many trans Christians
is one way of doing that.
Thanks for watching the
video of this week everybody.
I'm gonna put some links
to further resources
on these passages down below,
so definitely go check that out.
If you like this video and
you wanna see more like it,
don't forget to hit the
subscribe button over here.
And I will see you back
here next Wednesday.
Peace, everybody!
