A Fresh Look at Cross-Dressing in Deuteronomy

A few years ago I was speaking with a colleague in ministry about how the church responds to trans people. I tried to suggest that, strictly speaking, as a question of chapter-and-verse citation, the Bible does not say anything about the morality of gender transitioning, and, therefore, it is probably best for the church not to frame it as a moral issue.

My friend cocked an eyebrow. “Really?” he said. “You don’t think the Bible addresses this?” And then he cited Deuteronomy 22:5—“A woman must not wear men’s clothing, nor a man wear women’s clothing, for the Lord your God detests anyone who does this”—and he rested his case.

At the time, I hadn’t spent a great deal of time digging into Deuteronomy 22:5, so I didn’t argue the point. I was pretty sure, however, that a single verse in Torah hardly made an airtight argument. I felt this especially because Christians believe as a foundation of their faith that the Lord Jesus has fulfilled all of Torah in his death and resurrection, and the single command to love our neighbours faithfully in Jesus Christ fulfills the entirety of Torah (Galatians 5:14).

A while later, though, I had occasion to look more closely at the Hebrew text of Deuteronomy 22:5, and I noticed something I had never considered before.

You see: the most common word for “clothing” in the Hebrew Bible is beged. It comes from the Hebrew root word bâgad, “to cover,” and occurs 217 times in the Hebrew Bible. Other common words for clothing include lebûsh (32 occurrences), malbûsh (8 occurrences), śimlâh (29 occurrences) and mekasseh (4 occurrences).

In contrast to this, the word “kelı̂y” (319 occurrences) is a somewhat flexible word, which generally means something like “equipment” or “furnishings.” It can refer to a vessel or sack that contains something, to jewelry, to a tool or weapon, to gear that someone might wear for a specific purpose, or to a soldier’s armour. The meaning of kelı̂y is very much dependent on the context in which it is being used.

The most common word for “a man,” in Hebrew is the noun 'ı̂ysh. It occurs 2163 times and means “a man” in the most general sense. The second most common word for “a man,” is the word 'âdâm, with 541 occurrences. This is the word that the name “Adam” comes from and can mean a “man” specifically, or a human being more generally (regardless of gender, as in “God created 'man' in his image”). The Hebrew word for “male,” with special reference to the sexed-body, is zâkâr (with 82 occurrences).

In contrast to these various terms for a “man,” the word geber literally means something like “valiant man,” or, more loosely, a “warrior.” It occurs 65 times in the Hebrew Bible.

With that rough and ready Hebrew glossary in mind, let me return to Deuteronomy 22:5, and its prohibition, seemingly, against men and women wearing each other’s clothing. Because the word it uses for “man” is not 'ı̂ysh, or 'âdâm, or zâkâr. And neither is the word for the man’s clothing beged, lebûsh, or śimlâh. The word the NIV translates as “man” is geber, “a mighty man,” and the word the NIV translates as “clothing” is kelı̂y, “gear/equipment.” Admittedly, the word geber can be used in the Hebrew Bible to describe a man generally, in a way similar to how the word 'ı̂ysh is used, but in this context, paired with the word kelı̂y like this, it seems obvious to me that simple, generic “cross dressing” is not what the verse has in mind.

Literally, we might render it like this: “There shall not be ‘the gear’ of a ‘valiant man’ upon a woman, and a ‘valiant man’ shall not put on the mantle (simlat) of a woman.”

A rough and ready gloss of the verse might run like this: “A woman shall not put on the equipment of a warrior, and a warrior shall not put on a woman’s dress.”

It would take more unpacking than I have space for in a simple blog post like this to determine how accurate this gloss is to the original intent. It’s notable to me, however, that the prohibition against a woman “wearing a warrior’s arms” appears in Chapter 22, shortly after a lengthy list of laws pertaining to how the Israelites are to wage war (or not to wage war, as the case may be) with the nations they will encounter in the Promised Land. Verses 21:10-14, for instance, give careful guidelines for how the Israelites are to treat a woman taken captive in war.

With this context in mind, I can’t help but wonder if Deuteronomy 22:5 actually has nothing to do with the act of cross-dressing, but instead is prohibiting the people of Israel from using their women as soldiers in battle, or allowing their male soldiers to shirk their “manly” duty to fight on behalf of their people (both of which, in an Ancient Near Eastern context, would be an affront to the nation's honor (see, for instance, Judges 4:9)).

Even if these arguments aren’t conclusive, they strongly suggest that we cannot read Deuteronomy 22:5 as some sort of a definitive word on the modern day phenomenon of gender dysphoria, or use it as a some kind of directive on how we ought to respond to trans people. If we do, we'll be doing a kind of violence to the text (to say nothing of what it does to trans people themselves), wrenching the verse from its context and making it say something it’s not meaning to say.

A Fresh Look at the Prophet Daniel

Last week I shared some thoughts about an often-overlooked detail in the story of the Road to Emmaus, and the possibility that, counter to generations of tradition, the two disciples that Jesus encountered that day might not both have been male, that they might have been a married couple. That post received an unexpected level of engagement at my church, so much so that I thought I’d share another “overlooked detail” that I came across in my daily Bible reading, that maybe sheds some interesting light on an familiar story.

The story in question involves the prophet Daniel, one of the best loved prophets in the Old Testament. Many of us have probably heard the stories of Daniel interpreting King Nebuchadnezzar’s dreams, or reading the writing on the wall, or braving the lion’s den, but the other day I was reading Daniel Chapter 1 and I saw something I never noticed before.

In verse 1:3, we are told that Daniel was brought to Babylon from Jerusalem during the exile, and that upon arriving in the palace he was placed in the custody of Ashpenaz, the chief of Nebuchadnezzar’s court officials. That is how the NIV renders the verse, anyways. The NASB reads the same, though it includes a footnote clarifying that the word could be translated as the “chief of the king’s eunuchs.” This is, incidentally, how the old King James version translates it.

Was Ashpenaz actually the chief of Nebuchadnezzar’s palace eunuchs? If so, what would that have meant for Daniel, to have been placed in Ashpenaz’s custody?

The word in question is sârı̂ys, a Hebrew word that comes from a root word that literally means “to castrate.” It’s the word used in Esther 2:14 to describe Shaashgaz, for example, who was the eunuch in charge of the King’s harem, and certainly in the context of that story—which shares many similarities with Daniel, by the way—in that story it is highly probable that Shaashgaz, as the keeper of the king’s harem, was a eunuch in the literal sense of the word.

The word sârı̂ys can also simply mean an “official” or “officer of the court,” however, with no implications as to the person’s reproductive status. In the story of Joseph and Potiphar, for example, we’re told that Potiphar was a sârı̂ys of Pharaoh, and later we discover that he is married, and may even have had a daughter (Gen 41:45). In that story, it’s not likely that Potiphar was a eunuch in the technical sense, which is why most English translations call him an “official” in Pharoah’s court.

In some cases, as in the story of Esther above, the context itself can help us decide how the word is being used. We know, for example, that in 2 Kings 20:18, when the Jewish King Hezekiah sins by showing off his wealth and military might to the envoys from Babylon, the prophet Isaiah warns him that, as a result, his children will be taken away and made to be sârı̂yim in the palace of the Babylonian king. Given the severity of this threat, the context suggests that Babylon will “make eunuchs” of Hezekiah’s sons in the literal sense, not simply make them into court officials. It is possible that this was a common practice—or at least, not uncommon—for Babylon to castrate its prisoners of war before making them servants of the court.

So what about Daniel? Does the term sârı̂ys in this story mean more than just “an official?” Was Daniel literally “made into a eunuch” when he came to serve under Ashpenaz, the head of the king's eunuchs?

Admittedly, the final answer is inconclusive (hence the NASB’s footnote leaving both possibilities), but my hunch, for what it’s worth, is that he was.

I say this partly because of the similarities between the story of Daniel and the story of Esther, another Jewish captive who experienced sexual violence at the hands of the Persian court (though admittedly Esther’s sexual violence was of a different nature). I also say it because of the way 2 Kings 20:18 seems to foreshadow Daniel’s situation so directly.

It would be easy to make a much bigger deal out this detail than the context warrants; Daniel being “made a eunuch” does not make his situation the same as people who identify as what now adays we might call a “sexual minority.” At least, not exactly the same. If Daniel was a eunuch, it was not sex-change surgery he received. He was violently mutilated by an oppressive empire. It would be anachronistic, I think, to over-lay his story onto the experience of people today who identify as trans, or experience gender dysphoria.

At the same time, it would be easy to make too small a deal out of this detail, too; and that, I think, is the greater danger. In Deuteronomy 23:1, we’re told quite explicitly that no one who has been castrated is to be permitted in the assembly of God’s people. It’s not clear what should be done with them, but it’s clear they are to be “excluded from the assembly.” And yet, if my reading of Daniel’s story is accurate, then in Daniel we have at least one instance of someone who falls under the Deuteronomy 23 prohibition, but instead of being excluded he is, rather, used powerfully by God.

There’s a line in Daniel 10:11 that I’ve always found to be very poignant. Daniel has received a horrific vision of the future and is in deep distress. He’s been praying and mourning for three days straight, when a divine visitor finally comes to comfort him with the interpretation of what he’s seen. Before this theophanic messenger does that, however, he starts by saying: “You, Daniel, are ‘highly esteemed.’”

That’s how the NIV renders it, at least, but I don’t think it’s strong enough. In Hebrew the word is châmad, a word that literally means “desirable,” or “precious.” It’s the word used to describe precious jewels in 2 Chronicles 20:25, precious gold in Ezra 8:27. In Psalm 19:9-10 it’s the word used to describe “the judgements of the Lord”—they are more desirable (châmad) than precious gold.

The use of this word to describe Daniel in 10:11 would hit you in the gut with its beauty, if, in Daniel 1:3, it really was the case that he had been castrated when he was brought into the service of King Nebuchadnezzar. Because if he was, then according to the Law of Moses, his status as someone whose body lacked “full sexual congruity with his gender,” so to speak, would mean that he should have been excluded from the community, cut off from life with God (no pun intended).

And yet, Daniel discovers just exactly the opposite: his divine messenger assures him that he is deeply loved—desirable even, and precious—regardless any sexual violence he may have experienced at the hands of the oppressor, and whether or not his body was “sexually whole” (for lack of a better way of saying it). Those things would not determine his worth in God’s eyes, or, more importantly, his desirability as a servant of the Lord.

Neither do they determine our worth in God’s eyes, if we are in circumstances similar to Daniel’s: if we have experienced sexual violence, perhaps, that has left a permanent scar on us, if our bodies do not align wholly with our sense of who we are, if there is something about our bodies that feels to us “un-whole,” and we think, as a result, there’s no place for us in community. If I’m on to anything in my reading of Daniel’s story, none of those things make us any less precious to God, or God less able to use us powerfully for his purposes.

A Fresh Look at the Road to Emmaus

In Luke 24:13-32, we’re told about a mysterious encounter two disciples had with the risen Jesus, in the afternoon on the day of his resurrection. It’s sometimes called “The Emmaus Road Encounter,” because these two disciples encounter him while they’re on their way to Emmaus, a small village about seven miles outside of Jerusalem. At first they don’t know it’s him, and the text strongly implies that somehow or other they are being supernaturally prevented from recognizing him. They start sharing with him the bewildering story they'd heard that morning, about an empty tomb and a risen Lord, and he explains to them how it had all been predicted in the Old Testament Scriptures. When they finally reach their destination, and he joins them for dinner, we’re told that they suddenly recognize him “in the breaking of the bread.” The instant it dawns on them who they’ve been talking to, however, he vanishes, leaving them with racing thoughts and burning hearts.

It’s a great story, one of the most famous post-resurrection encounters in the New Testament. One Easter I was researching it for a sermon, however, when, like the disciples recognizing Jesus in the breaking of the bread, I came across some details that helped me recognize someone in the story I'd never seen before.

 

You see: every illustration of the road to Emmaus I’ve ever seen has always been roughly the same. Two men are seen, walking along an idyllic country road, with a mysterious stranger (usually in white) walking between them. I’ve sprinkled a few samples throughout this post to help you imagine it.

The details may vary somewhat from picture to picture, but, in addition to the presence of the mysterious stranger, there’s one detail they all share in common. The two disciples are always both depicted as being male. I’ve never seen a painting of the Emmaus Road Encounter that bucks this trend: a mysterious Jesus walking along the road with two men.

Now, this post is primarily an exegetical reflection, not an advocacy piece, but let me humbly point out that there is nothing in the text that would require both disciples to be male, and there are, actually, strong exegetical reasons to suspect that one of the two was, in fact, female.

Certainly, one of them is quite clearly male. We’re told he’s named Cleopas, and he seems to be doing most of the talking. The other disciple remains unnamed throughout the encounter, and, though he or she may have spoken at some point, the narrative uses a plural verb, “they said,” to describe it; that is to say, it only describes the second disciple speaking with Cleopas together, so we don't have any specific personal pronouns we can use to determine his or her gender. 

All we know that he or she was traveling with someone named Cleopas, and they apparently lived together; at least, they’re staying at the same house when they arrive at Emmaus.

This details stands out pretty markedly when you go looking elsewhere in the New Testament for evidence of who this Cleopas might have been, and who might have been living with him in Emmaus.

In John 19:25, we’re told that when Jesus was crucified, a woman named Mary, was standing at his cross, along with Jesus’s mother, Jesus’s aunt, and Mary Magdalene. This fourth woman, we’re told, was “Mary the wife of Clopas.”

Could that Mary, the wife of a man named Clopas, be the same disciple in Luke 24:13, walking along the road with a man named Cleopas? 

Before you answer, I should point out that: (a) both names are a variation on the Greek name Cleopater; (b) some ancient manuscripts spell the name in John 19:25 as Cleophas; and (c) at least some Christian traditions hold that they are the same person.

Of course, if the Cleopas that Jesus met on the road to Emmaus really was the same Clopas mentioned in John 19:25, whose wife was standing at the cross when the Lord died, then it doesn’t take much to connect the dots. It’s very likely, and certainly not impossible, that the second disciple on the road to Emmaus was a woman, Clopas’s wife, herself a devoted follower of Jesus Christ.

Even if these exegetical arguments don’t satisfy, it does raise some crucial questions: why do we always assume that the unnamed disciple in the story was male, when there’s nothing in the text itself to justify that assumption?

And what does it say about us and our biases when reading Scripture, our tendency to project onto the text what we assume is there, instead of opening ourselves to see what’s really there?

And what else might we be missing in our reading of the Scripture—who else might we be excluding from the story—because our cultural biases, our complacency with tradition, and/or our spiritual prejudices have blinded us to their presence?

My 2023 in Books

 Happy New Year, everyone! Each year in January I like to take some time to review the year that was, and set some goals for the year that will be. One of the ways I do this is by looking back on the books I read in 2023, the things I learned from them and the way they impacted me. As far as "years in reading" go, 2023 was a bit leaner than pervious years, but that's partly because I finally buckled down and tackled 1692 page treatise on the Apostle Paul's life and theology, Paul and the Faithfulness of God. This book absorbed the bulk of my reading time and energy, both, and I didn't have much left over for other books, when it was finally through. That said, here's an annotated list of my reading in 2023.

The Phenomenon of Man, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Written in 1948 by a Catholic paleontologist, this book is old, now, and feels somewhat dated, but it is one of the first honest efforts at presenting a thoughtful case for theistic evolution. Even though it got overly mystical towards the end, with its talk of the Omega point and the consciousness of planet earth, still it gave me a lot to think about.

Perfect Present, Greg Boyd

I read Boyd's Satan and the Problem of Evil, and God at War, almost a decade ago, now. and found his case for a Christus Victor theology of the atonement, and his love-requires-free-will justification for the existence evil thought provoking and compelling. This book surprised me, for both its immensely practical approach to the devotional life, and its tendency towards subjective mysticism. It is essentially a collection of reflections on how to practice the presence of God in our daily life, and exercises for growing in the practice. 

Mistborn, Brandon Sanderson

Each year I make a point of reading some fiction, and inasmuch as I grew up reading a lot of J.R.R. Tolkien and Terry Brooks, I wanted to put some high fantasy on my 2023 reading list, for old time's sake. Although Sanderson's Mistborn came highly recommended, I have to be honest and say that I found this book mostly tedious and frustrating. I felt the magic system was too pedantic, the plot too meandering, and the world-building unfocused. I know it's well loved by many, but it just didn't do it for me.

The Relationship Cure, John Gottman

One of the most recognizable names in marriage therapy, John Gottman has written multiple books on marriage enrichment. In The Relationship Cure, his major take-away is the concept of the "emotional bid," the ways in which people make subtle, sometimes subconscious requests for emotional connection with their significant other. Gottman shows how these bids function in the dynamics of a relationship, how to respond to them in ways that enrich the relationship, and what happens when they are rejected.

Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, John Ratey

This was my "self-help" book for the year. Ratey presents some very compelling evidence from multiple scientific studies, showing that regular physical exercise has all kinds of positive effects on cognitive functioning and mental health. Regular exercise can boost your memory, increase your academic success, cure depression and prevent cognitive decline in old age. If you needed motivation to hit the gym, this book should be first on your reading list.

King, Magician, Warrior, Lover, Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette

Moore and Gillette suggest that there are four primary character dynamics that together make up a mature masculine experience. They present a neo-Jungian reading of history, literature, and mythology, to illustrate each one, and show how they manifest in the lives of men. While I did find some of their ideas helpful-- the concept of "accessing" different energies in different circumstances, for instance-- a lot of it felt like pseudo-psychological mumbo-jumbo. Though it is occurring to me, as I write this, that the four Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles each align with one of the four archetypes; so maybe they were on to something.

Paul and the Faithfulness of God, N. T. Wright

As mentioned above, this book was a massive undertaking, a thorough and painstaking analysis of Paul's writings, situating them in their 1st Century context and showing how they related to his three worlds-- the world of Judaism, the world of Rome, and the world of Greek philosophy. Because the first three books in Wright's Christian Origins and the Question of God were complete game-changers for me. Although this one felt repetitive at times, and widely-meandering at other times, still, it continued to change the game for me, when it comes to my understanding of the world of the New Testament.

The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, Louise Perry

Perry's thesis is that the modern sexual revolution, though it was billed as a step towards the liberation of women, has actually had the opposite effect: it has predominantly benefitted men, who now have greater access to no-strings-attached sexual experiences, it has led to greater exploitation women, who are now being told that commodifying their sexuality is in their best interest, and it has led to increased violence against women, as culture becomes increasingly desensitized to more and more violent forms of pornography. Writing as a feminist sociologists, Perry surveys a wide range of cultural data, and though her case is grim reading at times, I found it very compelling.

Sackett, Louis L'Amour

My father-in-law is a big Louis L'Amour fan, and though I've never been a fan of the genre, I felt it behooved me at some point to experience a good old-fashioned Western novel. This one was about as old-fashioned, I think, as they come. It was full of tough, lonely, resourceful men, determined-but-dependent women, gun fights, fist fights, land claims and gold rushes. I found it tedious reading at times, predominantly plot-driven and only loosely interested in delving the characters with any depth, but it gave me a lot to think about when it was done, regarding the myth of the mature masculine (see above), and the way that myth has been perpetuated in popular culture.

The War of Art, Steven Pressfield

I was somewhat disappointed with this highly recommended meditation on the creative life; I think I was expecting something more concrete, practical, action-able than I got. Pressfield's major take-away is that anyone who commits to a creative life is going to encounter resistance-- practical realities, relational pressures, emotional pushback, psychological blocks, concrete obstacles-- to pursuing their art. It is inevitable, and what separates the artists from the amateurs is that the artists have fought through the resistance, no matter the cost, and whatever the sacrifice. Pressfield says little about how to actually fight the war, but by laying it out in such start terms, he certainly challenged me to ask some hard questions about what it really takes to pursue the arts vocationally.

Hondo, Louis L'Amour

See my thoughts on Sacckett above, for how this book made it to my list this year. According to the jacket blurb, John Wayne called Hondo the greatest western novel ever written. I was warmly surprised by the occasional moments of real poetry in the book-- Louis L'Amour's description of the southwestern landscape often reflects real experiential knowedge and great love. That said, I was startled by the explicitly racist undertones of the book. Indigenous people (in this case the Apache) are presented as vicious savages whom the white hero of the book greatly respects, for their woodcraft and warrior culture, but also exceeds in every respect. 

Blossoms in the Valley, Dr. Thomas Choy

Dr. Choy was psychiatrist-in-charge at the Schizophrenia Program at the Scarborough Hospital for many years; in Blossoms in the Valley he shares the heart-felt stories of 10 real-life people he encountered in his practice who have recovered from schizophrenia. Choy speaks very eloquently about the importance of maintaining hope in the midst of mental illness, and of adopting a strengths-based approach to treatment. I read Blossoms in the Valley for a course on psychopathology I am currently taking through Tyndale University, and, while it was required reading, it challenged me deeply to reflect on the realities of psychopathology and how our society responds to the mentally ill.

Troubled Minds, Amy Simpson

Another read for my course on psychopathology, Simpson's book deals especially with the way mental illness is stigmatized and demonized in church communities, specifically. Writing as the daughter whose mother suffered from schizophrenia, Simpson shares some poignant reflections on the was Christians often respond in harmful, hurtful ways to the mentally ill. A very important read for church leaders.

Leaving Church, Barbara Brown Taylor

I was expecting a deeper exploration of the spiritual, theological and emotional dynamics involved in letting go of the vocation of being a pastor. As it was, Leaving Church is more a memoir about being called to ministry than it is about the struggle to leave ministry (she only makes her decision to "leave church" in the final third of the book). Even so, I find Barbara Brown Talyor's writing thought-provoking, and found much I could personally resonate with in this personal account of what it's like to be a pastor.

Music, Ecstasy and the Brain, Robert Jourdain

I posted a full review of this book a few months ago, in which I dissect some of the philosophical bones I had to pick with Jourdain's analysis of the phenomenology of musical experience. Those bones notwithstanding, I have to say that his detailed discussion of how the human brain perceives music, processes it, and translates it into emotional experience inspired me personally to thank God for how fearfully and wonderfully we are made, to meditate on the deep connections between musical expression and religious experience, and to listen more intently to some of my favorite music. In short, it helped me become more ecstatic in my own appreciation of music. 

On Psychology and Faith, A Theological Exploration of Psychotherapy (III)

A sobering question that rises for me as I reflect on the findings of psychology in relation to my Christian faith, is the tenuous nature of the “self”; the filament-thin connections, I mean, between all the different aspects of our selves that together make us who we are. This often hits me most sharply when I’m learning about neuroscience in the context of my study of psychology. Although there are still vast regions of the brain that remain uncharted, still, humans have discovered amazing amounts of information about what makes our grey matter work. When I come across detailed discussions of the brain’s inner-workings, however, I often struggle with feelings of existential dread. If the brain really is a network of cells and synapses, charged with electricity and surging with chemical reactions, and if this really is what our thoughts “consist of,” then what is there about those thoughts that makes them more than merely those pulses and charges and chemical reactions.

These questions intensify for me when I discover how quickly certain medications can alter a person’s personality or transform their mental state. If ingesting a tiny amount of some specific chemical compound or other can actually change how we experience our selves on a fundamental level, you can’t help but wonder what a person really “is,” that it can be so easily manipulated by such material means.

A book by Christian Sociologist Christian Smith called What Is a Person? recently helped me wrestle through these questions. Smith defines a person as a “conscious, reflexive, embodied, self-transcending centre of subjective experience, durable identity, moral commitment, and social communication who . . . exercises complex capacities for agency . . . in order to develop and sustain his or her own incommunicable self in loving relationships with [other selves] and the non-personal world.” It’s certainly a mouthful of a definition, but each morsel in there has been carefully chosen to express something about the fundamental nature of human personhood. When you take the time to unpack it, you start to see that what makes me or you you or me is a subtle, intricate interaction of realities that together are greater than the some of their parts.

This is actually a central idea in Smith’s definition of personhood, something he calls the concept of “emergence.” According to Smith, emergence refers to “the process of constituting a new entity with its own particular characteristics through the interactive combination of other, different entities that are necessary to create the new entity, but do not contain the characteristics present in the new entity.” Emergence occurs when two or more entities at a “lower level” interact, serving in this way as the basis for a new, “higher level” entity with characteristics that cannot be reduced to those of the lower entities. With this definition in mind, we can say that a person is an “emergent reality,” coming into being through the “lower level” interaction of our bodily components, our mental and emotional capacities, our relationships with others, and so on, in a such a way that the whole of who we are is greater than the sum of these individual parts.

The value of this concept in understanding the self—especially from a Christian theological perspective—is the way it guards against reductionism, the modern tendency to view human persons as “nothing but” the material elements of which they are composed. Smith refers to the reductionist move as “Nothing Buttery,” and argues that such a view keeps us from understanding the full breadth and depth of what it means do be human. In contrast to this, an emergent view of human life insists that there are higher, irreducible levels of meaning and purpose that are not immediately present in the lower levels of human existence. This non-reductionistic view intersects meaningfully with a theological anthropology, which has always insisted that there is more to us than our biological matter.

Of course, the Christian tradition has long maintained that there are spiritual realities emergent from the material components of human life. I often feel, however, that this is not well understood in popular Christian teaching. A common Christian assumption is that the spiritual is separate from and more important than the physical, and certainly not in any way related to the material. Smith’s discussion of emergence is a helpful reminder that, whatever the “spiritual” aspect of human life may be, it is emerges from the material, depending on it in some way while being at the same time “greater than the sum of its material parts.” This encourages a more holistic, and ultimately more biblical approach to things like worship, prayer, and other Christian practices, one that engages the body along with the mind and the spirit.

While Christians are not usually guilty of reductionism when it comes to spiritual things, and rightly argue against seeing human beings as “nothing but” their material bodies, a perspective like Smith’s helpfully guards us against an error Christians often make in practicing reductionism in the other direction. By this I mean the tendency of Christians, and especially of evangelicals, to reduce human persons to “nothing but” their immaterial spirits, “contained” in physical bodies which have no importance beyond their role as “vessels” for the spirit. This shows up in the work of ministries that emphasize “saving souls” while downplaying “social justice” and denigrating “the social gospel.” It shows up more subtlety in the common evangelical suspicion of creation care and environmentalism as legitimate Christian concerns. Christians can be just as “Nothing Buttery” when it comes to spiritual things as secular people can be when it comes to physical, and a deep engagement with sociological ideas like the ones presented in What is a Person? would help us guard against this kind of unbiblical dualism.

On Psychology and Faith, A Theological Exploration of Psychotherapy (II)

I did not fully appreciate the schism that exists in some circles between psychology and the Christian theology, until I took some introductory-level counseling courses for my Masters of Divinity, when I was preparing for ministry back in 2004. That was some 20 years ago now, of course, and the schism seems less wide now than it did back then. Between the various efforts in secular culture to shine a spotlight on the very real challenges of mental illness, on the one hand, and the good work of Christian psychologists like Larry Crabb, Mark McMinn, and Grant Mullens, on the other, there seems to be much more cross pollination between these two disciplines than there was two decades ago. Back then, one of the hotly debate topics in my pastoral counseling courses was whether or not there could be any reconciliation between faith and psychology at all; and though none of them were endorsed by our instructors, I did read a good number of books by evangelical pastors, back then, that issued a flat-out, resounding “no!” to the question.

Today, as I say, there is less a schism than an uneasy cohabitation. Certainly most clergy that I know and work alongside will agree unbegrudgingly that psychology has its place. Many churches I know offer bona-fide Christian counseling services, and those that don’t frequently refer parishioners to such services. The Christian embrace of psychology is not universal, by any means. I still have colleagues among the clergy who cock questioning eyebrows when discussing the reality of mental health in the church. Richard Beck, one of my favorite psychologist-theologians, recently did an extended series on his blog about the challenges many Christians face in understanding and responding well to mental health issues (I’d encourage you to check out that series here). So there are still many corners of Christendom where psychology, and the issues it addresses, are viewed with great suspicion.

As someone who has studied psychology at length, and worked for many years in pastoral ministry, who has, as it were seen both sides of the fence, I find this suspicion difficult to understand. As someone who has personally benefitted from the work of a trained therapist, I find it regrettable. My personal conviction is that the theories, findings, hypotheses, and models-of-the-self provided by psychology can actually expand and enrich our theology as Christians, and the help that psychology can provide to those suffering mentally is a gift that should be welcome in the church.

I have wondered if one of the reasons Christians might feel uneasy about making space for psychology in the ministry of the church has to do with an incomplete, and largely unbiblical understanding of what human beings are. In Christian circles, we tend to think of human nature as a body/soul duality in some sense. Sometimes this is divided even further, to a body/spirit/soul dichotomy, or a mind/body/spirit division, but the key point is that “we” (whoever we are) are not our “bodies.” The true “me” is the immaterial, interior, soul within, but not the flesh and bone vessel that contains it.

Biblically, however, human beings are not so much “souls” contained in “bodies” as they are body/soul unities. Space precludes an extended exploration of this claim, but most contemporary theological readings of the scripture point in this direction: that the human being is not a body/soul duality, but a unity.

We do not “have bodies”; we are bodies.

Neither do we “have souls”; we are souls. And body and soul together make the human creature what it is. In lieu of an extended biblical exegesis, let me simply point you to the bodily resurrection of Jesus to make this point. Our bodies are not immaterial parts of ourselves, easily cast off when no longer needed. They are so integral to who we are that we are promised, in the Christian hope, resurrection bodies like the resurrection bodies of our Lord.

If it’s true, this claim has all kinds of implications when it comes to making sense of psychology as a Christian, but two stand out in particular to me. On the one hand, it would mean that, in principle, Christians should not hesitate to seek the help of psychologists for mental unwellness, any more than they’d hesitate to see a doctor for a broken bone. If the body and the soul really do make an integrated whole, then it stands to reason that both can legitimately be addressed by modern medicine, and neither is “off limits” as a domain of scientific understanding.

On the other hand, the body/soul unity we discover in scripture reminds us that both can and should be an object of Christian care, concern, and compassion. If the body is integral to being human, then caring for its physical wellness matters. And if the soul—the “inner self”—is inextricably bound to the body, then caring for our mental wellness matters just as much.

There is more to say, certainly, about the role of psychology in a Christian understanding of the self. More to say, for instance, about acknowledging the limits of psychology. And more to say about the way that Christian faith imposes its own unique ethic on the use and practice of psychology. But if nothing else, the fact that humans are as much their minds as they are their bodies should assure us that there is a place in a Christian understanding of the world, for the things that psychology can teach us about ourselves.

My David, Your Jonathan (String Version)

If you would be my David
Then I’d be your Jonathan
Yeah, I’d take off all the trappings
Of the glory I got on
And I’d remove my armour
And I’d offer you my crown
If you would be a David
To my lonely Jonathan

And I would stand before you
Unclothed and unashamed
And I’d show you all my secrets
Just to hear you whispering my name
And if it meant I could no longer
Be my father’s son
Still I’d let you be my David
If I knew that I could be your Jonathan

Cause there’s a friend who sticks closer
Than any brother could
There’s a water that is thicker
Than the purest drop of blood
There’s a love that is more wonderful
Than any I have known
So hold me to your heart my Holy David
And I swear that I will be your Jonathan
O I swear that I will be your Jonathan
I swear that I will be…

And when the night is lonely
And the shadow’s running high
If I took my shot into the dark
Would you swear to never leave my side
And when my journey stumbles
And I’ve fallen on my sword
If I swore to be your Jonathan
Would you swear with all your heart to be my Lord?

Cause there’s a friend who sticks closer
Than any brother could
There’s a water that is thicker
Than the purest drop of blood
There’s a love that is more wonderful
Than any I have known
So hold me to your heart my Holy David
And I swear that I will be your Jonathan
O I swear that I will be your Jonathan
I swear that I will be…

Heart and Soul, A Theological Exploration of Psychotherapy

Although I work full time as the lead pastor of a local church, with both an M.Div and a D.Min under my belt, I recently enrolled clinical counseling program through Tyndale University in Toronto. There is a bit of a long story behind this statement. When I left my previous ministry post I didn’t yet know where the Lord was going to lead me next, or even if he wanted me to continue in pastoral ministry at all, so I signed up to get trained as a psychotherapist, thinking it would be a good fit for me, should I discern that my days as a pastor were truly over.

As God would have it, my next ministry assignment opened up sooner than I expected, and I started pastoring another church—the church I currently serve at—before I had even completed one course in my degree. I still saw a great deal of benefit in completing my training as a therapist, however, so I rolled back my course load to parttime studies and started doing both: pastoring a church fulltime and earning a degree in counseling on the side.

Though it has been a challenge to balance the demands of church life and my studies at the same time, I have found this training to be indispensable to my work as a pastor. Even if I don’t ever go into clinical practice (the jury’s still out on that question), the things I have already learned about neuroscience, personality, emotional systems and psychopathology have helped make me a more effective pastor. Over the next few months at terra incognita, I intend to explore how, in a series that I’m calling "Heart and Soul, A Theological Exploration of Psychotherapy." I hope to share some of the things I’m learning in my studies, on the one hand, but also to discuss important connections between pastoral work and psychotherapy, on the other.

As just a sample of what some of those connections might look like, let me share a few thoughts about a book we read in a course on psychopathology I took this spring. It was called Blossoms in the Desert, and it was written by a psychiatrist named Dr. Thomas Choy, drawing on his many decades of experience as the head psychiatrist of a schizophrenia program in a Toronto hospital. Although Choy is a person of faith, his book is not explicitly Christian, rather it is focused on the “success stories” he has experienced with schizophrenia patients over the years, exploring what contributed to their success and encouraging people to reimagine what treatment for the severely mentally ill might look like.

What stood out to me as a pastor, however, was the emphasis Choy places on the role of hope in a schizophrenia patient’s recovery. Choy is not speaking about hope here in the Christian eschatology sense of the word—the final hope of redemption to eternal life that is ours in Christ. He is speaking more narrowly about the tenacious hope for recovery that seems to have played such a key role in the many success stories he has personally witnessed. Choy defines hope simply as “the expectation that what we choose today will affect what happens tomorrow,” and he suggests that it is this kind of hope that motivates patients to make the kind of choices that will result in their wellness rather than choices that will deepen their unwellness.

Choy offers some approaches to treatment that encourage this kind of hope in particular: using a strengths-based paradigm for treatment, helping patients make meaning out of their experience, and defining recovery not in terms of “being healed from mental illness” but in terms of discovering a new way of to live as a person with mental illness. If we only focus on the magnitude and severity of what is lost through mental illness, he argues, it can only lead to hopelessness and despair. Real life-transformation can happen, though, when we redefine what recovery means and reframe what it looks like.

Because I read Choy’s book as a pastor, as much as I did as a student of psychotherapy, I found myself resonating deeply with his definition of hope and the role it plays in helping people recover from severe mental illness. If hope really is an “expectation that what we choose today will affect what happens tomorrow”—even if that’s not the whole of what hope is, but only a part of it—then this kind of outlook is probably just as important for the mentally well person as it is for the mentally ill.

Oftentimes in Christian circles, our definition of hope is more deus ex machina than this, a mere blind trust that God’s gonna make it all work out; that Christ will return and take us home before the world becomes unlivable, or if we should die before that day, then the Lord will keep our souls safe and sound in heaven with him, when we do. And I’m sure there is some merit to this way of conceiving of hope. In the end our hope is in God and not in our own hard effort.

However, it is quite possible, and even pretty helpful, to adapt Choy’s definition of hope in a way that aligns very well with a Christian hope. Because, there is a profoundly Christian way of defining hope as the “expectation that what we choose today will affect what happens tomorrow.” All it takes is to acknowledge that, theologically speaking, the Lord Jesus sets the human will free, enabling it to choose to love and serve him, and inasmuch as this is a genuine freedom, our choice of him can be said to be a genuine choice. Even though it begins with God, and is empowered by God, and is brought through to completion in God, still, once God has taken the gracious initiative like this, our response is freely chosen.

So is our choice to pray, or worship, or witness, or meditate on the Word, or any other of the myriad of things that Christians do as an expression of their faith. And as far as I can tell from the Scriptures, these things really do have an affect on what happens tomorrow, because these are the means by which God ordained that we would grow in the things of Christ and he would accomplish his purposes in our lives.

In this way, hope is not just for the schizophrenia patient—though it is absolutely vital for the schizophrenia patient—but it is equally vital for all of us. Because what steps of devotion and commitments of discipleship would we make, if we really believe that God would use those steps, and honor those commitments, to make a difference in the world?

I have Inscribed You, a song

I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands
I have etched you here on my side
And I wrote your name with the nails of the cross
On my hands and feet that they might never be lost
In the stripes of my back
With my arms stretched wide
I inscribed you, I inscribed you
I inscribed you on the palms of my hands

And I have placed you as a seal on my arm
I have set you here over my heart
And my love for you is stronger than the grave
It burns with all the brilliance of an unquenched flame
Like an empty tomb
When its gates burts apart
I have placed you, I have placed you
I have placed you as a seal on my arm

Look on the hands you have pierced
Fall at the feet whose heel you bruised
Touch the flesh that you tore in your sin and pride
See the blood that poured from his riven side
I was broken for you, it was poured out for you
It was offered to make all things new

I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands
I have etched you here on my side
And I wrote your name with the nails of the cross
On my hands and feet that they might never be lost
In the stripes of my back
With my arms stretched wide
I inscribed you, I inscribed you
I inscribed you on the palms of my hands

In Bodily Form: The Role of the Body in the Ministry of Jesus

In Colossians 2:9, as part of an exhortation to the Colossian church not to be led astray by non-Christian systems of thought, Paul makes a passing but profoundly significant reference to the physical body of Christ. “In Christ,” he claims, “all the fullness of the deity dwells in bodily form” (NIV). Though “in bodily form” is an accurate rendering of the Greek here, the emphasis of this verse is not on the “form of the incarnation”—as though the human body of Jesus was simply an incidental “form” that God’s coming to us took, one form among many that it might have taken. Rather the emphasis is on the essential fact of the physical body—that the fullness of deity (το πληρωμα της θεοτητος) dwells “bodily” (σωματικῶς, as a physical body) in the person of Jesus Christ. The present active form of the verb κατοικέω (to dwell) underscores this: it is not that Christ “assumed a human body” for the purposes of salvation, only to discard it when God’s saving work was complete; rather through the incarnation, God took onto God’s self the full reality of a physical body in a permanent way, one that continues even now through the resurrection and exaltation of Christ. In this way, rather than saying, “in Christ God ‘took on’ a body,” or “Jesus ‘had’ a body,” it is perhaps theologically more accurate to say “in Christ, God ‘became’ a body,” and “Jesus ‘has’ a body.” Of course, the nature of the body he now has is only hinted at in the closing chapters of each Gospel, where we catch glimpses of the resurrection body of our Lord, nevertheless, as far as Paul is concerned, the Lord’s “bodily form” is still an ongoing reality, and its implications still obtain for us today.

This is important to keep in mind as we examine Christ’s “embodiment” as it is presented in the Gospels, because it assures us that the physical reality of Christ’s body was not merely tangential to his ministry, rather it was inextricably bound up with who he was and what he came to do. Inasmuch as Christ’s own body was the necessary matrix of his spiritual experience, our bodies, too, provide the necessary matrix through which we “receive and express the life of God in the world.” In particular we might note three ways that Jesus’ embodiment impacted his spirituality which are especially instructive for us. These are: the reality of physical limits, the importance of sensory experience, and the power of human touch.

One of the most vivid images in Mark’s gospel is the description of Jesus sleeping on a cushion in the stern of the disciple’s boat while the storm rages and the waves threaten to capsize them (Mk. 4:38). As it relates to a theology of embodiment, what stands out here is the obvious fact that Jesus needed sleep, and, if he were tired enough that he could sleep during a raging storm, one might assume he was exhausted. Sleep, fatigue, and exhaustion, of course, are all signs of our physical limits as embodied beings, reminders that our energy is not limitless and must be restored through sleep. We see similar examples of the physical limitations of his body in Christs experience of hunger and thirst. He hungered during his temptation in the desert (Matt. 4:2), for instance, and again on the Mount of Olives during Holy Week (Matt. 21:18). Like sleep, of course, hunger is another sign of our physical limitations: our energy must also be restored through basic nutrition. As a final example of the limitations of Christ’s physical body, we note the account of his healing ministry in Luke 4:42-43. Jesus has spent all night healing the sick, and when he sets out to leave the next morning, the crowds urge him to stay with them and continue as a healer in their midst. His reply offers a subtle but profound comment on the spatial limitations that are a necessary part of our embodied nature: “I must proclaim the good news … to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent” (Lk. 4:43). The obvious but often overlooked implication here is that, as an embodied person, Jesus can only be in one place at one time. To preach and heal in one town means he cannot preach and heal in another, a reality that requires difficult decisions daily about where and when and how he will spend his finite energy.

Besides giving him physical limitations, another way that Jesus’ body impacted his spirituality is in his sensory experience, the way his five senses mediated and heightened his experience of the world. We must read between the lines here, because none of the Gospels directly depict Christ as savoring smells or drinking in sights, but there is enough evidence to suggest that Jesus was intently aware of and deeply alive to his sensory experience of the creation. One of my favorite passages in John’s Gospel, for instance, is the account of Christ’s anointing at Bethany, where Mary pours a pint of pure nard over his feet and the house, we are told, “was filled with the fragrance of the perfume” (John 12:3). The fact that John’s Gospel so vividly recalls the fragrance in the air, and that in Mark’s account of the event Jesus says that Mary has done “a beautiful thing” for him (Mk. 14:6), suggests that it is not just the symbolism of the gesture, but also the rich sensuousness of it, that ministered to the Lord’s heart. We can read between the lines in a similar way in John’s account of the wedding of Cana, a story redolent with sensory data, if we stop to imagine it. Amidst the din of a (presumably drunken) wedding party, we find Jesus unapologetically turning bright, clear water into the richest, reddest wine imaginable, a wine so rich and red that it is met with laughter and wonder by the steward, who declares that it surpasses in strength and bouquet anything yet served. Stories like these suggest that, though it may be contrary to traditional Christian opinion, delighting in one’s sensory experience of the Creator’s world—the sound, scents, sights and tastes of creation—can be a holy experience.

One of the poignant details that echoes throughout the New Testament is the role that physical touch played in Christ’s ministry. Indeed, the Apostle John emphasizes this as one of the fundamental proofs of the Christian message—not simply that they heard Jesus or saw him, but that they physically touched him (“That . . . which . . . our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of Life” (1 John 1:1)). Physical touch plays an especially important role in Christ’s healing ministry. We see him repeatedly healing others through the laying on of hands (MK. 6:5, Mk. 8:25, Lk. 4:40, Lk. 13:13, etc.). We see him taking little children “into his arms” and “laying his hands on them” to bless them (Mk 10:15, 19.15, etc.). In addition to this kind of healing touch, the witness of the Gospels also suggest that it was normal for Jesus to express affection for his friends through physical touch. The most compelling example is the way the Beloved Disciple “leaned back against Jesus” at the last supper (lit. lay back into his chest, John 13:25) in a way that suggests this kind of physical contact was not uncommon between them. Similarly, though the outcome of the kiss was a tragic betrayal, still, the fact that Judas greeted Jesus with a kiss in the Garden of Gethsemane suggests that this was not an uncommon form of physical contact for the Lord. While much of this was no doubt conditioned by his culture (cf. Paul’s reference to the holy kiss, e.g. 1 Thess. 5:26), still these examples suggest that Jesus was physically demonstrative in his affection for others. He embraced his friends, touched the hurting, held comrades close to his heart, and welcomed even his enemies with a kiss.

The significance of Jesus’ body has powerful implications for our understanding of our own bodies and the role they play in our spiritual experience. It suggests, for instance, that rather than seeing the limitations of the physical body as a curse or an obstacle to overcome, we should embrace them as gifts from God, one of the ways God teaches us dependence on him. Likewise, it suggests that a healthy spirituality will savor the sensuousness of the created world, delighting in the sights, sounds and scents of life as another gift from the Creator. Finally, it suggests that Christians should acknowledge the healing power of touch, and, in contexts where it is appropriate to do so, should not shy away from letting physical touch express the healing embrace of God in ways that Christ himself did.