Have you ever heard that argument, have all the young shepherds in America ever met him one way or another, perhaps in the teen who says sarcastically?But the Bible says something about not smoking marijuana!? And being strict, the teenager is right. Get an agreement and you will suffer by finding a chapter and verse that refer to some of the most intense topics in culture: “Abortion,” “Cloning,” “Nuclear Weapons. “
Therefore, as the argument is generally held, the Bible is useless in forming moral judgments on these issues, but, as every young pastor in America has said, this poor vision of the scriptures can be corrected through a correct understanding of biblical theology.
- Are teens a different category?But it’s essentially the same level as Jay Michaelson’s argument in a Daily Beast article where he mocks a resolution recently passed by the Kansas Republican Party on transgender people.
- Proposed by Eric Teetsel.
- Director of the Family Policy Alliance in Kansas.
- While Teetsel has clearly responded to much of Michaelson’s arguments elsewhere.
- I would like to focus on one aspect of what Michaelson says.
The history of creation says nothing about gender. Notice how the end of the [transgender] resolution speaks of God’s “plan for gender to be determined by biological sex”. Where did it come from?
It may seem new to you that “the story of creation says nothing about gender. “
This seems new because he is unansessed with the new rules Michaelson takes as a fatality: the gap between definitions that has apparently recently opened up between the terms “sex?”This division is crucial to understanding contemporary cultural conversations that revolve around gender and sexuality, as Michaelson explains.
Remember that sex is not the same as sex. By definition, sex is related to chromosomes; gender deals with cultural practices. Sex is what we have between our legs; Sex is what we have between our ears. My male gender means I can have a beard; Does my man mean it’s socially acceptable for me to have a beard?but it is not acceptable in conservative societies to wear high heels or make-up. Of course, there is nothing objectively masculine or feminine about shoes and clothing; these are aspects of gender and social construction. ?
You see, there’s a real core to this argument. There is a conceptual difference between biological sexual realities and cultural signs of gender. But to cite this difference in definition as supporting the argument that “the history of creation says nothing about gender ?”is misleading. Michaelson wants us to believe that biblical writers operated according to the same understanding of the categories of “gender” and “sex” that progressives use today. But don’t you need a PhD, in Bible Studies to understand this notion of?gender?Is there a correlated distinction?
In Genesis 1:27, the Bible says that God created humanity and ‘woman’. That is why God created man in his image, in the image of God, created him; The man and the woman created them. ? (N. do T. : almost all Portuguese translations include “man and woman”, but Hebrew words have the first meaning “man” and “woman”)
Michaelson quotes this verse to say, essentially, “You see, the history of creation refers to sex (male/female) and not gender (male/female)”. To clear things up, the Hebrew words for? (Za?Ka? R) and? Woman?(ne?qe?ba?) they refer to humanity as sexually binary, with subtle etymological references to the sexual organs that distinguish men from women, but does that not automatically mean that these words have nothing to do with God’s creation being?Male?? and ‘feminine’.
The history of creation does not end in Genesis 1, but continues in chapter 2. There we read that God removed a rib from the side of the man, Adam, and formed the woman, Eve. Upon seeing Eve, Adam exclaims:
“This, yes, is the bone of my bones and the flesh of my flesh! Will she be called woman (isha?) Was she kidnapped because of man (i? Sh)? (Genesis 2. 28)
Immediately afterwards, the author of Genesis will universalize the principle enshrined in the (binary) creation of the God of man and woman and in Adam’s subsequent sentence and, above all, will maintain it with a purpose, the reason behind the creation of the binary. humanity for God’s sake. ” Therefore, the man will leave his father and mother and join his wife, and they will be one flesh” (Gn. 2, 29).
Here we find the same verse that Jesus quotes to base his definition of marriage, thus reaffirming the timeless nature of the truth God built on the fabric of creation (Matthew 19:5, Mark 10,7). In this way, marriage is God’s way of achieving its other purpose behind the creation of a binary humanity, given in Genesis 1. 28.
So, even if we give in for a moment to Michaelson’s definitive categories, we should still say that if the history of creation in Genesis 1 focuses more on biological sex, the continuation of the history of creation in Genesis 2 clearly speaks of God creating humanity into two corresponding, necessarily binary, genres. Because in Genesis 2, we read that God does not simply believe humanity as “man” and “woman”, but as “man”?Is she a woman? Relational roles (according to 1 Corinthians 11. 9).
However, when we read these stories together, how clearly should they be read, does the binary, inherent and coherent characteristic of God-created humanity as “man/man” and “woman/woman” become clear and obvious?What is “man” if not “male”? Genesis 1. 27?if not the correspondent? Woman?? Does God create men for masculinity and women for femininity?And to rebel against it is an abomination (according to Deuteronomy 22. 5).
Far from Michaelson’s assertion that the history of creation speaks absolutely of gender, do we find gender, on the other hand, masculinity and femininity, rooted and intertwined in God’s male and female creation?it does not correspond to the way the Bible speaks of men and women. Kevin DeYoung points to a similar point when writing:
As stated by the contemporary academy in another way, the Bible believes in an organic unity between biological sex and gender identity, so men and women are (only) the type of couple that can reproduce (Genesis 1. 28, 2. 20). A man who sleeps with a man as if he were a woman (Leviticus 18:22)?That is why the Apostle Paul can speak of homosexual couples as a break with natural relationships or the natural function of the male-female sex (Romans 1: 26-27). In each case, the argument only works if there is a supposed equivalence between the biology of sexual difference and the corresponding male and female identity.
It is good news that God has created male and female humanity. We do not have to suffer the existential anguish of self-definition. It is God who defines us, and God created us and called us men and women, men and women.