Book Review: Intersex in Christ: Ambiguous Biology and the Gospel

 Let me start out that to my knowledge I have not been diagnosed as or told I was Intersex, but would not be surprised if I was and just haven't been told due to the shame and stigma around being intersexed that the author mentions, as I know even without knowledge of a diagnosis, I have experienced a similar shame due my puberty leaving me underdeveloped in some areas while wrongly developed in others.

The biggest reason I purchased this book is because I have been interested in how various Evangelical groups/individuals view the concept of those being Intersexed, but not wanting to sound like it was being used as a "loophole" when talking about gender dysphoria, but how they view Intersex on its own, partially because of knowing some of the biology and genetics behind intersexed conditions but again due to the possibility of me falling under the category of being intersexed and a Bible believing Christian.

This book was a good read, that I could barely put down, and I would recommend it, not as an end all be all resource regarding Intersex and the Christian faith, but as a starting point. This should be read by not just ministers, pastors, and lay leaders; but also expecting parents and even those that are intersexed and interested in learning about Christianity and how it relates to them. This book constantly expresses the importance of the Gospel and that those who are intersexed are both just as much in need of it as everyone else, and that it is just as available to them as it is to everyone else.

Now the negative, but not negative enough to affect the rating. Just with people you meet in real life you might not agree on all the minor Theological issues that the author discusses, and sometimes her definition of certain terms being used makes it hard to follow regarding some topics; but overall, it appears to be a good Biblical approach to a group that is often misunderstood, marginalized, and overlooked. 

The areas I had some differing opinions on are more related to her view of complementarianism and egalitarianism as well as how the resurrection bodies will be. The author is an egalitarian and views regarding intersexed individuals this is the view that makes the most sense in how they are to be involved within the church community and in ministry; I on the other hand while agree with that in some aspects in others I would still hold a more complementarian view such as pastoral leadership. Then with the resurrection body the author believes that in the resurrection intersex will be completely erased, but I am not quite as certain on that as with the one example of a resurrection body we have, much of the scars and signs of the torture Jesus endured appear to have been healed, or at least are not mentioned, He still had the scars from the nails and the spear; thus, I believe some resurrected bodies will still be intersexed.  Some people may also get confused regarding the author pointing out how intersexed conditions are part of the result of the fall, I even saw someone leave a review stating how this just reinforces the concept of shame. To me the author did not have that intent, as they pointed out how intersexed conditions are just one thing out of many that are the result of the fall, things like sickness, cancer, and death; by no means did it view this as something to be shameful of but just a "fact of life." I think the misconception has to do with people linking everything that is the result of the fall to sin. Just as Jesus was asked regarding the man born blind "who sinned?" Jesus responded that the blindness was not because of the man or his parents' sin, in a similar manner the author points out how while being one of many results of the fall being born intersexed is not sinful or even related to the sin of an individual 

Liberty

"You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments." Exodus 20:4-6

Let me start by saying this; I am an American, I enjoy the freedoms we have; however I do not worship them and my faith and hope is in God. I know God is the one that granted us those freedoms, but also realize that God is also allowed to take them away when we, as a nation, start to make them our focus of worship over Him. What I am about to talk about also has nothing to do with the proposed vaccine mandates, while vaccinated myself I believe it should be a personal choice after one prayerfully considers the pros and cons regarding the vaccine. What I am getting at is more in regards to a trend/attitude I have noticed over the last 5-6 years.

Now to the purpose of this post...

History lesson: When the division of the kingdom of Israel into Israel and Judah happened (around 930 BCE) within the first 22 years in the northern kingdom Jeroboam made two golden calves, assigned his own priests, and made his own festivals for them to worship instead of going to Jerusalem to worship the Lord. Then about 50-70 years later (874-853 BCE) the northern kingdom was ruled by Ahab, and it was under him that Baal worship was at its peak; Baal was a rain god, and God displayed Himself to be greater that Baal by causing a drought for three years. It was probably also under Ahab that Israel had irreversibly turned away from God, as all the kings afterwards were compared to him in their wickedness. The northern kingdom lasted for a total of about 200-220 years from the establishment of the idols Jeroboam placed in Dan and Bethel to the Assyrian exile.

Now I wonder if some of America's problems are the result of the dedication of a 151 foot statue of the Roman goddess of freedom, which took place 135 years ago, especially since it appears many people put worship of her higher than that of God?

October 28, 1886 (135 years ago to the date) in New York harbor a statue was dedicated as the embodiment of the American spirit. The figure that was decided upon was that of the Roman goddess of freedom called Libertas, or as translated into English "Liberty;" you can also find various statues and images of this goddess in and around a number of government buildings including on top of the dome to the US Capitol building (statue of freedom). About 40 years after this dedication (dedication of the statue of Liberty Enlightening the World) was the Scopes Monkey trial (1925), which many view as what pushed the theory of evolution into the forefront and replacing the teaching of creation in public education. Then about another 40 years after that (1962-1965) a series of Supreme Court cases placed control of the public school system in the hands of the federal government allowing the removal of prayer, Bible reading, and any religious symbols from the public school. As I stated earlier, over the last couple of years I have been seeing others post on social media complaining about the government slowly taking away or restricting our freedoms to the point I wonder if the god in which they trust is the one whose name is expressly written on our coins, and who has been prominent on our coins from just about the start ... "LIBERTY"

As I stated at the beginning of this, God is the one that granted us our freedoms; but if as a nation we start worshiping Liberty in her many different forms, like we have as a nation, who are we to complain when God decides to prove His power over Liberty by taking our liberties away. Remember just like we as Americans are regarding our freedoms, the Jews in Biblical times thought the same thing about the temple in Jerusalem.

The Independent Fundamental Baptists may have been right, or Why I stopped listening to Christian Music

 

While there are many things in which I don’t agree with the King James Only Independent Fundamental Baptists, from here on referred to as IFB, sadly I have come to the realization I have found common ground with them in regards to “Christian” music. About a month ago I felt God placing on my heart to stop listening to what the music industry considers to be Christian music, at the time I didn’t really pay attention to this prompting wondering what is wrong with it, I mean I know some of the praise and worship music comes out of churches that aren’t biblical; but those aren’t groups or songs I listen to. Then after recently watching the American Gospel documentaries, both Christ Alone and Christ Crucified, I felt God’s call to stop listening to Christian music again, and this time I am starting to listen.

While I don’t agree with the IFB stance on music regarding the style of music, I do agree that much of what we consider Christian music, including the bands are coming from churches and movements whose teachings aren’t Biblical and some when looked at hard enough are actually anti-Christian. Now I am not saying this is true of all those involved in the Christian music industry, but after listening to various artists and bands through my preferred streaming service, all I can state if most of what I heard was more focused on self and less focused on Christ. Now you may be wondering what is wrong with that, it is still good music and the lyrics aren’t as bad as what is being played on mainstream radio, you would be surprised to realize not really; I have heard lyrics from some Christian artists that I wonder how it got past the profanity filter, and when the themes being presented aren’t any different than what secular artists are singing about, the Christian artist just tries to loosely couple it to Christianity.

I grew up in the 90’s and much of the bands that I listened to on the radio had lyrics that expressed either a form of New Age spirituality or Secular Humanism, and when I recently took a good listen to the Christian music I would regularly listen to while driving to and from work a lot of what I heard was just the artists trying to put a Christian spin on those same concepts. The danger here isn’t the style of music but the lyrics; I have started to listen to strictly instrumental rock music of which God hasn’t placed on my heart not to listen to. 

The reason I say the problem isn’t the style but the lyrics is to take a look at the concept of subliminal messaging; one example is in old westerns the good guys always wore white and bad guys wore black, or in more modern terms you will never see a bad guy using an iPhone. In constantly listening to music we are subconsciously teaching and training ourselves to believe what the lyrics are presenting and to think along the same lines. The real problem comes into play when you consider we probably spend more time listening to music each week than we do listening to good Biblical teaching, and some aren’t even getting that as their churches are also teaching the same unbiblical concepts disguised as Christianity.

Now, I feel that this is such an important message to present that I have both posted this in my blog and plan to record it for YouTube so that people can share it in various formats. Now besides warning Christians to carefully examine and test the music they listen to personally, I also want to point out to the leadership of all churches you need to make sure what your music is teaching doesn’t contradict with what you are preaching. Close enough doesn’t work, this isn’t horseshoes, hand grenades, or government work; this is the spiritual welfare of those placed under your care that you are playing with.

Is the "God First Life" really about living a God first life?

Let me start out by stating the answer is both yes and no. To do a little background, a couple of years ago while filming the prayer breakfast that is part of the St. Pete Dream Center's ministry it was talked about reading through the book as part of their discussions, if you go to the Becoming God's Man YouTube channel you will see that it never happened. However, I ended up purchasing the book at that time and it sat on my virtual bookshelf collecting virtual dust until recently. Due to some things coming to my attention, both personally and regarding Christianity as a whole, I felt led to read through the book. Now let me just state that I almost walked away from reading the book after just the second chapter, which I will get to later.

This book is kind of broken up into two sections, the first two chapters provide the what and why behind living a God first life.  Chapter 3 through the end of the book is how one goes about putting God first in their life, I will say that these last chapters do a good job of informing a Christian how to put God first in their life. He talks about concepts such as being in close fellowship with other believers, being rooted in the Bible, placing yourself under the authority of a Bible believing church, etc. 

Now we get to where I had an issue, and the reason behind my title, Chapter 2. As I started to read the book, I will state I was a bit wary knowing how Prosperity Gospel preachers and the similar will use similar language, but aren't truly talking about putting God first, as their goal is to use God to get what they want. Unfortunately, as I read chapter 2, this is what it felt like was being conveyed in this book. Chapter 2 uses Matthew 6:33 as a means to state that in putting God first, He will provide everything we need and want, everything that will make us happy. Now, I am willing to provide the author the benefit of the doubt that he wasn't telling us to put God first in order to get the things we think we want; and that he really meant that in putting God first, God will reveal that the happiness we seek and desire will only be found in a relationship with Him, where He is first in our lives. The problem though is after reading the chapter I had to ask, if you are "putting God first" for any other reason than that is where God deserves to be, are you truly putting God first? The secret is you aren't, once there is a reason other than because He's God, such because of what God might give you, God is no longer first but your desires are. With these issues regarding chapter 2, I can't really recommend this book to anyone, as appears to have unfortunately lived up to my fears that it is based in the Prosperity Gospel.

My Recent Silence

 I apologize for not having any recent posts. The main reason is that God hasn't given me anything to share. I am working on a couple of projects that I will be using this blog for besides sharing those short messages God gives me to share. First will be doing book reviews, I have one book I have just finished reading which I will be working on reviewing and a couple more in the queue. I also am considering posting some of my more creative writings on here, which includes reposting many of my poems that I had written a couple of years ago but had taken down off another of my sites. I know this is a short post but I figured I would give an update and something for everyone to look forward to.

The Church with a misplaced focus.

 ' “Write to the angel of the church in Ephesus: Thus says the one who holds the seven stars in his right hand and who walks among the seven golden lampstands: I know your works, your labor, and your endurance, and that you cannot tolerate evil people. You have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and you have found them to be liars. I know that you have persevered and endured hardships for the sake of my name, and you have not grown weary. But I have this against you: You have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember then how far you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. Otherwise, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent. Yet you do have this: You hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. “Let anyone who has ears to hear listen to what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God. ' Revelation 2:1-7

The Church with a misplaced focus. If not familiar with this passage from Revelation, though who hasn't heard of the church that lost its first love, most Christians have probably heard of the church of Ephesus. This was the church that in Acts Paul spent 3 years ministering at. It was the only church that Paul gave a farewell speech to the elders, actually warning them to be on the lookout for everything that Jesus praises them for. By this point this church was keeping faithful to the faith. They were regularly attending church, reading the Scripture, testing their teachers and pastors to make sure they weren't teaching a false gospel. They were speaking out against various sins with zeal. So, what did Christ have against them? They lost the love they had at first. Now some may think this meant they turned away from the faith, but they were still being faithful, all their actions were done because of and for their faith. The problem is that they lost that zeal for Christ that caused them to have that million-dollar bonfire without being prompted to they decided to burn all of their pagan books. Their focus shifted, ever so slightly at first, from looking to Christ and have everything else follow until they were looking to everything else and expecting Christ to follow, and ended up way off track and Christ someplace else because of that misplaced focus. That zeal and pure worship of God died out as they became more concerned about keeping true to the Gospel, keeping out false teachings, keeping out false practices, speaking out against sinful behaviors, etc. until that was all they were focused on and their faith was just a reason for it. They were no longer actions produced from a desire driven by love, but actions followed because of their faith. Just like in a boat if it is pointed just a fraction of a degree off course, further down the line they could be miles away from where it should be if the course is never corrected. This is why every day we need to seek God and ask if we need to do a course correction before it becomes too bad. Remember anytime your focus shifts off of Christ you are no longer heading towards God.

Be alert, the church needs to watch out for ANY spirit of antichrist not just The Antichrist!

'Knowing their thoughts, he told them, “Every kingdom divided against itself is headed for destruction, and no city or house divided against itself will stand."' Matthew 12:25

Let me state this, often as Christians  we are always looking out for "The Antichrist" we often ignore the fact we are warned of many false messiahs, false prophets, and false teachers, all that come in a spirit of antichrist, whose goal is to lead the elect astray. This means Satan's goal with these is not to draw the world to him for he already has them. He also knows that he can't lead the church astray with things that appeal to the world, as few would follow. What can lead the church astray is to prey on those that view specific issues as more important than anything else, like abortion is more evil than any other sin, and use someone whose character expresses many other sins yet they claim to be against abortion, have them run for a major public office, and as the single issue voters ignore the caution signs and red flags, they view those that look at the caution signs and red flags as being sinners that need to repent or not even Christians. This causes division as believers start fighting with each other over this issue, some even becoming more focused on the issue than they are on Christ, some to the point where it appears they start to worship their stance on abortion instead of Christ, as they appear to point people to their view on abortion rather than pointing them to Christ and letting Him change the views. Remember the pharisees were known for drawing attention to themselves by saying "look at me, look at me worshiping God, look at how righteous I am by keeping the law;" but they were focused on self, on the law, on how they appear to the world, but not on God Himself.

Whether Trump’s legal challenges to the election results stick or not, I will say that Satan has used the "Pro-life" platform and Trump’s character to wrap this most recent election in a spirit of antichrist. Now I am not claiming Trump is "The Antichrist" or even one of many antichrists or false messiahs that as Christians we are to watch out for; what I perceived as at least a major caution sign may have just been him being extremely spiritually immature or at least that is what I hope although I am concerned seeing that many people appear to be worshiping him. What I will say is that many SINGLE ISSUE voters that view abortion as the only issue to decide their vote on are being used by Satan to divide the church. They fall under the false assumption that if one didn't vote for the candidate that was against abortion (Trump) then they either aren't Christians or are sinning and need to repent because they support abortion because they didn’t vote for the anti-abortion candidate. They often don't care about the character of the candidate being willing to turn a blind eye to a number of sins as long as they claim to be against abortion; regardless of the fact that we are given numerous examples, as well as multiple verses, that warn us about bad character, bad leadership, can corrupt those around them as well as those under their authority. Just like not everyone that voted for Trump agrees with his character, not everyone that voted against Trump is for abortions, and every third-party candidate that I looked into was somewhere on the “pro-choice” spectrum, whether it was to not take a stance either way or to be willing to allow it to the levels of the Democratic party’s position. Only 3% of voters actually used abortion as an issue when making their decision on supporting a candidate.

Now a slight warning about the misplaced worship that is resulting with this division; which if not part of the spirit of antichrist it is still a thing to be cautious of since anything that takes your focus off of Christ is moving your worship to that where your focus goes, and when you are pointing people more to your stance against abortion, than to the free gift of grace offered by faith through the sacrifice of Christ, you are in a way worshiping abortion as you are putting your focus on that, even if you mention God or your faith as a footnote for pointing to your stance against it. Just like low self-esteem is a form of pride, focusing on being anti-abortion over the Gospel is worshiping abortion.

Let me leave you with a couple of verses to dwell and reflect on along with Matthew 12:25.

'Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. ' 1 Peter 5:8

'Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour. ' 1 John 2:18

'Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. ' 1 John 4:1

' Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor? ' James 4:11-12