Out Of Control

Pete and Laura had been married 12 years, 7 months and 13 days when Pete told Laura he wanted a sex change operation. He told her that he had always felt that he was really a woman trapped in a man’s body, and that he could no longer go on living as a man. Laura couldn’t understand. How could she? They had been happily married - she thought. They had a good sex life. They were friends. They talked about things, laughed together, supported one another. He had a job that he loved. He had friends and hobbies that challenged and absorbed him. She thought they had been happy. She asked him if he was attracted to men; he said “No; he still loved her.” She asked him if he wanted a divorce; he said “No. He still loved her.” Laura had gone along with his desire to dress as a woman, ignoring her own misgivings to support Pete’s desperate quest for wholeness. But it hadn’t been enough. “Won’t you still be you?” asked Laura, despairingly, “what do you need to have that you can’t have as a man?” But Pete didn’t know. He only knew that he felt trapped, and since it wasn’t his job or his wife or anything else in his life it had to be himself. He had to get rid of being himself to go on. And if he had to lose his wife as well, so be it.

Stuart, on the other hand, was perfectly happy being a man. He didn’t have a girlfriend at the moment but there were women in his life who he cared about and who cared about him. His job was not only going well, it was profoundly satisfying. He had enough money to plan ahead; for the first time in his life he wasn’t just living day to day, from crisis to crisis. His health was better than it had been in years. But he felt trapped. Everywhere he turned, it seemed, there was another reminder of his father, who had abused him physically and emotionally. The old man had been dead ten years, but Stuart still couldn’t break loose. He’d had therapy, talked through the painful memories with his sisters and brothers, done everything he knew how to do to exorcize the past, and it hadn’t worked. So he decided to change his name. He didn’t go to his mother’s name, or to a family name further up the tree. He decided to make up a name for himself. Stuart was sure that if he changed his name he would finally be free of his father’s shadow.

I’m close to all of these people. This has all happened in the last two years. I have wept with Laura and prayed for Pete and Stuart. And it has struck me all along how desperately unhappy they are, and how futile and fruitless their actions are. Because, you see, they are both looking for salvation. But they are looking in the wrong places.

The Bible talks about bondage and redemption. These are terms that don’t make sense to us moderns. But change the terms to “being trapped” and “escape” and all of a sudden we’re surrounded by people who know exactly what it feels like. The Bible talks about bondage to sin. Pete and Stuart talk about being trapped - by their own humanity, by their memories. And Pete hates his manhood, and Stuart hates his past, and neither can escape no matter what they do because it is their own selves that they are rejecting. So they are trying to purchase their salvation from some unknown, vengeful deity - by sacrificing pieces of themselves. The image that keeps coming back to me is that of an animal in a trap chewing off its own leg to get free. Self-made salvation may purchase an illusory freedom for a time, but it leaves you crippled at best - and even more desperate the next time your humanity fails you, as it will.

Isaiah’s contemporaries, so far as we know, didn’t agonize as we do over issues of personal identity. But they were far more aware of their own human limitations than we are, cushioned by technology and prosperity from most of the daily uncertainties which beset Israel. There’s ALWAYS food at the grocery store, even if it costs more than we like. There’s ALWAYS water to drink, even if we can’t water our lawns every day. And we haven’t been in danger of invasion for over fifty years. But in 800 BC you had to get the gods on your side all the time, because who knew what was going to happen if you didn’t? They were in bondage to their fear of the unknown, the unreliability of nature, and their awareness of their nation’s vulnerability. But they had solutions! They could make the gods do what they wanted!