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!
"The carpenter measures with a line and makes an outline with a marker; he roughs it out with chisels and marks it with compasses. He shapes it in the form of man, of man in all his glory, that it may dwell in a shrine. He cut down cedars, or perhaps took a cypress or oak.... Half of the wood he burns in the fire... From the rest he makes a god, his idol; he bows down to it and worships. He prays to it and says, “Save me; you are my god.” [Is 44:13 17]
But sometimes it didn’t work. Sometimes the harvest would fail or the neighbors would invade, even if you’d been doing all the rites just right. Sometimes you needed stronger leverage to make the gods do what you wanted. Sometimes you only had to change your name for the god who was mad at you to lose interest. But sometimes, said the priestesses of Astarte, sometimes the goddess wanted you to be castrated. Sometimes, said the priests of Ba’al, sometimes the gods demanded your firstborn. And sometimes the Israelites gave it to them.
Because when you’re already headed in the wrong direction, it starts to make sense just to keep giving more and more and more to whatever god you serve, whether Ba’al or technology, to force them to fulfill your needs. If one sacrifice doesn’t work, try another one - a bigger one! Anything, even gnawing off a limb and flinging it at your pursuers, is easier than admitting you’ve made a mistake, and changing gods.
Because to change your allegiance from a god that you have made, a god that you can command and manipulate, a god that is your servant, is to admit that you are not in control after all. And that, my friends, is very hard indeed. We so like to believe that we are in control, that we make our own destinies with our own dirty, little, human hands. I’ll bet schoolchildren still learn that ghastly poem “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley, that ends “It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.” This, my brothers and sisters, is a terrible lie to teach our children. We are responsible, yes; but to God, not to ourselves. We are not our own, we have been bought with a price. When we tear off a piece of ourselves to give to another god, we are paying a bribe with stolen property. Control is an illusion that robs us of the only true salvation.
Happy is the man whose God is YHWH, for he knows who is boss. Happy is she whose God is the Holy One of Israel, for she knows there is someone beside herself to turn to. Happy are we whose God is the maker of Heaven and Earth, because we do not have to bribe him to take care of us.
"Happy are you," says Isaiah, "... you descendants of Abraham my friend, I took you from the ends of the earth, from its farthest corners I called you.... I have chosen you and have not rejected you. So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. All who rage against you will surely be ashamed and disgraced; those who oppose you will be as nothing and perish. Though you search for your enemies, you will not find them. Those who wage war against you will be as nothing at all. For I am YHWH, your God, who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, 'Do not fear; I will help you.'“ [v. 41:8-13]
Happy are we whose salvation is in the Lord Jesus Christ, for we do not have to tear ourselves apart in frantic search for an end to our internal pain. Happy are we who, having given ourselves to our God, receive a new self back, clean and mended and sweet-smelling.
Happy are you who have come to terms with your own weakness, for in your weakness God can do mighty things. Happy are we who know we are not righteous in ourselves, for we do not have to lie to God about the things we have done. Happy is he who when he is old knows that the hand of God is as tender as a lover’s; happy is she who when she is old knows she is not forgotten.
"And so we do not lose heart, even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day, and we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us up, and will bring us all at last into his very presence." [2 Cor 4:16,14]
