Given Not Taken

Today is about sexual identity.

There are two areas that we can look at the current cultural climate from

Sexual identity

and sexual desire

These are two different compartments and our culture doesn’t see them the same

Identity. We agree on the importance of it and the need for it. We just disagree on the source of it.

So this week identity and next week desire.

I want to frame this message on gender identity in talking through how we got to where we are. And that in doing so we forgot how to tell our story

- Psalm 139 tells a story of a relationship between creation and creator. We will look at that passage in a moment.

- We have lost the sense of who we are

- We have lost the story of relationship so now we tell the story of relationship with the self. How do I relate to myself? Because we cannot shake the desire to tell a better story we will just find one within ourselves.

We trust in the givenness of our body becase we are much more than choices we make for our lives. Our value is found in Jesus.

what we are learning to do is the ministry of incarnation and reconciliation. We can’t just accept or reject. It is on us as the church to do the work of discernment. That is why I’m asking you to lean in.

through ground floor

dialogue

sermon notes

books in welcome central

This is about understanding what the Scripture says and understanding what to do from that point.

- Recap: In believing in the created order we believe that God created the world a certain way. We also believe that because of that humans are not responsible for creation. And because of that we believe that the world is not chaotic in its premise. We have made it chaotic. Because God has ordered the world we believe in the given mess of our bodies. That we are created for reason, value, and function. That we are never without purpose. And because of that we don’t have to recreate, it is given. We have to receive it.

this reality of the created order, mixed up in chaos and redeemed is all found solved in Christ

Jesus is the solution.

We want to understand why every other solution doesn’t stack up.

This morning we are going to do a cultural deep dive into how we got to where we are.

we have created solution for identity that have not stacked up. Primarily we believe in the

Desire for Self Optimization

This is the current state of where we are. We have excelled as a culture technologically and economically where we want to spend the bulk of our time working on making the best self that we can.

Look at the idea of the quantified self.

This is the ability for us to figure out every part of our body through body metrics.

We have different ways of doing this.

Heartrate monitors

Metabolism calculators

Mood definiers

Ozempic

Botox

We do anything we can to work out the best ways to optimize ourselves.

This is the idealist version of humanity

We quantify everything.

Now, these things on their own are not inherently bad. This is not a sermon on the ails of quantified self. I have an apple watch and use the metrics on it all the time.

The issue is when we become obsessed when creating the very best version of ourselves, no matter how much it costs.

because We live in a quantified world We’ve lost the sense of story. To quantify something doesn’t tell a story. 100 people were there is not a story. That is the optimized quantified self.

I want to show you a pictre of our vacation from last week.

Show quantified stats

Thats what happens when you see things from a quantified place. You see the numbers but it doesn’t tell a story.

Now here’s a real picture. This actually tells a story

In fact it becomes how much we can give in order to build the best version of ourselves.

There is nothing off the list

There is nothing that we won’t do to create the self we believe we need.

Now you can connect the dots to gender identity but this problem goes much wider than that.

The problem of self optimization

We become what Wendell Berry calls a “tourist of cures.”

We take and take and take in order to develop the best version of ourselves.

And when we do that we think that any part of our body that comes with the purchase, that is part of our givenness can be undone or changed.

We have bought into the idea that everything can be altered and everything should be altered.

but what happens when I can’t make the change I want to? Or I am different than I want to be?

When everything can be altered or we think should be altered we come up with a problematic solution.

When we attempt the autonomous, optimized self, there is only one option. We end up hating the body

We have grown to feel that we are responsible for all creation.

When that responsbility isn’t met. It’s too hard. It is met with aggression.

And that aggression turns on ourselves.

The freedom that we have pursued and hoped for doesn’t work out the way we wanted. In a few weeks we are going to look at biblical freedom vs cultural freedom.

When eveyrthing is up to us, when we don’t think we borrow or recieve from others, we have no choice but to aim any disgust or hatred for not meeting that goal at ourselves.

When then we hate the body, we want to change the body relentlessly.

Graph

When we hate the body, we need to change everything in the body

we are knee deep in our cultural thinking right now.

We are at a place where internal frustration and agression at our own bodies leads us to have only one option. To change the body.

- Here’s one of my biggest concerns Wendell Berry states that that which can be a replaced becomes dispensable. If we view something simply through its utility, then it can automatically be replaced because it can work or not work. And once it can work or not work, it simply dispensable. In regarding some uses of gender fluidity, and queer theory are we simply just making humanity replaceable, and thereby what happens when we only become dispensable. It is a low view of human life and flourishing.

We are treating the body as replaceable, then we too easily treat ourselves and one another as dispensable.

And you are much more than dispensable.

We are called to value the body as indispensable and a part of who we are and how God created us.

This is why, for the Christian, the givenness of the body is an important theology. Because it reminds us that we are dependent and irreplaceable.

Our Response is to trust in the givenness of the body.

-We are confronted by the givenness and

limitations of our own bodies. To trust the givenness means living within the limitations of our bodies.

It is the most prominent frontier of culture because we don’t want to admit our limitations of the body.

How we handle our own bodies as given or taken. The only way to encounter it is to defer to its own immanence and cooperate with our own limitations.

When we look to God as creator we can see that the givenness of our bodies is a gift.

Psalm 139:13–18 (ESV)

For you formed my inward parts;

you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works;

my soul knows it very well.

My frame was not hidden from you,

when I was being made in secret,

intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw my unformed substance;

in your book were written, every one of them,

the days that were formed for me,

when as yet there was none of them.

How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!

How vast is the sum of them!

If I would count them, they are more than the sand.

I awake, and I am still with you.

We value the body because it is always a part of who we are:

We are deeply connected to our body. We done say, My body is eating. We say I am eating. Or My body is sleeping, rather I am sleeping

That doesn’t mean we trick ourselves into thinking that our bodies always do what we want them to. Or that we are given bodies that work perfectly.

But when we live in the complete optimization of the body then we begin to beleive that things that don’t work the way we want to automatically need to become fixed.

And that when people don’t work the way we want to then we need to “fix” them.

This is about sexuality but it is part of a much bigger problem.

As an example Canada has recently passed MAID legislation, (Medical Assistance in Dying) and while that is an entirely other conversation. This is the edge of what happens when you stop valuing the givenness of the body. There is a story in the AP about a man who was helped to die because of hearing loss.

This is why it is concerning to define ourselves by fragments and not the whole. We are not what we can do or what we can’t do. We are more than that. We are more than dispensible. More than how we feel at any part of our lives.

We are a much larger picture than we give ourselves.

- love that body she talks about we don't say my body is eating or my body is walking you say I am walking or I am eating which connects the metaphysical and the biological. We are not divorced from our body but our part of a moral universe and a moral “I”

- This wholistic biblical view is confirmed by everyday human experience. When you eat food, you do not say, “My mouth is eating.” You say, “I am eating.” When your hand is injured, you say, “I am hurt.” The two-level division of the human being is not true to our inescapable daily experience.

What do you do if you don’t feel like your body is a part of who you are. Or that your body is distinct and different from who you are?

First of all let’s recognize the anguish that that could cause. How hard that would be to experience. No sense of home. People with Gender dysphoria and transgender populations do not feel at home in their bodies.

Our culture has made a mess of our bodies. Not just with gender dysphoria but we jump btween the poles of optimizing ourselves past recognition and then hating our bodies when we can’t accomplish it.

Body Dysmorphic disroder is when we overly focus on one or more areas of our body obessively, percieving defects or flaws.

SO we have an entire generation of people who don’t feel at home in their bodies, who feel distinct from their bodies, whether it has to do with gender or size or otherwise.

And the only solution so far is to tell them to fix it.

To fix it (aimed at optimization)

until they are unable to do so to the point they are satisfied. (hate the body).

That is the cycle our culture lives in. That is the cycle we live in.

A note about gender and biology.

I am talking here that we believe there are two distinct biological sexes. Male and female. And that gender represents maleness and femaleness. There are biological and genetic behaviors that can be connected to biological sex. But again, as a culture, we have taken this too far and have made sterotypes of what a male looks like and what a female looks like. We have boxed gender in. There are cultural constructs to gender that we can;t ignore. And we have to confess that there has been damage done because we have told people that a male looks exaclty like one way and a female looks exactly like another. Gender is constructed. The way we represent male and femaleness now is wildly different than 100 years ago and wildly different than they do across the world. When we sterotype (you stand here) then we can do real damage. We tell boys that men don’t cry or men hunt or do whatever and that women girls must be dainty and wear pink. Some of the issues we have now with gender identity come from the tight boxes the culture and the church has laid of gender. I’m not saying everything is acceptable. I’m saying that you might be holding onto an image of gender that is not helpful, either culturally or biblically.

Where do we go from here?

Inviting people home in Christ.

What do you do when we are a generation who keeps trying to find home but can’t?

We invite people home in Christ.

John 14:1–7 ESV

“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

Jesus invites us home in Him. To find home in Him. Not in the body, not in the mind. TO find home in Christ.

- This is the missional interaction with the church. To agree with the struggle of people dealing with gender identity issues.

- And to invite them into something more.

Gender identity is all about finding home in the body. About being able to relax in who you area, to live with certainty and peace.

It is also understanding that we are given a new self. We are made whole,

2 Corinthians 5:17 ESV

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

Christ offers us new. We don’t have to make new. It is given renewal.

And in moments that we are tempted to live than less than the whole we are we are commanded to put on Christ.

Galatians 3:27–29 ESV

For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.

We are given Christ, offered new life in Him and can put Him on.

It does not mean that every struggle goes away.

It does mean that we have an unlimited supply that offers us real identity.

The issue isn’t the desire. The issue is the solution. We have pointed at the solution without asking after the desire

Our agreement is that our desires are often for things beyond Christ. For past the givenness of our bodies. The Christian deals with that desire using trust that God for purpose, and that he is re-creating them in promise

People outside up have no other solution than themselves. Our responsibility as Christians is to be able to inquire after the condition of the person and their desire if we’re going to care for them and then offer a better solution.