Friday, June 23, 2023

On the Streets of Babylon: Twisting Jacob Trans Heard on the Streets

Babylon is fallen, is fallen,
Come out of her, my people,
Revelation 14:8/18:4
 
There seems to be some attempting  "Twisting Jacob Trans " Heard on the Streets of Babylon...
 
 
"Praying to “the Great Queer One,” students at United Methodist-
affiliated Duke Divinity School proclaimed God’s acceptance and support for LGBTQ relationships in a Pride worship service.
Tirzah Villegas, an M.Div student, encouraged listeners to accept their sexuality because “You are never called to abandon yourself. Abandoning the self is negating the truth of who you are, and that is always a lie,” Villegas stated. God is a “queer God” who loves “every part of us,” according to Villegas.
--- I would like to suggest this as a trans text,” Surbaugh proposed about Genesis 32:22-31. The passage details Jacob wrestling with a stranger until daybreak. The man harms Jacob’s hip and commands Jacob to, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.” Jacob responds, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” As a result, God blesses Jacob and gives him the new name “Israel.”
In this passage, Surbaugh sees “an example of a negotiated body, a trans body, which has been both momentarily injured and fundamentally blessed.” Surbaugh compares Jacob’s struggle to the experience of taking testosterone to transition from a female to a male identity. Surbaugh wonders “how Jacob felt after the angel had gone” and if “he felt the same way I did on the clear October morning when I learned to give myself a hormone shot.
Transition, according to Surbaugh, “can be framed as a choice,” but “transition is better framed as a calling. It is a calling to wrestle with God and not let go until we receive a blessing in our own bodies.”
JE