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