My “Silly Little Article” and a Powerful Response

Last updated on: March 14, 2018 at 9:25 am by Chuck McKnight

My “Silly Little Article” and a Powerful Response 2018-03-14T09:25:48-07:00 Chuck McKnight

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Salvator Mundi

Image credit: “Salvator Mundi” by Giampietrino, early sixteenth century.

A few months ago, I posed the question, “Could Jesus Have Been Biologically Intersex?” The responses, as expected, were mostly incredulity with a smattering of disdain. One person referred to it as a “silly little article.”

But that’s okay. A handful of readers actually did engage in a meaningful way, and whether or not anyone agrees with the article’s premise is beside the point. It accomplished the goal of prompting conversation.

However, Jera Brown has recently written an article in response to some comments on my article, and I’m a bit blown away by the import of what she has to say. I’ll share a little snippet here, but I hope you’ll follow through to read the original.

When McKnight shared his post on Facebook, several comments were outright dismissive of the idea, and one person called it a “silly little article.” I haven’t gotten those words “silly little article” out of my head since.

What angered me in reading that comment (and others) on McKnight’s post, was the refusal — whether conscious or subconscious — to consider what it might mean to intersex people not only if Jesus were intersex, but to even entertain the notion that he could be.

Why must it be silly to imagine that an embodied version of God could be anything other than a cis-gendered man?

For centuries, Christians and religious scholars have debated whether there was a literal Garden of Eden or a virgin birth. Did God or an angel of God truly come down and wrestle with Jacob? Dare I even consider whether Jesus (or even Lazarus) truly rose from the dead? Churches have split over these questions, and non-Christians laugh at religious naiveté.

God has always spoken just as much, if not more, through the human imagination — through dreams, fantasies, and possibilities — than through any solid encounter.

Imagination is one of the most important aspects of faith itself — the ability to ask what if.

What if God cares about our suffering? What if God actually hears me? What if there’s something more than the reality I see around me?

Continue reading Jera’s article, “The Power of an Intersex Christ.”

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