Pain on Display
I have noticed something about what people post on Facebook. Every so often, some people will post a status that is basically a cry for help: "I can't handle this situation." "Please pray for me, today was really horrible." "I don't know what to do."
This kind of status is not all that common (compared to say, pictures of food) not because people don't have problems all the time, but because most people have to arrive at a place of particular pain, emotional discomfort, or desperation, before they are willing to "go public" in this way. Some people might be dealing with even greater problems, but feel they have enough resources to handle it, or simply have the kind of personality that hides the pain instead of seeking the comfort of others. They don't want to announce it to hundreds or thousands of people on a social media site.
I neither condemn nor approve of this practice; I did it pretty often in darker, younger days, and tend not to share so much now. It's not that millennials aren't tough enough to be the strong, silent type, it's that the social conditions which produced strong silent types are much less in play in 2015. We share our lives online, and that means sometimes sharing the pain too. Being strong is great, even in a time when weakness has never been more celebrated, but being silent just means you are not participating in what has become an integral part of life for developed-world internet generation kids. (Every age has its benefits and drawbacks. One day the value of silence will be rediscovered too.)
So the sharing itself is not the problem; it's a method or channel for communicating the pain someone is dealing with, a kind of pressure valve. But the more the pain, the longer it hurts, the more desperation creeps in, the less anyone cares what other people think. The pain longs to be expressed. It can't be held inside forever. It breaks out and becomes obvious to everyone.
What Courage is Not
Bruce Jenner's very public act of doctor-assisted self-mutilation (regardless of what you think about his "true identity," physically speaking that is what occurred), is being presented, even awarded, as an act of great courage. Not caring what anyone thinks, the story goes, he (My pronouns are chosen in light of genetic realities) was willing to do something still considered extremely outre, making a spectacle of himself and being held up in many cases to derision and the ogling of the general public, in order to be "true to himself/herself," and in doing so is held up as an example. I imagine some parallels to the courage required to "come out" as homosexual (into a society where lgbtetc people currently enjoy most-favored status and can shut down businesses for not recognizing that) are in play here.
The most consistent online reaction to this idea, and to the idea of his being presented with an ESPN courage award, was the sarcastic comparison of his act with soldiers of the US military, many displaying the wounds and disfigurements they have received in the line of duty. The implication is that this, by contrast, is what true courage looks like. My Facebook feed was half-filled with this kind of post for a few days.
I want to suggest this is not a very effective reply (not addressing the real issue, anyway). We all know, I think, that there are different kinds of courage. Yes, our soldiers are an excellent example of one kind, really a collection of different kinds of courage. But there are other kinds of courage, of course: a Muslim daughter's willingness to face her parents' wrath for accepting Christ; a young pianist getting up in front of everyone for a recital; someone suffering deep and damaging depression just deciding to get up and live another day. Robin Williams not killing himself; that would have been courage. To live would have been an awfully great adventure.
We do know this. And personally I don't doubt that what Jenner did involves some level of courage, though as I'll explain below I don't think that was the primary issue here. Courage is not a trait which bestows goodness or evil on those who exhibit it, it's simply a positive trait which we admire. However, if the person is clearly using their good courage to do evil, we no longer admire that in them. We may be tempted to say it's not courage at all, but give it other names, like madness. We call our friends "full of desperate courage" and our enemies "frenzied." They themselves would call it courage, of course, we just don't want to honor their motives by recognizing they too partake in common grace and can exhibit positive character traits, even while serving a cause we find repulsive.
(tl;dr- Some of the Nazis were brave too. Doesn't mean bravery is bad or they were good.)
So following the analogy C.S.Lewis uses at the beginning of Mere Christianity, courage is like a note on the piano, and our sense of morality tells us when to play it. To continue his analogy: we are tempted to call it the wrong note when we don't like the song, but in reality it was the same G we liked in Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, just serving another purpose.
What people are really saying, when they post those contrastive examples of soldiers, is that they feel the cause for which the soldiers exhibit courage and risk the consequences of physical mutilation (or even death) is Right and Just, and the cause for which Jenner exhibited courage (if it was courage, more on this below) and risked the consequences of his physical mutilation is wrong, weird, and sad. I think it would be more honest and courageous to just say this, rather than
It's not a question of courage. It's a question of what ideals courage should serve.
Despair and the Blade
That being said, I believe what motivated Jenner was not primarily courage. Going back the first section of this post, I believe the identity crisis and moral confusion raging inside him for years, and tendencies of which people around him were apparently aware, finally reached a head, and in despair he no longer cared what society's verdict might be. (Perhaps some interpret this as bravery because, lacking any received truth, what society's verdict might be is the final authority for them) That's not what courage is. Despair is not courage, it's the opposite of courage. Acting with courage is doing something despite the consequences; it's brave because you do actually care very much about those consequences and are willing to suffer them for a higher purpose. Acting in despair is doing something because you no longer care about those consequences.
There are those who would say I'm being too generous, and that the media circus and worldwide attention showered on Jenner is one of the reasons he did it. Maybe it's true; maybe the real battle was fought and lost many years ago, and this was a calculated decision to profit off the resulting debacle. It's impossible to know for sure. Whatever the case now, there must have been years of mental self-torment and deep delusion to even consider doing this. And the torment and the delusion have not been "resolved" with this act, but exacerbated. Letting the inner unwellness out only increases the totality of its bondage in the end; the chains of the mind are now engraved in the flesh.
Self-mutilating in an effort to force physical reality to reflect inner brokenness comes in many forms. Cutting, for example, is an epidemic which with nearly any Millennial is all too familiar. When it hurts too bad inside, many students are driven to hurt themselves on the outside too. Now imagine if, instead of trying to help those who cut and get them to stop, to bring healing to that brokenness, we glorified it. We celebrated it. We put scarred and bloodied wrists on the front page of newspapers, on the morning news, and proclaimed it a beautiful act of courage which should be praised and awarded. Wouldn't that be sick and twisted?
But that's exactly what is happening with Bruce Jenner. This is Cutting, taken from the wrists and extended as broad as the whole body and as deep as one's sexual identity. Slice it up to make the outside match the messed-up inside. But it won't stay feeling like that. There's a reason for the sky-high suicide rates after this kind of surgery. Yet we see that many of those with the authority and ability to do so are promoting this to the world's youth. Woe to them.
Sin is not a Choice
As distracting as the controversy him has become, Bruce Jenner is a symptom of a deeper problem. There is much we don't know about his motives, but the gender confusion with which he struggled would not even have to be his own choice to still be wrong; we live in a fallen and corrupted world. Flesh-eating bacteria don't ask permission to exist and wreak deadly havoc in your body, mental disorders don't ask permission to exist and corrupt your mind or psyche. Sin certainly doesn't ask permission to corrupt your soul, that's already the default state of mankind.
A particular sinful decision is a choice, but sin overall is no more a choice than being human is a choice; an unregenerated person can't refrain from sinning. That's what it means to be in bondage to sin. Sin is not freedom, it's an inescapable prison. The new life Jesus Christ offers is freedom from that prison, and friendship with Him. And who the Son has made free will be free indeed.
Bruce Jenner is not free, he is in total bondage to sin. He cannot escape by any effort of his own. That the expression of his sinful bondage is abnormal is itself not that strange. Sin breeds more sin, deeper corruption. We have simply arrived at the point in our culture where particularly unsettling forms of sin aren't being kept out of sight anymore.
It was inevitable that this would occur. Every nation, America at every point in history, every earthly culture, is entirely composed of sinful people. All cultures, all nations, eventually decline, decay, and fail. Nothing but the Kingdom of God, a kingdom not of this world, endures and remains unstained.
So if these damaged individuals were regarded as examples of unhealthy people especially needing love and patience and reinforcement of a Biblical idea of selfhood and identity in Christ, that would be the Church acting as it should. What we see in our society today, however, is a rush to exalt this deviance and praise the people who practice it. Let us not take our cues from them and think we need to fight over this issue with hopes of "retaking our culture." We never actually had it. It's pointless to try to fight a battle with society, since: 1) Society defines its values by common accord, so you will automatically lose by definition. 2) According to scripture this is the wrong battlefield. Society was a lost cause when Adam accepted the fruit from Eve. Christ will make all things new. Our job is not to make them look like that now, but to proclaim that fact. (And in doing so, some things will start to show signs of their future glorification even now)
So How Should We React?
One thing the Church must do, and only the Church can do, is to speak the revealed truth of God with the indwelling love of God. That means we very firmly reject the idea that what is wretchedly wrong can be called right, and that one man's confused self-nihilism should be put on display and celebrated as a model for others. At the same time, we must show sacrificial love, as Christ did. That means caring more and doing more for damaged souls than seems safe or prudent, while never legitimizing the damage itself.
If any condemnation is deserved -and indeed, the uncomfortable, twisted wrongness that is so obviously present in this situation does deserve and demand condemnation- let it be directed toward and fall on those who approve of this sin, promote it, and lead others into similar deception:
Woe to those who call evil good and good evil,
Who put darkness for light and light for darkness,
Who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!
(Isaiah 5:20)
The deceived will sin and certainly receive their due punishment, but it is the deceivers for whom scripture reserves special condemnation. It is from them that a love of deviance spreads through our society. We all have a sinful nature, but there are those who go further, who are described by Paul in Romans 1 as "those who invent new ways of doing evil," or those Jesus speaks of as leading children astray and for whom drowning is too soft a punishment. These people are not the misled sheep, but the misleading shepherds, themselves misled by their father, the Father of Lies.
A culture cannot be saved, only individual human souls. But if a reaction is proper, let us push back against those who are actively seeking to deceive, rather than giving in to kneejerk reactions against those who have been deceived by them. In recent years this is a typical trap set for the Church, and we have a bad habit of falling right into it. Make sure you are not simultaneously condemning those who are themselves partially victims and unwittingly supporting those who promote and push for acceptance of the lies in which an entire generation of youth are being daily saturated.
Instead, pray for those youth, disciple them and model Christ to them. (You yourself may be a youth, you can still do all of those things) Pray that God would give you wisdom in how to love sacrificially while also speaking truth and not condoning sin. And pray for Bruce Jenner. He is a soul God created, one that is wrong, confused, exploited, and statistically speaking may be on suicide watch soon. But imagine the witness he would have if he was delivered from his bondage to sin into the freedom of Christ and the light of truth.
It's time for the Church to once again fearlessly proclaim the grace and freedom and power of Christ into a world burdened with disorder, violence, and falsehood.
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch... like me
I once was lost, but now am found
Was blind, but now I see
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