Kim Davis. Does the name sound familiar? Perhaps, you know her better as the Kentucky clerk who was defied the Supreme Court by refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. According to her lawyers, issuing a marriage license to a same-sex couple “…irreparably and irreversibly violates her conscience…” A federal judge disagreed with her lawyers and sent her to jail.
Apparently clerks in more than a dozen other counties are—or were—taking a similar stand. We’ve also seen Davis’ pre-Christian character publicly crucified. Such is the world in which we live.
To be honest, I don’t exactly know how I would have handled being in her situation. This controversy, however, is causing me to think about boundaries and the lines drawn in our lives.
We at times despise boundaries, but our world would be a disaster without them. Something as simple as a car crossing a yellow line can result in traumatic injuries.
In the garden of Eden, God drew only one protective boundary: Don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Despising the almost unlimited freedom given by God, Adam and Eve chose to ignore the one line that limited their actions. If we were to use the word free to describe the aftermath, it would have to be in the form of free fall. What a mess has resulted!
Humanity’s attempt to erase our God-given boundaries has now resulted in many more constrictions. From tax laws to building codes to various restrictions of all sorts, we’re all feeling squeezed by out-of-control human rules and regulations. Our rebellion has also compelled God to establish boundaries with matters that were non-issues in the garden of Eden—wearing clothing, for example.
The reality is that the more we attempt to erase boundaries given by God, the more constricted and chaotic our lives become. Still, we don’t seem to learn from our past mistakes.
Officials from Hillsboro High School in Missouri recently agreed to allow a 17-year-old transgender male who identifies as a female to use the girls’ locker and restroom facilities instead of an alternate bathroom. According, to the Washington Post, “That simple act set off a firestorm of controversy.”
That simple act? Is this really how far we’ve fallen? We’re talking about a young man using a women’s locker room! I’m having trouble even believing that this is even an issue, but once again, popular culture is attempting to rid itself of boundaries drawn for our protection. This is a situation in which no one wins. Not the female students of the school. Not the confused 17-year-old. Not our nation. No one wins. No one.
Perhaps, in connecting the dots between the Supreme Court ruling and situations such as that in Hillsboro, Kim Davis is trying to play her part in challenging our humanistic attempts to cast off all God-given boundaries. Perhaps.
Regardless of what we think about Kim Davis and the stand she’s taken, I think we’re beginning to understand that the idea of playing ostrich by burying our Christian heads in the proverbial sand is no more than a myth.
Like the shy pubescent girl in Hillsboro High School who, while putting on her gym clothes, suddenly finds a 17-year-old male in her locker room, cultural shifts are coming to us whether we want to face them or not.
Consequently, I can’t help but ask, where will you draw your lines?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/09/02/a-transgender-teen-used-the-girls-locker-room-now-her-community-is-up-in-arms/
Jason
Umm, no she wasn’t. I can’t even bother to write something original here but quote someone else ‘It would (be) helpful to remember here that Davis is not being “punished” for her beliefs. Davis was found in contempt for refusing to abide by a federal court order to issue marriage licenses to gay couples. She is being appropriately dealt with for not doing the taxpayer-funded job the citizens of Rowan County elected her to do, for not upholding the Constitution she took an oath to abide by. ‘
But a better question is why do Christians feel persecuted when they are asked to obey the law or any time culture shifts? Why didn’t Davis just resign? She could have resigned and then toured the media circuit. If she’s taking a public moral stance shouldn’t her own moral history be scrutinized? People with real jobs end up going against their conscience every day. If everyone resigned, we’d all be unemployed.
As for the trans teenager, I think the fact that you don’t take her seriously and refer to him(instead of her) as ‘confused’ just shows a refusal to accept a person’s functional reality. Believe it or not, that’s how she sees the world, and that’s the paradigm in which she deserves to be addressed. I also can’t believe this is even an issue, but I can’t believe it because we’re stuck in a stone-age mentality which encourages gender differentiation, and continues to live without unisex bathrooms everywhere. Mystery between the genders is pointless and counterproductive. I don’t know about you, but I do most of the laundry in my home and at the end of the day, a pair of unmentionables is just a pair of unmentionables. (I’ve kept this last point clean because the graphic reality is a bit much for public consumption.)
I know we’re mostly at odds on your blogs, but I appreciate them in as much as iron indeed sharpens iron. What else can we do?
Bob
Jason, I’m still processing the Kim Davis issue, but am leaning more and more in favor of her stand. It goes back to a previous post about the Supreme Court passing legislation from the bench. In essence, she believes she is upholding the laws of her state and that the SCOTUS overstepped their bounds in trying to overturn those laws. I found this related article to be quite interesting: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/09/04/tenn-judge-refuses-to-grant-straight-couple-a-divorce-because-of-gay-marriage/
Regarding the young man self-identifying as a female, psychologists have long regarded the “refusal to accept a person’s functional reality” as a psychological disorder. I don’t question whether or not that’s how he sees the world, but I do question the benefit of putting a stamp of normalcy on his behavior. (Here is a related article on the issue: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/michael-w-chapman/johns-hopkins-psychiatrist-transgender-mental-disorder-sex-change)
Furthermore, from what I’ve read, the school district had been providing alternate restroom facilities, but he specifically requested to use the female facilities. This type of decision (literally) opens the doors for all sorts of abuse and exploitation. Is the next step to come up with a list of complicated standards to decide which males truly identify as transgender and which ones are just trying to do what a lot of hormone-driven males do?
Finally, every couple is different and, for the sake of a healthy marriage, should work out their own plan regarding cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc. There is, however, a massive difference between sharing domestic roles and self-identifying as the opposite sex.
Iron does indeed sharpen iron, and it’s probably something we all need!