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| Remember Annie Lenox? |
Franklin also noted that, in announcing his identity shift, Jenner also expressed regret over mistakes he made as a father. Any suggestion that mere cosmetic changes will restore any of his past regrets, however, is a notion Franklin finds impossible.
“I have news for them,” he wrote “—changing the outside doesn’t change the inside. No man-made modification can fix what’s wrong with the heart. Only God can fix the human heart. If we ask for His forgiveness and accept by faith His Son, Jesus Christ, He will wipe the slate clean.”
westernjournalism.com B. Christopher Agee June 5, 2015
I started with this quote because I am a Christian, and for years the Christian response has been the definitive stamp on matters of LGBT advancement, but its simply not working that way anymore. Nobody finds church terribly sacred these days, even if we claim a belief in God. In some ways, church has become the most judgemental environment in the land even though salvation claims to offer freedom from judgement. In reality, God's judgements are already complete and we are the generation of fulfillment. Grace is a miracle so complex, that it doesn't comport with a mind that has been conditioned to earn everything you get.
The American Dream itself is almost a contradiction to the idea of Grace because Grace essentially makes a lotto winner out of every believer, not just those who've been scratching at this thing for years. If there is any reason for the failure in the ministry of Grace, it is the ministers assigned to its message. I'm not talking about Franklin Graham or his famous father Billy. Grace is a spirit that came to dwell inside the House of God, His true church. Emmanuel (God With Us) was a divine gift of a savior that has taken up residence in the hearts of man, claiming them as his true church. Unless that gift resides in the house of the father's of our world, it may not reach the hearts of the children.
In the Western Journalism article, Franklin Graham prefaced his critique of Jenner by talking about his failure as Bruce the father. The article reads:
“In Vanity Fair’s cover story about Bruce Jenner’s gender change,” Franklin wrote, “the author talks as if Bruce and his newly chose identity of ‘Caitlyn’ are two separate people.
He went on to quote Jenner’s son, Burt, who declared: “I have high hopes that Caitlyn is a better person than Bruce.”
Amen brother! Amen!
The truth about us men is that we are more lady like than we ever want the world to know. In that I mean, we are just as prone towards insecurity and fear as any human being, but we are the least allowed to admit it. Bruce grew up in America with the same expectations that every man in America endures. Man Up! Be tough! Shake it off and move forward without acknowledging your pain or your fears or your insecurities. And for God's sake, please don't come out of the closet when you are a muscular manly Olympic hero. We are all not quite ready for all of that.
What aspect of who Bruce has become is impacted by who Bruce HAD to be for the sake of a society not ready for its greatest Olympic hero to be anything but macho. Does his conversion actually mean that our greatest Olympic legend was always a woman anyway? NO. It just means that he lived a very long life of dishonesty with himself and clearly a life of dishonesty with the world, especially his own family.
Burt Jenner (Bruce's son) looks forward to a better relationship with Caitlyn than he was able to achieve with Bruce, or whoever that person was all of those years that struggled to live an authentic life. The World Health Organization has declared transexualism as a mental illness. I will do them one better by declaring a life without authenticity as a mental illness waiting to explode. What if Bruce were more free to be a little Caitlyn like during the years that he was on the cover of Wheaties and not Vanity Fair? Would that version of himself been more sensitive to the children he'd brought into this earth?
People who are unable to embrace their own fear and insecurity (men) will all suffer degrees of mental illness as a result. How that illness gets manifested might be abuse of drugs or people, or it might become a desperate search for an embracing of your fears and insecurity as a means of overcoming them.
Is Jenner suffering from a mental illness?
Maybe!
The compulsion to be a woman in a world that oppresses them is sort of like a white man wanting to be black. Even the rapper M&M is only enjoying a closeness to the black experience. He's not looking to lose credit points or add extra police harassment to his life as well. For a man to give up his societal privilege for the challenge of womanhood might cause the return of Bruce all by itself. Transsexuals often look back on the change with regret after years of enduring life as a woman with its obvious drawbacks. Regardless of what motivates him to decorate his exterior in whatever form he chooses, the struggle is his and I think we can all look past a man that nobody really knew or liked very much as we get to know the honest person he's trying to become.
The truth about all of this stuff is that men are afraid and insecure of anything they don't fully understand. When we stand in front of a beautiful woman who we believe to be a woman, we admire her, maybe even flirt with her to get her attention because beauty inspires our senses. Less than pretty women can get a lot of attention with a little liquor, but all women have a powerful beauty that has been said to rule the world. On the other hand, a man's power is his might and we use it to beat down our fears and insecurities until one day we discover that the more sensitive species, our women (first mom, then our wives), have run our lives all along.
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| Annie Lenox, a beautiful woman, made young men in her era feel uncomofortable, as if an attraction to her meant you also could be attracted to men. |
or a man dressed like a woman, the problem is you. Bruce and Caitlyn might very well be struggling with fear and insecurities, but it feels like he's facing them instead of suppressing them like most of us men do. Caitlyn claims that she's not gay just because she made the change, though it feels odd to wonder who she'll choose for a sexual relationship, a man or woman.
Never mind all that. I never cared who Bruce had sex with before and I don't care about Caitlyn's sex life either. Obviously, some people do, because instead of focusing on the authentic exterior that Caitlyn is trying to express, we are advancing this criticism to the bedroom behavior it must suggest.
Like one of Graham's Facebook followers for whom the topic is especially relevant. She wrote:
Thank you for this post. My son is a declared homosexual & I pray for him every day. When my son first told me he was gay, I wept almost every day as I prayed that God would make him a heterosexual, but then I realized that the heart is where the change begins. My prayer is different today since God revealed this truth to me – the heart is where the change begins. Please keep my son in your prayers. - Westernjournalism.com
How do we know that Franklin Graham is living a sexually pure life, and do we care? Young girls who have developed bodies will get labeled a slut if their clothes get tight to the point of being physically revealing. In our world, we blame them for the rape that might follow, not the twisted view of the rapist who assumes too much.
Nothing is more raping than the judgement of others, especially those who have no idea or right to comment about your sex life just because of the fashion choice you find most fulfilling. Even if you are totally right in your assessment Franklin Graham, you are totally wrong in your judgement, and all of the Caitlyn's of the world are probably not going to join your church and may never discover the kind of Grace that doesn't care what you wear or why you are wearing it.
You know, the kind that changes our heart.
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