I’ll tell you a parable, as it were, in the fashion of another sandal-wearing dude who didn’t like to shave.
There once was a devout man who lived a religious life. He went to church every Sunday, sang in the choir, tithed regularly and performed volunteer work for his church. He was a good man. He never hurt anyone, never had a bad word to say about anyone. He was a good man, a real rarity. His house lived near a river, and one day, in a time of torrential rains, the river overflowed the banks and threatened his home and entire neighborhood.
Emergency workers came to his door in a Hummer to evacuate him, but he refused to leave. “I’ve given my life to God, and God will take care of me.” The emergency workers pleaded with him, but eventually had to leave him. Before long, the water rose so high that he had to climb out onto his roof. As he sat on his roof watching his possessions float away, a man in a boat came by and tried to talk him into leaving the house. The old man refused. “God will take care of me,” he said, as his dining room table crashed through the picture window and floated down the street.
The water continued to rise, and darkness fell on the old man’s street. Eventually the water was so high that he had to climb on top of his chimney to keep from being swept away. A helicopter came over him and lowered a rope, but the old man refused. “God will take care of me,” he shouted to the rescue workers. They tried to convince him to get in the basket they lowered, but eventually they left him there. A few hours later, the waters swept the old man away, and he died.
When he came to the pearly gates, they swung open for him, and he looked up at the kindly man there with a confused expression. “I gave my life to the Lord, why didn’t he save me?”
Saint Peter laughed and said, “We sent a Hummer, a boat, and a helicopter to save you. What more could we have done?”
What does that have to do with Caitlin Jenner? Valid question, I suppose. My friend Trish posted on her Facebook page today her ire with people saying that “God doesn’t make mistakes” and thus transgender people should live in the bodies they are born in and just cope with it. Well what about my cousin with the cleft palate? Should his parents have not had surgeries performed when he was a baby to fix the problem and let him live a normal life? Or should they have sat on their roof and said “God will take of us?” Should my friend Dave still be mostly deaf or should he have the hearing aids that let him live a fuller life? Should I stumble around the world bumping into everything, unable to drive or probably read? Or should I wear glasses and contacts and live a better life?
If you’re a religious person, and where I am on that scale fluctuates daily, you believe that all blessing flow from God. So do all medical advances. So do all scientific advances. So all the technology and medicine that allows Caitlin Jenner to live the life she feels she needs – they all come from God. God allowed her doctors to perform any surgeries that have happened, prescribe any medicines that have happened and basically have allowed her to find her life. God doesn’t seem to have a problem with Caitlin. Why do you?
Note that if a plague of locusts suddenly descends upon LA I reserve the right to change my opinion on whether God has a problem with this. But if THIS is the thing that finally gets a plague dropped on Los Angeles, then somebody wasn’t watching the last three Star Wars movies.
