A fella called Rev James Willems (is Rev his first name do you suppose? did he perhaps change his name to Rev in order to trick people into thinking he’s a Reverend? or is he actually a Reverend? I do not know the answers to these questions) commented on Be Scofield’s profundity about god’s love for transgender people. His comment is a classic of its kind.
“God” is not an assertion, but, rather, is an experience. I have no problem with people rejecting institutional religion. I have profound problems with people who have not lived a deep practice of interiority reducing spiritual experience to religion. When one begins to prescribes what is acceptable behavior for another person, that person should have the self respect to pay attention to what the “Other” is saying about one’s own experience.
See? Classic. Jargon mixed with sanctimony.
But it’s irrelevant to what Scofield is trying to say. It’s got nothing to do with “anyone who seeks to redefine God or say that God loves transgender people.” An experience doesn’t love people. A person or other conscious agent loves people. An experience is not a person or another kind of conscious agent. Rev says god is an experience, so Rev is saying god is a kind of thing that can’t love (or hate or any other emotion) people. But Rev’s point is clearly that teh atheists are rong and Scofield is right.
It is my claim from years of working with others in meditation that anyone who spends serious time in meditation will have an experience of transcendence. There is nothing irrational or unreasonable about such an experience. It is simply transcendent. I agree that communicative praxis reflects one’s cultural situs and its resultant conditioning. Yes, cultural bias requires a significant critique. Such a critique will never demolish or destabilize a living experience of transcendence. One’s radical commitment to identity (LGBTQ or other) is not endangered by transcendence. It is strengthened and affirmed.
Ooooh communicative praxis reflects one’s cultural situs – that’s a good one. What Rev says is still beside the point though.
Mind you, Scofield probably wouldn’t say it is. He would probably say it isn’t. But at the same time he wants to claim that god loves transgender people. He wants it all – a god who loves us, a god who is an experience of transcendence, a god who is both of those very different things at once – he wants it all, and he will get it via the alchemy of language, or rather, jargon. That and a lawless way with our friend the comma.