The Problem with Erasure

and the Christian propensity to keep doing it

There has been something I’ve been thinking about lately and it's the way Christians, or perhaps all humans do this, use erasure. Not sure how to compartmentalize something messy that is entangled with your faith? ERASE IT! It doesn’t exist anymore--problem solved. Except to everyone else, “it” still very much exists. That’s the problem, evangelicals can live in their own delusion, but no one else can.¹

For instance, LGBTQIA people may be unallowed sex changes, but it doesn’t stop them from feeling like they’re in the wrong body. I speak from walking closely with two separate mothers navigating their children's desire to be a different gender, now 18+. It’s their own decision and one that feels impossible and excruciating albeit alienating at the least for both child and parent. These two mothers are in the ministry, raised their kids in church. Everything that can be said, has been said. 

And then what? That’s the question evangelicals need to run all the way to the end. And then, if they still go through with the operations and hormones-- Then what? You can make laws up and down and say they don’t exist because you can’t hold their existence and your faith at the same time, but they are out there living in the world taking hormones and having surgeries. This isn’t a commentary on affirming or not affirming, etc. It’s about nuance and it’s also about Christian tactics of avoiding seeing people made in the image of God. 

I don’t have any particular opinion on the response of the religious except that it isn’t working. Erasure leads to dehumanization. Acting like pronouns don’t exist leads to high rates of suicide in trans people, all while Christians scream “PRO-LIFE!” We see this with immigrants too. ERASE THEM! And so we mass deport without caring if they’re even going to where they came from. And so they’re erased from our country, but they very much keep existing often suffering greatly because of our actions. And we applaud ourselves for taking down the “All are welcome here” poster and putting the Ten Commandments on the wall in schools.

The other day when I posted the passage in John about the adulterer brought to a stoning and Jesus saying, “Go ahead if you’ve never sinned.” And my comments are littered with, “That passage isn’t even supposed to be in the bible. It was added later!” And after studying that theory deeply and scholarly, I am sure it was meant to be in your bible.² Regardless, the response to something that makes you face your own humanity, your own darkness, your own fragile self righteousness with erasure is so problematic. “THIS PASSAGE DOESN’T EXIST! Problem solved! We can stone the adulterer!” Anyway, this isn’t a piece on immigration or LGBTQIA or our propensity to use suffering as entertainment. It’s that we keep thinking erasing is a great answer because we have no proximity to these humans, and we don’t have to. 

The thing I keep thinking about is how Jesus purposely put himself in proximity with those on the fringes. He continually said, I’m with you. And the religious hated him for it. He condescended to earth through a poor, teenage woman from a literal tiny podunk, backwoods town who would have been well acquainted with being a second class citizen under Roman rule. Her life was hard and she likely worked the fields from the time she was able. Joseph isn’t mentioned after Jesus was 12 because in all likelihood, he died, leaving Mary a single mother, a widow who never remarried to raise several children³. If ever there was a candidate for food stamps! I don’t think American evangelicals would recognize Mary or Jesus if they walked into a room because they’re not looking for holiness in poor, rural, leather-skinned, single mother, in need of government assistant, brown kids in tow (one of those kids keeps getting into trouble with the law and the church has kicked him out too). They’re too busy looking at their bank accounts and the empire and their own self righteousness to save them.

AI read that paragraph and came up with this image. Interesting.

But, if you want to find Jesus, find the margins. Find the outcasts. Find the sick and poor.

When asked, “Who is the stranger,” my professor Eva Bleeker said, “the person you hope it's not.” We don’t want to have to love LGBTQIA humans and we don’t want to love immigrants and we don’t want to love the undeserving millionaire. So we erase. 

I don’t have solutions for you because I don’t think humans are problems to be solved but people to be loved⁴. “But Jesus didn’t leave them in their sin!” Well that’s good news, I guess since it’s God’s job to change hearts, you can be freed up to love humans any which way you find them. And goodness, they can be found if you can set your erasers down for a bit and see the stories they’re writing just by their existence.

Thanks for hanging with spicy me today LOL,

Jami

PS: Christian Books is selling all their hardbacks for .98 to $4! Steal of deal if you haven’t bought my book of essays yet. WINK WINK.

1. Christians have a long standing tradition with Erasure. For example, the slave bible which took out the Exodus story (the story of mass liberation from slavery), and Philemon (the tale of a free slave), Galatians (there is no slave or free), etc. They removed 50% of the OT, and 90% of the NT!

2. NT Wright has a podcast on this one and it’s fascinating and good. https://www.premierunbelievable.com/ask-nt-wright-anything/ask-nt-wright-anything-71-should-the-story-of-the-woman-caught-in-adultery-be-in-our-bible/12403.article

3. Catholics would disagree that he had other siblings bc they maintain Mary remained a virgin throughout her life. Protestants disagree bc Jesus had brothers in the Bible.

4. I doubt I made that phrase up.