Monday Night after my trans social group (since it’s Spring Break and able to do something after) I was taken out to a drag show for the first and (probably) last time in my life. I had never been to a drag show before and so I was intrigued, and since one of the performers was in our group, I felt obligated to go support them. I learned two things last night: One, drag is definitely not my scene, and two, sexuality is spooky and never, ever assume. Anyway, while I was watching, I began to think about how each of them not only got interested in drag but also developed their personas. I never got around to asking any of them as I did know if that appropriate, but figured it did not seem, especially since I only knew one of the group.

One of the other things that happened last night is just how unfamiliar and foreign the world in which I found myself spending my Monday night. Growing up as a conservative, sheltered church boy, the LGBTQ bars and nightclubs of Houston were so far off of my radar that they did not exist to me. They were not even just “another world” they were an entirely different universe, Mars itself would be less alien to me than if I had wandered into one in high school. The reality is that, while it did seem unfamiliar and foreign to me at the time, because it was new, looking back on it, there really was not that different at all. If anything, what was going on was the breaking down of these walls that I had put up due to the years growing up learning about how immoral and wrong these places and LGBTQ people were when the only difference really was that it was more accepting of LGBTQ people and catered to that crowd.

As a self-described progressive Christian, and transgender individual myself, it is scary to come to that realization that I still had these walls put up by my LGBTQ brothers and sisters, especially the non-Christians. My Sunday morning, Christian formation (as we call it at both Episcopal Churches I’ve been to) class is going through the Old Testament, and the teacher presented Jericho in a way that I had never thought about before. in that if you read God’s command, God never commands them to kill everyone in the city, just to take down the walls and take the city it is Joshua who commands it, and here’s an interesting exchange at the beginning “Are you for us or for our adversaries?” 14 “Neither,” he replied, “but as commander of the army of the Lord I have now come.” (Joshua 5:13-14, NRSV) Then the angel’s command stops here “wall of the city will fall down flat, and all the people shall charge straight ahead” (Joshua 6:5 NRSV) He explained God is not in the business of “us vs them”, God is in the business of breaking down walls.

I remember Jericho’s story because it’s one of the most infamous stories of the Bible, but also because of how much fun I had when we reenacted it by marching around the gazebo at our church when I was elementary school, but I never really felt like I understood the lesson other than maybe trusting God. The lesson I learned from it now as an adult has completely changed my perspective on a story where there is actual genocide. That happens in the story because Joshua is still in that us vs them mentality, something God is not concerned with. God is on everyone’s side.

The city of Jericho likely put up walls for their protection, like many ancient cities did, and many people put around themselves to this day. There is also another kind of wall built God is in the business of breaking down, the one he did for me, putting up the wall to separate myself from “those people.” There is another wall, and it’s the wall that, at least I have personally noticed, that many LGBT people put up around themselves because they have been hurt by the church, and God wants to tear down that wall as well. It’s our job that when God does tear down that wall for people, that we do not slaughter them.

This mentality of “us vs them” that perpetuates so much of our culture, especially Christian culture, is doing nothing but pushing people away from Christ and making the walls higher and thicker. I watched a video this afternoon that talked about why Christian movies are so bad in quality, and one the things it talked about is that they’re not art, but sermons in the form of a film. One of the things that the producer and narrator of the video talked about was a Newsboys concert before they played their song “God’s Not Dead”, they played clips from the movie God’s Not Dead, and when the atheist came on screen, the audience literally booed, he described it, and I agreed, “like something out of 1984.” He continued to say “Imagine if someone invited their atheist friend to the concert and he witnessed that…what would be the message that he got seeing Christian cheer for the Christian, but boo the atheist.” Personally, I think that he would come to the conclusion like many have that, that Christians are not a loving people.

The mentality of films such as that are not helpful to the gospel, the gospel from a God who replies “Are you for us or them?” answers with “Neither.” God is on our side, but God is also on their side, and not even on either side. God wants humanity to be reconciled with them, and how can we expect to be reconciled with our Creator when we cannot reconcile with each other? God does not want us to be us and them, but just us. In my humble opinion, there is no community and not many more Heavenly things on Earth than Christian fellowship because it’s based on unity. God does not want to us to be divided and have these walls and division, but united. If you read the end of Revelation when St. John, in his human limitation tries to describe Heaven mentions this “Its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there.” (Rev 21:15 NRSV). The gates of Heaven are never shut, so why do we shut ours?