The Problem

So after writing my last post here dealing with the problem of evil and God, and writing They shall be burnt with fire on my other blog, I had an extensive email exchange with Steve Wells about how God seems to him to be quite evil as portrayed in the Bible, and yet predictably I, as a Christian, manage to see God differently. Then this morning, something was said that hit me profoundly. In the midst of a rather large email, I said to Wells,

I respect your opinion on the Bible; it's not unreasonable. I respect the views of Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, etc. Is it really so impossible in your mind that there exist rational and moral people who believe in these holy scriptures? People manage to see things differently from each other, and that's okay.

I pressed him for an answer to this question, and this morning he came back with the following email I quote in its entirety:

I'm not sure there's much more to say, Brucker.

Donald Trump could shoot someone in the middle of 5th Avenue, and his followers would still believe in him.

The Bible could say that you should stone to death your entire family if they believe differently than you, and you would still believe in it. (Which, of course, it does in Dt 13:6-10, and you do.)

As for your last comments and questions, no I don't believe that "Hebrew slavery was intended to be a system of helping out the poor." Or that Moses wrote Deuteronomy forty years after writing Exodus. (There's no evidence that Moses ever existed, but if he did, he didn't write either book. They were written by different authors at different times and the text was changed and edited over several centuries.)

You ask if I think it's possible for rational and moral people to believe in the Bible. My answer to that is a qualified yes. Many people who are rational and moral in their daily lives and beliefs believe in the Bible. But their reason and morals are suspended when they look at the Bible. Since they believe the Bible is both true and good, they can't question its truth or morals - because they believe the Bible is both true and good.

They are like people who believe in Trump. They've already decided that he is good and truthful. They can be good and rational about everything else, except for when it comes to him. It is the same for Bible believers.

The tl;dr version of this email is, "Belief in God is like belief in Trump; they're both horrible, but if you've already decided they're great, maybe nothing will convince you otherwise."

This shook me. I have a hard time understanding why there are so many Christians who continue to support President Trump when he's obviously (to nearly everyone who isn't a Trump supporter) a horrible person.* However, what if many atheists feel the same exact way about people who love the God of the Bible, and what if they're right?

There's actually some real soundness to this argument. The God of the Bible never denounces slavery. The God of the Bible demands capital punishment for the victims of rape. The God of the Bible instructed the Israelites to commit genocide several times (a timely issue for 2024!). There's more, so much more that can be said, and it's not just the Old Testament, either; the God of the Bible killed Ananias and Sapphira for lying! It's actually not hard for a person to make the case that the God of the Bible is a terrible being!

It's something that on some level every person who believes in the goodness of God needs to reconcile, even if they don't believe in the Bible. How can you believe that God is good when (fill in the blank)? And there are so many things that can fill in the blank! As I've blogged so many times, this is an issue philosophers wrestle with, but we also have to deal with on a basic level in tangible reality.

I haven't mentioned it either in my blogs or in emails to Wells, but I suffer from chronic pain. It comes and goes in varying degrees from day to day, but on several occasions it has been so intense that I have contemplated suicide, not out of depression, but as a painkiller! No painkiller can touch it, though, because it's something neurological. I don't understand why God would allow me to have this condition. It's not the result of any sin that I've committed. Do I quote 2Corinthians 12:6-9 again as I did in the comments of my last post? Is that really a good answer? Maybe, but it can sound like a cop-out. Isn't Paul just making excuses for God's bad behavior?

I received Wells's email this morning, as I said, but it was actually specifically as I sat in my church's auditorium waiting for the Sunday service to begin. Here I was, about to do the church thing, and Wells hits me right in the faith! And what did church bring to me? Well, there was an announcement that the church was starting a support group for people with chronic pain. And then the sermon, which delivered the message that (1) sometimes life is confusing, but (2) God is always in control. Maybe it's odd, given all that I was contemplating about God, but I found this message to be very comforting.

I talked with my wife about the email and the sermon, and found that she was one of the people in the camp that I'm sure I've talked about before, the ones who say, "It's God's house, so it's God's rules." This viewpoint implies that God by definition of being the creator of the universe is not beholden to our measurement of morality. It may be true, but I don't personally find it satisfying. If God subjects humans to his rules of morality, it seems that they should at least be consistent. (How do you reconcile "Thou shalt not kill" with genocide? Yes, I know I tried to address this issue when I covered the book of Joshua, but how many atheists found that argument convincing or reasonable?)

If you can convince yourself that genocide is ever justified, maybe you can convince yourself of anything? But what if the argument is logically sound nonetheless? Maybe logic and morality aren't as compatible as I like to think? These are big questions without easy answers. The Bible teaches that God is perfect, but it also teaches that God prefers to work out his perfect will through the actions of imperfect people. Modern-day Israelis are largely convinced that their genocide of the Palestinians is completely justified. I believe they are wrong. Yet the genocide continues, at the hand of God's "chosen people". My government under President Biden is complicit in the genocide, and my omnipotent God is not stepping in to stop it. Why do I protest the one and continue to accept the other?

I'm not presenting an argument here as I often do; I'm presenting moral conflict. I do still believe that God is good, but I admit it isn't always easy to explain why. Am I a model of good faith, or am I a model of moral failure? I think sometimes that this conundrum is very like the conundrum of believing that God exists at all: there is some compelling evidence on either side, but no real proof that one can cling to. At least, I haven't seen it. Is the Bible a fit moral guide when it tells me I can sell my daughters into slavery, but I'm appalled by the idea? Steve Wells would tell me that alone is proof enough, I'm sure; but I'm still not convinced. It's not my belief that every part of the Bible is meant to be all things for all people for all time. So what do I believe the Bible is? It's a collection of books that tells a story about imperfect people and their imperfect relationships with God. It's a story that is mostly real history, but it functions like one of Jesus's parables; it doesn't hand us morality and wisdom on a neat little plate, but makes us think about it. It's simple for some people, while being far from simple for others, and I'm definitely in the latter camp in the end.

I don't pretend to have the Answer-with-a-capital-A, but see myself as occasionally having an answer-with-a-little-a, and from there, I work out my own salvation with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12).



*I always have to note here whenever I denounce Trump that I'm no fan of President Biden, either. I feel they are both racist rapists who are pushing our country toward fascism; Biden's just fascism with a smiling face on it.

The Problem of Evil and God

So... I came across a real conundrum in my other blog; see Behold, this evil is of the LORD (Isaiah 31) and the comments thereon.

I have touched many times on the Problem of Evil in this blog, but it deserves a revisit due to the issues brought up in that post and the KJV. While more modern translations of the Bible take advantage of the nuance of the Hebrew word mostly translated "evil" in the KJV to translate it into words like "calamity" or "misfortune" or some other less charged word, the Hebrew word "raʿ" is the word used in Genesis chapters two and three in the phrase "tree of the knowledge of good and evil,"which seems unequivocally about evil, and there are many verses in the Bible that have God being the creator of "raʿ". Now nuanced translation of this word is not necessarily wrong, but it's still quite suggestive. To me it suggests that for the Jew and the Christian, there is a need to solve this conundrum:

A) God is good.
B) God is all-powerful.
C) God is all-knowing.
D) Evil and suffering exist, and...
E) Some evil and suffering is created by God.

It's much more challenging to formulate a convincing theodicy with statement (E) in the mix, don't you agree? Yet based on the Biblical evidence, (E) is difficult to deny.

My approach to a theodicy has always been first of all to place a caveat on statement (B) and say that God must be limited by the boundaries of logic. If God is not bound by logic, then nonsense becomes possible and throws all logic out the window. God can make himself not exist. God can give humans free will and make us always choose right. And especially apropos to this discussion, God can remove evil while letting evil still exist, therefore (D) is false regardless of your personal experience of evil and suffering. I hope people can see this is nonsense.

If we suggest that it is not logically possible to create a world full of beings with free will without allowing evil, that's a beginning, but it doesn't quite address (E). Particularly, of course, it would seem that (E) clashes with (A) almost in itself. I think there are two issues that need to be addressed with respect to this clash. The first issue is why a good God would add evil to a world that already has evil. I think this is easier to address than it may seem. I believe chiefly when God visits evil upon people, it's for the purpose of discipline. We as a society recognize a need to discipline children, although there are vast differences of opinion on how best to do so. Even if you are a parent who doesn't believe in corporal punishment, discipline of any sort tends to involve creating some sort of discomfort in children to make them reflect on why their actions were wrong. In other words, we feel that when children act in an evil manner, they need to suffer for it; it sounds more cruel when phrased this way, but I believe that is essentially the nature of discipline. On a wider level, society accepts that when people break the law, it is required to make them suffer. Maybe that is in some form of restitution, maybe incarceration, and sometimes even death. (While I am personally aganst the death penalty for numerous reasons, it can't be denied that there is a large segment of society that feels it is justified.) So, extrapolating from the moral standards we hold in society to the moral standards held by God, I would say that God is sometimes enacting evil for the sake of justice and discipline, which I suggest are greater goods.

The second issue is the more difficult one: why does God allow or even enact evil upon good people? As I said in the post on my other blog, the Book of Job shows us that sometimes God inflicts evil on good people. Perhaps Job is a special case, but it's quite evident from real-life experience that everyone experiences evil and suffering, and it's quite possible that some is inflicted by God. Let's question Job first; is there a purpose for Job's suffering? When I was in high school, we read Job in our humanities class; everyone in my class except for me was convinced Job must have done something to deserve him suffering, but if that was true, wouldn't God say so? No, Job was definitely suffering through no fault of his own, so why? I've heard it posited that Job is actually a key piece of scripture, because in a way it asks and anwers the question, "Is humanity really worth God's love and grace?" Do people just follow God for rewards, or is there a recognition of God's inherent goodness and sovereignty? Job is a test case, being one of the most upright and moral men God had at that time. If Job can be put through loss of all he has and further suffering on top of that and still praise God, then it shows there is something deeper in the relationship between God and mankind. And Job passes the test, even with God showing up at the end of the book to pretty much taunt him!

Now God, being omniscient, already knew this would happen before it happened. God knows how every individual will stand in the face of adversity. So why go through with it? Because everyone who witnessed it, including Job, Job's wife, Job's friends, and the "sons of God" (i.e. angels, including Satan), now can see Job's character for themselves. Adversity reveals character, which is useful for spiritual growth, and spiritual growth is very important. Towards the end of John's gospel, Jesus talks a lot about the adversity his disciples will see once he's gone to Heaven; Paul talks about his personal sufferings in his letters, and says it's for the glory of God. The Bible teaches that being a follower of God is a good thing, but not that it's pleasant; quite the opposite. God often promises to send comfort in times of trouble, but also, you should expect that trouble.

So what is my conclusion? Sometimes evil and suffering are tools to make people become better people. Sometimes we need to be pushed out of complacency and grow, and evil and suffering do that. Whether we're doing something wrong that needs correcting or doing something right that we need to be pressured in to persevering, sometimes we suffer for the greater good. Of course, I know not everyone will find this convincing, and there is always suffering and evil that seem too much to be appropriate, but it's always a possibility that it has purpose. As always, please feel free to comment.

COVID-19 and mRNA vaccines

Okay, I wanted to take some time to explain how the mRNA vaccines work. I'm not a biologist, but perhaps that's a good thing, as I have studied enough of the science to understand how they work, and I believe I can explain it in very plain English.

First of all, it's worth dispelling some rumors that were common in the early days of the vaccines, and I still hear occasionally today. The vaccines do not have any affect on a person's DNA; your DNA is stored in the center of your body's cells, and there is nothing in the vaccines that actually enters into the cells.

The vaccines are essentially made of mRNA, which is something that naturally occurs in the human body. When your cells need to build a protein for some reason, your body produces mRNA to tell your cells to do so. The mRNA is essentially a chemical blueprint explaining how to build that particular protein.

What scientists have done in the case of COVID-19 is they have used the body's method of using mRNA to get the body to build a special protein that is called the "spike protein". While the technology of pretty much every previous vaccine was to inject the body with some weakened form of the virus you were supposed to be getting protection from, these new vaccines have mRNA blueprints of the "spike protein", which mimics the form of the actual virus. In both cases, your immune system reacts as though it is infected, and fights off the infection, but has the advantage of not actually fighting a live, dangerous virus.

Unlike what many people have either outright said or merely implied, this process *is* creating a form of natural immunity. Your immune system is learning what it's like to have an infection so that if it gets another infection (this time a "real" one) it has the tools to fight it in the form of antibodies. Contrary to what most people think, vaccines were never about stopping you from getting infected; they were about teaching your immune system to deal with an infection effectively.

Now yes, there is a downside in the case of COVID-19, and it's similar to the problem with the flu vaccine. No vaccine is 100% effective, but in the case of some diseases, the effectiveness is actually quite a ways off from 100%. The flu is a disease that frequently mutates, and will tend to come back different every flu season. So if you get a flu vaccine, it actually is a vaccine against two or three variants of the flu virus that scientists are expecting to be going around. Like the flu, the COVID virus has done a lot of mutating, and there are a lot of variants. The COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are only designed to help your immune system fight off the variants that existed at the time the vaccine was developed, so, yes, a vaccinated person can get COVID.

The good part of this, and a big part of the reason doctors are suggesting getting the vaccine even if you've been infected, is that while the vaccine won't stop you from getting infected, it still has been shown to help you fight the virus so that your infection is less severe than it likely would have been without the vaccine.

As for what happens in your body when you actually get the vaccine, the mRNA in the vaccine goes to your cells and without entering them, it delivers the message to build the spike protein. Having delivered the message, it naturally breaks up and dissolves like every mRNA in your body. When the spike protein is built, your immune system reacts, knowing immediately that this protein is not one that belongs. It figures out how to break it down and eat it, which is exactly what it will do to the virus if it encounters it later. So within about 48 hours or so, there is nothing left from the vaccine but the knowledge of how to fight the virus.

Homosexuality and the Bible

(This is a concise version of an argument I put together last year that I may flesh out further because my blog posts always need to be incredibly verbose.)

Christians commonly will cite 1Corinthians 6:9 and 1Timothy 1:10 as verses that call out homosexuality as a sin. However, both verses in the original Greek use the word "αρσενοκοιται", which is a word found nowhere else in 1st century Greek literature, because Paul made it up. The truth is, nobody really knows what it means, so people have had to guess. 

Modern English is a relatively young language, really dating back to the publication of the King James Bible and Shakespeare's works. There are lots of older languages that had the Bible before that, most notably, German. In German Bibles, "αρσενοκοιται" is translated into "Knabenschänder", a word which we do know the meaning of; it's "boy molester". 

Now of course some scholars will make the claim that Paul's "αρσενοκοιται" is a neologism that comes from the Greek version of Leviticus 20:13, which in the KJV reads "If a man also lie with mankind," or in Greek, the phrase ends with "ἄρσενος κοίτην". However, there's a problem with this translation as well. This command comes in the middle of a list of defined sexual sins, mostly reading "If a man lie with..." In the original Hebrew, each and every one of those instances of "man" is the same Hebrew word, "אִישׁ", so one might expect that verse 13 would read: if an "אִישׁ" lie with an "אִישׁ"; but it doesn't. It reads: if an "אִישׁ" lie with a "זָכָר". Why use a different word here, unless you mean a different concept? "זָכָר" is translated into a number of different English words, but one of them is "child". Indeed, looking at the German again, they translate it "Knaben" or "boy". 

Throughout the Bible there are a lot of sexual sins listed, and almost every one comes with an explanation of why it's a sin. Why is homosexuality a sin? I don't know, but if all the verses that are claimed to be about homosexuality are actually about paedophilia, is any explanation needed?

Why do you speak to the people in parables?

There's a side of Jesus that I think a lot of people either forget or miss entirely. It's weird.

Ask a Christian what the purpose of Jesus's parables was, and they'll probably tell you something like, they're little allegories to illustrate spiritual truths for people to understand. But Jesus actually specifically explained in Scripture the purpose of parables, and it's nothing like that:

Matthew 13:10-17 New International Version (NIV)
10 The disciples came to him and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?”

11 He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. 12 Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. 13 This is why I speak to them in parables:

“Though seeing, they do not see;
    though hearing, they do not hear or understand.

14 In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:

“‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding;
    you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.
15 For this people’s heart has become calloused;
    they hardly hear with their ears,
    and they have closed their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
    hear with their ears,
    understand with their hearts
and turn, and I would heal them.’

16 But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. 17 For truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.

What do my Christian friends make of this?

Situational Ethics as taught by the Bible

I have often heard it said by Christians that ethics are not situational, but rather absolute. It is my intention to illustrate the fact that not only is situational ethics an acceptable thing, but that it is in fact supported Biblically. In order to do so, I will run through the Ten Commandments, and give an example from the Bible--for as many as I can--of someone breaking that Commandment and either being blessed for breaking that Commandment, or being clearly right in breaking that Commandment due to context.

1. Exodus 20:3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

This is a pretty straightforward one. The Bible contains plenty of people who do not follow this Commandment, but I can't think of anyone who was said to be in the right for not doing so. As the First Commandment, this may be a principle that cannot be superseded by a higher one.

2. Exodus 20:4-6 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

In 2 Kings, a man named Naaman comes to the prophet Elisha to be cleaned from leprosy. After his skin is healed, he makes a request: 2 Kings 5:17-19 "And Naaman said, Shall there not then, I pray thee, be given to thy servant two mules' burden of earth? for thy servant will henceforth offer neither burnt offering nor sacrifice unto other gods, but unto the LORD. In this thing the LORD pardon thy servant, that when my master goeth into the house of Rimmon to worship there, and he leaneth on my hand, and I bow myself in the house of Rimmon: when I bow down myself in the house of Rimmon, the LORD pardon thy servant in this thing. And he said unto him, Go in peace. So he departed from him a little way." So for whatever reason (I don't see that it's given here) Naaman is given permission to bow down to idols, and still be a faithful follower of the God of Israel.

3. Exodus 20:7 Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

The Third Commandment is an odd one, as I don't know of a single instance of it being broken in the Bible. Moving on...

4. Exodus 20:8-11 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

This is an interesting one, as Jesus repeatedly breaks the sabbath and talks about instances in which a person might break the sabbath and be excused. Matthew 12 has some good examples, including the opening story: Matthew 12:1-2 "At that time Jesus went on the sabbath day through the corn; and his disciples were an hungred, and began to pluck the ears of corn, and to eat. But when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto him, Behold, thy disciples do that which is not lawful to do upon the sabbath day." Not only is Jesus breaking the sabbath (and I am going to make the assumption that if Jesus does something, it's not wrong to do so), but he gives the Pharisees a short lesson on situational ethics using David as an example.

5. Exodus 20:12 Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

Later in Matthew 12, Jesus' mother shows up. Matthew 12:46-49 "While he yet talked to the people, behold, his mother and his brethren stood without, desiring to speak with him. Then one said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee. But he answered and said unto him that told him, Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? And he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren!" I would argue that Jesus is dishonoring his mother here; I don't know why, but I'm willing to accept that since it was Jesus, it was the right thing to do, and he had a good reason to do so.

6. Exodus 20:13 Thou shalt not kill.

Where to begin? The whole Old Testament is filled with justified killing, and instead of picking a particular passage, I'll choose as my example the entire book of Joshua, which tells the story of not just justified killing but repeated outright genocides of entire nations. Now I know that a lot has been written about the justification of the actions of the Israelites under the leadership of Joshua (I've written on it myself in my other blog) but the fact remains that this is killing, justified by the situation that Joshua and his people were in.

7. Exodus 20:14 Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Who can forget Genesis chapter 38? Here's the highlight that shows even adultery can be right due to situational ethics: Genesis 38:24-26 "And it came to pass about three months after, that it was told Judah, saying, Tamar thy daughter in law hath played the harlot; and also, behold, she is with child by whoredom. And Judah said, Bring her forth, and let her be burnt. When she was brought forth, she sent to her father in law, saying, By the man, whose these are, am I with child: and she said, Discern, I pray thee, whose are these, the signet, and bracelets, and staff. And Judah acknowledged them, and said, She hath been more righteous than I; because that I gave her not to Shelah my son. And he knew her again no more." Here is an example of a woman who was judged righteous for engaging in prostitution! Why? Because the situation of her being a childless widow demanded her to be given a son. She gives birth to twins, and ends up being the descendent of King David and her name is mentioned in Jesus' genealogy  in the New Testament.

8. Exodus 20:15 Thou shalt not steal.

The wording in various versions of the Bible may make this one a bit tricky to understand. Exodus 12:35-36 "And the children of Israel did according to the word of Moses; and they borrowed of the Egyptians jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment: And the LORD gave the people favour in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they lent unto them such things as they required. And they spoiled the Egyptians." This is not "borrowed", as there is never going to be a time that this is given back. The Israelites are taking riches that belong to the Egyptians, and keeping them; why? It's reparations for slavery; they're trying to get 400 years of back wages. 

9. Exodus 20:16 Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

In the beginning of the book of Exodus, Pharaoh tells a pair of Hebrew midwives to kill male children that they deliver. They don't, which is following the Sixth Commandment, but then they break the Ninth Commandment: Exodus 1:18-20 "And the king of Egypt called for the midwives, and said unto them, Why have ye done this thing, and have saved the men children alive? And the midwives said unto Pharaoh, Because the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women; for they are lively, and are delivered ere the midwives come in unto them. Therefore God dealt well with the midwives: and the people multiplied, and waxed very mighty." This in the past has always been my go-to verse for situational ethics. The midwives are clearly breaking the Ninth Commandment, yet God blesses them for doing so, I assume because the lying saved lives. 

10. Exodus 20:17 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.

The Tenth Commandment, in my opinion, is a strange one, because it's the only Commandment that is broken entirely in secret. There are very few instances of this Commandment being broken in the Bible, but like the first, I don't know of any instances where someone was blessed for coveting.

But still, I think I have examples here for seven out of ten, and while someone may have an explanation as to why I'm misinterpreting one or two of these, I really don't think all seven can be denied (and if the example for number six can be dismissed on a technicality, I'm sure I could find another example that's better). My conclusion is that situational ethics is entirely Biblical.

The Nashville Statement: Sexual Heresy

For the sake of clarity, let me preface my argument by stating that I am a cisgendered evangelical Christian male married to a cisgendered evangelical Christian female. I have no need to oppose the Nashville Statement for any personal gain, but only oppose it for the cause of supporting right doctrine within Christianity.

This is my final argument concerning the Nashville Statement, I believe, because I feel confident it will prove there exists an inevitable logical choice between two options: (A) The Nashville Statement is logically inconsistent, or (B) Christianity is morally inconsistent. I will of course choose option (A).

The Nashville Statement (hereafter "NS") makes a number of statements I take issue with, but here I address only four:
1. Same-sex marriage is a sin. (NS Article 1)
2. Transgenderism (i.e. choosing a gender identity that does not match your biological gender) is a sin. (NS Article 13)
3. People who do not have an easy-to-identify biological gender must conform with the binary gender paradigm, and act as though they are the gender their genotype would suggest or they are in sin. (NS Article 6 and quote below)
4. Disagreeing with any of the above (or any other part of the NS) causes one to be in a state of sin. (NS Article 10)

As evidence, I put to readers that there exists a medical condition known as Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (hereafter "AIS"). People with AIS are genetically male, having the sexual genotype "XY", but without genetic testing are almost impossible to differentiate from a sterile female. In fact, while I cannot prove it to be so, I suggest it to be laughable to deny that at various times in the past (and even present) men have married and had sex with (although society has always considered them "women", Denny Burk, one of the main authors and #1 signer of the NS would tell us they are "men"*; remember that according to NS Article 10, you cannot disagree with this assessment) who have AIS. This includes couples in which both partners were professing Christians.

Here is the logical/moral dilemma. If these are men with AIS, then these were/are same-sex marriages. The NS tells us that this is sin, and therefore...what?

If engaging in a same-sex marriage is an unpardonable sin no matter what, this implies that God had to send these people to Hell for committing a sin without knowing they were doing it. Result: God is not just.

If the fact that they did not know they were doing it excuses them, that implies the sinful nature of same-sex marriage is a subjective matter and same-sex marriage is not a sin if you don't believe it is. Result: The NS is wrong about same-sex marriage.

If this was not same-sex marriage because the man with AIS identified as a woman, then either transgenderism is acceptable, or intersex people do not have to conform to the gender suggested by their genotype; possibly both. Result: The NS is wrong about transgenderism, intersex, or both.

If there is a fourth possibility that saves both the just nature of God and the integrity of the NS, I cannot imagine what it is, but I am open to discussion. Note that I am not denying the truth of statements 1, 2, or 3, but since they cannot all be true at once, I suggest that one or more of them must be rejected, and one must certainly by all means reject statement 4. Good Christians can and indeed should disagree with the Nashville Statement.

*"Try to determine as soon as possible the chromosomal makeup of the child. If there is a Y chromosome present, that would strongly militate against raising the child as a female, regardless of the apperance of the genitals or other secondary sex characteristics." Denny Burk, What is the Meaning of Sex?, page 81,