Is God Really Binary?

If you missed it, Texas Senate candidate James Talarico said in 2021 that “God is nonbinary.”  This has been in the headlines over the past two weeks, with evangelical politicians such as Ted Cruz and the Republican Party in general using this statement to prove that Talarico is a radical and “Anti-Christian.”

People who are in Christianity just for the religion of it (religion is all about appearance, not substance) are grasping their pearls from coast to coast in disgust over this outrageous statement. But do they really think God is binary, male vs. female, of course assuming that God is male? Does God really have a Y chromosome? Does God really have skin and bones and biological cells that contain DNA? But the real question, the answer being implied by the evangelicals, is: does God really have a penis and balls?

I’ve said before that when I was an evangelical, my God was very small. The God I had was completely knowable. I knew everything about Him, starting with the fact that it was Him. But I knew the 1,000 rules He had made for us. The rules were like the rungs on a ladder I could climb to prove I was superior to non-Christians, and then to other Christians. I knew the people God hated: the LGBTQs, the evolutionists, the secular, the Democrats, and, since leaving evangelicalism, I see that my old friends in that movement have added immigrants, people of color in general, non-Americans, and the neurodivergent to God’s shit list. We therefore need to change the lyrics to the old Christian song, to “They will know we are Christians by who we hate, make no mistake, who we hate.”

But I also had a personal relationship with God, meaning that I reduced God to such a small creature that He could fit in a box… in my back pocket. He, like a genie, found me parking spaces on campus. He filled my gas tank (me claiming that I was driving beyond the E as a miracle), and I molded this small God into exactly what I wanted from Him. That’s why I say we incarcerate God in the walls of our religions.

I’ve shared before that Thomas Aquinas (and Augustine, for that matter) said God has given humans two scriptures to know about Him (without knowing Him exhaustively): the canonical scriptures and creation, or nature. Evangelicalism only accepts Sola Scriptura (only the written scriptures) and has practically adopted the heretical Gnostic view that nature is garbage, nasty, which God will burn up soon, and that science (the study of nature), as one old evangelical friend told me a few years ago, is from Satan. Therefore, they have a monocular view of God.

Aquinas knew that nature was the best reference for interpreting the written scriptures. If we think the Scriptures say one thing, but nature screams of something else, then they must be reconciled, not the demonization of science and the study of nature.

I personally was brainwashed into this mindset. Although I had loved science before I became an evangelical, I was forced to see God’s creation as dirty and to be rejected, while claiming to love the creator… absurd. In the thirty years since I left evangelicalism, studying science and making up for all those years I lost, I know the real creator much, much better, including that God is unknowable in a comprehensive way. But if someone really wants to know the mystery of God, they should study cosmology, quantum mechanics, and such… completely mind-blowing. But God made that stuff, and you know the artist best by knowing their art. That’s why I’ve told my kids that, long after I’m gone, you can still find me in my writing.

When we take this logically, it is clear from nature that heterosexuality exists for reproduction. If humans could reproduce asexually, such as some sharks, Komodo dragons, some lizards, starfish, etc., then we wouldn’t need males and females. When an animal only reproduces asexually, then the genetic pool becomes stagnant. When cells divide or change function, each change creates an opportunity for genetic mutation. While evolution is born from helpful mutations, most mutations are harmful.

I have been battling cancer for seven years. The early part of that battle was horrendous because I had a simple mutation in a B lymphocyte cell:  the long (q) arm of chromosome 1, which normally has three copies, had more copies than it should have; chromosome 13 is missing; by mistake, an IGH (Immunoglobulin Heavy Chain) gene locus on chromosome 14q32 was rearranged, and a piece of this same gene was missing.

Genesis records the story that God created us male and female and then gave the commandment to go forth and multiply. Animals have the best chance of reproducing successfully when they diversify their DNA pool to dilute bad mutations. Therefore, drawing DNA from two separate lines greatly enhances that ability to reproduce. You can therefore conclude that heterosexual reproduction has great advantages over asexual reproduction.

You can also conclude from nature (where the Bible is silent) that most mammals carry their developing offspring internally and shield them deep within the body for protection. Therefore, one of the mating partners, the one to carry the offspring, must have an organ deep within (the uterus in the case of humans), and the other DNA donor, the males, must have a tube for delivering that DNA to that deep space, the tube, of course is the penis. So being male and female is simply the best way for humans (and most mammals) to reach that goal of reproducing and covering the Earth with their offspring. Of course we can build beautiful, loving relationships around this mating process, but there are also times when there is no mating or opportunity with equally beautiful relationships.

So, the question that must be asked: Does God reproduce sexually? If so, then we must leave our monotheistic concept because it takes at least two to tango. If God is biologically male, then it demands that there must be a God who is sexually female. Now we are really getting into trouble and resort back to the Greco-Roman gods who were male and female and reproduced sexually.

But the purpose of most religion isn’t to know God honestly, but to instill in us a feeling of piety or superiority over others.  I remember evangelicalism being profoundly competitive. Sunday morning worship, a beauty contest. Who was dressed correctly, had the best-behaved children, and said the right things in Sunday school to prove you were superior to the rest. That’s why I know people often attack me, trying to prove they are superior because I write outside the norm. So, in this paradigm that I must prove that I am superior to others, we create absolute laws that have nothing to do with God. While evangelicalism has thousands of such thinking and behavioral laws, its two main laws at this time in history have to do with gender roles and making the just-fertilized zygote fully human. Just in the last few years, due to the manipulation of Trumpism, gender has surpassed the zygote question. Everything is about gender. It is for that reason that Republicans are losing their minds over the concept that the creator of the entire cosmos doesn’t have a dick. They will use this to persuade Christians not to vote for anyone who denies this “fact.”

Life, and almost everything, follows a bell-curve distribution. So, while the standard deviations near the mean make up most members, exceptions exist. Some feel sexual passion for their same sex from birth. No, it isn’t because they first had to create a pact with Satan to do that (as I was taught as an evangelical). Some don’t feel they are in the right skin: female feelings in a male body or vice versa. That too is mostly congenital.

But since the purpose of religion is not to know the creator, but to prove they are superior to others, it must be made into laws. So, it becomes absurd.

We can learn a lot about God from scripture and creation, but we can never know everything about God because God is much, much bigger than humans can conceive. Making God biological and male and female is the grossest example of reducing God so small that they have no resemblance at all to the real Creator.

Respectfully,

Mike