McLean Bible Church: Jesus Experienced a Kind of Dysphoria Like Our Transgender Neighbors
This is pretty shocking, even if you have been reading our warnings (here, here, and here – to start) about the apparent in-coming embrace of LGBTQ+ among Southern Baptist Elites.
Eric Saunders, Pastor of McLean Bible Church of Arlington, MD, has released a video in which he claims Jesus experienced a kind of body dysphoria like that experienced by transgender claimants.
What?….Platt's McLean Bible Church teaches Revoice/Living Out nonsense that Jesus had body dysphoria similar to "transgender" people. pic.twitter.com/XqEyYrtMPd
— Terri Green (@TerriGreenUSA) January 4, 2022
If Saunders’ name doesn’t ring a bell his church probably does – Saunders serves under David Platt, former head of The Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board.
The clip in the tweet above comes from a video named “How Do I Love My Transgender Neighbor” on McLean’s Youtube channel.
While the longer video clearly aims at helping those experiencing gender dysphoria find reconciliation with their Creator in Christ the problem of how remains – namely by associating Jesus with the most recent of advanced Modern anxieties rather than pointing the dysphoric to repentance from sin, belief in the Gospel, and submission to the Lordship of Christ.
This kind of error coming out of McLean Bible Church is shocking on its face, even as those paying attention have seen David Platt’s doctrinal slide developing for years. Most recently, Platt was announced as a speaker for the upcoming “Theology in the Raw” Conference (a stomach turning name for a conference if there ever was one, considering the aims of its founder – more on that in a moment):
According to the conference website participants will “be challenged to think like exiles about race, sexuality, gender, critical race theory, hell, transgender identities, climate change, creation care, American politics, and what it means to love your democratic or republican neighbor as yourself. Different viewswill [sic] be presented. No question is off limits. No political party will be praised. Everyone will bechallenged [sic] to think. And Jesus will be upheld as supreme.”
Considering the conference founder’s leadership in the Revoice movement the direction of the promised “challenge” to think like exiles about sexuality and gender is easy to predict.
Readers may recognize Preston Sprinkle, the man behind Theology in the Raw as a leader of the Revoice movement to redefine evangelical sexual mores along more culturally fashionable lines. As Dr. Albert Mohler has written (in 2018!), Revoice belongs to the radical (no pun intended) sexual revolution of our cultural moment that “requires a total redefinition of morality, cultural authority, personal identity, and more. The revolution requires a new vocabulary and a radically revised dictionary. Ultimately, the moral revolutionaries seek to redefine reality itself. And this revolution has no stopping point.”
[Note: Mohler’s article is well worth reading, not only for documenting the obvious destructive errors arising from Revoice’s work but to note the realization of those errors now three years after Mohler wrote the piece. So is the work of Dr. Jared Moore on Revoice, which you can find on Founders Ministries blog here, on Monergism here, and the SBC Underground Podcast here.]
- David Platt is now sharing a platform with a man at the forefront of the effort to normalize sodomy and a whole host of other perversions among evangelicals. Saunders, a man Platt works with as a co-laborer, is ascribing to Jesus the experience of those embracing body dysphoria.
- The former head of the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist convention embraced CRT/I wokeness and, as the framework known as Intersectionality dictates, has partnered with those promoting sexual perversity. Or, said in Biblical terms, the leaven of sin has leavened the whole lump.
- James Merritt, SBC Insider & Annual Meeting Stage Scold, is praising the preaching of his openly homosexual son.
- Karen Swallow Prior, professor at Southeastern Theological Seminary, has never withdrawn her endorsement of Revoice.
- Those holding the theology of Revoice will be on the platform of the 2022 Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting Pastor’s Conference.
If the leaders of your local Southern Baptist church doesn’t have a problem with this already you need to get busy making it a problem for them – and fast. Your church is already in partnership with the normalizers and your tithe dollars are already funding their efforts.
This is Pastor Eric’s response: I understand the confusion. If I could have a do-over, I would make an effort to be even more clear. In that video, it was my desire was to serve the church in helping them understand how we might love our transgender neighbors with the love of Christ while holding to a biblical view of sexuality.
In the video, I describe Jesus’ bearing sin on the cross as dysphoria, however, I absolutely did not mean nor did I communicate that it was “gender dysphoria”. I was using “dysphoria” as it’s used generally. Like euphoria is a state of extreme happiness, dysphoria is the opposite. In its general usage, dysphoria is a state of extreme discomfort, distress or unease. In other words, I was using dysphoria as a synonym for suffering. What I was attempting to communicate is this: Because Jesus experienced dysphoria in a general sense on the cross (he suffered), he can sympathize with anyone experiencing dysphoria (suffering) including those experiencing the very specific kind of dysphoria related to their confusion about gender.
In no way was I attempting to present a view of Jesus’s deity or human sexuality that is different than what the Scriptures present. In fact, the opposite: it was my goal to present Jesus as a faithful priest who completely trusted his father’s will during his necessary suffering on the cross. Therefore, Jesus can help anyone, even those who are tempted to cross over in transgenderism because of their dysphoria, walk the path of obedience, even when it’s incredibly hard.
Thanks Jennifer. Good to read! Is there a link to where these comments were published?