Always Swim with a Buddy: What Can the Imago Dei Learn from Transgenders?
“Our bodies are like dust covers.”
So said prodigal son Ryan Stevenson, son of a murder victim who had been found in the ocean, severed in two.
Oh, but perhaps I should mention, this isn’t exactly a real story, but the plot from the most recent episode of the TV show Bones. The show features an anthropologist who sees religion as a “mass illusion” and completely illogical. Her partner is a non-academic Roman Catholic (in the sense that he is a normal guy who’s faith means a lot to him, yet he doesn’t spend his time academically trying to support it). The two of them throughout the four seasons have had disagreements about science and religion, and often offer at the least an interesting dialogue, even if it seems a little biased.
In this episode, the skeleton of a woman named Patricia, who was a pastor in a church called “Inclusion” (welcoming recovering drug addicts and alcoholics) washes ashore. Through a good amount of investigation and ingenuity, they discover that the pastor is actually the same pastor that had been a televangelist in a materialistic fire and brimstone type church, a church that openly spoke against homosexuality…. but the interesting facet is that former pastor was named Patrick… and had been male.
The quote I started with, from Patrick/Patricia’s son, is central to the whole religious tension in the show. Patrick’s son had taken over the pulpit after his father had disappeared some five years earlier, presumably dead. He gets fed up with the church, perhaps as his father had, and engages in types of social work as an act of redemption. Upon finding out his father had died, but had lived a life as a woman, Patrick’s son was not offended by his father’s sex change. Instead, he was saddened he had not known her as that person.
Booth, as a Catholic, shares some of the concerns that were raised by Patrick’s former wife. She was convinced that Patrick would never do that, at first, because they believed that people are made in the image of God, and God does not make “biological mistakes,” as the psychologist Sweets phrased it in the show. Bones countered that this woman had obviously had plastic surgery and colored her hair. Booth somewhat heatedly responds quickly that in the case of this woman, she was just augmenting the image God had given her, not totally dismantling it.
And while it is a complex topic to wonder whether or not people really are attached to their genders, or perhaps more accurately, if our gender stereotypes are all-encompassingly correct, what I would like to end with is the final moments of the episode. The son takes on his father Patricia’s role as pastor of the Inclusion church. And in his sermon he starts off by saying, on the outside we are gay and straight, black and white, fat and thin, man and woman, saint and sinner… but that we are all children of God. He says he is sorry he didn’t get to know his father Patricia but he wants to get to know her, that redeemed human being both in her old Bible, but most importantly through the church community. The people that she loved, and people that loved her back. The true Imago Dei.
Booth comments, “I get it. Redemption through transformation.” And poignantly asks, “What is it you believe, Bones? ” Despite all of Bones’ genius and scientific expertise, there is still something lacking, something that is often complemented by Booth’s presence, but is still something missing in her as an individual. And yet, Bones response illustrates this exact point! She says, “I believe in swimming with a buddy.” Booth is confused, but I think her point is extremely profound, and somewhat uncharacteristic for her, since she is quite proud of her individualality.
But even Bones understands that it is through relationships, through community, and through learning from others, or “gathering wisdom” as she phrases it, that we find meaning through our relationship with others, and for the church, by manifesting the imago dei.
