Embodied Quotes

“Sometimes compassion without critical thinking can move you to do things that make a person feel good in the short run but cause harm in the long run.”
― Preston M. Sprinkle, Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say

“But correct science and correct theology are pointless if we’re not willing to love and honor, listen to and learn from, care for and be cared for by the trans* people God has gifted us with. Jesus cherishes them and values them. Would they say the same about you?”
― Preston M. Sprinkle, Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say

“we need to really get to know someone on a practical level and enter their story before we give an opinion on whether they should make a life-altering decision.”
― Preston M. Sprinkle, Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say

“Christians are not solitary individuals called to follow Jesus on our own and demand that others do the same. We’re a community of radical misfits, called into a motley family filled with grace and truth where no one should walk alone.”
― Preston M. Sprinkle, Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say

“In no way should we minimize the psychological difficulties that a person with one of these conditions might experience. These are ripe pastoral opportunities to embody the love and life of Jesus toward people who, for whatever reason, might feel “othered” by society (intentionally or unintentionally) or by their own self-perception of what it means to be a “real” man or woman.”
― Preston M. Sprinkle, Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say

“Acceptance is the first step of discipleship. And Christian discipleship is about pursuing the image God created us to be.”
― Preston M. Sprinkle, Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say

“And if a trans* person comes to your church, they should be welcomed with open arms and accepted. Not just accepted, but embraced, delighted in, listened to, learned from, honored, loved, cared for, and shown the heavenly kindness saturated with compassion.”
― Preston M. Sprinkle, Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say

“The Bible’s primary invitation to every Christian is not to act more like a man or to act more like a woman, but to act more like Jesus.”
― Preston M. Sprinkle, Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say

“If you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus. If you want to know what we are like and what we should become, look at Jesus.”
― Preston M. Sprinkle, Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say

“To listen is to love. You can’t love without listening.”
― Preston M. Sprinkle, Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say

“Jesus is building an upside-down kingdom where outcasts have their feet washed, the marginalized are welcomed, and dehumanized people feel humanized once again. Where truth is upheld, celebrated, and proclaimed. Where those who fall short of that truth are loved.”
― Preston M. Sprinkle, Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say

“If I never learned about pure, undistilled grace, I would have transitioned to a female and left the church,” Alan said.”
― Preston M. Sprinkle, Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say

“It’s fundamental for discipleship—becoming more like Christ. We need to first understand who we are (ontology) before we know what it means to become who God wants us to be (discipleship). Ontology is integral to discipleship, because discipleship means living as we were designed to live—living as divine images.”
― Preston M. Sprinkle, Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say

“Discipleship includes inviting God to tell us who we are and who he wants us to become.”
― Preston M. Sprinkle, Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say

“theologian Marc Cortez puts it: the image of God is “a declaration that God intended to create human persons to be the physical means through which he would manifest his own divine presence in the world.”
― Preston M. Sprinkle, Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say

“when people use the term “gender,” make sure you ask them what they mean.”
― Preston M. Sprinkle, Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say

“Sometimes how we believe is just as important as what we believe”
― Preston M. Sprinkle, Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say

“Masculinity and femininity—gender roles—are kind of like height. Males are taller than females. The average height of American males is five feet nine inches tall, while the average height of females is five feet four inches tall. But this doesn’t mean every male is taller than every female. Some women are six feet tall, and yet no one would say they are not female because they fall outside the general pattern. There’s a clear difference in average, and yet much variation within each sex. The same is true of masculinity and femininity. Most males are more physically aggressive than most females. This forms the stereotype that aggression is a masculine trait. On the other hand, some females are more aggressive than some males. This doesn’t mean aggressive females aren’t females. These behaviors are generalities. We don’t determine whether a person is male or female based on whether they match the stereotype of their sex.”
― Preston M. Sprinkle, Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say

“The thing that brought me to an acceptance of Biblical masculinity was not a poignantly laid-out exegetical argument against transsexuality nor a fire and brimstone diatribe against homosexuality but a man who gave me the space to speak about my desires openly and let me know he and God loved me nevertheless.”
― Preston M. Sprinkle, Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say

“Though some intersex people embody traits from both categories, there are still only two categories of sex.”
― Preston M. Sprinkle, Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say

“We need to make sure we’re talking with people, not just about people.”
― Preston M. Sprinkle, Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say

“All of this is dehumanizing. We can’t just care about “intersex” when it comes up in an argument. Intersex people are people—image bearers of the divine and gifts to the church.”
― Preston M. Sprinkle, Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say

“Christian acceptance is always acceptance into a flawed community seeking holiness and repentance.”
― Preston M. Sprinkle, Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say

“Now, we do have to be extra cautious about making the biblical writers speak more directly to our current conversation than they intended. We have to understand what the Bible says on its own terms, in its own context, as it addresses its own situations.”
― Preston M. Sprinkle, Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say

“No matter what year it is, we still haven’t arrived. It’s important to keep our fallibility in mind whenever we’re tempted to overturn a biblical truth because it seems to clash with some settled perspective in science. Science is rarely settled.”
― Preston M. Sprinkle, Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say

“Paul is boldly declaring that women (who were usually treated very poorly in the first century) are given status equal to men in God’s kingdom—a beautiful statement that only makes sense if sex differences are real.25”
― Preston M. Sprinkle, Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say

“Paul is most certainly deconstructing social hierarchies associated with sex difference. But it’s unlikely that he’s doing away with sex difference itself.”
― Preston M. Sprinkle, Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say

“The eunuch passage calls us to a broader biblical vision of what it means to be a man or a woman, reminding us that we don’t need to mimic the cultural scripts of masculinity and femininity.”
― Preston M. Sprinkle, Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say

“Does Jesus accept, affirm, and celebrate godly men who can’t throw a football and who cry while watching Downton Abbey? Absolutely. Jesus values godliness, not gender stereotypes. But does Jesus use the eunuch to show that a person’s internal sense of self is more definitive than their biological sex when there is incongruence between the two? I think this is a bit of a stretch.”
― Preston M. Sprinkle, Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say

“Genesis 1 is talking about biological sex—male and female—not what we have labeled gender identity or gender role. And it’s perfectly fine for males and females to resist cultural stereotypes as males and females.”
― Preston M. Sprinkle, Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say