Is The Prohibition Against Cross Dressing in Deut. 22:5 Still Valid?

QUESTION: Is Deut 22:5 prohibition on cross dressing no longer a law for Christians since Jesus came and fulfilled the law?  

Deuteronomy 22:5:  A woman must not wear men’s clothing, nor a man wear women’s clothing, for the Lord your God detests anyone who does this. NIV

RESPONSE:  You correctly understand that the ceremonial Law of Moses is no longer binding on God’s people.  In fact, the cross lifts all the duties of the Law as a means to be made right with God.  The moral duties, however, remain as a guide for Christian discipleship.  The question for this passage then is, does it fall completely within the ceremonial law which has been abrogated by Jesus work, or is there some moral content which remains that aids Christian maturing?

To find out let’s remember that all the Law is about “being holy as I the Lord am Holy” – and “holy” has a sense of separation as well as moral purity.  So very often, the ceremonial restrictions of the law are about maintaining separateness while there seems to be no moral content to the command itself.  But because a LACK of separation would LEAD to impurity, the two are tied together.

For example, the Israelites were not to shave their heads above the ears (Lev 19:27).  There is no moral content in this command – it’s about hair!  This is ceremonial law with no ongoing responsibility for the Christian believer.  Ah, but if we know the context of ancient Canaanite pagan worship, we see God doesn’t give the command without any moral concern whatsoever. 

In Canaan, many of local priests would shave their heads in devotion to Baal.  So the hair command is about maintaining strict separateness so that Israel will not be like those who worship false gods.  And when we think about all the moral issues that went along with that worship (adultery, family breakdown, disease, prostitution, infanticide), suddenly the weirdly restrictive rules are given a moral imperative.

It’s the same with Deuteronomy 22:5.  A little bit of research reveals that almost every pagan culture has practiced some form of cross-dressing in worship rituals.  Theodore Burgh, in his book “Listening to the Artifacts” said that in ancient Mesopotamia, transvestites, men dressed like women, played and danced in the cult of Ishtar, performing erotic dances and pantomime.

In Canaan religion, their god Baal had a consort, the goddess wife Asherah and worshipers would engage in ritual prostitution with male and female cult prostitutes at hillside shines.  This was to encourage these gods to mate and make the earth fertile.  The Bible indicates that these cult prostitutes has specific dress (2 Kings 10:22; 23:7) for such ceremonies, as they played out the orgies of the gods.

So, the command against cross dressing likely had this in mind.  It was meant to keep Israel away from all practices that had anything to do with pagan worship – which, as mentioned above, led to every kind of evil that destroys people, children and society.

Since we don’t live in Canaan where such pagan rituals thrive, what is there to take from such a command?  First, this command confirms that there is male and female dress codes in all cultures and all times.  Second, this gender dress-coding is independent of the actual styles or modes of dress.  Which is to say that what exactly constitutes male and female dress is a culturally bound thing, but having differences in male/female dress is universal. 

For example, we can’t just think of pants as male, and dresses as female (as my grandma used to think).  Ancient peoples wore robes, both men and women, which to us all look like dresses or skirts, but somehow they knew the difference between male and female robes.  Dress codes change constantly, but everyone in all cultures knows when someone is trying to dress like the opposite gender.

Now, if we don’t follow the dietary restrictions of the Law, should Christians ignore this concern for gender distinction in clothing?  

When it comes to sex and gender Jesus taught us that the lasting moral designs of God are embedded in the creation account… which supersede Mosaic restrictions and permissions (Deut 24:1).  There we see God’s sexual design infused into the duality of human gender, male and female.  He makes us distinctly bifurcated into two and yet both are made in his Image.  So the difference is as sacred as the Image itself.  When Eve is made from Adam, we see God in their diversity – but then this very diversity is blended into a communal oneness of marriage when the “two become one flesh”.

All of this is holy. 

• The Image,
• The separating of the Image into Two,
• The blending of the diverse image bearers into marital oneness again.

This all is holy because it is like God.  God is a unity of diversity.  So any world where one or all of these three things are diminished or denied is a world of weakened human flourishing.  Because it’s a world where the beauty of God’s unity-in-diversity design is marred.

Ironically, the modern doctrine of gender fluidity destroys the beautiful complementarity between the genders, while at the same time invoking the sacredness of gender to do so!!  How?  Well, the message today is that you can pick your gender.  But when you express a different gender than the one assigned to you at birth, everyone knows exactly the mold you must fit into in order to be that gender!

If a man wishes to be a woman, he mustn’t simply declare it.  He knows instinctively what he needs to do to express that gender: soften his skin, surgically shave his brow and chin, acquire breasts, wear softer, more colorful clothing, soften his voice, grow his hair long and paint his nails and face.   In other words he must conform himself to instinctual patterns of femininity.  “Gender is a social construct,” we hear, therefore the line between male and female must be very blurry indeed.  But if we wish to cross that line embrace this ancient gender archetype!

Well, Christians believe that these gender archetypes are so enduring and inescapable precisely because they relate to our spiritual makeup.  Thus masculinity and femininity are sacred because they both, in complementary ways, express the Image of God.  That’s why Christians treat them as inviolable and resist transgenderism (even if we readily acknowledge and have compassion for that real and troubling psychological condition).  God speaks through Nature and human nature is clearly built on male and female, therefore we Christians don’t presume to challenge that or erase what is inerasable.

But it’s not surprising that when cultures suppress this truth, sex starts to become a free for all (see Romans 1).  Ideas have consequences, and if a society carries the idea that sex is not designed and carries no implicit higher meaning, then whatever makes you feel good sexually becomes our only guiding principle.  In such a world, unlimited sexual experimentation would not only be allowed, it would be encouraged because we are now the gods who get to invent meaning.  We get to take this accidental outcome of Nature (sex) and express it however we want (even while we bow to these inbuilt gender archetypes!).

So, we may not live where priests cross-dress to incite sexual intercourse that spills the bounds of committed, monogamous, heterosexual love - but given our current doctrines on gender, perhaps we do live in Canaan after all!  To this extent, Deut 22:5 may not be binding on believers, yet it hints strongly at the beauty and inviolable duality of human gender from Creation.

Now let me be clear:  this doesn’t mean Moses should be used to dictate any particular modes of dress for male or female Christians today.  Styles are very culturally relative and similar modes can have male and female versions.  Even so we affirm gender distinction, expressed in our clothing, built on the sacred masculine and sacred feminine and the dance of Oneness between them.  This duality reflects God back to us so beautifully, Christians cannot go along with  any way of thinking or dressing that intentionally tries to blur it.

How Old Were The Disciples?

QUESTION:  About the disciples, the question seems to come up often about how they could have written 30 or more years after the crucifixion of the Christ. However, since men started to work at an age that today would be considered inappropriate perhaps as young as 12 - perhaps approximating their ages would provide an answer. So how old were they? (Not exact ages of course.)

RESPONSE:  This question has a surprising answer, as you rightly deduce.  The disciples, likely, were very young.  The question you seem concerned with is how the disciples could be alive and writing about the events of Jesus as late as 95-100 A.D. (as in the case of John).  Even the other authors of the New Testament, like Matthew, Peter and Paul, seem to be (based on common assumptions) too old to be writing when they do, in the mid 60’s and beyond – especially given life spans at the time.

Why do we assume this?  Because we’ve been far more formed by Bible movies

Peter - Movie "Risen"

than by the Biblical data on hand.  Watch almost EVERY Jesus movie ever produced and see how they paint the disciples of Jesus as mostly older than Jesus.  Jesus, everyone agrees, was about 30 years old during his ministry, based on Luke’s explicit aging in 3:23.  But after that, the consistent picture of the

Peter: Movie "Passion"

disciples is of an older Peter and James with long beards, some gray hair, or balding heads, clearly middle aged, and clearly older than their strapping young Rabbi.

Thomas: Movie "Son of God"

Now, there is no indicator in Scripture of a specific age for any disciple, but the clues from the Gospels and from a little research into 1st century Jewish culture tell us that this idea, depicted over and over in movies and pictures, is almost certainly wrong.

Let’s go to the Mishnah, the oral interpretations of Torah (law) at the time of Jesus.  It shows a very regimented educational/life path for young boys in Judaism:

 “At five years old [one is fit] for the Scripture, at ten years the Mishnah (oral Torah, interpretations) at thirteen for the fulfilling of the commandments, at fifteen the Talmud (making Rabbinic interpretations), at eighteen the bride-chamber, at twenty pursuing a vocation, at thirty for authority (able to teach others)."

So, in the time of Jesus, almost all Jewish young men were married, and usually by age 18.  But in the Gospels, Peter is the only disciple known to have been married (Matthew 8:14-15).  No other disciples’ wives are ever mentioned.  So this tells us that the disciples may have all been under 20, with some as young as 15.

What bolsters this case is the educational pathway of that time.  Education for the Jewish child concluded at the age of 15.  But just as every parent today would be proud to have a son or daughter do much more education to become a high-status medical doctor or professor, Jewish parents would desire their boys to be selected for Rabbinic training. 

If you were 15 and done with your basic training in Torah, a boy who was bright enough, (or whose parents were rich enough) would find a rabbi to take them on as a student.  You’d have to show proficiency and it’s assumed many students had very large portions of the Law and Prophets committed to memory.  Paul’s case may have been like this, where an extremely bright Jewish student from Tarsus, is sent by his rich parents to Jerusalem to study under a great Rabbi (Gameliel).

If your son didn’t merit this honor, they would enter the workforce by their mid-teens, and in almost every case, apprentice under their fathers in the family trade. 

So this explains a few things we see in the Gospels. 

One, it means that if most of the disciples are apprenticing at their trades when called, as in the case of James and John working in the family fishing business, they must have been older than 15.  But, because they are also unmarried, likely not older than 20.  Peter is the exception to this, but because his brother Andrew is not married, and they’re working with James and John (Luke 5:10 - perhaps their two families have a joint business venture), it stands to reason they are roughly the same age.  It would be odd to have a brother twice as old as you, for example.

Two, because we find them working in trades at the time Jesus calls them, none of the disciples likely were “star students”.  After their formal education was complete, they were not taken for mentorship by any local Rabbi.  And so, being passed over as teenagers, they are perhaps shocked to be considered worthy of apprenticeship with a traveling Rabbi who was beginning to gain a reputation at that time. 

The great honor of being chosen for Rabbinic training, especially after being passed over, would compel most Jewish boys to jump at the chance to leave blue collar work behind (Luke 5:11).  The fact of their being passed over for classic training explains why after the resurrection, the Chief priests note they're level of education.  They clearly hadn’t passed muster for special Rabbinic training, but having been with Jesus for 3 years, and seeing him alive again, gave them special qualifications:

Acts 4:13:  When they observed the boldness of Peter and John and realized that they were uneducated and untrained men, they were amazed and knew that they had been with Jesus. HB

Three, it explains why Peter is painted as the spokesman for the disciples – he’s the only one married, so therefore probably the oldest.  But, as I said, we don’t have to infer that he was THAT much older, since his brother Andrew is still unmarried and he works with close friends James and John, also unmarried.  So positing an age for Peter of no more than 25 is very plausible, in stark contrast to the 45 - 55 year old Peter in most plays, movies and other depictions.

Four, the Mishnah explains why Jesus didn’t start his ministry until age 30 even though his mission of redemption by death could have been accomplished at any age.  Why not go through with it sooner?  Well, no Rabbi would take disciples until age 30, and no disciples would seek out a Rabbi younger than that.  Additionally Jesus had to take students to steward the Church when he was gone.  So really, Jesus begins at the very moment it was possible to begin - when it was culturally appropriate to assume authority and take on disciples.

Now, the only other disciple besides Peter who might have been outside his teens was Matthew, who likely needed to be an established adult to be an independent contractor with the Roman government as a tax collector.

But think of other indicators of the youthfulness of the disciples:

In Matthew 11:25, Mark 10:24, Luke 10:21, and John 13:33, Jesus calls his trainees “little children” or “little ones”.  As the Incarnate Word/Son of God, we think Jesus can make a paternal reference to any human and it would be fitting… and yes it would.  But let’s not void Jesus human nature and the nature of his patriarchal cultural.  Older men, were treated with respect as fathers.  Calling his disciples “children” may indicate they were mostly – gasp! – children! Or at least much younger than their Master.

Also, John and James' mother Salome wanted to arrange where her boys would sit with Jesus at the Kingdom table.  Imagine this scene if the brothers were grown men (Matthew 20:20-24)!  But if her boys were teenagers when chosen, it would explain her lack of resistance to them leaving the family biz ("finally we’ll have a doctor in the family!") and her maternal pushiness on their behalf.  Remember also that Jesus nicknamed them “Sons of Thunder” because they were probably either loud or bold, characteristics of youth.

Here’s something else.  In Exodus 30:14-15, we read that every male over the age of 20 was to pay a tax to maintain the “Sanctuary” or Temple.  In Matthew 17:24-27, we read that when questioned about this tax, Jesus instructs Peter to pay this tax – but only for “me and you”.  But all the disciples are present (“they came to Capernaum” vs 24). We might reasonably conclude that the others were under age 20 and did not need to pay.

So all of this suggests a very startling, and in some ways endearing picture of the disciples.  They're boys!  Mostly older teenagers, young Jewish bachelors, and not blue-chip Harvard stars either.  Nevertheless, they are honored to be taken for apprenticeship by a Rabbi perhaps more than 10 years older than they.  Don’t our hearts go out to them more as they struggle to grasp all that Jesus is saying to them?  Don’t we cheer for them more as these young 20 year old's buck a corrupt priestly system and boldly declare a New Kingdom on planet earth?  Don’t we have more patience with their blunders and pride?  As a father to 2 young men in this age bracket, I tear up with pride thinking about the stands they have made for this same Kingdom, and how Jesus is pleased to choose and use the likes of these (Matt 11:25).

And as to the plausibility of them being young enough to still be around to write about all this in the 60’s – 90’s, there is no problem at all.  Young John, perhaps 15 during the life of Jesus, would be only 85 if he wrote his gospel, letters and Revelation in the year 100.

Should Christians Always Bear the Burdens of Others?

QUESTION: Hey Rick! questions...... I feel like I tend to be the "white knight" in a lot of relationships in my past... some find their way to codependent relationships with me and others are just a season and then the person can mend their wound and walk on their own. I feel like I always thought this was the Christian thing to do because we are called to "bear with one another and help when people ur weak or hurting". I feel like maybe I'm wrong in this. I've been challenging my thinking in this area. Thoughts?
p.s. I've been reading "boundaries" by Cloud and Townsend. LOVING it! 

RESPONSE: Well, glad you found that book already because I would send you straight to “Boundaries” if you hadn’t. I can’t add much more to that good message…

Except to underline the importance of finding the balance between saving and serving.  Only one saves, Jesus. We are called only to serve. And the Bible says serving is sometimes best done by bearing a burden and other times by stepping back from developing dependency on you as the "White Knight".

The best Scripture to underline this balance is Gal 6:1-5 -

Brothers, if someone is caught in any wrongdoing, you who are spiritual should restore such a person with a gentle spirit, watching out for yourselves so you won’t be tempted also. Carry one another’s burdens; in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone considers himself to be something when he is nothing, he is deceiving himself. But each person should examine his own work, and then he will have a reason for boasting in himself alone, and not in respect to someone else. For each person will have to carry his own load. HB

The most obvious question about this passage is the juxtaposition of two similar words in 5 short verses.

What’s really cool is when you look at two Greek words which are translated here as “burden” (verse 2) and “load” (verse 5). The old KJV, with its very limited vocabulary, translated them both with the same English word, "BURDEN". And that sort of created a dichotomy or contradiction for Christians. How am I supposed to carry my brother's burden but then we’re all supposed to carry our own burdens?

The answer is that these are two different KINDS of burdens.  The first is the word for that kind of burden that is a crisis that no one can carry by themselves. The root idea is “weight”.  Something too heavy for one person to bear.  The second word (vs 5) is for that kind of burden that is more like cargo or freight. Something we all have to carry day to day.

So the impact of these verses is this: “help carry the burdens for each other that are too heavy to bear alone, and let no one expect others to carry the responsibilities and duties that are his alone.”

Now, this will take discernment to implement for surely it’s a sliding scale which burdens fit into which categories. For children, it’s a moving target. What was a burden too heavy to carry this year, will be responsibility they must carry themselves next year.  Parents are wise to see that their “interventions” in burden-bearing are moving gradually less and less as the child ages.  (This is, I think, more demanding a call to moms than dads!)

But then, with friends, seasons of loss, grief, crisis or tragedy put them into a mode where some of the simplest responsibilities which they ought to always take on themselves (making food, finding shelter) are too heavy for them, and the law of Christ calls us to step in.

So, use discernment.

But what this passage says in no uncertain terms is that is it NOT a blanket Christian response to others in any kind of need, that we rescue, help, pick up after or save. Yes, compassion, and servanthood should be our calling cards, but sometimes “helping hurts” (the title of a GREAT book!) – so we are called by Scripture to avoid that, for “love does no harm to its neighbor”.