Orienting our kenosis compass? Why self denial is not about transgender women of colour becoming cisgender white men.

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Mark 8:34b

At points in the Gospels and the Epistles we come across passages calling for us to deny ourselves. These are calls for us to enter into kenosis, an emptying of ourselves, for others.  While on a surface level these passages appear somewhat benign, they are historically some of the most abused passages in the Bible. Their misuse, again and again, has been to keep subjugated groups oppressed.

The actual concept in play is that the transcendent God, unblemished and untouched by any mortal concern, first removes from the Godself all transcendence, becoming incarnate in mortal flesh, this incarnate deity then removes itself from a place of sinless purity to one of enmeshment within the fullness of human depravity, in a descent through the cross into hell. The image is a constant movement away from places of power in the system and into solidarity to those without power in the system. For kenosis to work it must be oriented always towards the lowest point, towards the most vulnerable in the system.

At some point, however, kenosis became oriented not towards the least empowered in our society but towards a set of moral and ethical ideals. Suddenly kenosis stops being about solidarity with the least in our midst and becomes conformity to a set of moral expectations put forward by religious leaders. Compounding the problem is the fact that religious leaders arise, almost entirely, from the most privileged spaces within a society. The horror that then occurs is that the privileged in society suddenly have the power to mandate the moral system towards which all “good” individuals must orient themselves. What then overwhelmingly happens is that the religious leaders mandate a set of ethics that inherently maintain their power and privilege. Thus kenosis, whose purpose is to call the empowered to identify and recognize the needs of the disempowered, becomes its opposite, a call for the disempowered to conform to the expectations and needs of the empowered.

Non-white must fulfill the needs of the white, non-hetero must fulfill the needs of the hetero, non-cis must fulfill the needs of the cis, non-male must fulfill the needs of the male. The cross of the non-white/hetero/cis/male is to conform to the expectations of the white/hetero/cis, not to take up the cross of their own created being. The command is not “deny yourself and take up your cross and follow me” but “deny yourself, take up the societal norms of the dominant group and follow them”. This conflation of emptying oneself towards Christ with emptying oneself towards conformity with dominant societal norms is an inherent act of self-idolatry by those dominating society; it is the inherent opposite of a call to kenosis.

If we are truly seeking to enter into kenosis, to deny ourselves and take up our crosses, we must enter into an act of first truly identifying who we are, and then seek to be in solidarity with and working for the needs of the most vulnerable in our society. The point to which we must currently orient our kenosis is not unknown, statistically it is very clear, our work must be towards solidarity with Transgender Women of Colour.  This orientation of our kenosis compass can begin at the webpage for the Transgender Women of Colour Collective. Our duty of emptying ourselves is a duty towards these individuals, to work until we can no longer differentiate our place from their place, the duty of breaking down the walls that separate the non-white/hetero/cis/male from full inclusion in society.

The horror of so much of our current understanding of kenosis is that what it asks is that everyone orient themselves towards the expectations and privileges of white heterosexual cis-gender males, or any other point that is not that of the most vulnerable in our society. This false kenosis will not bring any one to a state of holiness or of following Christ, it will simply bring about an increase of the plight of the most vulnerable in our midst. We must reorient our kenosis compasses, and constantly ensure that they are oriented towards the most vulnerable and least empowered in our midst. It is only then that we shall truly be following Christ.