14-year city manager Steve Stanton, 48, has decided he needs to be a woman. After what must have been play-acting through marriage and fathering a son, Stanton’s manhood, he has concluded, just isn’t right. He wants to be a boy named Sue instead. You’ll be hearing about this for some time, whether you want to or not. If the city commissioners fire him (and it looks like they might) they will bring down on themselves a fire storm of howling wing nuts decrying intolerance outraged by their assertions of being catapulted back to the stone age, etc., etc., etc. If the commissioners sympathize with Mr. Stanton’s gender journey they risk the loss of credibility with their constituency, a highly conservative community that has already expressed its dissatisfaction in calling for his dismissal by a margin of 7-to-1. Either way, Deborah Norville has already booked her flight and Howard Stern has expressed interest in having him on the show after all the surgeries heal.

Setting aside all the undesirable publicity to Largo, Stanton’s consuming narcissism is what truly rattles my cage.

In a related article dated February 25, the St. Petersburg Times described Stanton and his wife sitting down with their 13-year-old son, Travis, for a family meeting about this. The paper recounts the exchange that got my attention. Stanton asked his son, “What’s the most important thing in Mommy’s and Daddy’s world?” Travis answered. “I am.”

Sorry, young man. Wrong answer. Whatever you’ve been led to believe, you’re not even close. Steve Stanton is the most important “thing” in Steve Stanton’s world.

At some point we’re all guilty of thinking the world revolves around us. We’ve all hurt those we love and embarrassed ourselves in one way or another. But how does a young son ever escape this stigma? How does a wife ever come to terms with the subtlety of such a back-handed rejection? What combination of social/emotional/psychological deficiencies could generate such profound confusion and self-absorption? What manner of delusion could prompt one to say to his Creator, “Hey, you’re wrong! You made a mistake. I know better than you and I’m going to permanently correct your error.”

There’s an option available. Steve Stanton, you can stop all this. Just don’t do it. Acknowledge the colossal error of a sex change. Don’t follow through with this insanity. Spare your wife and son. Focus your affection on them. We could all live with that. We could move beyond this and heal with you.

There are those who, in their self-proclaimed liberal sophistication, laud you for your courage. The truth is, they don’t know what courage is. In their rush to embrace everything, they actually stand for nothing. That requires no courage at all.

It takes enormous courage to do the right thing when practically everyone around you insists there is no “right thing.” Come on, Steve. For the sake of your wife and son and the community you say you love to serve, be a man!

You read it here. You read it today.

What would that make Willie? First………what?

“So, if you’re serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don’t shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ—that’s where the action is. See things from HIS perspective.”

It’s that last sentence that grabbed me. So, what is his perspective? What’s important to him? Of course, that isn’t particularly hard to determine. His perspective has to do with only the things that last. He looks at everything for the long run. That isn’t to say “things” around us aren’t important. They are—just not as……because they aren’t going to last.

That’s exactly what Paul urges us to do. Stay focused on what is really important. Why preoccupy yourself with what is temporary at the expense of grasping what is permanent?

It is in the very same vein Jesus tells us in Matthew 6 not to worry about food, clothes, shelter, etc. That’s shuffling along with your eyes on the ground. Instead he says, “What I’m trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God’s giving. People who don’t know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don’t worry about missing out. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met. Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.”

Now I’m left to ask myself, “Do I really trust Him to mean that?”

Dan