Christ Was, After All, A Guy, Right?

Hugo has an interesting post up about gender roles and (to a great degree) how his unique pro-feminist-Christian stance informs his beliefs on them. One particular part sort of stuck in my craw, though, because I think he does what many Christians do in terms of 'cherry picking' from the bible. This happens most often if somebody brings up the old testament--Christians often point out that this was the old testament, and that Jesus makes everything different. But what's the point of keeping the OT around if Jesus makes everything different? As Sam Harris points out (he wrote The End of Faith), Jesus may be the turn-the-other-cheeck-peace-monger sort of guy, but he is also the guy who (many believe from the bible) is coming back to earth with a freakin' fiery sword to kill those who don't love him.

Hugo says:
As Genesis makes clear, rigid gender roles with their strict complementarianism are a holdover from the Fall, but in Christ all things are made new. To me, that has always meant that as a believer, I can never, ever, ever, ever, say "I'm just a man, I can't help being the way I am." Christ destroys our old nature, including our fearful adherence to narrowly defined categories like "manliness" and "womanliness".

Christ destroys our old nature, so we don't have to create ourselves with those old, narrowly defined categories that, according to Hugo, God Himself laid down (in the OT). I try to take Hugo to task to explain to me why we have to adhere to any of the moral laws that God laid down in the OT then...


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Religion