The launching point for Cheng’s discussion of God is the doctrine of revelation. The doctrine of revelation tells us how human beings can know who God is and what God’s relationship to humanity is all about. It also addresses the ways in which God reveals Godself to humanity. Traditionally, theologians have taught that God reveals Godself in at least two ways; through the scriptures and through human reason. In queer theology, revelation is also comes through human experience. Cheng argues that revelation is analogous to the self-disclosure that occurs when an LGBT person comes out to someone whom she/he loves about her/his sexuality and/or gender identity. His primary contention in this section is that God’s coming out is an act of radical love because it results in the dissolving of existing boundaries.
The first boundary that is dissolved by God’s coming out is the boundary between the divine and the human. It is through revelation that the seemingly infinite gap between the divine and the human is bridged. Without revelation, God would remain a complete mystery to humanity. It would be impossible for us to speak about, let alone to comprehend God. As a consequence of revelation, we are enabled to speak of the God who is out there, for this same God is also Emmanuel or God with us. When an LGBT person reveals the truth about her/his sexuality and/or gender identity to another individual, the boundary that had previously existed between these two people disappears. The division between the public and private lives of the LGBT person is erased. Cheng reasons that the doctrine of revelation challenges the traditional view that a person’s sexuality and gender identity should be privatized; never spoken about and left outside of the realm of public discourse.
The second boundary that is dissolved by God’s coming out is that which exists between the strong and the weak. God has come out of the closet of heaven and out of the ancient Jewish religious system to reveal Godself in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. The fact that God would come out as the infant Jesus reveals God’s solidarity with the vulnerable and the marginalized. Likewise, God’s self-revelation as the Jesus who ministers to the unclean reveals God’s preferential option for the excluded outcast. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. Cheng also wants us to explore the ways in which the boundary between LGBT people (the weak) and the church (the strong) is dissolved by the revelation of God in the preaching of scripture. He suggests that God comes out of heterosexism every time an LGBT person preaches the word. The closet door opens, and there stands a gay God who longs to be welcomed into full communion.
The third and final boundary that is dissolved by God’s coming out is the boundary betwixt knowing and unknowing. In accordance with the mystical tradition of negative theology or apophatic, human beings can never know God completely in a positive sense. God is beyond all of our limited human senses, and thus He can only be known through a progressive process of unknowing. The mystical experience of God is a state of apophatic that resists any definitive or absolute knowledge of God. Cheng argues that transgender should be understood as a form of apophasis. The transgender experience is a state of resistance against binary oppositions of sexuality and gender identity as well as any final knowledge of the homosexual and heterosexual polarities. A climactic vision of perfection is rejected by both the doctrine of revelation and the transgender experience in favor of a picture grounded upon uncertainty and continual journeying. Living in the midst of this unsettling tension is what it ultimately means to mature as a human being.
