In 2017, the wildly successful third season of “Twin Peaks” was released after a 25-year hiatus. It was lauded as a fantastic work by director David Lynch, further cementing the show as an incredible creative venture and a classic.
The most enduring memory for many came from a scene in the middle of episode four titled “…Brings Back Some Memories.” FBI Director Gordon Cole, played by showrunner David Lynch, had a conversation with his Chief of Staff, Denise Bryson, a transgender woman. The two reminisced about Denise’s first days on the job and the prejudices she faced from her coworkers because of her trans identity.
Director Cole recalls his response to the bigotry of their colleagues with this now-famous line to Denise: “And when you became Denise, I told all your colleagues, those clown comics, to fix their hearts or die.”
The line has become a rallying cry for the trans community and their allies. It is a direct call to action, a powerful statement of truth.
I believe Christians can learn a great deal from this statement as we reflect on what it means to love the Lord our God with all our hearts.
The “heart” in Lynch’s quote is the core from which all other things originate. Christian scriptures agree.
Proverbs 4:23 reads, “Guard your heart for it is the wellspring of life.” The heart is the core muscle that keeps life and blood flowing through us. So, what does it mean when we say our hearts need fixing?
I am reminded of James 2:14-17, one of my favorite biblical passages: “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but does not have works? Surely that faith cannot save, can it? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.”
If what we say we believe in most dearly is not backed up by action, then it is physically dead. Lynch is drawing from the same well when he called on his colleagues to “fix their hearts or die.”
We see this throughout Jesus’ ministry, as he spent his time with tax collectors, the disabled, and sex workers—people despised and rejected by the systems of power and the religious institutions. With this in mind, how is the Church doing when it comes to loving our trans neighbors?
The United States government, through words and actions, is saying trans people are not people. They have demonized trans individuals from their political pulpits, denied them access to life-saving care and watched gleefully as they die at a rate higher than any other group in the nation.
The American church has either kept quiet or cheered along as the nation demonizes and murders trans people who are made from the breath of God—who are beloved by God. The church has not learned from the failures of the Pharisees.
We are still prone to treating people like garbage who do not fit our image of what rule-keeping Christians should look like. We still turn a blind eye to suffering out of convenience, ignorance or just plain hatred and bigotry.
Our heart, the church’s heart, is rotten to the core and dead because we are complicit in the hatred and the deaths of trans people in our country.
As Christians and as the church, committed to love, we have one choice: we must listen to and uplift trans voices. We must make our spaces welcoming to trans folks by being active advocates for equality, supporting them with our time, resources, voices and money.
Anything less than this is actively killing our hearts. Anything less is not love.
We, too, need to fix our hearts or die.
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Samuel Shepley is currently a junior at the University of Belmont. He is double majoring in English and Faith and Social Justice.