If you don’t know the meaning of the word cisgender, don’t feel too badly. It was not added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary until 2017. But even if it is new to you, it is probably not new to your teenage children or grandchildren. Wikipedia says it describes a person whose gender identity matches their sex assigned at birth. This definition makes a subtle assumption that no culture in the history of mankind has ever made—that your gender is assigned (presumably by doctors, nurses, or parents) instead of a discovered as REALITY. It was understood by every culture of the world, that a girl who thinks she is a boy in a girl’s body is delusional. What used to be called gender identity disorder was changed to gender dysphoria by the American Psychiatric Association in 2013.
One of the greatest treasures given by God to his people is his revelation of how he created man and woman differently in Genesis 2, to complete each other, becoming a loving unity, which God called man, just as the three different persons of the Trinity are One God in a perfect unity of love. This episode examines how to guide the rising generation to see the glory of God’s creation design of male and female and bring light to those enslaved by a tragic, darkened misunderstanding of gender identity and sexuality.
God speaks directly to the subject of gender in his creation process of humans, Male and female, he created them (Gen 1:27b). God created no gender-neutral humans. Gender is not a social construct, nor is it assigned. It is part of God’s design, profoundly grounded in the created order, and woven into the fabric of reality. Designed gender differences between male and female do nothing to undermine the dignity and value of either. As we saw last week, both man and woman are created to be God’s image bearers. This fact secures their equal and inestimable worth in the sight of God. But equality of worth and dignity between man and woman does NOT mean SAMENESS any more than the equal worth of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit means SAMENESS. In fact, the DIFFERENCES that God created into men and women are so important, that God takes almost the whole second chapter of Genesis 2 (twenty verses) to emphasize the distinction between the two. For example, they differ in:
- The substance from which they were made
- The way God fashioned them
- The way they got their name
- The moral responsibility directly assigned to them by God
- The primary way they exercise dominion
- The purpose assigned to them
- Their roles in relating to one another
Understanding and internalizing this second chapter of Genesis is profoundly important for our loved ones to flourish. Human wholeness comes not by denying reality but conforming to it. As one wise theologian observes, Sexuality permeates one’s individual being to its very depth; it conditions every facet of one’s life as a person. As the self is always aware of itself as an “I,” so this “I” is always aware of itself as HIMSELF or HERSELF. Our self-knowledge is indissolubly bound up not simply with our human being but with our sexual being (Paul Jewett, Man as Male and Female).
God’s gift to us of having Moses write down in Genesis 2 how differently he went about creating Adam and Eve reveals awesome nuggets of truth pointing to what our roles are in marriage so we can follow them and build a thriving marriage. They help us better understand our mate and how her needs are different from our own, so we can love her well. These verses are vital in helping our sons and daughters build a strong self-image that is rooted in surrender to their creation calling as a man or woman and to focus on the inner qualities that exhibit godly manhood and womanhood. These diamonds and rubies of wisdom will be the subject of our study the next two weeks. But these riches are not intended just for us to flourish; as Christians we are called to be a blessing to the lost world that surrounds us. As God’s words made clear to Abraham, the father of the Christian faith, his plan for believers has always been for them to enable the rest of the world to thrive. His words to Abraham are: I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and will give to your offspring all these lands. And in your offspring all the nations of the earth shall be blessed (Gen 26:4).
Today the culture that surrounds us needs our influence when it comes to understanding gender more than it ever has. Authors Owen Strachen and Gavin Peacock, in their book, The Grand Design: God Made Them Male and Female, describe our culture’s deconstruction of God’s gender design,
Many people today… pursue androgyny (a sexless world). As a result, boys want to be girls today and girls want to be boys. Many men embrace the traits and attitudes traditionally associated with womanhood. Many women do the same with manhood. Both sides avoid at all costs hard and fast stereotypes. The ultimate transgression today is to fit into past concepts of the sexes…Men have grown increasingly passive, effeminate, and unsure of themselves. Women have become increasingly manly, aggressive, and unsure of their future. These are hard words today, but they sum up the drift of a secularizing world.
How Sin Has Corrupted God’s Good Design of Created Gender Differences
A. Marriage failure and mistreatment of women is blamed on God’s design. In every culture of the world, men have used their power to abuse women and women have resisted the authority of their husbands. Christians must be moved with compassion for the way that the knife of rejection is plunged deeply into the hearts of those in failed marriages whose partners commit adultery or divorce them. We must grieve over the way that a child’s parents splitting up shatters his world. But we must model compassion for those wounded by marriage failure with eyes that see the truth about the cause of such pain. The problem is NOT God’s design of man and woman to be deliberately different so that they need each other to be fully complete. The solution is NOT to label anyone who mentions the difference in God’s design of men and women as sexist. Blaming God’s design of man and woman for the pain inflicted on each other in marriage is like crashing your car because you take a turn too fast and blaming the designer of your "faulty" brakes because they didn’t slow you down fast enough! There is nothing faulty about God’s design of male and female for different roles. The problem is us. We have corrupted God’s design, which was and is still very good.
B. The second way sin mars God’s good design of gender is that it corrupts human sexual desire. This corruption may be exhibited by intense sexual attraction to women who are not your wife, instead of focusing one hundred percent of your sexual attraction towards her alone. Sin also causes same-sex attraction. The only solution to broken sexual desires that attracts people to the wrong things and are acted out in wrong behavior is CHRIST. Here are some false worldviews that blind people to this solution:
- Most Christians are gay bashers. Brett Kunkle in A Practical Guide to Culture comments that he doesn’t know a single Christian whom he has seen be hostile to homosexuals. He recounts a conversation with a Christian teen who claimed that Christians treat gay people terribly. Brett answered, “You grew up in the church, so you’ve observed Christians for sixteen years. In those sixteen years, how many times did you personally witness a Christian treat a gay person terribly?” The teen answered, “Never.” Kunkle then asks, rhetorically, “Where does this evidence come from if it is not clearly evidenced in the lives of Christians? It comes from a media-saturated culture that constantly posts images of picketing ‘Christian’ groups like Westboro Baptist Church and their ‘God hates fags’ signs in an effort to characterize all of Christendom" Christianity being portrayed as hostile to those who expereince same-sex attraction, stops those struggling with such feelings (that their conscience tells them are wrong) from looking to Christ for help.
- Since homosexuals are born with same-sex attraction, it is not fair for God to make homosexual sex wrong. The attempts to show that homosexuality is genetic have been disproved by research, among other things the study of identical twins (who have identical DNA). In cases where one twin is gay, the other twin is gay only 15 percent of the time. Even the pro-gay organization, the American Psychological Association (APA) has had to admit the lack of evidence to support the idea that homosexuality is genetic. Although much research has examined the possible genetic, hormonal, developmental, social, and cultural influence on sexual orientation, no findings have emerged that permit scientists to conclude that sexual orientation is determined by any particular factor or factors. This does not mean that a person cannot be born with same sex attraction, since all humans are born with sinful natures. Same-sex attraction comes from the sinful nature which compels us all towards evil. Galatians 5:19-21 explains that this nature is the source of sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. A human inclination towards evil is part of every human’s experience. Resisting the wrong desires of our hearts is required of every human. To have unfulfilled sexual desire is not harmful but the path of life when that desire is evil. It is also noteworthy that sexual desire is rooted in our human need for intimacy, leading Paul to correct the thinking of the Christians struggling with sexual temptation in Corinth by writing, You cannot say that our physical body was made for sexual promiscuity; it was made for God, and God is the answer to our deepest longings (1 Cor 6:13b). The body’s thirst for illicit sexual satisfaction, when quenched, does feel good for the moment. But, says Paul, it never really satisfies. To the contrary it drives a wedge between us and intimacy with God—which is the love bond that most satisfies our heart. (It is important to add, however, that the choice of a homosexual to repent and come to faith in Christ is often the choice to remain celibate. Thinking that repentance will replace same sex attraction with heterosexual attraction is a common, and often hurtful misunderstanding among Christians who don’t know Christians who have come out of the gay world.)
C. The third way sin corrupts God’s gender design is that it causes humans to lose touch with reality and believe delusions. This is a terrifying result of yielding to sin. The idea that I can make my gender identify whatever I want to make it, regardless of the biological reality of my gender is absurd. It is disconnected from reality. All thirty trillion of a man’s cells tell him he is male because they ALL have XY chromosomes. He probably has a thousand percent more testosterone than a woman, less estrogen, and obvious male reproductive organs. Only a severe delusion could possibly cause a man to think he is a woman. To demonstrate this delusion, Joseph Backholm, President of the Family Institute Policy of Washington, conducted an interview with students at the University of Washington. The students affirmed the right of every individual to declare his own gender identity regardless of his biology. Then Backholm challenged the idea that simply CLAIMING something is true, MAKES it true, when, IN REALITY, it is false. He asked,
- “If I told you that I was a woman, what would your response be?”
- “If I told you that I was Chinese, what would your response be?”
- “If I told you that I was seven years old, what would your response be?
- “If I told you I am six feet five inches tall, what would your response be?” (Backholm is five feet nine inches tall.)
Amazingly the vast majority of student interviewees were unwilling to say that Backholm's four CLAIMS i.e. being a woman, Chinese, seven years old, and six foot five inches tall, was, IN REALITY not true. This break with reality is astounding! Normally, when a human’s mind disconnects from reality to this degree, he is diagnosed with psychosis, which is defined as a severe mental disorder in which thought and emotions are so impaired that contact is lost with external reality. When we consider the soul-darkening that must take place for a human being to embrace the delusion that he can determine for himself his gender identity regardless of his biology, Romans 1, verse 21 comes to mind: For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
Helping Our Kids Resist the False Narrative that Gender Is a Social Construct
1. Ask them questions and listen well. Good shepherding always begins with knowing your sheep. This means discovering what your teen thinks and feels about these issues. We achieve this goal by asking questions. What does he think about the transgender movement? What does she think about homosexuality? What has her experience been with lesbian friends? Does he think the biblical views are outdated? What does she think about male/female stereotypes? What do they think the Bible teaches about gender roles? It is only by asking questions and listening carefully to the answers and feelings behind the answers, that we can help our children make the biblical worldview of gender their own.
2. Let God move you and your lived ones with compassion for the sexually broken and those blinded to the glory of God’s creation design.
- Homosexual sex is not the unpardonable sin or eviler than the everyday sins Christian’s struggle with like pride, backbiting, and heterosexual lust. Furthermore, to whom much is given, much is required. The greater mystery of sin’s power in my view is not the brokenness of sexual desires in our fallen race, but why someone like myself, who knows that Jesus died for me and has opened my eyes to the destructive power of sin still rebels against him and doesn’t love him far more than I do.
- The LGBTQ life is destructive. For example, the Center for Disease Control found out the following to be more prevalent among gay, lesbian, and bisexual students than among heterosexual ones. A) Feelings of sadness or hopelessness: (60.4% compared to 26.4%). B) Serious contemplation of suicide: (42.8% compared to 14.8%) C) Actual suicide attempts: (29.4% compared to 6.4%). Some dismiss this striking factual disparity by arguing that such despair in the LGBTQ community comes from its lack of acceptance by many in our culture. But Stonestreet and Kunle point out, Even in gay-friendly countries like the Netherlands, where same-sex marriage has been legal since 2002, or in countries like England or New Zealand that are recognized for the liberty afforded LGBT citizens, rates of anxiety, depression, drug dependence, and suicide are still much higher among gay men and women (Ibid).
- 41 % of transgender men and women attempt suicide, a staggering fact when you consider that the rate among the general population is 1.6% (Ibid).
3. Help teens realize that transgender people feel like they are broken and something needs to be fixed. They may think that the problem is that they are a man trapped in a woman’s body, and have their breasts removed and start testosterone shots. In contrast, the biblical worldview tells us what is really broken—her relationship to herself, and with God as a result of mankind’s sin. Most transgender people believe that they don’t fit their own or other’s stereotypes for masculinity or femininity. The solution is not to mutilate their body; it is to come to know the God who gloriously creates no two expressions of femininity the same or masculinity alike. Each is unique. And all overlap some with the other gender’s bell-shaped curve of characteristics. There is so much opportunity to be used by Christ to show love to a transgender person simply by being his or her friend. Jesus poured acceptance and friendship into the heart of the sexually broken woman at the well of Samaria, opening her heart to come to faith in him. With Christ’s help, our children and grandchildren can do the same!
The 2020's will be a defining decade for Christians in America. Will we winsomely influence a fallen Western culture drifting further into darkness in its understanding of gender and sexuality as the absurd notion that gender is a social construct gains ground? Or will God’s people do their job and be the blessing to the world that it desperately needs by modeling, teaching our children, promoting, and perhaps suffering by taking a stand for—God’s design of male and female?
For Further Prayerful Thought:
- How would you explain to a new Christian that gender is not a social construct?
- How would you try to help the rising generation see that the problem of toxic manhood is not solved by ignoring God’s design of gender roles in the family and church family?
- What can you do to feel deeper compassion for those enslaved in the LGBTQ life by their sinful nature who suffer greatly by this choice of lifestyle?
- Why might a transgender person be open to friendship with a Christian who treats him with dignity as God’s image bearer and reaches out in friendship?
