It’s becoming somewhat of a buzz phrase that a person’s gender is a cultural construct.
This idea flatly contradicts the wisdom of human experience and long established cultural norms.
But more importantly, this thinking contradicts God’s creation. God designed men and women in his creation. Our gender is an essential part of our being. Until the last couple years, our society was in pretty solid agreement on this subject. Today, I still believe most people understand this but there is a culture war, and it’s easier to go along with this progressive agenda than to stand for truth. (more…)
A recent article from NBC talks about a Massachusetts family who are raising their twin boys without a gender. The idea behind this parenting philosophy is to allow the twins to decide for themselves when they’re older.
In the story, the mother made the fair point about how we do have ways how we stereotype little boys and little girls that aren’t always helpful. Many raise girls to be prissy and “girlie,” while boys are raised to be tough and to not cry. These aren’t necessary aspects of masculinity and femininity, on that point, I agree. However to combat those stereotypes, we don’t need to raise children without gender. There are other, healthier approaches.
It’s absolutely unnecessary for a person to take an otherwise normal, healthy baby and to then introduce confusion into their child’s life. Is letting a person “decide” their gender so important?
I hear people talk about how complicated gender is.
For the vast majority of people, it’s pretty simple. And so I return to my question, why introduce confusion? Why introduce additional complexity?
I know to some this seems progressive and enlightened.
It’s unwise.
I saw a video a few years ago of a British woman who was doing this with her son. It’s heartbreaking.
If your approach to parenting is doing something that society has historically not done and which contradicts the wisdom of human experience: it’s wrong. Raising a child is not the time to try new experiments.
The idea that you can raise a kid without gender and then let them decide their gender is self-defeating.
The idea that you can take a baby boy or girl and raise this child neutral of gender, and later let them decide their gender, it’ll be in the context of them having been raised as unaware to their gender. When they decide which gender they want to be, it’ll be from a context of not having been raised according to a particular gender. It’s not like you’ll decide you want to be a boy and instantly know how to do it. You weren’t shown! You weren’t taught! You were intentionally kept in the dark.
Part of the justification that I’ve seen is that this helps a child to embrace their identity. I would argue that it actually raises a child ignorant of an important aspect of their identity. This style of parenting takes away the foundation of manhood and womanhood.
And for what purpose?
According to a 2016 study by the Williams Institute, transgendered people make up just over one half of one percent of the American population. And the transgender life is not an easy one. Tragically, the rate of attempted suicides within that community is 40% according to The Report of the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey.
With the Massachusetts family, the mother is an engineer and talks of the gender stereotypes in her field, how it is often male-dominated. That’s probably true. But how does it help that to raise boys as if they’re not?
Gender comes from God. It’s fundamental to his creation of humanity. God made men and women and we are both created in his image. We should celebrate masculinity and femininity. Men and women compliment each other.
Josh Benner is the associate pastor at Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Fergus Falls, Minnesota and has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He lives with his wife Kari in Minnesota.
A few weeks ago, the Episcopal diocese in America voted to remove gender pronouns for God in updated versions of their Book of Common Prayer.
I think many in our world believe in a gospel of “you’re ok.”
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about liberal Christianity.
They place a strong emphasis on love. And love is obviously important. The greatest commandment that Jesus gives is to love God and to love our neighbor. Not just to love our neighbor, but to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.
But here’s where liberal Christians get it wrong.
They emphasize love to the exclusion of other aspects of God.
God is love. But he is not only love. God is also holy. God is also wise. God is also just and a judge.
And when we hold up love as the only aspect of God that matters, it will ultimately lead to affirming that which is blasphemous.
The gospel is not there to tell us that we’re all ok. Actually, it’s the opposite of that message. We are not called to love sin. Nowhere in the Bible is sin seen as a good thing. The Bible teaches that all of humanity is sinful. In fact, we are so sinful that the only way that we could be reconciled to God was for God to bear the cost of our sin. Jesus did that on the cross.
God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).
Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13).
Absolutely, we see the love of God in the gospel. But we also see his justice. Sin has an eternal penalty apart from Christ. And while he went to the cross to show his love, it also shows the cost of sin. Let us not take sin lightly.
When we try to decide what is good apart from God’s moral law, it ends up becoming merely the opinions of men. As the common refrain in the Bible’s book of judges goes: “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes (Judges 21:25).”
God is love but he is also wise. And just as we can’t pick and choose who to love (we are called to love everyone, to want what’s best for everyone, to have concern for people) we also cannot pick and choose which aspects of God’s wisdom and morality we want to like. It’s all true.
In the Beatitudes, Jesus teaches: blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
Blessedness is not in pursing worldly goals, it’s not in “following your truth,” it’s not in doing what makes you happy. It’s having a desire for the righteousness of the righteous and holy God who created the universe.
And because God loves us, he doesn’t desire for us to be kept the same when we come to him. It’s not a difference of opinion between us and God in regards to sin. It’s truth and falsity.
