When I was growing up in the 60’s and 70’s, life was a bit simpler. We understood gay/lesbian/bi, and I instinctively sensed it was all unnatural. But I never dreamed of something like gender self-identification. I don’t think it’s a confusion about the biological definition of male and female, but a claim that gender is independent of biology, that one can be in the wrong kind of body.
Yet claiming we belong in a different body implies we’re distinct from our body, that we’re more than flesh and bone. This is in fact a profound step: it’s admitting we’re spiritual beings, implying we’re created by God, formed in His image.
It’s also an assertion that God’s made a grand mistake in our case, that our unnatural passions (Ro 1:26) aren’t perverse, but God’s fault for putting us in the wrong body. (Jud 1:15)
Yet God doesn’t make mistakes. How could He? He’s made us as sexual beings, male and female (Mk 10:6), amazing and beautiful. (Ps 139:14) Perversion is what it is: a twisting of God’s design, and our inclination to harm ourselves and others is particularly visible here. Our desires aren’t king, God is king, and He knows best. As difficult as this may be to accept, it’s in our best interest to submit to His one-flesh design, tame our passions, and channel our energies in healthy ways.
Being indignant and offended when anyone dares call perversion what it actually is (Ge 19:9) is admitting we’ve nothing but raw presumption to support our claims. It’s demanding freedom to make up Moral Law as we go, while forbidding others to do the same, a blatant inconsistency. Yet giving ourselves to sin like this leaves us no other choice: the sting of our shame is simply too painful for most of us to bear.
Silencing those who oppose us isn’t going to heal us, nor make it any easier to face God in the end. This will only sear our conscience and harden our hearts, which can’t end well.
Tim,
Excellent point you made:
“Silencing those who oppose us isn’t going to heal us, nor make it any easier to face God in the end. This will only sear our conscience and harden our hearts, which can’t end well.”
Extremely perceptive anointing to discern that. ALL Glory to the Almighty.
stephen
Thanks Brother!
Derived from Stephen: If someone claims gender can be in the wrong body, why not “race”? Why not identify as black or white or whatever race that academic scholarship is for? How ’bout age? I am older than I look, whatever age I want to be; I want that cigar, that beer … Self-identification destroys the definitions of words for personal convenience, such that we cannot meaningfully distinguish between anyone at all.
The fact that we are conscious spiritual beings distinct from our body proves that we are made in the image of God. The Spiritual is not material, so it didn’t evolve from material; it must be created by Spiritual Intelligence.
The supreme Being that created us must be spiritual, conscious, volitional, intelligent, expressive, innovative, moral and purposeful, thus similar in these ways to us.
Claiming to be a different gender than one’s birth gender is claiming that gender-identification is both important and meaningless at the same time.
Claiming to cross genders is to deny the concept of gender – to reject any meaningful distinction between man and woman. If a woman is defined as a person who identifies as a woman, the definition of “woman” is circular, and thus meaningless and irrelevant.
In other words, if we can’t identify a male or a female other than by asking a person how they identify, and in so identifying the person must borrow a definition of gender which they don’t accept, and which they are immediately going to contradict by claiming to be what they are not — there’s no legitimate basis for making a distinction between genders. This makes “gender” meaningless, such that there are no genders. So, we simply can’t have something real called gender self-identification: it’s pure nonsense.
But at the same time, those who insist on this nonsense require the rest of us to applaud their gender-identity claims … which they can’t properly define.
The delusion driven by blind ideology becomes apparent once we’re honest with the facts. The scriptures call this delusional state “a reprobate mind.” (Ro 1:28)