Our culture has descended from recognizing the biblical understanding of man, woman, and marriage (Gen 1:26-28; 2:18-25; Matt 19:4). We have seen for many years the advancement of the normalization of homosexuality. Then on June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that all states are required to grant and recognize same-sex marriages.
Still, further, we have, as a culture, descended in pursuing the idea that people can be transgender, which is a term that signifies the person does not identify with the sex they were assigned at birth, which assignment was based upon possessing the biological anatomy of a boy or girl. Further complicating this, is that gender identity can be fluid. That is to say, it can change from time to time or even from one day to the next.
This ever-changing sexual identity is because, unlike the sexual identity of a male and female, transgenderism is not based on objective biology. Whereas male and female designations are evidenced by objective unchanging biology, transgenderism is totally determined by the person, subjectively, and can change when they feel differently. As Christians, here are a few things we can remember when we consider such cultural changes.
The belief in transgender and gender fluidity is a product of the fall and not God’s creation (Gen 1:26-28)
The belief in gender fluidity or being non-cisgender (not identifying with the sex assigned at birth based on biology) is not based only on a person’s subjective experience or wish, but it is a choice that is contradicted by all hard biological and biblical evidence. Therefore, it is no more credible than someone who believes he is a cat or giraffe.
Their subjective claim could be wrong; they could be confused, and I think they are. I can have compassion for them without accepting their claim. To accept their claim requires the denial of Scripture, objective biology, and the loss of any rational means to evaluate other subjective claims by anyone about anything. This includes claiming to be some particular animal since Darwinism has taught us that humans are not different from animals in kind but only in degree.
The discussions to justify transgenderism normally focus on changing only some obvious objective anatomical features like those that are most well known and most associated with a woman or a man. The thinking seems to be, if we can change those, the evidence for male and female disappears. But that is not the whole story
Regarding some twin studies, Dr. Michelle Cretella, head of the American College of Pediatricians says, “Studies like this one prove that the belief in innate gender identity the idea that feminized or masculinized brains can be trapped in the wrong body from before birth is a myth that has no basis in science.”[1]
Cretella also says, “Biological sex is not assigned. Sex is determined at conception by our DNA and is stamped into every cell of our bodies. Human sexuality is binary. You either have a normal Y chromosome, and develop into a male, or you don’t, and you will develop into a female. There are at least 6,500 genetic differences between men and women. Hormones and surgery cannot change this”[2](italics added).
Dr. JD Greear serves as pastor of The Summit Church in Durham, North Carolina and president of the Southern Baptist Convention. Greear promotes the use of transgender preferred pronouns. He said, “When we apply Paul’s linguistic approach to the pronouns we use about transgender people, I believe we arrive at a posture of pronoun hospitality: a willingness to accommodate the pronouns of our transgender neighbors regardless of our own views about the Christian ethics of gender identity.”[3] He based this on Acts 17.
We should not adopt Greear’s promotion of using “transgender pronouns” because that exchanges clear creational biblical language for culturally loaded and biblically antithetical language (transgender language). That exchange necessarily undermines the gospel because he fails to speak the truth of what God says about one’s sex and sin. And he fails to use words of biblical creation when they are needed most.
The Bible, beginning in Genesis, speaks clearly about God as creator, and his created order as certain, particularly as it addresses marriage, sexual identity, adultery, fornication, and homosexuality. The New Testament refers to God as creator and his creation in four different places when speaking of his witness so that people have an opportunity to know their sin, repent, and know him (Rom 1:19-20; Acts 14:15-17; Acts 17:22-33; Rev 14:6-7).[4] Greear’s “pronoun hospitality” camouflages God’s truth from the transgender.
Therefore, it is not hospitable to adopt terms and language that accommodate a distortion of God’s created order and a person’s sin, which masks their deep need for repentance and forgiveness. His “pronoun hospitality” displaces truth and thereby exchanges the message of the gospel for words that leave no need nor place for the gospel.
We fail God and do a great disservice to truth and those who suffer from sexual identity confusion when we fail to speak the truth in love to them (Eph 4:15). Jesus said, “Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth” (John 17:17).
[1] https://www.dailysignal.com/2017/07/03/im-pediatrician-transgender-ideology-infiltrated-field-produced-large-scale-child-abuse/, accessed 5/4/20.
[2] https://www.dailysignal.com/2017/12/11/cretella-transcript/, accessed 5/4/20.
[3] https://jdgreear.com/askmeanything/when-talking-with-a-transgender-person-which-pronoun-should-you-use/, accessed 2/21/20.
[4] While creation is insufficient alone to result in salvation, if they receive the light of creation, God will get the gospel to them
