Re-Creating the Created

I promised a friend I would make this post. She’s like a lot of other people I know, quietly grieving the choices our kids have made. I warn you this is not light-hearted, but maybe it’s time to go deeper with our spiritual discussions because, even though the Christian community is the best community on the planet, I think we could do a little better making sense of the issues of the day in an effort to help each other understand what’s going on in our world and what to do about it. So I’ll give you my take on an issue I don’t really want to talk about—gender identity and pronouns—but I will.

I don’t agree with everything our current administration is doing, but I was happy to hear that they’ve chosen to recognize only two genders. Although too many people are still suffering from the aftermath of the storm that blew in with that issue to think we’re completely out of the woods. Of course it makes sense that the world would take license with God’s word and manipulate laws of nature to call boys girls and girls boys, but it seems that the Christian community is also complicit in, what appears to be, a global push to recreate the created. I recently watched in real time as a Christian University welcomed a female student on social media and then promptly changed her pronouns to “they/them” when she asked them to, instead of taking the opportunity to do the very thing the world needs them to do: instruct students according to the teachings of Jesus and shine the light of Biblical principles in a dark world. I don’t think the church means to defy God; it just seems that when they look at this issue, they only see two sides: acceptance or disgust. I don’t feel comfortable with either approach.

Those of us who believe in the God of the Bible know that He created everything, including each of us and our gender, and that He has a plan for our lives, individually and collectively. The fact that He introduces Himself in the plural as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is truly a mystery, but one of great significance in this debate. Thankfully, He gives us a clue in unpacking the mystery when He tells Adam (the first male) and Eve (the first female) to come together and have children, in a brilliant illustration of how one being can be made up of smaller parts. It’s a mirror of things we can see and understand (family = father, mother, kids) to help us grasp the things in the spirit world that we cannot yet see nor understand (God = Father, Son, Holy Spirit). It’s a beautiful picture and one I believe He expects us to share with those who have ears to hear, especially our own children.

Satan is apparently infuriated by this mirror that God calls the family and has been working hard to smash it to pieces for at least as long as I’ve been alive. I imagine you’ve noticed it too. We’ve gone from embracing to exalting nontraditional families under the guise of tolerance, while traditional families are increasingly mocked and belittled under the opposite guise of fairness. More than ever, same-sex couples are celebrated while stay-at-home moms are considered behind the times (I know because I’ve been one since having our first child over twenty years ago) and fathers are seen as either overbearing ogres or complete morons. Just watch mainstream TV and look for it. You really can’t miss it anymore. Our kids’ generation has been raised on it, and it has surely affected them. But if you comment on it, you’re likely to be called a bigot—or worse. Maybe we should all let that sandpaper rub against our skin and toughen it up a bit. As end times approach, we may be happy we did, because I don’t think addressing difficult topics is going to get any easier.

One of Satan’s many sinister goals for human beings is apparently to convince us that we’re each absolutely autonomous, needing no one and nothing outside of ourselves to be complete. But he doesn’t stop there. He also wants us to believe we have the power to create our own personal gods and that those gods should give us everything we want when we want it. In a world where personal preference is king, with ad campaigns like “You Rule,” “Because You’re Worth It,” and “You Can Be Anything,” I would argue that he has all but won that battle. But complete isolation is not his end game. He also aims to destroy.

Now he’s apparently whispering to each fiercely individual person, including our kids, that he or she is not even the boy or girl that God created, but quite the opposite. In some cases, and ironically, he even suggests that an individual identify as multiple people, as in the case of the “they/them” pronouns. And, lest you think this is temporary and harmless like bellbottoms or mullets, the percentage of increase in “gender-affirming” surgeries in recent years is in the hundreds if not thousands, depending on the source. That’s high, any way you look at it—and very permanent, by the way. The whole thing is nebulous and confusing and exactly what Satan specializes in, and a lot of people are falling for it—even Christians. How can this be when we have a Bible that makes these things so much clearer than that?

Jesus asks the demon-possessed man in Mark 5 what his name is, and he answers, “My name is Legion, for we are many.” This is not just a story; it’s a true account of something God wanted us to know about. Jesus recognizes that the demons who inhabit the man have renamed him, asserting authority over him, just like God did with Adam and Adam did with the animals in Genesis. But Jesus doesn’t call the man by the name hell has assigned. Neither does He refer to the man in the plural, even though He knows that He’s technically talking to a group of demons. Instead, He casts the demons out and frees the man from spiritual slavery. Nothing confusing. Nothing nebulous. Maybe we should take a page out of His book.

Just because we’ve read the same passage in the Bible a thousand times and still don’t understand it, doesn’t mean it’s not true. I’m assuming that a person who thinks God made a mistake with his or her gender doesn’t know God personally. I’m guessing that anyone who feels like he or she was born in the wrong skin is hurting enough and doesn’t also need the rejection of God’s people. But we can’t affirm a gender transition either, so what’s the answer? If we look at the example of Jesus, I suppose we’ll tell people the truth, that no one is trapped in the wrong body but on the wrong side of the spiritual war that’s been waged for our souls. Ultimately it has very little to do with gender and everything to do with the heart.

We’ve been created to be whole and single male and female individuals who belong to families and organizations, the largest of which is the global church and, ultimately, the Kingdom of Heaven. How clever of Satan to systematically pervert the very vocabulary we use to identify ourselves and our communities in order to ultimately destroy our understanding of ourselves and our relationships with each other and with God. Maybe our churches, instead of either digging our heels in against this issue or embracing it wholeheartedly, could learn to talk about it and be patient with other people who want to talk about it. We might even have a little healthy, sharpening disagreement, and that would be okay too, wouldn’t it?

For my friends who are struggling with the choices their kids have made, don’t give up hope. You know I understand how painful it is to watch someone you love go down a path headed in the wrong direction. But if God can make male and female human beings out of nothing, surely He can help our kids leave the offramp they’ve taken and get back on the narrow road we’ve taught them to walk. Most of you who are reading this support the HUGS for Tomorrow ministry in some way, and I want to encourage you that God sees our efforts to raise these kids to be the boys and girls that God made them to be and to clearly understand the call and purpose He has for each one and for their community as a whole. Join me in praying boldly that God would have mercy on us and our own families as we do the work of caring for these orphans who are dear to His heart. I know we have His ear because we could not do the things we’re doing in Africa without Him. Together we can love the people God made while rejecting the evil in them, like Jesus modeled for us. His promises are true, even Proverbs 22: “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he’s old he won’t depart from it.” Hang in there. A day of rejoicing is surely coming for us!