Genesis 1:27 says God made them “male and
female.” No matter how hard some people try, they can’t wish away this
fundamental physical reality—and that’s a good thing.“When you wish upon a star,
Makes no difference who you are;Anything your heart desiresWill come to you.”
In the 1940 film Pinocchio,
Jiminy Cricket sang those famous lyrics to a woeful little wooden boy who
wanted to become something different. The tale is touching. In our day,
however, people no longer apply such inspirational messages in traditional
ways. “Anything your heart desires” has been hijacked.
In ways that Walt Disney could not
imagine, such slogans now inspire people to surgically remake themselves.
Witness the spread of “transgender” identity, in which men seek to become women
and women seek to become men. In 2015, this is no extraordinary occurrence. It
is an increasing trend and a major worldview challenge to the Christian church.
How
Should We View the Body as Christians?
The creators of Pinocchio, of
course, did not have “transgender” individuals in view when they made their
famous movie. They simply wanted boys and girls to dream big. As the West has
lost its Judeo-Christian moral constraints and its traditional vision of
manhood and womanhood, we have embraced a radical individualism. This mindset
has created what theologian R. Albert Mohler Jr. has called a “culture shift.”
Radical individualism casts off all
moral restraints in order to achieve maximum personal happiness. In my book
Risky Gospel, I call this mindset Narcissistic Optimistic Deism.1 “I can do whatever I
want,” many people think, “and God exists to make all my dreams come true.”
This perspective has influenced how many people view their body. The body is
not made by God for His glory. It is a blank slate upon which we may draw any
identity, any self-expression, we choose. Use it, abuse it, do whatever you
want with it. This is a neo-pagan idea.
The Bible teaches a very different
perspective. Our manhood or womanhood is not incidental; it has been given us
by God as a gift. We inhabit our God-created bodies as vessels of delight,
temples of the Holy Spirit, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:19. Our sexuality points to
what theologians call “complementarity.” Men and women are one “kind” (1 Corinthians 15:39), but we are not the
same. This is true in several respects. As Scripture indicates and common sense
shows, men and women are different anatomically. Adam named his wife “woman”
because she was distinct from him, a man (Genesis 2:23). Only a man can provide the raw
material by which to procreate; only a woman can bear children and nurse them.
Non-Christian scientists have
recognized the bodily differences of the sexes. Anne and Bill Moir, for
example, note that men have on average ten times more testosterone than women.2 Studies show that
women use a vocabulary that is different enough from men’s to be “statistically
significant.”3 We are distinct
emotionally, too. The Scripture gives voice to this reality when it calls godly
husbands to treat their wives as the “weaker vessel” and challenges fathers to
not “provoke” their children (1 Peter 3:7; Colossians 3:19). These and other patterns
constitute the markers of our manhood and womanhood. Our differences, as is
clear, are considerable. They are also God given.
We complement one another. This owes
to God’s original design. He created Adam, but there was not a “helper” fit for
him (Genesis 2:18). So the Lord in His kindness
and wisdom made Eve. She instantly delighted Adam when brought to him. “This is
now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh!” he cried (Genesis 2:23). Her womanhood did not escape
Adam; it captivated him.
Satan has always tried to usurp the
created order. He took the form of a serpent to entice the man and woman (Genesis 3:1–7). Adam was called to exercise
dominion over animals, and yet an animal mastered him in the Fall. Adam was the
head of his wife, but he relinquished his headship when he allowed Satan to
tempt his wife, and when he let his wife lead him to eat the forbidden fruit.
While she was duped about the consequences of her rebellion, she knowingly led
her husband into this sin of disobedience. This is a portrait of her rejection
of God. The Lord indicted Adam for his failure to lead Eve by asking him,
“Where are you?” indicating that Adam had responsibility to spiritually protect
his wife. He failed in this holy task, however, paving the way for Eve to
disobey God. Adam’s failure led to Eve’s, and both of them were held guilty by
the Lord.
The just curse he pronounced on
their humanity had spiritual and physical consequences. Both of them lost
eternal life and brought the judgment of eternal death on the human race. Their
bodies, given to them to glorify the Lord, would now bear the marks of
fallenness in gender-specific ways. Adam’s work of provision was cursed, as the
ground would now fight him as he worked it. Eve’s childbearing was cursed, as
what was meant to be a beautiful process became a painful, even
life-threatening, one.
The sexes were also put in
competition, and Eve, the Lord said, would now have a desire for her
husband. This word is also used in Genesis 4:7, where God tells Cain that sin’s
desire is for him, which means that evil is seeking to master and rule
over him. So the woman will now seek to lead and dominate her husband. When we
listen to Satan, pain and brokenness follow, and the gender roles laid out for
us in Scripture are undermined and attacked.
We see the profound tension between
God’s design and Satan’s attacks on this design. The Lord created man and woman
and gives them specific roles to play for His glory; Satan targets man and
woman and induces them to upend God’s design. God orders and structures; Satan
tears down. God brings life; Satan destroys it. These tragic patterns are as
old as the earth. They are not new, but they do morph with the times.
Western culture is making good on
this rebellion. It denies the distinctness of divine creation; it tears down
the uniqueness of the sexes; and it rebels against the lordship of Jesus
Christ. The wisdom and design of God is rejected, and the Word of God, in sum,
is reviled.
How
Does Our Culture Now Think of the Body?
Over the last 50 years, American Christians
have watched as our society has fashioned a brave new order for itself.
Feminism and the sexual revolution have transformed the American home. Many men
have lost any sense of responsibility for their family. They’re tuned out,
passive, and self-focused. Many women feel great tension between their career
and home. They are told by secular lifestyle magazines to pursue perfect
“work-life” balance, but it’s hard to find. Increasingly, the sexes are in
competition. These troubling developments represent phase one of the
transformation of men and women.
Phase two is the spread of the
homosexual movement. Led by celebrities in the 1980s, the homosexual movement
built off of the momentum of the feminist push and the sexual revolution. It
sought to mainstream homosexual behavior. Men and women, it assumed, were not
different in any meaningful way. The moral constraints of the biblical
worldview had already been cast off. Romantic love was not subject to any shape
or design. It was just a feeling. As such, it had no duties, no covenantal
dimensions, and no enduring commitment. If it persisted, great. If the feeling
of love died out, then the relationship died with it.
In phase one, gender roles were
recast. In phase two, romantic love was recast. In phase three, the body itself
is recast. “Transgender” ideology is grounded in the idea that the body isn’t
an essential part of our being (a viewpoint known as essentialism). Our “gender
identity” is fluid, a social construct that can change. We may well be a man
trapped in a woman’s body, for example; our identity does not necessarily match
our body. In such instances, many “transgender” people opt for reconstructive
surgery so their identity fits with their body (an essentialist view,
ironically).
This trend is building momentum
today. The show Transparent has received prominent placement on Amazon
Prime, with a lead character embracing a transgender identity. Minnesota high
schools took action at the end of 2014 to allow transgender children to play on
either boys’ or girls’ sports teams—whichever they choose. In Maine and
California, students identifying as transgender can use whichever restroom they
desire. Celebrities promote this viewpoint in their own homes, with leading
film stars Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie publicly encouraging their daughter
Shiloh to call herself “John” and dress up in boy’s clothes. The new way to
approach the body is to see it as an art project, a means of self-expression,
rather than as the creation of the divine mind and a means of
God-glorification.
It should be clear to Christians
that this latest phase of our culture’s shift away from the Judeo-Christian
worldview is a major one. We are witnessing the undoing of the most basic
realities of God’s created order. In such a climate, what should we do? Let me
suggest four responses on the part of Christians.
What
Christians Can Do Today: Four Suggestions
First, we should recognize that we
are witnessing moral anarchy, as Western nations abandon all semblance of
biblical authority. There is nothing more essential to our lives than our
manhood or womanhood. Our culture is embracing transgender identity and is thus
uprooting the very structure of our bodily existence. To reject this reality is
to embrace chaos. Untold numbers of boys and girls will be harmed by doing so.
Most significantly, God is not honored or obeyed.
The rates of suicide among
transgender people show the brokenness this choice causes. Paul McHugh, former
Johns Hopkins University psychiatrist in chief, has noted in the Wall Street
Journal that the suicide rate among transgender individuals is 20 times
higher than in the normal population.4 Embracing transgender
identity at the cultural level does not produce happiness and wholeness. It
goes hand in hand with personal confusion and disorder.
Second, we should celebrate the beauty
of God’s creative design. The Christian church and the godly family should be a
festival of happiness. We should rejoice that God in His sovereign wisdom has
opened our eyes to see that He has made us according to His perfect design.
Manhood and womanhood aren’t Plan B. God Himself has made us as we are. We are
the pinnacle of His creation.
A visceral response to sin must
never quiet our instinct to show mercy to lost people.
God’s creative work is undermined
across the board today. Even in evangelical settings, it is increasingly
acceptable to teach that humanity isn’t really that special. Adam and Eve
weren’t literally the first man and woman, but merely selected from a group of
hominids to represent humanity. The Bible speaks a “better word” than this (see
Hebrews 12:24). A secularizing, darkening
world seeks to demystify the human body. God and His Word dignify it, showing
us that our bodies were made not only for utility, but for worship. Christians
celebrate the beauty of the body, and of manhood and womanhood, for we see that
we owe our form to divine design.5
Third, we should recommit ourselves
to training our children. The bodily differences between men and women are
real. They speak to differences in our makeup, specifically designed by our
Creator. In practical form, we must teach these differences to our children.
They must see that being a boy or a girl is a matter of God’s glory. There
should be no shame in boys liking boyish things or in girls adopting girlish
behaviors. Christians should encourage this kind of awareness. Many parents
will find that their children genuinely enjoy being a boy or a girl, a future
man or a future woman. We should regularly remind our kids that it was God who
made them as they are. We should encourage them to embrace and assume manhood
or womanhood.
When we do so, we’re imitating the
pattern of wise biblical parents. “Be strong,” David said to his son Solomon,
“and prove yourself a man” (1 Kings 2:2). Parents cannot guarantee the
godliness of their children, of course. Solomon clearly chose to exhibit his
manhood in sinful ways. But we can shepherd our children and exalt the goodness
of manhood and womanhood.
If we do not teach our kids about
gender and sexuality, we can be assured that our unbiblical culture will. The
culture-makers who disobey the Scripture are persuasive, forceful, and eager to
indoctrinate our children. Fathers and mothers must recommit themselves to
training their children in the scriptural worldview so that children do not embrace
the cultural one.
Fourth, we should reach out in
compassion and call for repentance. We must reach out to those cursed by Adam’s
Fall just as we were. We may feel a visceral response to sin and its effects,
but this response must never quiet our instinct to show mercy to lost people.
Transgender individuals will be increasingly common in our neighborhoods and
communities. We have a choice: we can sinfully avoid them, or we can seek to
reach out to them in kindness and conviction and evangelize them (see Matthew 9:10–13).
Conversion for transgender
individuals will not be neat and clean. It will be messy. It will involve the
recognition that sin has corrupted us in every fiber of our being (Isaiah 64:6). But the gospel is stronger than
sin. Christ’s death washes us clean, and Christ’s Resurrection gives us life.
The Resurrection raised Christ’s spirit even as it renewed His body.
Pastors should preach on the
implications of the Resurrection for all people, including transgender ones.
Coming to faith has profound implications for our bodies. For people who have
embraced a transgender identity, repentance will mean embracing their God-given
gender and rejecting whatever sinful identity they have chosen.6
Conclusion
The talking animals of Walt Disney
films and pop culture have charmed many of us. But a Disneyfied concept of
narcissistic self-determination has not done us any favors. The culture has
offered us a false gospel, one that approves of all we do, leaving us to pursue
anything we desire.
The scriptural gospel is far better.
It makes sense of our humanity. It restores our dignity. It calls us to be men
and women who see our body as a gift, a vessel by which we may give glory to
our Maker and Redeemer. This may sound too good to be true, but the church
exists to make one thing clear: this is no fairy tale.
It is the message of Scripture, and
the hope of us all.
