The War on Gender - Amy Lawrence

The War on Gender

A Study of Biology

It’s a crazy world in which we live. I will tell you a secret though; it always has been. Solomon wrote, “The thing that has been is what will be, and that which is done is that which will be done; and there is no new thing sunder the sun.” (Ecc. 1:9) We would like to think that the advances or atrocities of our generation are new, but they are just recycled. There have always been men that want to be women and women that want to be men. God commanded the children of Israel that “a woman shall not wear that which pertains to a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment; for all that do so are an abomination unto the Lord your God.” (Deut. 22:5) One can see that such confusion has been plaguing our race for millennia. The struggle for the Christian, however, isn’t always simply the difference between right and wrong.

Dealing with emotions, desires, and temptations is a task in itself. That begs the question: how do we behave around and talk to those that struggle with such issues? This question doesn’t only need to be answered for those that struggle personally, but also for those that have a close relationship with someone that does wrestle with this issue.

Moses recorded in the book of Genesis that God created us male and female. These aren’t just labels or nametags. A person’s gender exists all the way down to DNA. No matter what one looks like on the outside, the inside tells all. (I am neither a scientist nor a doctor. I cannot give you the details of such genetic disturbances, but there is a condition in which one can be born male with female reproductive tissue or female with male reproductive tissue. It is known as XY intersex/XX intersex or pseudohermaphroditism. It is medically possible to determine if the predominant genome within a patient with this condition is male or female. It is usually determined at birth that a child has pseudohermaphroditism. He does not know what he is, she does not know what she is. The parents choose what gender the doctor will “remove”. This is a rare condition; male pseudohermaphroditism almost always requires a defective genome from both parents. The likelihood for males is 1 in 99,000. It is still uncommon but less so in females, 1 in every 16,000. This is usually because the mother undergoes hormone treatments during pregnancy that introduce or produce masculine hormones that are transferred to the female fetus. Again, this condition is rare. The higher percentage of adults that choose to try and be the opposite gender are males/females with healthy genomes .) There are laws in place that allow us as a species to continue thriving. One of those laws is that in order to reproduce another human, it requires the joining of a male gamete and a female gamete. Two males cannot produce a child. Two females cannot produce a child. God told Adam to “be fruitful and multiply”, Gen. 1:28, just as He did every other living creature, Gen. 1:22. This is not possible between two men or two women.

Some would also put God in a position of contradicting Himself when they say, “God made me this way.” Let me make this inescapably clear; God doesn’t make mistakes. If a person’s DNA says XY, God meant for that person to be male. Nothing any individual says or does will ever change that chromosomal XY. If a person’s DNA says XX, God made that person female. Nothing any individual says or does will ever change that chromosomal XX. This is basic microbiology. It is tested, established truth. Another truth is that God didn’t make us for the purpose of achieving our own happiness. He made us for the purpose of His glory, Is. 43:7. That puts us into the realm of feelings. Emotions are tricky, fickle things, holding on to anything of substance by a thread when not properly secured. More often than not, people use emotion to try and produce truth. Truth is never a product of emotion but rather emotion of truth. Feelings alone cannot be trusted, Jer. 17:9. They must be anchored in the truth that no personal feeling can trump God’s commands.

It is also important to understand that self-control includes managing one’s feelings instead of allowing feelings to control. Paul’s letter to the Galatians speaks of self-control as one of the fruits of the Spirit, Gal. 5:22-23. A healthy brain is able to be trained to do this, but it - as any worthwhile endeavor - requires practice.

God will not command something of us that we cannot give, Deut. 16:17. We have the free will to do whatever we choose, but one must realize that there are consequences to every choice made, Ecc. 12:13-14, 2 Cor. 5:9-11. Consequences are also never predictable. Sometimes they are immediate. Sometimes they take years to manifest. This is where prudence comes into play. Solomon had quite a lot to say about prudence (Prov. 12:16,23; 13:16; 14:8,15,18; 15:5; 16:21; 18:15; 19:14; 22:3; 27:12) and its connection to knowledge and/or wisdom. One that considers what consequences could or will come about from choices made before making them is a prudent person. An imprudent person in scripture is also called a fool, Prov. 13:16, and life is already hard…but it’s even harder when you’re a fool. It doesn’t have to be. Yes, we all make mistakes, and suffer the consequences of those mistakes. There is, however, value in suffering. In suffering, we learn, James 1:2-4. Those who don’t learn from their mistakes are doomed to repeat them until they do learn. Suffering also brings us closer to God, a closeness that is incomparable, James 1:5;4:7-10.

We must also discuss sacrifice. The Oxford Dictionary defines sacrifice as “an act of giving up something valued for the sake of something else regarded as more important or worthy.” There are and will be things we want in this life that we think will make us happy. Whether or not we are right remains to be seen. We are built to survive first, thrive second. In thriving, we as a species tend to forget what surviving was like and how many things we were willing to do without for the sake of better things…because we got those better things. We forget gratitude and respect. This nation has fallen into the time-old trap of the many nations before it; we are deceived into thinking the ease we now enjoy as a product of suffering can never be taken away, as if we have the inalienable right to never suffer again. Suffering for which one is not prepared is a much harder suffering. One who is well versed in sacrificing something now for something better later is a person that is well practiced at handling suffering when it comes. Not “if”. WHEN. Abraham knew, Heb. 11:8-11. Moses knew, Heb. 11:24-26. They knew the value of sacrifice. There will be times in every Christian’s life where a sacrifice must be made to remain children of God, Rom. 12:1-2. It. Will. Be. Worth. It. Jn. 14:1-6.

Hosea wrote God’s words, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge…” (Hos. 4:6). The best place to start dealing with the issue of gender confusion is in gaining knowledge. One cannot do what one does not know. The roots of knowledge are truth. Gender is a truth, and truth does not change no matter how we feel about it.

Gravity is a truth. No sane person jumps from an airborne plane without a parachute. Only an insane person would think they are actually a bird and won’t need a parachute, and just as insane is a person that thinks they can alter their gender. To change the direction and consequence of ignorance, we must teach truth. We cannot teach what we ourselves do not know, and so the command to study is practical in such situations, 2 Tim. 2:15. Some Christians also have this idea that tolerance is the right thing to do. In the same verse in Hosea, the priests were rejected because they did not teach truth. We must teach truth - no matter how difficult this is.

Our words must be palatable when we teach truth, Col. 4:6. We must teach in love, Eph. 4:15. Our hearts must understand that this is a disease. It is a disease of the mind, one that is incurable unless it is dealt with God’s way. Hate the sin, not the sinner, Mt. 5:44-45. We can be loving Christian people without tolerating sin. We can be respectful when we speak to others, we can be kind in our dealings with anyone, and we can let Jesus’ light shine in us when we do the right thing (ESPECIALLY when they expect us to do the wrong thing), Gal. 6:9-10. We can also set boundaries. We can express what we will not tolerate with kindness and respect, both for them and for ourselves. We are not given a spirit of timidity but of power, love, and self-control, 2 Tim. 1:7.

Love as Jesus loved, Lk. 23:34. Teach as Paul and Barnabas taught, Acts 13:46.

Have the courage of Joshua, Josh. 1:1-11, the patience of Job, James 5:11, and the meekness of Moses, Num. 12:3. Rest in full assurance that the reward is worth far more than the sacrifices of this life, Heb. 10:32-37, 11:24-26.