Understanding Gender Ideology and Its Consequences: Part 1
The World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) was established to advance gender ideology as the scientific and professional viewpoint. Any health professional with a different viewpoint is speaking against the professional associations if they give voice to their dissent. Thus, the professionals that distressed parents will turn to will likely recommend the denial of a child’s true sex as the proper treatment.
Gender ideology, the basis of transgenderism, was the topic of two presentations at the recent Southern Evangelical Seminary’s Apologetics Conference in Rock Hill, South Carolina. Jay Richards, Director of the DeVos Center for Religion, Life, and Family at the Heritage Foundation discussed the philosophy itself, while Christian apologist and author Frank Turek, President of CrossExamine.org, discussed its radical inconsistencies and disastrous consequences.
The Fracturing of Marriage and Sex
Richards said that the sexual revolution is “a fracturing of things that are meant to go together.” Today, the dominant culture in practice and law and rhetoric is pulling apart what God intended to go together, and thus “all sorts of bad things are unleashed.” What is pulled apart is “the organic unity of marriage, sex, and the sexual act and childbearing.” Sex and childbearing are held together in traditional Christianity. The sexual revolution pulled these things apart, not only intellectually, but also technologically. Indeed, Richards maintained that the sexual revolution was not possible until the advent of the birth control pill, which made practical the separation of sex and childbearing. He compared this to the Protestant Reformation and the printing press. Advancing the Bible against prevailing religious doctrines and practices was greatly facilitated by the new availability of Bibles and literature supporting the Reformation.
In our day, the smartphone has had a dramatic impact on social relations and behavior. Technology likewise enabled a worldwide shutdown of society in 2020. With the separation of sex from childbearing, marriage is seen more as an affectional relation than the basis of procreation and a family. A 50-state enactment of unilateral (or no-fault) divorce followed. This made a marriage contract easier to break than a business contract. People take these changes “for granted,” but they were “unprecedented though for most of Christian history.” The deregulation of sex resulted in an increase of unwanted pregnancies, which led to a demand for legal abortion, which the Supreme Court decreed in 1973.
These changes, Richards said, were not only in the United States, but worldwide. The coupling of people in marriage “only makes sense” if there is understood to be a “complementary nature of male and female,” and that as a basis for procreation and a family. Without this basis, there is no reason why two people of the same sex might not marry each other. But once same-sex marriage was decreed, “the logic of monogamy fell apart.” There is no reason why a relationship not focused on the union of male and female need be only between two people. Indeed, without the union of male and female being essential for marriage and the family, the way is open to attack the division of humanity into males and females. After the Obergefell decision in 2015, it was as though “everybody had a memo” to start talking about transgenderism. The sexual revolution is “the logical outworking of an original revolutionary idea that was enabled by technology.”
Richards said that there is a difference in people’s ability to comprehend these changes based on age. Baby boomers and “gen Xers” find these changes “so discontinuous” with the world that they knew “that we tend to not quite get what’s being said.” On the other hand “gen Zers” have “sort of been steeped in this stuff.” Young people from many public and even private schools have been “bombarded” by gender ideology for some time, and the new ideas do not seem as strange. Indeed, gender ideology is taught to young children not yet able to read. This is truly radical, because, Richards said, among the things a young child needs to know to “navigate reality” are “the difference between an adult and a kid, and the difference between a boy and a girl.” Because the difference between male and female is so basic, it is important to “queer” or destabilize the beliefs of young children to further the objectives of self-determination and moral autonomy.
Many teens today follow social media “influencers,” who sensationalize the ideas of gender ideology. Early adolescents disturbed by changes to their bodies or psyches are vulnerable to the valorizing of transgenderism, and its basic claim that their bodies are at war with their souls. They are told that with pills and surgery their bodies can be made to conform to their sense of self. This has resulted in a massive increase in the number of minors presenting with “gender dysphoria.” This he defined as “the intense sense of distress and discomfort with your sexed body.” It is not really a false belief about one’s body, but only discomfort with the body one has.
Both sex and gender are several hundred year old words, but starting in the 1960s, academics and other theorists of sex began referring to the biological difference of male and female as sex, and its psychological and social aspects as gender. But this distinction was then replaced by gender ideology as it currently exists, which denies biological sex and distinguishes between “sex assigned at birth” and “gender identity.” Gender identity is supposed to be the “internal sense of our gender.” But this definition defines gender in terms of itself, so that it has no objective meaning. It is claimed that sex based on body parts or structure is only a “social construct… associating certain body parts with stereotypes, called sexes.” The determination of sex when a child is born is thus only an arbitrary assignment. Although it strains credulity to believe that sex determination based on body parts is arbitrary, this is in fact what is being maintained.
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Christian Foster Parents Who Lost License Over Biblical Beliefs May Sue, Federal Court Rules
Judge Phipps said, the Lasches’ allegations that their civil rights were violated because of the state government’s religious hostility and retaliation based on their biblical views should not have been dismissed by the lower court. In explaining his reasoning, Judge Phipps cited two recent Supreme Court cases supportive of religious freedom.
The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed a lower court decision dismissing a New Jersey couple’s lawsuit against the state after it removed their foster child and suspended their license to foster parent. The decision relies on recent U.S. Supreme Court cases favoring religious freedom and paves the way for Christians in the Garden State to push back against government hostility toward biblical values.
Licensed foster parents Michael and Jennifer Lasche could only watch helplessly in 2018 as their foster daughter – whom they wanted to adopt – was removed from their home by government officials. Employees of the New Jersey Division of Child Protection and Permanency (DCPP) decided the Lasches’ religious beliefs about the sinfulness of homosexual conduct and same-sex “marriage” justified the child’s removal.
But then the state went even further in making its point by suspending the Lasches’ license to foster any child. When the couple sued the state for violating their constitutional rights, a federal district court dismissed the lawsuit.
However, the 3rd Circuit reinstated the lawsuit and sent it back down to the lower court for further proceedings.
“The District Court dismissed the Lasches’ [constitutional rights violation] claim against the individual capacity defendants for First Amendment retaliation on two grounds,” Judge Peter Phipps wrote on behalf of a three-judge panel.
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Are Young People Turning to Prayer More?
Who Paul Prayed To
In Ephesians 1:17, the apostle gives a short summary of his prayer to God for the Ephesian believers.
First, Paul refers to God the Father (to whom he is praying) as “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ” and “the Father of glory”. The Father is in His own nature infinitely glorious, the fountain of the whole Godhead and all the divine attributes in the Son and the Holy Ghost. All glory is due to Him from created beings.
What Paul Prayed for His Friends
Paul then mentions what he sought from God for the Ephesian believers. This was “wisdom,” or a further increase of the saving knowledge of God which the Holy Spirit gives, together with a clearer insight into the Scripture where the same Spirit reveals these truths. This “wisdom” mainly consists in the saving, believing, and operative “knowledge of him,” i.e., of our Lord Jesus Christ. Paul wants the Holy Spirit to remove the natural blindness of their understandings and to bestow a clear discerning of the things of God.
We Should Have Definite Things to Pray For
We should not necessarily restrict ourselves to a set form of words when we pray. Yet we should have set purposes worked out, and a definite point to aim at, when we pray, so that we would be able to give an account of what we are praying for, whether that is for ourselves or for others.
We Must Pray to the True God
Our prayers should be directed to God only. No one else knows us, or the secrets of our hearts. Anyone or anything else is unfit to receive our prayers.
Also when we draw near to God in prayer (whether for ourselves or others), we should do so with confidence and reverence – for these are not mutually exclusive. We should think about God, and express what we are thinking about Him, in a way that will most strengthen our faith and most strike our hearts with reverence towards Him. To strengthen his faith, Paul refers to God as “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ” and to bring his heart into deep reverence he calls him “the Father of glory,” or “glorious Father.”
We Should Pray Out of Faith in Christ
In order to have access to God with boldness through Christ, it is necessary to renew the act of faith which applies and appropriates Christ to ourselves. Then, being made one with Christ, we will be seen by the Father as clothed with Christ’s righteousness. This is the way that God will accept both our persons and our imperfect prayers – that is, through Christ. Paul here appropriates Christ to himself as his own, calling Him “our Lord Jesus Christ.”
It is necessary also that when we embrace Christ in this way, we do not divide Him into parts, but take to ourselves the fullness of all the perfections which are in Him. This is an evidence of our sincerity in embracing Him, but additionally, nothing less than the whole Christ is necessary to cover all our imperfections, bear us up under all our discouragements, and help us in all the infirmities which beleaguer us in our approaches to God. -
Is It Okay to Be Anxious, If I Know Suffering Is Coming?
Victory comes through suffering. Real authentic, painful, soul-crushing suffering. And it’s not a lack of faith to sometimes quake at that reality. Daniel did. His alarm doesn’t negate his redemption, though. And that’s why even if we do grieve with Daniel, we grieve as those who have hope.
There’s a sermon illustration that I love. I think it first came from Randy Alcorn. It involves intricate marching bands. You ever see those? The marching band comes together and looks like a giant football player kicking a field goal. (Here is an example).
They are super awesome. But I bet they don’t look so cool when you’re on the field and view things from that perspective. When we view things from the ground instead of the grandstand we often miss the beauty and brilliance of what is going on. The same is true of life.
If you can see the whole picture, or know the end of the story, then it creates a bit of calm for us today. I think about this illustration as I’m preaching through Daniel. I’m convinced that those visions are given to the prophet in order to provide a bit of comfort as they go through exile. I suppose its a similar thought which leads Iain Duguid in his commentary to say about Daniel 7:
After all, the purpose of the passage is not to give us nightmares but to calm our nightmares. The focus of Daniel 7 is rather on the coming day of divine judgment, when these monsters will finally receive justice and God will win the final victory. (Duguid, Daniel REC, 112)
We know the end of the story. Jesus wins. God reigns, not whatever scary monster we are facing. Relax. No panic. No alarm. Don’t be anxious about the days ahead.
One Problem
As I was preaching through Daniel 7 last week that is the path that I wanted to take. But I couldn’t do it, not entirely. There was just one sticky little problem. Daniel 7:28,
Here is the end of the matter. As for me, Daniel, my thoughts greatly alarmed me, and my color changed, but I kept the matter in my heart.
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