Tuesday, August 15, 2017

But

If you've been following along, you've probably been suspecting that there's a "but" coming. Or perhaps you've been hoping there would be one. Even as I speak from my heart about how I, as a Christian, engage the transgender movement, I do have to ruffle a few feathers and say that while a person's gender orientation is not a threat to my faith, there is a very real danger in part of the secular sexuality agenda, and that is this:

There is a growing voice that says there is no male nor female at all. We're simply human.

This is where I have to draw my line. It's okay with me if wires get crossed, if things get turned around, if we just don't understand some things. That's fine. But when we reach this point, it's not fine any more.

It's not fine because this is a statement that goes directly against God's Word. It goes against what God explicitly said about the way that He created mankind - as male and female. It goes against what we've witnessed in biology since the beginning of time, what science itself declares. There is a male and female, and anyone who says otherwise is a liar and a fraud.

They are a fraud because their very premise is based on a reaction to observation. They have looked at themselves, looked at others, discovered a fundamental difference in the biology of who we are, and then had the audacity to look up and pretend it doesn't exist. They are a fraud because the very science - physical or social - that they use to back up their premise has asserted since the beginning of time that male and female are real categories.

It's important to note that many, if not most, cultures have recognized gender neturals in one way or another, positively or negatively, but even this has been based on the recognition of male and female as legitimate, discrete categories. Those who have historically been recognized as gender neutral have been seen as not wholly male or female, rather than not being male or female at all.

This kind of idea that is being pushed in our society today is nothing more than an attempt to further distance our humanity from what God has to say about it. It is an attempt to avoid the question, the tension, and the existential angst that exists when our male and female get messed up. Instead of saying that there is an order and a design to the world that we don't quite fit, instead of having to buy into the brokenness narrative that God offers in this beautifully consistent way, the effort is to pretend there is not a problem at all. Instead of saying that we're messed up, lost, broken, confused, these voices would rather say that we're nothing at all. Male? Female? What even is this?

Must be poppycock.

Must be poppycock because it makes us uncomfortable with the things that don't fit. Must be poppycock because we have to wrestle with its implications. Must be poppycock because it's just so confusing, so hard to figure out, so impossible to understand.

And look, I'm not saying that gender and sexuality and sex are simple matters; they're not. They never have been. From the very first bite of fruit, Adam and Eve began to struggle with this. The trouble was not that they were naked, but that their nakedness exposed their differences. At the very core of this entire conversation is the shame that goes all the way back to the Fall. I get it.

But I would rather wrestle with the tension than live in a lie. I'm more comfortable with the shame than I am with the serpent. There is a male and female. Part of the challenge of being human is figuring out what that means, no matter how you come at it.

I'm fortunate in this regard. I'm fortunate because I have a faith and a worldview that helps me to start thinking about the question. I'm fortunate because I have an authoritative Word from God that reminds me, even in the bushes, that this is good. This is very good. Even on the days when it seems like more trouble than it's worth. I'm fortunate because I have a long line of narrative about just how male and female works, about how God intended it to work, and because I have the absolute assurance that shame doesn't last forever.

If you're not a Christian and you're wrestling with this, you don't have such fortune. You've got some good places to start, but you've got nothing that can take you to the existential depths of sexuality the way that God can. That's why it's so easy, I guess, to buy what the world is selling and to say that it's just a figment, a phantom, a social imagination. That it doesn't really exist.

But we know that's not true. There is not a worldview out there that can consistently hold this position.

So that's where I draw my line. I draw my line at truth. It's where I stand while I'm standing next to you. Because in my heart of hearts, I know - and I think you'll agree - that you've always been something, not nothing. 

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