https://thepreachersword.com/2016/04/05/what-does-the-bible-say-about-gender-identity/
What Does The Bible Say About Gender Identity?
Hannah Holloway says, “I never really thought to myself, yes, I am a girl. Or, yes, I am a guy. I’m Hannah.”
Hannah’s story along with several others was reported in Sunday’s Kansas City Star in the Arts and Culture section. The Star devoted three full pages to the issue of gender identity. Hannah and others want to be classified as nonbinary. So, she doesn’t want to be called by the pronoun “she” but the pronoun “they.”
Another lead article discusses how the definition of transgender has continued to evolve. Kasimir Hazelwood thinks “normal” is a meaningless word. Hazelwood identifies as androgyne, someone masculine with feminine qualities.
Rogers claims to be “genderfluid.” That means sometimes Rogers feels like a male and other times a female. V is open to any sexual orientation and dates both men and women. “I like the label queer,” says V, “because it is not clear cut.”
So, now the new controversy in our culture is gender identity. This minority of mixed up people is clamoring for gender neutral public restrooms. Unisex locker rooms, and the right to identify however they choose on legal forms. Some applications provide the choice “Male,” “Female” and “Other.” Facebook now allows you to choose, “him,” “her,” or “their.”
How many others are there, you ask?
According to an ABC report they have identified at least 58 gender options. They include bigender, pangender, transgender, Agender, intersex, Cis, Trans, and something called two spirit.
Don’t you miss the days when life was simple? There were just boys and girls.
I don’t claim to understand this confusion. I’m not a psychologist or psychiatrist. I’m a preacher. So, I will offer a simple Bible explanation.
Gender crisis and confusion exists because people have strayed away from God. They have lost their spiritual identity. And they have denied the Creator and His purpose for their lives.
Our society is on the fast track to becoming like the pagan culture Paul described in Romans chapter one. “…They knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man — and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things” (Rom. 1:21-25)
The Bible says that in the beginning God created the first pair “male and female.” He pronounced a blessing upon them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply.” (Gen 1:27-28). Later when Jesus was asked by the Pharisees a question relating to marriage, he responded this way.
“Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.” (Matt 19:4-6)
The Bible does not give us free rein to choose our sexual preferences and gender identity.
Our culture has taken something simple, and obvious and made it so complex and complicated that it goes beyond the absurd! Yet, “enlightened” educators, politicians, journalists and sadly some church leaders, nod with some kind of knowing empathy that everyone is entitled to their own beliefs, feelings, behavior and sexual identity or preference.
Our culture has lost its way. The real crisis today is a crisis of values. G. K. Chesterton was right when he wrote, “The danger when men stop believing in God is not that they’ll believe nothing; but that they will believe in anything.”
The solution is not to seek our gender identity, but to seek God. To desire spiritual communion with Him. And to accept who He created us to be.
Parents, preachers and Bible teachers must now emphasize to a new generation influenced by the confusion of their culture, that God created us. He made us male and female. He gave us distinct gender roles. And that our body does not belong to us, it belongs to the Lord.
–Ken Weliever, The Preacherman