The
transgender bathroom controversy (and other identity crises) runs deeper than
the obvious perversions suggest, nonetheless, they are amazingly easy to resolve. But when even many Christians admit they don’t
know who they are in Christ, how can we expect the world to define themselves
properly?
The
root of the problem is a matter of focus and union. Only Christians focused on self separate
themselves from Christ and make themselves wonder who they are in Christ. Christians focused on Christ—those “Looking
unto Jesus, the author and finisher of...faith” (Hebrews 12:2) perpetually—are,
by that sustained focus in perpetuity, cementing their union with Christ and
obtaining for themselves a new identity derived from the name and house of
their Bridegroom.
I
hear way too often from Christian pulpits and lips, “We need to know who we are
in Christ!” It bristles me, not because
it’s not factually correct, but because I discern the selfish and erroneous
spirit it is spoken from. Who we are in
Christ is the byproduct of knowing Christ.
Our identity is therefore derivative and relational, not original and
exclusive.
It
is an established principle that feminine beauty be derived and defined from a
masculine perspective. This is no commentary about the equality
/inequality of the sexes, except to distinguish mankind’s posture from
God’s. We are the bride of Christ, and
we need His masculine posture to define our feminine one. Our eternal beauty is only a reflecting one
of His. He beautifies by His love; we
are worthless, unloved, and without our own internal beauty without Him first
loving us. This is an unequivocally established principle throughout Scripture
and much ancient literature. I believe
Byron, in She Walks in Beauty is
saying exactly this; the innocent heart at peace within the seat of emotional
man is best described as “she” in the “tender light” of “the night” which the
“gaudy day denies.” She walks in beauty
which walks in less than the full light of enlightenment, and the feminine
posture is the posture of faith—that posture we must all walk in (both male and
female)—if we ever expect to arrive at our gender specific and individual
destiny (which is only found in context with, and relationship to, God and
others).
To
throw aside gender identity is lethal to affirmation. Our sex is primal and one of the fundamental
stamps of our identity. This is obvious
even in its perversion. The key to
solving the identity and gender crisis, however, is simple and profound. Only by acknowledging and honoring God
truthfully do we align ourselves correctly to the fundamental stamp of our form
and function as made individual and original by our Creator alone. Just as primal and fundamental as is God’s
stamp on us, however, is God’s judgment against those who pervert this
foundational basis of life. Paul said
that “Fools...exchange the glory of the eternal God for an imitation”; I say, sages
exchange themselves for Christ.
Since
I cannot say it better than Paul, here is the apostle’s take on the matter:
“Now
the holy anger of God is disclosed from Heaven against the godlessness and evil
of those men who render truth dumb and inoperative by their wickedness. It is
not that they do not know the truth about God; indeed he has made it quite
plain to them. For since the beginning of the world the invisible attributes of
God, e.g. his eternal power and divinity, have been plainly discernible through
things which he has made and which are commonly seen and known, thus leaving
these men without a rag of excuse. They knew all the time that there is a God,
yet they refused to acknowledge him as such, or to thank him for what he is or
does. Thus they became fatuous in their argumentations, and plunged their silly
minds still further into the dark. Behind
a facade of ‘wisdom’ they became just fools, fools who would exchange the glory
of the eternal God for an imitation image of a mortal man, or of creatures that
run or fly or crawl. They gave up God:
and therefore God gave them up—to be the playthings of their own foul desires
in dishonoring their own bodies.
“The fearful consequence of
deliberate atheism
“These
men deliberately forfeited the truth of God and accepted a lie, paying homage
and giving service to the creature instead of to the Creator, who alone is
worthy to be worshipped for ever and ever, amen. God therefore handed them over
to disgraceful passions. Their women exchanged the normal practices of sexual
intercourse for something which is abnormal and unnatural. Similarly the men,
turning from natural intercourse with women, were swept into lustful passions
for one another. Men with men performed these shameful horrors, receiving, of
course, in their own personalities the consequences of sexual perversity. Moreover, since they considered themselves
too high and mighty to acknowledge God, he allowed them to become the slaves of
their degenerate minds, and to perform unmentionable deeds. They became filled
with wickedness, rottenness, greed and malice; their minds became steeped in
envy, murder, quarrelsomeness, deceitfulness and spite. They became
whisperers-behind-doors, stabbers-in-the-back, God-haters; they overflowed with
insolent pride and boastfulness, and their minds teemed with diabolical
invention. They scoffed at duty to parents, they mocked at learning, recognized
no obligations of honor, lost all natural affection, and had no use for mercy.
More than this—being well aware of God’s pronouncement that all who do these
things deserve to die, they not only continued their own practices, but did not
hesitate to give their thorough approval to others who did the same” (Romans 1:
18-32 PHILLIPS).
