A couple years ago I wrote a piece called “Facebook Gender Options.” The topic of that piece was the move by Facebook that gave more gender options to its users beyond male and female. Facebook provided fifty six gender options to be exact. Facebook intended this move to be inclusive of every variant gender identity or “questioning” person under the sun. A person who is “questioning” is confused as to whether they are gay or transgender and as to who they are and where they should be headed. Gender differences have expanded in these two short years since that piece was written. Now in many places a man who identifies as a woman or vice-versa has the right to use the bathroom consistent with their gender identity. In other words, if a man feels like he is a woman he has a right to use the bathroom or locker room consistent with what he feels he is on the inside, even if it doesn’t match up with what his body actually is. This has become the law in a number of cities and states. Those who speak out against it are branded as intolerant and will even be kicked out of public facilities. This has actually happened to woman in Ohio who complained about a man behaving himself inappropriately in the women’s restroom of a Planet Fitness gym.
Not only do such policies go against common sense, they also violate God-ordained notions of gender. “Male and female created he them” (Genesis 1:27b). This passage means that a person’s biological sex is permanent. Many things about a person change in their lifetimes including height, weight, voice and hair color. Personalities develop over time as well. That being said, one’s gender remains consistent throughout all of these changes. Transgender advocates, on the other hand, teach that people are gender-fluid, that is, that a person can be male one day and female the next. Think of a jar of Play-Doh or the sand you find at the beach. These things can be changed to whatever you want them to be. You can use that lump of Play-Doh to form a dog one day and a castle the next. The same thing is true of the sand at the beach. That’s the kind of thinking that supporters of transgenderism engage in.
Play-doh and sand are malleable, gender is not. There is no record of any human being actually switching sexes. It doesn’t happen and it cannot happen. God is the only one who can mold things the way that He wants them. He takes the people that live in this world and He forms them as He seems fit. “Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?”(Romans 9:21) Here God is referring to election and reprobation whereby He saves some and not others. The same thing is true in this world. He makes one male and another female and each individual fulfills the unique role that He as ordained for them.
Our calling as young people and young adults is to live as Christians in this world. Part of living as a Christian is living contentedly in the body God has given us, the body appropriate to the gender He has given us. We are not surgically to mutilate our bodies as many people do today. We are not to celebrate those who have had this done to themselves or are contemplating having it done. In both cases we are to exhort them to repent and to pray for their repentance. God has made us different. Men and women are different physically, mentally and psychologically. We are to recognize, celebrate, and enjoy these differences without trying to pervert them into something that God never meant them to be. When we do this properly God is glorified. He will judge those who defy His creation ordinances and reward those who by His grace and Holy spirit seek to honor and obey Him in this and in all things. May God receive all the honor and glory due unto His name!
Kevin Rau
Young Calvinists 