Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 335 | Understanding the Biblical Telos of Gender

Episode Date: December 7, 2020

Today we're tackling a heavy topic — gender. We'll be looking at the ideas of gender and sexuality through a biblical lens and comparing those ideas to the much more recent idea of "gender identity." It's a difficult conversation to have, especially in today's highly political world. But God's message about gender is very different from the one you're hearing from those on the Left. Also, how should Christians respond when asked to use alternate pronouns or are asked to announce their own pronouns? Today's sponsors: ExpressVPN: Protect your personal information, visit https://ExpressVPN.com/ALLIE to get three extra months free Mack Weldon: Win the gift-giving season and get 20% off your first order at https://MackWeldon.com/ALLIE, and use promo code 'ALLIE' -- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Monday. Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. Today we are going to talk about a very controversial topic. I guess we always talk about controversial topics when you think about it. Today is going to be one of those evergreen subjects, but we are talking about it because of recent events. We're going to question where this particular trend and idea is going, how it's changed, why things have changed, why we are just supposed to repeat the mainstream talking points without any intellectual curiosity or moral qualms or scientific objections at all. And that is the topic of gender and so-called gender identity. So Ellen Page, that was the name that this person used to hold, came out as a lesbian a few years ago in 2014 and then announced last.

week, a transition into manhood. A page announced he they pronouns and much of the internet was very excited about this. It applauded the decision and then proceeded to slam anyone who quote dead named page by saying Ellen rather than the new name, which is Elliott, or who insisted that transitioning from female to male or vice versa isn't actually something that is possible. The fact of the matter is that we're not, we're told that we're not allowed to even debate this topic. We're not allowed to question it. The popular perspective on sex and gender has completely changed in just the last five years. And already we're not allowed to question it without being accused of being archaic backwards bigots.

And that's the reason really I want to dive into this topic precisely because it is so controversial. And because of the pressure that we're feeling from the. culture, we're scared to talk about it. We're scared to say, hang on, that doesn't make total sense. I don't really understand. That doesn't align with what I know about biology. And this includes some conservatives and it includes, I think, a lot of Christians as well. So today we're going to break down gender theory, the biblical perspective on gender, what Christians are supposed to think about it according to scripture and also how we should confront it in culture when it comes to what's called personal or preferred pronouns and so-called dead naming and things like that.

How are Christians going to stand out from the world knowing that we will be called bigots and transphobes and even worse? Let me just say this up front and I say this. I'm speaking to myself as well. I am not chastising you. I'm not speaking from a place of self-righteousness at all. I am preaching to the choir here when I say this. If a Christian is not able to say confidently that a man is a man and a woman is a woman, that God made us male and female as we read in the creation account, then there is no reason to think that that Christian will stand up for anything else when it comes to biblical values.

If we can't even say the most basic observation of scientific reality and biblical truth, which humans of many backgrounds have known and accepted for all of time for millennia, then we cannot kid ourselves into believing that we will stand up for the gospel, which is far more offensive because it says that without the saving grace of Christ, people are going to hell. If we cannot bring ourselves to say that God made men to be men and women to be women, as we are told in the first chapter of the Bible, then there is not a chance that we will have the courage to stay the first.

far more controversial, far more offensive, far more unpopular truth, that Jesus, as he says in John 14, 6, is the only way truth in life and that no one comes to the father except through him. This is the reason that when people become culturally compromising, they become theologically compromising as well, why many of your friends who have started to accept worldly dogma on cultural issues, like gender, eventually probably also stopped believing that Jesus is the only way to heaven. The gospel is the most offensive part of the Bible. It's the most offensive part of Christianity. Not the differentiation between male and female, not gender roles, not the definition of marriage, not the defense of life inside the womb, not the defense of private

property and property rights, but the fact that Jesus Christ came to call sinners to repentance. It's good news, obviously. It's gracious news, but it is offensive to those who don't want to believe it and who don't want to accept the fact that they are in need of salvation and sanctification that can only come through Jesus Christ. 1st Corinthians 122 through 24 says, for Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God. So let us not foolishly convince ourselves into believing that it's okay for us to not have a stance or not to be able to confidently speak to the questions

in which our culture is floundering in confusion, like what is a man or what is a woman? If we know and can declare the gospel of all things, this is easy. Now, let me say it. I know that it's not actually easy, and I'm not discounting the difficulty that comes with this subject because it hurts to be criticized. It hurts to push back on someone that you love, whether they disagree with you on gender or whether they identify as transgender. It can be very difficult to engage in these kind of identity-centric conversations. And it's difficult to be castigated as unloving or unkind. I know that. that. I have been scared to say things. And you have to, honestly, this episode, I'd rather not do.

I would rather not talk about the controversial things that I do, but I see so much need for some kind of clarity, not just in the culture, but also in the church. And I'm certainly not the arbiter of clarity and truth. But I am taking you along the journey with me and seeking truth through God's word that's desperately needed in my own life, and I think that's desperately needed probably in my listeners' lives as well. So I am humbly seeking these things, and I am asking you to come along with me. But I would rather avoid these topics. I am not judging you or pretending to be better or braver than you in approaching them. I have been a coward before. I've been at a loss for words before. I've chosen not to speak about something that I should have

spoken about. I've watered down what I actually believe to be more comfortable for unbelievers. I have compromised to my shame. I'm sure a lot of you can relate to that. If you can't relate to that, then that is awesome. Then I need to be more like you. You are not alone, though, if you have had the experiences, some of the shameful experiences that I have and not speaking up when I should have, not standing up when I should have. But this is a part of sanctification. Thankfully, we have a very patient, very merciful God. Growing deeper and knowledge, more confident in our faith and more courageous and standing for what God says is true. We get to ask the Holy Spirit for both wisdom and boldness and God is kind enough to give these things to believers. But it is easy. When I say

that this is easy, it's easy in the sense that it is simple. It's not complicated. For the believer, it's not even controversial. And when we stand on God's side of things, we should have every reason to be confident and to be assured. Jesus reminds us in Matthew 10 not to fear those that can hurt the body, but to fear the one God who can hurl our body and soul into hell. It is to him and to him alone that we will ultimately give a count. So my goal in talking about this very controversial subject, this very sensitive, rightfully sensitive subject, is to be as gracious as possible, to represent the arguments as accurately as possible, and to speak truth lovingly.

Now, unfortunately, we know that both secular and spiritual people alike have the tendency sometimes to define love in loving as simply agreeing with a person or agreeing with every progressive stance on cultural, theological, political issues, and they have the tendency to define humility as being agnostic about issues, saying, oh, I don't really know my stance on this controversial issue. so I'm just going to pretend like I don't have an opinion on it. And when we don't know, of course, it's okay to say we don't actually know your stance on that.

I'm still learning that. That is fine to have that answer. We can admit that. There are many things I don't know that I'm still learning about. There are things that I thought I knew and didn't actually know. There are things we get wrong. I'm not talking about having a blinding arrogance about these things. I'm talking about a confidence in truth that comes not from ourselves, but from

Christ, especially when it comes to something as fundamental and as basic as what is a male and what is a female. Many people are very uncomfortable with watching or listening to other people stand against the mainstream and confidently say, no, no, no, no, no, that's not how that goes. That is a lie. This is truth, not my truth, but the truth. I'm not confused on this one. I'm not undecided about it. I won't be fooled. I won't go with the flow. I won't repeat your talking points. I won't be intimidated by your name calling. People don't like to hear other people standing against the mainstream and saying these things, saying I won't be bullied into compliance. I'm not going to be bullied into believing that it is hate to believe and speak that which God says is true. I will choose to

love my neighbor how God tells me to love my neighbor and not how culture tells me to love my neighbor because God is love and truth and we can neither out love nor out truth God. So as long as I'm following him and submitting to his authority, there's nothing the world can say or do to change my mind. People don't like to hear a Christian say that. They don't. It makes them uncomfortable. They'll call you judgmental. They'll say your tone is off. They'll say that you lack nuance. They don't like that. They want you to be agnostic. They want you to be mushy. They want you to pretend like you don't really know. They want you to go with the flow. They're more comfortable with cowardice than they are with courage. As Martin Luther said, peace, if possible, truth at all costs.

All truth is God's truth. That means natural truth, scientific truth, mathematical truth, philosophical truth, moral truth, theological truth. All that is true, God authored it. He is the source of it. Nothing that is true will ever contradict God in His word. Therefore, the pursuit of God is the pursuit of truth. Love of God is the love of truth. Love of truth very often leads to a love of God, though people can be right about a lot of things intellectually and never actually know God with their heart. You can know a lot of truth and still not know God, but you cannot love God and not love truth. Truth is what grounds us. It keeps us saying. If you'll remember, if you've read 1984, the last segment of 1984 when Winston is finally being tortured by O'Brien in an attempt to make him

submissive to the party and to Big Brother, the goal is to convince Winston that no, independent reality exists. That is what ensures his total submission and fidelity to the party and to Big Brother. Truth, he must believe at the end of this torturing is given by the party. Words are defined by the party. History is created by the party. That's the people in power, if you don't know. Memories are constructed by the party in this world. Morality is made by the party. Logic is under the authority of the party. Math is decided by the party. If the party, if the party, party says, Big Brother says, that yesterday in 1984, they were at war with East Asia, but today the party says they've always been at war with Eurasia, then they've always been at war

with Eurasia. Does it matter what you think you remember yesterday because no reality exists outside of what they tell you? If the party says war is peace, freedom, slavery, ignorance, is strength, then they are. If the party in 1984 says the 2 plus 2 equals 5, then it does. nothing can be independently proven in this world because the party's control is complete even over your mind. That is the final stage of totalitarianism. The Italian fascist dictator Mussolini defined totalitarianism as, quote, everything within the state,

nothing outside of the state, nothing against the state. Now, I would change that to match kind of at least part of our situation. I'm not trying to be dramatic, but part of our situation in the United States, and even to match 1984 as everything within the party, nothing outside of the party, nothing against the party. Because I think what we see in America today is a totalitarianism that is outside of the state in a lot of ways, but is really primarily predominantly exacted by the cultural powers that be, even corporations and big tech and celebrities, people that have the most influence

those powers that be, then primarily the power. political powers that be. The party today in the U.S. that people in charge are these leftist corporations, the media, the cultural warriors who dictate what we must believe now, what we must say now, what the new reality is. They construct objective truth. Nothing exists that is outside of what they say is good and right and real and true. And if you oppose any part of the new reality that this so-called party controls, then you are lambasted. You are censored. You are sometimes threatened. In some cases, you are fired or ostracized, and they do this in the name of defeating bigotry. They say that having your opinions and stating your opinions is actually harmful. It's actually

violent. And part of this new reality that this party has constructed, and by new, I literally mean, just in the last few years, that we're not allowed to question is that men and women are defined not by biology, but by mere declaration, that there is no real meaning to what it is to be a man, no biological meaning to it, no real biological meaning to what it is to be a woman or anything beyond or in between. This idea is not new, but it is newly mainstream. And the defense of it is newly dogmatic and pervasive. A group of us have been reading, Love, Thy Body by Nancy Piercy. And I really can't. I know I've said this before. I've had Nancy Percy on my podcast. You should go back and listen to the interview I did with her a little over a

year ago, or maybe even two years ago now. But it is one of the most important books besides the Bible that I think that you can read that speaks to what is underneath the cultural trends right now when it comes to how the secular world views the body versus how scripture views the body. Make your teens read it, especially your daughters, make your friends read it, your parents, your sister. I think, in my opinion, it is absolutely crucial. So Piercy argues that the secular view of the body is this dualistic view of the body that actually degrades the physical in favor of the psychological. So the idea is that who we really are, according to the secular dualistic thinking, is what we think, what we feel. That dictates.

who we are and what we do with our body. Our body doesn't tell us anything. Our body is less real than what we feel and what we think. That is the new secular idea about how we should view ourselves. Our identity comes from what we feel, who we say that we are in this mindset. Our bodies are subject to our inner self and what the identity, and what the identity that he or she takes on, that is defined by our internal monologue, by our feelings, by the decisions that we make about ourselves in our mind. So the idea is that our real true definition, our real true identity is decided upon by us, and our body really has nothing to say about it.

This way of thinking has a centuries-long philosophical history, but it is contrary to scripture. Scripture teaches something called a teleological view of nature, including the human body. Tele means end or goal or telos means end or goal or purpose or aim. Logos means explanation or region or reason. So teleology studies the purpose of natural entities. The Bible tells us a few things just in the creation account alone that points to this and in the biblical canon as a whole, that God made the world and he did so systematically, he did so thoughtfully, he did so carefully, and specifically the nature of God, as we see revealed in

scripture, is that he does not do things arbitrarily or accidentally. And very rarely does he do anything in a way that seems automatic. We see from creation to redemption that God is a God of process. He takes steps to accomplish his sovereign will. That to us, it doesn't seem like he should have to, or maybe they seem superfluous. But he does things according to his will through process. Everything God creates, everything that God does, he creates and does with purpose. The Adam has a telos. It has an end, goal, purpose, a function, a specific, important role that it plays, a blade of grass. has a specific nature, a specific role it can play. A wing on a bird has a purpose. It can't do

the same thing that a foot on a bird can or a beak on a bird can. It has a specific purpose that God made it for. Our kidneys have a particular function, a telos, and cannot operate outside of that function. In most people would agree with that. They hear, okay, yeah, of course a wing is supposed to do something that a beak cannot do. There's a purpose to these things. There's obviously a designed to these sinks. Most people accept that because it's obvious. You can't even argue against it without even knowing or realizing where they land philosophically or theologically. And yet, much of the secular world, and in particular, the West has rejected this view, has rejected the teleological view when it comes to the human body. So we accept it when it comes

to, say, a bird's body or when it comes to different parts of nature, we realize that there are some purposes for natural entities, but for some reason when it comes to human beings, the new secular philosophy or the newly mainstream secular philosophy is that we reject the teleological view of the human body. So the popular idea today is that we can do what we want with our body, that our purpose is determined by what we feel on the inside. As long as something that we want, it's okay. We can sleep with as many people as we want to. And as long as it's consensual, it's totally fine. We can have any kind of sexual relationship, this philosophy says, with any kind of person that we want, and that's fine. We can do what we want with our bodies, even if it includes

killing the child residing inside our body, this philosophy says. And because we've elevated autonomy in this worldview as a sacred value above all else, this is acceptable. And finally, according to this view, we can declare that our anatomy tells us nothing about our gender, our identity, who we really are, feelings define our gender and our body is just a bag of bones with no telos. All of these ideas actually reject the idea that our bodies have a specific tell us, that they are and they are and they do what we say they are and should do, that we are self-defining, that we are self-creating, that we self-identify. But Christianity reject that, rejects that secular view.

We hold the fundamental belief that God, made the world, all of it, with purpose and a specific design. And therefore, who he, our creator and designer says we are, we are. How he says our body should be used, that's how they should be used. And when we use them in a way that goes outside of their function or purpose, we dishonor both the design and the designer. The secular self-identifying, dualistic view of the body is actually very degrading to the view of the body. I think a lot of times we think of the secular sexual ethic as liberating as freeing and the biblical ethic as regulating and restrictive and burdensome and degrading. It's actually the opposite. Christianity views the body in a very dignified way that

the secular world doesn't understand. The secular world says that the body is basically meaningless and arbitrary, that it's only our feelings and our thoughts that really matter. Christianity says, no, no, no. Your body matters. Your body was created with care and with purpose and with intention, you are made in God's image. Genesis 1.27 says, your body matters so much that God gives strict rules for how we are to use it in a way that carries out its function best. God gives us laws against assault, abuse, rape, murder, gluttony, drunkenness, sex outside of marriage that the New Testament doubles down on. Jesus goes so far as to say if you even lust after a woman, you're already sitting and committing adultery. We see throughout Scripture that God

cares very much about our bodies and what we do to them and what other people do to them. Listen to this from 1st Corinthians 618 through 19. Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you are bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. This would have been so radical for the time because there have been competing views throughout history that either we are just supposed to pursue physical pleasure and whatever feels good in our minds. We simply use our bodies to accomplish that end. Or there is a denial of the physical

altogether in almost the stoicism to deny ourselves any sort of pleasure saying the body is bad. Well, this passage from 1 Corinthians is speaking against both of those, saying, no, your body is important. Your body has a purpose. Your body houses the Holy Spirit, and you aren't supposed to just pursue fleeting pleasure in the way of sexual immorality. You are supposed to glorify God with your body. Your body is a temple, Christian, of the Holy Spirit. You are not just a stack of bones. If you are a Christian, the Spirit of God dwells in your body.

You are supposed to glorify God in your body. Jesus Christ didn't come as a spirit, as a hologram, as a mirage, he took on flesh. He grew in Mary's body. He lived in a real body. He endured real pain in his body. He suffered real death in his body. He was raised in his body. It was a bodily resurrection.

He healed people's bodies. After his resurrection, his bodily resurrection, he was no longer in the tomb. The stone was rolled away, not because he was a ghost that could just, go through walls, which of course he had the power to do so because he is all powerful, but he rolled away the stone and physically walked out of that tomb. You'll remember that Thomas had to feel the wounds on Jesus's hands where the nails were driven through on the cross to really believe that was Jesus' body. The body matters. God believes he knows the body matters. The body is part of redemption, not just in the way of Christ taking on flesh to become our eternal

perfect sacrifice, but in the way of our own bodies being resurrected and living eternally. In 1 Corinthians 15, we read this, but someone will ask, how are the dead raised? We're talking about the resurrection of the bodies that will happen at the end of time. How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come? You foolish person, Paul says, God through Paul says, what you sow does not come to life unless it dies. I would just like to insert here, like I always like to do, that those who are overly concerned about tone, all of us can become very sensitive and easily offended by tone.

I always wonder, like, how people who are overly concerned with tone, how they feel when they read the words of Paul, who is inspired by the Holy Spirit, or read the words of Jesus of Jesus himself. They are very harsh and very direct sometimes in their language for the sake of speaking the truth and love. He goes on to say, so is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is stone is perishable. What is raised is imperishable in a moment in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised imperishable. And we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable and this mortal body must put on immortality.

Romans 822 through 23. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth. until now, and not only the creation, but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the spirit grown inwardly as we eagerly await for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. We will have renewed, imperishable, invulnerable, eternal bodies in which to dwell with Christ forever and ever. They're not bodies completely different from our earthly bodies, the gender that God gave us in the womb, we are going to have forever and ever. They are our bodies new and improved and made to last perfectly forever. God made the body. He cares about the body. The body has

both temporal and eternal significance. And its teleology, according to the Christian worldview, its telos is not just to function how God says that it's supposed to function here on earth, but for the Christian, it is to last forever, redeemed and renewed and restored without sickness or pain or decay. God cares so much about his creation that he is going to redeem it. And that includes the bodies that he created of the believers who follow him. And if he cares enough about our physical bodies to do all of that, we can bet he both knows and cares about what we do with our bodies here on earth. And we see that he does throughout Scripture. We honor God with our bodies by acknowledging and submitting to the functions that he has given them in the same way that you honor any created

item by using it according to the function its designer made it for. This is why we abide by what he says when it comes to sex, when it comes to procreation, when it comes to what he says to put in our bodies, when it comes to marriage and on the most fundamental basic level, when it comes to acknowledging our bodies in accordance to his design of gender. First chapter of the Bible, very basic, core tenet of our faith. Genesis 1.27 through 28 and 31. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him.

Male and female, he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. And have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth. And God saw everything that he made. and behold, it was very good. I have heard an interpretation before by self-identifying progressive Christian that male and female in this passage don't actually mean male and female, that they actually represent a broad spectrum, a broad range of possibilities. There's nothing there that indicates that.

I made sure that I was correct on this, but the Hebrew word used for male is zachar, which means. man, which means male. The word used for female in this passage is Nakeba. I'm sorry, my Hebrew is not great, meaning female. That's it. There's no nuance there. It means male. It means female. It means man. It means woman. They can also actually describe a male, like a male animal, but it is describing the two distinct genders. Genesis 224 says, therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. So what do we see from these first chapters of the Bible about human beings?

That God creates them. God defines them. God defines their union. He defines what the family looks like and defines their function. He said, your man, your maiden are, the trinities, father, son and the Holy Spirit, image in that you can reason. You are a moral creature. You are also a spiritual creature, but you're not the same you two, Adam and Eve.

You are both human image bearers, but you are man, you are woman in accordance with the bodies in which I created you. And here's what you're to do. You're to have sex and have babies and have dominion over and steward the earth and all that inhabits it. So God does not give human beings the authority to self-create to self-define or self-identify. He does these things himself as the creator, as the designer, as the ultimate authority. The fall of man and the entrance of sin doesn't change these things.

Human goodness was diminished through the fall, not God's authority. Humans changed. God did not. He still is the designer, the designer, the definer, the identifier of all things. That's what Christians believe as a core basic tenet of our faith. We hold to Genesis 1-1. The most controversial verse in the Bible, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. That necessarily means that God says what is and what isn't,

what's true and what's not, what's right and what's wrong, what we're here for and what we're not here for. How our bodies are supposed to function in how they are not. We have said that sentence a million times on this podcast, it seems. We see God's designation of male and female and the goodness of their marital union throughout Scripture, including by Jesus himself. This is Matthew 19, 4 through 6. he answered, have you not read? They're asking about divorce. He says, have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said, therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to

his wife and the two shall become one flesh? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separates. And by the way, people often say, you know, Jesus didn't talk about these controversial topics, these cultural topics, so we shouldn't care about them either. Well, first of all, he does clearly. In Matthew 19, he speaks to both gender and marriage and the definition of what those things are. And by the way, let's remember that Jesus is God.

Whatever God the Father says is good and right and true in the Old Testament, Jesus agrees. John 1-1 in the beginning was the Word Jesus and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made. So male and female, Adam and Eve, the genders were made through Christ. Anyone who says Jesus doesn't care about this subject is simply theologically confused at best and totally deceived at worst. Christians reject the secular idea that the body is arbitrary or up for redefining,

that we self-define our genders, that our feelings dictate who we are and what our so-called gender identity is. God made our bodies gendered as male and female, and those bodies have a telos that is designated by him, not our feelings and not popular culture. This idea of gender identity actually came from a guy named John Money. He was a psychologist from Johns Hopkins, who in the 1960s, he tested this theory that he had. He had what was then considered a very radical theory about nature versus nurture. He believed that really most of what human beings do in how we think is a product of nurture, and especially when it comes to gender and sexuality.

And so he wanted to test this theory on a boy whose genitals had been maimed in a circumcision. The boy was named David Reimer. And per the encouragement of Dr. Money, I think that's how you pronounce it, not Mony, but I'm not sure. He had his genitals removed was given art of, officially constructed female anatomy and was raised as a girl named Brenda by his parents and was given female hormones during puberty. Money's theory and what he told Reimer's parents was that this will be absolutely no problem. All you got to do is dress him like a girl, tell him he's a girl, give him some hormones, and he'll be a girl and be completely comfortable with that. Now, what I'm

about to say is even more disturbing than what I just said. So if you got kids in the car, if you don't, if you're in public, I don't know, if you're around something that you don't, you don't want people to hear this next part. I'm just warning you. Throughout his adolescence, this boy's adolescence, John Money also forced him and his identical twin brother to perform sex acts on each other in front of him. And actually in an article for the Rolling Stone, this boy or this man recalls memories from his childhood and graphically, pretty graphically and specifically described.

what John Money had him and his brother do to each other. And when they refused to do that because they were obviously uncomfortable, their kids and they're also related, money would verbally abuse them until they complied. And by the way, he made sure other colleagues watched these sexual interactions between the brothers and captured photographs of this happening, you know, just for research, totally above board stuff. And these pictures are still around. they are currently being held as property of the Kinsey Institute, which is an institute that was started by Alfred Kinsey, who was an outspoken defender of pedophilia. Listen to this, just a little

side note on this. Listen to this from the Seattle Times in 1995. In the last week, the director of the Kinsey Institute revealed that Kinsey's research conclusions on the sexuality of young children were based not on scientific study, but on the secret history of a single pedophile who kept a diary of his experiences with 317 pre-adolescent boys. So Alfred Kinsey, he asserted this what he called a scientific theory, that kids are sexual, that they should be free to engage sexually. And he said that this was a scientific finding. It was actually on the account of a pedophile whose testimony and whose experiences Kinsey used to base these so-called findings. He encouraged this guy, this pedophile to send him very graphic accounts of his sexual encounters with boys and their reaction to it.

Of course, this pedophile asserted that, oh, these sexual interactions are all great and well and good and they like it. And Alfred Kinsey said, yes and amen. That sounds wonderful. I completely agree. So the Kinsey Institute started by a pedophile, started by a pedophile pervert. He has the pictures of the interactions between poor David Reimer and his brother that was forced on them by another pedophile pervert, John Money. So all of this that we're talking about, this gender identity, the public opinion now, the secular opinion about sex and sexuality and gender is based

in large part when it comes to this particular part of progressive gender theory on the unscientific findings of these two perverts. Their ideas were not just perverted, but they were also philosophical in nature. They come from this idea that some Enlightenment philosophers and leaders psychologists like Freud believe that the body is dictated and defined by the mind and can be nurtured into doing whatever we want it to do and can be defined by whatever we want it to be defined by, that our biology can be adapted based on how we feel, what we think in our environment and new social and cultural trends. Remember, as a I've said, progressive such as these, these people were progressives for their heirs, they get human

nature wrong. They put way too much emphasis on nurture, discounting the intentional, teleological nature of the world, and in particular our physical bodies. Some nature, like gender, cannot actually be changed. And this actually all goes back to a godless Darwinianism view of human nature and the world that basically says we are just clumps of cells, we're just material beings, we're just bags of bones, everything is. Everything just happened by chance and you determine what you're for and you determine your nature. This is materialistic, godless view of the body. This whole theory of gender identity comes from this Darwinistic godless view of the body that was perpetuated, unfortunately, by abusers like the ones that I just listed. Both the Ryman brothers committed suicide later in

their lives, by the way. Both of them did. the boy who was raised as a girl, insisted when he was an adolescent that he was, that he was a boy. He knew he was uncomfortable as a girl. He finally had surgery, removing his artificial hormone induced breasts and married a woman and adopted children, which is wonderful. And I wish the story ended differently. But his mental health deteriorated, as did his brothers.

And they both died by suicide a few years apart. So if there's not a, if this is an example, not an example of a failed experiment. I don't know what is. And the research of this wicked person who conducted it is where we get this idea of gender identity being separate from your sex. And it's just not. It's just not. It's not just anatomy that makes us different. We are gendered in every cell of our bodies. Are there disorders? Are there anomalies that happen very rarely? Of course. Of course. consider those anomalies. But for the vast majority of people, how people are made and are supposed to be made, the natural and the normal makeup of the body is that every cell of our body is gendered.

There are very, very, very rare anomalies, and they are anomalies and disorders where this is not the case. We are gendered down to our DNA. Boys and girls' brains develop differently in the womb. Boys have denser bones. They have greater aerobic and anaerobic capacity than girls do. If you have ever watched girl and boy toddlers play together, you immediately see how differently they relate to people and objects. Very, uh, there's a lot of similarities. But there's also some very basic differences that you see that are not nurtured, but they are nature. Are there outliers? Of course. But boys and girls are distinct. Our sex, our bodies mean something. We are not just clumps of cells. We are not just bags of bones who are self-defining and self-creating.

and self-creating. That doesn't mean that boys have to abide by every stereotypical definition of masculinity to really be a boy. It doesn't mean that girls have to fit every stereotypical of definition of femininity either. That's actually the beauty and the freedom of the biblical, the fixed, the scientific view of male and female, is that a boy who likes ballet is just as much a boy as the boy who likes football. A girl who likes dirt bikes is just as much a girl as the who likes Barbies. Ironically, it's actually the progressive gender theory that reinforces the most stereotypical descriptions of male and female.

Women who say that they identify as men start dressing in baggy clothes. They cut their hair. They change their name. Men who identify as women often present in a way that is overly and sometimes sexually feminine. They change how they talk, how they move their body. Sometimes they put on lots of makeup, et cetera. And not only that, but progress. Gender Theory also emphasizes the importance of our anatomy, even while saying that it's arbitrary.

They say that your anatomy doesn't define your gender. But very often when a person decides to identify as the opposite sex, they seek to change their anatomy to fit their gender identity, which means that they actually think anatomy means and matters a lot. Another contradiction and point of confusion that we are going to continue to see in this is the obfuscation of science. orientation. If gender is independent from your anatomy and your anatomy is basically meaningless, then what does it really mean to be gay or a lesbian? Are those even real categories anymore? And what about feminism? Is there such thing as elevating women's rights if anyone can be a woman by mere declaration? Is having biological men compete against girls and women in sports? occupy women's private spaces like bathrooms and domestic abuse shelters, is that a win for women's

rights and equality? And what if children, if children have the authority and autonomy at age eight to declare themselves a different gender, should parents even have a say in that? And if they have that authority, that autonomy, that ability to make those kinds of decisions that can sometimes have lifelong effects, depending on what route is taken by parents and doctors, by that logic, why don't they then have the authority to then decide that they want to be in a relationship with an older person? If we are giving the children the authority to deny their biological reality and change their identity, then by that logic, what would be stopping children from having the authority to do anything? Which was, of course, the fantasy of the psychologist who came up with these ideas in the first place and experimented them on children.

Have we even thought about what we're doing to these kids' bodies? who doctors are allowing to take cross-sex hormones before they go into puberty, causing irreparable harm to their reproductive systems before their frontal lobes are developed enough to make long-term decisions. Our frontal lobes aren't even fully developed into or 25. You remember how stupid you were as a teenager? I mean, think about the things that you believed when you were a kid. I mean, kids are very smart. Teenagers can be very smart. Obviously, they're very valuable. But our brains are developed. We think stupid things. We believe stupid things. We don't have the ability to be able to make long-term decisions. That's why we have parents. That's why God gave us

that structure to protect us and to guide us and to help us grow under a shelter until we have the ability to be out on our own. Abigail Schreier wrote irreversible damage for this reason. She argues, based on research, not just her own opinion, that there is actually a social contagion of transgenderism among young girls who previously never identified as trans, never indicated that they were in the so-called wrong body, and no one is stopping them from ruining their bodies, their fertility, their voices for the rest of their lives. We've already seen parents have their children taken away from them because they don't affirm their child's new so-called gender identity. I guarantee you that fight is on the march as we speak. They're coming for your kids. They're coming

for parental rights. They're coming for the breakdown of the family in the name of the progressive gender revolution. Joe Biden declared on the first day of that on the first day of his presidency, he will force federally funded schools to allow students to go to the locker room, bathroom, and play on the sports team in accordance to their, quote, gender identity. So that means that, yes, a boy who identifies as a girl who may, by the way, still be attracted to girls will have full authority under the Biden administration to share a bathroom in a locker room with your 12-year-old daughter, to smoke your daughter in track, to dunk on your daughter in basketball if they go to a public school, and through the Equality Act, which will get passed

if Democrats take the Senate, Georgia, this will apply to private schools as well. The fact is, these kids and people in general who are struggling with a very real dysphoria where they truly feel that they are trapped in the wrong body are not getting the help that they need in many cases because it is politically incorrect. to question someone's declaration of their new gender identity, even when they're eight years old. Rather than trying to reconcile the mind with the body, the mode of operation today, in modern medicine, in culture, is to try to reconcile the body with the mind by maiming it, which again is causing irreversible damage. And the suicide rate, even post-transitioned, is still astronomically

higher among transgender people than it is for non-transgender people. Not just in America, by the way, some people like to say, oh, it's American bigotry that's causing that, but it's not just in America, it's throughout the world and even much more progressive places like Sweden. Because we are not treating people with the real compassion that they need. We're treating them like secular sclerity cats who have bought into the unscientific idea, that our bodies mean nothing. They have no tel-os and can be changed as our feelings and thoughts and political and social whims see fit.

We are going against our tel-os, and we are both individual. and we are seeing both individual and societal ramifications for it. And this will come down hardest. The consequences will be bared the most and the most harshly by women and children. The most vulnerable are always hit the hardest by progressive movements. Always. It is going to be women and children that suffer the most from this. The church must be the place where confers.

Fused people come for clarity, where hurt people come for healing, where people weighed down by the constant contradictions and the vapidness of the world come for consistency and for substance. We have to be the source of love, true love for people who struggle with gender dysphoria, who struggle with any sense of the temptation to defy the purpose and design of our body sexually, through self-harm, through denial of their God-given gender. We have to understand these issues. We have to understand the secular philosophy behind. mind-body dualism. We have to know why. From scripture, we hold to the fact that there are two genders,

why the body matters. We have to have an ontological view of the world and the body. We must point to a better way and say, while the world has a degrading view of the body, Christianity radically has a dignified, sacred, beautiful, honoring view of the body and sex and gender and gender roles. They're both for God's glory and our good. That's what living, out our telos does, it glorifies God and it serves our good and consequently the good of the world. God loves you. He loves us. He loves you who are struggling. You who are confused, you who are tempted. He loves you. He is not mad at you for being tempted or for struggling or for being confused. It is not a sin to be tempted. Hebrews 415 says, for we do not have a high priest, Jesus, who is unable to

sympathize with our weaknesses. But one who in every reason, respect has been tempted as we are and yet is without sin. That is Jesus. God made flesh, our spotless lamb, our perfect sacrifice. He was tempted in every way, yet was still sinless. This Jesus loves you and wants what is best for you, even and especially when you are tempted to deny your tel loss in any way. He wants to take care of you. He sent his son, God sent in his son, Jesus to die for you so that you could be forgiven from your sins to walk in freedom and obedience and to live with him forever in a glorified, renewed body that will be fully healed and fully whole. He loves your body. He made your body. He calls it good. He gave you your gender, your sex in the womb, and he calls it

good. And the gender he gave us in the womb will be the gender if you are a Christian that will be in, that will define our glorified bodies forever. That is good. The world does not love. love you. God loves you. The world does not love you. The world simply celebrates and affirms whatever is popular at the time. It's why they celebrate transitioners and people who come out but mock detransitioners and people who decide to embrace biblical sexuality. They don't care about you. They don't care about your body. They certainly do not care about your soul. They don't even believe you have a soul. God does. He defines us, not our thoughts and feelings, which are so often unreliable. We cannot be surprised that this is the way that culture has gone. This is godless postmodernism.

It's been moving forward for a long time, the rejection of a transcendent source of truth, the rejection of absolute universal truth, exchanging the God of Scripture for the God of self and ending up with a whole lot of confusion. But Christians must be absolutely certain where we stand. And we need to be agents of love and hope and truth. For those who show up at our door weary from the long journey of carrying the worldly burdens of self-definition and self-identification, we point them to Jesus, who gives them an easy yoke and a light burden, the giver of truth, the perfect embodiment of love. His way is better. We have to believe that. And that's the most loving thing that we can say. People say it's loving to agree with,

with new progressive mantras on gender to use preferred pronouns and to refer to biological men or women who identify as the opposite sex as their new gender identity? But if we believe God and we believe in his tell us that he has given the universe, including human beings, if we believe in Genesis 1-1, if we believe in his gospel, how can we say that affirming this heavy confusion and this denial of reality and hatred of the body is loving? It is one of the most hateful things that we can possibly do. We cannot outlove God, as I said in the beginning of this episode.

God is love, as 1 John 4-8 says. So our affirmation of a lie about someone's gender is not love because the God who is love tells us what gender really is in Genesis and tells us not to lie in Exodus, both of which are reiterated throughout Scripture, one of the Ten Commandments, which Christians honor as part of God's moral law that is reestablishes, by Jesus in the New Testament is do not bear false witness. Lying, according to God, is a sin. So if the God, who is love, both tells us what gender really is and tells us that we can't lie, then it is not loving to call a biological male a she. We can use their legal name,

since that's really their name, and we would be speaking truth to say what their legal name is. but pronouns correspond to a biological reality. They always have. They did an ancient Israel. They do today. And Christians are lying when we affirm something that isn't true about another person. I would also avoid giving pronouns, giving your pronouns if you were asked. That to me is not lying, but it's implicitly, or maybe explicitly agreeing with the idea that gender, identity, and sex are separate and are self-defined.

and you who know what is true do not need to give in even an inch to that conversation. And in the midst of all of this, we continue to be kind, we continue to befriend, we continue to bless those who curse us, we continue to engage, we continue to be hospitable and generous and open. We don't run from people and make them feel shame. Remember, all unbelieving people, all unbelieving people, including us when we were unbelieving, are repenting first from unbelief, not from a laundry list. of other sins. That is the sin that we must primarily deal with, that the Holy Spirit primarily deals with,

not all the other stuff, which will be worked out through sanctification, and it will and must be worked out. So when we see someone who is transgender or who is denying their bodies tell us in any way, that is actually not our chief concern. Our chief concern is that their heart needs to know God. That's our chief concern about all unbelievers, no matter what their sins are. And as ambassadors for Christ, we show his love and hospitality as much as we possibly can. His definition of love and hospitality, by the way, not the worlds. That may mean open conversations about why you can't use certain pronouns with a consistent emphasis on your love for someone as a person and your eagerness to be their friend.

It's a difficult age that we live in. It's a difficult time that we live in. You will continue to be lambasted for this. You will get pushed back. You will explain it in the most gracious and generous. and loving and caring way that you possibly can. And yet you will still get told that you are heartless, that you are hateful, that you are mean,

that you are judgmental, that you lack nuance, that you're uneducated. Of course, you're going to be told all of this because you are holding fast to the truth that will grow increasingly unpopular, but it's worth it. It's eternally worth it. Okay, that's all I have for today.

I will see you guys back here on Wednesday.