Twisted: I'll Tell You Who I am?

INTRODUCTION:

Mr. Rogers and our mothers told us, “You can be anything we want to be.” Most of us thought it had to do with our careers or jobs.

I told my kids they could be anything they want to be. So, our oldest son is an estimator for a construction company, our second born is an ER doctor, our first daughter is a submarine officer, and our youngest is a school teacher who has been promoted to a stay at home mom.

Ben Carson was told that by his mother, so he became a neurosurgeon and HUD secretary for the United States.

Dylan Mulvany evidently listened to Mr. Rogers so he became “the woman of the year” by Attitude Magazine and the spokesperson for Bud Light.

We have seen a 6’1”man who goes by the name of Leah Thomas win the NCAA Division 1 National Women’s Championship. It is interesting how the wording of articles about Leah Thomas begins with “Thomas was assigned male at birth.”

Transgenderism has not been something on just the television screen for me. I have ministered to individuals and family who have wrestled with this.

I think of my first encounter with a man who was a crossdresser. After counseling him for many months, I asked him a simple question: “Do you want to get well?” His answer was “I just don’t want to get rid of that identity.”

I have ministered to families in which their daughters in their early twenties elected to present themselves as men and who not only began to have hormone treatments but also reassignment surgery.

One of the leaders of the Independent Christian Churches who slept in our home and who I looked up to for years, has transitioned from Paul to Paula.

As a kid in 1976, I was an admirer of the Olympics. You know the “Thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.” I remember watching Bruce Jenner winning the Olympic gold in the decathlon in the Montreal Olympics. Bruce was a married man and fathered children. It seemed like he had everything a man could want – an impressive athletic career, family, fame and fortune. But then people began to notice a change in him, he was taking on a softer appearance.

On April 24, 2015, in an interview with Diane Sawyer, he went public. He told the world who he was. Bruce Jenner announced he was transsexual saying, “for all intents and purposes, I’m a woman…call me Caitlyn.”

How did our culture respond to Bruce Jenner deciding to become Caitlyn Jenner?

In July of that year, Vanity Fair magazine featured him on their magazine cover.

In August, Jenner won the Social Media Queen award at the Teen Choice Awards.

In October, Glamour magazine named her one of its 25 Glamour Women of the Year, calling him a “Trans Champion.”

In December 2015, he was named Barbara Walters’ Most Fascinating Person of 2015

Jenner said to Diane Sawyer in that April interview, “I would sit in church and always wonder, ‘In God’s eyes, how does he see me?’”

That’s the right question. How does God see me?

How does God see those struggling with their sexual identity?

What does God think about people who have a man’s body, but believe they have a woman’s mind, and visa versa?

If this was an issue that only involved individuals, personally and privately, then we might attempt to only address the topic with those individuals when they cross our paths.

But, unfortunately, it doesn’t just impact individuals, personally and privately, it is an issue that has been thrust into the public forum and is being championed in our culture.

The media is filled with transgender characters and messages; including in literature, theater, TV, movies, music and web series.

Many public schools are educating their students (our children) about transgenderism, and in some cases the indoctrination begins in the kindergarten, with books like “I Am Jazz.”

Endorsed by the American Library Association, the “Drag Queen Story Hour” has spread to twenty-one states, targeting preschool and grade school children with homosexuality and transgenderism in public libraries.

The Associated Press made a film of a “Drag Queen Story Hour” in New York.

And in one scene, the drag queen asked the children, “Who wants to be a drag queen when they grown up?” And the little children raised their hands and squealed, “Meeee!!!”

And surely none of us have missed the lawsuits concerning transgender bathrooms.

Or the transgender student who sexually assaulted a girl at school and they transferred this male who posses as a girl to another school and assaulted another girl.

Yes, this is an issue that cannot be avoided and must be understood and addressed.

The Twist: I Can Be Anything I Want to Be.

God gave us great potential. We can strive to be a lot of things. However, our culture tells us we can truly be anything we feel like being and the rest of society must adjust to that individuals feelings.

I will attempt to graciously and biblically answer four questions:

EXPLANATION:

1. What is Gender Identity and Transgenderism?

A person’s “sex” refers to the biological classification of a person as male or female based on physical features.

A person’s “gender” refers to the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex.

Until only recently, Americans linked one’s gender to one’s sex. A person’s way of understanding themselves and of relating to the world (gender) was considered a product of the person’s biology (sex).

However today their inward feeling of their gender – might be the same or different as their physical, biological sex.

When someone is biologically one gender, but feels in his or her mind that they are another gender, the street term for that is called transgender.

The proper medical term is gender dysphoria.

Transgenderism seems to be everywhere in the media. .

Researchers estimate that there are more than a 1.3 million people over age thirteen in North America who identify as transgender.

To relieve the pain of the difference between one’s biological identity and his or her felt gender identity:

Before recent national obsession with transgenderism psychologists treated gender dysphoria with counseling and medication.

Some transgenders cross-dress

some get opposite sex hormone treatment

others go as far as having gender reassignment surgery.

2. What Does Science Say About Gender Identity?

Sometimes the phrase used to describe the feeling of a transgendered person is that they are a “female trapped in a man’s body” or visa versa.

What does science say about this phenomenon? Is it biological? Is it psychological? Both?

The truthful answer is that science doesn’t know.

Scientists have tested a theory called “the hormone wash theory” – it speculates that perhaps something happens during the fetal development cycle that results in gender dysphoria.

But to date there is no evidence of any differences in brain chemicals of those who suffer from gender dysphoria and those who don’t.

The Human Genome Project has identified all the genes in the human DNA and they did not find any homosexual gene or transgender gene. There are no genetic abnormalities between those who experience transgender desires and those who don’t.

By God’s design, biology is precise – there are only two biological sexes.

Every male has an X and a Y chromosome, and every female has two X chromosomes.

There are no other combinations and there is no doubt about a person’s sex.

A survey of Dutch psychologists revealed that gender identity issues are not the only psychological problem for those with gender dysphoria.

1. For instance, 25 % of those struggling with gender identity disorder are also schizophrenic.

2. 75 % of patients struggling with gender identity disorder are clinically diagnosed with a psychiatric illness, personality disorder, or mood dissociative disorder.

3. Gender identity disorders are almost always a secondary problem sourced from a much deeper psychological issue.

4. Tragically, child sexual abuse is often a cause of gender confusion and sexual orientation issues.

5. Experts say that when there is no child sexual abuse or other psychiatric issues, most children outgrow any gender confusion by puberty.

As Christians, we want to know the causes so that we can better minister to those who suffer.

As the University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Paul McHugh, explains: “[Gender dysphoria] belongs in the family of similarly disordered assumptions about the body, such as anorexia nervosa and body dysmorphic disorder. Its treatment should not be directed at the body as with surgery and hormones any more than one treats obesity-fearing anorexic patients with liposuction. The treatment should strive to correct the false, problematic nature of the assumption and to resolve the psychosocial conflicts provoking it. With youngsters, this is best done in family therapy.”

3. What Does the Bible Say about Gender Identity?

This is the main question that must be answered: Is gender or sexual identity set by a preference of the individual or by the providence of God?

Or to put it another way: from whom do I get my identity from me or God?

Humans were created not a cosmic accident

Creation is where the Bible story begins, and it is where a Christian’s thinking about transgender must begin.

Each person is created and loved by God.

Each person is a creature not a machine.

Each person has freedom that comes from God.

True freedom, according to Scripture, is found not in asserting our radical independence and in trying to be who we are not made to be.

True freedom is found in embracing and being who we are by God’s design.

A fish that decides to make a bid for freedom by jumping out of the water will not be free – because it is created to live in the environment of water.

And as soon as we try and become what we are not, far from enjoying freedom, we can’t expect to flourish.

This conviction – that we’re creatures, not machines – has enormous implications.

Genesis 1:27–28 (ESV)

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.”

God created both male and female

equal in their opportunity to relate to God as His image bearers, and equal in their call to rule over God’s world.

So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man—Genesis 2:21–22 (ESV).

God created both male and female and brings together genders to form the oneness of marriage.

Men and women are different, but are always complementary.

Jesus affirms that God created both male and female and that our gender matters.

Matthew 19:3–6 (ESV)

And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” He answered, “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 separate.”

The Bible distinguishes between the genders, pointing out the beauty of each gender complementing the other.

Just as God stands as head over His creation and His creatures, so we must reflect God’s order as male and female in our complementary roles and relationships.

To the level that we flatten the inborn distinctions between maleness and femaleness, we flatten the distinctions between the sovereign savior and the saved.

We take glory away from God when we act as though distinctions between men and women are non-existent, or unimportant.

That’s why we see in God’s commands a clear distinction between men and women.

Deuteronomy 22:5 (ESV)

“A woman shall not wear a man’s garment, nor shall a man put on a woman’s cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God.

See also 1 Corinthians 11:1-16; 1 Corinthians 14:34-35; 1 Timothy 2:8-15; Ephesians 5:21-33 .

The biblical truths about sex and gender are confirmed in real life, although sin has often stained God’s gifts of sex and gender.

God’s design and His Will has room for only two sexes – male and female

APPLICATION:

4. How Should Christians Respond?

Overarching Principle: Truth should never trump compassion but compassion should never compromise the truth.

1. Let’s be quick to repent and slow to judge

Whenever we are confronted with an unbiblical lifestyle or a cultural shift that we find morally reprehensible, the church should first remember that we are a people redeemed from our own state of sinfulness.

2. Let’s grieve

let’s grieve deeply over the brokenness of our culture and the depravity Satan has led so many people into and how he is holding them in his trap.

3. Let’s love and care

We must be mindful of those broken by transgender identity crisis, and care deeply for the violators and the violated.

We need to help those struggling with transgender identity to find a new identity in Christ, and to help those who have been hurt by others find the healing and relief that only Jesus brings.

We must also oppose the bullying of anyone for their differences

4. Let’s pray

Let’s pray that God will soon right all wrongs; that He will open blind eyes, and quicken hard hearts; that He will preserve His church and give us the courage to share the truth.

5. Let’s model the God-honoring views of maleness and femaleness

Let’s model for our kids and the world what it means to lovingly live out true manliness and femaleness.

Let’s celebrate men being masculine and women being feminine while realizing that there can be a wide difference in interests and temperament, even while maintaining a distinction between the sexes.

6. Let’s stand up for the truth

We must speak with grace and conviction – most people are not repulsed by conviction, but can be deeply offended by condemnation.

We can make our voices known in the political process with our elected representatives.

And there may be some who feel led to hold positions of influence on school boards or other elected positions.

7. Let’s hold out hope .

To those who feel there is no hope for them. If you are experiencing gender identity issues or sexual orientation confusion, then please talk with someone you trust.

Grace, mercy and help are available from God and from God’s people.

Laura was a single woman in her 40s. She had curves, shining blonde hair and red lipstick. She grabbed the attention of both men and women whenever she entered a room.

One day, while meeting with her counselor, she asked him if he could help her find a church. She hadn’t been to one in years but recently she wanted to learn more about God and what God thought about her life.

That conversation led Laura to try different churches. Many rejected her when they found out her story, but one church accepted her, helped her, and when she confessed her secrets, they set up a special prayer team for her.

Each week she wrote a letter to a group of 30 in the church who committed to pray for her.

As you probably guessed, Laura was not a traditional woman. Laura was a surgical woman. She was born a he.

His birth name was Walt. Walt grew up distant from his parents. As a child, when he stayed at his grandmother’s, she made him wear girl clothes. His grandfather repeatedly molested him.

As a young man, he confessed his sexual shame and guilt to an episcopal priest and instead of helping him, the priest sexually propositioned him.

Thankfully Walt ran, but he didn’t just run from the priest, he ran from God.

Walt says that as a boy, for as long as he can remember, he always felt that deep inside he was a woman. As a young man, he repressed those feelings.

He married, had children, and went on to work at NASA in the Apollo program.

He later worked for Toyota and was part of the team that birthed the Acura car line.

All the guilt and sexual shame of his youth never went away. It came bursting to the surface. He could no longer deny it. Deep inside he felt he was a woman, not a man.

Eventually he divorced his wife and left his family.

Trying to be true to his inner self, he underwent sex change surgery to become a woman.

Even after becoming a stunning woman, he discovered it was’t all it was cracked up to be.

He knew something wasn’t right. He wondered what God would say to him and about his life. That is what began his mid-life search for a church.

As I already mentioned, a church and a minister eventually took him under their wings.

After listening to God’s Word and studying it, Walt repented of his sin and gave his life to Christ. God’s spirit made it unmistakably clear that God’s will for his life was to be the biological gender God assigned him at birth.

His struggles didn’t magically disappear. In his biography Walt describes years of wrestling with his gender identity.

He worked a job as one gender and lived at home as another gender, changing in the car on the way home. Even though he knew what was right he couldn’t shake his inner female gender identity.

God in his grace eventually helped a therapist to notice something.

The Walt side of him acted one way, the Laura side of him acted another way.

The Laura side of Walt had different hand writing and even different tastes in food than the male side of Walt.

Walt was diagnosed with a multiple personality disorder that developed in early childhood.

As a child trying to deal with the shame of molestation, his brain developed the alternate personality of a woman.

After years of therapy, his multiple personality disorder was solved.

Today he is one person. He is a man all the time – Walt Heyer is his name.

The amazing part of the story is as Walt grew in his faith, he eventually met and married a woman.

He went on to become the director of care ministries at a large church in California.

Even though God turned his life around, he still suffers from the results of his life-altering irreversible sex change surgery.

He has a letter of apology from the physician that performed the surgery asking forgiveness for performing the irreversible surgery and not digging further to discover that his identity disorder came from a psychological condition.

Today he runs the web site https://sexchangeregret.com.

He is the author of many books that tell the other side of gender dysphoria that you don’t hear about in the media.

Brothers and sisters, the hope for Bruce Jenner, and for others like him in our community, is not to alter their bodies with surgery or flood their systems with hormones as they try to fix the mistake, they believe God made in their physical births.

What they need, and what all of us need, is a new birth through Jesus Christ.

He is the only one that fixes what is wrong with each of us.

May all of us continue to surrender ourselves to God as we walk in obedience as the men and women of God as He made us.

COMMUNION:

2 Corinthians 5:16–21 (ESV)

From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.