I never dreamed I’d live in a world where real live humans would be talking about “the harm of infant gender assignment”, saying of their expecting baby: “We’re going to wait and let it choose which gender it identifies with”, and calling you a cruel parent if you announce the gender of your child before this monumental event.
“Obstetricians, doctors, and midwives commit this procedure on infants every single day, in every single country. In reality, this treatment is performed almost universally without even asking for the parents’ consent, making this practice all the more insidious. It’s called infant gender assignment: When the doctor holds your child up to the harsh light of the delivery room, looks between its legs, and declares his opinion: It’s a boy or a girl, based on nothing more than a cursory assessment of your offspring’s genitals.” From Don’t Let the Doctor Do This to Your Newborn
Nevertheless, I’m not going to talk about that in this post. I can’t. I simply can’t contend with the illogical, irrational belief that definitive evidence of Science isn’t enough for the declaration of gender.
Contrasted with the craziness of our gender confused culture, Rebekah Merkle’s Eve in Exile has given me a refreshed idea of the BEAUTY and the POWER of gender difference, specifically, how being a woman is so immensely wonderful, even though it’s a tenet I’ve never questioned.
And, can you even wrap your head around this? Our culture is fighting for a person’s right to deny his own biological assignment, but simultaneously persecutes the one who chooses to embrace it and celebrate it? I can be a man if I’m really a woman (and you will celebrate me and tell me I’m brave and maybe even the Woman of the Year), but how dare I act like a woman if I really am. Maddening and void of absolutely any shred of logic.
As a woman, I am different and I believe that difference makes the human race better. In my difference, I get to translate the gospel (in a thousand ways) using what God gave distinctly to me. Using a favorite analogy from the book, Merkle explains that invitations are framed in the language of what the men are to wear: “black tie” etc. but it’s the women who translate the “rule” and glorify it, and the others wait to see what she wears. The red carpet is about the woman’s attire. Because she is dressed differently, femininely, beautifully, even though it was a “black tie affair”, we want to see her. We want to see her version, her unique outworking of the dress code.
Why? Because women, in their differences, translate beauty and glorify everything.
Listening to a harmonious ensemble, we are glad for the different parts. It is precisely what makes it better, beautiful. How awful if everyone sang the same note!
As Merkle aptly stated, if men are the skeleton, women are the bones. If men are the words, women are the music. If men are the radio waves, women are the amplifiers.
We GET to be that.
How glorious it is to be woman, to be different, and to use my differences to improve everything around me.
Instead of putting our efforts into screaming about equality, what if women threw themselves into being women, in all their distinctness and uniqueness and giftedness, preaching the gospel through their fingertips, lending their harmonious parts to the great symphony called life?
“So be the glory of your husband. Be the concentrated, intoxicating, incarnate poetry that tells the story of death and resurrection, and then throw yourself into the task of glorifying. Be fruitful. Build your house. Work hard. Be ambitious. Be productive. Learn more. Run harder. Take the gifts God has given you, the desires He has given you, the constraints he has given you, and then figure out how to weave those into something glorious, something compelling, a beautiful aroma that can’t b contained and that beckons a broken world to come and taste, to see that the Lord is good.”
22 comments
Thank you for being a beautiful and encouraging voice of reason in the growing craziness of the world we live in!
Thank you for stopping in and letting me hear your voice of reason. 😀
I agree fully.
What they do not openly recognize is that if we all chose to be the other gender, there might be “celebration” of sorts, but mankind would become extinct in short order. We need both real men and real women to continue on.
I am proud to be able to be a real, creative woman and thank God that I can carry out what His purpose is for me. I am glad my husband is a real man.
We do not need parades…we do not need “outings” to be proud. We do not need to be loud nor push our agenda.
What we need to do is teach our children to be proud of their God given identity, be kind to those who are mislead, and teach our children how to respectfully share with others God’s mercy that is salvation. Their sin is essentially no different than mine. Their core problem, as is mine, is that they need to turn God. He will guide them in the truth.
Makes me wonder what hospitals will do now with all the pink and blue baby blankets they give to new parents. (Or don’t they do that anymore? Am I hopelessly out of date, with my youngest almost a decade old?)
Seriously, our culture sends youth such sad messages these days, just adding to young people’s tragic confusion on this. Or, worse yet, starting them on the road to questioning who their loving Lord created them to be.
“…male and female He created them.” Too many do not believe that anymore.
We deny the beauty of our Lord’s loving design for us, planned from even before conception, when we allow these sad distortions of truth to cloud our thinking, when we refer, for example, to surgically or hormonally altered males as “she” and “her” (and vice versa with females). This perpetuates the deception.
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you…” Every aspect of who we are — our physical bodies, our emotions and personality, all of it — we are wonderfully created by our Lord, Who is not the author of confusion, but a God with plans to give us a future and a hope, and Who created us in His own image.
We Christians have a rapidly-growing mission field in this, to be sure.
Just saw a photo of a newborn in the hospital…where the parents give you a password to see their child’s picture. She was a girl in a hospital-supplied white blanket with two pink horizontal stripes.
Oh yes thank you for sharing your thoughts on this! Have you ever done the study True Womanhood 101: Devine design? I actually think it was you who pointed me to the videos that go with the lessons! The study is so so good and would be great to go through with your daughters. 🙂
Amen!!!
This seemingly bizarre article seems to be written with a compassion towards the transgender community and the angst they have felt over their gender identities. Obviously the author is wayyy off in her proposed solution to their problem, and many of their problems could be resolved with a right understanding of God, His creation, our sin, His redemption, our identity in Christ, His purpose for our lives, etc. In addition to the spiritual side of people turning away from God in their gender confusion, however, I wonder how much of a biological/physiological component there is to it all. We live in a fallen world with toxic hormone-disrupting chemicals all around us–and in us–and perhaps these transsexual individuals are more biologically susceptible to the effects of these chemicals?? Here’s the article that got me thinking- http://www.naturalnews.com/052832_atrazine_endocrine-disrupting_chemicals_sex_changes.html. Either way, I truly feel sorry for these people who claim to be in such disarray for years and years over their gender. That is not what God has intended for any of us, you know? Of course what He intended for us is exactly what Kelly explained so beautifully.
Sexchangeregret.com was eye-opening for me. I don’t even remember how I stumbled upon this but it was created by a man who had a gender reassignment surgery, then got saved, then transitioned back to a man and has since written books and this website to try to minister to the trans community. According to this website, 20% of transsexuals regret their procedure, and 41% of the transsexuals in America have attempted suicide. They regret it and fall into a depression because they (finally) realize that any superficial changes the doctor may perform will never change their DNA; they will always be the gender they were originally. A surgery won’t fix the psychological/spiritual issues they are dealing with. Sad stuff. Praise God that He who is in us is greater than he who is in the world.
Sorry, at first it sounds like I’m calling Kelly’s article bizarre! I mean the article she quoted 🙂
I think I’ve seen the testimony of the man you describe–at least I’ve seen one. It is a truly sad and heart-wrenching thing. The thing that is so maddening to me is when society tries to normalize a mental disorder which I think is what the article is about.
Yes, totally agree!!
One of the doctors from John’s Hopkins who used to champion sex- reassignment surgery and did many of these procedures, a Dr. Paul(?) McHugh, now realizes it was a big mistake. He and one of his colleagues (can’t remember his name) now say that most children who express transgender desires usually outgrow them by adolescence. Two keys: 1) Don’t encourage the child’s desires (obviously) 2) Don’t make a big fuss about them, either, saying that they are evil, etc. Wait and watch. And of course, pray (but Dr. McHugh didn’t mention that). Usually it dies out on its own.
I have a friend who is a transgender person, but out of the probably 500+ people I know, she is the only one who doesn’t identify with the gender she was issued at birth, so this is obviously quite a rare thing.
But my 4 year old son, just this morning was very upset when I insisted he was a boy, and not a girl like his sisters. He even cried, until I pointed out that his big brother was a boy, just like him, and so is daddy, and the dog and the cat. I can’t imagine the confusion if he was just left to *decide* what gender he wanted to be.
Kelly,
Yes, confusing at best. What’s frightening is that the LGBT agenda is so aggressive, children aren’t only being left to decide, but being heavily persuaded and influenced about how “normal” it is, that many just “identify” by default. The latest statistic revealing how many teens identify as transgender is staggering. Normalizing a mental disorder is abuse.
Hi Kelly,
I haven’t read the links to this article, but I am wondering why transgender identity is being labeled as a mental disorder. We know that we are born as sinners, into a sinful world. We all wrestle with sinful tendencies. I happen to believe that the areas we are tempted in are part of the curse, it’s how we respond to it that becomes sin. I have heard testimonies of Christians who say they have struggled with same-sex attraction much of their lives. The difference is they are willing to fight against it and believe in God’s design of a male/female relationship, instead of insisting they were born homosexual or that their feelings are normal and good and should be tolerated.
Now take into account that our world is practically screaming at youth that they in fact should question their birth gender and you’ve got thousands (even millions) of mixed up kids who aren’t sure what to identify as. I don’t assume these kids have a mental disorder – they are simply believing the lies fed to them. Sin abounds in all of us and mankind has made their own choice to deny the Creator and been given over to their way of living (hence the acceptance of all LGBTQ lifestyles).
Could you clarify what you mean by transgender identify as a mental disorder? Maybe I misunderstood????
Thanks.
I am not beyond believing that a true identity crisis where one feels tormented could be a mental disorder. Now the “trend” to question one’s identity or just identify differently because you want to or can, absolutely not. But perhaps there is a very, very small percentage of the population who has a true disorder THAT NEEDS TO BE TREATED but that doesn’t mean society should normalize it so the few can feel OK. Or maybe I’m wrong, but that’s the stance I’ve taken as of yet.
Thanks for clarifying. I know there are mental disorders and we are to be compassionate and understanding. Hard to know these days what is an actual disorder versus a world that wants to label everything to somehow normalize it.
Thank you for this encouraging article. I so enjoy reading your posts and really appreciate your openness about the joys and struggles of motherhood! Many blessings to you and your family
Thank you Kelli! I really appreciate your encouragement.
Kelly, thank you for the peaceful direction on this topic! From this point on, when this subject comes up, my heart will now turn to the beauty – the true beauty! – & blessing of being a Wife & Mom & Daughter.
What a blessing!
Thank you!
You’re welcome, Melissa. Keep up the good work of faith!
Beautiful!!
Have to add that invitations state the male dress code because women already know what to wear 😉