Pregnant Man? Not Really!

Welcome to the brave new world! (read about him here). Regardless of how a person looks, talks, identifies oneself, the hormonal injections, sexual orientation, relationship status, etc. this does not help the cause of gender neutrality or equality (that there is no difference between genders, that all gender is is a social construction).

In fact, it proves the exact opposite of what he was hoping for and has been fighting for in his personal life--namely, identification as a man. What it does is give incontrovertible evidence that though he thinks he's a man, he really isn't!

Transgender Pastors

The United Methodist Church, not the bastion of orthodoxy in ANY way whatsoever, now gets to decide whether Rev. Drew Phoenix, formerly the Rev. Ann Gordon, can remain a pastor in their denomination.

There are some interesting political ramifications to this story too. Read it here.

GCC 2007 Men's Conference Audio

Follow this link to download the mp3s from Grace Community Church's (John MacArthur) 2007 Men's Conference where John MacArthur, Alex Montoya, Mike Fabarez and Phil Johnson spoke on the topic "Time to Act Like Men" with reference to God, the world, the home and the church.

I had trouble downloading the mp3s at the site above, but got them easily when I subscribed to the podcast, which I did on the same page above.

What is Gender?

With all the stories coming out about "sex-reassignment" surgeries, the evangelical world needs to answer the question "What is gender?," "What are the differences between men and women?" and whether or not there is an indissoluble union between gender and one's anatomy. It seems to me that this is where the challenge against traditional understandings of gender are directed.

For instance:

"What is gender anyway? It is certainly more than the physical details of what's between our legs. History and science suggest that gender is more subtle and more complicated than anatomy" (see whole story here).

And:

"The old categories that everybody's either biologically male or female, that there are two distinct categories and there's no overlap, that's beginning to break down," says Michael Kimmel, a sociology professor at SUNY-Stony Brook. "All of those old categories seem to be more fluid."

Finally, I thought this was a very important paragraph for apologetic purposes:

"So what's different in transgender people? Scientists don't know for certain. Though their hormone levels seem to be the same as non-trans levels, some scientists speculate that their brains react differently to the hormones, just as men's differ from women's. But that could take decades of further research to prove."

If anyone knows of any resources on this issue, I'd really like to be made aware of them. I want to be ready for this because they're coming after us. See for yourself:

"Transgender opponents have often turned to the Bible for support. Deut. 22:5 says: "The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God."

Does this verse apply to transsexuals who are no longer the sex they were born? Is sex change the same as homosexuality? Many of the reasons given for sex change that I've read have nothing to do with attraction for the opposite sex, or at least that's not mentioned as a reason, but maybe it is. Is gender set regardless of anatomy? Is there a difference between a person's gender and their sex or are these synonyms?

Mike Penner Becomes Christine Daniels

Mike Penner, sports writer for the L.A. Times, announced here that he will leave on vacation and return in a few weeks as Christine Daniels.

As I read this article, my initial response was to feel sorry for a guy who has been constantly afflicted with the "white noise" of really being a woman for over 40 years, and then have people tell him his brain was "wired female" even though they admit transsexualism is "a complicated and widely misunderstood medical condition."

A couple months ago I posted on a story about a 14 year old boy named Tim who became Kim. At that time I wrote:

"What makes a man male? His parts or his nature? In other words, just because his parts changed, does that mean he's no longer male?

If a man lost his "equipment" from cancer, would he no longer be male? What if he lost it, and wore dresses and makeup?

If a woman lost all of her "equipment" in an accident and wore men's clothing and talked with a deep voice, would she cease being female? I don't think so.

What did people do who thought like Tim before sex-change operations? They fought the thoughts in their mind with reality, or gave into them and were miserable.

My point: Just because you think or feel something, doesn't make it true no matter how strong the thought or feeling is. So much for self-control. If I feel it, it must be true?

The reality is Kim is Tim, and just because Tim took hormones to change his body's appearance, and just because he wears women's clothing, doesn't make him Kim. In fact, nothing can make Tim Kim."

I know that will not be persuasive for many of you. In fact, most of the comments I read on the L.A. Times website argued along the lines of "if it makes you happy it must be right and good and true."

Now, there is a lot of courage that goes into this decision. I don't want to minimize that, or the suffering he's gone through. And, I don't want to be like the Christians who posted Romans 1 and a call to repentance in the comments either.

Rather than punting to the sovereignty of God (which is true, and his operation is a prideful spurning of His sovereignty) to explain Mr. Penner's condition, I think more can be said about this.

What he's experiencing is certainly an effect of the Fall. If there was no sin, we would never think of our "software" conflicting with our "hardware."

Homosexuality is certainly a sin, but this article says nothing about his attraction to men. Should we just assume that's going on? I don't know.

Also, the article does not mention a wife or kids, who would trump any considerations of a sex change.

And, regardless of his operation, Mr. Penner is still loved by God and made in His image and in need of the gospel. He has been told the false gospel that his problem is not sin, but a prolonged difficulty with emotions that he can be "saved" from by mean of an operation.

However, I'll leave with these words from Ed Welch's, When People are Big and God is Small, which help me begin to understand what's going on in his mind:

"If you exalt the individual and make emotions the path to truth, then whatever you feel most strongly will be considered both good and necessary for growth. ... That is why the unpardonable sin in today's culture is to either 'deny' or suppress your emotions. Emotions point to needs, and to deny your needs is to deny something God-given and God-like." [But] "just because I feel a 'need'...doesn't mean that this desire is really a 'God-given need,' a 'legitimate need,' or a 'primal need.' Perhaps what I am calling 'need' is really disappointment or grief, or perhaps it is my demandingness and lust" (pgs. 87, 89).

I hope that as these episodes multiply, more and more Christians will write books and articles on gender, transsexuality, and what makes a man a man and not a woman from philosophical, theological and counseling angles.

Gender & The Bible

I spent at least 3 hours early this morning helping my good friend think through and respond to this short article by Mrs. Anne Graham Lotz, daughter of Rev. Billy Graham, on gender and the Bible from yesterday's washingtonpost.com religion section called "On Faith."

Please take the 3 minutes to read what she has to say. I do believe hers represents the majority position in Western evangelicalism today, though I don't believe it's the Bible's position. I'm not going to post my 5 page response here, but only the summary and conclusion.

Positively, I found a lot I could agree with like women being oppressed historically, the Bible being God's Word, and salvation being found in Jesus Christ alone. I was blessed to see her end the article with the gospel.

Negatively, I found the article, first, extremely vague. For instance, what does she mean by "equality?" And, who's her opponent? What view is she writing against? Societal discrimination? Evangelical complementarians? The Qur'an? The Upanishads? I don't know. If she's not writing against someone, but simply teaching what she thinks the Bible says, does she know that her view has substantial disagreement from more than just backwoodsy, beer-drinking, wife-beating, Tony Saprano types? I don't know that either.

Second, her appeal to Jesus and the early church completely lacked any exegesis, any precision in interpretation, and worst of all, it lacked any explicit teachings by either Jesus or the apostles--most damning to a position wanting to be biblical. Instead she rests the entire weight of her argument on a biased reading filled with implication and innuendo.

Third, she says nothing about the texts that explicitly challenge her view (1 Cor 11:3, 7-13, 14:34-35, 1 Tim 2:11-14, Eph 5:21-33, Col 3:18-19, 1 Pet 3:1-7). In fact, we don’t even know what her view is in light of those texts because she treats these key biblical texts, the ones that actually address the gender issue, as if they didn't even exist.

Conclusion: Because of the problems stated above, her article ultimately fails to convey what the Bible actually teaches about gender, the very goal she was setting out to do.

So, what does the Bible teach about gender? Briefly...

First, the Bible does teach that as God's image-bearers, men AND women have the same essence (i.e., the image dei), and are therefore, equal in value, worth and dignity. Neither one is more the image of God than the other (cf. Gen 1:26-28).

Second, despite this equality, the Bible also teaches that men and women have different roles in the home and in the church (cf. 1 Cor 11:3, 7-13, 14:34-35, 1 Tim 2:11-14, Eph 5:21-33, Col 3:18-19, 1 Pet 3:1-7), which by the way, is NOT based on the Fall or sin and therefore, was NOT reversed by Jesus.

In the same way, despite having different roles--the husband as loving leader, the wife as submissive helper, and male, not female or mixed gender, leadership in the church--men are not more worthy, more valuable or superior to women, nor are women less valuable, less worthy or inferior to men. The two genders were meant by the God who created them to complement each other.

Men and women are both equal in value and different in roles. The first pertains to essence, what they are. The second pertains to function, what they do. To steal a line from Mrs. Lotz, only when THAT complementarian message is “read, applied, obeyed, and lived out” from the Bible will women be “treated with respect and honor as co-heirs with Jesus Christ in the Kingdom of God.”

Now, just in case you think I'm making this distinction up, where else do we see equality in essence, in value, in worth, in dignity, but difference in roles? Do you know? Give up? The...Trinity. The Father is not more equal than, not more valuable than, not more worthy than, not more dignified than the Son or the Spirit because all 3 are equally God. Yet, the Son still submits to the Father (John 5:30, 6:38, 8:28, 12:49, 14:10), and the Spirit still submits to the Father (John 14:16, 26) and the Son (John 15:26, 16:7, 14) because while each one is equally God, each one also has His own unique and different role.

One last thing. If Christians like Mrs. Lotz can devise an argument that uses vagueness, imprecision and innuendo while ignoring relevant texts to conclude that the Bible teaches her evangelical feminist / egalitarian position, than the Bible can be made to teach anything. Therefore, at it’s core her whole article is a direct attack on the authority of Scripture to dictate what's true and virtuous.

There's a lot more that could to be said about her article and the gender issue, but I'm convinced very few people read posts this long anyway. So, for more on this, see Wayne Grudem’s book Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism? (which is on sale here for 40% off until Feb 15th).

Women in Pastoral Ministry

I had a private faculty meeting last week to discuss the topic of women in ministry. The school I teach at is egalitarian while I am a complementarian.

While trying to prepare for this meeting, I found this web page to be a complete lifesaver. It helped me clarify my position and answered all the objections I was thrown.

Skim it and tell me what you think and why?