Celebrating Pride? (Part 3)

This is the third week of speaking to the topics of biblical identity, gender, sexuality, and marriage/singleness. Last week we focused on sexuality as it pertains to sexual orientation/identity, this week we’ll aim at a biblical understanding of gender.

A worldly understanding of gender:

First, we must acknowledge that gender dysphoria is a real phenomenon and for someone who feels uncomfortable in their own skin, as believers, we need to respond with sensitivity and the love of Christ.

But gender dysphoria, which at one time was considered a mental disorder, is now considered a threshold into a new identity and a journey to remake oneself into the self that I can be comfortable with.

Gender and biological sex are viewed as mutually exclusive in our culture. One is binary, but not instructive or authoritative to inform my sense of self, the other is fluid yet authoritative, at least as I see fit to implement it in my life at any given moment.

My gender identity, in the world’s view, is as mailable as I want it to be.

Take the LGBTQ movement and its acronym as symptomatic of gender identity. There is so much fluidity and subjectivity that: 1. Colors are continually being added to the “rainbow,” while adding corresponding letters (‘+’ sign) are as well, and 2. The LGBTQ+etc. moniker has largely been commandeered by the trans movement, much to the chagrin of the gay and lesbian population. All is not quiet on the western front.

Nonetheless, the infighting of the LGBTQ+etc. movement are not for us to referee or perhaps even to fully understand. What we must seek to understand is why is the thinking of this community the way it is? Coming back to this central theme of identity and sexuality being driven by the psychological, internal self rather than the biological, physical self, it follows that what I feel or connect with, with regards to being “male” or “female,” is what I am. “I think therefore I am,” has never been more apropos.

But here’s where it gets muddled. Often what is used to evaluate one’s sense of gender identity, where one feels ‘at home,’ or comfortable in one’s own skin, are outside, subjective trends and stereotypes of make and female — masculine and feminine. For instance, a man who enjoys poetry, art, fashion, or things of the “softer” side of life, or more simply, if he preference pink over blue, or velux over flannel, the cultural norm is for him to at a minimum ask the question if in fact he may actually be a woman with a man’s biology, rather than simply a man who is complex and has eclectic interests.

The opposite is also pointedly true. There has been plenty of cultural commentators who’ve asked the question, “Where have all the tom-boys gone?” The answer is of course that within our current cultural milieu, they all think they’re men.

But here’s the obvious deduction. Aside from real struggles of gender dysphoria, the measures being used are all cultural projections of masculinity and femininity, which often vary from culture to culture and have also varied over human history to a degree. Furthermore, and I’m waxing long here because these points need to be made, the trans movement will be very critical of gender stereotypes, trucks, flannels, steaks, and rough tools as imagery denoting what is masculine, and dance, pink, makeup and whatever else denoting femininity, and then immediately adopt these SAME STEREOTYPES as evidence of one’s gender identity in opposition to their given biological sex, in the next breath. It’s uncanny.

A Biblical understanding of gender:

So what is the biblical perspective on gender then? Well, for one, God’s Word is clear in the very beginning:

Genesis 1:26–27- Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

The biblical understanding is that biological sex is part of God’s good intent at creation, and that our biology directly informs gender identity.

But here’s where the biblical view has a subtle agreement to the outcry of the trans movement where gender norms are concerned. Gender norms, or cultural stereotypes are cultural, and are fluid and changing and are also extremely oversimplified.

I love the way the authenticmanhood.com says it in the 33 series on manhood. Men are both warrior/kings, AND lover/friends in their creational design.

Our culture emphasizes the warrior/king side of manhood, attributing the lover/friend side entirely to femininity. This is a complete falsehood. We’re simply way more complex like that by God’s loving creational intent.

BUT, men are to be men and women are to be women, EVEN WITHIN cultural understandings of gender identity to a certain degree. This is the second major emphasis of the Bible’s teaching on biological sex and gender, and did you know that it’s in BOTH the OT AND NT.

In the Old Testament law we read:

Deuteronomy 22:5- A woman must not wear men’s clothing, nor a man wear women’s clothing, for the LORD your God detests anyone who does this.

And in Paul’s teaching to the church in Corinth on church community order we read:

1 Corinthians 11:3, 14–15- Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.

Does not the very nature of things teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him, but that if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For long hair is given to her as a covering.

In the OT we’re dealing directly with a prohibitive statement clearly meant to reinforce the nature of the differences between us as men and women, even as displayed across various cultures. Whereas, in the New Testament passage, Paul is establishing a norm of biblical headship to a people coming to faith in Jesus out of a thoroughly sexualized culture with acute sexual and gender confusion (sound familiar) and so he begins with the creational order of things (vs.3), and then speaks to that creational intent as it relates to gendered behavior, within that particular culture (vs.14–15).

What’s the point?

Even with varying ways of identifying male and female in cultures over time. God’s people were to exhibit cultural norms as they correlated to biological sex within the time and culture that they were living. This is because how we dress and carry ourselves in public with respect to gendered identity further corresponded to not only our biology’s authority to tell us who we are, (I am a man, due to my male anatomy and endocrinology, and so forth and therefore I need to “display” as a man within my culture), but also points beyond biology to theology. I am created in a particular way by a loving, intentional Creator, who made me this way with love and intent. And this is the most important truth, the gospel truth.

How shall we then live?

So hands down, this is the most complex, and the loudest of the topics around this series. So how do we then live. There are lots of possible answers, but since this is already lengthy, here are two simple suggestions:

1. Live within the cultural norms of your biological sex/gender, but push those norms in healthy ways. Encourage women who love things more regularly attributed as male interests. Encourage men who show interest or aptitude for more traditional feminine pursuits; things like poetry and the arts, etc., — affirm these as gender normative in God’s good creational intent and thereby deconstruct the cultural narrative.
2. Help people to see past biology to theology. In conversation with others who might hold more liberal or progressive views don’t be afraid to speak of what God says about us, how HE identifies us. In a recent post by Pastor Mat Chewning of Netcast Church, he said it this way:

“The world is loud about identity! They say you are your pronouns. Your past. Your preferences. Your performance. But Jesus says something better. In Christ…

You are chosen. You are redeemed. You are holy. You are blameless. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. You are worthy… Not because of what you’ve done, But because of what He did. You are his prized possession.” — Matt Chewning

And I would add, you are beloved; a child of God, made in His image, purchased with His blood!