This summer, my son found a CD for me at our local library sale, Amy Grant’s “The Collection.” I had it as a teenager but misplaced it somewhere along the way. The lyrics of “All I Ever Have to Be” make far more sense to me now as an adult than they did when I was a teenager:
When the weight of all my dreams
Is resting heavy on my head
And the thoughtful words of help and hope
Have all been nicely said
But I’m still hurting
Wondering if I’ll ever be the one
I think I am…
Those lyrics remind me of a teenage girl that I know. During the pandemic, my children and I stopped attending a Christian homeschool co-op that we had been a part of. This past school year, though, we returned, and encountered a lot of people that we hadn’t seen for a couple of years, including this girl.
I’ve always liked her. She is cute, friendly, polite, and talented. She was assigned to one of the same co-op classes as my daughter, but I was dismayed when I discovered that she is now asking to be referred to by a male name, and “they/them” pronouns. I was further disappointed when, during a Zoom class that was held, I overheard the teacher using the requested name and pronouns. Then, my 11-year-old daughter also began referring to her with the male name, because that was what she was hearing used in class.
Having my daughter exposed to this ideology at a co-op of Christian children, with classes taught by Christian adults, was a disappointment to me. If it was a secular group, I would just explain to her that people who do not follow Jesus have different ideas about the world than we do. How do I explain to her that people who claim to follow the same God as us do not acknowledge His sovereignty when it comes to this issue? His Word really isn’t ambiguous on this topic:
“So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”
– Genesis 1:27
The more I thought it over, though, my feelings began to change from angry to sad. I began to see God’s heart for this young lady.
“Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you; before you were born, I set you apart.”
— Jeremiah 1:5
This sweet girl that God created and loves has been deceived. Somehow, the enemy has convinced her that God made a mistake when He created her, that she is not whole as she is, that she has to be something different than what He made her to be.
Then you gently re-remind me
That You’ve made me from the first
And the more I try to be the best
The more I get the worst
And I realize the good in me
Is only there because of
Who You are…
Earlier this year, I read an article by a de-transitioner who shared her story of being swept up in gender ideology as a teenager. She was a lonely girl who found companionship online on platforms like Tumblr. She felt accepted – at first – until she began to realize that there was a social hierarchy there. If you were part of an “oppressed” category, you were considered “good,” but if you were an “oppressor” you were “bad.” She was literally made to feel guilty about being born a white, straight female. Afterwards, she began to question whether she could possibly fit into one of the oppressed categories. She couldn’t change her race. She was attracted to men, so she knew that she wasn’t a lesbian, but she wondered, could she be trans?
Reading her story is what finally helped me to understand this sudden phenomenon of rapid-onset gender dysphoria in children and teens. One interesting point that she made was how all of her online “friends” supported and celebrated her when she “came out” as trans, but the same people completely abandoned and rejected her years later, when she realized that she wasn’t trans, after all.
If you read about the history of Marxism and Critical Theory, her story will make more sense to you. Critical Theory and ideas about oppression are designed to divide people. They offer no hope, just never-ending conflict. Who is really behind those ideas? Who is the author of confusion, the one who comes to destroy? The enemy of your soul is. Jesus alone offers us the only real reconciliation.
“The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.”
— John 10:10
“For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
— Galatians 3:27-28
Do not take this verse out of context. It does not mean that there literally are no genders, just as there obviously are enslaved people and free people. What it DOES mean is that in the eyes of God, those distinctions do not matter. Those of us who have accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior all come to God on the same playing field. Our identity should no longer depend on our ethnicity, gender, class, etc. Our identity becomes “follower of Christ” instead. This is also the lens through which we should view other believers as well.
Instead of division, Jesus brings unity.
And all I ever have to be is what
You’ve made me
Any more or less would be
A step out of Your plan
As you daily recreate me
Help me always keep in mind
That I only have to do what I can find
And all I ever have to be is
What You’ve made me.
Artist: Amy Grant
Songwriters: Gary W. Chapman
All I Ever Have to Be lyrics © New Spring Publishing Inc.
If I could tell this girl anything, it would be that God loves you just as you are. He made you and He doesn’t make mistakes. He has a plan for your life, and you just have to discover what that plan is.
A few days ago, I saw a news report that a church near me had the LGBT+ flag that they display on their church’s sign vandalized. I pass this church all the time and have always been disappointed to see this flag displayed there. However, my thought was that everyone involved in this situation was in the wrong.
If someone had a problem with the flag being displayed, they should have discussed it with the church. If they found no satisfaction that way, they could have written a letter to the editor of the local paper, sharing their opinion and reasons. If they had done so, the flag probably still would have remained there, but if they made their argument graciously, they may have planted a seed of truth in someone’s heart that read their words.
By causing destruction, they instead ruined their witness on this issue. No one who isn’t already in agreement with their discontent about the flag is going to want to hear what they have to say now.
On the other hand, the church was definitely in the wrong for displaying that. Everyone should be welcome in a church, because we are all sinners in need of a Savior. We all bring our sins with us when we initially walk through that door, but as we are born again, we must leave them at the foot of the cross. The church has a responsibility to teach us to repent of our sins, so that we can receive forgiveness for them through the shed blood of Jesus (who willingly took our punishment for us) and spend eternity with our heavenly Father. It doesn’t matter what the sins are. It’s all the same in the eyes of God. If a church hangs a flag that appears as though it is celebrating certain sins, then one has to wonder if they are teaching their congregation that they even need to repent of those things. If they aren’t, then they are failing the people who walk through their doors. They are leading them to eternal separation from God and an eternity of torment. How is that loving? They are failing the people in their congregation and in their community.
That is why I am so concerned about this issue. The teacher at the co-op who was calling the girl “they/them” genuinely seems like a very nice person, so I assume she has good intentions, but good intentions aren’t going to get that girl into Heaven. Sure; she ultimately is going to make her own decisions, but Titus 2:1-5 instructs us:
“But as for you, speak the things which are proper for sound doctrine: that the older men be sober, reverent, temperate, sound in faith, in love, in patience; the older women likewise, that they be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things— that they admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed.”
We have a responsibility to disciple the younger generation by speaking the truth. You will send a message to them if you acquiesce to using preferred pronouns, and it is not a message of truth.
I expressed my concerns about this to the leader of the co-op. I don’t blame her for the situation arising, but I feel that God put it on my heart to raise this issue, even though it is uncomfortable.
One piece of advice that I’ve heard suggested if you are put in the position of someone asking you to use pronouns that are different than their biological sex, is to politely decline, saying it violates your conscience to do that, because of Genesis 1:27. I feel that is a good option, as it is speaking the truth in love, and we have a responsibility to do that. We owe it to God, but we also owe it to the young people around us.
“And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ—from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.”
— Ephesians 4:11-16