Does Being Updated = Being Reformed When It Comes To The Problem With Sex?

 The subject of today's review is an interview that the TableTalk Magazine people had with Rev Chris Gordon (click here and look for the information on Rev. Christ Gordon). The subject of the interview was Rev. Gordon's was his recently published catechism on Human Sexuality (click here for the interview and there for information on Rev. Gordon's catechism). In writing that catechism, Rev Gordon was following in the Reformed tradition of using catechisms to teach what is regarded as true.

In the interview, Rev. Gordon expresses a more than appropriate concern with how Christians, especially those who of school age, are responding to the changing views that our culture has on sex and gender identity. Here we should note that unbiblical sexual desires are strong and alluring enough for us even if we lived in convents where it seems that everything that hasn't been considered in the past, goes. And so when we add to that peer pressure and other influences, we see the need for Christian resources that help us to establish what God has said in His word about sexual orientation and gender identity.

At the same time, after reading through the interview and looking at how Rev. Gordon has borrowed a method from the distant pass to communicate what we need to know, one has to wonder whether the past has too much of a hold on some of Rev. Gordon's ideas.

Rev. Gordon is rightly concerned over the compromises he sees many Christians making regarding sexual behavior and gender identity. We should all be so concerned. We should also be wary because we are not approaching this subject as an unaffected bystander. Rather, most, if not all, of us face many of the same pressures and temptations to compromise Biblical standards accommodate our sexual desires and gender identities. And some of us also face the confusion and temptation of gender dysphoria. For example, a friend of mine confided in me that she knew of an adult person in her church who was transitioning.

So what does Rev. Gordon tell us about in the interview besides the need for Christian sources to help us fend off our temptations?

The fact that Rev. Gordon is using a catechism to convey these truths tell us about the ties to the past that he has. In the movie, 13 Days, we hear President Kennedy talking about how, in WW I, yesteryear's tactics were being used to fight a then modern war filled with new technologies that made the mass killing of soldiers easier. It's not that Rev. Gordon should not have written his catechism to address the issue of the new and increased sexual temptations we face because of the current sexual revolution, it is that this is apparently Rev. Gordon's only approach to the problems we are facing. This points to my view of one the problems that traditionalists have: they rely too much on the past to interpret and respond to the present.

Next, we should take special note of the following quote from Rev. Gordon

Who we are as image bearers of God is not to be defined by our sinful desires.

Who we are and how we are defined is more complicated than is recognized by God's redeeming work in us. Why? It is because despite God's wonderful work of redemption, we will, until we die our earthly death, be both a redeemed saint and a sinner. As James said, we all stumble in many ways and will continue to do so until the end. Here,  we should be reminded of how great Reformed saints from the past stumbled in terms of racism. People like Jonathan Edwards and J. Gresham Machen held racist views. Rev. Billy Graham, who was not reformed, gave evidence of also having a problem with racism (click here and there) though maybe not to the same degree.

We Christians will have at least two identities for as long as we live this life. We are redeemed in Christ and made new creatures. But we will also be sinners like the tax collector from the parable of the two men praying (Luke 18:9-14). To deny the former identity denies the work of Christ in us. To deny the latter identity of being a sinner means that we no longer need to confess our sins and beg for God's mercy. To deny the latter identity is to embrace the identity of the Pharisee from that parable.

The denying of specific instances of the latter identity has become a controversy in some Reformed churches. Side B Christians, for example are now prohibited from holding in church offices in the PCA Church. A Side B Christian is a person who struggles with Same Sex Attraction (SSA) but remains celibate. The rationale for such a prohibition is the unfair and inconsistent expectation that some of the old guard in the PCA have with Side B Christians as not giving enough credit to God's grace for changing them. 

Rev. Gordon seems to see the cause for homosexuality is sin and only sin. In addition, Rev. Gordon takes a Genesis 1:27 approach to gender identity. That God has created us male and female with nothing in between. The problem is that some are born as being indeterminant in terms of being male and female. And there are a number of physical causes for this condition. That means that while Gordon sees people as being either male are female, there is a small percentage of people who are truly neither male or female, but that they have parts of both biological sexes in them. Such people are classified as being intersex. 

In addition, for some who experience gender dysphoria, they happen to have the kind of brain structure, and yes there is a male structured brain and a female one, that belongs not to the biological sex they were assigned to, but to the biological sex of the gender they are identifying as.

And thus, what we are hearing from some scientists is that if we must have a binary classification of sex, it isn't a discrete one where one is either male or female but not both. Instead, we have people who have characteristics of both sexes.

Recognizing more than 2 biological sexes by counting intersex as a biological sex or by recognizing that some, though legitimately classsified as either a male or female still have parts of them that belong to the other gender should have been addressed in Gordon's catechism.

Likewise regarding sexual orientation, there are many species in which Same-Sex Behavior (SSB) has been witnessed. For some species, SSB contributes to the well being of the species. Since we don't attribute such behavior in animals to sin, it would seem that there are at least some biological factors that contribute to SSB in animals. And that is with animals, it is certainly not unreasonable to accept the possibility that at least for some people, SSA is due to some biological factors.

Its not that this scientific information should cause us to compromise biblical standards, but such information  should at least change our tone when speaking to those in the LGBT community about the biblical standards for sex and gender identity. In other words, updating our knowledge about sexual orientation and gender identity can cause us to reform our approach to those in the LGBT community without necessarily changing our standards.

In addition, none of this information about those with SSA or gender dysphoria contradicts Genesis 1:27 as some fear or anticipate it would. That is because while Genesis 1:27 is stated before Adam's sin and the fall of man, nature also fell when Adam's sinned.

But, from the interview, it seems that Rev. Gordon is either unaware of the possible physical causes to SSA and gender dysphoria, or he thinks that such information is irrelevant. That because he has the Scriptures, the only way to respond to SSA and gender dysphoria is to quote the Scriptures about sinful desires.

All of that leads us back to a trait that Rev. Gordon shares with the same previously mentioned weakness of traditionalists: they rely too much on the past to interpret and respond to the present. And so there is no updating for traditionalists. And because there is no updating for them, there is no reforming them either.

The Troubles With Genders

How one can change genders and fit into society is today's hot topic  both in society and in the culture wars. How did it get this way?

We have a few problems with genders. For one thing, we live in a society that uses assigned biological sex to categorize us instead of in addition to gender. Meanwhile, we have more genders than our biological sex categories know what to do with. And so what we have is the pigeonhole principle. We end up with people from multiple genders being grouped  into the same biological sex category. And not everyone is happy with who has moved in theirs or other's biological sex neighborhood.

What is causing further tension is that  people are using their favorite ideology, which includes religion, alone to try to understand and solve the problems created by the expanded list of gender identities when science is telling us that biological factors can possibly contribute gender identification. This means that in order to resolve the conflict that arises when we have more gender identities than biological sex categories, people are demanding solutions while either deliberately ignoring or lacking awareness of what science is saying about gender dysphoria and identity. Thus the gender identity battlefield becomes hotly contested because, for many of us, the veracity of our favorite ideology is at stake. And so now many of us have personal investments in how others are categorized by biological sex.

In addition, gender identities don't always sit well in the biological sex categories in which they have been placed. Because we can't conflate the two, when the biological sex of a person makes a significant difference, the emphasis on gender identity is misplaced and those who strongly identify as being other than cisgendered have salt rubbed into their centuries-old wounds.

And speaking of those wounds, we have a long history, again counted in multiple centuries, of people who have a different sexual orientation than heterosexual or are not cisgendered being punished by our laws and marginalized in society. And these people are rightfully demanding equality. But they do not have enough allies in society who are willing and ready to cooperate in making their equality a reality.

From my perspective, those are all of the factors that makes gender identities other than being cisgendered such such a mess for society and a great hardship for those who are demanding their equality now. But again, that is from my perspective.

One common practice of those who are both relying on ideology alone to solve the gender identity problems is that they tend to conflate one's biological sex with one's gender identity. One might assume that only  religiously conservative Christians who are trying to resolve the gender identity problem of conflating biological sex and gender identity. After all, such people try to insist that the presence of the sex chromosomes and the physical appearance of the the genitalia are all the information one needs to know to determine with which gender a person should identify with.

However, there are those from the LGBT community who insist on conflating biological sex with gender identity as well. Their version of conflating the two consists of using only their gender identity to determine their biological sex. They do that despite the fact that gender identity deals with the psychological while biological sex deals with the physical. Because of the differences between one's biological sex and gender identity, one would think that resolving this problem would be a slam-dunk. However, since biological factors might affect gender identity, we have to admit that the distinction could be more complicated than we are willing to admit.

Also, those who insist that their ideology alone can solve the problems that come with gender dysphoria and identity also tend to be overly simplistic in identifying the causes for our gender identity problems. If we take my fellow religiously conservative American Christians for example, they believe that the prime cause for gender identities other than cisgendered is sin. And so the solution would be for the non-cisgendered is to repent and believe in Christ. They believe that because that is what they believe is the cause and solution for all of our social problems. That not everyone, or even enough people, who suffer from gender dysphoria will repent and believe does not alter that religious approach.

Or if we take Robert Jensen's approach where the root cause for gender dysphoria is patriarchy and the solution is provided by radical feminism, we see a leftist version of how many of my fellow religiously conservative American Christians see and want to solve the problems with gender dysphoria. BTW, I hate disagreeing with Jensen because I have learned much from him. But like my fellow religiously conservative American Christians, he does not factor in enough of the biological factors that scientists are telling us are possible causes for gender dysphoria.

However, Jensen makes a very valid point against letting transgendered females participate in women's sports. It is that  they have benefited from being male in that males TEND to make them stronger than cisgendered females--musicians like me, certainly not all musicians, didn't always follow that tendency throughout our lives. And thus regardless of how far a male has transitioned into a female, they tend to have a physical advantage over cisgendered females and thus should not participate in women's sports.

That, along with the bathroom issue is why some of our gender identities don't always sit well with their preferred biological sex category. And these two areas are two of the areas where we see where the problems with gender identity causes the biggest commotion in society.

So what are many of the scientists telling us? For one thing, they are telling us that genetic mutations can contribute to gender dysphoria. In addition, males and females have different brain structures. And it seems that at least some with gender dysphoria are identifying with the sex associated with their brain structure. And so at least some females with gender dysphoria are identifying as males because they have a male brain structure while at least some males identifying as females do so because they have a female brain structure.

Science is also telling us that those with gender dysphoria tend to suffer from depression more than the cisgendered do. Those with gender dysphoria are also more at risk for committing suicide than their cisgendered counterparts. There are several factors that drive this tendency. Those factors range from the discomfort one feels when suffering from gender dysphoria to the negative reactions of family members, friends, and others to both the state of a person's gender dysphoria to their attempted transitioning. 

But there is a very small minority of cases where people who transitioned from male to female or vice-versa regret their decisions.

So, what how should we respond to gender identity problems. One thing we can do is to admit our society's structural weaknesses in solving this problem. One such weakness is how we use a binary approach to categorize people by biological sex. In reality, we have 3 biological sexes: male, female, and intersex. And we need to acknowledge that to show that perhaps the differences between males and females, though significant, are less than what we continue to think they are.

Another societal structural weaknesses is that we don't include gender identity along with biological sex in categorizing people. Using both gender identity and biological sex to categorize people would eliminate how our current pigeonhole principle contributes to the problems with gender identity. That is we would no longer have to have people with more than two different gender identities placed in the same biological sex category. Such a remedy would be costly and require significant changes to our society. These changes would be more than just acknowledging the difference between biological sex and gender on one's birth certificates. It would require changes in how we run sports programs, share bathrooms and shower facilities, group people people schools and colleges for example. And those changes would not be without problems. But we have acknowledge that categorizing people solely by one's biological sex and then trying to force a binary approach to that categorization is a structural weakness that ensures that the mere addressing gender identity problems will forever a highly contentious venture. 

Also, we have to abandon solely relying on preferred ideologies to understand and try to solve the problems that go with acknowledging more than 2 genders. It's not that we abandon our preferred ideologies. It is that we let those ideologies be tempered by what science is telling us. Here we should note that if scientists do not fully understand the causes for gender dysphoria, then those who rely on their preferred ideologies alone who also ignore or are unaware of science is saying about the subject will know even less. But unfortunately, those who know less about gender dysphoria and identity seem to be speaking the loudest about the subject.

Finally, because we live in a democratic society, we must be promoting for and working for the equal rights of those with whom we agree and disagree. That is because in a democratic society, we must become invested in promoting the full equality of others in society. That is because democracy is more than just the majority rule, it is about equality.

Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For November 9, 2022

 Oct 17

To R. Scott Clark and his article on lamenting the passing of Christendom and whether we should work for and want a restoration of some version of that Christendom. In that article, Clark describes in positive terms how there is a nature-grace divide here where we should want natural law to govern society while grace rules over the Church. This article was posted on Heidelblog.

Over all, the above article has good points to make. But there are false accusations made about certain groups, such as the ones made against libraries, school boards, and sexual revolutionaries.

There is no New Testament basis for restoring Christendom to America, I fully agree with Clark on that point. If only he had stopped there. For there is also no basis to so neatly  divide and group civil life with nature and  church with grace especially when both are concerned with morality. That division and grouping were made by past theological heroes who grew up and  lived in European Christendom; we don't see that division in the New Testament. But even with that morality, some who are claiming to be against the restoration of a past Christendom are promoting a Christendom-lite when it is the Church's understanding of nature and natural law that they desire to impose on civil life. In fact, some call imposing natural law, which for some Christians is the second table of the Law of Moses, 'Christian Nationalism.'

So let's talk about nature for example. Homosexuality violates the Biblical view of nature and how God designed it; but homosexuality is prevalent in the animal kingdom. Is that to say that homosexuality is in accord with nature? We should note here that same-sex behavior is exhibited in animals from anywhere between a few hundred species to over 1,500 species. If sin is not an issue with animals, then is it nature that is telling animals to practice same-sex behavior?

What we Christians who live in democratic societies must be fully aware of are the implications that come with concepts of democracy and freedom which we claim to cherish. Democracy is not just majority rule, it is a system where the majority exercises self-restraint so as to not oppress the minority nor to deny them their equal rights and status. And Freedom carries with it the same strain of self-restraint because Freedom - Equality = Privilege. Because of the influence of the free market on democracy and the penchant for authoritarianism by us religiously conservative Christians, we lack the full understanding of the self-restraint implied by those two terms.

We need to distinguish when we can promote certain rights in the context of a democratic and free society from when we should discourage or even prohibit those same rights in the Church. Just as we can promote the freedom of religion in society while prohibiting the worship of false gods in the Church, we must learn to distinguish between promoting the freedom to engage in certain sexual practices and relationships in society from prohibiting those same practices and relationships in the Church and in our evangelism.

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Oct 28

To Heidelblog and its article that quotes Felice J. Killer's letter complaining about a regulation that prevents parents from being involved in the school's response to those children who are suffering from Gender Dysphoria.

Felice J. Killer's entire letter can be found at:

    https://pitt.substack.com/p/re-administrative-regulation-259

Felice Killer's letter, part of which is quoted in the above article, shows the discrepancy between what some, especially many religiously conservative Christians, believe about gender identity and what actually exists. Yes, parents have the right to raise their children in the way they see fit, but that right is not absolute especially when the safety of a child is in question.

Because of how we approach the Scriptures, many of us read Genesis 1:27 in ways that unnecessarily contradict the real world. How we read Genesis 1:27 where it says how God made man as male and female is a prime example. That statement was made prior to the fall of both man and nature. What we see today are a variety of ways by which a person could be born as being intersex. Being intersex could include being born with mixed genitalia where the external genitalia is not in accord with the internal genitalia. Or being intersex could involve where the external genitalia are not pronounced enough to determine the gender. One can have the the normal chromosomes of a male or female and still be be intersex. Or one can either have one sex chromosome or 3 sex chromosomes. And so we are not just physically born male or female after the fall.

The assumption made by many of my fellow religiously conservative Christians about gender identity is that even with those who are not intersex but are male or female, that what we know from the external  genitalia is the only message nature is giving to people. But considering what we know about those who are intersex, we can no longer say that for sure. And thus, we can't assume from what we can observe from the chromosomal makeup of a person and one's biological sex what nature is actually saying to a person.

And then again, there are the psychological and social factors that go into gender identity. What we can't afford to do that both the LGBT community and many fellow religiously conservative Christians do is to conflate biological sex with gender identity while being faithful to the Scriptures. Thus, we must recognize one's biological sex and their gender identity as two separate entities. And just as one's gender identity cannot change one's biological sex, one's biological sex cannot be forced onto one's gender identity.

Here we should remember the Church's failure when it came to recognizing Heliocentrism. Many Reformed and Roman Church leaders not only initially rejected Heliocentrism, they attacked it with a vengeance because of how they read the Scriptures regarding creation and the earth's relationship with the sun and the heavens. And lest we think that gender identity issues are peculiar to Western Civilization, we should realize that some Native American tribes recognized up to 5 different genders. So the question becomes, when it comes to biological sex and gender identity, are we doing to gender identity issues what the Church did to those who promoted Heliocentrism?   Our challenge as Christians is to be willing to relearn what we thought we knew about biological sex and gender identity while remaining faithful to the Scriptures.

Some other things are true regarding gender identity. Gender Dysphoria can be experienced by children as young as 3 years old. And that the devastating effects that can occur to those who are experiencing Gender Dysphoria are associated with family and peer reactions to those people to the extent that it can cause depression and even produce suicidal tendencies. Thus, those are safety issues when it comes to responding to those with Gender Dysphoria.

I don't know what the correct balance is to the competing issues of helping children with Dysphoria and parental rights. But I do know that many of us religiously conservative Christians have a too simplistic view of the relationship between one's biological sex and one's gender identity. And that too simplistic of a view can make us feel persecuted as we wrongly respond to those with Gender Dysphoria. Remaining faithful to the Scriptures should not prohibit us acknowledging the complexity involved when it comes to Gender Dysphoria.