I want to mention something in follow up to a question I was asked on yesterday’s broadcast. I was asked about an article in National Geographic, which turns out to be the entire magazine almost. It is a special issue dealing with the gender revolution. I mentioned yesterday that I had not read it, so I got a copy of it, and read the whole thing today, quite a task I might add.
It starts, interestingly enough, by quoting Gloria Steinem, who says the most pressing gender issue today is “getting rid of [the idea] of gender.” According to Steinem, the most pressing issue is to get rid of the idea of gender. You have to divorce it from biology. Why? Because according to Steinem, “the idea of race and the idea of gender are divisive.”
We have all kinds of new terms indicated in National Geographic like “gender fluid,” which is someone whose gender identity shifts between masculinity and femininity, between a man and a woman. Another is “gender queer,” someone whose gender identity is neither man nor woman; instead, it is between or beyond genders or a combination of genders.
One of the articles was titled “Helping Families Talk about Gender.” The first sentence reads as follows: “All children need the opportunity to explore different gender roles.” Every single child on the planet again needs the opportunity to explore different gender roles. According to the article in National Geographic.
The cover story sports a picture of Avery and says she “spent the first four years of her life as a boy and was miserable.” From 0 to 4 she was absolutely miserable, but now as a transgender girl, the Kansas City native, has become “impressively articulate and wise.” She has made that transition from boy to girl, and the wisdom is already self-evident at a very young age.
The conversation continues with evolving notions about what it means to be a man or a woman and the meanings of words like transgender, cisgender, gender non-conforming, gender queer, agender, or any of the more than the 50 terms Facebook offers users for their profiles. You got lots of options over 50. Sadly, enough a recent survey of 1000 millennials found that half of them think that gender is indeed a spectrum.
In the face of that what do we do? The first thing we do is recognize that God has spoken, and the Bible is crystal clear respecting gender bending activities. Secondly, we ought to adjust our attitude. In place of a we/they siege mentality, Christians must recommit themselves to becoming salt and light, and do so with gentleness and respect. Finally, we must never yield our conscious to the subtle lure of what is today “politically correct” in magazines like National Geographic. The temptation to yield to cultural norms is going to be pressed on each Christian with increased veracity. Yet, to yield is to abandon the very call that God has placed upon our collective lives.
—Hank Hanegraaff
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them
(Genesis 1:27, NIV).
This blog adapted from the January 31, 2017 Bible Answer Man broadcast.
