GOD ESTABLISHED THE ROLES FOR MEN & WOMEN

Posted on by

A great article appeared in The Washington Stand by Joshua Arnold: Lead, Provide, Protect: An Urgent Call for Godly Men. I have taken excerpts from it

Lead, provide, protect. That’s what God created men to do. Our society has other ideas, to its own disadvantage and disgrace. But the best counter to the culture is for men to step up and embrace their God-given identity and role.

Today, “boys are penalized … for being boys,” Owen Strachan, senior fellow for Family Research Council’s Center for Biblical Worldview, declared on “Washington Watch” last week. “Boys hear, ‘Don’t be strong’ and ‘Don’t want to be … a traditional man. … You’re not really good the way you are as a boy. You should be more like a girl.’ … Nothing could be worse for boys than that.”

This propaganda — blasted out by every mainstream institution from schools to Hollywood — applies half a century of radical feminist ideology. Radical feminists of the late 20th century argued for abolishing all differences between men and women. They demanded absolute equality in the academy and the workplace. They demanded utter sexual libertinism, endorsing promiscuity, childlessness, and the dissolution of the marriage bond, in imitation of their mistaken caricature of masculinity. They demanded freedom from their own reproductive biology (through birth control and abortion), again in an attempt to reproduce a false version of masculinity.

Ironically, as radical feminists tried to become like men in every way, they also insisted that men become more like women. “There are all sorts of traits associated with good things in Scripture that in today’s culture — among woke, leftist, pagan thought — are very bad things,” said Strachan. “So, if you take risks today if you’re assertive if you speak up in groups if you might dare to ever correct a woman in public … if you like competitive sports, if you like watching World War II movies, you better get out your blanket and hide in the closet because they’re coming for you.” This attitude nurtures men “against their nature,” he added, “against their wiring, because now they’re being told, ‘Don’t be what you naturally want to be.”

Because of his death on the cross, we who believe in him are redeemed from the futility of our dead works and restored to a right relationship with God. In his sacrificial example, we have a model to imitate (1 Corinthians 11:1), especially those of us who are husbands (Ephesians 5:25). “Our ability to fulfill our God-given responsibilities as men is not because of virtue within us,” said Strachan, but “because of God’s grace in us that summons us to wake up and to be not just a man for ourselves, not just an adult in terms of age, but to be a man who lays down his life for others to whatever extent is necessary.”

Lead, provide, protect. This is what God designed me to do, and it’s more necessary than ever in our fallen, messed-up world. It’s especially important for families, the building blocks of society. “If you build fathers, you build the family and you build the society,” Strachan stated. “If you break fathers, you break the family. If you break the family, you break the society.”

Lead, provide, protect. That’s the role of a godly man. The world has always sought to tear down, trip up, or otherwise neutralize godly leaders, and that’s especially true of our culture, which has embraced an anti-biblical, anti-masculine ideology. “Of course, a Christian is going to say, ‘You’re only going to be truly strong when you recognize your weakness and your need for Jesus Christ,’” Strachan granted. “Nonetheless, in Scripture, in case after case, (David to Solomon or the Lord God to Joshua), there’s a call to courage, and there’s a call to strength, and that is what boys need.”

We need men who, in the face of worldly opposition and devilish temptation, will heed this call:

“Be strong, and show yourself a man, and keep the charge of the Lord your God” 1 Kings 2:2-3

VICTIM OF IDENTITY THEFT

Posted on by

Fighting the Wrong War

I think all parties agree that biological sex is determined by our chromosomally dictated external body morphology, so the real question confronting us is this – What is gender?

The UCSF Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Resource Center defines gender as:

“A social construct used to classify a person as a man, woman, or some other identity. Fundamentally different from the sex one is assigned at birth; a set of social, psychological and emotional traits, often influenced by societal expectations.” 

If this statement is true, then I feel the transgender community has been deceived by the culture. If gender is truly a social construct then the dissonance they experience between their inner gender and outer biology is not really an internal struggle at all, but rather a conflict between their biology and cultural gender stereotypes. They have been cruelly enlisted to fight a proxy war over social constructs within their own souls and the battlefield ends up being littered with emotional and physical casualties. 

I think the transgender community would be better served by fighting for a better cultural understanding of gender rather than battling for societal acceptance of physical transitioning. It seems to me that once you transition you have lost the war and surrendered to the societal dictates of what it means to be male or female. 

Authentic Self

What is the authentic self? Is it physical or spiritual? While those outside the Church define it by how culture sees them, Christians must ask: “How does God see me?” 

St. Paul made it clear that outward appearances such as ethnicity, sex and social standing are irrelevant to God, so maybe we need to stop defining our image bearing by physical differences and do some real soul searching. The problem is that our culture, rather than allowing us to be our authentic selves, steals our identity by forcing us to choose from a culturally approved list of sexual categories. 

You cannot lump transgender people together because they all have unique stories. I think this is a very important point because in this day and age of identity politics the individual is often drowned out by the shouts of the mob and their unique voices become auto-tuned to conform to the elevator music standards of political correctness. 

Sadly, our unique image bearing has been dumbed down to color, ethnicity, gender and sexual preference, none of which describes the genius of who we truly are. While these categories may be important components of our personal journeys, they do not define us. The reason this is important is because when our identities become slogans we no longer have conversations between unique individuals but rather shouting matches between ideologies. Name calling and yelling is the default mode of interaction between movements, but polite dialogue and civil debate should be the norm when two image bearers meet. 

Identity Theft

Ironically, our culture, which seems to value individuality, ends up homogenizing its citizens in identity group blenders. We are fooled into believing that identity politics will help us find out who we truly are, when in reality it only steals our identity. Instead of articulating those things that make us unique we are encouraged to chant slogans, instead of engaging in dialogue with other interesting human beings we are encouraged to lecture at them, and instead of ruminating on our own lives we are encouraged to spit at others. 

Identity politics co-opts our personal biographies and uses them as infomercials for somebody else’s political product, and the more we are forced to watch them the more we believe the lie. If you insist on draping yourself in somebody else’s flag no one will ever see your true colors. You may want the world to see you as a rebel with a cause, but Jesus sees you as a sheep without a shepherd. In the first instance, you will be a dime a dozen but in the second you will be that rare lost coin that keeps old ladies up at night.

Warning! If you seek family by becoming a poster child for an organization you will end up becoming the intellectual property of those who market the ideology, and if you ever decide to break ranks you will quickly be tossed aside as a cultural orphan, such as those who publicly regret their decision to transition. The beauty of the gospel is that Jesus has already visited the orphanage and adopted you as his child. You no longer need to try and find intimacy in a political commune where a village raises a child, but rather can be adopted as a child of God where you are personally loved by your Abba Father. 

Our individuality is found in Christ where there is no democrat or republican, black or white, male or female, conservative or liberal. God created you as a unique image bearer so don’t let culture make you a victim of identity theft.

Extract from the excellent article “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria only diagnoses the fearsome power of social media” by Dr. Erik Strandness. He is a physician and Christian apologist who has practiced neonatal medicine for more than 20 years.  Posted on patheos.com – Evangelical, February 22, 2021