'Identity Politics'.
'Gender Identity'.
I have written before on this issue. ( eg here) But it's getting to the stage of eliminating the very thing people are so desperate to find.
Even the secular media is expressing concern at where this is taking us as human beings.
So how is a Christian to understand this current 'identity' obsession?
Is there some biblical direction for the Christian on the matter?
If you look up 'identity' in the concordance at the back of your English Bible, you won't find it listed.
However, the concept is very much there and one of the places it is prominent is Galatians 3:28:
"There is neither Jew nor Gentile,
neither slave nor free,
nor is there male and female,
for you are all one in Christ Jesus"
This is a verse all about identity options (6 of them in fact- Jew, Gentile, slave, free, male, female) and how we are meant to see ourselves and not see ourselves.
As we look at our world, we are seeing the result of a lost identity and a desperate search to find it again.
Sin separated us from God. We lost our primary identity (our self-worth) of 'belonging to him', in the fullest sense. Yes, it is all tied up in that ever-present issue of worth, - of honour. Our identity is essentially the honour of who we are - our person-ness, our value, and our place and purpose for living.
Our modern world which doesn't even want to believe in God, is not going to acknowledge we were originally designed to 'belong to God' and find our identity in Him, nor is it going to acknowledge that identity in Him has been lost.
Thus, sadly the search for identity has not become a search of how to get back to God, but how to create our own identiy without God.
But that little verse in Galatians which tells the Christian their new identity is in Christ, also tells us about the way in which our identity is in Christ. Therefore, if it tells us what we can find in Christ, it is telling us also the kind of identity we have lost and are really looking for.
This is very revealing because it tells us what is happening in our world and why it is happening, and why the gospel is the only answer for these issues. It helps to diagnose the disease of our society. And the disease is not simply a warped view of marriage, or even destruction of the family, or even push-back against Christians. It reminds us that what is happening in our world is no shock or surprise to God. We can be assured He already knows what we are searching for, because of how He describes what He gives us through our idenity in Christ.
We see the issues of our world which are disturbing and destructive, but there is a deeper issue. The good news is that there is also a divine solution!
Our world is desperately seeking the honour of identity without partiality.
We want an identity marker without differentiation, or without what our world calls 'discrimination'. We want identity in the context of equality - an equality that is based on the most foundational essense and worth of who we are - at our very soul, or what our world is calling our 'true self' - that part of us no-one else sees.
At our very core, we sense we are meant to be defined, approved of and accepted beyond the terms of anything that makes one person externally preferred (by performance, status or appearance) over another. But instead of receiving a new identity in Christ that over-rides and surpasses our earthly identities, the world is trying to re-form and re-make 'soul' identities out of earthly forms of identity.
Our world is seeking a barrier free 'soul' identity outside of the only One who can give it!
However, working through this verse in Galatians and thinking about our world, was very helpful and revealing for me, and I thought it might be helpful for me to share some of my thoughts -
Issue 1
All one in Christ Jesus:
Equality: In Christ we are all equally one - no superiority or inferiority of position.
Christ brings the concept of true equality to a world filled with people all seeking their own honour at the expense of others.
The world likes the idea and benefits of equality. At some level we each want to feel equal, and be treated equal to one another without others having preference over us. While some of this is related to our own pride of not wanting to be lower than others, there is a sense in which we are seeking what we were made for. We desire an identity that incorporates a sense of equality. We want a sense of 'one-ness' and we think we can achieve it outside of the Creator's plan.
Did you notice when the same-sex-marriage bill was passed through Australian Parliament recently that the song which erupted from the balcony and to which the majority of MPs joined in singing was 'we are one, we are many,…..we are Australian'. Though the passing of the bill was a sad moment in many ways for Australia, the singing of that song was very revealing as to the real heart-yearnings that Australians 'think' that SSM will solve!
In our sinfulness, the desire for equality lacks the light of truth and wisdom. We get our definition and understanding of equality wrong, and how to achieve it all wrong too.
However, if we look carefully there are three main ways our world wants to eliminate the areas they see as barriers to equality - ways that, though warped, still reflect the fact that God knows the three ways in which we as human beings can feel prevented from a sense of equality, ways that Christ gives answers to, while the world still searches for them.
Issue 2
Neither Jew nor Greek
Equality through elimination of ethnic barriers or status
Our world has fought hard to strive for inter-racial harmony. Not only this but there has been a desire for removal of racial, ethnic and even national distinctions. Globalisation, dual citizenships, the EU and all other nudges in that direction are not necesarily all bad, but they reflect our human desire to be 'humans' together on this planet and not have things that prevent free and 'equal' co-existence.
(see previous blog about this issue)
Without realising it, the world is seeking a reversal of the Tower of Babel and the elimination of ethinic divisions in our world. The world is seeking a one-ness of God's created human beings that was lost in Eden and can only be re-gained in Christ. Searching for it in our broken world is a fruitless, hopelesss search.
Issue 3
Neither slave nor free
Equality through elimination of social status
Although it was Christians who strived to rid the world of the slave trade, it is a legacy which has given society a taste for acceptance and worth without regard for social status. Where society once had no regard for abuse of children in child labour and no regard for orphans either, it was Christians who set up orphanages to care for children disgarded by society. It's the Christians who desired to educate children, provide literacy for even the poor and demonstrate that social status should not determine one's destiny, duties or 'rights'. And although society now expects government to care for the downtrodden, it is still, to a great degree, the churches and church charities which are being funded and co-opted by government to carry out the care of those who would be otherwise neglected. It is still the Salvation Army who is dealing with the 'bottom of the bottom' of the neglected in society, those who even fall through the government social services cracks.
Again the world has tasted this over the past couple of centuries and likes what the benefits are, but doesn't understand the motives or reasons behind it. The Christians didn't do it to benefit themselves, but to glorify God. The world thinks it can copy the actions, ignore the motives and get the same results. But it isn't possible.
However, the effort is still there in all its worldly and selfish wisdom, to 'get equality'. Without God's wisdom and godly motives it will only reap destruction, as the meaning of 'equality' and how to reach it becomes something far from God's definition and means.
Our world has become so confused in its own wisdom on this, that a few decades back there was a push to remove the 'privilege' status of marriage or being married over those who wanted to 'live together' (which of course is sexual immorality, but just bear with me on this). Society didn't want preference shown to the married or to have any greater importance or preference to marriage encouraged, and so in Australia the category of 'defacto relationship' was introduced to give equal benefits to those who lived together but didn't get married. Now we have almost done a flip, and society was angry that same-sex partners didn't have the privelege of marriage and being able to have the status of being married. One minute we want to remove any elevation of marriage as important and the next minute we want to promote marriage as important.
It is all just evidence that we are wandering around in the dark, trying hopelessly to find equality of social status that can only be found in Christ.
Issue 4
Neither male nor female
Equality through the elimination of gender status
Not only have we wanted to try to make the genders equal in function as well as role, and are destorying ourselves in the process (see previous blogs on headship and honour of women), but we are now going to the extreme of the trying to remove any differentiation of uniqueness of biology of gender.
Not only have we prohibited the use of words such as 'chairman' and replaced it with 'chairperson' (which for the record - the 'man' in chairman has nothing to do with gender but to do with a Latin root of 'manus' meaning the 'hand', implying that the chairman has the hand of leadership, direction and rule in such a situation), but now I am not surprised to read that it is being debated in the UK whether we can say pregnant woman, since some transgender 'men' (who were born biologically women and have kept all their female anatomy) have got pregnant. Supposedly we should be saying 'pregnant people' and it is a crime to say a man cannot get pregnant! Rightly so, some are raising concern about such dangerous stupidity!
But there is no excaping the fact that the transgender issue is the 'current' issue. Even here in Botswana there has just been a case granted in the courts for a transgender person who wanted their gender marker changed on their National ID card because 'her birth assigned gender does not correspond with her internal and individual experience of gender'.
The transgender issue is one that is horrendously sad and bad, but not just because of the destructive symptoms, but because it reveals how lost and confused and deluded our world has become. When a man who takes hormones to become a 'woman' (at least look like and slightly sound like a woman) then marries a woman who takes hormones to look and sound like a 'man' and then they want to have children so they have sex according to their birth sex organs and the 'man' stops having his hormones so he can revert to the woman she has always been and always will be and becomes pregnant and gives birth (and they do this not once but twice to have their two boys), we have seriously become horrendously confused. They may say they are just living out their identity as their 'true self' (which is a self-made assessment made entirely on a choice based on feelings), but what about the identity of those two boys when they grow up to discover that mummy is really daddy and daddy is really mummy?
We have moved from 'living according to God's will', to following evolution's logical outcome of 'living according to nature and biology without reference to morals'. But we have gone even further to 'live according to illusionary feelings even if they are in direct opposition to evident biology'. We are medicating people to allow them to live according to how they feel. If a little boy believes he is superman we say he is delusionary, but if he says he believes he is a girl, we encourage him and give him hormones to prevent him becoming a man! This can really turn problematic if he later changes his mind! (check out these links here, here and here if you want to learn more about those who 'de-transition')
Saying we can 'switch' gender is a destructive lie of Satan in order to offer barrier free identity apart from Christ. Once again Satan gets us to confuse the honour of equality of our God given roles and personhood, with our outward function. So without knowing our created status and role, we want to merge our function with our role and personhood, in an effort to find an identity that isn't dictated by our function. In the process we are eliminating and destroying the very roles, biology and value of our foundational human-ness.
We are not being 'true to self', we are 'destroying ourselves'.
Having said this, we must seek to be careful in how we respond and I would highly recommend this article. We should make godly observation but respond with love, truth, care, help, concern and the gospel. We shouldn't be judgemental and harsh, but sad and compassionate - not compassionate about sinful behaviour, but compassionate because those struggling or caught in such situations are caught in a lie and are looking at life in the wrong way and searching in all the wrong places for answers. I also want to make it clear here that in speaking of transgender I am not referring in any way to the various forms of 'intersex' which are the biological medical issues existing from birth when the reproductive or physical sexual anatomy/genetics of a person doesn't seem to entirely fit the typical definitions of female or male. (see here and here for more information on this)
A Gospel Response
Whatever ways we search for identity in this world which rest on any aspect of race, status or gender will fail to satisfy. They will leave us hungry and thirsty for something more, because our soul will not find rest outside of the One who said 'Come unto me all you who are heavy laden and I will give you rest', and we will not find peace outside of the Prince of Peace.
In Christ we have true identity free of being defined by function, but rather based on equally important but differing roles, as equally valued created human beings and members in the body of Christ. And we will never find that outside of Christ.
Christ is the answer for those in our modern world who are so desperately trying to find an identity that the world can never give.
I'm guessing you would never think to use that little verse in Galatians as a springboard for gospel conversation with your non-Christian neighbour! But what if you asked your neighbour if they would like a world with no racial, status or gender barriers and why?
Rather than point the finger at other's actions or sit down in despair as we watch our world, let us kneel down in prayer and rise up in godly wisdom to take the good news of the gospel to those who so desperately need it in ways that will truly connect with the deep core issues and searchings of their hearts - hearts that don't even fully understand what they are searching for.
PS. Here is another article about the Identity Politics issue which includes titles of a couple of interesting related books
And I would recommend watching these Youtube videos here and here and here and here
And I would recommend watching these Youtube videos here and here and here and here
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