Below is an excerpt from Exposing the Gender Lie: How to Protect Children and Teens from the Transgender Industry’s False Ideology, an ebook co-authored by Summit Ministries president, Dr. Jeff Myers, and journalist from The Christian Post, Brandon Showalter.
The Spiritual Element of Gender Ideology
The debate over gender ideology has revealed a raging fury against the idea that human beings bear the image of God. Nowhere is this indignation more clearly seen than in the deconstruction of the very definition of male and female. Sincere and faithful Christians cannot remain on the sidelines. We must speak with biblically informed, compassionate wisdom. The philosophical and moral questions are complex. But what is at stake is whether we, as a human society, will be able to recognize truth, discern reality, and prepare the rising generation to live confidently as image-bearers of God.
Two Reasons We Are Concerned
You may wonder if this level of concern is warranted. We will present our arguments, and you can decide for yourself. But our position is two-fold. First, we think the concern is warranted because the issue of gender ideology is much bigger than the few people who are genuinely experiencing a severe incongruence over their biological sex. Second, we think the concern is warranted because the struggle over gender ideology is a gospel issue that has serious medical and psychological ramifications. The book of Genesis says that God made us male and female. Jesus affirmed this teaching. Biologically it is undeniably true. If society persists in denying the importance of this fundamental aspect of being, we could very well be “hostages to chaos” and “lose our collective tether to reality”—to echo the words of the evolutionary biologist Colin Wright quoted at the beginning of this introduction.
This book is a crash course on a thoroughly bewildering subject. If you had asked most people thirty years ago if they had ever met a person who sincerely claimed to be the opposite sex, few could tell you they had. Maybe they would mention seeing what were once called “transvestites” at Mardi Gras or a few troubled individuals who lived on the margins of society.
But according to reputable polling, gender identity issues are now at the forefront of concern for young adults. Some polling says that thirty-nine percent of young people claim to identify as LGBTQ.1 In addition to youth identifying as transgender, some now say they are “non-binary,” “genderqueer,” or another of an ever-increasing panoply of self-created gender labels. Healthline.com lists and defines sixty-eight terms that describe gender identity and expression.2 Some have estimated that given the current (yet ever-changing) parameters of gender ideology, there could well be three thousand different genders. If children are taken for therapy or medical evaluation, current standards of care specify that those identifying as other than their biological sex be treated by therapists as if they are, in fact, something other than their biological sex. Families are being told that if they do not embrace this treatment regimen, they are putting their child at risk of suicide and, perhaps, risking the forfeiture of their parental rights.
Families are distraught and confused. Americans as a whole, according to polling by Summit Ministries, seem baffled by the whole issue. Two-thirds of Americans say they do not think that transgender identity is a normal, healthy lifestyle. Seventy-two percent say that it should not be taught in schools. Ninety percent say that gender-alteration drugs and surgeries should not be performed on minors.3 Yet for the gender ideologues and the moneyed players who set this top-down, systematic deconstruction of sex in motion, the instinctual clarity most people have about the issue is misguided. The confusion that gender ideology creates is a feature, not a bug of their entire project. If none of this makes any reasonable sense to you, well, that is precisely the point. At the root, we are dealing with a postmodern rejection of reality that is bound to fail. The question is: How many lives must be shattered by it before it does?
We hope that as you engage the forthcoming pages, you will be equipped to address these tough and thorny themes with compassion for struggling people and with the uncompromised conviction that the truth must be proclaimed and defended. We will tackle why transgenderism is a medical (and social) scandal, discuss the history of gender ideology, show how this ideology twists language and distorts reality, and explore what a healthy and flourishing vision for human sexuality looks like in contradistinction to gender ideology.
To continue reading The Gender Lie: How to Protect Children and Teens from the Transgender Industry’s False Ideology and learn more about this topic from a biblical worldview, check out the free ebook available for download: