Gender Confusion In Children - The Need For Truth

Many have heard of men who feel as though they are really women trapped in a man’s body, but fewer are familiar with the prevalence of this dynamic in children. It will not surprise anyone to hear that we are living in the midst of a society that is profoundly confused about issues of gender. What may not be as apparent is that children are not immune from the current intellectual and cultural atmosphere of blended and confused gender identification. More and more children are being raised in a world largely unacquainted with biblical standards of morality or reality. Consequently, they are left to find truth in their own way and are ignorant of both who and what they are. That, this confused search for identity can extend to the subject of a person’s gender can be clearly seen in a series of news stories that recently aired on the National Public Radio (NPR) program All Things Considered (aired May 7th, 2008). In the first of these programs the host, Alix Spiegel, follows the journeys of two sets of parents. Both have six-year-old boys who steadfastly believe that they are really girls.

Both families are wealthy and well-educated, and neither family sees a problem with their son’s proclivity for playing with Barbie as opposed to G.I. Joe. One of the mothers described her initial reaction this way, “We thought he was creative, lovely. Of course, why wouldn't you identify with the female characters? They're more colorful, and maybe he doesn't want to stab the other guy on the horse.” The mother of the other little boy, Jonah, encouraged her son’s “creativity” by dressing him up as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz for Halloween and by caving in to his insistence, at age 3, that she buy him a dress. According to Spiegel, “Jonah felt that he was not a boy. Jonah felt that he was a girl, a girl to his core, a girl trapped in a boy's body. He was absolutely certain of it.” Eventually, Jonah’s parents sought help from Dr. Diane Ehrensaft, who is a developmental and clinical psychologist in the San Francisco Bay Area. Under her counsel, Jonah’s parents were encouraged to embrace his new gender by transferring him to another school district in which he could be enrolled as a girl. They were instructed to allow him to dress and socialize as a girl. It is worthwhile to listen to how Dr. Ehrensaft explained the rationale behind her approach to Jonah:

"I think we can learn from looking at what we had to unlearn and re-learn about homosexuality. You see, 35 years ago, homosexuality was considered a mental illness, a pathology so severe that it required aggressive therapeutic intervention ... Today, the American Psychiatric Association's position is that therapies which try to turn homosexuals into heterosexuals are unethical. Homosexuality is now seen as a normal variant of human behavior.”

Dr. Ehrensaft believes that it is normal human behavior for a young boy to believe that he is really a girl and furthermore, that it would be unethical to attempt an intervention to counteract it. She goes beyond this, asserting that not only is it unethical to oppose the “reassignment” of a person’s gender but it is unhealthy as well. Again Dr. Ehrensaft: “If we allow people to unfold and give them the freedom to be who they really are, we engender health. And if we try and constrict it or bend the twig, we engender poor mental health.” She believes that it is unhealthy for a person to deny who he/she really is and attempt to live as something which he/she is not. We must recognize that Dr. Ehrensaft is making a statement of absolute truth here; namely that a person’s gender is ultimately determined by his or her feelings on the issue. She believes that a child can confidently know who he/she is apart from any outside counsel and that it is the responsibility of parents, teachers, caregivers, etc. to simply listen closely to what that child is saying so that he or she can tell us who one really is.

We must realize that the Bible paints a very different picture. Proverbs tells us that, “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child.” (Prov. 22.15 [NAS]) It is important to note that God locates the foolishness of a child in his or her heart. Children are not simple beings, and they come into this world with some surprisingly sophisticated ways of warping reality to their own desires. The Bible reveals to us that humans are born neither innately good nor passively neutral, rather we are actively opposed to God’s will for our lives from day one. David expresses this truth by observing, “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.” (Ps. 51.5 [NIV]) This is why it is so vital that the Church and godly parents take seriously their responsibilities set forth by Paul: “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” (Eph. 6.4 [NAS]) The Church must not bow to the idol of unguided “self-discovery” but should instead realize that we can only come to know ourselves truly when we come to know God truly. This is a reality that Jonah is being allowed to ignore because, presumably, the truth is somewhere in his mind or feelings. Let us introduce our children to the Savior who challenges us by saying, "If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." (Jn 8.31-32 [NAS]) This is THE truth that our kids need to hear.

I will treat another aspect of this controversy in next week’s blog.

Vacation Bible Schools Close Their Doors

Vacation Bible Schools are harder to find than they used to be. At least that is the general trend observed by a study conducted by the Barna Research Group in 2005. The origins of VBS are usually traced to 1898, when Eliza Hawes, the wife of a doctor in New York City, rented out a beer parlor in order to instruct indigent street children about the Bible during the summer. Hawes’ passion for the spiritual formation of children eventually inspired her pastor to adopt the program by bringing it onto the property of the Church. Over the next two decades more and more Churches began to reach out to Children through a regular “Bible School” that typically corresponded to the summer months, until, in the 1920’s, publishing houses began to produce literature specifically intended for Summer Bible Schools. Over the decades that followed Vacation Bible Schools proliferated and became something of an institution in many areas, with some towns hosting multiple Bibles Schools each year. Among Southern Baptist Churches, nearly a quarter of annual baptisms are attached in some way to the conduct of a VBS. VBS has been a vital ministry to children in the U.S. for generations, but some recent data indicate that its future is far from certain.

According to an article by Edith Webster of the Rockford Register Star, a survey conducted by the Barna Group found that, “Since 1997, the percentage [of Churches] continuing [to offer VBS] has dropped from 81 to 69, representing 38,000 fewer churches.” [The Rockford Register Star, August 8, 2005] This decline would be no cause for alarm if Churches were simply opting to seek alternative ways of reaching children during the summer and had found other more effective means, but, according to Webster, this is not the case. The most common reason Churches cited for dropping the ministry was “lack of teachers.” This study is an occasion of both sorrow and joy for me. When I think about thousands of Churches in our country who, over the last ten years, have discovered that they have few members who are passionate about reaching their own children for Christ, I can’t help but feel regret for the lost opportunities. Jesus once told His disciples that, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” [Lk 10.2 (NIV)] Jesus was observing, as so many in the Church have observed since, that there never seem to be enough workers to accomplish what needs doing.

I am, however, simultaneously rejoicing at how the Lord has recently answered our prayer for workers here at Gilead. Jesus seems to be complaining about the lack of decent help in Luke 10, but what is unexpected about this statement is that Jesus makes it while He is in the process of sending people out to share the gospel. He had good workers, but, in light of the size of the task at hand, He wanted more. He wanted even greater capacity to minister in new ways and in new places. This is a desire that I share, and I pray that we will never lose sight of the unsown fields and the unreached people right in our own communities and homes. How many spiritual fields go unsown because there is no one willing to plow the ground? I shudder to think, but I am thankful that we were able to do some “harvesting” during VBS because the Lord of the harvest sent you into the field. I am thankful that ours is one Vacation Bible School that stayed open.

The Value Of Life: Lower?

The Associated Press reported Friday that the value of a human life, as calculated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), has declined almost 11% over the last five years. The new going rate for a human life is $6.9 million. This news provided fodder for numerous sardonic new articles in which it was variously observed that, “It's not just the American dollar that's losing value. A government agency has decided that an American life isn't worth what it used to be.” [Daily News, Los Angeles, July 10, 2008] The news that the government has estimated that the value of a life is less than it used to be is certainly an easy way to get people’s attention, because Americans tend to take it as an affront to their personal contribution to the world. This would seem to be a classic case of the government assaulting the dignity of human life, but the details of this story are a little less exciting than that. What the EPA actually lowered was the “value of a statistical life” not the value of an actual life. What does this mean and what difference does this make?

What does it mean? The government has to have some way of determining whether certain public projects are worth what they are going to cost. They have to do a cost/benefit analysis. In other words, they have to determine whether the benefit of a project (such as improved quality of life or lives saved) will be worth the price of the project. At first glance, this appears to be perverse. How can you compare money to lives? This is like comparing apples to oranges. But, there is only so much money to be spent in the budget and there is no end of various projects that are clamoring for some of that money, so how do you determine which projects are worth the money that you spend and which aren’t?

This is where the “value of a statistical life” comes in. Say you have a project that is estimated to save 10 thousand lives but that project costs $80 billion. If the “value of a statistical life” is $7 million then that would mean that the total value of the lives saved would only come to $70 billion. Hence, you wouldn’t be getting as much out of the project as you had put into it. There would be no need to start that project. But, let’s look at the same $80 billion project if we place the “value of a statistical life” at $10 million. Those same 10 thousand lives would be worth $100 billion with this new estimation, and since our project still costs $80 billion we would be getting a lot more out of the project than what we had put in.

So, what difference does this make? Simply put, the higher you calculate the value of life to be the more likely you are to commission a certain project. To put it another way, the more value you see in the lives of others, the more money you are willing to spend in order to see that those lives are protected. There is an obvious object lesson here for the Church. The more value we see in the lives around us, the more time and treasure we are willing to hazard in order to see them saved. God has always called His people to risk in order to bring other people to Himself. He has always called us to be passionate about the same things that He loves, but sometimes we are as thickheaded as Jonah who felt more sorrow over the death of a plant than he did over the possibility of the destruction of a city. God reasoned with him by saying, “You cared about the plant, which … appeared in a night and perished in a night. Should I not care about the great city of Nineveh, which has more than 120,000 people who cannot distinguish between their right and their left?” [Jonah 4.10-11 (HCS)]

The government has a complicated set of calculations that it uses to determine the value of a statistical life. The Church has a relatively simple set of calculations by which we determine the value of an actual life. We need to constantly remember the cost of our actual lives. Let God remind us that we “were bought, not with something that ruins like gold or silver, but with the precious blood of Christ, who was like a pure and perfect lamb.” [1 Peter 1.18-19 (NCV)] When we realize that the blood of God’s Son has been shed for sinners (who are just like we were), are we really willing to say that our time, money, and effort are too precious be spent for them as well?

Community That Crosses Communities

If the liberal voting practices of your neighbors is an irritation to you, or you no longer want to feel as though you are supporting the lifestyles of those with whom you disagreee then there may be a solution for you in West Texas. Just outside Dell City, Texas, community organizers have begun plans for a housing development that will contain nothing but supporters of former presidential hopeful Ron Paul. This housing development, named "Paulville", is intended to be the first of a many communities inspired by the networking organization "Paulville.org". The organization's stated purpose is to "establish gated communities containing 100% Ron Paul supporters and or people that live by the ideals of freedom and liberty." The apparent beauty of living in such a community would be the fact that you would no longer have to fear coming into contact with someone whose political views differed from your own. For most this kind of insularity and retreat from engagement with distasteful elements of our culture may seem extreme at worst or merely amusing at best, but the temptation to eschew interaction with the world may be more alluring to us than we realize.

A recent article in the June 18th edition of The Economist magazine indicates that many suburban communities in the U.S. are becoming increasingly homogenized as potential homeowners look for homes in areas where the voting and political preferences of the neighbors mirror their own allegiances. People take note of the kinds of bumper stickers that are prevalent in the area and the types of bookstores that are available as they decide where to seek a home. Greater affluence has afforded more people, especially well educated ones, the opportunity to be choosy about not only the physical location of their homes but also the philosophical location of their homes. Over the last thirty years, more and more Americans have taken advantage of this choice and the results can be seen in the voting results over the past few presidential elections. The 1976 election was extremely close nationally with Jimmy Carter winning just 50.1% of the vote, but in a little over ¼ of the counties in the U.S. the results were far more disparate. The Economist describes these as “landslide counties” where “Mr. Carter either won or lost by 20 percentage points or more.” In 1976, 26.8% of Americans were in “landslide counties”, this meant that people in those counties knew relatively few people who did not vote the same way that they did. In 2000 and 2004, the percentages of Americans in landslide counties were 45.3% and 48.3% respectively; an almost two fold increase. This indicates that, over the last thirty years, people in the U.S. have been sorting themselves into ever more homogenous communities in which the skeptical agnostic rarely encounters a conscientious evangelical who believes in a biblical worldview.

This geographical “self-sorting” coupled with the media selectivity possible through the internet and cable news networks has had a profound effect on the ideological landscape of our country. The Economist article observes, “Because Americans are so mobile, even a mild preference for living with like-minded neighbours leads over time to severe segregation. An accountant in Texas, for example, can live anywhere she wants, so the liberal ones move to the funky bits of Austin while the more conservative ones prefer the exurbs of Dallas.” We should pay special attention to the observation that “even a mild preference for living with like-minded neighbors leads over time to severe segregation”, because it contains a potent warning to the Church. The “Balkanizing” of the country has not left the Church untouched. Many Church growth strategies consider it axiomatic that a Church will only effectively reach people outside the Church who resemble the membership inside the Church. As a result, many Churches have had more than “a mild preference” for seeking after people who basically look and think like they do. What is more they have done this consciously, believing it to be the best way to be effective in reaching the world for Jesus. Consequently, there are palpable pressures on the Church to reflect our culture’s tendency toward fragmentation into various socio-politico-economic factions that seek to gather more likeminded adherents to their banner while exerting little effort to interact with their opponents. There have always been sharp differences of opinion concerning matters of faith and philosophy in America, but we are living in a time in which fewer and fewer believers are actually interacting with those whose view of the world differs from their own.

This poses a serious question for the Church: how can people be confronted with the gospel if they never interact with someone who knows the gospel? The fact is that there are “foreign mission fields” right here in the U.S. in which people have a functional illiteracy of the Bible and the basic truths that are derived from it. As salt and light, the Church has been called to proclaim God’s truth to people from every possible background; philosophical as well as ethnic. Paul gives us a glimpse into this as he writes to the Corinthian Church, “Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” (1 Cor. 6.9-11 [NIV]) These verses indicate the various backgrounds out of which the Corinthian believers had come. Paul had obviously not confined his ministry to trying to reach those who thought essentially the same way he did. The essential truth is that everyone apart from Jesus is lost, desperately lost, and that Jesus has come to seek and save what was lost. This should motivate us to view our interactions with those whose philosophical, political, or religious commitments differ from our own as opportunities to reach into another community for Christ. The organizers of "Paulville.org" are seeking to reach those who already agree with them. Jesus wants us to reach those who do not yet agree with us but may one day sing with us this new song, "You are worthy … because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth." (Rev. 5.9-10 [NIV]) May it be so.