Gender or No Gender—What Feels Right to You?

The Washington Post recently ran a news article on a young lady named Kelsey Beckham who defines herself as “agender”or “non-binary,” rather than male or female. Kelsey says,

I don’t want to be a girl wearing boy’s clothes, nor do I want to be a girl who presents as a boy . . . I just want to be a person who is recognized as a person. That’s how I’m most comfortable. I’m just a person wearing people clothes, who likes to look like myself and have others see me how I see me.

The reporter sympathizes with her by questioning, “How do you navigate the world when the world is built on identifying with one group or another group, male or female, and the place that feels most right to you is neither?” This story highlights the continuing degradation of a culture that used to be based on biblical principles but has now gone adrift in a sea of everyone doing what is right in their own eyes (Judges 17:6). Instead of basing our definitions of masculinity and femininity on an absolute authority—the Bible—culture is by and large redefining male and female by what “feels most right to you.” If you have no absolute authority and being “genderless” feels right to you, why not go for it? And, of course, if you can arbitrarily change what gender means then the definition of marriage is also open to redefinition.

But God has not left us adrift in regard to gender. Genesis reveals that God created Adam and Eve male and female as two distinct persons, both specially made in His image (Genesis 1:26). Even though both males and females are completely equal in God’s sight (Galatians 3:28), there is a distinction of roles between the two. This distinction was present from the beginning, “And the Lord God said, ‘It is not good for man to be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him’” (Genesis 2:18). And this distinction is reaffirmed in the New Testament:

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her . . . . So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies . . . . Nevertheless let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband. (Ephesians 5:22–25, 28, 33).

Gender is not a social construct that confines us and can be arbitrarily changed based on our feelings—it is a God-ordained created order that has been present from the beginning but has been marred by sin (Genesis 3:16). Instead of trying to change ourselves into the opposite of who God created us to be, we should embrace our God-given gender.

Sadly, we are now seeing more and more stories like Kelsey’s, but we need to remember to reach out to these individuals with the gospel of Jesus Christ and a message of the true design for men and women.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,

Ken

 

This item was written with the assistance of AiG’s research team.