Philosophers have long considered truth, goodness, and beauty to be “ultimate values.”[1] This is, in part, because these ideals transcend time, geography, and culture. Without truth, goodness, and beauty, human life could not continue to exist. If it did manage to carry-on for a while, it would be a terrible existence full of hopeless darkness and confusion. Thus, when evaluating two competing ways of viewing life’s most basic questions, it helps lay out a case for which one best accords with these ideals.
When it comes to the issue of gender, there are irreconcilable
differences between the biblical view and the modern Western view. The Bible
describes the creation of humanity in binary terms. “So God created man in his
own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he
created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and
multiply’. . . . And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was
very good” (Genesis 1:27-28, 31). According to the Bible, the binary of two
sexes and two corresponding genders is “very good.”
This claim, however, is being rejected by some in modern Western societies. Cultural elites, political leaders, and the media supply a different narrative rooted in a different worldview. To them, the binary is outdated. More than that, they argue that the binary is not true, good, or beautiful.
My plan is to do a series of blog posts to demonstrate that the gender binary ("male" and "female") is true, good, and beautiful while transgenderism is a denial of truth, morally fraught, and ultimately uninspiring.
In doing this, I am not denying that there are some individuals who struggle with their gender. They are confused and hurting. We recognize that living in a fallen world means physical and spiritual suffering abound for all of us. All people are simultaneously sinners and sufferers. The gospel deals with both issues in a way that no human wisdom can. The gospel gives the hope of forgiveness and joy of knowing God. It connects us to God and his design for us. Christians believe true and lasting joy comes by living in accord with the truth, goodness, and beauty of God's design. That is where God is honored and humans flourish. Thus, the church offers the healing balm of the gospel to all people.
In the next posts, we will begin examing the truth, goodness, and beauty of the gender binary. The goal is to equip us to value God's good design even as the cultural winds begin to howl in the opposite direction.
[1] Crispin Sartwell, “Beauty,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2017), ed. Edward N. Zalta, accessed December 31, 2020, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2017/entries/beauty/.
This is the beginning of a series of posts on the issue of transgenderism and the gender binary. It is an edited form of a paper I wrote for a doctoral seminar on cultural apologetics. I will be posting small sections of it at a time to make it easier to read. It has been edited for the blog.
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