“The facts of life” are such that
it takes the bodies of two persons of opposite sex to conceive children. As any physician or scientist will affirm, there
are distinctive and biologically defined roles for men and women in this
process. It is also the nature of human
beings to inherit physical and other traits from their parents. In other words, the difference and
complementarity of biological males and females stands at the heart of what it
means to exist as a human being.
No doubt, throughout human history there
have been men and women who would have preferred to have been born as members
of the opposite sex. It is one thing to
acknowledge that, but quite another to conclude that their preference means that
there is no abiding biological reality to the distinction between males and
females. It is one thing to hope that
people who struggle with these issues will find peace in accepting the implications
of the physical reality of their bodies for their personal identity. It is one thing to reach out to them with
compassion, as Christians should to all people with profound personal
challenges. It is quite another,
however, to say that only vicious, ignorant oppressors would dare to think that
someone’s physical body manifests whether that person is a man or a woman.
Granted, there are very rare cases
of ambiguous genitalia or persons with a disparity between their chromosomes and
the outward structure of their bodies.
Barring those conditions, it is hard to see how someone could even come
close to making a coherent claim that he or she is “really” a member of the
opposite sex. Such an assertion would
entail that the characteristics of one’s physical body are simply irrelevant to
his or her personal identity. The
details of gender roles have varied throughout human history and do vary today
in different settings, but the physical distinctions between the anatomy of
males and females have remained. Those
who do not recognize that biological sexual identity is an abiding dimension of
personal identity have taken a large step away from reality and the broad scope
of human experience in the world as we know it.
It is not yet clear how far the
agenda of deconstructing maleness and femaleness will go, but to make gender
identity simply a matter of subjective self-definition should deeply trouble us
all, and especially advocates of the rights and equality of women. If our society comes to view physical bodies
as irrelevant for the definition of who is a woman, then matters involving women’s
bodies—such as pregnancy, motherhood, or violence against women-- will be taken
even less seriously than they are today.
If a simple declaration by a biological male makes him a woman, then the
unique interests and cultural significance of those with female bodies must not
matter that much. Indeed, any claim that
male and female bodies are even truly distinctive would become incoherent. The
definition of who is a woman would then have no connection with the physical
characteristics of the human body; those characteristics would then have only
trivial significance. The less standing the
bodies of our neighbors have in our eyes, the less of an obligation we have to
help them as embodied persons. No, this
way of thinking is not good news for the orphan, the widow, the stranger, or
the rest of us. The classic feminist phrase
“our bodies, ourselves” would be replaced by a dangerously disembodied vision
of personhood.
For Christians, the deconstruction
of biological sexual identity is yet another manifestation of the ancient
heresy of Gnosticism. We cannot tell the story of the good news of
our salvation without referring to biological men and women, for our salvation
is the fulfillment of our identity and vocation as those created male and
female in God’s image and likeness. (Gen. 1:27) Just
try to make sense of the story of the Hebrew people from generation to
generation without such a perspective. Contrary
to those who think that Jesus Christ was uninterested in these matters, He
specifically cited our creation as male and female in speaking about marriage. (Matt.
19:4; Mark 10:6) Against the libertines
who thought that what they did with their flesh sexually had no spiritual
significance, St. Paul stressed that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit
that will participate in eternal life. (1
Cor. 6:12ff.) Christ’s resurrection
manifests God’s gracious intensions to sanctify every dimension of who we
are: body, soul, and spirit. And since He is the Eternal Word Who spoke
the universe into existence, breathed life into us from the dust of the earth, and
told us to “be fruitful and multiply” as men and women (Gen. 1:28), it should
not be surprising that His salvation is the fulfillment, not the repudiation,
of our embodied personhood.
In this
light, Christians must show true compassion toward people who struggle with
gender identity without encouraging them to adopt self-definitions that ignore
the physical realities of human personhood.
Christ invites us to the healing of every dimension of our humanity,
which includes embracing the truth about who we are as embodied male or female persons. For all of us, that is a struggle in one way
or another. Healing comes through the
difficult task of offering every dimension of our lives to the Lord in humility. We become more truly the people He created us
to be when we reorient ourselves to Him in body, soul, and spirit. Our faith
calls us to give more—not less—attention to the role of our bodies in sharing
in the eternal life of the Lord Who made us men and women in His image and likeness.
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