The Bible, Biology, and Preferred Pronouns
by David K. Bernard
Podcast recording (no venue stated in the delivered transcript)
Kind: teaching
Scripture: Genesis 1

Source: https://acts238.life/repository/sermons/david-k-bernard--the-bible-biology-and-preferred-pronouns
Published by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon transcript on that page.
Free to copy and share with attribution.

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this is indeed an important question it raises a lot of issues and so let me establish kind of the parameters first and give some information on the one hand we want to be very clear about the truth of god's word on the other hand we want to be compassionate towards people sinners who may not understand the truth um so in general my philosophy in dealing with people especially people that do not share our beliefs so maybe i'm dealing with an atheist or a buddhist or a muslim or someone who's in a homosexual lifestyle or now a transgender lifestyle and it may be a friend or a family member or a co- worker so you try to walk the fine line in the terms i use acceptance of them as a person but not approval of their conduct or their lifestyle so you try to communicate i believe you are created the image of god you're a child of god i believe you are a person for whom jesus christ died whom jesus loves on the other hand that does not mean i approve of your choices your conduct your behavior your lifestyle so somehow we try to uh communicate both and that's where the challenge comes now why this is important is a survey a gallup survey just came out recently and for people born before 1946 less than one percent of americans identified themselves as l g b t q but among generations z which would be the young adults right now 21 identified which is mind-boggling shocking now over half of that 20 said well they're bisexual so it's really something where they're kind of saying i could be attracted uh but but i think with a biblical teaching they could easily channel their attraction in in an appropriate way so it's not quite as bad as the 21 but still that's huge now what that does show is we're not primarily dealing with something biological we're primarily dealing with a cultural shift where people are being indoctrinated they're being trained they're being recruited their minds are being deceived they're trying to be politically correct they're trying to identify with something that seems to be rebellious or exciting or on the edge it's not truly a biological or physical or psychological phenomenon uh but but notice again you mentioned young adults or or even like teenagers this is a real thing where 20 21 of their peers are claiming to have one of these identities then it also becomes difficult because now there's some employers in in schools that are requiring their employees so you could actually lose your job there was a recent case however that supported um freedom of speech that you don't uh it looks like the law is going to uphold that you don't have to conform uh to your employer's requirements although i can see social ostracism or subtle ways of penalizing you and denying you promotions and raises and so on uh so you know again maybe the way we could approach this i look at two extremes so let's say someone uh comes to you they they appear to be a woman you you meet them for the first time they introduce themself with a very feminine name they're dressed like a woman and what's ironic to me is a lot of these uh transgender women they will definitely wear skirts they will definitely try to choose a very feminine and what we consider a feminine attire but anyway so you don't really know and so you address them by the name they've introduced themselves you refer to him as she and then later somebody tells you oh did you know that person you know 10 years ago transitioned well what are you going to do go up to them and say i reject your name so that's what you know them by so in that case you probably would you're not condoning what they've done but what they've done is done and it's history and you don't know anything about it what are you gonna do that's all you know them is it's kind of like let's say a man commits adultery and leaves his wife and marries a second wife and then you meet them and so this is my wife okay good to meet you mrs so-and-so and then somebody says do you know he you know he divorced his first wife he committed adultery with this person here so you're going to go back to him hey i i reject your marriage you know you're a sinner you're not business so and so this is so-and-so is this other woman my point being if it's an accomplished fact and you you only know this person as this person that might be one way of treating it however you're dealing with a friend a colleague or a teenager and all of a sudden they say well i want you to call me by this other name then then i think well no i'm not because i would be condoning a choice you're making so i use those illustrations to say in general i think we should not do anything that would support someone making a sinful choice we should resist that and we do have freedom of speech we do have freedom of religion and i think we keep in mind i accept them as a person i don't approve of their choice if you can find a way to do that so in most cases that probably is going to mean that someone who is trying to transition a recently transition or someone you know that you would not go along with their false narrative and i think i do we did have an earlier podcast where i talked about this but i think i should cover this again because it's so important of course from the biblical perspective it's absolutely clear genesis 1 god created male and female so this is god's idea it's not multiple genders there's male and there's female and that is carried consistently throughout scripture and that's true even in biology and science this transgender idea is contrary to science so let's say you don't even believe in god all you believe in is evolution well evolution teaches survival of the fittest it teaches reproduction of the species well obviously neither homosexuality nor transgenderism is functional in that regard so i'm not wanting to engage in hate speech certainly but to be honest we should recognize that this transgender idea is not biblically true so if you believe in a creator as we do it will be contrary to god's creative intention for your life but even from a biological point of view it doesn't propagate the species so at best it would be an aberration a dysfunction a a mistake a problem a you know an error that you would fix and so normally if somebody comes to you with a delusion or fantasy that's altering their life you wouldn't cater that you try to give them cognitive therapy to help them understand reality so if somebody comes to a psychologist or psychiatrist and says well i'm adolf hitler and i demand this and this and this so you wouldn't say well grow a mustache and learn german and we'll help you out here you would say wait a minute no that's false and you would try to give them theory to conform their mistaken idea to the reality of their life and what really is tragic to me and especially with children who are not by law are not capable of giving consent so when it comes to child abuse you know we say they they're not even capable of consenting to a sexual relationship um even if they consent it's considered statutory rape but yet we're going to let them choose to change their body and then we give them hormone blockers and give them different hormones puberty blockers and hormones that actually will stop them from developing normally and then force them to develop abnormally it harms their bone structure it's going to make them infertile it's going to permanently destroy their ability to function as they were born and the way god created them and that's a decision they're making as a minor which they're not even capable of making and but it's going to affect their whole life it's going to affect maybe their lifespan their health their ability to have children ability to have family ability to have a normal physical relationship sexual relationship this is devastating and so the book i recommended before but it's called irreversible damage by abigail schreier i believe it's her name is s-h-r-i-e-r and she comes from a liberal jewish perspective so it's not christian and she's not uh doesn't have necessarily a biblical view of sexuality but on this point she says this is a psychological and sociological phenomena where our culture is molding and she's focuses on pre-teen and teen girls that culture is taking what is normally a transitional time into adulthood which has its own issues and it's catching these young people at a vulnerable moment and destroying them a false narrative now also it's interesting if you do the research uh when i was in college in the in the 70s this was cutting edge this transgender stuff was very minority but the the guy who actually created the term of gender identity and sexual orientation was a man named john money m-o-n-e-y and he had this theory that being male or female is strictly a social construct it's not biological it's just the way society trains you and so uh he wanted to prove his theory so we found some cases and in one particular is is in a book called um as nature made him the boy who was raised as a girl by john colapinto it's a tragic story but he took this he found this uh baby boy that uh circumcision had been performed but it was botched and so john money convinced the family it would be easier to reconstruct your baby surgically as a girl and since being male or female strictly how people are raised just raise him as a girl he will never know the difference and so this boy was raised as a girl as a teenager he got into all kind of psychological problems he kept trying to dress like a boy act like a boy get in fights whatever and he didn't know his own history until it's finally revealed to him and then it all made sense and so he turned back to a boy got married and so on sadly he had lots of psychological problems he ended up committing suicide but all during this time john money promoted this story and others as dramatic case studies of success proving his theory now he didn't do it scientifically accurately and he hid the details he didn't let people know the whole story but he created this whole ideology narrative that section out that that being male and female or gender as it's called is a social construct and he used examples like this which actually turned out to be false he also promoted pedophilia sex with children if the children were consent then it's okay there's nothing wrong with nothing psychologically wrong so this kind of evil person his motive was to totally wipe out any norms for sexual behavior and promote pedophilia but he created this theory and here's the tragedy what i just said you can verify just by going to wikipedia he's been totally 100 discredited after his death but the ideology created is now the standard accepted ideology so the whole ideology is on a false narrative and it's on an evil narrative now now the people that are promoting this i think many of them are very sincere they don't have a biblical background and so they honestly think certain people are psychologically affected and this is the treatment this is the cure and so to answer your question we cannot support that ideology so we cannot cater to that false narrative that fantasy i really regard it especially as you know we live in a pluralistic society so an adult that makes some choices even though i may severely disagree uh i feel like we're we're limited in what we can do as a society and as a culture and as a law but when it comes to minors we have to draw the line against indoctrination and even much more so against actually allowing any physical changes while they're not even adults and so to answer your question i know i've covered a broader subject but while i i think we should treat people with respect no matter where what their situation because we want to be kind and courteous and friendly in order to build a bridge to win them to the lord and we do have some examples uh i i remember a man in the austin area that came into one of our daughter works and uh he felt like he was supposed to be a woman so he took the hormones to change his body he began to dress like a woman everything he came into our church repented was baptized received the holy ghost he became convicted he had done everything but the actual surgery and so he transitioned back because he felt that was god speaking to him so there are examples of where people can be delivered so i do think we want to try to treat everyone as as a person for whom jesus christ died which means we treat them with respect love kindness and pray for them and so to that extent i think we should try to relate to whomever comes to our church or in or comes into our life that we can influence for jesus christ but when it comes to supporting a false narrative especially that affects children so greatly we can't compromise and we can't cooperate we've got to be kind but firm on what is true most of all biblically but now even medically and scientifically and it's amazing to me some medical doctors and interestingly some transgender pioneers who made this transition as adults have come out to say you know what this is a very difficult process and a difficult decision and we made this decision but no child should make this decision and while i disagree with these people's choices i really appreciate they're honest enough to face medical and physical reality and we can do no less we have to support god's plan and there are a few anomalous cases at birth in those difficult cases genetic problems which ultimately is caused by the sin of the human race we we find trusted medical professionals that will share our values to help us decide what is the best way to treat those extremely rare cases but aside from that we have to reinforce god created you as male or god creates you as female we want to support you in every way of maintaining and affirming your god-given identity