In simpler days nearly everyone thought of two kinds of people in the world: boys and girls, men and women. (According to my dad the boys were the ones with the short hair and the girls were the ones with the long hair. So the sixties were a little challenging because he could't figure out who was who.) In those by gone days it was very easy to tell one's gender. Back then, before some clever clog discovered ultra-sound, we waited nine months while the kid baked in the oven and then once it popped out we looked between the legs and presto, we announced "it's a boy" or "it's a girl!" It was easy. Little boys had a little boys thing-a-me-bob and little girls had the other bit. And for family and friends it was even easier. Mom and dad brought the little darling home and dressed the little girl in pink and the little boy in blue, saving everyone the embarrassment of checking the physical parts for themselves. Everyone just trusted that the doctor at the hospital read the signs correctly. From then on everyone, including the "little darling" knew what was expected throughout the rest of life. The little boys knew to wear pants, stick frogs in their pockets and grow up to be firemen, pilots, mechanics and so on. Little girls knew they were supposed to wear dresses, play with dolls and grow up to be moms, or sometimes nurses. Little Billy pulled little Sally's hair in the desk in front of him and little Ines passed notes to little Joy across the isle.
I am, of course, deliberately stereotyping now. But we get the picture. Just 20 to 30 years ago the question of gender was hardly raised. Most of us accepted ourselves for what our physical make up indicated that we were. My parents dressed me in the clothes they did and encouraged me to play with the toys they did because that is what was expected of me as a male, which I am according to the physical parts I posses. If I was going to someday raise a family I needed to know and embrace the role and skills that a husband was to exhibit. After all, in those days, like it has been for millennia, the roles of males and females had always been well defined and my parents had no reason to try to change direction for me. I am sure that some reading this now might want to put their hands up and offer some corrections, but bear with me for a little longer if you will. The roles of male and female were very clear. Men were the bread winners and women raised the children and kept the house. But today things are a little more complex, or as some would have it, more sophisticated. I don't want to debate the indignity, cruelty and pain that was at times a result of that long established system. It left society wanting a good many times. But there was also much dignity and clarity in that system. Most of us knew who we were and where we were going and what was expected of us. It took much of the mystery out of life.
Our long understood roles in society began to change in the 1960's. That was the age of flower power and the peace movement. The era of long hair, no bras and LSD. Music changed, clothing changed and institutions began to change. The Catholic Church had Vatican II, the American Camelot (the Presidency of John F. Kennedy) was ended with a bullet in Dallas and American College campuses were battlefields of protest against the Vietnam war. Ideas that had once seemed the bastion of society began to be questioned and rejected. For better or worse, society began to take another view on those long standing roles that we had lived by for so long. Along with the change in roles for men and women, came among other things the very nature of what we thought it means to be a man or a woman. Although the human race has always had individuals who had trouble being comfortable in the body the Lord gave them, in has only been in recent years, after the revolutions of the sixties, that society has begun to acquiesce to demands that we accept, accommodate and even celebrate the right of such individuals to be "who they are." Recently Facebook changed it's profile setup to include more that two choices for gender. Now users can choose custom and enter something in the box. As you start typing Facebook will offer choices based on the letter you type. The really weird (to me that is) thing is if I want to I can change my gender every year, month week, daily or whatever. If I want to be known as Trans-male this week, but then start to doubt the male part next week I can change it to Gender Questioning. And then if i feel like I am more female the next week and can change it again to Trans-female. Then, maybe if I don't feel like any gender a few weeks later I can change it to nuetrois. (My spell checker doesn't even recognize that word)
Of course I am exaggerating the frequency of the changes a bit to make a point. (Although I don't doubt that in some cases it may get this unbalanced.) The point is we have seen a huge change over the past few years that has the heads of many people spinning. However, we should not be surprised by what is happening. Our Lord told us as he was talking to his disciples to expect that in the last days society would be much like it was in the days of Noah or in the days of Lot. In those days the human race was lawless and each man did what was right in his own eyes. "The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." (Genesis 6:5) This is not to say that today some people are truly confused about their gender. But what is happening is caused by the general lawlessness that has taken hold in society. Are am sure some reading this are a little confused by that statement. After all we still seem to have law and order in our society. I mean we are not seeing wholesale violence and law breaking on our streets every day. Our prisons may be crowded, but we are not sending people by the truck loads to prison — yet. But listen to these words by the apostle Paul to the Romans.
"The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them." (Romans 1:18-32)
The interesting thing to note about what Paul is saying is that God is not judging the people because of sex and lustful desires, but that part of God's judgment is the perverted acts of sex and lustful desires. Yes there may be individuals today who are confused about their gender, and indeed, there has always been such people in the world. But as the world becomes more lawless as regards the law of God, the less God will be able to extend his grace to mankind and the more confused and lost men will become. And the worst of that confusion will come just before the return of Jesus Christ the second time.
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