Follies of Trying to Transcend Gender

Looking at trends in academia is a good tool in predicting where our society is headed. After all, our culture's future ought to be mentored and guided by the best minds we have to offer, right? Isn't that the best way to ensure progress? Exactly what kind of education is being received though? Having just made the transition out of a secular university with that coveted piece of paper in hand, I can tell you exactly what type of education America's young people are receiving: one unconcerned with absolute truth. I'm sure that this is not the case in all departments. Mathematicians do not reside in the realm of subjectivity. A rectangle will always consist of 90-degree angles, and 25 will always be divisible by five even if you insist to look at it through a Marxist lens. But in nearly all of my humanities courses, there was no such thing as absolute truth. The closest we came were well-supported theses. This absence of truth naturally led to an abstraction of definitions. When this “logic” is followed, it doesn't take too long before you're convinced there is no such thing as “gender.” Gender becomes a social construct – a tool used by a society or culture to categorize the sexes in ways they ought not.

Any new bride will tell you that the idea that gender only exists as a social invention is nonsense. I was never more convinced in the reality of gender distinctions than the first few months of marriage. It's real. Not only is it real, it's intentional. God didn't create male and female to be different only in anatomical components. He created them to be different in strengths, weaknesses, abilities, functions, and purposes. It's beautiful to realize that He didn't just create them to be different: He created them to be complementary. But is it really a danger that we abandon the distinction? Can't the distinction be like small pox: real, but no longer a concern because of the advancement of society? It is impossible to advance past gender, and to attempt to do so (especially as believers) really is dangerous. There are at least three broad dangers in this abandonment of gender and one individual danger.

Firstly, embedded in the premise of ignoring or denying the existence of gender is a disregard for the absoluteness of God's authorship. Genesis 3:18 describes God's intention for women. It says, “Then the Lord God said, 'It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.'” God intentionally authored woman to be a helper to her husband. By choosing to deny or ignore this role, women deny or ignore God's intentional authorship. And if God's authority in gender cannot be seen, how will his authority and sovereignty over the more complex aspects of life be seen? Without God as authority, feelings and/or experience is enthroned as that which governs and dictates life. It's important to see what is happening here: God is being denied Kingship. And that's a very big deal. Refusal to see God as intentional author of the role of the female gender is a dangerously cracked foundation upon which some are choosing to build their lives.

The second danger that results in a refusal to accept God's biblical authorship of gender roles is a discontent in marriage. When those feelings of pride and selfishness creep in (when), because emotions and experience have been enthroned as governors, conflicts are not resolved in godly, self-sacrificial ways. Selfish desires and that which we think we are entitled to, not God's will revealed in scripture, become a priority over husbands, homes, and sanctification.

Lastly, because of a refusal to accept gender roles, families suffer. I don't have children, but I have seen the effects of this post-modern mentality in family members and friends. Without biblical commitment to God's will in gender roles, mothers cannot teach daughters how to pursue biblical femininity and they cannot teach sons how to pursue biblical masculinity. A new generation of post-modern, subjective evaluators is formed and their tendency to apply this absence of hard-and-fast truth won't stop with gender.

On the individual level, the saddest result of women refusing to submit herself to the role God has given her is the reality that she will not be able to experience the joys of submission to the Lord through submission to her husband. She won't be able to be that radical woman who is so rare in our culture that finds fulfillment and satisfaction and complete contentment in being what God has told her she ought to be. She cannot be an example to her sons to encourage them to be providers and protectors of such women. She cannot be an example to her daughters by showing them that their joy and worth is found in Christ and in obedience to Him. She cannot teach her children how not to be swayed to and fro by every new philosophy that comes along, but rather be grounded, governed, and guided by the sufficiency of the Word of God.