Opinion: As a Christian pastor, I believe gender and sexuality are assigned by God. Here's why. [Opinion]
I have been a pastor for 22 years and have worked directly with thousands of young people. I would say that in the last decade, I have probably counseled three times as many people about homosexuality than I had in the first 12 years of my ministry, and in the past five years, approximately five times as many people about transgender issues than in the previous 17 years. Issues about sexuality and identity are not going away; in fact, this revolution is only gaining steam.
In light of changing beliefs about sexuality and gender identity, public institutions, businesses and families are having to sort through complicated issues, about public accommodations, locker room use and sports teams, and deeper questions about the nature of the world, our place in it, and what is good, what is right and what is beautiful.
Many modern schools of thought are ill-equipped to answer these existential questions. We have increasingly looked to science or naturalism or philosophy to explain the world around us. While these modern worldviews can be of great utility when they help us to develop modern medicine, or the internet, or air conditioning, they are woefully inadequate in helping us understand the meaning of life, or moral transcendence, or the mysteries of love.
This is where the Christian worldview is of such great value. Many people in the last century have dismissed religious claims as outdated or obsolete. We are guilty of what C.S. Lewis calls “chronological snobbery.” We think that new ideas are inherently better than old ideas. Yet, when it comes to modern questions about gender identity and sexuality, it is the Christian faith that offers us the most robust and satisfying answers.
Christianity asserts that we do not find ourselves randomly floating in the universe as a result of trillions of random accidents, but that we are the creation of a personal God who has designed us and this world for a purpose. Our job, as His creation, is to submit ourselves to His standards. By my and many other people’s reading of the Bible, God has designed marriage to be between one man and one woman, that this is not simply tradition, but it is God’s law.
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