I was watching the news recently when a segment of Diane Sawyer’s interview with Bruce Jenner was played. In that interview, Jenner, the 1976 Olympic gold medal winner of the Decathlon, shared that since he was a little boy, “I have always been confused about my gender identity. I have always been living a lie about who I am.”
When Sawyer asked Jenner if he was a woman, Bruce went on to share how, even though he has all male body parts, for all intensive purposes he is a woman. His “heart and soul and everything he does identifies with being female.” Jenner said he feels like a small boy stuck in the middle of being a man and a woman. He repeated, “Bruce lives a lie, she is not a lie. I can’t do it anymore”
So at the risk of hurting all of his fans, friends, and family, by sharing with a watching world that inside of his male body he feels like a woman, Jenner hopes to “change the world”. “I really firmly believe that we’re going to make a difference with what we’re doing” (The “we’re” being the other 700,000 transgender Americans).
In her commentary, Sawyer then explained how, with the help of a therapist, Jenner made the decision to stop running from his feelings and began transitioning into a woman. Jenner found a doctor who prescribed “female hormones—estrogen… he had surgery on his nose…and began treatments to remove his chest hair.
After reflecting on this particular eight minute portion of the interview I realized Jenner was right, he is indeed helping change the ethos of America. Being applauded and affirmed by millions for his courage of exposing “the lie” he was living, Jenner sadly continues to add to the confusion over reality in our nation.
Jenner’s inner struggle clearly reveals that the heart is deceitful above all things. Seems to me that simple logic would say if I have male body parts, I look like a male, and sound like a male, then regardless of any feminine type thoughts, feelings or actions, I am still male.
The Bible says in Genesis 1:27, “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” The Bible gives no indication that God created “transgender.” In fact in Deuteronomy 22:5 we find that God detests it when a woman dresses like a man and a man dresses like a woman.
The truth is, Jenner is not helping our society by claiming to be female when we all know he is a male; he/she is still living a lie. And it doesn’t help in our day of political correctness for Christians to passively allow this foolishness to deceive and destroy our society under the biblical misinterpretation that we are not to judge other people. Silence and passive acceptance only adds to the confusion and one day we are all going to wake up and realize it is too late.
And let me close by adding, as Christians we add to the confusion when we express contempt for those who are clearly deceived for we all live a lie in one form or another. May it not be so with us to condemn those who are caught in sin, but rather may we walk in the grace and truth that Jesus walked. If you and I are going to change the world then we must speak the truth in love for we know that it’s the truth that sets us free.
Grace to you, and peace,
Mike Altena