There’s a lot of talk in our beloved country today about bathrooms. Arguments and emotions are at a high pitch on both sides. What interests me most about the debate are the philosophies behind them. On the one hand, transgender bathroom folks are strictly applying “post-modern” thought. If I identify with a certain gender – whether I was born that way or not – then who is to say otherwise? On the other side are “modernists” who believe that universals exist: men are men and women are women.
But the deeper, more fundamental, issue behind this debate is identity…what does it mean to be human?
There is an inescapable, logical log-jam here for the LGBT community. For the most part, they would suggest a very humanistic/naturalistic approach to what it means to be human. As a species, they might say, we humans are free to develop and evolve as necessary. Here they pull from Charles Darwin and his famous “On the Origin of Species.” Darwin stated that all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual’s ability to compete, survive, and reproduce. And yet, homosexuality and transgenderism run exactly contrary to this major tenet from the Darwin bible.
The other option, of course, is that we have a Creator/Designer who made us male and female and called that creation “very good.” But this thought runs contrary to the LGBT position, too. The transgender person must decide that (if there is a Creator): A) God made a mistake when creating me (i.e. giving me the wrong gender); or B) the Bible does not accurately describe human sexuality – and the many sexual mores in the Bible all stem from this faulty, old-fashioned understanding of sexuality. Therefore, they say, I shall identify with the gender of my choice and express this how I choose.
These are complex issues and the bathroom at Target probably isn’t the best place to have this debate. But this is where we are. Ultimately this is not an issue of body parts. It is an issue of identity. God did create us male and female, but right before these gender descriptions in the Bible is the all-important qualifier: made in the image of God.
Humans are much more than organisms competing, surviving, and reproducing. There is more to us than carnal desires and their fulfillment. Only we have free will, the ability to reason, to create, to sacrifice, and to act in a way that benefits society. That is the image of God in us. When a human’s identity is considered the same thing as his sexual identity, we have lost who we are…we have debased ourselves. Both sides of the debate would do well to raise their standards.
Imago Dei…the image of God. Lose that, and we lose everything. Lose that and we fight for bathroom rights.
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