Self-perception alone is not a reliable guide for who we are. How can Christians balance civic involvement as well as extending love to those who identify as transgender? Pastor Lutzer distinguishes listening well from confusing reality. If Christians do not speak about these issues, all that is left is the secular morality of the state.
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Transcript: Welcome to “5 Minutes with Pastor Lutzer.” I’m so glad that you joined us again today and if you’ve been with us, you know that I’m giving a very quick summary of my book, entitled, “No Reason to Hide: Standing for Christ in a Collapsing Culture.
Just this morning, I was interviewed by someone who asked this question, why did I write this book? What is the goal? Well, there are many intentions that I had but one is this: to help all of us as Christians think through the issues that we are facing today, to be able to give a biblical response. Because we don’t have to go looking for culture wars; the culture wars are coming toward us.
Today I want to discuss the issue of transgenderism. How should parents respond when a child comes home from school and says, “You know I think I’m trans?”
First of all what you need to do is to realize that one of the reasons that child may be saying that is because of what they’re being taught in school. Imagine a child going to school being taught all different forms of sexuality, and I discuss in my book how explicit some of those teachings are. He’s being confronted with all that and in his heart, he knows that this is wrong. His conscience tells him that. But he’s told that this is perfectly normal. Naturally, this leads to shame, it leads to guilt and it leads to depression. So once you’re depressed, you’re told, “You know what your problem is? You are probably trans.” So listen to your child. Be careful to listen to what they are saying.
Then what you have to do is to help them to understand that self-perception alone is not a reliable guide as to who they are. As a matter of fact, you can prove that very easily. You know, there are those who go to a psych ward and they will tell you there are some people there who earnestly believe that they are Napoleon. But what they believe about themselves simply is not true. As a matter of fact, you can pretend that you are someone who can fly. You are Superman. But pretending or even believing that you are Superman, does not mean that you can fly. We have to help people to understand that transgenderism is ruining our people, ruining our children. If they go for surgery that means, of course, that they can never be a biological parent. It means that there will be continued confusion within them and they will never find the alignment that they hope to seek.
Perhaps you’ve heard me say this before but I need to emphasize that George Orwell, in his book “1984,” tells the story of how Winston was taken into a room. Someone held up five fingers and said, “How many fingers are there?” Winston said, “Five.” The man said, “No, there are four.” Then he held up three fingers and said, “How many fingers?” And Winston said, “Three” and he said “No, that’s four” and then he said, “You must understand that four plus four sometimes is five. Sometimes it’s three. Sometimes it’s both.” I’ve often thought about that. What’s going on there? It’s not as if the man thought that he could actually convince Winston that two plus two was five. What he wanted Winston to do is to be comfortable living with lies.
That’s where we are at. Everyone knows a man cannot have babies too. We all know that. But our culture, the transgender revolution is revolutionizing everything. It is even attacking the women’s movement because the women’s movement is saying now we were for the rights of women and now you want us to be for the rights of men who believe that they are women. The confusion is everywhere.
You and I have to help our young people think these things through, to understand that they should be who God made them. If they ask you to change their pronouns, you can use a different name, but don’t call Bert a she. He was born a boy. His pronouns are he and him. I share my heart with you because I think that this is a fist in God’s face. And you and I need to help this generation think these issues through in a way that is scriptural and helpful and stand for truth, and let the chips fall where they may.
Thank you so much for joining us today. Actually I think next time I’m going to be speaking about our public schools. But as for today, my friend, no matter how hard it becomes, you just go with God.