Can a Person Be Anything They Want?

The big thing in modern culture is to permit people to name what they want to be, and everyone is supposed to go along with it. The most popular area where that plays out in our current day has to do, of course, with gender. If a woman wants to identify as a man or a man as a woman, pop culture says that they are supposed to be able to do it without anyone questioning it. That is referred to as transgender. It doesn’t represent reality, but it is the current fad.

There is another fad out there called transracial. This is where a person identifies as someone of a race different from their birth race. You may remember Rachel Dolezal who was born a white woman, but identified as black. She even rose to be the president of the Spokane NAACP, and became an African studies professor at Eastern Washington University. But even this is a rather meaningless thing. The truth is, human beings are human beings, and what is commonly referred to as race consists of nothing more than small surface level variations. In actual fact, there is no genetic basis for race at all.

Then, of course, there is Tamillia Valenzuela. She is a school board member on the Washington Elementary School Board in Arizona. She became famous for opposing a contract with Arizona Christian University because they are committed to following the teachings of Jesus Christ. Not renewing the contract with the school meant that its students couldn’t intern in the school district. Valenzuela shows up at school board meetings wearing cat ears and self-identifies as “a bilingual, disabled, neurodivergent Queer Black Latina … who loves a good hot wing (but only with the right ranch) and things that sparkle.” Now those characterizations may actually be true. She may actually be “a bilingual, disabled, neurodivergent Queer Black Latina… who loves a good hot wing and things that sparkle.” But she also identifies as a “furry.” A furry is a person who identifies as some animal – in her case, a cat. Did you even know that there is a transfurry community?

Well, now we can add another “trans” category to the list – transabled. Nick O’Halloran pretends to be an amputee and actually wants his leg cut off – even though there is nothing wrong with it. In the past, this was considered a psychiatric disorder called BIID (Body Integrity Identity Disorder). There is a similar disorder, called Munchausen’s Syndrome, in which people identify as ill and fabricate or induce symptoms of illness in themselves. But like the other trans categories, many modern social activists no longer see these as mental disorders – they are now considered legitimate groups that need advocacy.

I saw a video recently of a person doing a presentation on a college campus. This particular speaker was calling out transgenderism. After the speech there was a Q & A session and a young lady stood up and blasted the speaker for not accepting transgenders at face value. In responding, the speaker asked her why she didn’t identify as a 60 year old. Of course, it is totally absurd for a person in their late teens or early 20s to actually believe they could be 60, and the girl realized immediately the absurdity of it. After all, a person can’t change their age. The point was abundantly clear that a person’s gender is the same kind of unchangeable characteristic as age.

When it comes to the current fad concerning various “trans” groups, what we are dealing with is people wanting to live in a fantasy world. That is the case for everyone who wants to pretend they are a different gender, race, animal species, or physical condition from what is objectively true. All males have a Y chromosome and females don’t. Humans are humans and are not some other animal species. There is such a thing as objective reality, and a person is what he or she is. Wanting to be something else or identifying as something else doesn’t change reality. A person can pretend, but that is all it is – pretending.

In making this observation, it is not my intention to be political. I really don’t care about the politics of this. And if people want to play pretend, I also believe that is their business. The degree to which modern activists are taking this trans nonsense is not harmless, but it is their business on a personal level.

But it is an altogether different thing when they try to force the rest of society to go along with their delusion. It has two negative effects. First it degrades the societal environment and makes it more difficult for God’s actual purpose (not to mention people’s normal daily living) to be carried out in the world. A second thing that concerns me is that these people have personally become divorced from reality with the result that they have alienated themselves from God.

God created the natural universe to operate in a particular way, and those who deny that deny Him. Each of the “trans” delusions do, of course, have temporal consequences that are harmful to people in many ways. But it is the eternal consequences of denying God that are the big issue.

It is not wrong, or even a bad thing, for Christians to fight the culture war and push back against all of the trans ideology. But that can never be our most important battle. God’s interest relates to people’s heart, mind, and soul ... and that should also be our focus.

Freddy Davis is the president of MarketFaith Ministries. He is the author of numerous books entitled The Truth Mirage, Rules for Christians Radicals, Liberalism vs. Conservatism, and his latest book Shattering the Truth Mirage and has a background as an international missionary, pastor, radio host, worldview trainer, and entrepreneur. Freddy is a graduate of Florida State University with a BS in Communication, and holds MDiv and DMin degrees from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is a popular speaker, particularly on the topic of worldview and its practical implications for the Christian life. He lives in Tallahassee, FL, with his wife Deborah.

You may also contact Freddy at Leadership Speakers Bureau to schedule him for speaking or leadership engagements.

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