Last summer, I did a series on my kids show about gender identity issues and I wrote this at that time to help adults understand how it is absolutely not the kids or just the liberal media who have created this problem—we’ve been just as bad and even worse as believers. How can that be? What can we do? This week we are going to explore just that. My series for kids can be found here. There is also an extensive book list on this topic below.
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Hi, I am Tyler Dawn Rosenquist and welcome to Character in Context, where I teach the historical and ancient sociological context of Scripture with an eye to developing the character of the Messiah. If you prefer written material, I have six years’ worth of blog at theancientbridge.com as well as my six books available on amazon—including a four-volume curriculum series dedicated to teaching Scriptural context in a way that even kids can understand it, called Context for Kids (affiliate link) and I have two video channels on YouTube with free Bible teachings for both adults and kids. You can find the link for those on my website. Past broadcasts of this program can be found at characterincontext.podbean.com and transcripts can be had for most broadcasts at theancientbridge.com. If you have kids, I also have a weekly broadcast where I teach them Bible context in a way that shows them why they can trust God and how He wants to have a relationship with them through the Messiah.
This week is really different and this episode is designed to dovetail with the series I did last summer with the kids. I designed it to help children deal with the modern crisis of gender confusion—without talking the slightest bit about sexuality because I don’t believe this has anything to do with sexuality. I believe it has to do with kids not being able to win no matter what they do, and not being permitted to be the unique people that God created them to be. Between worldly culture, and religious culture, we have really done a terrible disservice to children that has created problems that were worse than the ones we thought we were preventing.
Evangelical Christianity has been positively obsessed with creating “masculine” Christian men and “feminine” Christian women. But what does that even mean, and who decides, and based on what cultural time period and values, and what about people who were never born to meet those elusive standards? How are our kids reacting to these standards and how do these expectations damage and confuse them and drive them into thinking they aren’t really boys and girls but instead people who can’t measure up for this or that reason? Little boys are made from snips and snails and puppy dog tails, right? Not always right. Big boys don’t cry, but Jesus wept, and so did Jacob, Joseph, David and many others in the Biblical text. Little girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice, except when they aren’t. Girls are supposed to be meek and submissive, not bring home any income that will threaten their husband’s fragile egos, and stay home and raise families based upon 1950’s upper and middle class white household standards that weren’t feasible for much of anyone even fifty years before, but what about those who never marry or can’t have children, and do not meet our culture’s standards of physical beauty? If we look back through recent and ancient history, what expectations of ours would we find to be worldly and culturally determined and which would actually be commanded and celebrated throughout Scripture? We will be covering this and a whole lot more today.
First things first. In the Bible, God never endorses any culture. The Bible, in fact, stands as a critique of human culture—past, present and future. That’s why it is useful. It didn’t tell Abraham that the ancient Near Eastern way of doing things was good. It didn’t tell the Israelites in Egypt that their culture was good. It didn’t tell the people at Sinai that they had it right. The Bible, from front to back, is the story of God rescuing us from not only our sins but our cultures—from the brutal ancient Near Eastern reality of the OT to the brutal Greco-Roman Hellenistic reality of the NT to the unique brutality of our modern times. Hellenized Judaism got slammed and so would American Christianity if we would spend a lot more time listening to what the Spirit has to say. In fact, the Bible never says, “Yes, you guys are perfectly just and absolutely doing it right.” The Bible can’t say that because we have always been and will always be creatures who are influenced by worldly standards of worth, beauty, justice, ethics, and morality. We can no more claim ourselves to be unaffected by the injustice of the world than by the pollutants in the air. We are all compromised, and we have even incorporated our culture into our religious observances, and we do that because we read our own cultural ideals into the text without even thinking about it or being aware of it. But perhaps the most damaging thing we have done is when we lift the cultural reality, the background scenery, of the Biblical world and set it up on a pedestal as an ideal for our lives in the here and now. Guess what? God was initiating a campaign to bring them out of that culture and into His, which is founded on the principles of justice and righteousness, love and goodness, grace, kindness and gentleness, and perhaps most importantly, self-control. We cannot be completely like Him when we are also clinging to the culture—no matter whose culture it is. Yahweh has reached out to us both through His instructions at Sinai and even more dramatically through the New Creation inaugurated at the Cross, not to enshrine the standards and culture of ancient societies but instead to set humanity on a trajectory of reform and freedom from participating in the evils of this world. Evils, I might add, that come in some really surprising forms.
In many ways, we have reformed. Slavery is almost unheard of within the Judeo-Christian world—despite being accepted as good and even God’s will into the 18th century by just about everyone who wasn’t enslaved. Women can now be educated in almost all Christian sects and have been freed from the tyranny of polygynous marriages that set them as rivals to their sisters in Christ and subjected them and their children to the divided attention and resources of their husbands—who enjoyed their undivided attention and partook of the undivided resources of many women. Women can now survive abandonment, as there is now respectable employment for us in the world. Children are no longer left exposed on hillsides to die as people walk by without noticing, even though we still have abortion and many of the social problems that lead women to make that choice. So much has changed but so much more needs changed. It is a better world than it once was, as any student of history can attest, but we still have a long way to go.
We get some things right, don’t get me wrong, but one of the things we have gotten very wrong is our very American idea about what is manly and what is womanly. Ideas that very much exclude men who are not naturally tall, muscular, or rugged looking. Ideas which exclude women whose facial features aren’t delicate enough or their bodies thin enough or curvaceous enough to conform to this decade’s idea of what makes a woman beautiful. Pastors give sermons talking about how men need to have a beautiful woman on their arm, one who is a model of social perfection. But social perfection differs widely from era to era and a woman’s/girl’s body is subjected to the fickleness of the worldly culture that tells men what to consider beautiful while they themselves must often deny whom Yahweh uniquely made them to be in order to measure up to the men on the covers of romance novels. We have created a tyrannical system where only a few can measure up—not to Biblical standards of beauty and gender-perfection (which are characterized not by looks but by fruit, virtue, and industriousness inside and outside of the home for both sexes) but to cultural norms. Christian men want a woman who looks good according to the culture, and women have been trained to want a man who is likewise culturally acceptable. Such is the tyranny of the worldliness of the church and such is the trap our children have fallen into—but they are increasingly realizing that it is futile and are responding in unhealthy ways.
Pastor Stewart Allen, in January of 2021, preached a sermon that became viral on the internet where he complained about wives letting themselves go and how men “need” a beautiful woman on their arm. It did not go unnoticed that he wasn’t thin, as he demanded of his wife, or attractive by modern standards, as he demanded of his wife, or even well dressed in the pulpit. Everything that came out of his mouth was worldly—and being cheered on by his audience. And he isn’t the only one saying these sorts of things—giving the message that men only need to be men but women have to meet cultural standards of beauty that few attain, not even with the help of airbrushing and computerized manipulation of their images. We live in a world where men may age but women must not. This is a message that is exalting our sons (as long as they are suitably masculine in their behavior, as defined by culture) and setting our daughters up either for failure or for vanity at a very early age. That culture does it, of course, is to be expected. That the church follows culture is criminal and vile. I do also find it strange that in terms of dealing with transgendered individuals, we say that a man and a woman are defined by their chromosomes and not by anything else, while saying the opposite when it comes to how men and women are required to behave and look. In that case, it isn’t enough to have that XY chromosome and to have male genitalia—because to be a Christian man you also have to go to lumberjack school and be capable of growing facial hair—or you aren’t really a man at all. It’s a no-win situation because we have become decidedly unbiblical and worldly in our expectations.
We weren’t always like this, obsessed with these ideas to the point of forcing Christian men to be uber-rugged in order to be acceptable as men of God. And we certainly didn’t get these ideas from the Bible, which says absolutely nothing about the ideal man in terms of appearance but instead focused on the heart and on the actions required of Kingdom humans, male and female alike. The problem came in when we decided we needed to look not only respectable in terms of our behavior, but also prosperous in terms of our appearance. Again, not biblical. Instead of standing out as counter-cultural and a refuge for the least of these and the poor and the outliers of society, we strive to look like the world in terms of their values—only, it is the 1950’s white middle and upper class world that never worked for anyone else and doesn’t represent the historical reality that both men and women have been breadwinners and that makeup and fancy hair were reserved for royalty and not for normal people because of the time and resources required to indulge in such luxuries. But now a woman isn’t deemed to be an acceptable wife or to look professional without looking like the royalty of ages past while men get away with a far, far lower standard.
What about the kids who don’t and can’t measure up to cultural standards (as opposed to Biblical standards)? Are we going to make our congregations into extensions of the hell so many of us endured in High School? Maybe some of you enjoyed the social life of High School but if you did then there’s a really good chance that you lack the perspective to appreciate what we adults are doing to our kids to try and get them to measure up to worldly standards before they ever even see a schoolroom. It’s nothing but peer pressure, and it is an insult to God and how He made individuals, not Barbie and Ken dolls.
God does not control us or commandeer us. God has never demanded we look a certain way or work out or wear elaborate outfits or makeup or spend a ton of money at the salon on our hair and nails. God stands as a witness against out materialistic and beauty-obsessed culture and not as a fan of it. Women aren’t even allowed to look like themselves if they want to appear professional, or if they want to keep a man—when he leaves, we get the speculation that we have let ourselves go instead of looking at the faithfulness and self-control of our husbands. And self-control, by the way, in Greco-Roman context, was inherently tied to the ability to control oneself sexually. But in a culture focused on externals—in a church culture focused on externals—that’s just where our worldly minds take us. And our kids watch it, and they internalize it, and they judge themselves according to those standards even before their peers get ahold of them. Am I pretty enough? Am I doing the right things to be attractive? Am I macho enough? Am I enough of a man to satisfy the crowd’s demands?
Here are the questions we force on kids when we inflict severe and unyielding gender stereotypes on them: “If I am not feminine or masculine enough, does that mean I am gay? I have all the girl parts but my body is not very girlish—so maybe I am really not a girl at all. And I am not interested in hair or makeup or being a cheerleader, am I a lesbian? I love sports and science and I am loud and boisterous and my parents tell me that I came out of the womb that way. Maybe I am a boy trapped in a girl’s body.” Or how about, “Grandpa says that I am a 98 lb weakling and that I need to get outside and play sports, but I was in the hospital three times last year with asthma attacks. I get told that I need to toughen up if I want to be a real man but I am really interested in music and painting. I write my own songs and play three instruments and my art teacher tells me that I have a real talent in oils. I don’t enjoy watching sports, much less playing them. Even though I have a crush on Sheila down the street, the other boys say that I must be gay and even the guys at church. Did God make me wrong? Why am I so skinny and sick? Why am I so talented at the arts and music? If I go to Julliard will I really come back as a…well, I hate that word a lot. Why is the way I am not manly? Why do I have these talents if they aren’t for guys and only for girls? It seems as though—if I show the world who I really am, that I don’t belong to any group at all and I don’t know how to deal with that.”
What values are we really promoting here? Where is the emphasis on fruit and godly living? Why are we focusing on attractiveness and the seventy-year-old cultural norms of a select few in order (promoted on television, no less) to show the world that Christians somehow have most-favored nation status? It’s simply another form of prosperity Gospel but just as in the areas of health and money and stuff, most people come up empty. Instead of the church being a sanctuary, it becomes just another reminder that they don’t measure up. And our kids are watching. And our kids are the victims. And our kids are fighting back by trying to mesh who they know they are on the inside, messy and unique individuals who do and do not measure up to this and that, by showing it on the outside. Or, in extreme cases, by changing their outsides. Very frankly, it is because we have given them no way to be whom God created them to uniquely be, while still validating them as males and females. It’s a heart issue we adults have and we have forced the hand of all the kids who have never really fit in, and who have no idea how to fit in. People like me. And I wonder what I would have done when I was a teenager if this had been an option for me, this counter-culture pushing back on the insane ideals that were never really reasonable for the majority. Resentment and confusion build throughout the generations until they explode into something really damaging. And not just with gender. And when it happens, we blame the generation which explodes when we should blame ourselves for perpetuating anti-Kingdom values. Haven’t we always known that it was wrong? But haven’t we gone along with it anyway, desperate to belong?
When our kids are struggling with this insane, unjust, and ungodly system of measuring up—when they don’t even know if they are really boys or really girls because they don’t fit into that very strict mold that Evangelical Churchianity has foisted on the (and the rest of us have adopted as our own and gone along with) how dare we judge them when what we must do is step back and measure what makes a real man or a real woman in terms of godly character. Until we can accept others as image bearers regardless of how well they fit in socially, aka in worldly ways, then our kids won’t be able to stomach what they hear in church as we preach one set or values from the text while we live out our faith and indoctrinate one another and especially our kids according to the worldly standards of the 1950’s while pretending that they are somehow Biblical. Or that they were a great time to be living if you weren’t upper or middle class suburban whites. There are books out there telling girls and boys what they need to be in order to be pleasing to God and none of it comes from the Bible—it comes from the culture of the last few centuries and especially the golden age of Hollywood, when men were portrayed as tough and as controllers of the world, and women were soft, and delicate and occasionally spunky but still knew their place and couldn’t get anything done without a man to protect them. That led into the era of John Wayne and Billy Graham, who changed the way the world saw evangelists with his rugged good looks and focus on physical fitness. Today, it looks like Mark Driscoll and Allen Stewart telling men and women from the pulpit about how they must measure up physically and not spiritually.
If we want to talk about gender confusion, we must start with what the Scriptures demand of both genders and then look at what they are being taught from many pulpits. And we have to learn to be discerning about the messages we teach our children—often with the agenda of not wanting them to be socially unacceptable or homosexual or whatever it is that embarrasses us—and the messages that our kids are receiving from the pulpit and asking ourselves if we are making them into barbie and ken dolls or into servants of the most high, meeting different standards and living up to what it really means to bear the image of the unseen God whose character, and not appearance, must be emulated. This God without DNA because He had to create it and who is unapologetically described in the Bible as both paternal and maternal, emotional and forgiving, merciful and justice-minded, patient, loving, kind, gentle, self-controlled, generous, an ally to the vulnerable, no respecter or persons Jew or Greek, male or female, Greek or Barbarian (an idiom meaning educated or uneducated), slave or free and we are to emulate Him in that. No excuses. What we are not called to do is to create an idol out of any cultural ideal and substitute that for the command to represent Him to the world—and the manifestation of His glory to the world will look the same and different depending on who He created us to be.
When God gifts someone with the talents of music or other arts, it isn’t because He wants them to play baseball instead. And we insult God when we shun His beautiful gifts just because of cultural pressure. Evidently, God is under the impression that masculinity is about having a penis but other than that, a man can be so many things, have so many talents and interests—and it is only the idolatry of culture that tells us otherwise. And frankly, whether you or I approve of homosexuality or not, same-sex attraction doesn’t eradicate gender. Suggesting otherwise drives people in the wrong direction and toward gender confusion and not away from it. When we penalize culturally “un-masculine” or “un-feminine” traits, we compound the problems. There is nothing wrong with a man who wants to be a stay at home dad. In fact, that might very well be God’s design for him. Who are we to tell God what men and women should do and look like? This is what we do when we marginalize Deborah for being a leader or Paul for being sickly and, by his own admission, meek in person and only forceful in writing. Or when, as Mark Driscoll and others have attempted, made their version of Jesus into a tattooed, swearing, muscle-bound fan of cage fighting who would mock men who didn’t measure up to modern masculine ideals.
We’re the problem. As moms and dads and relatives and teachers and preachers. In fact, we are worse than Hollywood because anyone can see they are worldly but we pretend that our standards are somehow not worldly because they reflect the worldliness of another generation and one specific ethnic group. It seems holy and right because we look back with rose colored glasses and refuse to see what life was really like in those days and the cost of that lifestyle for those who couldn’t ever hope to have it. Men can be meek, and women can be strong. God makes and uses all sorts of people. Not everyone will be married and not everyone will have kids. Since the Resurrection, our command to be fruitful and multiply has been tweaked into a need to preach the Gospel and multiply the children of God in that way. There is nothing wrong with being our unique selves in service of God’s Kingdom as long as we image the character of God as preached by Yeshua and by Paul—who both set such high standards that growing into them should be far more of a focus than our appearance.
Are we giving our kids what they need to measure up to Kingdom standards? Or are we desperately wanting them to look attractive to the world based on standards that have nothing to do with the cruciform message of Christ and Him crucified, resurrected, and reigning?
Helpful books (affiliate links)
Valente, Sarah Hawkes Mary Ellen Rutherford is a Brave Little Girl –uses the story of Deborah to show that brave, rough and tumble girls are still girls
Pyle, Nate Man Enough: How Jesus Redefined Manhood–this book revolutionized my understanding of how we harm boys and men
Baumann, Andrew How Not to be an *SS: Essays on Becoming a Good and Safe Man
Snodgrass, Klyne Who God Says You Are: A Christian Understanding of Identity –this was the book I based my children’s series on, but it was written with adults in mind
McKinney, Jennifer Making Christianity Manly Again: Mark Driscoll, Mars-Hill Church and American Evangelicalism –excellent book on the problems with promoting certain destructive male stereotypes as inherently Christian.
Gregoire, Sheila Wray She Deserves Better: Raising Girls to Resist Toxic Teachings on Sex, Self, and Speaking Up
Payne, Philip The Bible vs Biblical Womanhood –new release, read it last month and it was a really terrific challenge to those who wish to lock women and girls into man-made boxes
Barr, Beth Allison The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth
Williams, Terran How God Sees Women: The End of Patriarchy
Byrd, Aimee Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood
