Our son got his first LEGO set for Christmas this year. He's four, so I knew he'd need a lot of help putting it together. From the moment he opened it, he demanded that I get to it! It’s been a long time since I’ve played with LEGOs, at least a couple of years (cough cough), but I figured, I’m a grown man now! I have a lot more wisdom and experience at this point in my life. I mean, I could probably build a real house if I absolutely had to. Surely I can knock out two small LEGO cars in five minutes...

You guys, it took me over an hour to assemble two cars smaller than my four-year-old's foot.

Who knew how precise each step in the manual would be for such a small thing? I had to follow every single step in that booklet to the tee and when I missed one step, it threw everything off.

You know why the manual is important? Because it was written by the same people who created not only the end product of the pieces but every single LEGO piece that makes up the product! If you don't follow their instructions, you won't get their results. The creator designed how the pieces go together.

Now here's where you inwardly roll your eyes and say to yourself that you know exactly where this is going. "The Bible is our manual for life." Well, sure, but let me tell you why it’s the manual for life.

It's because the AUTHOR of this manual is also the DESIGNER of our world.

He uniquely designed each of us to be a particular size, race, ethnicity, height, and yes a particular gender. We are designed and created by God to operate according to the manual. When we don’t, we won’t function properly.

THE WORD

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 WORLD VS. THE WORD

What words immediately come to mind when you hear the word "gender?" A few years ago, probably hardly anything beyond male, female, man, woman... maybe dude or lady? But today we hear things like: confusion, fluidity, non-binary, and identity. A far cry from the very basic understanding human civilization once had on gender.

The world seems to be plagued with an obsession to rewrite God's design to our own liking. I think it must have something to do with eating from that Tree in the garden, I don't know. But, take success for an example. The world has defined success as wealth, fame, fortune, appeal and all the like. But the Bible tells us success can be summed up in three words: obedience to God.

At the end of this life we won't be judged by how much we acquired, how smart we were, or how many followers we had. God will judge us on our ability to obey His Word and live out the gospel of the Kingdom.

Or marriage as another example. Marriage is not just some social benefit or relational contract. It was woven by God into the foundation of the world. The Bible defines marriage as a covenant between one man and one woman for life.

But alas, the world has redefined marriage as little more than a piece of paper that announcement of two (and in some cases more) individuals who are committed to each other for the time being until they should wish to separate and move on to something else. Be it two men, two women, and as often as you'd like, anything really goes.

As if it wasn't bold enough to attempt to redefine this pillar for the social fabric of God's creation, the world has taken it one step further and declared war on God's design for gender. Before there was marriage, there was gender, and without God's definition of gender, there cannot exist God's definition of marriage.

THREE LIES THE WORLD IS TELLING ABOUT GENDER

LIE 1: GENDER and SEX are NOT the same

A 7-year-old boy came home from school one day and said, “Mom, what is sex?” She made her best effort not to panic, baked him some cookies, and sat him down as she began to explain everything. I mean everything. She talked about the female reproductive organs, how relationships work, how babies are formed, all while he sat wide-eyed and stunned. Finally, after 45 minutes she concluded her TED Talk and says, "Do you have any questions?" The boy then pulled a crumpled-up piece of paper out of his pocket and said, “This is my soccer application. I still don’t know what to put beside the word sex."

It used to be that the "sex talk" was the most difficult conversation to navigate with our kids, but now we're having an entirely different conversation about biological sex.

The lie that’s being told today on many college campuses, all over TIK TOK, and from the cultural pulpit as a whole is that sex and gender are two separate things. Sex refers to your biology, DNA, and physical make-up, while gender refers to your emotional state and inward-identity.

This redefinition gives rise to the trans-identifying community, made up of anyone whose gender, how they feel, doesn’t align with their sex, how they look.

Now I am very sensitive to the realities of medical deformities, mental-illnesses, and psychological confusions. I would never condemn someone for what they feel nor would I speak harshly to someone who is suffering from the consequences of a deceptive lie or an internal struggle as it relates to their own identity.

I believe we're ALL born into an identity crises and will remain in one until our identity becomes Christ-in-us (see what I did there? Crises, Christ-in-us? Ok moving on).

But Genesis 1:27 clearly tells us that God created mankind not only in His image, but in His design of two kinds: Male and female.

The interesting thing is that the trans-movement is founded on the idea that your biological design can be wrong, but think about that for a moment. Our feelings and emotions are a part of our biological make-up. So why would you trust them over your body parts? Why are your emotions or your inner mental compulsions more trustworthy than your anatomy?

What I'm getting at is that we can't trust anything WITHIN us or AROUND us, we can only trust the One who is OVER us. Our feelings will LIE to us. They're not evil but they can be misleading. Jill likes to say that "feelings are indicators, not dictators." They have to take a backseat in our lives, where we can still listen to them, process them (with sound voices), but most importantly, hold them up to God's Word, the manual written by the designer.

LIE 2: MEN and WOMEN are the SAME

The world is trying to erase the line between men and women. It's a line in sharpie and they're using a worn-down pencil eraser. This endeavor is an attempt to rid both men and women of their God-given uniquenesses and their God-ordained roles, and yes men and women have different roles. It doesn't mean there isn't a crossover, and it doesn't mean that there must be inherit hierarchy. The fact that men and women are different simply means they are designed with purpose.

I'm sure most everyone reading this is at least somewhat familiar with Genesis 1 to some degree. It's the account of God creating the world. But have you ever noticed how He created the world? It appears that all things were put together in pairs or dichotomies (vocabulary flex, go me!). A dichotomy is a pair of things that contrast or oppose one another. Allow me to show you:

Genesis 1:1 - God created the heavens and the earth.

Genesis 1:3 - God created light and darkness (day and night).

Genesis 1:6 - God created sky and water.

Genesis 1: 9 - God created land and sea.

Genesis 1:14 - God created sun and moon.

Genesis 1:20 - God created sea creatures and land creatures.

Genesis 1:24-26 - God created animals and humans.

And then finally in Genesis 1:27 MALE and FEMALE.

God sets all of creation on the foundation of opposing forces. Why, because opposing forces create tension and where there is tension, there is balance. The land and sea are beautiful where they meet. Who doesn't love the beach? Except for all the sand... and self-unaware, half-naked people.

Some of the most breath-taking scenery in the world is found at the coastlines where the land and the sea meet together in harmony, holding each other in tension.But when the sea overtakes the land, we call that a flood and it brings devastation and creates chaos. When the land overtakes the sea, we call that a drought or a desert, and it does the same.

You'll find this same formula all throughout God's creation. If we stay in a dark room for days on end we become pale and sickly. And if we remain in the sun for long hours we become burnt and dehydrated. Day and night were designed to give us perfect balance.

Here's what I'm getting at: in order for humanity to flourish and creation to function, the sun must SHINE and the moon must REFLECT, the ocean must ROAR and the MOUNTAINS must stand, and men must be men and women must be women.

Order is found in balance. In tension. Men and women can’t be the same because their differences bring order to the world. Where women attempt to be like men, and where men attempt to be like women, it throws design out of whack. This is the aim of the evil one.

LIE 3: If you're not INCLUSIVE, you're INTOLERANT

What the world often means by inclusive is "affirming" or "in support of." In other words, if you don’t accept these lies, if you don’t support trans-rights, use preferred pronouns, or champion the sexually-identifying minority community, then you are intolerant: the ultimate sin in the world's eyes. Intolerance only works one way though. To be intolerant towards intolerance is completely tolerated. Just make sure your intolerance is more noble and virtuous than their intolerance so that their intolerance will no longer be tolerated (I'm just being silly now).

But this is all wrong.

See, if we follow Jesus, then that automatically means we don’t follow the ways of this world. Jesus is intolerant of sin, but He’s inclusive of sinners. If He wasn't, none of us would be following Him.

Yet He invites all of us, the self-righteous Christian, the trans-activist, the closeted homosexual, the condemning corner-preacher, ALL OF US, to choose Him over our feelings, attractions, and desires and to hold up the truth of His Word.

CONCLUSION

The key to navigating these choppy cultural waters is found in the tension of two more opposing forces:

grace and truth.

The message of grace is that God loves you just as you are. The message of truth is that God loves you too much to leave you as you are. But where there is an ALL GRACE message and no truth, it breeds liberalism. "God created you that way, He forgives all sin anyway, live how you wish!"And where there is an ALL TRUTH message and no grace, it breeds legalism. "God is going to send you straight to Hell!"

Where grace and truth are in perfect harmony, the result is love. Righteous love. The kind of love that can only be revealed by the Father, who IS love.

Ephesians 4 calls for us to speak the truth IN LOVE. 2 Corinthians 8 says that our LOVE is an act of grace. But my favorite one is John 1:17, "For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ."

Jesus Christ, who IS love is grace and truth perfectly harmonized. Whether you tend to ground yourself in grace or truth, we all must arrive at the place of love if we're going to be Jesus in the world.

There's tons more to be said on this topic, but I'll leave it to much more wise and well-rounded voices than my own. Love well and lead on!