Location: Tidewater marshes, Chesapeake, Va.

Deuteronomy 22:5 (NKJV)

⁵ “A woman shall not wear anything that pertains to a man, nor shall a man put on a woman’s garment, for all who do so are an abomination to the Lord your God.

News: "Transgender Boy Allowed To Use Girl's Bathroom" (See HERE)

"Cody’s parents claim he began to identify as a girl at 18 months. By the time he was 4, his family began dressing in girls’ clothes and referring to him as “she.” During his kindergarten school year, school officials agreed with his parents’ request to treat him as a girl."

There are two birds in the photo above. The Canadian goose is obvious.... the other, like "Goldbug", may require some searching to find. Also, like "Goldbug", I can't seem to figure out just what kind of a "creature" (though I know it's a wading bird) that it is. It's probably in the egret family but I just don't know.

Sometimes it is evidently hard for some of us humans to figure out just "what we are" also and that raises the difficult question "why?".

In the story referenced above the parents of young Cody have bought into one whole line of thinking about gender identity. For them to assert that an 18 month old baby was already showing signs of female self-identification though physically constituted with male features, they must have been predisposed to the idea that our gender identity is innate in the same way that our physical gender attributes are. I find it difficult to believe that beginning to dress a physically male child in girl's clothing and referring to that child as "she" could not help but move that child down a path that might otherwise have been different. There is something of the nature of a "self-fulfilling prophecy" here.

It occurs to me that distinguishing between an individual's gender characteristics and their identity is taking a step into a very murky swamp, especially for those who consider themselves "enlightened" in the modern sense of that word. If "gender identity" is a "psychological/spiritual/mental state" that is somehow other than one's physical characteristics, it seems difficult to then attribute that "identity" to some physical origin, such as that person's DNA. If "identity" is something a person is unchangeably born with then the only explanation for physical characteristics to be different is that the DNA for our mental/psychological state is separate from that of the physical state. It further argues that the mismatch is grounds to call such a condition an "abberation" or "abnormal" condition and as such carries a "negative" connotation.

This is not to say that there are no "feminine" males or "masculine" females. I know folks in both categories but their fundamental 'identiy' matches their physical sexual gender.

All this leads me to believe that in Adam's fall the corruption of our physical natures is such that there can be some males/females who have some variation in their physical gender characteristics, but that their 'identity' is metaphysical, routed in their souls and as such subject to nurture and choice. A person may be physically inclined to same-sex attractions yet does not have to assume that "identity." (BTW - I have a book on my reading list, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert by Rosaria Champagne Butterfield who left the LGBT culture for life as a married heterosexual mom. It comes to me highly recommended but I haven't read it yet.) If this is the case then parents and the individuals themselves do have the ability to influence and ultimately determine their own sexual "identity" as an act of the will and hence as a moral imperative.

The Deuteronomy passage quoted above is quite clear. Unless a person is committed to the self-deceiving notion that God no longer cares about such things or that the Old Testament is simply a remnant of mankind's barbaric past, then the only position a Christian can take is that how we dress must reflect our physical gender and that we are, individually and as parents, to reinforce that our identity is to conform with that physical gender whether physical desires and perhaps emotional inclinations are counter that identity.

Does this set up the possibility of emotional conflict and even angst? Of course. That is the nature of all temptation. Romans 7 describes just such an emotional, spiritual conflict and teaches us that a Christian is not exempt from it. Spiritual warfare can be brutal but it is also the sphere in which the amazing power of the Holy Spirit is able to demonstrate victory beyond our wildest imaginings. Just as some men or women are "cursed" with an over active libido that inclines them to heterosexual excess and inclines them to see monogamy as boring and stale, so temptations to other forms of sexual sin must be resisted as well, both in physical chastity and in the emotional/spiritual battle that goes with it.

If "obedience is the pathway of blessing" (cf. 1 Pet. 3:8ff) then that applies in all avenues of human endeavor and sexual "identity" is not exempt.

Christian parents and individuals must resist the modern notion that "identity" and "physical characteristics" are materialistically determined in the same way. The "nature versus nurture" battle has not been absolutely decided in favor of the former by modern science. Both have their influence but the moral sphere, as inerrantly and infallibly revealed by the Scriptures, is relegated to the spiritual realm and must be pursued in terms of "holiness to the Lord."