June 3, 2015

Et Tu, Bruce?

Bruce Jenner didn’t start with objective truth. He started with Bruce Jenner.

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.’” This isn’t a treatise on faith, but, for Christians, those words are where any discussions of gender and marriage begin. For those who don’t share our faith, we’d simply point to the Declaration of Independence, in which the Founders acknowledged that Liberty comes from our Creator. And family is the third pillar of Liberty.

But Bruce Jenner didn’t start with objective truth. He started with Bruce Jenner.

Before the aptly named Vanity Fair’s upcoming cover story on the former Olympic Decathlon champion’s transition from Bruce to Caitlyn, Jenner described his view of how God created him: “God’s looking down, making little Bruce. … He says, ‘Okay, what are we gonna do with this one? Make him a smart kid, very determined.’ … And then when he’s just finishing he says, ‘Let’s wait a second.’ God looks down and chuckles a little bit and says, ‘Hey, let’s give him the soul of a female.’”

Jenner insists he’s only coming to terms with who God really made him to be: “If I was lying on my deathbed and I had kept this secret and never ever did anything about it, I would be lying there saying, ‘You just blew your entire life. You never dealt with yourself,’ and I don’t want that to happen.”

God’s Word actually has a lot to say about the subject, and the voices in Bruce’s head are completely at odds with all of it.

So how does 21st century American pop culture respond to his very public and self-congratulatory — yet still physically incomplete — sexual transition?

Mostly with fawning accolades. Media stories erupted everywhere, giving deference to Bruce’s chosen gender instead of his God-given biological one. His Wikipedia entry has been altered to reflect that “she” won Olympic medals — 40 years before this transition. ESPN will award him the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at the July ESPYs. Even Barack Obama found time between rounds of golf to tweet, “It takes courage to share your story.” Jenner quickly set a Twitter record for reaching one million followers.

And, hey, he’s a Republican!

In short, our world includes an ever-increasing population of broken people who celebrate brokenness, while attacking the broken people (like us) who say there’s a better way and a higher truth.

Which prompts the question: What’s courageous about basking in the glory of the media spotlight?

Based on Jenner’s revelations, he is clearly a troubled soul. Compassion, prayer and treatment are appropriate responses. But affirmation? Few things could be less compassionate or helpful.

The comparisons to other mental illnesses and destructive behaviors are numerous and illustrative, albeit imprecise.

RedState’s Erick Erickson focused on behavior, arguing, “[I]f an alcoholic told you that his authentic self was to drink, you would not encourage that. If a person told you his authentic self was to be attracted to small boys, you would not encourage that. If a person told you that his authentic self was to mutilate his body, you would not encourage that.”

Columnist Ben Shapiro recounted a personal story regarding the mental illness aspect, writing, “My grandfather was deeply mentally ill. He spent nearly a year in a psychiatric institution after being diagnosed with bipolar disorder; he heard the radio talking to him. He became suicidal. He spent years battling the condition, until he was prescribed lithium. For the next several decades, the medication brought his mental illness under control. Nothing would have been crueler to my grandfather than had society told him that his delusions were correct — that the radio was, in fact, talking to him; that the curtains were indeed threatening him; that he was normal, and that it was the stereotypes of the world inducing his paranoia. … It’s cruel to allow a mentally ill person to exploit himself in public, but the political left is happy to do so in order to perpetuate the pseudo-scientific nonsense that a man can magically turn into a woman.”

Also, Canada’s National Post had a story this week about people who become disabled by choice, cutting off limbs they don’t want. These supposed “transabled” people are mentally ill.

These comparisons illustrate a painful truth: Leftists don’t care about Bruce “Caitlyn” Jenner; they care about an agenda to remake our culture without good or bad, right or wrong, up or down — and most certainly without God. To them, Jenner is merely a tool who normalizes aberration. Leftists are tired of feeling guilty, so, instead of turning to their Creator, they glory in their brokenness. Dysfunction becomes virtue.

Meanwhile, the Left has duped more than half the American public into thinking homosexuals make up a far bigger part of the population than is true. Therefore, Americans are left to conclude as they checkout at the supermarket next to all those tabloids that Jenner is perfectly normal.

Ironically, while the culture celebrates Jenner’s transition, conversion therapy (which can actually help homosexuals who want to go straight) is illegal in some states. Ponder that one.

Next comes more of the inevitable punishment for those who aren’t sufficiently “tolerant.” Consider Brendan Eich, the creator of JavaScript, the cofounder and CEO of Mozilla (which develops the Firefox web browser), who was forced to resign as CEO of the company he founded for contributing to a lawful ballot initiative that opposed same-sex marriage. Or think of the Christian bakers who were forced to bake the cake for same-sex weddings.

Indeed, The Washington Times reports, “The Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued guidelines Monday suggesting that employers allow transgender employees access to the restroom that corresponds to their gender identity.” Just wait until this is no longer a suggestion.

Jenner’s story is about far more than celebration and tolerance. It’s about coerced compliance and mandated approval. Jenner is merely a pawn in the Left’s ongoing “coexist” game.

In conclusion, let’s consider another passage of Scripture: “God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator.” We shouldn’t worship Jenner. We should pray for him, for he needs his Creator’s healing redemption.

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