Bruce Jenner – Witkowski Blog

caitlyn The name Caitlyn has disappeared from the Social Security Website’s list of 1000 popular baby names. The once favored name fell 542 spots from 609 to 1151 over this past year. And, the drop is not an isolated incident. The three other most common spellings of the name (Caitlin, Katelynn and Kaitlynn) also disappeared from the list of popular girl names. The names fell from 652, 994, and 943 to spots 1060, 1054, and 1375 respectively. The seismic drop of the name Caitlyn is rather unprecedented.

Time, The New York Daily News, and many other news outlets have run stories trying to make since of the name’s supprizing disappearance.

Today, many Americans cannot help but associate the name ‘Caitlyn’ with Caitlyn Jenner who once identified as a man, Bruce Jenner. The former Olympic gold medal winner has been in the news quite often since 2015. He won the Arthur Ash Courage Award at the ESPYS, donned the cover of Glamour Magazine, and gave captivating interviews to Diane Sawyer. As he underwent sex change operations and switched his pronoun usage, he grabbed the attention of the American public.

Today, fifty-one percent of Americans approve of letting transgender men and women use their restroom of choice. Sixty-six percent of people who know a transgender person our sympathetic to the transgender cause. Yet only thirty percent of U.S. adult know a transgender person.

Acceptance of transgender ideals is growing as the stats show above. But, the appropriate secular response to the movement continues to be confusing and undefined. Many almost two-thirds of the country have not had to directly interact with the issue.

Because things are unsettle and contentious, parents are fleeing from the name that the transgender community champions. As one baby name expert told Time, “We just want to avoid controversy in picking names.”

Yet such avoidance is not a sign of hate. As Time suggests, the drop of the name Caitlyn was not spawned by “wave of homophobia.” I tend to agree.

I believe the name is controversial because the transgender movement is challenging many of the liberal norms that have been used to advance the sexual revolution over the last several years. Much of the homosexual marriage fight was propelled by the notion of biological identity. They claimed that men and women were born homosexuals and deserved the right to express the biological urges.

The transgender movement declares that gender and sexual expression are now divorced from biology. Humanity has the freedom to choose their gender apart from the biological reality. The immovable is now movable.

When feminist fought for equally rights, they were fighting for people with two X chromosomes. Now men can identify as a women and dominate the very sports that Title IX was created to protect. Though many liberals want to welcome transgender men and women into the sporting world, the invitation effectively excludes biological women from reaching the field.

Consequently, I believe many in our culture are confused. They do not know how to resolve these ideological difference of tolerance. As a result, the simply avoid the issue. Their refusal to call their kids Caitlyn is simply an outworking of their confusion.

Thankfully where there is much confusion, the gospel is clear. Christians do not have to fear the name Caitlyn or transgender people. They fit into the gospel narrative quite nicely just as does every other subgroup of humanity. Caitlyn Jenner is broken and hurting like everyone else. The solution for all brokenness found is Christ. As people repent of their sin and follow Jesus, they find hope. The void that they seek to fill with sex changes can be satisfied by Jesus’ work on the cross. Those in the transgender community can find meaning, hope, and relationship through Christ just like we have.

Christians can freely name their children Caitlyn or any of its variations. The name does not ultimately represent the transgender movement. It ultimately points to brokenness and hurt as does every name ranging from Ava to Zachary. The beauty of the gospel is that Jesus came to save the hurting. The message that we share with our children and with the world is that Jesus saves, liberates, and redeems people from every name, tribe, and sexual ethic. We have hope that make sense of the confusion.

So are you ready to consider the name Caitlyn again?

pastor-response-to-transgender-blog The past week, the news cycle and social media have been abuzz with Transgender discussions. Because of President Obama’s new bathroom guidelines, we all may have to live with the reality of men being allowed to use female restrooms, locker-rooms, and dressing rooms. Quite naturally, many conservative Christians (self included) are greatly troubled by the transgender movement.

In attempt to help people like me embrace the pending changes, many on the cultural left are appealing to religious themes. So how do we respond to the claim that God is pro-transgender? Let’s take a look at how to refute three popular pro-transgender arguments.

Jesus Was Transgender

According to this argument based on a ‘literal’ meaning of scripture, Jesus was born with a set of XX chromosomes. Because Jesus did not have a biological father, God had to transform hm into a man. And he was not the first transgender person. Eve, the first woman, went through a similar experience. She was taken from Adam. She had XY DNA but was transformed into a woman. As Suzanne DeWitt Hall concludes, “If Jesus and Eve were walking around today…they’d have to swap restrooms.”

Response:

No. Jesus was born as a man. He was fully human down to his chromosomes (Heb. 2:17). If he was not a biological man, he could not save us from our sins (Rom 8:3).

Moreover, the lack of a human father does not necessity that Jesus lacked a Y chromosome. Jesus’s humanity was ultimately based on God’s plan and not on his mother’s biology (Luke 1:35). And, Jesus clearly taught that God created the two genders (Matt. 19:4). Because God created the XX and the XY chromosome packages, we can be certain that Jesus had XY chromosomes. God never goes against himself. Neither Jesus nor Eve evolved according to some half-hearted, miraculous process governed by the modern view of sexuality. Eve was created as a woman with XX chromosomes and declared good (Gen 1:26:31). And, Jesus is the perfect son of God and is beloved by his heavenly father (Matt 3:17). God did not have to transform anything.

Intersex

But not all people are created male and female. Every year, thousands of people are born with both male and female genitalia. The presence of these intersex humans challenges the very concept of our binary understanding of sex. And when intersex children are born, the child or the child’s parents get to pick the child’s gender. To be consistent with nature and our loving God, Christians must admit that they don’t fully grasp the diversity of found in God’s creation. We must be willing to expand our views of sex and gender. Or so the argument goes.

Response:

It is true that intersex persons do exist. And it is true that people have assigned intersex children a gender. But intersex persons do not represent a new gender. And, they do not disprove the existence of two genders.

Intersex is rather a perversion of gender caused by the fall. When genetic testing is done, intersex persons have either and XX or and XY chromosome set. In short, their genitals are different and may not correspond perfectly to their gender. But those deemed to be intersex are still biologically either male of female. Gender expands beyong genatilial but never exceeds the realm of nature. Instead of assigning intersex children a gender or categorizing them as another gender, we should work with doctors and scientist to determine their God given identity.

Once we discover their idenity, we should use medicine to help them live out their God given gender. When a child is born with a cleft palate the loving response is to use modern medicine to help them return to health. The same principle should apply to intersex children. We should seek to help them overcome the effects of the fall as best as possible.

The existence of intersex people does not disprove the biblical view of gender.

It Feels Right

But what about feelings? Christians are encouraged to let men use the girl’s bathrooms and to let women shower in the men’s locker-room because we should want everyone to feel loved and validated. As Bruce Jenner famously said, “My brain is much more female than it is male. That’s what my soul is.” For Bruce to be fully himself, he needs the freedom to be a woman. And he needs culture to treat him as a woman. If people deny him access to women’s restrooms, people are attacking his very humanity and happiness. Surely Christians do not want to stand opposed to love?

Response:

I do not deny Bruce Jenner’s or any other transgender person’s feelings. I’m sure they are very real. And, I don’t deny that their expression of gender brings them happiness.

But for the Christian, one’s true humanity and happiness are found in Jesus. Happiness is never found in following one’s mental inclinations (Prov. 12:15). True happiness in found obeying Jesus. To be fully human, we believe one must be like Jesus. And to be like Jesus, we have stop listening to what our hearts say. We have to follow God as Jesus did. Notice what Jesus says in Matthew 16:24. “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” To love people, we must encourage them to escape from the recesses of their minds and embrace Jesus. We must encourage them to deny their transgender identity that leads them away from their creator.