Short Take #3: Explaining the Transgender Desire

Here is another short take from The Christian Worldview with David Wheaton. There's obviously, there's many things that go into how someone feels about themselves. And this has been the question of psychiatry and psychology since the invention of those fields, is trying to understand how do human beings think and reason and understand themselves. And of course, secular psychology has all kinds of answers that it puts forward. And it wants to put out some kind of, basically some kind of innate idea, because obviously these things are also, these things are never disconnected from political ideas.

So if you can call it innate and you can call it biological, you can create a civil rights category that can be adhered to and reflected in law. But in terms of a person's individual experiences, well, quite commonly, especially within the transgender conversation, there is some element of abuse that often happens in the background, sexual abuse, physical abuse, things that were harmful to a person at a young age that were quite shaping to the person's way of understanding themselves and thinking about themselves and relating to other people. And sometimes it may not be abuse so much in the background, but it is this way of feeling like I don't belong.

I feel different than other people. And then someone starts to internalize that. And then this idea, like you mentioned the word transgenderism earlier, if you throw out that word and someone is already questioning, well, I feel a little different, suddenly that word is something that they can grab hold of and say, well, maybe this explains what's going on inside of me. So of course it's very difficult to actually get inside someone's head and understand exactly what they're feeling and what they're thinking about and how they're understanding themselves. Because of course, as the scripture says, the heart is deceitful and wicked and it leads us astray.

It isn't a good guide toward truth and toward clarity. So there's so many things that are happening inside someone's head. And I think it's important for Christians to realize that we're not describing things that truly are biologically there. I mean, even the research on this that has tried to prove that even transgenderism could have something to do within the gestational period, that there's something different in the brain or something. They've never been able to prove this conclusively. And there's no evidence that a transgender brain, so to speak, is any different from a regular someone who clearly identifies and is happy within the sex that they were born with. There's no evidence of this anywhere within the scientific field. And try as they might, many secular scientists are trying to find these kinds of things because they want to justify it and they want to find an explanation.

And honestly, nature just hasn't given it to us. So we have to go back into the psychology. We have to go back into people's minds. And how do they understand themselves? I mean, honestly, if I think back over my life, the way that I even interpret my own thoughts over time, that changes as I grow, as I mature, as I experience other things. And so those things can reinforce ideas that I had in my head or work against ideas that I had in my head. And so there's so many ways we need to get out of just thinking about ourselves and so much internalizing through this whole psychological movement and this whole idea of we have to somehow empathize with this mindset.

Of course, the Bible talks about sympathy, but it doesn't talk about empathy in the way that people use that term nowadays. And so we need to be clear. We need to point people back toward truth, and we need to be clear about the truth ourselves. This has been a short take from The Christian Worldview with David Wheaton. To find out more about The Christian Worldview, order resources, make a donation, become a monthly partner, or contact us, visit thechristianworldview.org. You can also call us at toll-free 1-888-646-2233 or write to us at Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota 55331. That's Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota 55331.