It’s the greatest gifts from God and the fundamentals of how He designed the world that are often attacked the hardest. God gave us gender as one of His very first gifts to mankind in Genesis 1. It’s the building block of the building block of society, for without gender, marriage wouldn’t exist in the way God created it to work: as an example of Christ’s relationship with the Church.
In our current culture, gender is attacked in pretty much every way possible. Gender and the innate things that go along with being male or female are caricatured, blown up, held to impossible standards, ignored as merely feelings or fancies, and beat down on as toxic or harmful. It creates a mess that harms both individual people and the society in which they live.
A recent interview Ulta (a large beauty retailer and make-up brand) did on their podcast, “The Beauty of…,” has gone viral, so-to-speak, because the host, David Lopez (a biological male who styles himself as nonbinary), spoke with Dylan Mulvaney (a famous TikToker who came out as “trans” and has been journaling his “journey to ‘girlhood’” through a series of videos – he’s a biological male) about the beauty of girlhood. Two grown men wearing make-up and talking about being a girl. This didn’t go over very well with Ulta’s clientele, probably because it’s made up of mostly women who didn’t appreciate two men telling them what it’s like to be a girl.
In fact, Ulta got so many negative comments about the interview that they’ve hid many replies on Twitter, and turned off comments on YouTube, and one of the clips posted to Instagram.
Ulta responded to the backlash by tweeting,
“The premise of ‘The Beauty Of…’ is to feature conversations that widen the lens surrounding traditional beauty standards. We believe beauty is for everyone. And while we recognize some conversations we host will challenge perspectives and opinions, we believe constructive dialogue is one important way to move beauty forward. The intersectionality of gender identity is nuanced, something David and Dylan acknowledge themselves within the episode. Regardless of how someone identifies, they deserve our respect.”
It’s an answer that keeps accord with a non-biblical view of the world in a society driven by feelings and desires. Why shouldn’t gender be whatever you want it to be if you don’t believe God created everything for a purpose and has ordered the world to work a certain way? Feelings may be valid, but they certainly are not always accurate, and we shouldn’t use them to go by. God created each and every person fearfully and wonderfully and made them the gender He made them, and it’s good.
An attack on gender (and marriage) is especially egregious because these physical realities don’t just point to physical realities. We’re told in Genesis 1:27, “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them.”
Jesus later reiterates this in Mark 10:6-8, “But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female. Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’” Gender is the basis for one of the most significant symbols in scripture – marriage. God designed marriage to reflect salvation, as seen in Ephesians 5:24. It’s a wonderful gift from God, and therefore, the devil is going to attack it.
It’s good to be a man, and it’s good to be a woman in the way God created them to be. Listening to your feelings when they tell you differently is a sure way to hurt yourself and those around you. Feelings are wishy-washy, and they change often. Reality – and the truth of Scripture – doesn’t.
