This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program originally aired on Nov. 10, 2022. To listen to the program, please click HERE.
Sam Rohrer:
According to the word of God, on the sixth day of Creation, only about 6,000 years ago, God did what only God could do and he declared as good, or divinely established and approved, what he did was he declared his creation of man to be good, divinely established and approved by him. In Genesis 1:27 it says this, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them.” That’s two sexes, male and female. God created two genders, but with a purpose, to multiply and take dominion, wisely stewarding the vast creation of God is one, and the other is to bring glory to God.
And since God does not change, and cannot change, and because God as the creator has the total right to determine the pattern and purpose for all he created, there remains, to this day, only two divinely recognized genders, male and female. Yet, as we know, the world seems to be a blaze with an aggressive move to redefine what God created and declared unchangeable good. Laws are being made on the federal, state, and local levels, redefining gender, the number of genders, and seeking to compel everyone else to agree, even to the point of threatening churches and pastors and doctors with any communication of God’s divine creation model.
Well today this is our Stand in the Gap Today program, it’s our monthly creation and apologetics update focus. And joining me, again, just a moment, from Answers in Genesis is Bryan Osborne, author, conference speaker, and Christian apologist. My co-host for today’s going to be Pastor Steve Harrelson, President of our Virginia Pastors Network.
Now think with me on this if you would, the singular threads of the concepts, the reality of God, creation, mankind, male and female, marriage, family, children, grandchildren, human life, and God’s design and purpose for humans created in God’s own image, these together form a single braided cord, and to cut out or unravel one thread undoes or severely attacks all the others and literally cuts the divinely established cord. Now since this is so important to God, these together, it’s important to us, and since we know that whatever the area of life where mankind chooses to follow an opposing or contradictory direction to which God established, there’s always remorse and regret and misery and sorrow. This is nowhere better seen than in the lives of so many, who took someone else’s advice, beside what God said, and began to physically alter their God given gender, male to female or female to male.
Now this leads us to today’s program and the title I’ve chosen for, actually it’s the title of a brief YouTube presentation made by my guest today, Bryan Osborne, entitled, When Trans People Regret Transitioning. With that, welcome to the program, again, Bryan Osborne, thank you for being back.
Bryan Osborne:
Oh, thanks for having me back, Sam, and it’s good to be with you guys once again.
Sam Rohrer:
Bryan, this is a big subject, and I know all of our listeners right now are saying, “Wow, I probably don’t want to walk away from this,” I don’t want them to walk away. But just a couple things here. According to the UK Guardian the term transsexual was not coined until 1949, transgender not until 1971, and the word trans, very commonly now, it’s really a British term, they say didn’t come about until 1996. Now what I just said here was all out of the UK.
Now according to a Healthline article from earlier this year there are now 68 official terms that describe identity and expression, I’ve also seen numbers as high as a 100, so like inflation it seems the numbers seeming to number the number of identities, or genders, seem to be exploding, just like inflation, as well as the laws and the people who are counseling our children to make permanent changes in their bodies, so it’s a big deal. Bryan, in your nine-minute video on YouTube you define some terms, just start out here if you could, define what is termed gender transition, and then begin to pull these things together as we go into the program.
Bryan Osborne:
Yeah, no, absolutely. That’s, like you said, it’s very important to do. I’ll take it back one step further, before we get to gender transition, let’s define gender identity, because for many of us, we think of gender as just a set biological reality, which it is, in reality. But according to the transgender movement, now your gender identity is the way you feel about your gender, and so the way you feel you think you should be on the outside. And so your gender identity can be a fluid, changeable social construct, it’s really a state of mind, and so if your gender identity, the way you feel on the inside doesn’t match your physical reality on the outside, then at that point this movement says you can then transition to a different gender and try to meet how you feel on the inside.
So first you have the gender identity aspect, and then the gender transition, and that’s basically when someone, according to this whole movement, when the way they feel on the inside doesn’t match what they have on the outside, biologically speaking, that actual gender reality given to them by God, then a person can choose to really undergo a process to align their bodies with their felt gender reality on the inside. So if they’re a biological boy, but they feel like they’re a girl, then they can begin to do stuff to try to change to be like a girl, and that leads to actual gender transitioning. And so this can happen in multiple ways, this can include changing their name from a boy name to a girl name, changing their pronouns, in any number of ways you see through our culture today.
And then of course it gets to the extreme of literally changing their body, so where that can involve hormone therapy, which these things are really, we don’t know the extent of what these hormones will do to people’s bodies over time, it’s really just an experiment on kids, and it’s a travesty on so levels. And then even surgery, to where people can have surgeries done to try to make their bodies match their felt gender on the inside, which can include all sorts of things, but even just taking off perfectly healthy body parts, all sorts of things, and surgery to try to make them fit their felt gender identity.
So you’ve got the gender identity, you’ve got the gender transition, and then gender dysphoria, that’s when someone has that feeling to where they feel different on the inside than what they are on the outside, and so that’s called gender dysphoria by technical definition, and then they may seek to do a gender transition according to this cultural movement.
Sam Rohrer:
All right, you did a great job, Bryan, of getting all of those in there. And of course there are a lot more terms than what Bryan went over, ladies and gentlemen, but I think those are the key ones that he just described, and so you get the sense. And I know that no matter where you are listening across this country, you probably have had some experience, maybe there’s a family member, maybe there’s a neighbor, maybe there’s somebody in your church. This is very broad now so it’s why we’re trying to deal with this and to try to help those who are considering, the parents of those who are considering, and others to say, how do we deal with this issue, starting right where we needed to start, at creation with God, and then we’ll go from there.
Now when I come back, begin to diagnose the problem, talk about the extent of what it is that we’re talking about, and also have Bryan describe to us the cause. It’s important to know how did we get to where we are, and then we’ll walk into a solution in the third segment, and we’re going to give advice to parents and grandparents.
Sam Rohrer:
Well, our theme today is a very relevant one, when trans people regret transitioning. My special guest is Bryan Osborne, been with us before. He’s an author, a conference speaker, and a Christian apologist for Answers in Genesis, which their website is AnswersinGenesis.org. My co-host today is Pastor Steve Harrelson, the President of our pastor’s network in the state of Virginia.
Now we’re going to look at the problem. We just defined some terms in the first segment, so if you’re just picking up on it right now you might want to go back and listen to the program, get the terminology and the foundation we established in the last segment, because it’s important because we’re building off of that. But when God created all that we see in six days and declared all to be good, Satan manifested his rebellion as the great deceiver, the liar, and the father of lies. The grand masquerader we know from scripture often presenting himself at times even as an angel of light. We know he did this to Eve and she yielded to temptation, with Adam just knowingly following his wife into disobedience and plunging the entire human race into death and depravity and, well, we’re all dealing with the results of that today, aren’t we?
Well, in all things, in all areas, Satan has sought to usurp the worship of God, to question the character of God, to counterfeit the acts of God, and to take to hell as many as possible the souls of mankind created in the image of God. Now no area seems to be attacked more, now or in the past even, than God’s design for male and female, which logically leads into father and mother and husband and wife and children and grandchildren. They’re all there like a cord, like we just explained.
Now Bryan, let’s go into this, because you laid out great definitions in the last segment, and I just right now, just tried to provide just a simple biblical worldview foundation of human sexuality and family. Give any additional comment you might have to build out what I just said if you want, but answer this question then, could you describe the extent of this problem? I mean, how many people? What are we talking about? How prevalent has it come for people to say, “Ah, well, I feel this and I feel that and wanting to make a change.” How many people are being impacted one way or another to alter their birth gender? And if you would share just briefly what kind of choices are being encouraged, and the extent of those changes, you just referenced it briefly in the first segment, take and build that out a little bit and help us to establish the problem that we are seeing.
Bryan Osborne:
Yeah, no, absolutely, and you did a great job to find that biblical worldview on family and sexuality, and so forth. And I would just simply say this, along with that, that God as a creator makes all things good, and if he made you male, he made you a male on purpose. If he made you a female, he made you a female on purpose, and it’s for his purpose, his glory, and our good. And when we live according to what God has designed for us, that’s going to be better for us. If we try to buck against that and rebel against that, there’ll be consequences for that in any number of ways, and we’re seeing that in a catastrophic way on this issue.
And so really the scope of this has just blowing up over the past five or 10 years as far as how many people are really buying into this and really seeking to “transition.” I’ll give you one example, just one stat here, this is from the UK, and so this is over in the England area, but it’s representative of what’s happening throughout the western world. But from one particular children’s clinic over in the UK, in 2011, get this, they had 210 referrals of kids who are struggling with gender identity and gender dysphoria. 210 in 2011. In 2021 they had 3,585 referrals. That’s a 17 times increase.
Now it may not be that big all throughout the western world, but we’re seeing four times, five times, six times, we’re seeing just multiplied over many more kids, especially kids, when I say kids I’m really referring to young teens and teenagers and young adults, but we’re seeing so many people who are now buying into this ideology because it’s really being pushed down so many avenues of our culture today, whether you’re talking about the medical establishments, schools, colleges, professors, you’re talking about a friendly media who pushes this, what you see in movies, and so forth, and so we’re seeing it being pushed, and kids are really being encouraged, “Hey, if you’re confused about this, well this is your answer. If you’re confused, if you’re not sure, if you’re feeling weird about this, well here’s how you get fixed, you need to transition.”
And Sam, I’m telling you, the things that they encouraged to do is nothing short of demonic when you really break it down, because even the hormone therapy, or the puberty blockers, I mean we’re playing with kid’s hormones, or we’re stopping their puberty for a given period of time. This affects their growth, their brain development, this can make them sterile, and that’s just what we know right now, who knows what we’ll figure out in five to 10 years, 20 years, how this therapy has really affected them and hurt them and damaged them for the rest of their life from the inside out.
And then you have the surgeries they’re being encouraged to do. For girls, well, if you want to be a boy we’ll get a double mastectomy, that’s not a big deal, because it’s going to match up with your felt identity. Take these hormones that’ll literally change your voice and make you have a deep voice, and then you’ll actually get more of a male pattern hairline, you may actually lose some hair, but that’ll be great, you’ll be more like a boy, because you’ll have this receding hairline, and so forth and so on.
What really sparked us to make the videos that people can go check on YouTube on trans regret, the Answers in Genesis YouTube page, it was us seeing some of the testimonies of these poor kids, I’ll call them, again, they’re teenagers, who had gone through these different things, this therapy, or these surgeries, and now they’re utterly broken by it, they are broken because they had the surgery, they’ve done the therapy, and they realized it didn’t fix anything. As a matter of fact they realize, I feel more broken than I did before. And as you look at their reactions, they seem even more hopeless. And so the real passion for this was to as a warning, listen, this is not the cure, because also, the other part of the passion is, I want to reach out to those who have gone through this and let them know there is hope for them.
Steve Harrelson:
Good afternoon, Bryan, this is Pastor Steve here. We’ve talked about the terms, we’ve taken a look and seen how important it is to define this problem. You’ve even mentioned the scope of how broad this problem is. Let’s take a second, Bryan, and let’s pivot now to the cause. In other words, how did this mentality of someone actually changing their gender, how did that come about? Because I’ve encountered this in my own ministry, even now it’s gaining acceptance in our culture. How did this happen? How did we get here?
Bryan Osborne:
Yeah, as you well know, it’s really all about autonomy. I think you could sum it up in three words, Disney World philosophy. And this is not all Disney’s fault, don’t misunderstand, but here’s what I mean. If you watch a Disney movie, what’s the theme? Follow your heart, right? Follow your heart, that’ll give you your purpose, that’ll bring you ultimate happiness. And so it’s the idea of follow your heart, whatever you feel is right and good, you should do that, which the Bible tells us, no, don’t do that, your heart is deceitful and wicked and broken by sin, and so we need to follow God and not our heart on any issue, including gender issues.
And really what we’re seeing here, this whole act of this gender transitioning, this whole gender identity, a philosophy being pushed on our culture, it’s really an act of just total rebellion. It’s basically saying we will be autonomous. God, you’re not God, I’ll be my own God, I’ll decide my gender, I’ll determine what is right or wrong, I will make myself in my own images as I see fit. It’s really that heart of rebellion that we will be in control of our own lives, and I really think, as I’m sure you guys could probably testify to, in our culture we’ve seen the steady rejection of biblical norms.
You go back to the 50s, 60s and 70s, the sexual revolution, where we’re rejecting God’s design for marriage and sexuality. Then you get to really 90s and 2000s, you get to homosexual revolution, up to what we see now, we’re rejecting really God’s plain definition for what sexuality actually is and the physical reality of it. And now we’re getting to the point where not just rejecting biblical sexuality, but rejecting biblical gender norms that are just basic physical realities, now we’ll even reject that because no, we will determine truth for ourselves. In a nutshell it is sin, and sin is basically the act of I will be autonomous, I will be my own God, which goes back all the way to Genesis 3, you can be as your own God. And so nothing new under the sun, but this is a new expression of that autonomous rebellion that we’re seeing really having horrific consequences in our culture today.
Sam Rohrer:
Absolutely, Bryan, and that was a great question, Steve, in looking to the cause. What you said there, Steve, makes me think of discussions we’ve had on other programs here. George Barna, who I think, does a lot of research, and one of the things that he’s found about the attitudes of Americans, even those who professed to self-identify as Christians, 74% of Americans are in that category, have actually come up with a new religion, he calls it syncretism, it’s a little bit of this and a little bit of that. So it’s a little bit of God, it’s a little bit of mysticism, it’s a little bit of Hinduism, it’s a little bit of atheism, and we put it all together, and what he made clear was in the research we talked about was at the end of the day, the people’s determination of what was valid or invalid was how they felt about it.
And that’s exactly what you were saying, Steve, it comes down to how we feel about something rather than what God says. This is a big concern when I consider that the efforts are going right down into our little kids in cartoons, and so forth. You want to have a little bit left, but it does make a big difference when this attack is foisted on our children. They’re not adults, they’re kids, they’re very shape-able, aren’t they.
Bryan Osborne:
Oh, no doubt. And as you said, we’re seeing cartoons, shows, and different, of course it’s been in the news so much, Drag Queen Story Hours, where even kids are just being hit with this whole ideology, and they want the kids to accept it as normative, so they grow up with it being normal so they’ll embrace it as they get older, and that will affect the rest of the decisions they make in their life. And so yeah, it’s everywhere, and we need to be ready to deal with it as Christian parents and Christians in this culture.
Sam Rohrer:
And ladies and gentlemen, stay with us, because when we come back we’re going to go from the problem, and some of the cause, and we could have gone much deeper, but then there’s a solution. What do we tell those who have actually made decisions to becoming part of changing who they are, what do we tell them? And so we’re going to talk about that in the next section. In the last section then we’re going to give some direction, some guidelines and counsel to parents, you, and grandparents, you too are listening, because we all play a part in this.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Sam Rohrer:
When it comes to any portion of God’s stated purpose or design for mankind, or God’s rules for human conduct and interaction, God makes it clear that choosing his way will yield predictable results, they include blessing and prosperity, and good health, physical security, and abundant food. Isn’t that something we all want? But when people, or civilizations, choose to disregard God’s way, or even yet, to subvert it and actually take and go in a complete opposite direction, then God, in many places throughout scripture, states that all the blessings, some of which I just stated, would actually be turned around completely and turn to judgment and curses, and as stated in Romans 1, “There would out of that come very disastrous physical consequences.” Not just social, not just political, not just financial, but physical consequences, and they would be felt individually. And in time the entire civilization, the entire nation, would collapse. But thankfully, in God’s plan of redemption, there is a solution.
Now Bryan, let’s go here. We’ve talked about some things that are being so brazenly confronted, the media’s dominated with, and as you talked about, this concept of boy becoming girl, girl becoming boy, and it’s all up to you, and it’s however you feel, all the things we just talked about, it’s hitting from all sites, it’s in school, it’s in libraries, it’s on little kids cartoons, they’re infiltrating. All right, now, in your video that you did, and when you answer here you can tell people the title and how to find that, but you had a number of testimonies of people, some of them were amazing, as I watched them, who some had made temporary, some had made permanent changes to their bodies in their effort to alter themselves from male to female, or female to male, but then later expressed extreme remorse, you could see it in their faces in those interviews. Can you describe some of those comments and what people are saying as a result of making some of these permanent changes?
Bryan Osborne:
Yeah. I mean, when you watch the videos, it is really heartbreaking. There’s a whole gamut of what people are saying, those who are regretting their transition. Again, especially when you involve hormone therapy and the surgeries, and so forth. There are a lot of comments saying they feel broken from what they’ve done, and they feel like they’ve been part of some sort of social experiment. In a sense they have been, they really have been, which is so catastrophic. Some feel like they’ve ruined their life, they feel like they’ve broken it to a point where it’s not fixable. They’ll describe what they’re going through, I’m thinking of one girl in particular who went through, I think, five or six years of hormone therapy, and she talks about how her body has just changed and it won’t go back, even now she’s off hormones, it won’t go back. So her voice is deep, it won’t go from that, she’s losing her hair, receding hairline, growing facial hair, and those things are not fixable at this point for her.
And so you’re getting all these testimonies of people who feel like they’ve been broken by this, they feel violated, like they’ve been experimented on, they felt they’ve been misled to where they were told one thing, this would give you hope, and it led to the exact opposite, they thought they were lied to. And oftentimes, Sam, what makes it even more sad is that for those who are having this gender dysphoria and they’re trying to find some answer according to the secular perspective, then those of the LGBTQ+ ideology, they will say yeah, they’ll cheer these kids on, “Yes, get this transition, go do this, this will make you feel good, this will be the answer you’re looking for.”
And then for those who decide, once they get through the transition, that this was not right for them, that this was not right, period, and that they want to transition back, well guess what? All those people who were cheering them on earlier are now attacking them for being the enemy, because they don’t fit the narrative. And so these poor souls, they feel broken, they feel like they’ve been violated, they feel like they’ve been left behind by those who were cheering them on, and you can tell, for so many of them, they just feel hopeless. And that’s where we as Christians can really step in and fill that vacuum for them. There is hope available, if you will turn to Christ there is hope, and that’s the real passion we have on this issue.
Steve Harrelson:
Bryan, you just hit on this, one of the greatest things about the perfect, the agape love of God, is that he knows that we are totally depraved. The natural man is completely dead and trespasses and sins, all of us. But the Bible also says that God knows our frame and he remembers that we’re made of dust. And so whenever you have someone in the trans community, and they truly regret this major decision that they’ve made, they express remorse, you mentioned the hope that is in Christ. Can you specifically share that hope? I mean, what specifically do you share with them that’s going to bring them out of this?
Bryan Osborne:
Yeah, that’s a great question, and I would echo what you said, that we’re all broken by sin, right? That’s one thing we can share with them, “Hey, listen, you’re not the only one broken by sin, I’m broken by sin. Now that’ll display itself in different ways in different people, but we’re all broken by sin, and so you’re not unique in that.” And so there’s some sort of relation, we can relate on that level. But then the hope, number one, is that they’re made in God’s image. No matter what they’ve done to their bodies, even to this point, they’re still made in God’s image, and being made in God’s image means they have inherent indelible value. And so that’s one step, and I hope to recognize you’re still made in God’s image. Have you been broken by sin? Yes.
And then if they’ve done some really horrific things to their bodies, made really poor decisions, those things, yes, they can still leave scars for the rest of their life, maybe they’ll have to be involved in medication for the rest of their life, depending on what they’ve done to themselves. But even if their bodies have been broken by the choices they have made, God can still use their life, their experience, their time here on this planet for his glory and for their good. Their experiences aren’t meaningless, but they will turn to Christ, that is repent of their sins, and put their faith in Christ alone for salvation. Then they become a new creation in Christ, and God will use their life for his glory. And so the pain, the suffering that they have gone through here, won’t be for naught, it won’t be for nothing, it’ll be for eternal purpose for God’s glory and our good.
And so there’s that hope in the gospel that even what we endure now, and those consequences are real, and that should be a warning, but even what we endure now can be good and be used for good by God for his glory, even though the things themselves weren’t good. And then not only that, but then as I mentioned before, in Christ you are a new creation, the old has passed away, the new has come, you find your new identity in Christ, and so that’s where your identity rests, not in anything else, but in Christ holy. And then when we leave this planet and we go to our eternal abode in Christ we have a new body that is perfect in Christ. And so you have that hope both for now and for eternity in Christ.
And so for every person, no matter what your background, what you’ve gone through, what your sin has been, that hope is there. For those who have gone through this, who feel so hopeless, I just want to tell them, no, you have hope. It’s a hope that’s always been available to you, pre-surgery, post-surgery, pre-gender transition, post-gender transition, it’s the same hope in Christ, turn to him, and you will find your true identity there.
Sam Rohrer:
And Bryan, that’s the heart of God’s plan of redemption. It’s powerful, it changes, New Testament is full of examples of people, “Such were some of you,” and the whole long list, murderers, and adulterers, and idolaters, and into this, everybody can fall into one of those, and that’s, what you’re saying there, yes, each one of us can identify, not with that specific bad choice that we’re talking about here, and obviously a lot of our choices have far more consequences than others. Okay, that’s what you talk to, that is the biblical message, you greatly expressed that. Let me just ask you this, in your experience on this topic, and looking at it, do you have any way to quantify how many people, young people, older people who have gone down this path, now experiencing remorse, are coming to the understanding that God can forgive and heal the soul? What are we finding on that, can you comment?
Bryan Osborne:
Yeah, no, it’s a great question. It’s hard to really put that in numbers, how many who have truly regretted that transition, because it is still fairly new in our cultural landscape, and so any numbers I might try to give would be arbitrary in that sense. I will say this though, and this is, I would really admit, it is a bit arbitrary in a sense, but what we are seeing are so many testimonies popping up on YouTube and TikTok and then other places where kids are letting, they’re actually giving their testimony, because so many times the mainstream cultural media doesn’t want this story to get out, they don’t want the story to get out that these things have consequences and they’re bad. And so you don’t get those platforms, but if you can get a different platform, like your own account on YouTube, or so forth, or your own post or blog post, you’re seeing more and more of these stories from kids saying, “Hey, I’ve gone through this, these adults have gone through this, and it wrecked me.”
And then we are seeing, because of that, more and more of us saying, “I found my hope in Christ,” because, I mean, they’re in a dark place, and they’re down to the lowest level. And meantime, when you get down to that lowest level, that’s when people will then turn to Christ, we’re seeing that more and more. And so I’m hoping that Christians will be ready to engage even more people in the future who are reaching that point, we can give them the hope they really so desperately need.
Sam Rohrer:
Bryan, that’s excellent. So ladies and gentlemen, I hope, again, people listening to this program are all over the country, I wish there was a way you could call up and share some things that you’re going through right now, but we’re just not set up for that. But I know that you’re identifying with this because it is in fact so prevalent, and because those who are listening right now are probably mostly parents and grandparents, you may have the question, okay, well what do I do? Maybe you’ve not run into this directly with your children, hopefully you have not, or your grandchildren. But they’re running into it, they know about what we’re talking about, far better than probably most of us listening to this program. So what do we say? What can you do? Moms and dads, grandparents, and I’m going to put in there too, pastors, you’re listening, what are you doing about this to help guard and warn? When we come back we’re going to get Bryan’s input on those, parents, grandparents, if we have time, pastors.
Sam Rohrer:
Well, as we’ve been considering, when trans people regret transitioning, which at some point they all do, because the recommendation that you should follow your feelings and make permanent changes to the way that God made us, male or female, which is what we started the program with, that’s God’s design, we can’t change that. We can try, but it never works out. So we’ve talked about definitions of where we are, these things, how we got here, the extent of the problem, and some solutions, what do we tell those who have made choices like this that have become unchangeable? Well there’s hope, we offered that in the last section.
But now what do we do? The best thing, obviously is to not go there in the first place. Now, as in all of life, God’s preferred plan, which is what the Bible is all about, talks about every issue of life. And we say that, do you believe that? That the Bible speaks to all issues of life? Well, it does. Well, if we believe that, we will find that God has a preferred plan for everything about what we’re talking about. For parents, it is to train up your children in the fear and the admonition of the Lord, that’s God’s preferred plan. The earlier our children, and our grandchildren, know the way of God, the will of God, they will come to know that God, and the Son of God, through faith in Jesus Christ. And the sooner that is, and the more carefully it’s built within our children, the more greatly they will experience the blessings of God.
Now, warning, teaching, guiding, and leading children, that’s all an essential part of parent’s job. It’s what God says. Yet the devil, in his anti-Christ ideologies and philosophies that are all about us, the devil also knows the value of targeting our children with satanic counterfeit plans and promises that are not real, and a purpose that never comes about, and promises to reward them with great rewards, only to yield lies, and bondage, and misery. I mean, that is the story from the Garden of Eden, that’s where we are now.
So it brings us to this point, Bryan, obviously all of these people who have made choices, and now as adults, or as teenagers, are speaking and saying, oh man, did I make a mistake, they were all children, and all parents listening to me right now, we’re children too, we know. Now parents are listening right now and saying, boy, oh boy, I’ve had some interaction, and I don’t know too much, but I see it all about, so here give some advice. We’ll just go down the path here, speak to this first. Parents, first of all, who aren’t listening, what can they do? What should they be thinking? How can they help to prepare and fortify their children’s defenses to resist the lies and to follow, instead, God’s ways for them?
Bryan Osborne:
Yeah, I think there are numerous things. One thing we can definitely say is be aware of what’s happening, be aware of the attack. I know for many of us, we look at this stuff and think, well this is crazy, surely nobody buys into this? I mean, no one can really believe it, my kids won’t believe that, my kids won’t fall for that, or my grandkids won’t, there’s no way. It seems utterly ridiculous to many of us, it doesn’t seem like it’s a possibility, and so we just, well, we just don’t really pay any attention to it. But in reality know this is a huge attack, it’s gaining so much traction in our culture, amazingly so, it is literally everywhere, as we mentioned before. So be aware of the attack, and the magnitude of the attack, and the focus of the attack, which is what we mentioned earlier, which is this is an attack on biblical authority, it’s an attempt for us to be autonomous and separate from God and define reality for ourselves apart from God. So understand what it is, and understand it’s literally everywhere.
Sam, we could go through so many different news stories that would show people, again, how this is literally everywhere, and how really, if you look at our culture, those who want to dictate the new cultural morality of the world we live in, they actually say that those who hold to a biblical worldview, they’re the immoral ones, whereas those who hold to this, a secular or sexual gender ideology, transitional ideology, and so forth, well they’re the moral ones. And so we’re seeing that shift in our culture as well, so be aware of that. So number one to be aware of.
And number two, what you already alluded to, Sam, as we know full well, and that is this, that we need to train our kids in the way they should go. And that really starts by getting them rooted in the word of God, as you mentioned already, as the authority in every area of their lives. You mentioned studies earlier, that there are many “professing” Christians in America, and there are many who will profess Christianity to one degree or another. But then if you do look at polls, at how many people in America have a biblical worldview, how many people in America actually try to align their lives, the way they live, how they think, what they do, how many try to actually align their lives with the Bible, that number drops to usually single digits, five, six, maybe 10% at most. And so there’s so many who profess Christianity but don’t really have a biblical worldview.
What I mean by that is God’s word is not truly the authority in their lives. So maybe Sunday they go to church, and they feel good about what they hear, and whatever, they get a boost, a shot in the arm, or maybe they feel guilty for something, but then Monday through Saturday they live life as they want. Well, that’s not biblical Christianity. And so we don’t teach ourselves and our kids that God’s word is the authority, God defines truth, God defines reality. And when we, as you mentioned already, when we align ourselves with that reality, that is good for us. And so from a young age teaching our kids God’s definition of sexuality, age appropriate, of course, you determine that with your own kids at their right age, but how God defines gender, how God defines sexuality, how God is good and perfect in knowledge, and he’s got it perfectly assigned for you, and to trust him in that, how God defines all these things, and then to root their thinking in God’s word as the authority. Because ultimately this is a battle over authority.
And so if we can get our kids thinking this is about God’s word versus man’s, and God is always bigger, better, stronger, smarter than man, because he’s God and we’re not, that we trust him, and he’s always good, and so we can trust him, and so we get them thinking that way. And so that will be, I think, the foundational stuff we have for ourselves and our kids to then be ready to engage the culture with good biblical answers. How God defines sexuality, how God defines gender, how God defines reality, how we can explain brokenness. Yes, you can have a broken perception of reality, you can view your gender wrongly, well that’s because of sin. We’re all broken by sin, we can explain that brokenness and explain the cure for that brokenness, which is found in Christ.
And so we can give good answers rooted in God’s word. By the way, that starts by starting in Genesis, that history that gives us the foundation for gender and sexuality and marriage, but then also we can be ready with the gospel, which is what those who’ve been broken by this sin so desperately need. And Sam, I’m convinced, in watching these testimonies, we’re going to see more and more of these testimonies, more and more people who have been broken by this and they’re searching for an answer, and we’ve got it, and what an opportunity that we can have to share this good news that’ll be so incredibly good to them as they are so broken by their sins.
Sam Rohrer:
Bryan, that is just excellent, and what you put together there is good for parents and grandparents. And Brother Steve, I’m going to go to you right now, only about a minute left, you are a pastor, obviously we know pastors have a vital role by helping to preach these principles from scripture, I’d like you to close the program however you want to in prayer, and pray for all of those involved. We have an opportunity, we need to take advantage of it and be ready.
Steve Harrelson:
Absolutely. All right, let’s get Lord in prayer. Father, the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, and only you know it. Father, we want to thank you for meeting us where we were, as we were dead in trespasses and sins, by the wooing and the drawing of the Holy Spirit of God. You have said in your word that you’re not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. And so Father, please give us the wisdom and the discernment as we go out and engage as parents, grandparents, pastors, help us to speak the truth and love and to be used by you to honestly make a difference. Lord, use us in these days as the culture becomes more and more corrupt. We thank you for how you’ve used us already, and we thank you in advance for how you’re going to use us to make a difference in the lives of these that we’ve been talking about today. We love you and thank you so much, in Jesus name, amen.
Sam Rohrer:
Amen. Thank you Steve and Bryan Osborne from Answers in Genesis, thank you for being here. Fantastic content in this program, ladies and gentlemen, I hope you’re encouraged. Answersingenesis.org, you can find a lot of things, and check up on their YouTube channel as well for this subject and more.
Recent Comments