Why should we, as Christians, talk “slaves’ and fools’ talk”? For that’s exactly what these twisted pronouns are: The talk of slaves to gender ideology and the utterances of fools who go along with it. Bree also gets at another important aspect of the debate — men who want to be referred to as “she/her” aren’t women, whether they want to be or not. And just as the Tisroc was never going to live forever, so too no one can change their biological sex.
Before the latest polluted wave of toxic gender ideology washed over our fair land, just about everyone knew what their “personal pronouns” were simply by looking in the mirror.
In fact, there was really no such thing as “personal” pronouns at all. There were just pronouns — handed out for free by the English language — and every Tom, Dick, and Harry, or Molly, Sue, and Jane, just grabbed the matching pronoun, “he/him” for men, “she/her” for women, and they/them for groups of men and/or women, without a second thought. And if any singular individual ventured to suggest that “they” contained “multitudes” or were “gender-fluid” and insisted that you use “they/them” in reference to, again, a single person, said person would either be scheduled for a mental examination or an exorcism.
Now, with the rise of transgenderism, gender ideology, and general wokeness, even Christian college professors are getting in on the pronoun game. Dr. Alicia Jackson, professor of history at my very own alma mater, Covenant College, was recently caught with “she/her” pronouns in her LinkedIn bio.
How should Christians respond? At the outset, allow me to be clear: Christians should never agree to call people by “gendered pronouns” that do not correspond with that person’s biological sex, as determined by God and revealed at birth or in the womb. To do so is to participate in a lie. It’s a violation of the Ninth Commandment, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” (Exodus 20:16), because it is bearing false witness for your neighbor. It’s also a high-handed act of rebellion against God and His good creation order, which fixed, for all time, men as men and women as women. Furthermore, Christians should never willingly participate in the pronoun-offering charade, even if they are using the “right” ones. For that is an act of offering incense, of worship, to the false god of gender ideology.
The famous British author and Christian apologist C.S. Lewis never lived to see the days of “ze/zir” descend on Western civilization. But in his prescience, he articulated the stakes of speaking truthfully, even if the culture demands otherwise, in the book A Horse and His Boy (a criminally underrated entry in his well-known Chronicles of Narnia series). And he does so, amazingly, out of the mouth of a horse. A talking horse, to be exact. A horse from the free country of Narnia and the North.
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