Hi, thank you for your interest in my blog! Please take a few moments to read the previous parts of this blog series, this is not a standalone blog post. Thank you and I hope you learn something!
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3 (Not as vital for this post, but if you want to know more specifically about the Church should respond)
There's a billboard on Interstate-45 in Texas I see every time I make the drive between Dallas and Houston that reads "Demo'rats will pay! Thank God for Trump and Abbott!" What ultimately bothers me about the sign isn't just the hateful rhetoric, but that it's just giving into the culture war going on right now between conservatives and liberals. Recently in Texas, there was a battle going in that war over the issue of bathroom laws regarding transgender individuals, and recently Pope Francis weighed in on the issue saying that it's terrible people allow their children to choose their gender.
In this day and age of soundbites, talking heads, endless newscasts and internet articles, it's easy to feel informed because there is so much information. The story it reminds me of is a mother from here in Texas, my hometown in fact. A self-described "born-Republican woman" who assumed it was her duty as a Christian Southern woman to vote straight ticket conservative party, and bought into the idea that this whole thing was just a lifestyle choice, and that Satan had a hold of them. She remembers seeing, like so many people, an article shared on Facebook about how people would use these bathroom laws to spy on women, and ate it up like candy. All of that changed when she gave birth to who she thought was her son. By age 2, her child was gravitating towards the toys that other girls played with and other girls, and her two best friends were girls. The family tried to redirect Kai towards more masculine activities and toys, and punished her when she did anything feminine. By age 3, she started to stretch t-shirts to make skirts, wore them around her hair to give herself long hair, and would be telling them about how she was a girl just to get her point across. The breaking point came when she overheard Kai praying to God one night to take Joseph, Kai's birth name, away to be with Jesus. She realized that she was overhearing her toddler pray for death. Another point came when a psychiatrist asked her, the mother, "If you and Kai were on a desert island, would you let her wear girl's clothes?" She responded that she probably would, to which the psychiatrist replied that her issue wasn't with what God thinks, but with what other people think.
That has been one of the more publicized stories, but there are thousands like it all across the United States and the West nowadays. I'm not talking just about gender dysphoric children, but adults as well. I'm talking about stories of acceptance from people who never thought that they would be accepting or that it would ever happen to them or their loved ones. When it's happening "over there" "to those people", or however you want to say it, it's easy for us to misunderstand and demonize other people. Humans have a tendency to fear what they don't know or understand, it's one of the most basic fears. For a good portion of human history, that fear helped us survive against predators, poisonous plants, and other dangerous. The problem is that when we put that fear on other people and assume that because we don't know it means it has to be against us The truth is that there is no shame in not knowing, too often are people don't want to admit that they don't know, but that there should be shame when irrational thinking and not being willing to learn fill the void. So, ultimately we listen to people we trust, who are ultimately responding the same way, tells us that these people are threats in one way or another, and we listen to them.
Humans respond to threats in ultimately one of two ways, the flight or fight. Some people do choose the flight option and just cut themselves off from society, but most choose the fight option. Thus, the culture wars started. They exist, but they're ultimately built entirely in our fears and depend on them to stay alive. What politicians, pundits, talking heads, and others know is the same thing that the advertising industry, psychology, and the movie industry discovered: fear is the most powerful emotion because human beings are wired to pay more attention to it than anything else. Due to that, we're more likely to take action, share information, the same articles and talking points, and it spreads through society like a virus with this same message: These people are our enemies and their agenda must be stopped or else!
That's why we get the same talking points over and over again on social media, this website. We get media outlets pumping out articles written by journalist with no understanding of psychology taking snippets out of academical psychological journals, experts being paid by the network to be interviewed or newspaper to write, production companies making documentaries trying to teach people with a journalist and short interviews from people with first hand experience so everyone feels like they're on the right side of the battle.
The problem with that is that when an issue like gender dysphoria is viewed this way, the victims aren't our children, our society, our religion, or anything that you hear about from people talking about it. The victims are those people who suffer from gender dysphoria, and often times feel torn between the two sides, especially the Christians who have this condition because they feel apart of both sides in the war.
Whenever you see a viral article or documentary, I encourage you to critically look at it. Ask yourself some questions, do you agree because it fits into your view or disagree simply because it's the "wrong side", who wrote this and what was their purpose? Too often, people just accept something is correct because they agree with it based on what they already know. Like I touched on in my previous post, it's usually much more complicated than the simplistic answers you often hear about and may or may not think. The truth is usually more complicated and I hope that I've done a good job with this series finding a middle ground and explaining some of the psychology and sociology behind it. Since it would not be fair to give you that assignment without being upfront about myself, I'll tell you: I am a Christian with a degree in psychology who has academically studied these issues from a psychological and theological perspectives because they are personal to me so I wanted to know the truth. I've wrote this blog series in hopes that you learned something or at the very least were able to see things in a different way.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3 (Not as vital for this post, but if you want to know more specifically about the Church should respond)
There's a billboard on Interstate-45 in Texas I see every time I make the drive between Dallas and Houston that reads "Demo'rats will pay! Thank God for Trump and Abbott!" What ultimately bothers me about the sign isn't just the hateful rhetoric, but that it's just giving into the culture war going on right now between conservatives and liberals. Recently in Texas, there was a battle going in that war over the issue of bathroom laws regarding transgender individuals, and recently Pope Francis weighed in on the issue saying that it's terrible people allow their children to choose their gender.
In this day and age of soundbites, talking heads, endless newscasts and internet articles, it's easy to feel informed because there is so much information. The story it reminds me of is a mother from here in Texas, my hometown in fact. A self-described "born-Republican woman" who assumed it was her duty as a Christian Southern woman to vote straight ticket conservative party, and bought into the idea that this whole thing was just a lifestyle choice, and that Satan had a hold of them. She remembers seeing, like so many people, an article shared on Facebook about how people would use these bathroom laws to spy on women, and ate it up like candy. All of that changed when she gave birth to who she thought was her son. By age 2, her child was gravitating towards the toys that other girls played with and other girls, and her two best friends were girls. The family tried to redirect Kai towards more masculine activities and toys, and punished her when she did anything feminine. By age 3, she started to stretch t-shirts to make skirts, wore them around her hair to give herself long hair, and would be telling them about how she was a girl just to get her point across. The breaking point came when she overheard Kai praying to God one night to take Joseph, Kai's birth name, away to be with Jesus. She realized that she was overhearing her toddler pray for death. Another point came when a psychiatrist asked her, the mother, "If you and Kai were on a desert island, would you let her wear girl's clothes?" She responded that she probably would, to which the psychiatrist replied that her issue wasn't with what God thinks, but with what other people think.
That has been one of the more publicized stories, but there are thousands like it all across the United States and the West nowadays. I'm not talking just about gender dysphoric children, but adults as well. I'm talking about stories of acceptance from people who never thought that they would be accepting or that it would ever happen to them or their loved ones. When it's happening "over there" "to those people", or however you want to say it, it's easy for us to misunderstand and demonize other people. Humans have a tendency to fear what they don't know or understand, it's one of the most basic fears. For a good portion of human history, that fear helped us survive against predators, poisonous plants, and other dangerous. The problem is that when we put that fear on other people and assume that because we don't know it means it has to be against us The truth is that there is no shame in not knowing, too often are people don't want to admit that they don't know, but that there should be shame when irrational thinking and not being willing to learn fill the void. So, ultimately we listen to people we trust, who are ultimately responding the same way, tells us that these people are threats in one way or another, and we listen to them.
Humans respond to threats in ultimately one of two ways, the flight or fight. Some people do choose the flight option and just cut themselves off from society, but most choose the fight option. Thus, the culture wars started. They exist, but they're ultimately built entirely in our fears and depend on them to stay alive. What politicians, pundits, talking heads, and others know is the same thing that the advertising industry, psychology, and the movie industry discovered: fear is the most powerful emotion because human beings are wired to pay more attention to it than anything else. Due to that, we're more likely to take action, share information, the same articles and talking points, and it spreads through society like a virus with this same message: These people are our enemies and their agenda must be stopped or else!
That's why we get the same talking points over and over again on social media, this website. We get media outlets pumping out articles written by journalist with no understanding of psychology taking snippets out of academical psychological journals, experts being paid by the network to be interviewed or newspaper to write, production companies making documentaries trying to teach people with a journalist and short interviews from people with first hand experience so everyone feels like they're on the right side of the battle.
The problem with that is that when an issue like gender dysphoria is viewed this way, the victims aren't our children, our society, our religion, or anything that you hear about from people talking about it. The victims are those people who suffer from gender dysphoria, and often times feel torn between the two sides, especially the Christians who have this condition because they feel apart of both sides in the war.
Whenever you see a viral article or documentary, I encourage you to critically look at it. Ask yourself some questions, do you agree because it fits into your view or disagree simply because it's the "wrong side", who wrote this and what was their purpose? Too often, people just accept something is correct because they agree with it based on what they already know. Like I touched on in my previous post, it's usually much more complicated than the simplistic answers you often hear about and may or may not think. The truth is usually more complicated and I hope that I've done a good job with this series finding a middle ground and explaining some of the psychology and sociology behind it. Since it would not be fair to give you that assignment without being upfront about myself, I'll tell you: I am a Christian with a degree in psychology who has academically studied these issues from a psychological and theological perspectives because they are personal to me so I wanted to know the truth. I've wrote this blog series in hopes that you learned something or at the very least were able to see things in a different way.
