Wake Up, Look Up

Hello, everyone, and thanks for listening to Wake Up, Look Up, a podcast where we connect events happening in real time to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm Zach Weihrauch, and in today's episode, we're asking the question, is gender dysphoria a fad? Now, this is prompted by a fascinating opinion piece I read in the Wall Street Journal recently by Colin Wright, an academic. And he makes the connection between gender dysphoria, which is the condition where a person feels on a mental, emotional level, out of step with their anatomy. In other words, I might be born a man, but I feel as though I'm a woman. That's called gender dysphoria. And he connects that to another theory, the social contagion theory, which is that sometimes things happen in culture and spread very quickly that are not actually real. They're. They're kind of a. A fad swept up by momentum and then quickly fizzles out. And for evidence, he cites that there was a period of time in Sweden, for example, where gender dysphoria, among teen Girls was up 1,500%. And he, he makes the point, do you actually think that. That many girls in a generation, all of a sudden were actually feeling as though they were boys and. Or is 1,500% more indicative of the fact that that was just in the air, that in the same way everybody might freak out today when I say six, seven, There was a season where girls just thought the cool thing to do was to think that they were a boy. He also cites the fact that in recent years in the United States, there's been a 50% drop in gender dysphoria. In other words, quick swings up and quick swings down are not about biology. It's not all of a sud. People have this condition or they don't. It's that people perceive something to be real that actually isn't. In fact, Dr. Lisa Littman, another source that Wright cites, calls this rapid onset gender dysphoria. It's this quick identification among girls, in particular teen girls, who have never, ever cited any gender dysphoria before, all of a sudden, out of nowhere. He also cites the fact that even today, when you might imagine that liberal scientists are motivated to prove scientifically that gender dysphoria is real, there are still no credible studies that can point to any biological or anatomical reality that would cause dysphoria. Instead, he says, it's in the culture, everywhere, that transgender, non conforming, non binary, gender fluid. These are terms living in the air where kids breathe I say this not so much to talk about gender dysphoria. We've covered that ad nauseam here on Wake Up. Look Up. I think it's more about fads, because I think Christians tend to freak out about fads, maybe more than anyone. All of a sudden. All of our books, all of our articles, all of our talks are about something. We're worried that whatever that thing is, is the disintegration of, of society. And even our own children can get swept up in particular fads and movements. It makes me think of the words of Jesus in Matthew 7:24, who says this. Everyone who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. He goes on to say that everyone who doesn't do them is like someone who builds on sand. When the waves come, their house is destroyed. It, makes me think that one of the big reasons we have to be motivated to disciple, to be discipled, and to disciple people, in particular children, is so that they don't get swept up when things rise 1,500%. That's indicative of a lot of things in culture. But one of the things is that we have no moral foundation as a culture. We've turned our backs on God, and as a result, we're building lives on shallow and shaky foundations, and we know it. So when someone comes, comes along and says, hey, maybe the reason you're not happy is you're actually living life as the wrong gender. Maybe the reason you don't have love or you don't have joy is you're out of step with your mental and emotional state. We buy it as a culture because we know something's wrong, even if we don't know what it is. And so we chase one fad and after another. Christians will only become immune to that and immune to the fear and hyperbole around it. When we are actually anchored in the leadership and lordship of Jesus Christ. You and I don't know what the next fad is. We don't know what the next battleground of ideas are. But we do know how to get prepared. Jesus tells us we have to hear his words. That involves coming to church. That involves reading the Bible. That involves learning the word of God. But also we have to do them so that when the waves of culture come for our families, for our marriages, for our children, we will hold firm. The wave of gender dysphoria is fizzling out. But there's a next one coming. Are you and your family ready to withstand it today, make a decision to get in the word of God and to do what it says to be rooted in rock instead of sand. Hey, thanks for watching this episode of Wake Up, Look Up. If you enjoyed it, please help us get the word out by sharing it with someone you think might benefit from it. And while you're here, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to get further content or even download the CCC app, where you'll find even more resources to help you grow in your faith and relationship with Jesus Christ.

Have an article you’d like Zach to discuss? Email us at wakeup@ccchapel.com!