Our feelings do not affect God’s facts.
“I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me. I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please. What I have said, that will I bring about; what I have planned, that will I do.”
Isaiah 46:9-11
We’ve all heard accounts about how the world came into being.
There can be a great deal of controversy about it. There are evolutionists or naturalists who say that everything came into being on its own and gradually progressed to what it is today. Then there are creationists who say that God is the Creator of all that there is. Creationists say God supernaturally and purposefully created everything from nothing. Evolutionists believe that everything somehow emerged from nothing—chance brought it about.
Years ago, a man named Charles Boyle, who was a devoted Christian and a brilliant thinker, hired a watchmaker to design a working mechanical model of the solar system, complete with motion to demonstrate how the planets revolved around the sun. Boyle showed this model to an atheistic scientist friend who was very impressed with it. The scientist asked who made this intricate, fascinating model. Boyle answered, “No one. It just happened.” He made a good point, don’t you think?
I am one who firmly believes that, just as the Bible says, God created everything.
He did it just by His spoken word, creating everything from nothing, ex nihilo. He created everything, sustains everything, and gives it all purpose. All that exists was created supernaturally by a personal, loving, all-powerful God. We have a Creator who loves and enjoys His creation and has given it to us to love and enjoy as well.
And what an incredible creation it is, characterized by beauty and variety and imagination! For instance, he created a brown cow that eats green grass and gives white milk! And God didn’t make everything in shades of gray—he gave us brilliant colors. We don’t have just white rice to eat; there is an enormous variety of food in different colors, shapes, tastes, and textures. And consider some of the animals He created: giraffe, zebra, elephant, mouse, eagle, platypus, dog, “lions and tigers and bears, oh my!”
His creation includes the vast solar system down to the microscopic cells in our bodies.
Our massive solar system contains the sun, moon, planets, stars, and countless galaxies. The sun is gigantic compared to earth, like a bowling ball to a poppy seed. Yet there are many stars thousands of times larger than the sun.
The human body is made up of about 30 trillion cells. In the nucleus of each cell are strands of DNA, the genetic code telling the cell what to do, like computer software. There is almost 6 feet of DNA in each cell nucleus. That’s like putting 30 miles of fishing line into a cherry pit. And not stuffed in but folded, with each fold representing a different message. The DNA information in one cell would fill 300 volumes of books, each 500 pages thick. All the strands of DNA in a human body, if stretched out, would circle the sun about 260 times.
I mention these amazing facts to help us appreciate that the God who created all of this lovingly and intentionally created each one of us.
We are the crowning glory of His creation, His greatest achievement. We are created in His image, which makes us very unique and special among all He created. Nothing else is created in His image. His image doesn’t necessarily mean exact physical appearance—we don’t know what God looks like. There’s a story about a little boy who was busy coloring and his mom asked him what he was doing. “I’m drawing a picture of God,” he answered. His mom replied, “But Honey, no one knows what God looks like.” “They will now,” the boy responded confidently.
All our feelings, tears, laughter, sense of humor, intelligence, creativity, imagination—reflect the image of God!
The Bible tells us that God created man from the dust of the earth.
But He did not create woman in the same way. He created man first in the image of God, and then He took a rib from man and formed woman, who was also in the image of God, but different from man.
God is not male or female—He is both, and together man and woman complete His image.
So, God created us, male and female, and the difference between us is intentional. God has a purpose for our differences: He wants us to need each other, to complete each other. And the best thing we can do to live a healthy, thriving life is to accept, appreciate, and work with those differences.
Dozens of books have been written on trying to identify and understand the differences between men and women.
The book, “Men are from Mars; Women are from Venus” was quite popular. There are others:
“Men are Like Waffles—Women are Like Spaghetti”
“Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Can’t Read Maps”
“Men are Clams—Women are Crowbars”
Some of the differences mentioned are:
Men are lateral in thinking, using only one side of the brain at a time; women are bilateral in thinking, able to access both sides of the brain simultaneously. That is why women are better at multitasking.
Men favor the left side of the brain, where logic resides; women favor the right side, where feelings and emotions are located.
Men tend to define themselves by accomplishments; women tend to define themselves by relationships.
When stressed, men tend to withdraw, avoid feelings, and focus on what to do to reduce stress; when women are stressed, they tend to seek out others to talk to in order to feel and process feelings.
Here are other ways our masculine and feminine traits are different yet representative of God’s image.
Physically and psychologically, the essence of masculine is to initiate.
Men tend to be protectors, aggressive, authoritative, goal-oriented, challenge and conquer-oriented, factual, logical, and analytical.
Physically and psychologically, the essence of feminine is to respond.
Women tend to be helpers, encouragers, comforters, advocates, nurturing, intuitive, feeling, relational, creative, imaginative, and highly communicative.
Of course, some of these characteristics can appear in either man or woman, but generally, this is their behavior.
There is a lot of confused talk these days regarding men and women, gender and sex.
Sex and gender are two different concepts. Sex refers to the biological and physiological characteristics that define men and women. It is determined by factors such as DNA, chromosomes, hormones, and reproductive organs. Gender refers to socially constructed roles, behaviors, and attributes that a society considers appropriate for men and women. In other words, sex is determined by biology, while gender is determined by culture.
Gender identity is how one feels about gender, which might be different from one’s biological sex. Then there’s gender expression, which is how they outwardly show their gender feelings through clothing, hairstyle, voice, and mannerisms. Biological sex is fixed, no matter how one feels about it.
God is perfect—He makes no mistakes.
We are created just as God intended us to be. Yes, there are birth defects and illnesses, and I can’t explain all of that except to say that after man sinned in the Garden of Eden, all of creation suffered too. But God can redeem even the most desperate of circumstances if we have faith in Him through Jesus Christ.
I bring all of this up, about creation and men and women, to help point us to God for the solutions to our problems today. And gender identity has become a tragic problem, with young boys and girls being convinced that their confused feelings about gender means that they were “born into the wrong body” and the way to resolve this problem is to submit to the mutilation of their bodies to conform to their feelings! The reality is this is a mental illness, and there are solutions to healing this mindset.
My heart is broken at the attitude of today, when I read about parents who are “proud” of their transgender child and willingly go along with damaging hormone therapy and surgeries. These destructive choices are not to be celebrated. What is to be celebrated is God’s perfect plan for our lives and the hope that His healing can bring to these dire situations.
I know I’m going against the flow of popular thinking today.
But those of us who identify as followers of Jesus Christ must speak up against the culture of destruction and death, especially when it comes to children. You can agree with me or not, but I stand with Jesus. His way is our only hope in these troubled times.
Thanks for listening. God bless you all!
