9 Things You Should Know About Transgenderism

Transgenderism has been a frequently discussed topic over the past few weeks. On May 30, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services review board ruled that Medicare can pay for the "reassignment" surgery sought by the transgendered. A few days later Time magazine's cover story on the "transgender tipping point" declared the social movement is "poised to challenge deeply held cultural beliefs." And last week the Southern Baptist Convention, America's largest Protestant denomination, overwhelmingly passed a resolution titled “On Transgender Identity.” Since the topic will be coming up for some time to come, here are nine things you should know about transgenderism.

1. Transgenderism is an umbrella term for the state or condition of identifying or expressing a gender identity that does not match a person's physical/genetic sex. Transgender is independent of sexual orientation, and those who self-identify as transgender may consider themselves to be heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, pansexual, polysexual, or asexual. Approximately 700,000 individuals in the U.S. identify as transgender.

2. Transgenderism differs from intersex, a variation in sex characteristics including chromosomes, gonads, or genitals that do not allow an individual to be distinctly identified as male or female. Intersex is a physical condition while transgender is a psychological condition. The vast majority of people with intersex conditions identify as male or female rather than transgender or transsexual. (The term "hermaphrodite" is now considered outdated, inaccurate, and offensive as a reference to people who are intersex.)   Continue at Joe Carter

The People's Pope, The Man of the Year

Once there was a boy so meek and modest, he was awarded a Most Humble badge. The next day, it was taken away because he wore it. Here endeth the lesson.” And here endeth the opening quote from TIME’s story to announce Pope Francis as the Person of the Year for 2013. Nancy Gibbs continues:

How do you practice humility from the most exalted throne on earth? Rarely has a new player on the world stage captured so much attention so quickly—young and old, faithful and cynical—as has Pope Francis. In his nine months in office, he has placed himself at the very center of the central conversations of our time: about wealth and poverty, fairness and justice, transparency, modernity, globalization, the role of women, the nature of marriage, the temptations of power.

For all of these reasons and more, he is a natural and obvious choice for this distinction.   Continue at Tim Challies

Biblical Christians Are “Non-Jihadist Terrorists” and a “Greater Threat Than Those Who Admire Al Qaeda”?

Biblical Christians are being actively maligned with deliberate attempts to marginalize us in this increasingly secularized culture.

In recent times we have see an increase in secularists doing the following:

1. Accusing Christians/creationists of “child abuse” (as Lawrence Krauss, Arizona State University professor, has been delcaring in recent times).
2. Claiming Christianity is a virus (as atheist Richard Dawkins and others have done).
3. Accusing people with religious convictions of mental health issues—and causing children to have their own mental health problems (as we saw in a recent TIME article).

I want to suggest to you there is an increasing ploy by secularists to indoctrinate the public into thinking that biblical Christians are the enemy and dangerous to the culture. I must admit, I’ve been quite surprised at how rapidly the anti-Christian rhetoric is growing across this country.

You may be shocked to read what was written in a CNN opinion piece April 4 by Peter Bergen. CNN describes the author this way:

Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, the author of “Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for bin Laden — From 9/11 to Abbottabad” and a director at the New America Foundation. Jennifer Rowland is a program associate at the New America Foundation.

In this opinion piece titled “Growing threat of extreme right-wing violence,” Bergen states the following:    Continue at Ken Ham

Is the Pro-Life Cause Winning?

This week’s TIME magazine cover story announces that, forty years after Roe, the pro-life side is winning the abortion debate. I say, “Not so fast.”

 

On the one hand, yes, as the article points out, there have been some real gains in protections for the unborn in some important arenas. And public polling data does demonstrate, rather consistently, that younger people are more willing to identify themselves as being “pro-life” than are their mothers’ generation. This is due partly to sonogram and other technologies that make it harder and harder to maintain that the “fetus” is a clump of impersonal tissue. Whenever evangelical Christians see polls like this, we tend to see some triumphalist rhetoric about how “we’re winning.”

I think it’s more complicated than that.

Yes, it’s a win just that the concept of “pro-life” is still alive. The abortion rights movement probably assumed that forty years after the Supreme Court legalized abortion that the issue would be as settled as school integration or women’s suffrage. It’s still a controversy, and the pro-life side hasn’t been sidelined by history.

And it’s true that there have been some gains in the numbers of doctors who, for conscience reasons, are unwilling to go along with the lie that abortion is “health-care.”   Continue at Russel D. Moore

Psychiatric Medication and the Image of God

Watch any daytime talk show with an expert medical guest or flip through Time magazine's colorful diagrams, and you'll see that the latest emphasis in neurology, the brain's causal influence on human behavior, has leaked down to the popular level. Many of these experts consider the human being primarily as a physical creature whose actions, feelings, and thoughts for the most part simply manifest neurological activity. Undesirable feelings or behavior, then, should be addressed by ever-more-precise medical methods.

Many Christians have correctly seen the incredible danger such an understanding poses to a biblical worldview, which involves realities beyond what can be seen, touched, or medicated. In other words, we know that a human being involves more than the body. But we also know that the body is a vital aspect of our being as designed by God. So we begin to answer this question---How should Christians think about psychiatric medication?---by considering at least two aspects of what it means for people to be made as the image of God.

1. The Image of God as Union Between Soul and Body

 

The immaterial soul does not function independently of the material body. The soul is not a "ghost in the machine" whose function is autonomous of corporeal mechanisms. God intentionally designed humankind to represent himself in the physical world---a psychosomatic unity comprising both a soul that reflects the immaterial God and also a body that grounds him in material creation.

The keystone passage introducing the image of God is Genesis 1:26: "Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness'." Biblical scholar D. J. A. Clines has pointed out that this phrase is better translated, "Let us make man as our image" for grammatical reasons as well as for historical-contextual reasons. Man, as the image of God, is the physical representation of God's presence in creation.   Continue at Jeremy Pierre

Studies show HIV Infection Rates still Rising Among Gay Men

From left-leaning Time magazine.

Excerpt:

As the world’s leading AIDS researchers gather for the International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C., scientists report that despite gains in controlling the spread of HIV, the disease has continued to spread at an alarming rate in the very population in which it first appeared — gay men.

In a series of papers in the Lancet dedicated to the dynamics of HIV among gay men — a group epidemiologists define as men who have sex with men (MSM) — scientists say that the continued burden of AIDS in this group is due to a combination of lifestyle and biological factors that put these men at higher risk. Rates are rising in all countries around the world.

In one study, led by Chris Beyrer, of the Center for Public Health and Human Rights at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, researchers analyzed surveillance reports and studies of HIV among MSM, including data that were part of routine United Nations reporting from member nations. Rates of HIV among gay men ranged from 3% in the Middle East to 25% in the Caribbean. In all reporting nations, rates were on the rise, even in developed nations like the U.S., Australia and the U.K. where HIV is declining overall.   Continue at WintryKnight

The Old Idea Still Causing Us Problems

Time recently published its 2012 list of 10 ideas that are changing your life. Some of the usual suspects appear: "Computers are destroying our brains," "Humanity is destroying the earth," and (hold the front page!) "We're destroying ourselves with stress." There's also the bizarre: new food preservation techniques can keep meat edible for up to seven years (think I'll give that BBQ a pass). But at least half the entries mask a core idea that's been causing us problems for 6,000 years---the self-centered desire and demand for independence. Here are its latest disguises.

Living Alone Is the New Norm: In one of the biggest societal changes ever witnessed, the number of Americans living alone has increased from 4 million in 1950 (9 percent of households) to 33 million (28 percent of households) today.

But don't feel sorry for the "new loners." NYU sociologist Erik Klinenberg tell us this is the ideal life:

Living alone serves a purpose: it helps us pursue sacred modern values---individual freedom, personal control, and self-realization---that carry us from adolescence to our final days. Living alone allows us to do what we want, when we want, on our own terms. It liberates us from the constraints of a domestic partner's needs and demands and permits us to focus on ourselves.

The Rise of the Nones: "The fastest-growing religious group in the U.S. (16 percent) is the category of people who say they have no religious affiliation."   Continue at David Murray

The Gospel According to Peanuts

Click here to read more of The Gospel According to Peanuts:

What people don’t know is that the Christmas special almost didn’t happen, because some not-so-smart television executives almost didn’t let it air. You see, Charles Schulz had some ideas that challenged the way of thinking of those executives 46 years ago, and one of them had to do with the inclusion in his Christmas cartoon of a reading from the King James Bible’s version of the Gospel of Luke.

The more things change, the more things stay the same.

As far back as 1965 — just a few years before Time magazine asked “Is God Dead?” — CBS executives thought a Bible reading might turn off a nation populated with Christians. And during a Christmas special, no less! Ah, the perils of living on an island in the northeast called Manhattan.

“A Charlie Brown Christmas” was a groundbreaking program in so many ways, as we learned watching the great PBS American Masters series on Charles Schulz, known by his friends and colleagues as “Sparky.” It was based on the comic strip Peanuts, and was produced and directed by former Warner Brothers animator Bill Melendez, who also supplied the voice for Snoopy. . . .

There was a standoff of sorts, but Schulz did not back down, and because of the tight production schedule and CBS’s prior promotion, the network executives aired the special as Schulz intended it. But they were certain they had a flop on their hands.  Keep Reading >>>

Rob Bell on the Cover of TIME

TIME magazine’s cover story this week is about Rob Bell’s book Love Wins. Here is John Meacham’s one line explanation of what the fuss is about:

“[Bell] suggests that the redemptive work of Jesus may be universal — meaning that, as his book’s subtitle puts it, ‘every person who ever lived’ could have a place in heaven, whatever that turns out to be.”

Every year during Easter season, the news weekly’s like to feature stories that tweak traditional Christian belief (for example, The Gospel of Judas, the tomb of Jesus, etc.). For these publications, Holy Week has become heresy week. I think it says something that Bell’s book has now taken a place next to these kinds of stories. Keep Reading...

See Also: “A Massive Shift Coming in What it Means to Be a Christian?”

Looking Back: TIME Asks, “Is God Dead?”

John T. Elson's most famous article for TIME magazine appeared over 40 years ago, and it largely defined his journalistic career. His April 8, 1966 cover story, "Is God Dead?," became an icon of the rebellious and increasingly secular sixties.

Elson, who died September 7 at age 78, was the son of a reporter, and he knew a big story when he saw one. He worked on the TIME cover story for more than a year, interviewing theologians and religious leaders. When published, the story became a symbol of the tumultuous decade of the sixties. For the first time, TIME published the magazine cover without a photograph or drawing. The question, "Is God Dead?," was all that mattered.

As William Grimes of The New York Times recounts,

The issue caused an uproar, equaled only by John Lennon's offhand remark, published in a magazine for teenagers a few months later, that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. The "Is God Dead?" issue gave TIME its biggest newsstand sales in more than 20 years and elicited 3,500 letters to the editor, the most in history to that point. It remains a signpost of the 1960s, testimony to the wrenching social changes transforming the United States. Read the rest HERE