A “Pregnant Man,” Rampant Confusion, and the Only Answer

What's the Difference?

Over the twentieth century, the culture has produced alarmingly unnatural images and revisionist definitions of the identity of the sexes.  Only this year, it produced what many of you have heard as the ‘pregnant man.’  This is not a man.  This is a woman.  Men don’t get pregnant, but the culture would have the term ‘pregnant man’ printed across its billboards, in its magazine articles, and on its Internet websites.  The culture wants you to think that a ’pregnant man’ is truly a natural occurrence.

Friends, I think we can see from this that when there is no biblical worldview, confusion persists and truth is suppressed.  We must notice, first and foremost, that this wave of media-driven confusion and propagation speaks of the signs of the times.  It is people ‘deceiving and being deceived.’

Our enemy is not this woman who had an operation or her partner who I’m not even sure if it is a man or a woman, but it is Satan and his forces.  We do not war against flesh and blood.  We war against the principalities, the spiritual rulers of this present darkness.  They are actual persons who want lives to be ruined by belief in half-truths and lies about manhood and womanhood.

As such, the topic of my discussion is this confusion; it is a confusion about truth.  It is a confusion about what defines a man and what defines a woman.  The culture will not find truth in the way it is going.  The world and its wisdom is not the source of truth.

Jesus Christ is that truth, and he is that way.  Sorrowfully, I assert that the constant hatred that the culture has for people like me who will boldly say that men and women are different will not cease.  It will only get worse.  With a heavy heart, I truly hate what Satan is doing to those lost souls and most certainly what he will do to that poor baby, whose life will echo more and more confusion because her ‘parents’ are just as confused and blinded by the god of this age.

Satan wants confusion.  He wants disorder and anarchy.  He knows that God took disorder and anarchy and made it into the heavens and the earth.  God is the author of order, not the author of confusion.  He has clearly layed out in his word the definition and distinct purposes of men and women.  It all goes back to the created order of God, but sadly, the culture reflects the fall from that order more and more everyday.  Even more tragically, this fallen worldview has crept into our churches, and numerous Christians are just as confused about manhood and womanhood.

Recently, I heard news about a Christian friend, two years younger than I, who just got pregnant out of wedlock.  This is mostly tragic, not because of the sinful occurrence (which is tragic enough), but more so because of the failure of God’s people to help her understand biblical manhood and womanhood long before this happened. By God’s grace, his people will be there to support and love her in this hard and heavy time.  By God’s grace, the baby will be born and stand as testimony to the redemptive power of Jesus Christ in bringing my friend and her partner through this for his glory and for their good.  May they be saved or sanctified during this difficult time.

It is most sad to me that this topic is not being addressed in our pulpits.  Where it is being addressed, it is mostly ambiguous and curt.  “Don’t have sex until your married,” is the message that we hear.  But how to do that, how to keep a pure heart, how young men are to treat young women with respect and honor, work hard, display integrity, and take leadership, and how young women are to model modesty, support and be led by young men, and display virtuous femininity–these are not being taught. I believe that a pastor must be willing to lose his pulpit over this issue.  It is that important to Christian discipleship, Christian sanctification, Christian maturity, and most of all, the propagation of the gospel to a lost world that needs more of the ordered gospel and less of its own seemingly chaotic self.

Nevertheless, the condition of today’s young evangelical Christians reflects this lack of passionate biblical teaching and discipleship.  As a result, hearts are broken in many ways, and they continue to break up into adulthood, where their children will learn the same confusion. 

Mostly, this is due to young men who are more like little boys.  They are passive, uninterested, and predatory in their minds, viewing women as meat to be seduced rather than hearts to be earned.  They would rather wait patiently during the church services, content with the Lord’s work being done by someone else.  They are consumed with want of possessions (trucks and i-phones), want of comparison (viewing their muscles as more indicative of their character than their hearts), want of women (not with respect but with lust).  Chivalry is dying, and passivity is reigning strongly.  Manhood, for them, is not to be considered until marriage, and it is largely ignored before it.  They’ll play video games and watch funny you-tube sequences before they’ll study their Bibles and cultivate a life in the Word.  They would rather not think of fatherhood or leading a young woman spiritually.  ‘That is too hard, and I’m too young to think about that,’ one of them might say.  Yet for some reason, they think that on that day, when they’re married, they’ll be magically able to lead and protect and provide without any prior training or discipleship from their father’s or from older men in their church.  In fact, they despise any godly advice from their elders.  More so, these fathers and older men often don’t even know how to lead them themselves.  It is the fruit of Satan’s subtle work over many years.

On the other side of the gender, young women are more aggressive, in their words, in their actions and in their hearts.  They would be the ones to make the first move and take the initiative in almost all spheres of social life.  They would be the ones to entice young men with their bodies, wearing clothes that fifty years ago only a prostitute would wear.  They would be the ones to view marriage unbiblically, seeking fulfillment in their boyfriends rather than Jesus Christ, their God-friend.  They despise God’s intent for glad and nurturing motherhood, seeking rather to create a career, a name, and a paycheck.  Many view children as burdens and not as blessings.  Abortions, for this reason, are rampant, and corporations (I choose that word specifically) like Planned Parenthood would have them continue to think that way.  Feminism is killing our churches and ruining the lives of our young women.

In many larger metropolises, the public school system would have condoms and contraceptives in the hands of fifth graders, while the parents merely gawk, jaws dropped to the ground.  Or maybe they’re supportive of this usurpation of parental authority which is even sadder.  Parents may wonder just how raped their children’s minds truly are when their daughter has her first period at age eight or their son asks about a woman’s body at an age when, in my day, I was just enamored with my Star Wars action figures. 

Friends, I’m less concerned about lost people acting like lost people.  I’m more concerned because this is so rampant in our own pews.  Regenerate membership is a dirty idea today, and church discipline is a four-letter word.  This is tragic because those lost people just can’t seem to tell the difference between Christians and Agnostics, both of which are just as involved in pre-martial intimacy.

People will not like what I write in this essay.  My younger friends will call me a ‘twenty-year old fossil’ or a hyper-conservative hung-up male chauvinist because of what I say.  Older folks will say that I’m too young to know what I’m saying, and too inexperienced to have any authority to speak this way.  To them all I say, my only authority is God’s own word.

I’m okay with that now.  It once haunted me to consider what people would think of me because of these convictions for which I stand.  My social popularity is not what is at stake.  Rather, their souls are at stake.  This is because this issue, if you read my recent post on whether it’s 4th order doctrine or not, is so important.  It strikes at the core of a biblical understanding of marriage.  We don’t model this because it’s just tradition.  That is a sorry and pathetic reason to want to do marriage and gender roles like this.

The core issue here is that men and women are to relate in such a way that symbolizes the gospel.  A man must look up at his crucified savior with tears in his eyes and then turn to his wife and say, “That’s how I’m supposed to love you.”  A woman is to look at that same cross with tears in her eyes and then turn and look at her husband and say, “I will be there to support and love you the whole way up that Calvary hill.”

For you see, that is why the world hates the biblical understanding of manhood and womanhood.  They hate it because it mirrors the stumbling block of the gospel of God.   Are we preaching the gospel in our marriages and relationships?  That is the heart of the issue.  Is Christ being made much of in this? That is the goal of the entire institution of marriage.

Here is my thesis:  the only answer to the confusion of biblical manhood and womanhood is the gospel.

The once for all propositional truth of justification by faith in Christ alone is the answer to that scared and trembling young woman with that weight in her stomach as she sits in that cold waiting room at the clinic wondering if she’s doing the right thing.

The truth of penal substitutionary atonement is the answer to that facade of bravado as the young man sits next to that girl just as scared and confused and unable to understand what went wrong because now manhood means more than just seducing girls.

The truth of the resurrection with power is the answer to those comfortable young men who don’t know how to lead and so are just as content letting the girls do everything.

Because of an infantile understanding of Christ’s finished and complete work, all other spheres of life will grow weaker and weaker until understanding of truth has vanished and the church looks just like the world. 

God’s gospel will heal all wounds, will order all chaos, and will model servant leadership for young men, and glad submission for young women.

Go back to the old old story, Christians! That will set you rightly. It’s a biblical guarantee.

Working with you to cast down all confusion and to bow humbly before that old rugged cross,

Vince R.