Man

A study published in June of 2022, estimates that nearly 1.64 million people over the age of 13 in the United States identify themselves as transgender, based on an analysis of newly expanded federal health surveys.

The study estimates that about 0.5% of all US adults, (1.3 million people), and about 1.4%, of youth between 13- and 17-years-old (300,000 people), identify as transgender (having a different gender identity than the sex they were assigned at birth).

On “Transgender Day of Visibility” in March, two Biden administration agencies released guidance promoting “gender-affirming” health care for minors. This includes puberty blockers, hormone therapy treatments, and sex reassignment surgery.

One document released by the Health and Human Services’ Office of Population Affairs claimed that “gender-affirming care is crucial to overall health and well-being” for children and adolescents.

A parallel document released by the Administration’s National Child Traumatic Stress Network claimed that providing “gender-affirming” treatment to kids is “neither child maltreatment nor malpractice.”

The executive summary from the study says that there are more "transgender women" than "transgender men."

Of the 1.3 million adults who identify as transgender, 38.5% (515,200) are transgender women, 35.9% (480,000) are transgender men, and 25.6% (341,800) reported they are gender nonconforming.

Research shows transgender individuals are younger on average than the U.S. population. Ages 13 to 17 are more likely to identify as transgender (1.4%) than adults ages 65 or older (0.3%).

Psychologist David P. Schmitt has completed the most exhaustive cross-cultural research study on gender and personality. Writing in an issue of Psychology Today, Schmitt goes against the theory that men and women are basically the same.

Schmitt contends that research from neuroscience, genetics, cross-cultural psychology, and other scientific fields is conclusive and overwhelming: “There are psychological differences between men and women. And they affect matters as trivial as sensitivity to smelly socks and as significant as susceptibility to disorders such as depression and autism.”

Meta-analysis of research has found women to be more empathic, while men are more prone to sexual jealousy. Men “tend to be better able to rotate a dimensional object in their mind and to recognize, say, an upside-down character. Whereas women excel at locating an object in a visual field and remembering exactly where Big Ben is on a map of London.” Men and women are different--from puberty, size, strength, risk-taking, mortality, and reproduction.

Schmitt laments that just as all the evidence is mounting, “denial of differences has become rampant. Attempts at respectful and productive conversations about biological sex differences often end with name-calling (genetic determinist!) or outright cancellation of events.”

In Ubang, southern Nigeria, men and women speak different languages. They view this unique difference as “a blessing from God.” Dressed in a brightly colored traditional outfit, Chief Oliver Ibang calls over his two young children, eager to demonstrate the different languages.

He holds up a yam and asks his daughter what it is called. "It's 'irui'," she says, without hesitating. But in Ubang's "male language" the word for yam, one of Nigeria's staple foods, is "itong." And there are many other examples, such as the word for clothing, which is "nki" for men and "ariga" for women.

"It's almost like two different lexicons," says anthropologist Chi Chi Undie. "There are a lot of words that men and women share in common, then there are others which are totally different depending on your sex. They don't sound alike, they don't have the same letters, they are completely different words."

However, both men and women are able to understand each other perfectly--or as well as anywhere else in the world. This might be partly because boys grow up speaking the female language, as they spend most of their childhoods with their mothers. But by the age of 10, boys are expected to speak the “male language” as evidence of entry into manhood.

Chi-Chi Unde explains: “Men and women operate in almost two separate spheres. It's like they're in separate worlds, but sometimes those worlds come together and you see that pattern in the language as well.”

Possible Preaching Angles: Communication; Gender Differences; Human Nature; Marriage – 1) There is a mysterious and delightful difference between men and women which God intends for us to recognize and enjoy (Genesis 2:20-25); 2) Wouldn’t it be great if you really knew your spouse’s emotional language and used it to communicate fluently with him or her? 3) In our society, there is an increased blurring of gender differences between male and female. But as this small community illustrates there are natural differences that are instinctively known (Romans 1:18-27).

One of the main tenets of transgenderism is that gender is merely a social construct, not a biological reality. It follows that a person born a woman can actually become male or vice versa with little pushback or fanfare. Though it focuses mainly on child’s play, new research debunks the idea that there are not gender differences. It might also debunk some of these ideas surrounding transgender transitions.

A study published in the Infant and Child Development Journal November 2017 issue, examined a meta-analysis of research that reviewed 16 different studies on the topic of gender differences of about 1,600 children altogether, and found that innate biology seems to influence boys’ and girls’ toy choices. What’s more, this seemed to span across all countries, whether high or low on the “Gender Inequality Index.”

The article concludes: This study shows what many parents already know: Boys and girls have innate differences and any “social construct” surrounding gender is due to those preferences, not the other way around. To take this a step further, this doesn’t mean men and women don’t struggle with their biological gender—dysphoria is very real—but it doesn’t mean transitioning is healthy or the most helpful reaction to that, or that we should indulge personal claims of gender fluidity.

In his book Transgender, author/pastor Vaughn Roberts draws on a distinction made by John Wyatt between the "Lego kit" view of the human body and the "art restoration" view of the human body. According to the "Lego kit" view, if we have just emerged from the primeval slime by chance, then there is no design whatsoever in how we happen to be. The structure of the human body is value free, so if you want to change your sex, that's fine.

The "art restoration view" acknowledges that we are not machines; we are flawed masterpieces. If you see a work of art and you're asked to restore it, you don't look at it and say, "Well, I think he would look much nicer with a pair of spectacles." Or, "This scene would look better with a car instead of a hay cart." To do that is to break the code of the art restorer. Art restorers respect the work, and know that their job is to bring out the artist's original intention. They work at cleaning and restoring the vivid colors. They study the work and the painter so they can carefully get it back to what it once was. They work so that people can see the original in all its glory.

Roberts' states further, "The aim is to restore the Creator's intention: but we are not to try to change it. And that will certainly mean accepting the sex that he has given us.

In a collection of sermons by Ralph W. Sockman, one particular sermon includes a story that raises the question "Which is the real world: the one Jesus saw or the one we see?" Sockman writes:

New York's Museum of Natural History [once] arranged [a room] in accordance with the way it was supposed to look to a dog entering the door …. In this particular room … the legs of the table were made to resemble large pillars, the chairs were lofty thrones, and the mantel above the fireplace appeared as an unscalable precipice, high overhead.

Which was reality: the room as it looked to a dog, or the room as it looked to a [man or woman]? Being [men and women], we say, of course, that the room as we see it is the real one. But may there not be a divine eye as much above ours in perception as ours is above the dog's? And may not our little worlds as we see them seem as grotesque to the God above as the dog's room looks to us?

In January of 2007, the New York City Board of Health unexpectedly withdrew a proposal to allow city residents to change the sex on their birth certificates without undergoing sex-change procedures. Heath Commissioner Thomas R. Frieden, who enthusiastically supported the plan only a month before, told the New York Times that institutions like hospitals and jails raised concerns the board hadn't considered: Would female patients end up in hospital beds next to men? Would male inmates wind up in women's cell-blocks?

"This is something we hadn't thought through, frankly," Frieden admitted. "What the birth certificate shows does have implications beyond what the birth certificate shows."

Set against Chicago's World's Fair in 1893, Erik Larson's bestselling book The Devil in the White City tells the true story of two men, each serving as an extreme example of what human beings are capable of. The first is Daniel Burnham, considered by many to be the greatest architect of his day.

Burnham was the driving force behind Chicago's World's Fair, transforming it into a phenomenon that forever changed his country. In less than two years, Burnham supervised the construction of over 200 buildings that covered a square mile along the coast of Lake Michigan. The largest exhibition, called the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building, "had enough interior volume to have housed the U.S. Capitol, the Great Pyramid, Winchester Cathedral, Madison Square Garden, and St. Paul's Cathedral, all at the same time."

In a span of six months, the fair attracted over 27.5 million visitors, this at a time when the nation's total population was 65 million. Commenting on the effect of the buildings upon the visitors, Larson writes: "Visitors wore their best clothes and most somber expressions, as if entering a great cathedral. Some wept at its beauty."

The second man featured in Larson's book is Dr. H. H. Holmes. He was not famous at the time of the fair, but achieved infamy after his deeds were discovered. In the year before the fair, Holmes constructed a block-long, 3-story building that served as the antithesis of Daniel Burnham's architectural genius. Included in this monstrosity were a sound-proof vault, several gas chambers, and a specially crafted furnace designed to eliminate odors. He called it "The World's Fair Hotel."

When it was all said and done, Holmes confessed to the murder of 27 men, women, and children. However, investigators believed the number to be much higher. In the end, more than 50 young women alone were traced to Holmes's hotel and never seen or heard from again.

The comparison between these two men is striking. Burnham was famously quoted as saying, "Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood." Holmes, in his confession, stated: "I was born with the devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing." This duality is the reason Erik Larson chose to feature the two men in his book. He said: "Beneath the gore and smoke and loam, this book is about the evanescence of life, and why some men choose to fill their brief allotment of time engaging the impossible, others in the manufacture of sorrow."

The story of The Devil in the White City symbolizes the present condition of humanity. Even when we achieve our highest dreams and potential, there is evil afoot.

Talking about the way Christians view the world, Roman Catholic theologian George Weigel said: “We are not congealed stardust, an accidental byproduct of cosmic chemistry. We are not just something, we are someone.”

Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.

If you're going to care about the fall of the sparrow you can't pick and choose who's going to be the sparrow.

Gray, wrinkled, three-pound thing, I clearly see

I cannot trap you with an EEG,

You nervy organ, you, skull cased and free,

A brazen challenge to psychiatry.

Soft mass, I cannot help resenting you

Each time they search and probe for my IQ.

Half of Einstein's lobe was twice of you,

You joyless megavolt computer shoe.

Be careful, Judas organ, or you'll find

God cauterizes every rebel mind.

You small, gray lump, you always seethe and grind,

Spend small electric currents thinking blind.

Yet, you're the only shabby place I see

That his Great Mind may come to dwell in me.

All men matter. You matter. I matter. It's the hardest thing in theology to believe.

During construction of Emerson Hall at Harvard University, president Charles Eliot invited psychologist and philosopher William James to suggest a suitable inscription for the stone lintel over the doors of the new home of the philosophy department.

After some reflection, James sent Eliot a line from the Greek philosopher Protagoras: "Man is the measure of all things."

James never heard back from Eliot, so his curiosity was piqued when he spotted artisans working on a scaffold hidden by a canvas. One morning the scaffold and canvas were gone. The inscription? "What is man that thou art mindful of him?" Eliot had replaced James's suggestion with words from the Psalmist. Between these two lines lies the great distance between the God-centered and the human-centered points of view.

Imagine a sheer, steep crag with a projecting edge at the top. Now imagine what a person would probably feel if he put his foot on the edge of this precipice and, looking down into the chasm below, saw no solid footing nor anything to hold on to.

This is what I think the soul experiences when it goes beyond its footing in material things, in its quest for that which has no dimension and which exists from all eternity. For here there is nothing it can take hold of, neither place nor time, neither measure nor anything else; our minds cannot approach it.

And thus the soul, slipping at every point from what cannot be grasped, becomes dizzy and perplexed and returns once again to what is connatural to it, content now to know merely this about the Transcendent, that it is completely different from the nature of the things that the soul knows.

To be unconsciously incompetent is far from blissful ignorance. In fact, when I think about areas of my life where I don't know and don't know that I don't know, it sends a chill down my spine. This is maleness at its most dangerous, nuclear-holocaust level. This is maleness that damages and doesn't even know it. This is maleness that is abusive and violent and arrogant and fallen. The rude awakening, men, is this: this is what we come by naturally.

Cubs relief pitcher Bob Patterson described his pitch, which the Cincinnati Reds' Barry Larkin hit for a game-winning home run: "It was a cross between a screwball and a change-up. It was a screw-up."

If anything should put the "superstar" in his place, it's the fact that an interpreter's fame is ephemeral. ... The main thing is that the composers will live on. And they can only do so through the interpreter and the listener at a given moment. That becomes the value of my point in time.

The gulf that separates the Creator and the creature, the gulf between the being we call God and all other beings, is a great and vast and yawning gulf. ... If you do not engage in deep thinking, it may not seem so amazing, but if you have given yourself to frequent thoughtful consideration, you are astonished at the bridging of the great gulf between God and not God.

Either life is always and in all circumstances sacred, or intrinsically of no account.