Originally published Monday, 08 June 2015.
Earlier last week, I heard someone mention a Facebook debate about what people thought about Caitlyn Jenner. I just assumed that was the name of one of Bruce Jenner's daughters and began to dismiss the conversation.
I had been on a social media break for a bit, and my husband and I don't have cable, so I was completely unaware of what had captured the world's attention over the last week.
I grabbed my cellphone and Googled "Caitlyn Jenner."
I saw a familiar face masked behind obvious plastic surgery and my heart just sank.
Call me Caitlyn.
I continued to read an article about the now infamous Vanity Fair cover story and saw how everyone was using the pronouns for this man, including his own children, "she and her." I just couldn't wrap my mind around it. This (almost) 30 year old was having trouble understanding the whole situation how someone who was born a man, was now being accepted by the entire world as a woman because he had surgery to look like a woman and wanted to dress like one and be called by a woman's name from now on, because in his soul, he believed to be a woman.
If I was having trouble comprehending this, how would we explain this to our children and try to support it by God's Word? I thought to myself.
I then watched a short video clip on Vanity Fair's Facebook page where my eyes saw a woman in a photo-shoot, but my ears listened to a man's voice describing the personal experience that lead to this photo-shoot. He used words like "issue, struggle, isolation" and said he was desiring to "find out that you're not alone," to describe his painful life.
Strip away this topic of transgender-ism and any other sexual/gender/identity crisis issue, and you are left with the human condition.
The enemy has had us so focused on one man's issue that we are all still blinded that we have our own that stems from the same problem.
We are depraved and wretched.
We are prideful and arrogant and selfish.
We are depressed and anxious and lonely.
We are broken and confused and wounded.
We are empty and void and lacking identity.
And we try to (temporarily) fix those things by following our heart, which is so utterly wicked and deceptive:
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? (Jeremiah 17:9 KJV)
Bruce may think that his decision to become a woman will make all of his problems go away and heal his struggles and inner torment.
But it won't.
He believes by becoming a woman, his search for his identity is over.
But it's not.
[bctt tweet="When the struggle is in the heart and in the soul, changing the outside only puts a bandage on the deep, open wound." via="no"]
Despite what the world may say, he has not been made whole or free or found his true identity.
Nothing in this world will ever be able to solve, fulfill, mend or free us of our brokenness and depravity.
Only Jesus can.
How do I know this?
Because He did it for me.
I, like Bruce (aka Caitlyn), tried to fix and change myself from the outside. First, with attention from boys, sexual pleasure, and alcohol, and then when I realized that was just making matters worse, with religion.
I tried to be good and perfect by attempting to say and do the right things without a heart change or genuine repentance, which is a change in your thinking.
After awhile, I realized that I couldn't really be good or perfect, so I put my Christian card in my wallet as a reminder that deep down I was one because I believed I was, and continued to follow my heart as I searched for fulfillment in this life.
That journey would get me entangled in an adulterous relationship with a married man, alcohol abuse, countless one-night stands, bi-sexual behavior, and becoming the center of my own universe as I pursued a career as an actress.
As each fleeting moment of pleasure ended, I was left feeling the same way I always had.
Empty. Confused. Bitter. Depressed. Lonely.
These feelings make sense for someone who is worldly, and without the hope of Jesus Christ, but how could someone like me who confessed Jesus as her Savior be in such a pit of despair and brokenness?
The answer was simple, I never truly lived for Jesus.
So when I say that Jesus is the solution to the wickedness of the human condition, He is. But only if one embraces His life and not their own.
That is the gospel, my friends. It is not the matter of morality or being good. It is about laying down your life to find a life that was laid down for you.
The only possible way one can be made whole is by wholly embracing the Cross every single day.
Jesus is asking you to follow Him to start the journey of losing your life, but on the way, He promises you'll find it! Your life with Him is the only solution to your problems!
Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. (Matthew 10:39 ESV)
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