Fault Lines: How We Got Here

Dannah Gresh: Mary Kassian poses some piercing questions.

Mary Kassian: Question number one: How did we get here? How did we as a society reach a place of such gender confusion? Why is the ground under our feet shaking? Question number two: How do we respond? How do we stand firm in God’s good design for gender and become His ambassadors of mercy, grace, and hope to a broken and hurting world?

Dannah: She’ll start unpacking the answers, today on the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, coauthor of True Woman 101, for January 25, 2022. I’m Dannah Gresh.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: It seems like just about everywhere we look, we see a lot of confusion about issues related to gender and sexuality. Maybe you've found yourself having some tough conversations with someone at work or a family member. Maybe your kids are hearing some things at school and they are coming home asking you questions. You're thinking, I'm not sure how to understand or explain what's going on here. 

When it comes to this whole issue of gender and sexuality, my friend Mary Kassian has a good grasp of both the problem and God's solution. Last fall, Mary spoke at our conference Revive '21. The theme for that conference was “Standing Firm in a Shaking World.” And boy, oh boy, sometimes it does seem like everything relating to this subject is all topsy-turvy and anything but stable. Thankfully, we have the solid footing of the Word of God. And that’s where Mary Kassian pointed us in this unbelievable, ground-breaking message. It is so timely, so relevant, and yet, so timeless, as she took us to the Scripture to show us what it means to be grounded in God’s good design for us as men and women.

If you're not familiar with Mary, she is a noted speaker and author. She’s a wife, a mom, a grandmom. And interestingly, she says, when she was a girl, she was a tomboy. She didn’t like all the stereotypical girly things. But she’s grown to appreciate and cherish God’s good design for gender and sexuality. I think this message is one of the most important talks I've heard on the subject of we're about to address. Let’s listen carefully to Mary Kassian, speaking at Revive '21.

Mary Kassian: I want to introduce you to my COVID babies. My granddaughter, Charlie Ann, who was born the weekend that COVID shut everything down; and then Josephine Hope, who was born about eight weeks later. And then there’s my newest baby, who was conceived during the pandemic and arrived just last week, and her name is Connie—that’s short for confident, The Right Kind of Confident: The Remarkable Grit of a God-Fearing Woman. Isn’t she cute?

Now, I had no idea when I started writing books about God’s design for women that I would end up with so many grandbabies. I have six grandchildren now, and five of them are girls. 

Callie, in the pink jacket, is four years old, and she is a woman who is secure in her own opinion. If everybody is turning left, Callie will turn right, just because.

Clara, the oldest, is seven. Clara is a deep thinker with deep emotions. She’s creative, she loves reading, and she needs alone time to recharge, just like her grandma.

And then there’s Amery. Amery is highly relational; she’s highly attuned to others. She lights up; she comes alive when she walks into a room of people. People are her drug. She is just a real people person.

Then five-year-old James is the only boy. He is all boy, all energy, endowed with all sorts of superpowers, and constantly on the move and constantly torn between the desire to create and destroy. (laughter)

I often think about how rapidly the world is changing and what that means for my grandchildren. This past summer, as Clara and I were working on a craft together, we were gluing on a piece of felt, and Clara pipes up, “Omi!” (“Omi” is German for “Granny.”) She says, “Omi, Emma says a girl can marry a girl. Emma also says a girl can become a boy if she wants to.”

Wow. Those are the kinds of conversations that seven-year-old kids are having—seven!

Now, I’m well aware of the changes that we’re witnessing in society with regards to gender roles and sexuality, but I must confess that I wasn’t expecting it to impact my grandkids so soon and so young. It’s difficult for us to imagine that only ten years ago we had only two choices when it came to gender: male or female. Gender was a binary based on anatomy.

In 2014, Facebook added an “Other” category and allowed users to choose from a dropdown of about fifty-six options. As time passed, Facebook added more and more options to the list, until they just couldn’t keep up. So, they introduced a fill-in-the-blank freeform field. Now,  every single person can customize his, hers, zis, aers, hens, ems, xselves, or thems own gender.

The argument is that our sex has to do with our biological plumbing, our hardware, whereas our gender has to do with our psychological makeup, our software. Trans people feel that their hardware doesn’t match their software; their physical bodies don’t match the gender they psychologically view themselves to be.

Now, when the disconnect between a person’s hardware and software causes ongoing discomfort and distress to that person, the condition is labeled “gender dysphoria.” That’s the official term for the deep pain and mental anguish experienced by people who feel at odds with the physical plumbing they were born with. It is deeply painful.

Gender dysphoria has reached epidemic proportions in our society. In the past decade, the number of teenagers being referred for hormonal treatment and gender reassignment surgery (or, to use the newer, politically correct term, “gender confirmation surgery”) has increased over 4,000 percent! 

Some physicians in the United States are performing double mastectomies on healthy thirteen-year-old girls, and often parents have little say in the matter.

Two years ago, a Texas jury ruled against a dad who was seeking custody of his twin seven-year-old sons in his attempt to stop one of the young boys from transitioning.

School boards are directing teachers to assist and encourage children of any age to adopt transgender identities—without parental consent or knowledge. Some schools secretly provide the child with a year’s worth of counseling to help that child advance in their new gender identity.

All over the Western world, parents who instruct their children that gender corresponds to their biological plumbing at birth, parents who instruct their daughter that God created her to be a woman or their son that God created him to be a man are now at risk of being accused of abuse or neglect.

Our world is shaking. Do you feel it?

For some of you, you feel the shaking more than others. For you, this topic isn’t an intellectual exercise. Your daughter, your baby girl, has had her breasts cut off, her female innards carved out, and her genitals surgically altered. The hormone therapy the doctors are administering has lowered the pitch of your child’s voice, made hair grow on previously smooth skin, and created a bit of a bald spot where you used to start your little girl’s braid. You’re noticing mood swings, depression, and other alarming signs. You feel heartbroken, confused, helpless, hopeless, and scared. What happened to your little girl?

Or maybe you are that baby girl. You scorn the braid that your mum used to put in your hair. You’re vehemently repulsed by all your female bits and pieces, because to you they’ve only been a source of pain, and living as a man seems like the best way out.

Some of you here have or have loved ones who have come out as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, nonbinary, gender fluid, asexual, or questioning. Everything you used to believe about the world has been shaken. Your heart has been shaken, and maybe your faith has been shaken, too.

How did all this happen? How do we respond? How, in the midst of all the shaking, do we remain grounded in God’s good design?

Please open your Bibles with me to the book of Genesis. Genesis chapters 1–3 are foundational if you want to understand God’s design for gender. True Woman 101 focuses on these three chapters, and I urge you to do that Bible study if you haven’t already, but today we’re going to park in Genesis chapters 4 and 5.

The first half of Genesis 4 tells the story of how Adam and Eve’s oldest son, Cain, murdered his younger brother, Abel. Can you imagine being Eve or being a mom and how badly that must have shaken her world? Having one son murder another would be unspeakably horrible. It would be a horrible event to live through.

I want to pick up the story after that event. Cain moves away and starts having kids, and Eve becomes a grandma. We’re going to pick it up in Genesis 4:16.

Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden. Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch. When he built a city, he called the name of the city after the name of his son Enoch. To Enoch was born Irad, and Irad fathered Mehujael, and Mehujael fathered Methushael, and Methushael fathered Lamech. And Lamech took two wives. The name of the one was Adah and the name of the other Zillah. Adah bore Jabal; he was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock. His brother’s name was Jubal; he was the father of all who played the lyre and pipe. Zillah also bore Tubal-Cain; he was the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron. The sister of Tubal-Cain was Naamah. 

Lamech said to his wives, "Adah and Zillah, hear my voice, you wives of Lamech; listen to what I have to say. I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Cain’s revenge is sevenfold, then Lamech’s is seventy-sevenfold."

And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and called his name Seth, for she said, "God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel, for Cain killed him." To Seth also a son was born, and he called his name Enosh. At that time people began to call upon the name of the Lord.

This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, He made him in the likeness of God; male and female He created them. And He blessed them and named them men when they were created.

When Adam had lived 130 years he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth. The days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years, and he had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days that Adam lived were 930 years, and he died.

Now, at this point you may be scratching your head and wondering what all this mishmash of Adam’s family history has to do with our topic at hand, but let me assure you that it’s highly relevant and even profound. I’m going to use it to answer two crucial questions.

Question number one: How did we get here? How did we as a society reach a place of such gender confusion? Why is the ground under our feet shaking?

Question number two: How do we respond? How do we stand firm in God’s good design for gender and become His ambassadors of mercy, grace, and hope to a broken and hurting world?

First, how did we get there? The answer, in a nutshell, to this question is that the Fall created a fault line in human sexuality.

Now, anyone living near the San Andreas fault in California can tell you that a fault line is a fracture in the earth’s surface. It’s the place where the rock is broken. When there’s movement at a fault line, it causes an earthquake. That’s why earthquakes happen; it’s when the fault line shifts.

The Fall created a fault line in human sexuality. Now, sin fractured us in many ways, but I don’t know if you ever stopped to consider that sin fractured us and impacts us sex-specifically. When mankind fell, God pronounced judgment against sin sex-specifically. He told the man how sin would impact him as a man, and He told the woman how sin would impact her as a woman. That’s highly significant.

Sin messes with who I am as a woman and what I do as a woman. It creates fault lines in my identity and my sexuality.

Now, a fault line is a point of vulnerability. It’s where earthquakes happen. Here’s what I want you to grasp: cultural shifts in ideology, accompanied by technological advances, trigger a quake along the fault line of gender, sexuality, and morality.

Let’s go back to the narrative about the life and times of Grandma Eve. Genesis 4:16: “Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord,” and that right there is a huge ideological shift. Cain walks away from God. Adam and Eve had raised him in the ways of the Lord, but Cain chafed against God’s directives. He got angry at God. He got angry at his brother, who was happily doing what God wanted him to do. And there were undoubtedly plenty of occasions when Cain had a chance and had to make the choice whether he was going to go his own way or God’s way. But here he hits a major, life-defining fork in the road. For Cain, it became a point of no return. He killed his brother, lashed out against God, and went away from the presence of the Lord. He went his own way.

Now, “the way of Cain” is a phrase that became a moniker to describe any person whose life is characterized by a rejection of God’s authority, a scornful attitude toward holy things, and unbridled sexual expression.

Jude verses 8–11 (and I’m paraphrasing): “These people defile the flesh, pollute their own bodies, defy authority, and blaspheme supernatural beings. They scoff at things they do not understand. Like unthinking animals, they do whatever their instincts tell them, and so they bring about their own destruction. What sorrow awaits them, for they follow in the way of Cain.”

Cain was a man who rejected God’s authority, he scorned holy things, and he did whatever he wanted sexually. He defiled his own flesh.

The first century Jewish historian Josephus fills in some of the blanks about Cain’s life. Josephus says:

Cain built a city to increase his wickedness. He only aimed to procure everything that was for his own bodily pleasure, though it obliged him to be injurious to his neighbors. He augmented his household substance with much wealth, and [listen!] by raping and violence he procured pleasures and spoils by robbery, and became a great leader of men into wicked courses.

Josephus argues that the building of the city allowed Cain’s wickedness to increase. This is in line with what we see in our passage. The passage cites several key technological advances.

Verse 17, “Cain built a city.” This required advances in architecture and construction and engineering.

Verses 19–22 point out that Cain’s offspring continued to come up with these great inventions. Jabal pioneered livestock farming. Jubal was a trailblazer in music and in the arts. Tubal-Cain was the inventor of metal. He forged tools and weapons of bronze and iron.

But the passage also indicates that all these great cultural advancements were accompanied by an escalation of sin and depravity, particularly in the area of human sexuality.

In verse 22 we see that Cain’s descendent Lamech abandoned God’s design for marriage; he has two wives, and who knows how many mistresses. Arrogantly here in this passage, Lamech boasts that he knows how to dish out revenge. God’s vengeance on anyone killing Cain was sevenfold, meaning a perfect measure appropriate to the crime; but Lamech vows that he will take vengeance seventy-sevenfold. If anyone crosses him, he’ll unleash an avalanche of violence and vengeance.

We all know the type. I can picture him, half-drunk, maybe grabbing one of his wives by the hair, yanking her close to his face so she could smell his hot, putrid, alcoholic breath and see his bloodshot eyes, and hear him hiss, “Anyone who crosses me, Honey, I’ll slit their throat!”

Wickedness is escalating. People are becoming more depraved. When Cain went his own way, that shift in thinking had enormous consequences for him, his family, and Cainite culture as a whole.

Cain’s dad, Adam, lived to see seven generations of offspring born. He and Eve may have met Noah’s dad. They witnessed the events from the time of creation until the generation before the Flood. I wonder how Grandma Eve felt about the change in morals she witnessed in her grandkids and in their kids and in their kids’ kids. Can you imagine how she felt? Rape, abuse, violence, greed, sensuality, debauchery, immorality, unbridled sexual expression. Do you think that Grandma Eve felt shaken?

The shifting ideas and advancing technology during her time were causing massive earthquakes along the fault line of human sexuality. Really, that’s no different than the situation we’re facing today.

At the True Woman conference in 2008, I unpacked the ideas and history of second-wave feminism; you can still watch the video online. During the three decades from 1960 to 1990, feminism caused a huge shift in our thinking about male-female roles and sexual behavior. As a culture, we moved from a Leave It to Beaver view or ideal of women’s behavior to that of Sex and the City.

The main idea behind second-wave feminism was that women needed to redefine their role in society. The women of my generation—I was born in 1960—were encouraged to reject traditional ideas about femininity, reject everything “girly,” reject the role of wife and mother, and reject sexual standards, because feminism taught us that all these things had been defined by patriarchal men.

Now, let me be clear: feminism has and does identify legitimate problems in male-female relationships. It flags issues like abuse that egregiously assault the worth and the dignity of women. What’s more, the Bible would concur that womanhood is not defined by the June Cleaver stereotype. Feminism contains truth, but it introduces a subtle, deceptive twist into its solution. At its root, it is a philosophy that pivots away from a Judeo-Christian view of the world.

Nancy: We’ve been listening to part one of an important message by Mary Kassian, who’s helping us understand some of the historical dynamics that have been at play, causing so much confusion and brokenness all around us in the areas of gender and sexuality. Mary mentioned a couple of resources I want to draw your attention to.

One is a study she and I coauthored, True Woman 101: Divine Design. It explores God’s good design for men and women in greater detail, and takes us to Genesis chapter 3 to show us how sin has distorted the way we see ourselves and the ways we relate to one another as men and women. The second resource is a message Mary gave at the very first True Woman conference in 2008. That’s titled “You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby,” and she dives further into the effects of the feminist revolution on today’s society.

Dannah: And this week we’ll send you True Woman 101: Divine Design as a thank-you for your donation to support the work of Revive Our Hearts. We’re listener-supported, so we depend on donations from friends like you to sustain our day-to-day operations and expand our work around the globe. To donate, it’s very simple. Just visit ReviveOurHearts.com, and click where it says “Donate,” there near the top of the page. If you’d prefer to talk to someone as you make your donation, our number is 1–800–569–5959. Ask about True Woman 101 when you call.

Nancy: You’ll find links to Mary’s message from 2008 in the transcript of today’s program, at ReviveOurHearts.com. Just look for “Related Resources” in the transcript. And you’ll also find a link to the video of the message we’re listening to this week from Mary at Revive '21. This a really important message that I’m eager to get into the hands of believers everywhere.

Dannah: Once again, the Bible study True Woman 101 is yours for a donation of any amount at ReviveOurHearts.com or by calling 1–800–569–5959, and the videos of Mary’s messages from 2008 and from last fall are available as links within the transcript of today’s program.

Nancy: Thanks, Dannah. Today Mary Kassian unpacked a lot of what has gotten us to where we are today. Tomorrow, she’ll answer the question, “How should we respond?” Be sure and be back for Revive Our Hearts. 

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth gets you grounded in God’s good design, helping you find freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.  

All Scripture is taken from the ESV.

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