My BreakPoint colleague, John Stonestreet, and I are both dads. In fact, we are both dads of daughters. Thus, Friday’s bathroom edict from the Obama Administration hit particularly close to home, since it is girls like our daughters that are the most vulnerable.
But what can we do? As we like to say at the Colson Center, outrage is not a strategy. So I’d like to propose five things.
First, as John said on Monday, we have to understand the issue. This is a biggie, folks, on a number of levels: government overreach and ideological extortion, denial of biological realities, equivocation with civil rights, and on and on. At BreakPoint.org, we’ve compiled the best resources we could find to explain the gravity of this staggering exercise in government tyranny.
Second, we have to speak out. As American citizens, we should contact our state leaders and encourage them not to allow this blatant violation of state sovereignty—which it is—to go unchecked. As parents, we should contact our school boards and principals, and demand to know how they plan to protect all the children in the school in light of this edict.
Third, it’s time to talk to your children about the transgender issues. Yes, it’s uncomfortable. And none of us thought we’d have to add this to our plan in raising our children, but at times, our culture leaves us no choice. We all need to have “the talk” with our children, and today “the talk” includes not only the birds and the bees, but also gender, identity, marriage, and how to hold convictions about these things with courage, grace, and truth.
If you don’t talk to your children about these things, someone else—the media, the schools, the government, their peers—will.
And there’s a lot to cover. Happily, there’s a new resource hot off the press, and it couldn’t be more timely. John Stonestreet, along with our partners at AXIS and Sean McDowell have produced a “Family Conversation Kit” on gender, sex, and marriage.
This four-part series includes video teaching, with examples from popular culture to discuss with your kids, and tons of resources to look at together. And it offers something absolutely necessary, a clear description of God’s created intent for us as image-bearers, male and female, and how that enables His vision for sex and marriage.
Come to BreakPoint.org/gender, and we’ll tell you how you can purchase this digital download—it’s worth every penny, trust me. It will set the stage for the conversation you must have with your kids. It is great for schools, small groups, and youth groups, too.
Fourth, Christians need to be clear on who the enemy is not. Many gender-confused school children are themselves the victims of very bad ideas. They’re being misled by those who would advance theories and policies that deny observable biological realities. Ideas have consequences, and bad ideas have victims. Your family, your church, and your Christian community may be called upon to do victim care. Develop a plan now.
And finally, parents need to seriously consider alternative educational options. My family has chosen private education, and John’s family homeschools. Some families may feel they have no choice but to send their kids to public schools, and I get that. But there are more options than ever when it comes to educational alternatives. A line in the sand has been crossed, folks. Christian parents need to investigate other options. And churches need to jump in the process too, innovating opportunities for those families currently unable to take advantage of the alternatives.
So come to BreakPoint.org. We’ve got lots of resources there to help, and remember, at BreakPoint.org/gender we have information on the Family Conversation Kit on gender, sex, and marriage.
BreakPoint is a Christian worldview ministry that seeks to build and resource a movement of Christians committed to living and defending Christian worldview in all areas of life. Begun by Chuck Colson in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on today’s news and trends via radio, interactive media, and print. Today BreakPoint commentaries, co-hosted by Eric Metaxas and John Stonestreet, air daily on more than 1,200 outlets with an estimated weekly listening audience of eight million people. Feel free to contact us at BreakPoint.org where you can read and search answers to common questions.
Eric Metaxas is a co-host of BreakPoint Radio and a best-selling author whose biographies, children's books, and popular apologetics have been translated into more than a dozen languages.
Publication date: May 19, 2016