Marriage and Family: Did God make a mistake?

Written by By Francis Ewherido

Recently, I came across the story of a 14-year-old American "girl", Jazz Jennings, who was born a boy, but did a sex change to transmute to a girl. According to the story, Jazz started "leaning toward a feminine side at only 15 months old (hmmm).

By age two, Jazz started to verbalize her feelings that 'she was a girl,' and by five she was one of the youngest people ever to be diagnosed with gender dysphoria a persistent unease with the characteristics of one's gender, accompanied by a strong identification with the opposite gender." Jazz's parents allowed her transition to a girl while he was still in kindergarten.

After reading the story, many questions came to my mind: Does God make mistakes? If He does, what then differentiates Him from sinful man, since many sins actually result from mistakes? Why did God encase a girl's behavior and tendencies in a boy's body, as the diagnosis seems to suggest? Were the parents not too hasty in allowing the transition? Are there no other remedies? Is there even such a thing as gender dysphoria?

The writer of the story did not help me in my quest for answers, for she asks, "What defines gender?" I would simply have answered biology, but she continues: Is it biology, the heart and mind or a combination of both?" One even needs to be cautious when using the term "gender" as it is not necessarily interchangeable with "sex" in describing male and female. Oxford Dictionary says that "although the words gender and sex both have the sense, 'the state of being male or female', they are typically used in different ways: sex tends to refer to biological differences, while gender tends to refer to cultural or social ones".

There is no doubt that we must love and support our children, so that is not the issue here, but must we support their wrong decisions and tendencies? How do you just allow little and inexperienced children, who have not reached age of reason, take life-changing decisions based on feelings? If Jazz had undergone proper therapy and had been properly counseled, would he have walked this path? And if he had been allowed to come of age and experience the natural pleasure embedded in the union of man and woman, would he still have taken the decision to change to a female? Now that he is female, can she get pregnant? Does she even have a womb? Can she breastfeed? Does she feel like a natural female? Can she enjoy sex like a natural female do?

Why are American parents surrendering without a "fight"? At 13 years, Earvin Johnson III, son of American basketball legend, Magic Johnson, told the parents he was gay and the parents "showed understanding and gave him all the support he needed." How much does a 13-year-old know about gayism? For all you care, the young man was just following what he saw as a trend. Unfortunately, unless he retraces his steps, Earvin will never know the opportunity cost of his ill-timed decision. Now the "incredibly supportive family" of a two-year-old "decided to embrace her inner feelings and allowed her to start transitioning from male to female while she was only in kindergarten." We live in a free world and we should respect people's decisions, even if nauseating and unacceptable, but these children taking weighty decisions...hmmm. Children are intuitive and amenable; you cannot just take what they say hook, line and sinker; you probe and dig deeper until you get to the root of the matter.

Western societies have gone to the extremes; they have turned liberty, freedom and human rights in the head. The saying that "too much of everything is bad" cannot be truer in these circumstances. Freedom must go with concomitant responsibility; their freedom has too little responsibility attached to it and even that little is skewed. Their value orientation is also terrible. Jazz has become a celebrity and an advocate for transgender American students and "young people with gender dysphoria." Almighty Time Magazine named her among the 25 Most Influential Teens of 2014. She has been interviewed by top American news anchors and talk show hosts, including Barbara Walters! The family in the west is facing clear and present dangers.

Thank God, our many drawbacks notwithstanding, the Nigerian parent will not surrender in these situations without a very good fight. Some will conduct numerous vigils and prayer sessions, engage prayer warriors and pastors; others will book masses, pray countless decades of the rosary and do novenas until the "demon is chased away." I do not even want to document the extremes some parents will go to drive some sense into these children's heads. I have not heard any reported case of gender dysphoria in Nigeria, but we live in a global village, so these things are never far away. Parents must equip themselves to adequately tackle challenges, known and unknown, that inevitably come with parenting and there are myriads of such challenges.

I look at gender dysphoria with suspicion. I feel it is just another concept to justify and ram all kinds of western aberrations down our throats? But let us even give them the benefit of the doubt that gender dysphoria could result from genetic mutation or other natural defects. The question is are there no other and better remedies than sex change? What is more natural? Going through a sex change, or therapy to connect and harmonise the sufferers' nature with his feelings?

Back to our question, did God make a mistake with Jazz? Impossible, God does not make mistakes. Jazz's parents simply allowed their skewed value orientation to mislead them. There is a problem when an inexperienced kindergarten pupil leads grown up adults by the nose on very weighty issues. Also God did not feature in their decision making. The day God starts to make mistakes, mankind is doomed.