TransGender TransBetter? | Gender Shifting as a Sign of Societal Progress or Peril | YBT006 CWP045
Jan 23, 2024Episode 45
Cloud of Witnesses cast and crew
Do civilizations crumble under the weight of shifting gender norms? Our dynamic panelists spark a riveting dialogue about this very question. We convened a panel, including Jeremy, Nick, Mary, Maximus, and Robert, to dissect the phenomenon that Murray proposes: the focus on gender identity as a harbinger of societal decline. As we traverse through our cultural landscape, from pop songs to policy debates, our episode delves into the heart of why gender conversations have become so pervasive in Western society, especially in the United States. What is the Christian response?
This is far more than just a discussion of societal constructs; it's an exploration of the spiritual vacuum that may be at our core. Our conversation ventures deep into the meaning of suffering and authenticity in a world that increasingly prioritizes individual identity over collective unity, let alone unification with Christ Jesus. We tackle the challenging idea that the blurring of established norms might not be the cause of societal deterioration but rather a symptom of a larger crisis—a detachment from a shared objective reality, Christ Himself, that once bound us together. Join us as we seek to understand whether our current preoccupation with personal identity is a sign of progress or peril.
Do civilizations crumble under the weight of shifting gender norms? Our dynamic panelists spark a riveting dialogue about this very question. We convened a panel, including Jeremy, Nick, Mary, Maximus, and Robert, to dissect the phenomenon that Murray proposes: the focus on gender identity as a harbinger of societal decline. As we traverse through our cultural landscape, from pop songs to policy debates, our episode delves into the heart of why gender conversations have become so pervasive in Western society, especially in the United States. What is the Christian response?
This is far more than just a discussion of societal constructs; it's an exploration of the spiritual vacuum that may be at our core. Our conversation ventures deep into the meaning of suffering and authenticity in a world that increasingly prioritizes individual identity over collective unity, let alone unification with Christ Jesus. We tackle the challenging idea that the blurring of established norms might not be the cause of societal deterioration but rather a symptom of a larger crisis—a detachment from a shared objective reality, Christ Himself, that once bound us together. Join us as we seek to understand whether our current preoccupation with personal identity is a sign of progress or peril.
Thank you for journeying w/ the Saints with us!
Speaker 1:
To shimmy the kids through puberty until they get to be adults. Just with care, with a lot of care.
Speaker 2:
The temptation with some videos like this is that, look, the transgenders are the reason for the fall of America, and it's like what about praying for them to be enlightened against this endless onslaught of propaganda? How about? Hi, I'm Jeremy, hey, I'm Nick.
Speaker 1:
Hi, I'm Mary.
Speaker 3:
Hello Maximus. Hi, this is Robert.
Speaker 2:
This is Cloud of Witnesses on our new series. Yes, but we got a really interesting one today.
Speaker 4:
you guys, you guys ready to jump right in? Let's do it.
Speaker 2:
How far it's not even. I don't even know what it is.
Speaker 5:
This happens at the end of every civilization's reign and I think this happened with the Greeks and it happened with the Romans Romans. It's one of the things that Douglas Murray, when I had him on my podcast, was discussing. He said one of the things that happens at the end of civilizations is they become obsessed with gender. Mm. It's a thing that happens where men start becoming women, women start becoming men and it becomes like a big focus, like cross-dressing and all this stuff becomes a big point of focus, and I was like well, why is that? He goes. It seems to be that they're dissolving all boundaries and all norms and all societal structure, and that's a part of it. It's like gender roles.
Speaker 4:
So pretty interesting. Huh, Wow, that was a mouthful and certainly we see here in the West in the United States, Southern California and California in general, urban areas across the country. It seems to be an obsession of our culture. It's in our movies, it's in the pop culture songs, it's in the books. What do you guys think?
Speaker 2:
Do you know what I'm talking about?
Speaker 3:
Right, I don't know where to begin, lord of Mercy, I mean, it seems it would make sense that the ends of civilization would come with the decay of essential norms that would perpetuate that civilization. And the reason for this falling away is might at least I don't want to say that we're necessarily about to implode tomorrow or anything but like the loss of an end, everything like with the loss of an objective reality that we can point to, or objective common reality that we can point to, say God, people sort of begin to turn inward because they, you know it's either you're going from creation to God or you're just merely dwelling in creation and you kind of get stuck in like, oh well, what is this thing? What's the end of it? There's this. It doesn't seem to be end of it, so I'll make of it whenever I want to. So you'll try to turn people will try to turn creation into their own image.
Speaker 2:
This is obviously a symptom of something deeper, right, this is not. It's not like. This is the cause. If we would just have solid gender roles and I think this is where sometimes people on the quote far right right, the political sphere can, can, can get it wrong in the sense that they just think, look, if we just had solid gender roles, then it would be clear, right, then we'd be good, we'd be strong, now it would help us. But it's not really. It's not the inside, it's not the core, and that's what I'm wondering. You know, when I was listening to that video, I was like, okay, this is the symptom, but what is that root cause?
Speaker 3:
And it's, it's always the issue of just like if we just merely had the divine ordering without divinity.
Speaker 2:
Yep, exactly, that's basically the other side of the coin, as it were.
Speaker 4:
you know this, this, this luxury of a society, a society to reach a point to where its largesse is such that they have the time and the money to do things like get sex changes and augment their bodies, and spend all this time and money on clothing and, and you know, things of this nature, load of mercy, which we know as Christians, are also totally superfluous.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, this is a good. So all I wrote in my little note card is the word suffering, was it? I think it goes well with what you guys are saying. Like we don't understand, like we don't, we're not comfortable with suffering and orthodoxy. Like, when you read the lives of the saints, a lot of their, their lives are about suffering. They suffered for the sake of Christ and in the society, like societies work. I mean, I'm not, um, neither a sociologist nor a historian, I'm a biologist, so I don't really know much about that side of the world, but I'm guessing societies work to build themselves up to a point where people are comfortable and affluent, like you guys are saying, and then with that we are, we go farther, further away from suffering, so we have no need to ask for for God's help.
Speaker 7:
But I don't really know where to start on this one. I have a little bit of trouble with, in general, with studies that do these kind of sweeping uh overviews of civilizations, and in fact a lot of recent scholarship is critical of these kind of sweeping generalizations made based on, uh, you know, civilizations and things like that.
Speaker 2:
So there's a famous saying that says politics is downstream from culture. And then what a lot of us say? And culture is downstream from spirituality, right? So the spirituality of a people or of a person is what informs the culture that they create, and then the culture that they create, you know, lays the political foundation.
Speaker 1:
I mean, we're created to worship God. So once you take us out of, once you take God out of that equation, man, this is meaning, so he tries to make meaning out of everything.
Speaker 7:
So I'm not disagreeing with what Marianne is saying or what Nicholas is saying, necessarily, but I am just not so so ready to say okay, well, this is why his civilization ended.
Speaker 4:
I think that's very well said. Both ends and and uh, you know, I think we probably all agree that we can't look back on any period. You know, even the leave it to beaver. You know 1950s, whatever it was, um, you know the idyllic, uh, nuclear family, you know was highlighted, um, I think we all can all agree that you know there is sin, satan and the demons have been at work. Let's look at America. You know, certainly we are a society currently obsessed with with gender, um, with the role of gender, even that word, right, the very fact that we're using this word. So I'm curious, I'd love to like to hear your thoughts, maybe not so much about the demise of the civilization per se.
Speaker 1:
Hold on, sorry, and I'm not really necessarily promoting the author or anything.
Speaker 4:
Very reversible damage.
Speaker 1:
I could not stop reading this book. She makes an argument about and this is going to be a little controversial. She just makes an argument that the road has been paved for a lot of teens, boys and girls, to be able to, once they feel uncomfortable with their body which is a normal biological process go to the doctor or the psychologist, and the doctor or the psychologist tells them that it's okay, what you're feeling is normal and that's because you're in the wrong body. Like you have to tell me that my opinion is okay about myself, even though I did not go through six or seven years of medical training, and you have to agree with me or you're a bigot.
Speaker 1:
Kids go through changes. They don't have anybody to go to, they are just struggling with themselves. And now we have the internet, the kids are growing up thinking that this is the thing that I want to do, but then they face resistance and their resistance increases their strength. We know that we build muscle by going to the gym, building resistance. So the more resistance that they see in society, which is like the very I don't want to say the very conservative side of the pendulum, but maybe that is what it is, I don't know the very anti-any conversations about this side.
Speaker 4:
The establishment. The establishment maybe.
Speaker 1:
Right yeah, the establishment without any understanding of their humanity or their feeling. I mean, there are human, right, we are fallen humans also and you need to kind of understand that. To shimmy the people through puberty, to shimmy the kids through puberty until they get to be adults, just with care, with a lot of care and with a lot of compassion and love, without necessarily affirming whatever permanent damage that they want to do to their body, but also without being super resistant to them, because this is when you have the other side, you know that would be fighting and the kids are suffering, you know.
Speaker 2:
I'm glad that Jeremy actually re-centered it and kind of divorced the topic from the whole collapsing empire topic. And I love what you're saying, mary Ann, because I wanted to say this too. And really the main thing is love, right, that more than ever, they don't need to be bashed on the head with this is reality. Deal with it. No one cares. Work harder, right, like. What about love? What about compassion? What about understanding? What about praying for them to be enlightened against this endless onslaught of propaganda? How about asking God that this thorn in their spiritual eyesight would be taken out so they can see reality? I don't know the name of this one girl, but you know she said that one day. You know she thought she was a male. She went through all these things. One day it was like like St Paul, these scales, this cloud lifted from her and she saw who she truly was. How did that happen, I don't know. Must have been the grace of God.
Speaker 1:
And I want to add and acknowledge as scientists, as biologists, there are biological abnormalities in people's bodies that make them really have really messed up genes or hormones that would make them unclear whether they are a male or a female. I don't know the statistics, I'm not going to say all these are rare, but they're probably rare. But even if they're not rare, I just want to mention that fallen humanity, through the lens of orthodoxy, or at least how I understand orthodoxy through the lens of the fall, we have acquired diseases why not diseases where the genes of the sex determination are the ones that are hit. Yeah, so Christ sat with the prostitutes and the tax collectors of the world. We need to be that for the people. We need to be Christ for everybody. Amen. I love it. Also, respect that people have free will.
Speaker 2:
Ultimately, which is a painful dichotomy.
Speaker 1:
Yes.
Speaker 7:
We've put our focus and we've made an individual's opinion, and we made that this unassailable, unquestionable truth. So, whatever your truth is, I cannot question this. That's yours and there's absolutely no way for me to question that at all. The problem now we're trying to put a universal truth in an individual's reality, and you cannot find a universal truth in an individual's opinion, and I think that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to elevate one's opinion or one's experience and say that's the only truth. That is really what matters and you cannot question it. And I think what we're doing instead is we're only fragmentizing more. We're not finding any universal truth in this.
Speaker 2:
I think just to say one thing is that the temptation with some videos like this is that it's like look, the transgenders are the reason for the fall of America, and it's like these are people, right, and it goes back to what you're saying. What is that? Universal truth ultimately is God is and God is love. Right, and if we can go back to what Marianne said, emanate God's love. That is what will really enlighten us all to be on that same plane of communion and understanding with each other what it really comes down to?
Speaker 3:
is it's a battle of the heart or like a conflict between religions? Arguing with them or dragging them Probably isn't going to help. It's just probably going to make them dig their heels even deeper and create even more division. Yeah, we can sit here talking all day about like, oh, decay of civilizations, but ultimately, yeah, these are people that we're dealing with, these people who bear the image of God, amen. It could be very easy to forget that.
Speaker 4:
It's so true, such a temptation I would love for you guys watching to this point. By the way, I want to say thank you for joining us today. Bill Maher, who is not at all conservative. He makes this great point. I wish I could find the video.
Speaker 6:
Maybe we'll share it some other time he talks about he's like it is not uncommon to hear parents who each have a trans kid having a conversation about that. What are the odds of that happening in Youngstown, Ohio? If this spike in trans children is all natural, why is it regional? Either Ohio is shaming them or California is creating them.
Speaker 4:
This is a spiritual battle, it's a battle for the heart and, as the Bible says, what proceeds from the mouth, what comes from the heart. And it's these ideas that are coming from the mouth of our spokesman of the culture and it's infiltrating the minds of our youth, and it's a shame. And Lord, have mercy.
Speaker 1:
The harvest is ready, but the workers are few.
Speaker 7:
I think this is not a political issue Although of course it's hijacked by politics quite often but I think it is a matter of the heart and it's a spiritual issue.
Speaker 2:
Empires aside, to build anything or anyone up. First off, is these icons right? Is that to remember that? That is the prototype?
Speaker 3:
He is the prototype and this is what we should become A lot of this really comes down to like can you love your brother and your sister? And if you really can't, then you are just as much as like these other people that you may have negative sentiments for. You are also perpetuating the decay of society. Politics in that way is sort of parasitic and almost demands that this sort of like fight to the death happens. We have to. The primary weapon is going to be the cross, and you can't bear that without love.
Speaker 2:
Amen, I love that. Amen, amen, I love that. Thank you everyone for listening. Thank you everyone for talking.
Speaker 4:
Yes, awesome conversation. We really appreciate you and you listening to the end. We really appreciate you. Please go check out our Patreon. We are at patreoncom slash. Cloud of witnesses radio. This has been cloud of witnesses radio.