Recently there has been a desire by some to change the pronouns that are used to describe the gender of individuals. The idea is that someone’s preferred pronouns can be different than their biological gender. This has caused some confusion in certain English speaking countries as certain institutions have tried to legislate the use of pronouns in professional and academic settings.
To get a sense of how confusing this gender gerrymandering can be just consider this partial list of first person singular pronouns: he, she, ve, xe, ze/zie, ae, fae, per, they, and e/ey. As you might imagine, this can cause considerable confusion because an individual can request to be called by any of these terms and the person can change their preference at will. One day a coworker may ask to be called “xe.” The next day the pronoun preference may be “fae.”
Thankfully, the Christian has no need to be confused by this trend. The Bible makes it clear that Christians do not need to wonder about this issue because God’s word gives two options for the gender of a human being, male or female. All the pronouns in the Bible work around this understanding because they have been revealed to humanity by God himself. The very first chapter of the Bible makes this abundantly clear, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:27 – English Standard Version)
There are 31,102 verses in the sixty-six books of the English Bible. Of those verses, there are 7,220 references to a biological male using the word “he” and “737” references to a woman using the word “she.” The amount of gender specific references to male and female words increases dramatically as soon as the search turns from English to the original languages of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.
The original languages of the Bible are gendered languages. This means that the subject, object, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions are either masculine, feminine, or neuter. This means that every sentence repeatedly clarifies that the people mentioned are masculine or feminine. Trying to read a genderless Bible would be incredibly confusing because the original meaning is tied to the concept of two genders.
The gender clarity of the Bible is so helpful for the Christian because he knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that his gender is the same as his biological sex. There is no confusion about the gender of the historical figures mentioned in the Bible. There is no confusion about how the Bible instructs men to interact with women, “Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” (Eph. 5:25) Christian men know they are to treat older men as fathers and younger men as brothers, “older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity.” (1 Tim. 5:2) This creates a strong foundation for Christian men, women, boys and girls because they know their gender and they know how God wants them to live and function as a result. Instead of being restrictive, this is actually incredibly freeing to know who you are as a child of God. Instead of being confused about gender the Christian is confident and is able to seek to live in the way God intended him to live.
As a side note, I have been curious to see how the trend for pronoun preference has impacted modern gendered languages like Spanish. I found one article that describes “Lenguaje Inclusivo” and it describes how Spanish can be changed from using the gendered endings of “o” and “a” and replacing them with “e”. For instance, “mis hijos son lindos” would need to become “mis hijes son lindes.” Can you imagine how confusing this would be for the Spanish speaker? The reason it would be difficult is because a non-gendered version of Spanish is actually a completely different language that would have to be written, read, and spoken differently than modern Spanish.
One study found that 38% of the 4,000 languages studied are gendered languages. If this desire to change pronoun preference were to take place world-wide it would mean that hundreds of languages would have to die out in order to become non-gendered languages!
It is no surprise to me that the movement towards non-gendered language has come from English speakers. If people would read the Bible in the original languages they would quickly see the folly of their attempt to change language as we know it! Personally, I am glad I have the rock-solid foundation of God’s word undergirding my worldview. The Christian has no need for gender confusion. We know we were created in God’s image and that gives us the wonderful simplicity of a world with biological men and women who can discover God and live in a way that is pleasing to him.
