No one really believes in utterly free, unfettered choice. There are good choices and bad choices, and an enduring challenge in life is to know the difference. There are choices that we forbid ourselves and others to make. For instance, I have a legal right to drive my car whenever I choose, but I do not have the legal right to drive my neighbor’s car whenever I choose. While we may disagree about which choices should be legal and which shouldn’t be, rare is the person who would argue that we should have no laws at all. This is self-evident. “Choice” sounds wonderful in theory, but when the rubber meets the road, some choices are dark. This is, of course, why the abortion movement calls itself pro-choice, without making it plain that the choice it promotes is the right to kill a child.

What is not always self-evident, however, is the manner in which some choices are not expressions of freedom, but rather expressions of bondage. For there are some choices that we were never intended to make. This is particularly true of the most important questions, the ones that get to the heart of who we are.

Our culture is enamored of the individual’s freedom to define him- or herself. One’s true identity, we are meant to believe, is solely a matter of self-definition. While self-definition sounds liberating, it in fact opens one up to a dizzying and overwhelming array of challenges and questions. For instance, I recently watched a TED Talk titled “Ending Gender” by Scott Turner Schofield, born female but self-identifying as a man. During the talk, Schofield showed a PowerPoint slide headlined “Who am I?” that listed a range of questions a person seeking to change his or her gender would likely have to address:

How do you change everything? Will my family disown me? Will this affect my visa? What do I say at the airport about my gender? Will I be sent home for how I’m dressed? What will this cost me? Will I be able to get a job? Will my marriage still be legal? Will I be allowed to parent my kids? Will I take hormones? Can I be all of myself all of the time, or just with certain people in certain places? Will my friends accept me? Will I be fired? Will they use my name at school? Who is going to love me? Am I crazy? Which bathroom can I use? Will I have surgery? Which surgeries? Will I tell people who I was before? Will my faith community expel me? Diplomas?  Birth certificates? Social Security Card? Passports? Credit cards? 

No one should have to figure out all these things. If Schofield is right, that all of these questions are inevitable for a person seeking to change his gender, should this not tell us something? Is it even possible to answer them? All of them? Some of them? Which ones?

Having to make choices we were never intended to make is not freedom; it is bondage. A young man confused about his gender, and seeking to become a woman, won’t find freedom in self-mutilation, whether by knife or by pill. He needs someone to support and encourage him in who God has created him to be, and to walk with him as he tries to discover what it means for him to be a man. This is not to belittle the real struggles some people have concerning gender—it is to take those struggles seriously. It is to say that the way to address such confusion is to press into who we were created to be, and into God, who created us, instead of trying to change who we fundamentally are. That of course is easier said than done, and it will require walking with one another over a long and difficult road. But then love is difficult. Much easier to give someone hormones or encourage an abortion than to walk a long road in solidarity with a struggling person.

Freedom lies not in defining who I am, but in discovering who God made me to be. Conversely, the avalanche of unfettered choice that attends self-definition is crushing. Suicide rates among those desiring to change their gender are heart-wrenching testament to the weight of that burden. So is the incidence of suicide and depression among those who have undergone abortion. The fact that we encourage such, even legally, bears witness to our cultural darkness.