When Common Sense Becomes News
In an exercise in stating the obvious, The Daily Signal published a recent article entitled, “Biologically Male Athletes Have Competitive Advantage Over Women, Sports Group’s Study Finds.” The article reviews the findings of a report conducted by The Sports Councils’ Equality Group. They outline that testosterone reduction and suppression doesn’t alleviate or negate the physiological advantages such as strength, stamina, and physique that a biologically born male has over a female. The study brought to light something even young children know without the need of special reports: men have natural physical advantages over women.
The article garnered attention on social media. Many who saw the article’s headline, and the content within it, jeered at its silliness. I saw people post clown faces. Others stated satirically that “water is wet.” They’re right. It is sheer madness that this article was published with a straight face, as if we thought something different. The article’s timing served to highlight its surreal nature, as it was published less than a month after jarring photos surfaced of a biologically male transgender UFC fighter beating and choking his way to victory over a female competitor. It is easy to dunk on articles like this for needing a study to reach a conclusion that is common sense, even for a child. But this is the world we live in now. Common sense is now newsworthy.
Why is that? Why did it require a study to lead someone to conclude something obvious to most sane people? Because we now live in a world downstream from rejecting God. This is the byproduct of generations of people turning their backs on God and His Word. As we reject God and ignore what He reveals to us in Scripture, we become fools. We become detached from the world as it really is.
A few passages of Scripture help capture this. In Proverbs 9:10, we read, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.” It is fear of the LORD, reverencing Him, that produces wisdom and knowledge. Only as we align our hearts and minds on God and view the world through what He says about it, do we gain true wisdom and knowledge. Again, another proverb (Proverbs 1:7) says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.” This proverb states that fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but it also interjects that the fool despises wisdom and instruction. The fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion (Proverbs 18:2). Scripture repeatedly warns us about not being the fool, and not following our own ways.
What we call “common sense” are those facts and truths about reality that we experience in the world as we live in it. God has made the world to function in certain ways. There is a teleology, a design and purpose, behind creation. We learn things about God, and His wisdom, as we observe creation. We can observe men and women and discover quickly that there are differences in our makeup and design. Those observations lead us to conclusions that are basic in nature and do not require special investigations to confirm, unless you develop a habit of ignoring the world as God made it and start designing your own counter-narrative.
In Romans 1:22, Paul says, “Claiming to be wise, they became fools.” The context of this passage is the people who know there is a God from what He has made, but continue suppressing that truth. They live detached from the knowledge of God—the source of all true knowledge and wisdom. What does this lead to? It leads to them becoming fools. They claim to be wise and knowledgeable, but they wind up as fools who know nothing. They lack common sense.
This is how we arrive at a world that needs special studies to conclude that men are physiologically different than women. This is what leads to people being utterly confused on issues as simple as men and women not being the same. We live in a world now where many have sought to flatten the differences between men and women. The LGBTQ+ revolution has swept through the Western world and destroyed the foundations of something as basic as gender. People are now confused. There used to be no questions or debates that only two genders exist, male and female. People treat gender as construct that can be shaped and manipulated to one’s desires. “It is fluid," they say.
Those of us who still stand on the remnants of a biblical worldview, who hold to the idea that there are men and women, are becoming abnormal in society. We are the truth-tellers. You do not choose which gender you are; God does that (Psalm 139:13-16). Maleness and femaleness are not interchangeable upon our whims or feelings. They are fixed. Our denial of these things doesn’t change that.
Men are still, as a rule, larger, stronger, and faster than women. Letting a man, claiming to be a woman, compete against women is unfair to women. This isn’t transphobic, it is reality. It doesn’t require a special study to confirm these things. It requires common sense. But when you live in a world that is downstream from rejecting God and His ways, common sense is no longer common. It’s breaking news.
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