Proverbs 22:6
Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.

Ephesians 6:4
Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.

These two verses are ones that most any Christian parent is no doubt familiar with. In fact, most every parent is at least familiar with the principle that it is a parent’s job to raise their child right so that they can be a mature, responsible adult. As Christians, our job is to raise our kids up to be people of faith. I think most of us are hoping to not mess our kids up to the point that they abandon their faith or become a mass-murderer. That’d be a good start.

I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit since we found out Brea’s pregnant. There are plenty of examples of kids raised by full-time ministers who hate going to church, don’t believe anything in the Bible, and in many ways turn out to be exactly the opposite of what their parents were hoping they would be. This type of thing somewhat terrifies me.

This leads me to the news story from last week that really got my thinking about this topic. Last Thursday on Oprah’s show they had a “transgender pregnant man” from Oregon on. “He” describes “himself” as “transgender, legally male, and legally married to Nancy.” In other words he is really a she who had a gender-altering surgery, but kept the internal female reproductive organs.

“He” also said “Wanting to have a biological child is neither a male nor female desire, but a human desire.” I agree about the wanting to “have” part of that statement, but not if “have” means giving birth. I don’t know any guy who has ever said they wanted to give birth to a child. In fact, most women I know who are or have been pregnant don’t really look forward to the giving birth portion of the whole ordeal.

I didn’t watch the program, but thinking about the situation made me fairly angry. It’s an obvious attempt to make people more sympathetic toward transgender and homosexual couples. Oprah tries to come across in her show as a spiritually enlightened person, but in reality she is a pluralistic, polytheistic, new age apologist. She thinks that everyone should have the same beliefs that she does.

But the show also troubled me for another reason. I know that my main task in becoming a father for our soon to be born daughter is to guide her into being a woman of faith. I don’t know the person’s story on why she decided she was really a he, but I know there was a father involved in the process at least at some point. What if that dad was a good Christian person? Where did he go wrong?

I really don’t worry too much about our daughter one day doing anything as radical as this person did. But I do wonder how I will respond when she first messes up in a big way. I hope that I will be able to have the grace to forgive her as the father of the prodigal son did (Luke 15:11-31).