The short answer to the question, 'Should Christians use someone's 'preferred pronouns' in compliance with 'transgender' politics?' is, 'Of course not.' No realist should, for that matter. Yet the issue is not simply one of realism, it is also a matter of truth-telling. And, for those thinking that compliance with someone else's unnatural wishes is an expression of love, one can only hope that someone will love them enough to tell them the truth.
Paul Huxley, the Communication Coordinator at Christian Concern, has written a very clear, short article addressing this issue. It is entitled, 'Christians Should Not Be Compelled to Lie by Using Trans Pronouns' (15 July, 2022), available here. It is an excellent statement on the issue. The main purpose of this blog post is to suggest to readers that they read Huxley's arguments on the issue.
In a cultural context that has elevated perception and choice above reality and nature, Christians are going to face a number of challenges to 'speak the truth.' God is a God of truth. He says, 'I speak the truth, I declare what is right' (Isaiah 45.19). His people are to 'speak the truth to one another; render in your gates judgements that are true and make for peace; do not devise evil in your hearts against one another, and love no false oath, for all these things I hate, declares the Lord' (Zechariah 8.16-17). Only in a world of falsehood can one set up a conflict between speaking the truth to one another on the one hand and judgements that make for peace on the other, or equating truth with devising evil against another person.
Compelled speech is a challenge to liberal democracy and befits authoritarian dictatorships instead. When the Roman Emperor, Decius, wanted to compel citizens to worship the traditional gods, he required that people complied by acquiring certificates, libelli, stating that they had sacrificed to the gods and to the genius of the emperor. Under the emperor Diocletian, people were again compelled to offer pagan sacrifices. People did so or found ways to acquire the certificates without doing so, and some Christians complied, but many were martyred. Not only have tyrants forced people to contradict their consciences and religious devotion but other forms of authoritarian government have as well, most notably in recent times in Fascist, Communist, and Islamic State countries. Yet compelled speech and actions against one's conscience or that of a particular group, such as Christians, is also possible in democracies where the tyranny of the majority takes hold--a concern that James Madison addressed in the 51st Federalist Paper.
Huxley draws attention to the Ninth Commandment not to bear false witness when addressing the subject of a Christian, who knows God made humans male or female (Genesis 1.27), on the issue of complying with a person's pronoun preferences. Such compliance for those who confess the God of creation is false witness. He further notes Paul's word in Ephesians 4.25: 'Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.'
The relativism of postmodernity has become the tyranny of postmodern tribalism. Christians are increasingly pressured to oppose their own consciences and comply with the libelli of false testimony, particularly in the area of sexuality. As Christians under the Roman emperors Decius or Diocletian , pressured to deny the one God, our Christian witness can simply come down to confessing the Creator and what He has created, saying to a world of gender make-believe, 'We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth....' We reject your man-made gods, your humanly invented morality, and your false identifies in defiance of the Creator. As Paul says, 'speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ' (Ephesians 4.15). For us, speaking the truth over against the falsities and idolatries of the world is itself love. It is, in fact, hateful to withhold the truth from those living by lies.
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