January 22

Day 314: Preferred Pronouns

I'm going off road on this one. Surely to offend at least someone. My apologies.

My wife's employer (University of Alaska SE) is utilizing social media to highlight various student employees. Strangely, and right behind the student's name and hometown, it lists that student's preferred pronouns.

Now, I know I'm older than most reading this. I grew up in a time when 1) This wasn't a thing, and 2) I thought I had but one option.

Now, I will also admit that I may not be sufficiently "woke," but the fluidity by which anyone can navigate and manage their identity is new territory for me.

One's preferred pronouns (always more than one, singular and plural) are now to be established, stated and demanded. Be it in that person's presence, or even in referring to that same person in their absence.

And, personal freedom seems to now include the option to change one's preferred pronouns at any time. Thus, the new mine field of inadvertently offending someone at any given moment. (This has become so complicated.)

So this being a Friday, when I am perhaps at my silliest, I have already given some thought to what will henceforth be my preferred pronoun. And unlike most everyone else, I require just one; appropriate for both singular and plural. Useful for when you're in my presence or in my absence.

Your Majesty.

Identity is a funny thing. We all want to declare who we each believe ourselves to be. Autonomous control. Yet, and this is a big yet, we are dependent on everyone else to validate us in our identity.

For how can we be who we want to be, if no one else agrees?

And whether it be he/she, him/her, they/them, or whatever other options may exist (or are being added even as I write this) it seems that everyone ascribing to something other than their gender at birth is essentially saying, "Call me 'Your Majesty!'"

Because we all want to be King/Queen of our own world. But as we're dependent on others for the validation of our identity, we're also dependent on everyone else to acknowledge us as the sovereign.

Do the math, and it adds up to a lot of Kings/Queens, doesn't it.?And every King/Queen is expecting (even demanding) that all of the the other Kings/Queens respond as subjects. Way too many Majesty's in the room (or on the planet.)

Christians, on the other hand, adhere to something different. We believe our identity (and I suppose, by extension our personal pronouns) are established not by us, but by the One who created us.

If we are identified by our Creator God, then He, alone, is the ultimate Sovereign. He, alone, gets the naming rights. And how does that inform who I am?

I am a child of God. I am a son of the King. I am one of the Kingdom of priests. I am a citizen of a holy nation.

And what's so awesome about who God has made me to be is that I am not enslaved to the responses of other people respective to my identity. I am free from that dependence.

Therefore the working identity statement for me is, "Who God is, and what God has done for me determines who I am and how I live."

And if that be the case, which I believe it is, I'll take my personal pronouns clues from Him. And not me. Because He is the Majesty. And I am not.

-Mike Rydman, Lead Pastor, Radiant Church Juneau