My heart hurt when I saw Bruce Jenner’s distress in his interview with Diane Sawyer (April 24, 2015) and heard of his family’s grief. I grieved for the viewers who listened in the hope of having their confusing thoughts and desires explained.
Jenner believes his pain comes from the pressure he feels to live a lie. I believe it comes from believing a lie.
Jenner’s unsteady emotions stood in stark contrast to his set mind. Despite the fact he won the Olympian male decathlon, has a normal opposite-sex attraction to females, and has never been sexually attracted to men, he’s convinced God gave him a woman’s soul. Doesn’t the desire to marry and love a woman reveal a male soul? Jenner says no; sex and gender are two different things. That belief rules him.
At age ten Jenner donned a dress for the first time. The urge to cross dress grew over time. This conflict cost him marriages with women he loved. He’s hoping more drastic measures will finally bring him the peace that’s eluded him.
I wish I could tell Jenner, and anyone else badgered by alarming desires, that deceitful desires come because we are broken creatures in a fallen world. The enemy that slithered into Eden and polluted paradise wants to destroy us too. But we don’t have to follow this seduction.