The most common worldview in our culture seems to be what
Dr. Albert Mohler calls the worldview of
personal autonomy. This
worldview holds that the individual has the capacity to decide for oneself and pursue a
course of action in one's life, often regardless of any particular moral
content. We see this thinking in
much of what our culture has come to value, from the “right to choose”
(abortion) to the supposed inherent virtue of challenging authority. The worldview of personal autonomy says
that there is no higher authority than self.
One test we can use to evaluate the validity of a worldview
is by its internal consistency, or coherence. Does it contradict itself? By this test, we would have to conclude that the worldview
of personal autonomy is not valid.
Consider one major issue upon which our country is currently
fixated: transgenderism. The push
for the acceptance of gender transition through hormone therapy and surgical
procedure is founded upon the ideal of personal autonomy. The individual has the right to
determine his or her identity, and society must relate to that individual
according to the individual’s choice.
If a biologically male individual identifies himself as a female, he has
the right to change his biological features to match his “identity” and to live
as a female. Further, society is
bound to recognize that choice.
This has led to a cacophony of news items related to the how
society is struggling to workout exactly how to accommodate the transgender
community. The issue of public
restrooms alone is baffling. If people can truly determine their own gender, then they should also be able
to choose which restrooms to use in public, some argue. There have been obvious objections by
others uncomfortable sharing a public restroom with someone of the opposite
biological gender regardless of how that person “identifies.” One middle ground solution has been to
create certain gender-neutral public restrooms for the use of transgender
persons. However, this solution is
viewed by some as discriminatory because it singles out transgender persons and
fails to fully regard them as the gender with which they identify.
This one issue of public restrooms points to a huge problem
with the ideal of personal autonomy: one person cannot exercise true personal
autonomy without infringing upon the personal autonomy of others. If we propose to accommodate
transgender persons by allowing them to use whatever public restroom them
prefer, is it possible to also accommodate those who by their personal autonomy
choose to not share public restrooms
with those of the opposite biological sex? No, it is not.
The only way for one person to live with complete personal autonomy is
to deny complete autonomy to everyone else. Anyone who has ever lived under the same roof with even one
other person knows this to be the case.
Some might say, “well, we should modify the idea of personal
autonomy by saying a person has the right to choose their own course of life as long as it does not infringe upon
another’s right to choose.”
What a nice thought.
However, human history bears constant evidence that man is not capable
of preferring others. Every war in
history, every divorce, every murder, every rape, every act of injustice has
been the result of man choosing his own way to the detriment of others. And the transgender issue demonstrates
this, too. The LGBT community is
not seeking merely to have the right to choose for themselves. They want all others to prefer them,
accommodate them, and celebrate them.
They have no interest in not infringing “upon another’s right to
choose.”
Introducing the caveat – “as long as it does not infringe
upon another’s right to choose” – guts the concept of personal autonomy to the
point of rendering it virtually nonexistent. Here’s why – exercising personal autonomy almost always affects others. If I choose to sit in a particular seat
in the movie theater, I decide for everyone else that they will not sit in that seat. That is, they are not able to exercise
true personal autonomy; they must choose
some other seat. The times in life
when making a choice does not in some way affect others are so few and far
between that the exception becomes the rule and the application of personal
autonomy can only infrequently take place.
You see, you can believe in the ideal of personal autonomy
but you cannot live that way because it is self-contradictory. It is a logical impossibility for all people to have personal autonomy. Only the Christian worldview is
internally consistent. We’ll think
more about that next time.
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