“I don’t think it’s biblically justified to have a gender identity that’s different than what your biological sex is,” he continued. “But I don’t want to go about that in an angry, hostile way. You know, I want to be able to listen to people, understand. I always want to understand before I refute.”
Lecrae shared that his son is about to graduate high school and that the two went on a college tour. “He wants to go to school in Los Angeles, which is outside of the South,” said Lecrae, “which is a little more conservative.”
Lecrae and his son visited multiple colleges in Los Angeles. “And they kept asking a question at the beginning of every tour as people would introduce themselves,” Lecrae said. Lecrae’s son was asked: “Do you have a preferred pronoun? What’s your preferred pronoun?”
“And my son was like, ‘Why do they keep asking me this?’” said the hip-hop artist. “And I was like, ‘Welcome to Los Angeles,’ you know? But then I was faced with the thought of like, wait a minute, he’s got to navigate people who have a different preferred pronoun.”
Lecrae asked Sprinkle, “How do you approach that? If there’s someone that you’re like, their biological sex is one thing, but their preferred pronoun is another thing.”
Sprinkle laughed and said Lecrae was throwing him “right into the deep end.” Lecrae also laughed, saying, “You’re welcome!”
Some people, said Sprinkle, “are extremely passionate” and either believe we should always use preferred pronouns or believe we should never do so. But the issue is “more complicated” than that. He went on to explain his thoughts on the complexity of language and living in a pluralistic society.
In the Apostle Paul’s sermon on Mars Hill as recounted in Acts 17, Paul used “the language and ideas” of those to whom he was speaking, said Sprinkle.
He “quoted their philosophers,” said Lecrae. “I’m sure he didn’t agree with their philosophers.”
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“It’s funny,” said Sprinkle. “When he was referring to God using the Greek word ‘theos,’ that was a common word used to apply to the Greco-Roman gods, you know, Zeus.”
