Rolling Stone’s new cultural commentary looks at Second Nature: Gender & Sexuality in the Animal World, a documentary narrated by Elliot Page that explores animal sexuality, same-sex behavior, sex changes, matriarchal societies, and other patterns in the animal kingdom. The article argues that these realities challenge older assumptions about animals, sex, gender, and what is “natural.” The documentary’s own site says it highlights 1,500-plus animal species that engage in same-sex sexual behavior and parenting, change sex, form matriarchies, and more. (secondnaturedoc.com)
Fine. Christians do not need to be afraid of animal behavior. We should be curious about creation. God made a world full of strange, funny, beautiful, complicated creatures. Anyone who has watched a house cat for more than four minutes already knows creation contains mysteries.
But curiosity is not the same thing as moral surrender.
The cultural move underneath the article is the part Christians should notice. It is not merely saying, “Look, animals are more complicated than many people think.” That is a scientific observation. The deeper suggestion is, “Therefore, human identity, sexuality, and morality should be reimagined in light of animal behavior.”
Well, if your moral anthropology depends on penguins, clownfish, and bonobos, maybe we should slow the truck down.
The problem is the jump from what is to what ought to be. Animals do many things. Some are fascinating. Some are brutal. Some are tender. Some are horrifying. Nobody builds a moral life by walking through the zoo with a clipboard and asking, “What shall we imitate today?”
Creation reveals God’s glory. It does not replace God’s Word.
Genesis gives us the better starting point. “Then God said, ‘Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us’” (Genesis 1:26, NLT). Then Genesis says, “So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27, NLT). Human beings are not just clever mammals with better Wi-Fi. We are image-bearers.
That means humans have a calling animals do not have. We are accountable to God. We are given moral responsibility, dominion, stewardship, family, work, worship, obedience, and judgment. A seahorse may be interesting. It is not an apostle.
Genesis also says creation was “very good” (Genesis 1:31, NLT). Christians should not treat the physical world as dirty or meaningless. Biology matters. Bodies matter. Creation matters. But Genesis 3 also tells us the world is fallen. Creation is good, but creation is also groaning, disordered by sin, death, confusion, and futility. Fallen creation is not a clean moral textbook.
That distinction matters because people are not abstractions. Many people today are confused, lonely, wounded, discipled by entertainment, and hungry for a story that tells them who they are. Christianity has one. The culture has documentaries with a marketing calendar.
Christians should not mock people made in God’s image. We should not treat those struggling with sex, identity, shame, or loneliness as punchlines. That would be cruel, and cruelty is not courage. But neither should we let Rolling Stone catechize the church into believing morality is downstream from mating habits in the animal kingdom.
Jesus himself grounds marriage in creation. In Matthew 19, when asked about divorce, he points back to Genesis: God made them male and female, and the man and woman become one flesh. That is not a random proof text. Jesus treats creation as morally meaningful for human life.
So here are the categories Christians need: nature is what exists in creation, normal is what occurs commonly, moral is what conforms to God’s design, and human is what bears God’s image. Those are not the same category. Confuse them, and you can make almost anything sound profound with enough wildlife footage and background music.
We can study animal behavior honestly. We can admit creation is complex. We can reject lazy claims that every animal pattern is simple. But complexity in animals does not erase God’s design for human beings.
Christians do not need to fear what researchers observe in creation. Truth is God’s world. But we should resist the bait-and-switch that says animal behavior defines human dignity, human identity, or human obedience.
People are not animals with better Wi-Fi.
We are image-bearers accountable to God.
Source: Rolling Stone
