Things You Thought You Knew
Part 6
“Transgenderism—If You Say It Is It True?”
Last time we began looking at the issue of transgenderism and asked the question, “If you say it, does that make it true?” This in reference to men saying that they’re women and vice verse.
We looked at the terms swirling around this debate and I want to do a quick recap of them.
First we have the terms SEX and GENDER.
SEX refers to your bodily, biological makeup, while GENDER refers more to the social aspects of being a man or a woman – how you view yourself and express your biology in society.
The terms male and female refer to your sex or biological makeup, while the terms man and woman refer to how someone expresses or presents their sexuality as human beings.
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So your sex is about whether you were born as a male or female.
Gender refers to how you view yourself and how you choose to present yourself to society as either male or female.
The next two terms are GENDER IDENTITY and GENDER DYSPHORIA. These are two newer terms, and so you’re probably less familiar with them.
Gender identity, as we’ve already seen, has to do with how a person perceives their own gender. In other words, do you see yourself as a man or a woman?
Everyone has a gender identity, and for most of us our gender identity matches up with our biological sex. If you are biologically male, you see yourself as a man. If you are biologically female, you view yourself as a woman.
Yet for some people their gender identity—that is, their feeling of whether they are a man or a woman for whatever reason, does not match up with their biological sex.
When that mismatch occurs, they experience some form of gender dysphoria, which is our next term.
Gender dysphoria is when a person experiences a great conflict between their perceived or expressed gender and the gender they were born with for at least 6 months’ or longer.
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That brings us to our final three terms: TRANSGENDER, TRANSSEXUAL and INTERSEX.
TRANSGENDER has to do with a person’s felt identity. A transgender person is someone who not only feels a sense of conflict between their biological sex and their gender but chooses to identify their gender with the opposite sex.
So, for example, a transgender man is a person who is biologically female but identifies as a man. A transgender woman is a person who is biologically male but identifies as a woman. So, transgender has to do with personal identity.
TRANSSEXUAL has to do with bodily transition. A person can be transgender and not make any physical changes to their body. They might simply choose to call themselves the opposite sex, or to dress as the opposite sex, or to change their name or preferred pronouns to someone of the opposite sex.
But when a person undergoes surgical or some other medically induced changes with their body so that they resemble someone of the opposite sex, that is transsexual.
But here’s the reality: You can never truly change your biology from how you were born. Surgery may change your appearance, but it does not change your biological makeup.
You are either born with xx chromosomes to be a female, or with xy chromosomes to be a male.
The rare exception is those who are born INTERSEX, which is our final term:
INTERSEX is a very rare condition where a person is born with physical characteristics of both sexes. In most cases the child is assigned a sex at birth and continues to live out that gender identity.
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Now, experiencing feelings of gender dysphoria is not sinful, any more than experiencing feelings of depression is sinful, or being tempted is sinful. These are just some of the consequences of the fall in this world. We are all born disordered in some way. We are all created in God’s image, but that image is distorted because of the effects of sin.
Or as Andrew Walker puts it: “We live in a Genesis 3 (fallen) world with a Genesis 1 (perfect world) blueprint on the trajectory to a Revelation 21 (paradise restored) future.”
The good news is that one day God will restore creation!
We read in Romans 8:22-25: “The whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.”
In light of these things, how should we respond to people in this condition? Let me give you three words—LISTEN, LEARN and LOVE.
LISTEN—listen to those who struggle with gender identity without condemning. James 1:19 says:
“Everyone should be quick to listen and slow to speak.”
At the same time be wise. Avoid the sharing of graphic descriptions of sin. It is not necessary to hear morbid details of sinful activity to minister to someone. A general understanding of where they are is sufficient.
LEARN—learn more about the issues involved. “He who answers before listening—that is his folly and his shame.” (Proverbs 18:13)
In other words, we listen in order to understand their struggle. We should learn more about the issues involved so we can speak to it intelligently and Biblically.
LOVE—accept the person without accepting the sin; speak the truth, but always in love.
Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”—Matt. 22:39
Transgender people are your neighbors, and as Christians we should love them because they are our neighbors. We shouldn’t mock or treat them disparagingly. Even when you don’t agree with someone, you can still treat them with love.
—But then we must also speak the truth. Ephesians 4:15 says we should “speak the truth in love.”
John 8: 31-32 “If you hold to my teaching (which includes Genesis 1–God created them male and female)—you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
If we love people, we will want them to be free, which means we must speak the truth to them, and we should encourage people to live according to the truth, according to the reality of who they are.
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And what about children who express issues with gender identity? Most cases with children who express gender confusion resolve themselves by the time the child reaches adolescence or beyond.
In no way in a sane world should a parent whisk a child off to a doctor to get puberty blockers or some other terrible treatment. This borders on criminal.
Puberty blockers stop the body from its normal transition into adulthood. It can have damaging and irreversible effects, not to mention going even further to subject them to deforming surgery.
We should remember that Jesus had harsh words for those who would cause damage to children:
“If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.” (Matt. 18:6)
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And finally, what about the whole pronoun issue? Should we as Christians address a man with female pronouns and a female with male pronouns?
And beyond this, some people claim to be completely different genders or combinations of genders. These people might ask to be addressed using pronouns such as they or them, or even “new” words like xi, xim, or xer.
I’ve thought a lot about this and here’s my thoughts based on what I find in Scripture. Christians should:
Be gentle and respectful, but truthful. Christians cannot justify approaching the subject in a careless or callous way. We should be gentle and respectful, but truthful.
Acting in gentleness or showing respect does not require a believer to lie, betray their conscience, or give a false sense of support. At the same time, we cannot compromise truth or conscience to accommodate someone else’s deception. Acts 5:29 “Peter and the other apostles replied: ‘We must obey God rather than man!’”
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Secondly:
Context Matters. As with many things, our approach to transgender issues is influenced by context. For instance, commenting on a person who is not there and we don’t know is very different from having a face-to-face conversation with a coworker or family member.
So while context doesn’t alter what’s right or wrong, it does influence our approach. This is part of being “wise as serpents and harmless as doves” (Matthew 10:16).
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Now we come to the whole issue of being pressured to use false pronouns to address transgender people. The pressure is from society in general all the way to where we might work.
The reason preferred pronouns present a dilemma for Christians is that they imply something the Bible teaches is false: that a person can change genders or be born into the wrong biological sex.
Hence, referring to a person who is biologically male as “she” or “her” is to say something untrue. Worse, using preferred pronouns is enabling or endorsing a harmful, unbiblical condition.
Men are not women, and vice versa. There are no third, fourth, fifth, etc., genders, nor any biblical or biologically truthful basis for a person to “choose” such a thing.
For the same reason that believers ought not pretend that other faiths offer salvation (John 14:6) or that other gods are real (1 John 4:1) or that something sinful is morally right (Isaiah 5:20), for a Christian with Biblical convictions it’s immoral to enable the use of preferred pronouns.
While Jesus was merciful and loving to both the adulterous woman (John 8:10) and the woman at the well (John 4:23–24), He gave no mixed signals about their sin (John 4:17–18; 8:11).
So our position in this controversy must be to:
Listen, Learn, and Love without compromising truth to accommodate a falsehood.