Things You Thought Were True
Part 6
“Transgenderism: You Are What You Say You Are”
This time we’re going to look at the topic of transgenderism and the belief that you are what you say you are. Is that true?
Let’s start by reading again out of Genesis 1:26-27, where gender is clearly identified:
“Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over [a]all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”
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The transgender issue is not new to the human race, although it is a fairly new issue in the church and in our culture.
There have always been people who struggle with gender identity, but it is only in recent years that the issue has come to the fore in a big way.
Since this is a struggle real people deal with and suffer over, and also essentially contradicts the Bible’s teaching on sex and gender, we as the church cannot ignore it.
I also think its a good thing for people in the church struggling with gender issues to be able to talk about it and have Biblical teaching brought to bear upon it.
It’s a fact that we’ll be meeting more and more people who identify as transgender in our communities, and we will have people who identify as transgender coming to our church.
So what is the truth on transgenderism?
How will we respond?
How would God have us respond?
We’re going to deal with this issue in three stages.
First, what transgenderism is. Then we will look at what the Bible says. And then finally we will look at how we should respond.
Understanding transgenderism
There are many terms involved with this topic, so we will just focus on the major ones.
Let’s start with gender and sex. Although we often use these terms interchangeably, technically 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.
So again, the terms male and female correspond to your sex or biological makeup, while the terms man and woman refer to how we express our sexuality as human beings.
That’s why we also use the terms male or female when talking about pets or other animals, but we do not call them men or women.
Being a man or a woman is the human expression of the bodily reality of being male or female.
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The next two terms are GENDER IDENTITY and GENDER DYSPHORIA. These are two newer terms, and so we are probably less familiar with them.
Gender identity 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.
Now there is a wide spectrum of how men and women behave including things they like and don’t like. We need to be careful not to get locked into cultural stereotypes here. Not every man has to like football. Not every woman has to like cooking. Those are stereotypes. Women can like football, and men can cook, and there is nothing wrong with either of those.
But for a number of 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 an actual diagnosis defined as a “marked incongruence between one’s experienced or expressed gender and assigned gender, of at least 6 months’ duration which causes significant distress.” (Vaughan Roberts, Transgender, Kindle location 114)
It can be common for a person, especially growing up, to sometimes wonder about their gender, but that does not mean that you have gender dysphoria.
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That brings us to our final three terms: TRANSGENDER, TRANSSEXUAL and INTERSEX.
TRANSGENDER has to do with 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 identity.
TRANSSEXUAL has to do with bodily transition. A person can be transgender—that is, they can identify as someone of the opposite sex—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 would be transsexual.
But let’s make a crucial point: 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.
Each of us is born either male or female, with the rare exception of those who are born intersex, and we can never change our genetics. You’re either born male with male xy chromosomes, or female with xx chromosomes. That is unalterable!
Then finally there is INTERSEX.
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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I’ve given these terms in the order of decreasing numbers in society. For most people their gender identity matches their biological sex. For a smaller number of people, they feel a sense of dissonance between their gender identity and their biological sex.
For many of these it is never a problem, but for some it is, and they experience actual gender dysphoria. But not all who experience gender dysphoria choose to identify as transgender. And not all who identify as transgender choose to bodily transition as transsexuals.
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So, having covered the basic terms, let’s talk briefly about the various issues and consequences involved.
As far as causes, at this point we simply don’t know what causes a person to experience issues with gender identity or gender dysphoria. Is it upbringing? Wrong messaging to a child? Insecurities? Evil influence? We simply don’t know. What we DO know is that the God who made everyone one of two sexes and genders is not the author of confusion, and would never create a person to be something they’re not.
As far as effects or consequences, people with gender dysphoria are at much greater risk for suicide, depression, and anxiety disorders. This is true even for those who choose to bodily transition.
Ryan T. Anderson reports, “These problems do not seem to be alleviated much by sex reassignment procedures…The poor outcomes can’t be blamed on a hostile or bigoted society, since they are reported even in the cultures most accepting of people who identify as transgender.” (Ryan T. Anderson, When Harry Became Sally, Kindle location 1,932)
And so, if people who are struggling with these issues have these negative outcomes in their lives, as Christians who care for people and who love our neighbors as we love ourselves, that should be important to us. We should care about people who are experiencing suffering.
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You are what you say you are?
It wasn’t too long ago that when you filled out your Facebook profile, Facebook would ask you for your gender. Facebook gave you two choices—male or female. Then they created a category called “other” where you could choose from over 70 different options including bi-gender, transgender, androgynous and trans-sexual.
To add to the confusion, the options kept changing and the numbers kept growing, so they eventually changed it to male, female or custom. Under “custom” you can write down anything you want. When you choose “custom” as your gender, you also designate your preferred pronoun. Think about that—a custom designed gender!
Interestingly, there’s a video on YouTube with millions of views where a white male interviewer who is 5 feet 9 inches in height goes around interviewing people on a college campus.
First, he asks them how they would respond if he told them he was a woman. Most of them reply, “Sure, whatever you want is great with me.” Then he asks them, “What if I told you I was Chinese?” Once again, they say, “Sure, if you feel like you’re Chinese, that’s great. You be Chinese.”
Then he asks them, “What if I told you I was 6 feet 5 inches tall?” At this point some of them say no. He asks them why not? They reply, “Because you’re not six foot five. You’re just not.”
He responds, “So I can be a Chinese woman. But I can’t be a 6′ 5″ Chinese woman?” And they respond, “Yes.”
Predictably, some of them were just fine with him being six foot five. They said, “If you want to be six foot five, you go ahead and be six foot five. It doesn’t bother me.” (YouTube; “Gender Identity: Can a 5’9, White Guy Be a 6’5, Chinese Woman?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfO1veFs6Ho&t=105s)
Again, it wasn’t too long ago that a person insisting they were something they aren’t (Napoleon, some kind of animal, a superhero, etc) would have been taken directly to an institution for mental help. Yet our culture increasingly values and even celebrates self-definition over reality.
So here’s the thing: “Who gets to decide who you are?” To answer that we now turn to the Bible.
What does the Bible say?
There are four things found in God’s word we need to see. First:
• God created us male and female.
Genesis 1:26-27 “Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”27 So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”
As we noted last time, the terms “male” and “female” are not ambiguous. In the Hebrew language the word for female is ish-shaw and the term for male is ish. They are distinctly sex and gender specific. And there are only two!
Furthermore, he created them to be together in marriage. Moses further writes, “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.”—Gen. 2:24
Our Lord Jesus thoroughly validated Moses’s words by quoting them in Matthew 19:4-6.
“Haven’t you read that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female?”—vs. 4
And God said that what he created was good! Author Andrew Walker states: “Maleness and femaleness, according to the Bible, aren’t artificial categories. The differences between men and women reflect the creative intention of being made in God’s image.” (Andrew Walker, God and the Transgender Debate, p. 53)
So the Bible is crystal clear that we are created either male or female, and we are called to fulfill our gender roles according to our bodily sex. In other words, who gets to say who you are? God gets to say who you are!It is part of his created order.
This, by the way, is why the Old Testament forbids cross dressing. We read in Deuteronomy: “A woman must not wear men’s clothing, nor a man wear women’s clothing, for the LORD your God detests anyone who does this.”—Deuteronomy 22:5
The Bible forbids cross dressing because gender is a calling God calls us to fulfill on the basis of our biological sex.
It’s interesting to note that the New Testament also addresses clear distinctions in dress and appearance between men and women in 1 Corinthians 11 and 1 Timothy 2.
1 Corinthians 11:14-15 “Does not common sense itself teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a dishonor to him, 15 but if a woman has long hair, it is her ornament and glory? For her long hair is given to her as a covering.”
The Apostle here is making a clear distinction between the genders and how they should present themselves in society according to their given sex.
And in 1 Timothy 2 we read, “And I want women to be modest in their appearance. They should wear decent and appropriate clothing and not draw attention to themselves by the way they fix their hair or by wearing gold or pearls or expensive clothes. 10 For women who claim to be devoted to God should make themselves attractive by the good things they do.”—vs. 9-10
He’s not condemning having nice clothes, he’s just saying the clothes don’t make the woman. Character does!
So we can’t just say these commands are only Old Testament. The Old Testament is the foundation for the New, and Jesus affirms the foundational principles from Genesis concerning gender.
Interestingly, Jesus also affirmed that some people are born intersex, that is with dual or ambiguous sex organs. In Matthew 19:11-12 Jesus talks about eunuchs and says:
“Some are eunuchs because they were born that way; others were made that way by men; and others have renounced marriage because of the kingdom of heaven.”
People were very familiar with eunuchs in Jesus’s day. The Romans called those who were born with sexual ambiguity “eunuchs by nature.” The Jews called them “eunuchs of the sun” since “they were discovered to be eunuchs at the moment the sun shone upon them.”Jesus called them eunuchs who were born that way. (The Gospel and Gender Identity, p. 23)
You might wonder how this could be since God created everything good. Well, that brings us to our second point!—God’s created order is distorted by the fall!
We read in Romans 8:20-21: “For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.”
When humanity fell into sin, it brought disorder into God’s perfect creation. Part of this disorder is physical, for example, when people are born intersex.
And part of this disorder is psychological, for example, when people feel that their gender does not match their sex.
FACT: If there had been no fall, there would be no intersexual conditions and there would be no gender dysphoria. There would be no disorder in creation, and there would be no mismatch in people’s minds between their sense of gender and their bodily sex.
Experiencing feelings of gender dysphoria is not sinful, any more than experiencing feelings of depression is sinful. These are just real effects 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.
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.”
This is the hope that the Bible holds out to all who believe. One day the effects of sin will be reversed. Just as there would be no gender confusion apart from the fall, so there will be no gender confusion in the restored creation.
The various ways we experience brokenness in the world now, both physical and psychological, will all be healed and restored when Jesus returns.
As Philippians 3 says: “We eagerly await a Savior…the Lord Jesus Christ who…will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body” (3:20-21).
Or as Andrew Walker puts it: “We live in a Genesis 3 world with a Genesis 1 blueprint on the trajectory to a Revelation 21 future.” (Andrew Walker, God and the Transgender Debate, p. 88) One day God will restore creation.
You might say, “Well, that’s fine for the future. But what about now?” The good news of the gospel is not only hope for the future, but that Jesus offers you abundant life now. Jesus said, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”—John 10:10
When you and I come to Christ, our sins are forgiven, and God gives us the strength to deal with the various aspects of brokenness in our life.
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In light of these things, how should we respond to people in this condition? As Christians, how do we care for those who experience issues with gender identity? Let me give you three words in closing: 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.” Listen to those who struggle with gender identity. 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 are well-informed when we speak.
LOVE—accept the person without accepting the sin; speak the truth, but always in love.
As Christians we are called to love, which means we accept the person as a creation of God, remembering that we, too, once lived a sinful life.
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 should refuse to 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.” Jesus said in John 8: “If you hold to my teaching [which includes Genesis 1 – God created them male and female, man and woman], if you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”—vs. 31-32
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.
For those who struggle with gender identity, this would mean living out their gender in accord with their bodily sexuality and not according to what they feel in their mind.
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Finally, 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. The physical treatment of children with puberty blockers, in my opinion, borders on criminal.
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 to speak about 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)
I hope this helps you understand the trans debate. And that perhaps what you thought was true (you are what you say you are) isn’t after all.