Gender is one of the biggest topics at the intersection of faith, culture, and kids right now. Pastors, politicians, and pundits across the spiritual, political, and cultural spectrums are making declarations and signing documents regarding gender.
Most Christian parents I’ve talked to have wondered, “So how am I supposed to talk about biological sex and gender? How do I help my kids wade through the mire of culture, the media, and extremists on all sides and make sense of their sexedness?”
Parents, we must reject all extremes. Men and women are the same in many ways, there are differences between males and females, and our sex and gender matter. When raising girls and boys, the goal isn’t to embrace or reject the stereotypes or roles but to recognize that no matter our child’s temperament, likes, or mannerisms, we can raise her or him to embrace Jesus and His commands and reject the lies of culture and the Enemy.
Terminology
Let’s talk about some terms first so we’re all on the same page as we move through this post.
I’ll use sex or biological sex when referring to males and females. Because biology is what we’re able to see and observe, we use biology (chromosomes, hormones, genitalia, secondary sex characteristics, skeletal structure, musculature, brain chemistry, etc) to differentiate the sexes. When we are born, we are male, female, or, rarely, intersex. Humans are more than biology, of course, but when I use the word sex, I’m referring only to biology.
I’ll use gender when referring to one’s internal sense of maleness or femaleness. These are the psychological, social, and cultural aspects of being a man or woman, including how a person experiences themselves, how masculine or feminine they feel.
Gender incongruence, then, is an acute sense that one’s gender does not correspond with the experience typically associated with one’s biological sex.
Transgender (or trans) is a general term for someone who experiences gender incongruence.
God made them male and female
We’re first introduced to the concept of men and women through God’s perfect creations, Adam and Eve, whom He placed in a world full of life and potential.
Before the Fall, nothing about humans was broken by sin, not their biological sex nor their internal sense of maleness or femaleness. From creation, God’s intention was that males would feel like men and females would feel like women, that sex and gender would be one.
Then sin entered the world. With it came brokenness—in our bodies, in our minds, in the created order, in nature; nothing was left untouched by brokenness. As a result, some people experience an incongruence between their biological sex and their internal sense of gender.
Meanwhile, the culture our children are growing up in increasingly presents biological sex and gender as entirely separate categories.
Rather than creating a separate Christian vocabulary, we can choose to focus on equipping our kids by using the very words they’re already hearing, teaching them to think rightly, theologically, and compassionately about the language and ideas they are already encountering in the broader culture.
In light of these realities, I will not use sex and gender interchangeably in this post. Rather, I’ll use sex or biological sex to refer only to biology, and I’ll use gender to refer to a person’s internal sense of maleness or femaleness.
With that said, we must be careful to avoid falling into dualism. Human beings are an integrated whole; we are mind, body, and spirit, which are distinct but inseparable aspects our humanity, even if one feels a disconnect or discomfort between body and mind or between body and spirit. Elements of maleness and femaleness are expressed through all three, though we sometimes use and different words to describe each aspect because it may help kids better understand concepts like biological sex, gender, and gender incongruence and better love and minister to their trans peers.
Unless a known intersex condition is present, biology tells us what sex we are. Because biology is what we’re able to see and observe, we use biology to differentiate the sexes, and those differences are easy to point out. And while our biological sex does inform our gender, and while most of our kids’ internal sense of gender will match their biological sex, universal or inherent differences between men and women when speaking of gender aren’t able to be easily pinned down.
God’s intent
Genesis 1:27, Genesis 2, Genesis 5:2, Matthew 19:4, and Mark 10:6 all iterate that God created humanity as males and females.
But why did He choose to do that? What was His purpose? Are there two sexes simply for procreation? Are there two sexes because God intended for males and females to fill separate societal roles? Did God create two sexes because He just felt like it that day?
Your kids may have these same questions. Below are four reasons God created males and females.
To create new life
One of the central reasons God made the two sexes is to create new life. God created males and females with reproductive biology that works together; without sperm from a male and an egg from a female, new human life can’t be created. God was intentional and purposeful when He designed human procreation to work that way. Not only does human procreation image the Trinity when they worked together to create the word, procreation also images Jesus and the Church as they work together to create new spiritual life: adding people to the family of God and building up the kingdom.
To image God
God created each sex to image Him, though the exact ways each sex is to do that is mysterious. We’re not able to make a list of exactly which characteristics are shown in both sexes, in females only, and in males only. Regardless, males and females are both made in the image of God and are bearers of the image of God.
To be in relationship
We need the intimacy and family that healthy relationships with other humans provides, which means everyone needs healthy relationships with both sexes. We might quickly point to Christian marriage as the way God called males and females to find that kind of connection, but we don’t become relationally complete through a sexual union with the opposite sex or through marriage, nor is marriage commanded for everyone; rather, we will find the most completeness in our relational life when we enjoy deep, committed relationships with multiple people of both sexes within the wider body of Christ.
To build the kingdom
Genesis 2 is a beautiful picture of one of the reasons God created humanity as male and female. We are to be united in the common purpose of building God’s kingdom. Men and women are to image the unity found in the Trinity, building God’s kingdom through partnership and unity with other Believers of both sexes.
Male and female: alike and different
Males and females aren’t interchangeable; there are many ways we’re alike and there are many ways we are different.
Let’s start with some differences. Researchers have documented that males and females are innately different in many ways: chromosomes, brain structure and chemistry, hormone levels, physiology, and more. Perhaps the biggest innate difference between men and women is that it is women’s bodies that nurture a child’s life from conception to birth. The differences between men and women likely extend to our minds and spirits, but those differences are far less clear and aren’t ones we’re able to definitively pin down.
What about how men and women are the same? There’s a lot of overlap (or even no discernible difference) among males and females when it comes to things like personality, skills and abilities, intelligence, and more. Both men and women can be good at math, nurturing, assertive, loud, work best with their hands, artistic, emotional, generous, courageous, soft-spoken, initiators, athletic, etc.
Spiritually, women and men are alike in many ways. We all enter the Church and become members of God’s family in the same way: not on the basis of gender but through faith in Christ alone.
And we all have the same nature, the same humanity. Romans 8:29 reads, “God knew them before he made the world, and he chose them to be like his Son so that Jesus would be the firstborn of many brothers and sisters.” Women, just like men, are made in the image and nature of their big brother, Jesus. Thankfully, Jesus did not have a male nature. He had a human nature, the same one we have, and Jesus completely incorporated that human nature into Himself, temptations and all (Heb 2:17) so that males and females are offered salvation.
Rules and roles
Sometimes Christian parents set out rigid rules for gender expression or overprescribe gender roles. This may be a reaction to the rising number of kids coming out as transgender. It could be that parents strongly believe men and women have different natures and thus different roles that have little to no overlap. Or it could be that parents are simply continuing to hand down rules and roles their parents or church handed down to them.
But what does the Bible actually prescribe in terms of sex and gender? To what extent did God prescribe sex and gender?
We’ve already discussed how God makes humans male and female, giving us the gift of our biological sex. Leaning on many respected theologians and Church fathers and mothers, I define faithfulness to our maleness or femaleness as:
- Accepting our biological sex philosophically, which means we recognize in our mind, with our words, and with our actions that we are indeed biologically male or biologically female.
- Recognizing our potential for friendship and marriage as biologically sexed people and following God’s wisdom as we engage those capacities
Other than that, God didn’t provide further universal prescriptions for males and females. God didn’t communicate any further intentions about universal masculinity and femininity. He seems to have invited humans, with our authority and responsibility to care for and rule over creation, to create beautiful cultures and to express our differences within those patterns of masculine and feminine expression.
As such, additional man-made gender prescriptions don’t have moral weight and frequently change from generation to generation and culture to culture. Extra-biblical rules and roles obscure the truth about what it really means to follow Jesus as a boy or a girl. When parents or leaders over-prescribe gender roles or insist boys and girls follow rigid gender rules that aren’t actually inherent to men and women, kids get hurt. Characteristics so often used to judge whether a girl is feminine or a boy is masculine usually aren’t inherent to women or to men, which means many, maybe even most, of our kids will either fail to live up to those roles and spend their lives trying to achieve masculinity or femininity or become prideful and condescending when they do manage to fit into those boxes.
As Christian parents we would be wise to reject broken cultural definitions of gender while continuing to maintain that males and females are different biologically/physically in ways that lead to differences psychologically/spiritually, and we should humbly resist the urge to over-prescribe what universal, biblical masculinity and femininity are.
What do we teach our kids?
If not gendered rules and roles or tight boxes around masculinity and femininity, what are we supposed to teach our boys and girls about their sex and their gender?
We must look to Jesus. As He is both fully God (and therefore Creator of males/men and females/women) and fully human (and therefore like us in every way), He is the only one we can look to as we seek to define what men and women “should be like.”
When we look at Jesus, we see that Christian masculinity and femininity is an internal matter of the heart (2 Cor 5:12). It looks like weakness and foolishness to the world (1 Cor 1:18-30). It is lowly and humble (Mt 5:30, 11:20 and 29, Phil 2:5-8). It is being a mourner (Mt 5:3, Jn 11:35 Lk 19:41), being gentle (Mt 5:5, Mt 11:29, Is 40:11), thirsting for righteousness (Mt 5:6, 1 Cor 1:30), being merciful and pure in heart (Mt 5:7-8, Lk 6:36), being a peacemaker (Mt 5:9, Jn 14:27, Lk 22:50-51) and being persecuted (Mt 5:10-11, Jn 15:18, 2 Tim 3:12). It is willingly dying for the sake of others (Is 53:7, Jn 10:17-18 and 15:13, 1 Tim 2:2, Titus 2:4, Rm 5:8).
Christian men display Christian masculinity and Christian women display Christian femininity when they directly model their lives after the life of Jesus. Christian masculinity is being like Christ. Christian femininity is being like Christ.
And then, it’s intentional conversations from a young age:
Teach your boys and girls the gospel. Everything else is secondary to the gospel. It is the gospel that informs how we are to live.
Teach your boys and girls that Christian men and women are to follow the Bible’s teachings for all believers. Scripture describes holiness, godliness, and Christian living in universal terms. There aren’t separate lists of commands/virtues for males and females. Teach your boys and girls to
- display the fruits of the Spirit (Gal 5:22-23)
- recognize and respect the value of all image bearers (Rom 12:10, Gen 1:27)
- be family for others in the Body of Christ (Rom 12:10, 1 Cor 11:33)
- relinquish the idol of control, to serve, to pursue humility (Phil 2:3, Gal 5:13, Rom 12:3, 10, 16)
- sacrifice their own desires for God’s and be transformed (Rom 12:1-2)
- focus on unity with other believers (Gal 3:28, Eph 4:3, Col 3:14, Eph 2:14)
- commit to the flourishing of everyone (Rom 14:19, 1 Thess 5:11, 1 Cor 14:12)
- be known by their love for other believers (Jn 13:35)
Help your boys and girls recognize their giftings and callings. None of the gifts mentioned in Romans 12:3-8 or 1 Corinthians 12:4-11 are split up by biological sex. Help your kids find what they’re passionate about, what kingdom work God is calling them to, what relational vocation God wants to give them, where they best fit into ministry, and where they can use their gifts and talents for building the kingdom.
Affirm your boys and girls. Affirm that your boy is a boy regardless of his mannerisms, expression, personality, interests, voice pitch, clothing choices, or anything else, because the body God gave him is that of a boy. Affirm that your girl is a girl regardless of her mannerisms, expression, personality, interests, hair length, clothing choices, or anything else, because the body God gave her is that of a girl. Speak positively about being a girl or being a boy.
Boys and girls will have different experiences growing up; culture treats boys and girls differently. We’ll need to parent in response to those cultural influences and innate differences. For example, men are, on average, physically stronger than women. That’s an innate difference; culture didn’t decide to make the average boy physically stronger than the average girl. So we teach our boys that their physical strength isn’t for taking what they want by force and doesn’t mean that they are God-ordained to be in power over others, but is to be used to serve those around them. We teach our boys to love and appreciate their body, but to know that their looks, athleticism, strength, and gifting are not the measure of their worth. What they are interested in or how they dress or how protective they are doesn’t make them masculine. They are valuable because God created them, and they are masculine because God created them male. And we teach our girls that a boy’s strength doesn’t give him the right to be in power over her or make demands of her. We teach our girls to look to the characteristics God values in boys rather than the characteristics culture values in boys.
Because our American culture puts an extremely high value on a narrowly specific type of female physical beauty, we teach our girls that if their physical body happens to be what culture has deemed beautiful, they must not use their looks to manipulate others or feel that they are somehow better than other girls. We teach our girls to love and appreciate their body, but to know that their beauty, strength, and gifting are not the measure of their worth. What they are interested in or how they dress or how nurturing they are doesn’t make them feminine. They are valuable because God created them, and they are feminine because God created them female. And we teach our boys that physical beauty isn’t what determines a girl’s value and worth. We teach our boys to look into more than culture’s approval of a girl’s physical appearance when choosing friends or dates.
Affirm your child’s biological sex. Whatever our sons do, they are doing as boys. Whatever our daughters do, they are doing as girls.
Reject broken cultural definitions of biological sex and gender. Perhaps your daughter is made fun of at school for wearing “boy clothes” or playing in a rough way or your son is scolded by a family member for painting his fingernails or preferring to quietly play with a doll.
Remind your kids that our maleness/our femaleness doesn’t lie in our hair, fingernails, clothes, mannerisms, likes, jobs, personality, etc. Again, as Christian parents we would be wise to reject broken cultural definitions of gender while continuing to maintain that males and females are different biologically/physically in ways that lead to differences psychologically/spiritually, and we should humbly resist the urge to over-prescribe what universal, Biblical masculinity and femininity are.
Give a reason for sex difference. Talk to your sons and daughters about God’s purpose in creating humans as male and female. God made humans as males and females because He intended for Christian marriage to be a picture of His love for His people.
Note that boys and girls are the same, yet different. Explain how we’re more alike than different and beyond the physical differences, the specific, universal differences between men and women are much harder to pin down.
What’s the topline takeaway about biological sex and gender? Men and women are the same in many ways and there are differences between males and females and our sex and gender matter.
When raising girls and boys, the goal isn’t to embrace or reject the stereotypes or roles but to recognize that no matter our child’s temperament, likes, or mannerisms, we can raise her or him to embrace Jesus and His commands and reject the lies of culture and the Enemy.
Gender incongruence
What does the Bible say?
When God first imagined each of us, He created us to be perfect in every way, including our maleness or femaleness. But even as we were knit in the womb, we developed imperfectly and were corrupted physically at a genetic level, and then we were born into a world of sin. Nothing about who we are today is unmarred by the Fall, including our maleness or femaleness. We should not be surprised, then, when we find our sex broken at a genetic level or our gender broken by contributions from both nature and nurture. As in the case of the thorn in Paul’s side, being faithful a Christian doesn’t mean that God resolves all our brokenness in this lifetime.
The Fall touches every aspect of our sex and gender, and much of what the Fall bent and broke has little to do with gender incongruence. “Some or even most cisgender experiences also depart from the created order for our behavior and self-understanding as men and women.” But gender incongruence and the distress that incongruence causes are not what God intended at creation, either.
The Bible promises to contain everything necessary and sufficient for salvation, but God did not intend for the Bible to provide Christians with the answers to every question they might have about the Christian’s life. In fact, there is almost nothing the Bible says directly about gender incongruence, but there are several passages that address biological sex and gender expression that can serve as building blocks for a faithful response to gender incongruence. It should be noted that passages on gender expression are typically addressing specific cultural norms and practices within the biblical context and should be adapted (with wisdom and discernment) to our current cultural context.
There are 13 Bible passages frequently cited in the conversation about gender ethics. After surveying each passage and weighing each passage’s relevance to a Christians’ search for God’s wisdom around gender incongruence, Equip has arrived at the following summary:
- At creation, God intended for each of us to be male-bodied men or female-bodied women
- The Bible forbids genital mutilation, crossdressing as part of cult practices, the elimination of gender difference, and the intention to deceive another about one’s biological sex
- The Bible affirms the sex and gender binary
- The Bible makes clear that genital mutilation does not prevent people from being able to image God and be part of His family
- The Bible is filled with examples of men and women who break what we would consider to be contemporary Christian gender norms/stereotypes
Alternate perspectives
Worldviews on gender among secular folks are diverse but can be distilled down into two basic responses:
- The sex/gender binary is real, but one’s internal sense of gender is more important than one’s biology, therefore it makes sense to change one’s body to fit one’s gender (or at the very least, one should have the freedom to do so).
Some parts of secular culture lean into the male/female, man/woman binary but believe that one’s internal sense of gender should dictate how they identify. Therefore, they say, some biological males (sex) are female (gender), and vice versa (ie, “I was born in the wrong body.”). If a person’s gender does not align with their biological sex, that person should be free to take steps to change their clothes, mannerisms, name, pronouns, and/or body (through surgery, hormones, or puberty blockers) so that it aligns with their internal sense of gender. Internal sense of self always trumps physical reality: “I am a woman who has a penis” rather than “I am a man who feels like a woman on the inside.” This view relies on a fixed, essentialist identity and a binary view of gender, which actually goes against much of queer theory. (In fact, many trans activists view gender affirming surgery with ambivalence if not outright scorn.) Queer theory often leaves out those transgender folks who don’t identify outside of or beyond the binary. - Gender is only a social construct and needs to be deconstructed at least, perhaps even erased. “Man” and “woman” are arbitrary labels that ignore the wide range of genders along a spectrum.
Other parts of secular culture believe that gender doesn’t really exist: Because gender is socially constructed, there are many who won’t fit into the binary, and instead of shaming kids who don’t fit gender stereotypes or insisting they conform, incongruence is resolved by adopting a label–genderqueer, genderfluid, bigender, gender neutral, or nonbinary (enby, NB)–and living without the constraints of gender.
Some revisionist Christians embrace one or both of these secular philosophies toward gender incongruence. Some simply claim that the Bible isn’t binding or authoritative for modern Christians, so Christians can choose to follow whatever gender ethic they feel is most fair and true. Other revisionist Christians argue that the mention and embrace of eunuchs in the New Testament signals that genital alteration has been made holy by Jesus. Some claim that there will be no gender or biological sex in heaven, therefore whatever a person feels is most authentic should be accommodated.
Nuanced responses
It’s likely that your kids will be exposed to these ideas by their friends, tv shows, media, their school, and perhaps even other Christians.
One way to respond is by becoming a “culture warrior” whose greatest concern is to win the war against perspectives on gender that you view as threatening to Christianity. A culture warrior response is rooted in fear of the way society is changing, fear of how these changes might affect your children, and/or fear of the way you view the world being upset. Culture warriors must find an enemy. Unfortunately, the enemy often turns out to be “those people,” the folks who are navigating gender incongruence and questions of identity.
Another way to respond is to succumb to culture. These parents’ Christian worldview has little or no bearing on relationships, attractions, or gender. They take in every new idea without critical evaluation or question and incorporate it into the way they see the world. This approach may be taken out of fear of engaging the complex topic of gender and sex, or may be taken out of fear of seeming irrelevant of bigoted, but this approach doesn’t help kids learn how to think through the best ways of loving people according to God’s wisdom.
But these two responses aren’t the only options parents have. Instead, parents can be convinced that God’s wisdom is better than the “wisdom” offered by secular culture and choose to forefront compassion in their response to people and courtesy in their response to ideas about gender and sex that run counter to God’s wisdom. Parents can acknowledge that people who experience gender incongruence have to navigate a challenging path in life, a path they did not choose, and parents can choose to have compassion for those who are walking that road while also holding onto the truth of God’s creational intent and the possibility of sin in response to gender incongruence. And parents can hold those convictions in a way that isn’t offensive or hostile.
So what do parents do?
- Avoid initiating conflict over other’s beliefs about gender ethics or disparaging others whose beliefs are different.
- Respond thoughtfully to what the news is saying or what’s said by friends at school. Engage ideas about gender and ask questions that guide your kid to deeper insight and nuance. We don’t guide our kids to listen to their internal feelings over the truth of their bodies (we are body, mind, and soul; none takes precedence over the other two), and we don’t erase sex distinctions. We recognize that our gender identity is shaped by both nature and nurture, that our kids don’t choose the ways they understand themselves internally, that gender expression isn’t restrained to broken cultural definitions, and that overprescribing gendered rules and roles can be dangerous. And most of all, we teach our kids to look to Jesus as they wrestle with what it means to be a boy or girl, male or female in a culture that follows the wisdom of self over the good and weighty wisdom of God.
- Acknowledge that support is not the same thing as agreement. Agreement is, “You should do this. You are making the right decision.” Support can look like helping out with childcare during appointments, making a meal or snack, offering a “walk and talk” with parents of a gender incongruent child, and praying for the child, the parents, and their journey. Do more than just agreeing to disagree about ethics and theology. Show that you care, and show compassion both toward your friend and toward the difficult choices they are faced as they navigate a difficult path.
- Maintain and sustain your relationships with non-Christians in ways that will make them more likely to consider Jesus and His claims.
- Show empathy for those who struggle to trust God as a good and loving Father (either because of the incongruence they feel or because God has set parameters around the stewardship of our gender and our body). None of us is immune from attempting to subvert God’s intent to bring about what we think is God’s best for us.
- Highlight all of God’s truth. Yes, God has creational intent for our sex and gender. Yes, people who experience gender incongruence can sin in the ways they try to manage that incongruence. But there’s also the truth that God loves us, right where we are. God is good and loving and wants to be in relationships with each of us. Those truths are just as important.
We don’t guide our kids to listen to their internal feelings over the truth of their bodies (we are body, mind, and soul; none takes precedence over the other two), and we don’t erase sex distinctions. We recognize that our gender identity is shaped by both nature and nurture, that our kids don’t choose the ways they understand themselves internally, that gender expression isn’t restrained to broken cultural definitions, and that overprescribing gendered rules and roles can be dangerous. Most of all, we teach our kids to look to Jesus as they wrestle with what it means to be a boy or girl, male or female in a culture that follows the wisdom of self over the good and weighty wisdom of God.
Common Questions
How does gender incongruence develop? Like many things in life, gender incongruence is a combination of mental and developmental factors (nature) as well as cultural and familial influences (nurture). For most people, it is a combination of multiple factors that are typically experienced from an early age. No study points to one particular reason or source for why gender incongruence happens.
Will the incongruence go away? No one chooses to experience robust, enduring gender incongruence. Some may experience relief from the incongruence over time, but there’s no proven combination of counseling, spiritual practices, and pastoral care to eliminate gender incongruence.
Interestingly, about 80% of those who experience gender incongruence as a child see resolution as the individual grows and matures. It just fades away. Not because the child or parents did any particular thing. The children go through puberty, and everything feels congruent again. There’s no proven combination of counseling or pastoral care strategies or spiritual exercises that increases the likelihood of a child’s gender incongruence resolving.
In about 20% of cases, gender incongruence persists beyond puberty. If an individual sees gender incongruence persisting beyond adolescence and into adulthood, it is likely going to be a lifelong experience. To be clear, desisting incongruence does not mean that the child’s gender incongruence wasn’t real or that the child was merely confused. It is also important to note that there is also no way to know for sure if gender incongruence will resolve; the experience should not be dismissed regardless of the age of the person experiencing incongruence or how likely you think the incongruence is to resolve.
Is experiencing gender incongruence a sin? At creation, God did not intend for anyone to experience gender incongruence. Gender incongruence is a brokenness and one of many manifestations of the brokenness of all of creation as a result of the Fall. Merely experiencing gender incongruence is not a sin, though gender incongruence may tempt a person to soothe their discomfort in sinful ways or attempt to sinfully remake God’s gift of their biological sex, but a person does not sin until they say “yes” to temptation in thought, word, or deed. Still, we should be quick to remember that even when we sin intentionally or unintentionally, grace abounds more through Jesus Christ (Rm 5:20-21).
If someone experiences gender incongruence, does their internal sense of gender or their biological sex determine who they are? As we’ve already stated, when God first imagined each of us born unblemished into a perfect world, He imagined each of us as either masculine men or feminine women. But we live in a broken world, and some individuals experience a distressing incongruence between their biological sex and felt gender. Which reflects God’s intentions? Which is broken?
If an individual is not intersex and their chromosomes, gonads, sexual anatomy, and secondary sex characteristics all indicate the same biological sex, then we know God’s intentions for the individual’s biological sex. Plus, when we know God’s intentions for an individual’s biological sex, we also know His intentions for their gender. So when a person is not intersex but they experience gender incongruence, we know that their biological sex is as God intended but their gender is broken.
Can a Christian call themselves transgender? Identifying as transgender, similar to identifying as gay, bi, lesbian, etc. can mean as little as “I experience gender incongruence” or as much as “I am fundamentally a trans person and must follow a trans cultural script to be true to myself” (and everything in between). For those using the word trans merely to communicate that they experience gender incongruence, that descriptive word helps others know and understand that gender incongruence is a part of their lived experience but does not encompass the whole of who they are or determine what they do with their incongruence. Using the word trans isn’t off limits for Christians but may not be the best word for every Christian who experiences gender incongruence to use.
What steps can faithful Christians take to reduce their gender distress? If a person who experiences gender incongruence is not intersex, if we know God’s intentions for the individual’s sex and gender, and if we know that the person’s gender is broken whereas their sex is as God intended, taking steps to alter one’s body and reject God’s gift of their sex is sin. When a trans Christian undergoes hormonal or surgical transition, they are responding to broken gender by breaking their biological sex instead of recognizing God’s gift of their biological sex and faithfully managing their broken gender.
In an ideal world, a trans Christian would consider the moral implications of transition from a place of positive mental health, a robust relationship with Jesus, compassionate church discipleship, and robust support from friends and family. Unfortunately, this has rarely been the case. Many have taken steps to transition in times of mental unhealth, before knowing Jesus, after leaving the Christian faith, without compassionate support, and/or amid harassment from people who call themselves Christians. When offering discipleship to trans people, conversations about the morality of social or medical transition will rarely be a first or early conversation in pastoral care that imitates Christ’s love.
Additionally, medical transition does not remove a trans person’s ability to image God and represent Him to the world. Every human makes sinful decisions that affect their lives in significant ways, yet we also know that God can redeem our brokenness and our sinful choices for His glory and our good.
Finally, any conversation about the morality of transition and the steps trans people take to address their distress isn’t complete without a confession of the sins of Christians over the past century. Christians have overprescribed gender roles and rules, creating gender incongruence in some instances and amplifying gender incongruence in other instances. Even if we know that a trans person’s body is as God intended and it is gender that is broken, enduring broken gender is just as devastating and deserving of compassion as enduring a broken body. If Christian parents are going to invite our trans Christian kids to honor God’s gift of their biological sex by refraining from hormonal and surgical transition and instead enduring the pain of their broken gender (even when that wisdom is true and will be better for those trans Christians in the long-term), we are still calling our trans Christian kids to something profoundly difficult, made more difficult by decades of gender overprescription by Christian leaders.
In the range of steps considered social transition, the morality of many of those actions depends on the motivation behind the action. Few of them are inherently sinful. A trans person could take many of the steps of social transition in order to reject God’s gift of their biological sex, yes, or those steps could be taken in order to reduce the distress of their gender incongruence while affirming internally and externally that they are ontologically the biological sex that God intended them to be.
What about trans suicide rates? Tragically, about 41% of trans people attempt suicide (compared to less than 2% of the general population). Research also shows that trans people are generally at greater risk for mental illness than the general population. And within the LGBT+ community, trans people are at higher risk for self-harm and external victimization than any other subgroup. It makes sense that trans folks and their loved ones would be alarmed by these statistics and seek out any available avenues to mitigate the risk of self-harm and suicide.
Unfortunately, the extremes in the conversation often have the loudest voices. One side screams, “Just be normal!” Those on this extreme deny the daily, painful reality of navigating unchosen gender incongruence.
The other extreme yells, “Transition saves lives!” suggesting that parents who are hesitant to bless hormonal and surgical transition are dooming their children to self-harm or death and suggesting to trans people that transition is an effective intervention to address mental illness, including suicidality.
However, available research is inconclusive about the effectiveness of hormonal and surgical transition to reduce suicide risk. No one can claim that transition has been proven to effectively reduce suicidality. Plus, research has found meaningful health safety concerns (mental and physical) for both hormonal and surgical transition.
And while surgical transition generally produces high rates of satisfaction and a reduction in gender dysphoria, rates of depression and suicide often remain elevated, with some trans individuals actually experiencing an increase in suicidality after surgical transition.
Again, neither hormonal nor surgical transition has been proven to reduce suicide risk.1
Should I use a trans person’s new pronouns and name? For those who experience gender incongruence, their given name and biological pronouns can be a constant reminder of the pain and tension that is felt every day. Some experience meaningful relief from that tension when they adopt different pronouns or a new name.
Christians have a wide variety of opinions and beliefs when it comes to using the new name/pronouns of a trans person, and your convictions will likely vary person to person depending on the depth of relationship, age of the trans person, whether or not they are a Christian, and more. There is no blanket answer.
In early conversation, Equip suggests practicing language mirroring as hospitality. Listen to the identifiers, names, and pronouns that the individual uses and use those same words as an act of hospitality. You might ask the individual what they mean when they use those words. Choosing to mirror those words with those meanings in early conversation is not affirmation that the individual is using the best words and meanings and is not affirmation that you agree theologically with these steps of transition, but is instead building what Laurie Krieg calls “relational equity,” which can open the door for future conversation.
What if my child experiences gender incongruence?
Most Christian parents never expect to hear their child say, “I think I’m supposed to be the opposite sex.” And when it happens, they’re often met with silence from the Church or pressure from culture. Some churches avoid the topic entirely. Some Christian leaders don’t see it as a top priority, especially since statistically fewer than 2% of children experience persistent gender dysphoria. But the number isn’t zero. And when it’s your child, it feels like everything.
Help your child resolve their distress as much as they can and manage the incongruence that remains. How can you do that?
- Help your child address mental health challenges A majority of kids who experience gender incongruence also experience co-occurring mental health challenges such as depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation, and, to a lesser degree, but still in higher numbers than the cisgender population, substance use disorders, bipolar disorder, eating disorders, PTSD, and self-harm. Ensure your child’s mental health is cared for. Mental health must be addressed before any decisions can be made about names, pronouns, hormones, etc.
- Address shame from gender stereotypes. Identify and heal painful memories of being shamed for preferences/expressions contrary to cultural gender stereotypes.
- Give permission to reject gender stereotypes. American culture has arbitrarily attributed preferences and affinities and even consumer products and colors to gender that have nothing inherently to do with gender. Help your child reduce pain related to their gender by giving them permission to reject cultural gender stereotypes.
- Employ mitigation strategies that do not include medical transition. Ultimately, a teen navigating gender incongruence is likely dealing with co-occurring medical and/or mental health concerns. Instead of considering medical intervention, especially in the beginning, get help for mental health concerns, offer kids places where they can make sense of their distress and find belonging, and avoid social media use for as long as possible.
If significant distress remains after mental health concerns have been addressed and after community has been established and after the child has been away from social media and excessive internet usage, parents and the child can begin talking about what steps of social transition may mitigate the distress of gender incongruence. There’s no blanket recommendation I can offer; some kids will feel a need to use alternate pronouns while others won’t be bothered by pronouns that match their biological sex. Some girls may find relief by wearing a more culturally masculine hairstyle and throwing away their makeup while some won’t. Some boys may be comforted when they use a nickname instead of their legal name, others will have no problem continuing to use their legal name. Prayer and discernment within Christian community, for you and your child, are key.
Even after taking all the steps you possibly can without crossing into a rejection of biological sex, your child may continue to experience some persisting and painful gender incongruence. They (and you) know that hormonal and surgical transition have not been shown to effectively reduce suicidality, but they may still yearn for further relief and will certainly be burdened by cultural messages that further transition will eliminate their distress. Respond to that pain by inviting your child to accept some level of enduring brokenness.
- Help your child accept enduring brokenness/suffering. Unfortunately, all believers, in one way or another, will continue to experience some physical or emotional or mental or spiritual brokenness for the rest of their lives. Part of being a Christian on this side of Christ’s return is learning to live with some level of brokenness. That’s why we yearn so much for Jesus to return and make everything right, including giving us redeemed resurrection minds, bodies, and souls!
- Encourage your child, especially a child who has entered puberty, to share their story with trusted Christian mentors, pastors, and friends. Trans Christians need to share about their experiences to be fully known and fully loved. They need to share their stories, and they need to see their siblings in Christ respond with compassion and curiosity. If your child is older, encourage your child to gather with other trans* Christians. Among those with shared experiences, Christians navigating gender incongruence will find unique support and understanding. Each of these opportunities for Christian fellowship can contribute to greater spiritual growth, discovering shared meaning in suffering, and enjoying healthy intimacy in a community of believers.
To access the full webinar recording, visit Equip’s Premium Resource library at equipyourcommunity.org/premium.
This post contains an abridged version of the webinar content.
