When I was a stay-at home-mom with two preschool-age kids, my living room that often looked more like a wardrobe department than a family space. My daughter, older by two years, loved playing dress up. Anything with sparkles, bright colors, or a twirly skirt caught her eye. My two-year-old son just wanted to imitate his sister. So, when she put on a glittery tutu for an impromptu ballet performance in our living room, he wiggled into one as well. When she sat still for a rainbow manicure, each nail a different color, he waited patiently for his turn, hands splayed, grinning as I painted each little fingernail.
This was all very cute when my son was two and the world could chalk up his preferences to toddlers lost in the joy of make-believe. But as he’s aged, he still picks the sparkly sticker at the doctor’s office, enjoys lime green toenail polish, often chooses purple shirts, and prefers baking over sports. He’s still the same curious, sweet kid, but the world has started to respond differently.
Disapproving glances have replaced polite smiles at the playground when he arrives with painted toenails. A leader once muttered, “You’ll grow out of that,” when he brought a beloved stuffed animal to sleep-away camp. He was even mistaken for a girl a few times when he grew his hair to his shoulders.
My mama heart worries. My son is secure in his boy-ness. He’s never claimed to be a girl or expressed any desire to be female; he just likes what he likes. But I wonder how others might treat him if he chose to wear a sparkly shirt to school or show off his painted fingernails in Sunday School. Will his classmates make fun of him? Will one of his family members make thinly veiled comments about how “boys don’t do that”?
Kids & gender
Over the past decade, gender has become one of the biggest topics at the intersection of faith, culture, and kids. Pastors, politicians, and pundits across the spiritual, political, and cultural spectrums have made declarations and signed documents regarding gender. It’s easy to get lost in the myriad of talking points, laws, protests, and sermons that try to address sexed bodies, medical treatments, and gender expression. You may find yourself asking what I asked as I watched my two-year-old son happily twirl in that tutu: How do I talk to my kids about biblically faithful gender expression? How do I help my son and daughter wade through the mire of culture, the media, and extremists on all sides and make sense of their sexedness?
You’re reading this article, so you’re probably well aware of the tension Christian parents can feel when talking to their kids about gender.
Parents, we must reject all extremes. 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.
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 perfect world, full of life and potential. Before the Fall, nothing about humanity was broken by sin, not their biological sex or 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, and 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.
Because biology is what we’re able to see and observe, we use biology (chromosomes, hormones, genitalia, skeletal structure, musculature, brain chemistry, etc) to differentiate the sexes. Humans are more than biology, of course, but when I use the word “sex,” I’m referring only to biology.
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? Was is on purpose? Was it just for the purposes of procreation?
God’s intent
Your kids may have these same questions. You can teach your kids these four reasons God chose to create people male and female, as sexed beings:
To image God
God is a being-in-relation in the Trinity. There is diversity—each person of the Trinity is different—and complementarity—the Trinity is unified, and each person complements the others—in the Trinity. God created humanity in His image, and we are beings-in-relation to each other. We are diverse in many ways and yet complementary in many ways. One way humans exhibit that diversity and complementarity is through biological sex and gender, and one way humans interact as male and female beings-in-relation is through Christian marriage, though marriage isn’t the only way humans can connect and be in community with one another.
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, in males only. In fact, God may have intended for males and females to image God differently in only a few ways but mostly image Him in the same ways.
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 reproduction image the Trinity when they worked together to create the word, it also images Jesus and the Church as they work together to create new spiritual life by adding people to the family of God and building up the kingdom.
To be in relationship
God is a being who exists in relationship with Himself. He is neither solitary nor independent. God created humans such that we, too, are not meant to be solitary or independent. We need the intimacy and family that healthy relationships with other humans provides, which means everyone needs good relationships with both sexes.
We might quickly point to Christian marriage as the way God called males and females to find intimacy and family, but it’s interesting to note that God created Adam as a man and Eve as a woman before the existence of marriage or any biblical teaching about sexuality. 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 people of both genders (and with God, of course!).
Men and women who enjoy deep friendship with each other, but who aren’t married to each other, image the kind of relationship God created us for in different but just as beautiful ways as spouses in Christian marriages, and same-sex friends can enjoy just as much intimacy and family in friendship as a married couple enjoys in a marriage.
Why are we to be in relationship with both men and women? Because we, believers, Christians, are to point to what is coming: a New Earth where we will all be celibate, like our Savior, but enjoy perfect relationship with Christ and our siblings in the faith, other Christians.
To build the kingdom
Genesis 2 is a beautiful picture of one of the reasons God created humanity as male and female: united in the common purpose of building God’s kingdom. The Trinity partnered together to create the world and everything in it and then redeem humanity through the death and resurrection of the Son, Jesus Christ. Men and women are to image this unity, this building of the kingdom, through partnership and unity with other Believers of both sexes.
While marriage is an example of this kind of partnership, building up the kingdom requires all believers to partner with far more people than just their spouse and requires partnership with both men and women.
Male & female: Alike & different
Researchers have documented that males and females are innately different in many ways: chromosomes, brain structure and chemistry, hormone levels, physiology, and more. 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.
Interestingly, women and men are more alike than they are different. 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.
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 our big brother, Jesus. To say that men and women have natures that are ontologically different (that is, different in nature, different in being) means that, since Jesus was a man, women can’t be saved and the gospel loses its power for women. “Any part of human nature that hadn’t been assumed by Jesus in the incarnation, then that part of our nature, whatever it might be, could not be part of his record of perfect law-keeping and substitutionary death in our place. Jesus had to be like me in every way or I can’t be saved in any way.”1
Thankfully, Jesus did not have a male nature. He had a human nature, the same one we have, and “Jesus completely incorporated it into himself, temptations and all (Heb 2:17)” so that males and females are offered salvation. That said, Jesus wasn’t agender. Of course he was male and masculine. But a woman’s “femininity does not mean that [she] has a different human nature or a unique set of temptations that Jesus is unfamiliar with.”2 Jesus and women share the same humanity, and women and men share the same humanity.
Rules & roles
While men and women are beautifully alike in their humanity and equally saved through Christ, many Christian parents still feel pressure to define strict gender roles for their children. That desire often comes from a sincere longing to honor God’s design and to help their children flourish. But if men and women share the same nature, and if Jesus fully represents and redeems both, then what exactly are we trying to protect when we enforce rigid roles? Are those roles truly rooted in Scripture, or are they shaped more by culture, tradition, and fear of a changing world? Before we hand our kids a list of rules for what it means to be a “real” boy or a “real” girl, it’s worth asking where those ideas actually come from and whether they reflect God’s heart.
Some Christians feel that gendered roles are natural, God-programmed ways of living out maleness or femaleness and that secular society is trying to confuse kids by deprograming them. They believe that God has led Christian cultures to foster gendered roles that match what is inherent in us as males and females (e.g. men are initiators and women are nurturers). Thus, parents should encourage their kids to embrace and honor their masculinity or femininity by living into the traditional way of being a girl or boy and help awaken in their child what is already inherently present.
But what’s the likelihood that current codes of Christian masculinity and femininity we’ve been told are programmed into us by God were actually programmed into us by our parents or by tradition? What if those codes are actually suppressing some of the diverse ways God actually programmed our children to express their gender?
And who gets to decide what gender roles are? Who gets to decide which ways of being are inherent to men and which are inherent to women? Congress, culture, Christian culture, the pope, your parents, your local church, you? Some might answer that the Bible tells us what those roles are. But where in Scripture are the specific, universal designs for masculinity and femininity found? Let’s take a look at what the Bible prescribes in terms of sex and gender.
At the very least, sex and gender are important. I’ve already discussed how God makes us male and female, giving us the gift of our biological sex. But how can we recognize and appreciate this gift?
Part of being faithful to God is accepting in our minds and living out through our words and actions the gift of our biological sex. We can choose to reject God’s gift of our biological sex through our thoughts, words, or actions by believing God made a mistake, intentionally deceiving others about our sex, undergoing hormonal or surgical alterations to make our appear like the opposite sex, and more.
God made us for relationships, and biological sex matters here, too. As a biologically sexed person, we must recognize and accept that our potential for marriage and friendship is shaped by that reality. We are sons and daughters, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters. Our biological sex shapes how we are to live out those relationships. Engaging in sexual relationships outside of God’s parameters is another way we can reject God’s gift of biological sex.
Beyond this, God didn’t provide a detailed list of universal prescriptions for all males and all females or intentions about what masculinity and femininity must look like across all times and places. Instead, God gave us the freedom and responsibility, with our authority to care for and rule over Creation, to build cultures and express our masculinity and femininity in ways that honor Him. Man-made or culture-driven gender prescriptions don’t have moral weight; they frequently change from generation to generation and culture to culture. We can recognize the variety and differences within humans as created image bearers and celebrate the ways in which our differences can uniquely glorify God.
When made-made sex and gender prescriptions are elevated to the level of biblical truth, we run into difficulties.
For example, the problem is not that some, maybe most, women are nurturing. And the problem is not that many men are initiators. It’s not wrong to point out those patterns. The problem is that we end up teaching that all women must be nurturing to be feminine or that initiation is, by nature, a masculine-only trait. But these characteristics aren’t inherent to women or to men. When we insist they are, many, maybe most, of our kids will either fail to live up to those roles and spend their lives chasing after some ideal of masculinity or femininity or trying to perform masculinity or femininity, or they’ll become prideful and condescending when they manage to fit into those boxes.
As Christians, 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.
If not encouraging our kids toward gendered roles, what are we supposed to do?
We must look at Jesus. As He is both fully God (and therefore Creator of males/men and females/women) and fully human (and therefore like us), He is the only one we can look to as we seek to define masculinity and femininity.
We are men and women who are together directed to Christ, who called both men and women blessed who were poor in Spirit, mourners, gentle, thirsting for righteousness, merciful, pure in heart, peacemakers, and persecuted for his sake (Matt 5:1-10). Masculinity, then, “is an internal matter of the heart (2 Cor 5:12). It looks like weakness and foolishness to the world (1 Cor 1:18-31). It is lowly and humble in heart (Matt 11:20). Christic men willingly die for the sake of others (Isa 53:7, 1 Tim 2:2).” Femininity “is an internal matter of the heart (2 Cor 5:12). It looks like weakness and foolishness to the world (1 Cor 1:18-31). It is lowly and humble in heart (Matt 11:20). Christic women willingly die for the sake of others (Isa 53:7, 1 Tim 2:2).”3
We all grow up in different homes, interact with different people throughout our lives, have vastly different talents and abilities, and have hormones and genetics that express our gender in dramatically different ways. As the Holy Spirit sovereignly directs our kids’ paths (Ps 23:3, Prov 16:9), we may be surprised at what He calls them to if we make assumptions about callings based on gender alone (Jer 1:5). So, then, to say that there is a set way to be masculine or feminine is to condemn those who don’t fit that stereotype. When we use cultural stereotypes or roles as essential elements of femininity and masculinity, we are missing out on God’s creative design of human beings as unique, unrepeatable people.
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? How can parents lead their kids to embrace God’s wisdom about gender and biological sex?
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 to follow the teachings set out in the Bible 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)
As boys embrace their sex as God created them, submit their lives to Christ, lean into the gifts and callings God has placed in their lives, and seek to become more and more like Jesus, that is masculine. As girls embrace their sex as God created them, submit their lives to Christ, lean into the gifts and callings God has placed in their lives, and seek to become more and more like Jesus, that is feminine.
Help your boys and girls recognize their gifts and callings. None of the gifts mentioned in Romans 12:3-8 or 1 Corinthians 12:4-11 are divided by biological sex. Help them find what they’re passionate about, what relational vocation God may be calling them into, where they best fit into ministry, where they can use their gifts and talents for the kingdom. Teach them to lead and to accept leadership with grace and humility, and teach them that leadership is not guaranteed just because they’re one gender or the other. Teach them that their highest calling is following Jesus and fulfilling the Great Commission.
Affirm your boys and girls. Affirm that your boy is a boy regardless of his mannerisms, expression, personality, interests, voice pitch, valentine 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. Remind your children often that their bodies are good because God created them, that God was intentional about creating boys and girls.
Parent your boys and girls. Boys and girls are inherently different and will have different experiences growing up; culture treats boys and girls differently. And 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 boys physically stronger than girls. So we teach our boys that their physical strength isn’t for taking what they want by force, 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 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.
Another example: Because our American culture puts an extremely high value on a specific type of 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 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 a girl’s physical appearance when choosing friends or dates.
How Do We Lead Our Kids to Embrace God’s Wisdom?
Affirm your child’s sex. Whatever our sons do, they are doing as boys. Whatever our daughters do, they are doing as girls.
“You are a boy. God created you a boy, and boys are good! When you play baseball, you’re playing baseball like a boy. When you take piano lessons, you’re learning to play piano like a boy. When you cry because you’re sad, you cry like a boy. God created you as a boy on purpose and whatever you do, you’re doing that as a boy for the glory of God! You are masculine because God created you, body and soul in unity, as a boy.”
“How do I know you’re a girl? God created girls to have vaginas, breasts, and a womb/uterus. You have a vagina and a uterus. One day when you’re older you’ll have breasts. There are even tiny little pieces of humans called chromosomes that tell our bodies whether we’re a girl or a boy – girls have two X chromosomes and boys have an X and a Y. You have two Xs!”
“God intentionally made you a boy! You have XY chromosomes, a penis and testicles, and one day you will probably grow hair on your face and your testicles will produce sperm. Sometimes you might feel more like a girl than a boy, or you might want to do ‘girly things’ like have long hair or paint your fingernails or play with dolls, but none of those things are actually ‘girly things.’ Anyone can have long hair, anyone can paint their fingernails, anyone can play with dolls. You are a boy because God made you a boy.”
“Whatever you do as a girl, you are being a girl, you are acting like a girl. God created you, on purpose, as a girl, and whatever He calls you to do, you’ll do as a girl. If you ever feel uncomfortable in your body, please tell me and we’ll work through that together.”
Remind your kids that culture doesn’t define what it means to be a boy or girl.
Perhaps your daughter is made fun of at school for wearing baggy gym 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 pr wanting to buy pink valntines for his class. Remind your kids that our maleness/femaleness doesn’t lie in our hair, fingernails, clothes, mannerisms, likes, jobs, personality, etc.
“If you’re most comfortable outside of our cultural gender norms, you don’t need to change how you dress or what you do, and you don’t need to change your name or pronouns, you simply need to continue to do what God has called you to do and in that you are being a girl/boy. You can be who you are as God created you. Our bodies and our souls are gifts from God; we cannot remake our body or our soul into what we want it to be, rather we ask God to help us be content in the body and soul that He gave us, we lament the brokenness of the world, and we hold onto the truth that God is a good Father who gives His children good gifts, including the sex He created us as.”
Give a reason for sex difference. Talk to your sons and daughters about God’s purpose in creating humans as male and female.
Note that boys and girls are the same, yet different. Men and women are different, and those differences are important, but we do not have different natures and one gender is not God-ordained to be in power over the other. We are more alike than different.
Help your kids have compassion for those who experience gender incongruence.
“In God’s family, we recognize that we are the gender that our biology and body points to, that God didn’t make a mistake, and that sometimes the brokenness of the world means some people experience a mismatch between their body and their mind. God isn’t surprised when we experience brokenness, and He gave us His Spirit, His word, and the Church to comfort us and support us. If you ever feel like your body and your mind/soul don’t match, please tell me and I will support you and help you. You won’t need to reject God’s design for you.”
“We know that how we feel on the inside doesn’t change our body, but because of the brokenness of the world, some people feel really strongly that they were born as the wrong sex. They feel like a boy on the inside, but they have a vagina and uterus and breasts. Or they feel like a girl on the inside, but they have XY chromosomes. The people who feel that way aren’t bad or gross. They didn’t choose to feel like that.
You might hear the words “gender dysphoria” or “trans” to describe those experiences. And some people who experience gender dysphoria or who are trans may choose to cope with the brokenness by assuming that God put them together wrong. They may decide to reject their body’s biological gender and instead take steps to align their body to the gender they feel like they are in their soul/mind. That could include changing their name, wearing different clothes, changing their hairstyle, saying that they’re a boy instead of a girl, or even taking pills or having surgery to change their body. When someone asks us to use a different name for them or use “he” instead of “she,” we can choose to do that as an act of hospitality to them. Maybe this isn’t what God hoped for them, but they’re hurting, and this is the way they’ve asked us to comfort them.”
Parents, remember: we must reject all extremes. Men and women aren’t interchangeable, and yet they are more alike than different in many meaningful ways. God created us male and female, not as rigid boxes for us to squeeze into but as good, embodied realities through which we live, relate, and reflect His image.
Biological sex is a gift, and while culture may offer ever-changing definitions of gender, we don’t need to be swept up in the confusion. We’ve seen that the Bible offers a framework for understanding biological sex and gender that offers freedom of gender expression while holding fast to sex distinctions.
