Transgenderism took middle stage in America when Bruce Jenner introduced his gender transition in 2015. He shortly amassed thousands and thousands of followers on social media, was featured on the covers of magazines, and was declared the “girl of the 12 months” on varied award exhibits.
For many years previous his announcement, the psychiatric neighborhood formally thought-about transsexualism a diagnosable psychological dysfunction. Then in 2013, gender id dysfunction was modified from a dysfunction to a dysphoria within the psychiatric business bible, the “Diagnostic and Statistical Guide of Psychological Problems.” As one journalist put it, this alteration “shifted the emphasis in remedy from fixing a dysfunction to resolving misery over the mismatch” between one’s beginning gender and id.
After Jenner’s transition, voices throughout society advocated for the widespread acceptance of transgenderism. It was now not a dysfunction requiring remedy. As an alternative, it was merely a call requiring affirmation, if not celebration. This sudden shift led to discussions and debates about pronouns, loos, surgical procedures, and hormone remedy.
The winds of public sentiment are vulnerable to shifting on transgenderism. When it comes to public coverage, it appears headed in a path extra according to Judeo-Christian values. Nonetheless, in a rustic just like the U.S. the place the whims of the voters can change all of the sudden, Christians ought to have little confidence within the endurance of the current second. As an alternative, they should root their beliefs in one thing extra strong than celebrities and policymakers.
What does the Bible educate in regards to the relationship between our organic intercourse and gender id? That is the query Christians want to contemplate, and it’s the query Robert Smith units out to reply in his new guide, “The Body God Gives: A Biblical Response to Transgender Theory” (Lexham Educational, 2025). On this quantity, Smith argues we are able to solely conclude from a examine of Scripture that “the sexed physique reveals and determines the gendered self” (15).
Smith, an ordained Anglican minister and lecturer in theology, ethics, and music ministry at Sydney Missionary and Bible Faculty in Australia, affords a scholarly clarification of the biblical claims about organic intercourse and gender id whereas interacting with trans-affirming interpretations. The writer has executed evangelicals an ideal service with the depth and scope of his analysis. It should function a defining quantity and customary textbook in Christian ethics for years to return.
Although the guide affords a radical and considerate examination of the problems, the conclusion is straightforward: God solely and at all times creates people as male or feminine. And the physique God provides us governs and guides our gender id.
Intercourse is organic. We’re both male or feminine based mostly on the sexual reproductive organs God provides us. Gender refers back to the social and psychological dimensions of how we function and perceive our place on this planet as both males or ladies. Our gender id impacts how we relate to others and the way they relate to us.
God’s design for humanity is that our organic intercourse determines our gender id. To disconnect or disregard our organic intercourse relating to our gender id is disobedient to God, dangerous to ourselves, and injurious to {our relationships} with others.
The Authoritative Self
Day by day, we don’t merely have experiences. We additionally interpret these experiences. For higher or worse, we attempt to match them right into a story that helps us make sense of God, the world, and our place in it. For Christians, we should interpret our experiences by means of the lens of Scripture. As Smith places it, “It’s important that Scripture be allowed to control and information, illumine and consider, verify and proper the interpretation and utility of all different sources of data” (49).
The change during the last decade relating to transgenderism is the outworking of a longstanding presupposition underlying trendy Western tradition: the self is authoritative. This precept means we’re the authoritative interpreter who will get to determine the which means and significance of our experiences and perceptions. If we determine that our gender id differs from our sexed physique, then we’ve got an unquestionable proper to treatment it by means of surgical procedures and hormone therapies.
On this mode of existence, our self-perception is extra determinative and ultimate than our organic intercourse. Or to place it in additional Christian phrases, the choice about my id belongs to me and never the God who made me. Particular person autonomy and self-determination are nothing new in American society. They’ve change into synonymous with the pursuit of happiness. However their roots return additional than the founding of America (125).
In more moderen instances, in line with Smith, the transgender motion has been influenced by Michel Foucault.
He, like no different earlier than him, prosecuted the case that what we consider as pure, is the truth is, cultural; what we consider as goal is, the truth is, subjective; what we consider as freedom is, the truth is, oppression…As a result of categorization is a type of management, one of the best ways for management to be resisted is for classes to be denaturalized and deconstructed (125-26).
The transgender motion displays a tradition whose core perception is that the self is supreme and any try and restrain or problem it’s oppressive. Transgenderism discovered legitimacy within the academy earlier than taking middle stage in popular culture. Smith devotes a piece to summarizing the historical past of gender research and analyzing its main texts earlier than turning his consideration to the claims of the Bible.
The Biblical Texts
Smith spends half the guide journeying by means of Scripture, stopping to supply an in-depth evaluation of key passages cited in transgender discussions. He begins the place the Bible does, with the creation of Adam and Eve.
When God created our first mother and father earlier than sin ever entered the world, Moses tells us, “female and male he created them” (Genesis 1:27). Consequently, “Intercourse binary is primary to the divine design” (207). The creation account compels us to conclude that each human has one thing they share with each other (the picture of God) whereas additionally one thing that differentiates them from each other (male or feminine).
As Smith observes, “Sexed embodiment, then, not solely permits us to signify God and train dominion in his world, nevertheless it determines our sexed id (as male or feminine), establishes our gendered relationships (as son or daughter, brother or sister, and many others.), and alerts our potential marital and reproductive roles (as husband or spouse, father or mom)” (209).
God made us materials creatures and assigned us sexual reproductive organs. The psychological parts of our gender id are ruled by our organic intercourse. As Smith states, “Psychology is designed to be told by biology, the perceiving thoughts by the target physique” (274).
If you must understand how God needs you to current your self to the world, you must have a look at the physique he gave you. Our our bodies are presents to be acquired, not issues to be solved. Once we disguise, change, or destroy the our bodies God has given us, we alternate “the reality of God for a lie” (Romans 1:25).
Adam and Eve’s sin started with doubt about God’s goodness earlier than it developed into outright disobedience. Equally, Smith argues the “transgender temptation” begins with “doubt in regards to the goodness or actuality of 1’s sexed physique” earlier than it ends in “disobedience within the type of cross-gender identification and cross-sex presentation” (292).
After they sinned, not solely did Adam and Eve disguise from God, they hid their sexual distinctiveness from one another. As Moses tells us, “Then the eyes of each have been opened, they usually knew that they have been bare. They usually sewed fig leaves collectively and made themselves loincloths” (Genesis 3:7). Sexual disgrace and dysfunction are launched into God’s world and proceed to manifest themselves in the present day in varied methods.
Smith goes on to contemplate the instructions in Deuteronomy that forbade cross-sex presentation (Deuteronomy 22:5) and the prohibition of eunuchs from taking part in sacred assemblies (Deuteronomy 23:1). Transferring into the New Testomony, we uncover the mission of the church now contains introducing eunuchs to the excellent news of Jesus and baptizing them into the lifetime of his church (Acts 8:34-40). Those that have been beforehand saved out at the moment are included into the brand new neighborhood Christ is constructing.
Of all his exegetical insights, Smith is at his greatest when meditating on the embodiment of Jesus as male. Having been miraculously conceived, the male physique of Jesus was depending on the feminine physique of Mary for all times and nourishment. The incarnation reinforces the divine significance of organic distinctions. “Each pre- and post-partum, the Son of God depended for his human life on the truth and integrity of Mary’s intercourse” (326).
God calls his kids to evolve to Christ’s character, not his gender. Smith explores New Testomony passages relating to gender earlier than concluding, “Because the New Testomony makes plain, christoformity contains studying to see ourselves and categorical ourselves sexually in ways in which accord with God’s creational function for the actual intercourse given to every of us” (332).
On the resurrection of the lifeless, sexual distinctiveness might be retained even after we are absolutely glorified. Because the “Westminster Confession” states, “On the final day, comparable to are discovered alive shall not die, however be modified: and all of the lifeless shall be raised up, with the selfsame our bodies, and none different (though with totally different qualities), which shall be united once more to their souls ceaselessly” (32:2, emphasis added).
The Pastoral Points
If you’re in search of a guide to place into the palms of an individual contemplating a gender transition, that is possible not the guide for them. The aim of this quantity isn’t pastoral, however scholarly, interacting with the claims and writings of gender-affirming students in addition to the claims of Scripture.
The battle skilled by individuals who understand a mismatch between their organic intercourse and their gender is actual. Gender dysphoria could be as a consequence of bodily points. For a really small proportion of individuals, there are issues at beginning relating to their organic intercourse because of the malformation of their reproductive organs (95). In these circumstances, “problem in discerning whether or not somebody is male or feminine doesn’t imply they’re neither” (85).
Gender dysphoria may also consequence from issues executed to individuals or noticed by them. Sexual abuse and trauma can lead individuals to understand their God-given gender as undesirable. However gender confusion additionally outcomes from non secular points. Individuals refuse to acknowledge and reside in alignment with the sexed physique God has assigned to them.
Our first mother and father tried to grasp the world aside from God once they took the fruit and ate it. As an alternative of readability, it resulted in confusion, disgrace, and isolation. Gender dysphoria and sexual confusion aren’t new. So long as we tarry in a sin-riddled world, the church must patiently reply questions from people who find themselves sincerely confused about themselves, the world, and their place in it.
When you’re in search of one other weapon to make use of within the tradition warfare, this guide isn’t for you. Smith doesn’t provide recommendation on public coverage or most popular pronouns. As an alternative, he gives a theological interpretation of Scripture for “the church of the residing God, which is the pillar and help of the reality” (1 Timothy 3:15).
For these considering steering on how the seen church can deal with these points, I’d encourage you to contemplate the report from the PCA’s Advert Interim Committee on Human Sexuality.
The Good Information
As Christians, we should patiently and faithfully proclaim the reality of God’s design for people relating to intercourse and gender. And we’re additionally compelled to say this: transgenderism isn’t an unforgivable sin. Although it’s a clear violation of God’s design and directives, God forbid that any individual assume they’ve sinned themselves out of the attain of God’s love or exterior the potential for entrance into his kingdom due to their transgenderism.
Jesus stands able to obtain Bruce Jenner into his kingdom together with any others who’ve pursued an id totally different from the physique God gave them. Jesus lived, died, and was raised victorious over sin, together with the sin of distorting the physique and setting apart the id he gave you. As Smith reminds us, “No bodily deformity, together with genital mutilation, can stop those that ‘draw close to with a real coronary heart in full assurance of religion’ from coming into ‘the holy locations by the blood of Jesus’” (318).
Anybody who repents, confesses the truth of their transgression, and casts themselves on Christ as their solely hope could be assured of God’s forgiveness and everlasting fellowship with him. To the transgendered individual, the message of the church is similar as it’s for anybody: repent and imagine the gospel. For many who do, our Savior welcomes the penitent whereas saying to them, “Go and sin no extra.”
Andy Jones is the editor of byFaith and a instructing elder in Tennessee Valley Presbytery.
