Transgenderism

What is good?

Gen 1:26-27, 31.

Genesis 1:26–27 ESV

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

Man is made in the likeness of God

Man is created with purpose (dominion)

Man is created as male or female

and of man and everything else that He created

Genesis 1:31 ESV

And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

Everything that God made, according to God was good.

The word good is the Hebrew word tove which means having desirable or positive qualities; especially those suitable for a thing specified.

Today the topic we are considering is transgenderism. It is our aim to think through this issue by filtering it through a biblical ethic. As the creation account makes clear, the fact that people are either male or female is part of what it means to be a person. And the way God designed people, God saw was very good.

Maleness and femaleness is very good. Being male is desirable and possessing positive qualities that are suitable for a specified thing. Being female is desirable and possessing positive qualities that are suitable for a specified thing.

And, at least one aspect of the thing for which being male or female suits us for is being a person.

When people reject their gender, they reject what is good. They reject their own personhood. They reject God.

I read one testimony of a man who, despite career success, getting married and having children, had a strong desire to be a woman. He turned to alcohol and drugs for relief, and of course that didn’t work. He went to a counselor who told him if he had a sex change, that is if he had a surgery that sought to alter and remove that which is indicative of being male, his turmoil would be relieved. He had the surgery, and for a while he was, in his won words happy for a while. But he also said this:

But being female turned out to be only a cover-up, not healing. I knew I wasn’t a real woman, no matter what my identification documents said.

Eventually, Christians reached out to him and showed him love. They pointed him to Christ. He made the difficult decision to go back to lives as a man. He said this:

Coming back to wholeness as a man after undergoing necessary gender surgery and living a life legally and socially as a woman for years wasn’t going to be easy. I had to admit to myself that going to a gender specialist when I first had issues had been a big mistake. I had to live with the reality that body parts were gone… a sad consequence of using surgery to treat psychological illness… But I had a firm foundation on which to begin my journey to restoration. I was living a life free from drugs and alcohol, and I was ready to become the man I was intended to be.

the man he was intended to be. He acknowledge that being male was not fundamentally about how he felt. It wasn’t even about what desires he possessed. That he was male was by design… God’s design. Being male was good, and it was good because God made him a man.

For this rest of our time together, I want to consider 2 questions with you:

What is transgenderism?

How are we to respond to the ideology of transgenderism?

What is transgenderism?

Etymology

trans: comes from a latin verb that means to bring across or over, to transfer, to cause to cross, to extend across, or to convert.

gender: comes from the french word, genre, meaning kind, sort or class

Transgenderism does not appear in the 1973 Oxford English Dictionary. According to etymonline, the word came into existence in 1974.

Today, transgender refers to the psychological condition in which a person feels like their personal identity does not match their anatomical sex (gender dysphoria). The transgender movement claims that when one’s gender, which is defined as one’s feelings as being of being male or female, conflicts with the biological markers of maleness or femaleness, the feelings are determinative.

Ontology

Ontology is the branch of philosophy that is concerned with the nature and relations of being.

The ontological question

If a person experiences incongruence between their biological sex and their internal sense of self, then which point of incongruence is determinative?

This question is an ontological one in that it is concerned with the nature of being. It seeking to understand how we know who we are and how we are to relate to others.

Transgenderism has identified one’s internal sense of self as determinative for personhood, while biblical christianity recognizes biological sex as determinative because sex (gender) is part of God’s design for people.

History

The Enlightenment

The acceptance of the writings and teachings of Rene Descartes, french philosopher, contributed to the exalting of reason during this time. A fundamental question that Descartes sought to address was, how do we know that we exist? He eventually came to the conclusion, I think therefore I am. In other words, he believed that the fact that he thought about his existence proved that he did exist.

This exalted human reason (the enlightenment is often referred to as the age of reason) as ultimate. Human reason, in other words, became to the key understanding everything.

Romanticism

Aims at identifying who you are and not allowing anyone to interfere or allowing the constraints of this world to deter you in your pursuit.

Rousseau, another philosopher, believed that man is born free but is everywhere in chains. Society is negatively hindering people from discovering and being your true self.

“The real you is worth letting out if the real you is dead to sin and alive in Christ Jesus.” - Kevin DeYoung, “Do Not Be True to Yourself”

So, for example, education institutions, according to romanticism, should exist not to inform me who I am and how to act, but to affirm who I am and unlock my full potential.

Instead of me conforming to society, society needs to conform to me.

Modern Day Psychology

The 4th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (2000) used the term gender identity disorder. Activists have rejected the implication that to feel discontent with one’s biological sex is a disorder.

The 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (2013) uses the term gender dysphoria and defines it as referring to the distress that may accompany the incongruence between one’s experienced or expressed gender and one’s assigned gender.

The distress someone may experience could be, according to this definition, caused by external social factors (such as lack of understanding and acceptance).

Note that this is still listed in the manual for mental disorders.

In 2018, the World Health Organization ruled that gender incongruence would be classified under sexual health issues, rather than mental disorders.

Both still in play

Transgenderism trades on these ideas. Our ability to know ourselves begins with our own reasoning. What we think about ourselves determines who we are. And who we have determined we are is largely based upon how we feel about that conclusion and whether others affirm that conclusion or not.

“I can’t work somewhere that’s going to oppress me”

“I can’t listen to my parents because they’re trying to hold me back and I need to be true to me.”

How are we to respond to the ideology of transgenderism?

Binary is not bad

Definition: something made of two things or parts

General Revelation

We are taught about the character of God, His power, His glory and His beauty through the created order.

Gen. 1 makes clear that God’s separating of darkness and light, water and land and earth from sky is good. These are all binary states, and God calls them good. That man was created in a binary state, that is male and female, God called very good.

Man himself recognized his binary state was good. In fact, it brought him great delight.

Genesis 2:23 ESV

Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”

After the flood

The binary state of creation remained in tact after the flood.

Genesis 8:22 ESV

While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”

Gnosticism repackaged

Gnosticism calls for the separation of what is invisible about us (thoughts, feelings, soul) from what is physical (our bodies). The invisible is good and the physical is bad.

In the New Testament times, gnostics claimed that Jesus may have risen from the dead spiritually but not physically.

Gender ideology downplays the significance of the physical body, and claims that our feelings are more important. It places a wedge between body and mind.

Read from James, pg. 77

Pronouncing Pronouns

I do not mention this issue lightly. I know many in this church work in places that ask its employees to include in their email signatures their preferred pronouns and to display them on their id badges. We do however need to think through the ethics of our response to such circumstances. Should we use the preferred pronouns of transpeople?

Rosaria Butterfield’s reasons for why using transgendered pronouns is sinful

(From “Why I no longer use Transgender Pronouns - and Why You Shouldn’t Either”, https://www.reformation21 (accessed 12, July 2024).

Using transgendered pronouns is a sin against the ninth commandment and encourages people to sin against the tenth commandment.

The ninth commandment is, you shall not bear false witness (Ex. 20:16)

The tenth commandment is, you shall not covet (Ex. 20:17)

Using transgendered pronouns is a sin against the creation ordinance.

Genesis 1:27 ESV

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

gender is part of God’s design for people

Using transgendered pronouns is a sin against image-bearing.

Using transgendered pronouns discourages a believer’s progressive sanctification and falsifies the gospel.

Using transgendered pronouns cheapens redemption, and it tramples on the blood of Christ.

Using transgendered pronouns fails to love my neighbor as myself.

Using transgendered pronouns fails to offer genuine Christian hospitality (honoring God by obeying His command to “contribute to the needs of others) and instead yields the definition of hospitality to liberal communitarianism (a philosophy that emphasizes the connection between the individual and the community), identity politics, and “human flourishing.”

Biblical Love

Compassionate Community

What if a transgender person showed up here in Sunday morning? What should our response look like? How should we treat this person?

James 2:1 ESV

My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory.

Convictional Community

John 8:31–32 ESV

So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”