Nigel and Sally Rowe decided to pull their 6-year-old child out of school because he was confused and unhappy about a boy in his class who had started coming to school dressed as a girl. Cue a transgender media storm.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of this particular story, it is clear that we all need to get up to speed with how to think, talk and respond to this question. Among Christians there seem to be three quite distinct approaches to the debate about Transgender issues that is raging in our culture at the moment.
Strangely, I have found myself drawn to all three of these reactions at different times.
Which is precisely why we need the Bible to help us think rightly about an issue which is so complex and so charged with emotion. We are too swayed by powerful and emotional stories. We are too influenced by our own circumstances to come to a good place in our thinking and attitudes on this.
That’s why I found Andrew Walker’s God and the Transgender Debate to be a breath of fresh air. It shows that, for Christians, none of these responses are helpful, and that there is a fourth approach we need to work at if we are to both love the Lord our God, and our neighbours as ourselves.
We need to be Very Pro, but in a different way. We are to be pro the people who are experiencing Gender dysphoria. It's not funny, it isn’t made up and it is deeply distressing. People who are prepared to undergo surgery to alter themselves are deeply serious about the feelings they have. And we need to make it clear that we are pro them as people, because they are made in the image of God, who live like all of us in a sinful and fallen world. They are people who need loving, and caring for and nurturing and encouraging and accepting, like we all do.
But we also need to be Very Anti, but in a different way. Not with a knee-jerk conservative response, but with a considered and thoughtful conviction. Like us, they are made but marred; fashioned but flawed; designed but damaged. Through no fault of their own, they find themselves wanting to identify with a gender contrary to their sex. We are not anti them, but we do want to show a better way to think and live. In their distress, they imagine that their personal happiness and flourishing can only come from being free to live as they want. Our message is that there is a better way of human flourishing which we start when we return to God through his Son Jesus. But this starts with a recognition of these two foundational truths: that we are created by God, and that we are sinners living in a fallen world who need rescuing.
So lastly, we must be a different kind of indifferent. Never indifferent on the issues. There are some good reasons why it will be unhelpful to our culture as a whole to have some of these “freedoms” enshrined in law. But there is a sense in which those who advocate for these rights are missing the point the bigger point. They are simply another expression of a world that has lost it’s bearings in relation to God. And we must never be indifferent to those who tell their attractive, beautiful, but ultimately deadly alternative gospels—whether that’s the gospel of gold, possessions, or personal freedom. We know that they are all gospels that enslave. There is only one authentic gospel that truly sets us free. And that is the gospel we must share lovingly, joyfully and passionately with a world that is hungry for it.
We have two resources that will help you understand these issues more carefully, prayerfully and biblically. Take the time to grab hold of either Transgender by Vaughan Roberts or God and the Transgender Debate by Andrew Walker.
