A brief explainer of my views on biblical gender ethics
Trans** people are image-bearers, too. God values them greatly. We, the Church, must learn to better love those God loves.
I’ve consistently posted about the need to prioritize relationship with trans people, build trust, address any mental health challenges unrelated to gender incongruence, and patiently wait for the Holy Spirit to move. Check out my suggestions for empathetic discipleship at https://www.pieterlvalk.com/blog/7-tips-for-caring-for-trans-people.
But eventually, conversation may get to theological questions. Even more often, cisgender straight Christians press me to answer the question, “Is transition permissible for Christians navigating gender incongruence?”
I don't want to answer this question for the same reasons that I don't want to respond when people ask, "Well, Pieter, do you think gay sex is a sin?"
There are so many more important questions when it comes to embodying God's love for gay and trans people. There are so many hours of friendship and trust that must be earned before those of us who aren't trans or aren't gay have credibility to ask that question.
And yet, eventually, in some friendships and in some discipleship relationships, this question is asked. And it matters that we respond with God's love AND wisdom.
In a few words, what are my convictions on biblical gender ethics?
When God first imagined each of us being born into a perfect world, He intended for each of us to be either a male who feels fully like a man or a female who feels fully like a woman—in other words, God intended for us to be either male-bodied men or female-bodied women. God intended for this diversity and corresponding differentness to display a holistic imago Dei, image of God (Genesis 1-3).
The Bible affirms the sex and gender binary. Faithfulness to our biological sex includes accepting our biological sex and following God’s wisdom when we engage our capacity for relationship.
God didn’t provide any further universal prescriptions for maleness/femaleness or masculinity/femininity. He allowed space for humanity to create cultural norms for gender and gender expression. The Bible affirms dozens of times when men and women in the Bible break what we would consider to be contemporary gender stereotypes (Psalm 51:10-11, Micah 6:8, I Samuel 18:1-3, Proverbs 31, Judges 4:4, Acts 16:14, Luke 7:47,50).
Everything about this world is broken, including each of our biological sexes and each of our genders. Cultural concepts of gender, including arbitrarily assigning preference to one gender or another, are broken.
There seems to be a biblical pattern of condemning genital alteration (Deuteronomy 22:5 and Deuteronomy 23:1), cross-dressing as part of cult practices (1 Corinthians 11:2-16), and the elimination of gender difference (1 Corinthians 11:2-16).
Historical evidence suggests that the authors of Scripture were aware of trans people. The Bible makes clear that sinful genital alteration does not prevent people from being able to image God or be part of His family (Isaiah 56:1-5, Acts 8:25-39).
Gender incongruence is a brokenness, but merely experiencing gender incongruence is not a sin.
Gender incongruence develops from a combination of nature and nurture, but specifics of how much is attributed to each are unknown. God didn’t intend gender incongruence, and no one chooses to experience enduring, robust gender incongruence.
While some estimates are that 80% experience relief from gender incongruence over time, there’s no formula for “healing” gender incongruence.
Unique challenges are posed by gender incongruence experienced by kids/teens and noticed by peers. I generally defer to the authority of parents to disciple their children. Ministering to kids who experience gender incongruence and teaching kids more generally about gender incongruence can be approached with wisdom and compassion.
God calls His Church to support one another with grace so that we can faithfully steward God’s gift of biological sex and gender. Engaging in different forms of social transitioning could be either sinful or morally neutral depending on one’s motivations/intent. Denying one’s biological sex or intentionally deceiving others while engaging in social transitioning is outside of God’s plan. At the same time, we respect that a person can faithfully take practical steps to reduce one's experience of incongruence (for example, by using single-stall bathrooms, wearing androgynous clothes, or using gender-neutral pronouns) in a way that honor's God's gift of their biological sex.
Hormonal/surgical transition has not been scientifically demonstrated to reliably reduce depression/suicidality. There is no evidence to clearly support the theory that there is a brain-sex/body-sex difference that leads to gender incongruence.
When a person is not intersex but experiences gender incongruence, we believe their biological sex is as God intended, but their gender experience is broken.
Taking steps to medically alter one’s biological sex is a rejection of God’s gift of their biological sex and, therefore, is a sin. At the same time, someone who has medically transitioned still has full access to God’s grace and forgiveness and can be restored in their relationship with God, even if they are unable to de-transition.
For a deeper exploration of the biblical passages relevant to gender ethics and how to employ those to answer key theological questions, check out Equip’s Gender Incongruence Course at https://equipyourcommunity.org/gendercourse/.
**For the sake of clarity, here are the terms and definitions that I use in these conversations:
Sex—also referred to as biological sex: being male or female as defined by chromosomes, gonads, sexual anatomy, and secondary sex characteristics
Gender—also referred to as gender orientation; a person's internal sense of being a woman/a man or being masculine/feminine, influenced in part by cultural gender roles/expectations
Femininity/Masculinity—a person’s sense of being a woman/man and cultural expectations for how women/men will express their gender
Gender Incongruence—an acute sense that one's gender does not correspond with the experience typically associated with the person's biological sex
Transgender/Trans—a general term for anyone who experiences gender incongruence; it can include people who have engaged in some level of transitioning, but is not limited to those who have
Gender Identity—how a person internally describes and labels their gender
Gender Expression—how a person publicly expresses or presents their gender through outward appearance, behaviors, clothing, voice, body language, and name/pronouns/etc.
Gender Dysphoria—a clinical psychological condition where a person experiences significant distress or discomfort due to a mismatch between their internal sense of being a women/man and their biological sex; this phrase has negative connotations for some trans people as it might suggest being trans is a mental illness
Genderqueer—a gender identity that doesn’t fit the male/female binary or in some other way violates society’s expectations.
Nonbinary—not identifying as either male or female, or not identifying with masculine or feminine traits.
Intersex—being born with atypical features in one’s sexual anatomy and/or sex chromosomes
Transitioning—various steps one takes to represent oneself as a person’s gender, as opposed to a person’s biological sex. Gender transition can be organized into three categories: social transition, hormonal transition, and surgical transition.
Social transitioning involves taking steps within one’s social circles to mitigate incongruence non-medically. These include name and/or pronoun changes, adjustments to one’s appearance through clothing and hairstyle changes, wrapping/taping to flatten the chest, packing to give the appearance of having a bulge, using single-stall bathrooms, using the bathroom of people of the opposite sex, and voice training to raise or lower the pitch of one’s voice.
Hormonal transitioning involves the use of hormone blockers and/or Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) that chemically alters a person’s secondary sex characteristics to align with their gender identity.
Surgical transitioning can include adding or removing breasts, various forms of plastic surgery to change facial features or enhance other parts of the body, vocal cord surgeries, and altering genitalia. The most common terms associated with surgical transitioning is “top” (think top half of the body) and “bottom” (refers exclusively to genital alterations) surgery.
