The transgender movement?

Dr Al Mohler of Southern Baptist Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky, offers a Christian response

Our response to the transgender movement must begin with Scripture.

Scripture treats what the transgender movement discards as the “binary system of gender” as part of the goodness of God’s created order. Genesis 1 and 2 present our embodiment as male or female as essential to our self-identity not only as humans who constitute a human family, but as individuals. Every individual is made in God’s image. As Denny Burk rightly argues, “We dare not miss that God created sexual differentiation. The terms male and female are not cultural constructs. They are not social roles foisted upon mankind by the accretion of culture and tradition. Male and female designate the fundamental distinction that God has embedded in the very biology of the race.”^[1] 

Our identity as man or woman is not the result of a biological accident. The doctor at our birth does not impose it on us. It is not foisted upon us by our society’s social expectations, moral habits, and cultural meanings. Our identity as man or woman is who we are. Those born as intersex, hermaphroditic, or with ambiguous genitalia should never be treated as if they are less human. They remind us of two profoundly important truths. First, we are all equally made in God’s image and each of us is equally able to demonstrate the glory of God in our creaturely existence, just as we are all equally accountable before God as our Creator. Second, they remind us that the consequences of Adam’s sin even impact our genetic chromosomal structure. Ambiguous biological sex shows us that even our biology demonstrates our fallenness.

Separating sex and gender

What differentiates the transgender movement is the intention to change one’s gender identity from one’s biological sex. In fact, claims that an individual’s mental wiring is incompatible with the body now drive the movement. We increasingly hear the argument that an individual is “fixing” the body so that it will correspond with the individual’s consciousness. Christians must think with great care at this point. We must look to Scripture in order to understand how to situate this moral challenge within the storyline of Scripture and in accordance with what God’s Word teaches. Therefore, we unflinchingly hold that to be born male is to be male and that to be born female is to be female. The binary system of gender is grounded in a biological reality that is not socially constructed. While admitting that in the fallen world every society accumulates socially constructed ideas about gender that are often wrong and inconsistent with Scripture (and thus to be confronted and corrected), the Christian stands obligated under scriptural authority to insist that the gender assigned by biological sex is not an accident. We affirm that biological sex is a gift of God to every individual and to the human community to which that individual belongs.

This means that Christians must confront the transgender ideology at its very foundation, while also admitting that the church has often borrowed from the culture to make assumptions and expectations about gender that are socially constructed and not biblically sustained. Furthermore, we must admit that Christians have sinned against transgender people and those struggling with such questions by simplistic explanations that do not take into account the deep spiritual and personal anguish of those who are in the struggle.

Brokenness of creation

Furthermore, we must understand the argument that the brain is wired differently than the body is not a reason for sex reassignment surgery or the transgender option. Rather, it testifies to the brokenness of creation and the effects of human sin. It is an opportunity for the Christian to respond with the message of the gospel and with the recognition that every single Christian is a broken individual seeking wholeness in the only place it can be found—in obedience to Scripture under the Lordship of Christ.

All of this points to a host of very difficult pastoral and congregational quandaries. In due time, very specific and difficult questions will arrive at the doorstep of every congregation. What do we do when an individual comes to our church who is living out a gender identity that is opposite from their biological sex? When should such an individual, professing Christ and repenting of sin, be baptized and welcomed within the congregation? What is the long-term expectation for how obedience and submission to Christ should be demonstrated in the life of this believer? These questions are only further complicated by surgical interventions and other factors that may enter into the pastoral situation. Some of these questions will be addressed at the end of this book, but at this point, it is sufficient to say that every congregation will face these questions—and these questions are likely to arrive sooner rather than later.

Beyond gender?

Christians committed to Scripture cannot accept the logic of “omnigender” or the effort to “move beyond gender,” or even the effort to blur gender lines. Faithfulness requires not only that we refuse to accept this logic, but that we challenge it with the clear teaching of Scripture. Furthermore, when we do so we are not merely entering into a difficult and painful arena of intellectual and ideological conflict, we are entering into an arena in which eternal destinies are at stake. When we enter this arena, we are confronting principalities and powers no previous Christian generation has encountered.

If nothing else, the transgender revolution shows Christians that the gospel confronts ideologies, patterns of deception, and spiritual opposition in every generation. The fact that we fight, not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, is perhaps never more poignant and important than in the midst of a struggle. The transgender movement reminds us whom we are really fighting. We must remember we are fighting with a gospel that cannot fail.

Gender reassignment surgery?

The church must also respond to the transgender movement by rejecting both the reality and the morality of gender reassignment surgery. Though we certainly must sympathize with the personal anguish and confusion that causes any individual to seek such a drastic and surgical option, we cannot accept that a surgical procedure can actually change a man into a woman or a woman into a man. We are witnesses of a massive effort of societal self-deception on this issue. We are also witnesses to the failure of that self-deception. No one claims that the basic chromosomal structure of an individual can be changed by surgery or any other medical means. The only thing actually happening is the amputation of organs combined with cosmetic procedures that attempt to create the impression of one sex rather than the other. Added to this are hormonal treatments and other procedures that try to enhance the alignment of the body’s morphology with the newly declared gender identity.

Christians cannot avoid the moral conclusion that this amounts to a mutilation of the body. The biblical worldview insists that our embodiment actually demonstrates God’s love for us, his gift to us, and part of his purpose and plan for our lives. To amputate and cosmetically reform the body in this sense is an act of defiance against the Creator’s purpose. Where one might claim that there is a disconnect between self-consciousness and embodiment, the Christian must tenderly and compassionately advise that it is the mental—that is, the self-consciousness and sense of personal identity—that must be conformed to the body rather than the body conformed to the individual’s mistaken self-perception.

At this point, we need to note that every single one of us is afflicted by a mistaken self-perception. Our self-perception, whether on this issue or any other, must be corrected by Scripture. Furthermore, Scripture itself attests to the fact that our bodies are not accidents that happen to us, but part of God’s intention for us. David’s confidence that God stitched him together in his mother’s womb (Ps 139:13) biblically affirms that we are not accidents in any area of our lives. The infancy narratives of both John the Baptist and Jesus reveal that their biological sex was important before they were even born (Lk 1). As the giver of life, our Creator knows us before any other knows us. Before our mother’s even know we are there in the womb, we are known—as male or female—by the Creator who made us so for his glory and our good. 

No better

Interestingly, even some medical authorities now also insist that gender reassignment surgery is not only inadvisable, but wrong. Paul McHugh, former psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital, informs us that he was once part of the first venture into “sex-reassignment surgery” in the United States. Under his leadership, Johns Hopkins University became the first American medical center to perform these procedures in the 1960s.

Later reflecting upon this, McHugh recalls that he and his colleagues performed a study comparing the outcomes of transgendered persons who had the surgery with those who did not. He wrote, “Most of the surgically treated patients described themselves as ‘satisfied’ by the results, but their subsequent psycho-social adjustments were no better than those who didn’t have the surgery. And so at Hopkins we stopped doing sex-reassignment surgery, since producing a ‘satisfied’ but still troubled patient seemed an inadequate reason for surgically amputating normal organs.” ^[2]

Christians recognize that the inclination of every sinful human heart is to find security and salvation in something outside of Christ. If only pills, therapy, or a surgical procedure could deal with our problems, we would not have to deal with the reality of our sin. And we would not have to confront the solitary provision for that sin in the atonement accomplished by Jesus Christ. As with the contraceptive revolution, far too many Evangelicals rapidly accept the medicalization of a moral issue. We must be very careful that we do not allow the transgender revolution to become an opportunity for us to fail once again. We cannot allow ourselves to mistake a medical definition for a moral and spiritual reality.

Once again, these are the types of conversations that previous generations of Christians never needed to have. But, moving forward, Christians must remember three very important points. First, the intellectual and moral heritage of the Christian tradition provides a wealth of theological reflection on the issues of gender and sexuality. We must resist facile and shallow responses to the challenges of our day by reminding ourselves of the enormous theological tradition which we gladly inherit from our past. Secondly, we must always remember that the Scriptures are sufficient to engage these challenges (we will say more about this in chapter 7). Christians need to remember that the sufficiency of Scripture gives us a comprehensive worldview which equips us to wrestle with even the most challenging ethical dilemmas of our time. Finally, as mentioned before, the gospel provides the only true remedy for sexual brokenness. The theological and pastoral challenges we face in the transgender revolution are indeed enormous, but they are not beyond the sufficiency of Christ’s cross and resurrection.

Dr Al Mohler is President of Southern Baptist Seminary. This article is an extract from his recent book, We Cannot Be Silent: speaking truth to a culture redefining sex, marriage & the very meaning of right & wrong, published by Thomas Nelson, ISBN 978 0 718 032 487 and is used with permission.