What the Bible Says about Gender Dysphoria

Genesis 1:26-28, Romans 7:21-23

Let me start with this question:  Is the WORLD going to override the WORD?  Or is the WORD going to overrule the World?

Peter writes that we should be prepared to give an answer to everybody who asks you for the reason for the hope that you have.  But, here's how I do it . . . with gentleness and respect.  Today, I want to address the difficult question of gender dysphoria, and I hope to do it just as Peter directs.   

The WORD tells us what God says.  Scripture is our single authority for faith (what we believe) and practice (how we live).  Some may argue that Christians who disagree with their point of view aren’t very loving.  That may happen.  If you’re following the truth, sometimes you can’t change perception.  But, we can try to avoid needless hurt.  We want to be sensitive in responding to those experiencing the pain and confusion of this dysphoria.

For example, imagine a young person who’s 12, 13, 14 years of age.  Your entire life, you've always felt a little awkward and out of place.  It's like you never fit the stereotypes of what you were supposed to be like in your culture.  So, if you were a boy, you were never into trucks, sports and action movies.  You liked food and fashion.  If you're a girl, you were never into dress up and make-up.  You wanted to sword fight, play ball, and wrestle.  So, you’re a boy who prefers movies over trucks, dancing over soccer, and maybe, you were more emotional than other kids.  You grew up thinking maybe someday it'll change for me, because you always felt awkward and out of place.  But that change never came.  And then you kind of get this thing in your head.  I'm an outcast.  But, I just want to fit in, and really all I want to do is to be happy.

Then one day, you get on Tik Tok, and you see stories of people exactly like you.  They never fit in.  They didn’t fit the stereotypes.  And then, they made a decision to “come out” and change their gender, or change their name and enter the transgender community.  They seem so happy in their TikTok videos.  You were always the outcast at school, but when you look around at other people in your school who made the same decision, they were celebrated and applauded immediately.  You saw it!  They used to be outcasts, and now they’re not.  So, the way you might also find acceptance is to do the same.

So, in the next few minutes my primary sources are a pastor named Eric Geiger helped with all of the definitions and quotations you're about to hear.  Canadian professor and renown scholar Jordan Peterson, and Abigail Schrier, an Oxford and Yale educated journalist, who wrote the book Irreversible Damage.

The first word we needed to define is sex. Genesis 1:27 says,

“God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them.“

God used the words “male and female.”  Today, we still use those terms to identify sex, and we include scientific information typically with reference to chromosomes, internal reproductive anatomy, and external genitals.

Now, when somebody is born their sex is identified, not assigned.  Their sex is identified based on anatomy.  In the past, sex and gender identities have always been viewed as one in the same.  But in the last 10 or 15 years, there's been a strong popular push for gender to be separated from sex which leads to the next definition, gender identity.

Gender identity is defined as:

a person's self-perception of whether they are male or female, masculine or feminine.

Now, what we need to understand is that right here is the foundation of the transgender movement.  The idea that gender identity is a separate concept from sex, and I'll go one step further.  Some advocates of the transgender movement say that they're pushing for a genderless society, where instead of sex or gender being viewed as binary, male or female, to a spectrum where people at different times in their lives may move along the spectrum.  They should be considered “non-binary.”

Ironically, the transgender movement’s separation of gender identity and sex depends on stereotypes.  This requires us to think logically.

Here is a picture from the cover of Vanity Fair, a popular American magazine among women in 2015.  This effectively broke the world.

This is Caitlyn Jenner.  I won't keep it up there long.  Here's what's interesting.  Kara Dansky, a self-described “radical progressive feminist.”  Kara Dansky said about this magazine cover that Caitlyn Jenner undid in one magazine photo what feminists had been striving to accomplish for the last 150 years.

Here’s what she meant.  Think about it logically.  There was nothing about Caitlyn Jenner’s biology that said that Caitlyn Jenner was female.

But, what this magazine cover does in Kara Dansky’s words, is it communicates that girls are people who like long hair, lipstick, eyelashes, and pretty dresses.  Dansky went on to point out that both transgender advocates and male chauvinists from the 1950s are saying the same thing from different sides.  So transgender advocates are saying, if you like those things, you're a girl.  Whereas, male chauvinist in the 1950s were saying, if you're a girl, you should like those things.

In fact, the singer, Rebecca McLaughlin points out that if we separate gender from sex, all we are left with is stereotypes.

Now let me talk to parents.  Because parents maybe this whole concept of gender identity causes you to wonder, what if my son or my daughter are really into things that typically are coded the opposite sex?  My daughter wants to wrestle, and my son wants to do dance.

Does that mean that my children are transgender or non-binary?  No.  That's not what that means.  There's a difference between gender and gender stereotypes.  Gender is biologically defined.  It’s fixed.  It's a biological reality.  You've either got XY chromosomes or XX chromosomes.  God made them “male and female.”

Whereas gender stereotypes are culturally constructed.  They change according to cultures at ages or times.  For example, a popular American magazine, Ladies Home Journal, in 1918 said,

“The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.”

That's the 1918 Ladies Home Journal.  The point is that gender expressions and gender stereotypes change at different times and in different cultures.  Hey, I’m not your stereotypical pastor.  I wear blue jeans and ride a Harley-Davidson, and cook—some.  But, when I shared my own heart-breaking stories from my life with seminarians, one student commented, “you don’t talk like a professor.”  Hmmm.

In Scripture, men openly wept. They embraced one another.  They greeted one another with holy kisses.  (Don’t try that on me.)  And, there are women in Scripture who lead.  They were more analytical than emotional.  They build businesses, and kill enemies in battle.

So, my point is that there's a difference between gender and gender stereotypes.  Stereotypes change in their expression depending on times and cultures.  So, perhaps we need broader definitions for male and female, because we have men that may not like trucks, guns and sports, but they really enjoy cooking and the arts.  If you're a girl who likes mechanics, watching football and action movies doesn't mean you're non-binary.  It means you're totally awesome! That's what that means.

This leads me to definition number three—Gender Dysphoria

Gender dysphoria (GD), according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM 5), is defined as a "marked incongruence between their experienced or expressed gender and the one they were assigned at birth." It was previously termed "gender identity disorder."

The concept of gender dysphoria and the transgender movement are saying that there are people who experience a war between their mind and their body.  Now that's interesting.   I've read something before that described a war going on between the mind and body.  Romans 7:21-23 says,

“So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.”

So, there's a war.  My body's at war with something.  What's my body at war with?  The law of my mind—and it’s holding me captive.  To what?  To the law of sin that is within me.

Transgender advocates concur when they say some people experience war between mind and body.  In this way, Christians can relate to the experience of dysphoria.  Paul saw it too, because Christians are people who experience a war between the mind and body.  The whole Christian life is a war between my identity—who God designed and declared me to be, and my activity—what I actually do.  In fact, the whole reason I became a Christian is I knew that something was wrong and I needed a Savior.

What this means is that as Christians, we should have compassion on people who experience gender dysphoria.  Because even though we may offer different solutions from the world, we understand what it feels like to have a war going on within us.  We can have Compassion.

David Ronan, Ph.D.