Introduction:
A. There is a gender identity crisis sweeping across our nation and culture.
1. This is a serious issue facing adults, teens and children, and as I address this subject in today’s sermon, I will do my best to present this information in a way that is appropriate for all ages.
2. The cover of Time magazine on June 9, 2014 had a picture of Laverne Cox, a person born a boy, but is now living with a different sexual identification, and acts on the TV show “Orange is the New Black” as a woman.
a. The article in that issue of Time that featured Laverne was all about the transgender experience and its’ aim was to mainstream and celebrate the transgender life.
3. Today, when we think about transgender issues, we think about Bruce Jenner.
a. As you know, for most of his life, Bruce Jenner was known as the all-American man.
1. He won Olympic gold in the decathlon at the 1976 Montreal Olympics.
2. Bruce was a married man and fathered children.
3. It seemed like he had everything a man could want – an impressive athletic career, family, fame and fortune.
b. But then people began to notice a change in him, he was taking on a softer appearance.
1. On April 24, 2015, in an interview with Diane Sawyer, he went public.
2. Bruce Jenner announced he was transsexual saying, “for all intents and purposes, I’m a woman…call me Caitlyn.”
c. How did our culture respond to Bruce Jenner deciding to become Cailyn Jenner?
1. In July of that year, Vanity Fair magazine featured her on their magazine cover.
2. In August, Jenner won the Social Media Queen award at the Teen Choice Awards.
3. In October, Glamour magazine named her one of its 25 Glamour Women of the Year, calling her a “Trans Champion.”
4. In December 2015, she was named Barbara Walters’ Most Fascinating Person of 2015
d. Jenner said to Diane Sawyer in that April interview, “I would sit in church and always wonder, ‘In God’s eyes, how does he see me?’ ”
B. That indeed is a good question – it is the right question for Jenner and for us to be asking.
1. How does God see those struggling with their sexual identity?
2. What does God think about people who have a man’s body, but believe they have a woman’s mind, and visa versa?
3. What does God think about the questions and issues surrounding gender identity and transgenderism, and what should we think?
4. How should we, as Christians and the church, respond to these cultural and societal changes going on around us, and how do we respond to the Bruce/Caitlyn Jenners in our neighborhood?
C. If this was an issue that only involved individuals, personally and privately, then we might attempt to only address the topic with those individuals when they cross our paths.
1. But, unfortunately, it doesn’t just impact individuals, personally and privately, it is an issue that has been thrust into the public forum and is being championed in our culture.
2. The media is filled with transgender characters and messages; including in literature, theater, TV, movies, music and web series.
3. Many public schools are educating their students (our children) about transgenderism, and in some cases the indoctrination begins in the kindergarten, with books like “I Am Jazz.”
4. Endorsed by the American Library Association, the “Drag Queen Story Hour” has spread to twenty-one states, targeting preschool and grade school children with homosexuality and transgenderism in public libraries, a news article reported on Aug. 23, 2018.
5. The Associated Press made a film of a “Drag Queen Story Hour” in New York.
a. And in one scene, the drag queen asked the children, “Who wants to be a drag queen when they grown up?” And the little children raised their hands and squeeled, “Meeee!!!”
6. And surely none of us have missed the lawsuits concerning transgender bathrooms in N.C.
D. Yes, this is an issue that cannot be avoided and must be understood and addressed.
1. This is indeed a big subject with many complicated aspects to it, but it is also a very personal issue in that it deals with real people whom God loves and whom we must care about.
2. Although we could spend many sessions on this topic, I want to try to address it in one sermon.
3. In doing so, I must be cursory rather than comprehensive, and yet I believe we can gain an understanding of the struggle and the biblical principles that address it.
4. My main goal in this sermon is to communicate what the Bible teaches about this topic, and to suggest how we as Christians and a church should interact with the world in general and how we can help those who are wrestling with issues related to sexual and gender orientation.
5. In this sermon, I will attempt to graciously and biblically answer four questions:
a. What is gender identity and transgenderism?
b. What does science say about gender identity?
c. What does the Bible say about gender identity?
d. How should Christians and churches respond?
I. What is Gender Identity and Transgenderism?
A. Before we can begin to address any question or concern, we must first accurately understand it.
B. Let’s take a minute and define a few important terms involved in this issue.
1. A person’s “sex” refers to the biological classification of a person as male or female based on physical features.
2. A person’s “gender” refers to the social or psychological classification of a person as male or female based on personal perception – a person’s internal sense.
3. A person’s gender identity – their inward feeling of their gender – might be the same or different as their physical, biological sex.
4. When someone is biologically one gender, but feels in his or her mind that they are another gender, the street term for that is called transgender.
a. The proper medical term is gender dysphoria.
5. Transgenderism seems to be everywhere in the media, but in reality it is rare.
a. A little more than one in every 20,000 men experience gender dysphoria at one point in their lives and about one in every 34,000 women experience it.
6. To relieve the pain of the difference between one’s biological identity and his or her felt gender identity, some transgenders cross-dress, some get opposite sex hormone treatment, and others go as far as having gender reassignment surgery.
7. Being a transgendered person is not the same as being a transvestite.
a. A transvestite is a person, usually a male, who finds pleasure in dressing up as a female.
b. The transvestite does not wish to change genders, rather just enjoys cross-dressing.
8. In contrast, a transgendered person understands themselves to be different and desires to be different than their biological sex.
9. Transgenderism is also not sexual orientation.
a. A transgendered person might identify as heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, and so forth.
C. We hear a lot about LGBT, what does it stand for?
1. It stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender.
2. Some people add a Q to the end for queer or questioning – for people who are still discovering.
3. Some add a “plus” symbol at the end to be inclusive of all identities and orientations.
4. You may have noticed that Facebook now has a drop down list of 58 new gender fields.
5. Facebook recently introduced field No. 59, which is a fill-in-the blank gender field.
D. I hope these concise definitions help us to better understand the terms and issues that we are facing.
1. I think we would all admit that these are truly confusing times we live in and that we need God’s truths more than ever.
2. But before we get to what God says, let’s consider what science has to say.
II. What Does Science Say About Gender Identity?
A. Sometimes the phrase used to describe the feeling of a transgendered person is that they are a “female trapped in a man’s body” or visa versa.
1. What does science say about this phenomenon? Is it biological? Is it psychological? Both?
2. The truthful answer is that science doesn’t know.
3. Scientists have tested a theory called “the hormone wash theory” – it speculates that perhaps something happens during the fetal development cycle that results in gender dysphoria.
a. But to date there is no evidence of any differences in brain chemicals of those who suffer from gender dysphoria and those who don’t.
4. The Human Genome Project has identified all the genes in the human DNA and they did not find any homosexual gene or transgender gene.
a. There are no genetic abnormalities between those who experience transgender desires and those who don’t.
5. By God’s design, biology is precise – there are only two biological sexes.
a. Every male has an X and a Y chromosome, and every female has two X chromosomes.
b. There are no other combinations and there is no doubt about a person’s sex.
B. A survey of Dutch psychologists revealed that gender identity issues are not the only psychological problem for those with gender dysphoria.
1. For instance, 25 % of those struggling with gender identity disorder are also schizophrenic.
2. 75 % of patients struggling with gender identity disorder are clinically diagnosed with a psychiatric illness, personality disorder, or mood dissociative disorder.
3. Gender identity disorders are almost always a secondary problem sourced from a much deeper psychological issue.
4. Tragically, child sexual abuse (csa) is often a cause of gender confusion and sexual orientation isssues.
5. Experts say that when there is no child sexual abuse or other psychiatric issues, most children outgrow any gender confusion by puberty.
C. Ten years after the prestigious John Hopkins University Hospital began doing sex reassignment surgery, it did a patient follow up study.
1. As a result of their patient follow up study, John Hopkins shut down the entire sex reassignment surgery department.
2. After 10 years of practicing this surgery, they were not able to demonstrate that it helped a single transgender patient.
3. Dr. Meyer, the man who led the John Hopkins sex reassignment team said this after seeing the results of the follow-up study: “My personal feeling is that surgery is not a proper treatment for a psychiatric disorder, and it’s clear to me that these patients had severe psychological problems that don’t go away following surgery.” [J.K. Meyer and D. Reter, “Sex reassignment. Follow-up” Archives of General Psychiatry, 1979; 36(9): 1010-1015]
4. Unfortunately, John Hopkins University Hospital succumbed to pressure and restarted doing gender reassignment surgery in 2017.
D. As Christians, we want to know the causes so that we can better relate, engage, and help people, but from a biblical standpoint, whether the struggles that transgenders face are a product of biology or by nurture, or anything else, the truth of God’s Word and God’s design remains the same.
III. What Does the Bible Say about Gender Identity?
A. This is the main question that must be answered: Is gender or sexual identity set by a preference of the individual or by the providence of God?
1. Or to put it another way: Is my sex determined by my decision or by God’s design?
B. Creation is where the Bible story begins, and it is where a Christian’s thinking about transgender must begin.
1. The Bible tells us that we did not emerge, by accident, from the cosmic soup.
2. It states clearly that we’ve been created by a loving God.
3. That means that, as we think about transgender, we need to remember that we are not simply talking about “issues” here, but people: precious individuals, each created and loved by God, and who, like all of us, are lost without Christ.
C. But it also means that we human beings are creatures, not machines – and that has a huge impact on how we think about our liberty.
1. True freedom, according to Scripture, is found not in asserting our radical independence and in trying to be who we’re not made to be.
2. True freedom is found in embracing and being who we are by God’s design.
3. A fish that decides to make a bid for freedom by jumping out of the water will not be free – because it is created to live in the environment of water.
4. And as soon as we try and become what we are not, far from enjoying freedom, we can’t expect to flourish.
5. This conviction – that we’re creatures, not machines – has enormous implications.
D. John Wyatt, in his book Matters of Life and Death, talks about two different ways of looking at our human existence.
1. The first way of looking at human existence is the “Lego kit” view of the human body.
a. If we have just emerged from the primeval slime by chance, then there is no design whatsoever in how we happen to be.
b. We are simply a collection of parts that can be changed and adapted as we like.
c. You can try to improve and upgrade to a different model – you can reprogram the machine because that’s what we are.
d. The structure of the body is value free, so if you want to change your sex, that’s fine.
e. In the words of the old Lego add: “The only limitation is your own imagination.”
2. The other way of looking at human existence is the “Art restoration view.”
a. In the Christian worldview, we see ourselves not as machines, but as flawed masterpieces.
b. If you see a work of art and you’re asked to restore it, you don’t look at it and say, “Well, I think he would look much nicer with a pair of spectacles,” or, “This scene would look better with a car instead of a cart.”
c. To do that is to break the code of the art restorer.
d. Art restorers know that their job is to bring out the artist’s original intention.
e. They work at cleaning and restoring the vivid colors.
f. They study the work and the painter so that they can carefully get it back to what it once was - they work so that people can see the original in all its glory.
3. Humanity too is the work of an artist – a divine artist, God Himself.
a. Humankind is God’s masterpiece – the pinnacle of His work of creation.
b. Genesis tells us that when he looked at the people He had made, God declared that we are “very good.” (Gen. 1:31)
c. So identity is not for us to create.
d. It sounds very freeing to say, “You can become who you want to be,” but our actual identity, in that way of thinking, is completely invented, and therefore fluid, and therefore profoundly unstable.
e. It’s no wonder that in our culture so many individuals suffer from an identity crisis.
f. Perhaps that explains the profound insecurity and anxiety of many young people.
g. When I was at school, the biggest decision I had to make was what classes to take.
h. Now teenagers are having to consider how to define their sexuality and gender.
E. Let’s consider God’s creation of humankind in more detail.
1. The Bible says in Genesis 1: 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Gen. 1:27-28)
a. God created both male and female equal in their opportunity to relate to God as His image bearers, and equal in their call to rule over God’s world.
b. Additionally, we note that there are two distinct biological sexes with their inherent gender identities – male and female, and each plays different roles in being fruitful, multiplying and filling the earth.
c. Men and women are different, but are always complementary.
2. Then in Genesis 2, we have an expanded account of how God first created the man and then created the woman from the side of man.
a. The Bible says: 18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”… 21 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 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.” 24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. (Gen. 2:18, 21-24)
b. Here we see God further developing the role distinctions of male and female as head and helper – the male head serving as the primary protector, provider and leader in servant-hearted love, and the female helper supporting, following and complementing his lead.
c. This family structure provides not only the paradigm for marriage, but the building block for the church and for society.
d. Just as God stands as head over His creation and His creatures, so we must reflect God’s order as male and female in our complementary roles and relationships.
F. To the level that we flatten the inborn distinctions between maleness and femaleness, we flatten the distinctions between the sovereign savior and the saved.
1. We take glory away from God when we act as though distinctions between men and women are non-existent, or unimportant.
2. That’s why we see in God’s commands a clear distinction between men and women.
3. Deut. 22:5 says: A woman shall not wear a man's garment, nor shall a man put on a woman’s cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God. (strong language)
4. 1 Corinthians 11, Paul spends a lot of time explaining God’s order of things and although it is a difficult passage to understand because some of the cultural details of the 1st century, the principles are clear.
a. In verse 3, Paul explains that there is an order of authority: But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.
b. Then Paul goes on to explain that there is to be a clear distinction between men and women, concluding in verses 14 and 15: Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair it is a disgrace for him, but if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For her hair is given to her for a covering.
c. While the way men and women dress and conduct themselves will vary from culture to culture, the principle of men looking like men and women looking like women remains the same – there should be no intentional gender ambiguity in God’s design and in His people.
5. I wish I had more time to lead us through other verses in the NT that teach us to maintain role distinctions between men and women, like Paul instructing Titus to make sure young people live out their gender role related to their God-given sex (Titus 2:2-6) and Paul instructing Timothy to interact with people in the church as fathers, brothers, mothers and sisters in all purity (1 Tim. 5:1-2), all of which assumes that we can rightly identify those who are men and those who are women.
6. In summary: God’s design and His Will has room for only two sexes – male and female – and there is to be no confusion or blurring of them.
7. Let’s quickly address the last question…
IV. How Should Christians and Churches Respond?
A. First, Let’s be quick to repent and slow to judge - Whenever we are confronted with an unbiblical lifestyle or a cultural shift that we find morally reprehensible, the church should first remember that we are a people redeemed from our own state of sinfulness.
B. Second, Let’s grieve – let’s grieve deeply over the brokenness of our culture and the depravity Satan has led so many people into and how he is holding them in his trap.
C. Third, Let’s love and care – We must be mindful of those broken by transgender identity crisis, and care deeply for the violators and the violated.
1. We need to help those struggling with transgender identity to find a new identity in Christ, and to help those who have been hurt by others find the healing and relief that only Jesus brings.
2. We must also oppose the bullying of anyone for their differences
D. Fourth, Let’s pray – Let’s pray that God will soon right all wrongs; that He will open blind eyes, and quicken hard hearts; that He will preserve His church and give us the courage to share the truth.
E. Fifth, Let’s model the God-honoring views of maleness and femaleness – Let’s model for our kids and the world what it means to lovingly live out true manliness and femaleness.
1. Let’s celebrate men being masculine and women being feminine while realizing that there can be a wide difference in interests and temperament, even while maintaining a distinction between the sexes.
2. That’s why I am excited about the American Heritage Girls and Trail Life Boys troops we have just begun.
F. Sixth, Let’s stand up for the truth in our encounters with others – we must speak with grace and conviction – most people are not repulsed by conviction, but can be deeply offended by condemnation.
1. We can make our voices known in the political process with our elected representatives.
2. And there may be some who feel led to hold positions of influence on school boards or other elected positions.
G. And finally, let’s hold out hope to those who may feel like there is no hope for them.
1. If you are experiencing gender identity issues or sexual orientation confusion, then please talk with someone you trust.
2. Grace, mercy and help are available from God and from God’s people.
H. Allow me to end with Laura’s story:
1. Laura was a single woman in her 40s. She had curves, shining blonde hair and red lipstick. She grabbed the attention of both men and women whenever she entered a room.
2. One day, while meeting with her counselor, she asked him if he could help her find a church. She hadn’t been to one in years but recently she wanted to learn more about God and what God thought about her life.
3. That conversation led Laura to try different churches. Many rejected her when they found out her story, but one church accepted her, helped her, and when she confessed her secrets, they set up a special prayer team for her.
a. Each week she wrote a letter to a group of 30 in the church who committed to pray for her.
4. As you probably guessed, Laura was not a traditional woman. Laura was a surgical woman. She was born a he.
5. Her birth name was Walt. Walt grew up distant from his parents. As a child, when he stayed at his grandmother’s, she made him wear girl clothes. His grandfather repeatedly molested him.
a. As a young man, he confessed his sexual shame and guilt to an episcopal priest and instead of helping him, the priest sexually propositioned him.
b. Thankfully Walt ran, but he didn’t just run from the priest, he ran from God.
6. Walt says that as a boy, for as long as he can remember, he always felt that deep inside he was a woman. As a young man, he repressed those feelings.
a. He married, had children, and went on to work at NASA in the Apollo program.
b. He later worked for Toyota and was part of the team that birthed the Acura car line.
7. All the guilt and sexual shame of his youth never went away. It came bursting to the surface. He could no longer deny it. Deep inside he felt he was a woman, not a man.
8. Eventually he divorced his wife and left his family.
a. Trying to be true to his inner self, he underwent sex change surgery to become a woman.
b. Even after becoming a stunning woman, he discovered it was’t all it was cracked up to be.
c. He knew something wasn’t right. He wondered what God would say to him and about his life. That is what began his mid-life search for a church.
9. As I already mentioned, a church and a minister eventually took him under their wings.
a. After listening to God’s Word and studying it, Walt repented of his sin and gave his life to Christ. God’s spirit made it unmistakably clear that God’s will for his life was to be the biological gender God assigned him at birth.
b. His struggles didn’t magically disappear. In his biography Walt describes years of wrestling with his gender identity.
c. He worked a job as one gender and lived at home as another gender, changing in the car on the way home. Even though he knew what was right he couldn’t shake his inner female gender identity.
10. God in his grace eventually helped a therapist to notice something.
a. The Walt side of him acted one way, the Laura side of him acted another way.
b. The Laura side of Walt had different hand writing and even different tastes in food than the male side of Walt.
c. Walt was diagnosed with a multiple personality disorder that developed in early childhood.
d. As a child trying to deal with the shame of molestation, his brain developed the alternate personality of a woman.
11. After years of therapy, his multiple personality disorder was solved.
a. Today he is one person. He is a man all the time – Walt Heyer is his name.
12. The amazing part of the story is as Walt grew in his faith, he eventually met and married a woman.
a. He went on to become the director of care ministries at a large church in California.
b. Even though God turned his life around, he still suffers from the results of his life-altering irreversible sex change surgery.
c. He has a letter of apology from the physician that performed the surgery asking forgiveness for performing the irreversible surgery and not digging further to discover that his identity disorder came from a psychological condition.
13. Today he runs the web site www.sexchangeregrets.com.
a. He is the author of many books that tell the other side of gender dysphoria that you don’t hear about in the media.
I. Brothers and sisters, the hope for Bruce Jenner, and for others like him in our community, is not to alter their bodies with surgery or flood their systems with hormones as they try to fix the mistake they believe God made in their physical births.
1. What they need, and what all of us need, is a new birth through Jesus Christ.
2. He is the only one that fixes what is wrong with each of us.
3. May all of us continue to surrender ourselves to God as we walk in obedience as the men and women of God as He made us.
Resources:
What Does the Bible Say About Sexuality – Transgender, by Dr. Kurt Trucksess, christ2rculture.com
Resources on transgender from bethinking.org, Vaughan Roberts
The Church and Bioethics: Gender Identity and Transgenderism, Philip Meade
Confronting the Transgender Storm: A Sermon on Deuteronomy 22:5, Jason DeRouchie, PhD.
