Transgender children

This topic is something which I find intensely distressing.  I have recently watched the SBS program ‘Insight’, which this week was devoted to transgender people.  On this program there was a seven year old boy who is now living as a girl.  He dresses as a girl and is recognised as a girl at school.  His parents say that he was hitting himself trying to make the boy come out of him.  This phenomenon is being described as having a male body and a female brain.  The parents of the child are very accepting and they said what they want is for ‘her’ to be happy.  ‘She’ is much happier as a ‘girl’ than as a boy.

My reaction to this program was one of great disquiet.  I needed to come to terms with this matter prophetically because my distress over these matters was even causing physical symptoms.  It is one thing to have adults make choices about their lives which are in opposition to what God has decreed.  “A woman shall not wear man’s clothing, nor shall a man put on a woman’s clothing; for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD your God” (Deuteronomy 22:5 NAS).  But it is another thing for a child to be led into sin.  “Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Things that cause people to sin are bound to come, but woe to that person through whom they come.  It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around his neck than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin’” (Luke 17:1-2).

There must be something in the spiritual climate of Australia (and other Western nations) which has brought about this phenomenon.  According to one of the psychologists interviewed on ‘Insight’, the number of transgender children has greatly increased over the last few years.  There are no doubt cultural reasons for this, such as acceptance of gender difference etc.  However, as mine is a prophetic discussion, I am considering what is happening in our country in terms of people’s actions before God.  There is something severely wrong spiritually in a country where children are being encouraged by parents to participate in what is abominable before God, and where this is considered to be merely part of human diversity.

Human identity before God

The Bible has much to say about male and female roles within society and marriage.  This is not, however, the direction which I intend to pursue here.  The matter which seems most pressing is that of identity.  Human beings find are created to find their identity in their Creator.

“Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”  So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen 1:26-27).

Human beings as male and female reflect the God who made them.  That humanity is made with sexual identity – male or female – means that this sexual identity is part of imaging God.  Male and female have much in common, because Eve was made by being taken out of Adam’s side (Gen 2:20-24).

Obedience to the word of God is also part of human identity.  Human beings are not merely biological entities.  They are given the breath of life from God himself, making humanity both biological and spiritual.  “The LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being” (Gen 2:7).  Adam, a living soul, was given a command in the Garden.  “And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die”” (Gen 2:16-17).

If the human beings, made in the image of God, and given the breath of life by God himself, were to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they would die.  This tree was, according to Luther, a means given to Adam to express his worship through obedience to God.[1]  The identity of humanity was therefore disrupted when Adam and Eve chose to disobey this command and to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen 3).  Instead of being people whose identity is defined by their Creator, Adam and Eve took upon themselves the knowledge of good and evil by which they desired to become gods themselves.  The serpent had lied to them saying, “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:5).

Distorted human identity and idolatry

Humanity must thereby suffer from a distorted idea of identity from that time forward.  Instead of reflecting the God who made them by acting as male and female, together obedient to the word of God, human beings became more and more sinful, as the record of Genesis makes clear.  Yet humanity cannot escape their relationship to God, although they desire to do so.  Knowledge of God is continually present to humanity in the creation, making it impossible to avoid, and yet people suppress this truth.

Romans 1:18 “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities– his eternal power and divine nature– have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”

Instead of finding human identity as male and female who together worship the Creator in Spirit and in Truth, human beings now look for their identity in idols of various kinds.

Rom 1:21 “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. 24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator– who is forever praised. Amen.”

A consequence of this idolatry is the distortion of human sexual identity.  Human thinking is now futile instead of directed by the Word of God and the Holy Spirit.  What is unnatural now seems natural.  What is truth now seems to be false and what is false now seems to be true.  Paul writes that one such manifestation of distorted identity is homosexual behaviour.  This, however, is not the only possible manifestation of distorted human identity.  Gender dysphoria, that is, a condition in which “people whose gender at birth is contrary to the one they identify”[2], is the psychological description of what is happening in transgender people.  This distortion of gender identity is no doubt another result of human rejection of the living God in favour of idols.  When human beings reject their true identity as people made in the image of God there can be no alternative identity except that founded on idol worship.  Yet this identity, being false, cannot ever satisfy the need of the human heart for a true identity.

That our society is so manifestly lacking identity must mean that our culture, like the individuals who make it up, has been given over by God to this idolatry and its consequent sinful quest for identity in the wrong places.

Rom 1:26 “Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. 28 Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.”

Not only is this shameful loss of identity rampant in our culture, it is increasingly approved as being part of the diversity of human biology.  This increasing approval of what God finds abhorrent in our culture is, I believe, the reason why there are now so many transgender children appearing in the media.  The fact that our society is happy to cause even small children to sin in this way implies that something is amiss, not merely in our culture, but in the church.

A confusion in the church about identity

What is amiss in the church is that the church is also confused about its identity.  Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians gives us a picture of a church which was similarly confused about their identity as people of God.  In chapter 6 Paul rebukes the church for taking church disputes before the secular magistrates.  The Corinthians had forgotten that they were saints who would participate in the judgment of the world (6:3).  They had forgotten that they were the sons of God, and therefore brothers and sisters in Christ (6:8).  They had forgotten the redemption of God and were behaving like people of the world.  Paul exhorts them:

“Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders, nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.  And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor 6:9-11).

The church are not the wicked, not the sexually immoral, not idolaters, not adulterers, not male prostitutes, not homosexual offenders.  They are not people with a distorted sexual identity.  Now, this does not mean that Christians never experience sin and that anyone who commits these particular sins cannot be part of the kingdom of God.  Do not be confused about what Paul is saying here.  He is making a statement about Christian identity.  We are not people whose identity is wickedness.  That was what we were.  But our identity is now different.  The Christian identity is of people who have been washed in the blood of Christ, sanctified by the Holy Spirit, and justified by the work of Christ.  As such we are not given over hopelessly to sin and depravity.  Sin and depravity no longer define us.

There are many statements in the New Testament about what we once were.  We were powerless sinners who were God’s enemies (Rom 5:6, 8, 10).  We were slaves to sin and unable to be righteous (Rom 6:20) who bore fruit for death (Rom 7:5).  As godless pagans we were idol worshippers who were directed by our idols (1 Cor 12:2).  We were enslaved by the elemental principles of the world and slaves to that which is not god (Gal 4:3, 8).  We were dead in trespasses and sins (Eph 2:1) and separated from Christ and the covenants of God (Eph 2:12).  We were people in the dark (Eph 5:8) who were estranged from God (Col 1:21).  And we were once “not a people” (1 Pet 2:10).  These are all true statements about the people of Australia who are without Christ at this time.  It is the last statement which sums up all the rest.  Australians are “not a people”.  They have no identity and are all seeking to gain an identity.  This seeking manifests in a great variety of ways, but the basis of all these behaviours is the fundamental idolatry which is the character of a culture that has rejected God.  And indeed our culture has rejected God in a profound way.

But what of the church?  Surely the church has not rejected the God who has created us and from whom we must derive our identity.  And yet the symptoms of ignorance of identity are present, in that the church behaves like people who do not know who they are.  Like the Corinthians there is flagrant sin, lack of unity, discord in marriage, lack of giving, etc.  Other symptoms in the Australian church are a lack of prayer and a lack of Bible reading.  These are signs of a people who do not know who they are.

In the epistles there are many statements about Christian identity.  It is these which are the basis for Christian conduct.  An example should suffice:

“What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.”  ”Therefore come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.”  ”I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.”  Since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God” (2 Cor 6:16-7:1).

Christian identity results in Christian conduct.  Because you are children of God, act like children of God.  If we fail to act like children of God it is likely because we are unsure of who we actually are.  People who lack an identity act without direction and purpose.  Given the connection between identity and action, if the church acts like the world, which in many respects it does, then we must assume that people in the church are unaware of or confused about their identity in relation to God.

The identity of Jesus

Jesus was aware of his own identity as the Son of the Father from an early age.  He told his worried parents, who had lost him on their trip to Jerusalem, “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” (Luke 2:49).  He exhorted his disciples to act like God in order to be sons of their Father in heaven (Matt 5:45).  He addressed God has Father (Matt 7:21; 10:32; 11:25; 16:17 etc).  Jesus always acted like the Son of the Father, only doing and saying that which his Father commanded (John 5:17-19; 5:36; 6:57 etc).  The identity of Jesus was never in doubt to Jesus, even if others were unable to understand who he is.  Even in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus still understood his identity as the Son of the Father.  “”Abba, Father,” he said, “everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will”” (Mark 14:36).

Yet, Jesus experienced a loss of identity on the cross.  When Jesus became sin for our sakes (2 Cor 5:21) he experienced what it is to be a sinner under the wrath of God.  “And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”– which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”” (Mark 15:34).  At this point Jesus lost the knowledge of his Sonship.  He no longer calls God Father, but must speak of God in the general sense.  The loss of intimacy with the Father is a loss of knowing his own self.  Jesus lost his identity on the cross.  His identity is as the Son of God, the Son of the Father.  But at this point in Jesus’ passion, he is devoid of knowledge of who he is in relation to the Father.  He is as a sinner without the identity which comes in relation to God.

It is because of this loss of identity upon the cross that Jesus has enabled us to have a true identity as people of God.  Everything which sinners experience as a consequence of their sin was dealt with by the cross and resurrection of Jesus.  When Jesus rose from the dead he was declared to be the Son of God in power by the Holy Spirit (Rom 1:4).  He thus entered into the fullness of Sonship, which is in fact the fullness of his identity as a person.  The sinner’s loss of identity before God is thus undone in the person of the crucified and risen Christ.  All those are in Christ have received a renewed identity before God as sons of God (John 1:12-13).

Conclusion

If our society is to regain any sense of direction then the church must come to understand who she is in relation to the Father.  Believers must know that they are sons of God in Christ.  This is the message of the gospel and the gospel must be faithfully proclaimed in the church.

What the church needs to understand is that the words of the Father to Jesus at his baptism – “You are my Son in whom I am well pleased” – are, by virtue of our union with Christ through the Spirit, applicable to believers.  We are the sons of the living God.  We are not a people who lack an identity.  Because of what Jesus has done in his death, in losing his identity, and in his resurrection by solidifying his identity (Rom 1:4) as Son of God, we have been given an identity which cannot be taken away.  The church needs to know her own identity before the culture in which we live can ever be delivered from its lostness and lack of identity.  Only then can the matter of children with gender dysphoria ever be addressed in a meaningful way.