When HELPING HELPS
THE GENDER STRUGGLE
Liam is fifteen and faces many of the common struggles we would expect; the pressure to do well in school, navigating the complex hierarchy of freshman-year friendships, and the push to do the most recent, dangerous Tik Tok challenge. These and many more pressures don’t get his full attention because one pressure is heavier than all - his body. He’s bothered by his voice cracking when he projects. His new facial and body hair is thicker and darker - stealing his favorite feature about himself, his skin. He feels like he is living in a stranger’s house, a place that should be familiar and comfortable, yet is anything but.
He is still using his birth name and male pronouns. He also has no clue as to how he is going to address his bodily discomfort. He is not prepared to make decisions about puberty blockers or hormone treatments. He just knows he doesn’t want the path his body is on to continue.
Liam is grateful for his extended family. When they get together for dinners and holidays, he looks around the room and does not see himself in any of his uncles or cousins. These family events make him the most uncomfortable because it is the one place he knows he should feel at ease. So, the distance between his cousins and himself continues to grow.
His parents' hearts are torn and hanging out of their chests. Dad wants to help his son embrace his new identity and transition. Mom wants to wait and see if this is a phase her baby boy is going through. When mom or dad is alone with Liam, they each share their perspective and warn Liam not to tell the other parent because of a potential “freak out.” When Liam is not around the parents, they fight about how to help their son.
Amid their pain and looking for something to hold them together on this journey, Liam and his parents get out of the car and walk up the four steps out front. They are greeted at the door by the hospitality team. They walk quickly through the double doors with their heads down, holding a bucket of anxiety in one hand and a thimble of hope in the other. The family takes a seat at the 10:00 a.m. worship gathering. Now what? How do you serve this family? How does the Good News of Jesus help Liam?
WHAT NOT TO DO
Let’s begin by addressing three common mistakes Christians make, birthed out of oversimplifying the matter.
First, don’t give in to the lie of empathy-based morality and tell Liam, this is just who you are, and we want to encourage you while you transition your gender. As we explored in When Helping Hurts, this approach offers no real hope and actually harms.
Second, prayer is the critical foundation for ministering to this family, but don’t naively think that this family's challenges and pain can be fixed with a quick trip to the altar.
Third, this family is not “those people” - the empathy-based moralists who relegate the teachings of scripture to a meme of ignorance. Given the ongoing assault on scriptural teachings on sexuality and gender by mainstream culture, it's no surprise that we find ourselves instinctively taking a defensive posture. But Liam and his parents are not at your church to wave the latest iteration of the Pride flag. They are there to discover if the church has something that could help their family navigate the struggle their son is facing. Interacting with this family is not an opportunity to score a point against the other side!
These three common mistakes ignore the complexity of the issues this family is experiencing and could push them away from the Gospel.
WE ARE DISORDERED
We can have a solid foundation in our relationship with Liam by helping him see we are in the boat with him. We learn from Genesis 1-2 that God’s Creation was a perfect and harmonious order designed by God. It was a place of ultimate health, where neither sickness nor death had any hold. Adam and Eve, the first human beings, were the peak of this perfection, created in God's very image and likeness. Their bodies were perfect representations of God’s personal design, with every cell, every piece of DNA, flawlessly constructed and functioning. There was no genetic disease, harmful mutations, degradation, or entropy. The world and the Human body were ordered.
Then we see in Genesis 3:1-15 that the first humans reject God’s ordered world and use their free will to re-order it. Specifically, they wanted to re-order who was in control of knowledge. This story marks the Fall of humanity in the biblical narrative leading to significant consequences for themselves and all of humanity.
We learn the results of their rejecting God’s order in Genesis 3:16-19. Childbirth became disordered to include pain. The ground became disordered with a lack of productivity. The addition of toil, disordered work. The crops were disordered with thorns and thistles. And what is significant to Liam and us is the human body became susceptible to illness, decay, and death. As Psalm 90:10 so poetically words it, “Seventy years are given to us! Some even live to eighty. But even the best years are filled with pain and trouble; soon they disappear, and we fly away.”
In the broader ecological context, the world groaned under this new disorder. What was meant to be a harmonious balance of life became a struggle for survival. Disease, predation, and natural disasters came into existence, reflecting the broken state of Creation. Romans 8:22 says, "For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.”
Romans 8:23b reminds us, “..we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering.” Our DNA, the blueprint of life, is no longer safeguarded from error and corruption. Mutations occur, leading to a host of genetic disorders and diseases. Our bodies are constantly fighting against viruses, bacteria, and internal malfunctions.
1 in every 1,900 babies are born with an arm or a leg that is not fully developed - disordered. 1 out of 700 are born with an extra chromosome - disordered. 1 in every 200 children is born with a structural heart problem - disordered. Adam and Eve’s disordering has affected our bodies and minds. Gluttony, wrath, laziness, and selfishness are just a few of our innate desires due to the mind virus introduced by Adam and Eve. Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder, and Early Onset Alzheimers are all believed to have a genetic component.
We recognize when something is disordered. When we encounter someone in their 50s who has memory loss that affects their daily life, has new problems speaking and writing, and has severe struggles with remembering locations and how they arrived; we can see the disorder of Early Onset Alzheimers. We can watch a teenage girl who is skin and bones refuse to eat because she believes she is fat, and we can know she has an eating disorder. We can look at a baby born with a missing hand and see that this is not how God designed this child.
We are in the same boat with Liam because, although his specific gender identity struggle is not our struggle, we can reassure him that we are living with the brokenness handed to us by the Fall in Genesis 3. We can show him that we have had to find our identity - not in our self-sufficiency, race, gender, or sexual preferences - but as God’s beloved.
THE HOPE
“We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us. We were given this hope when we were saved.” The Apostle Paul assures the Christian that our disordered bodies and minds will one day be re-ordered to God’s design. In 2 Corinthians 4:7-10, he writes, “We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves. We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair… Through suffering, our bodies continue to share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies.”
Apostle Paul acknowledges our physical bodies – the "jars of clay" – are weak and breakable, yet they carry a great treasure. That treasure is the life of Jesus Christ within us, made evident by the work of the Holy Spirit. Despite our unhealthy desires and disorders, God uses our lives for His glory.
Paul encourages us to lead sanctified lives even in our brokenness. We do this by relying on God's strength rather than our own, allowing His power to be made perfect in our weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9). When we live this way, we reflect Christ in our lives, showing the world that our hope and strength come from Him, not from our physical abilities or circumstances. We are reminded that sanctification is a work of God's grace in us. Even in our broken bodies, we are called to live holy lives, set apart for God's purposes.
BORN FROM ABOVE
In John 3, it was a humbling experience for Nicodemus to have Jesus tell him, a respected and leading religious teacher whose life was considered perfectly ordered, that he needed to be “born from above.” The Fall distorted his physical and spiritual life; it was time to be born of water and spirit.
This was offensive because it would be a misunderstanding to think that Jesus was merely suggesting to Nicodemus that he add a dash of spirituality to his life or simply adhere to the Ten Commandments. What Jesus said was more radical - acknowledging that who we are in our fallen bodies is inadequate. His point wasn't about striving harder but becoming an entirely new creation. Nicodemus needed a transformed self, a reborn identity.
When Liam says he is transgendered, we will gently point out that God has created each of us. However, we shouldn’t attribute every impulse or innate desire we possess to God. Sin has disordered us. Sare not a sign of how God created us. It is a sign of how the fall has distorted our thinking.
Our intuitions and emotions don't necessarily reveal the individuals God intended us to be. Jesus imparts a difficult truth to all of us, stating that our birth in this flawed world doesn't align perfectly with His divine design. Certain traits or tendencies, no matter how intrinsic or long-standing they may seem, do not accurately represent the essence
One of the most difficult things Jesus said was, “Take up your cross and follow me.” Following Jesus is not a journey of becoming less ourselves and denying our identity. It is denying your distorted identity and becoming the you Jesus had in mind, his beloved child.
ATTITUDES THAT HELP
Like us all, Liam and his family are created by God, marred by sin, and of inestimable worth. It would be terrible if they rejected Jesus based on a misconception about the church and the Gospel. We are made to correct their misperceptions by our actions and our words.
Make every effort to give no one a reason to think you are hateful or intolerant. Don’t allow these issues to become pet irritations for you. Remain steadfast in upholding the truth as revealed to us by Jesus. At the same time, strive to be among the most compassionate, considerate, and empathetic individuals, even when engaging with those who hold vastly differing views. Pray to be filled with the spirit of Jesus.
In your posture of conversing with those with whom you disagree, take your cue from the Apostle Paul, who called himself “the worst of all sinners.” If you remain amazed that God loves even you, it will be easier to give help that actually helps Liam and his family. May their relationship with you and your church help them approach their current challenge with a thimble of anxiety and a bucket of hope!
©2023 Greg McNichols, All rights reserved.