Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say

Sometimes compassion without critical thinking can move you to do things that make a person feel good in the short run but cause harm in the long run.

In no way should we minimize the psychological difficulties that a person with one of these conditions might experience. These are ripe pastoral opportunities to embody the love and life of Jesus toward people who, for whatever reason, might feel “othered” by society (intentionally or unintentionally) or by their own self-perception of what it means to be a “real” man or woman.

If you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus. If you want to know what we are like and what we should become, look at Jesus.

To listen is to love. You can’t love without listening.

The Bible’s primary invitation to every Christian is not to act more like a man or to act more like a woman, but to act more like Jesus.

Acceptance is the first step of discipleship. And Christian discipleship is about pursuing the image God created us to be.

Jesus is building an upside-down kingdom where outcasts have their feet washed, the marginalized are welcomed, and dehumanized people feel humanized once again. Where truth is upheld, celebrated, and proclaimed. Where those who fall short of that truth are loved.

Christians are not solitary individuals called to follow Jesus on our own and demand that others do the same. We’re a community of radical misfits, called into a motley family filled with grace and truth where no one should walk alone.

we need to really get to know someone on a practical level and enter their story before we give an opinion on whether they should make a life-altering decision.

And if a trans* person comes to your church, they should be welcomed with open arms and accepted. Not just accepted, but embraced, delighted in, listened to, learned from, honored, loved, cared for, and shown the heavenly kindness saturated with compassion.

But correct science and correct theology are pointless if we’re not willing to love and honor, listen to and learn from, care for and be cared for by the trans* people God has gifted us with. Jesus cherishes them and values them. Would they say the same about you?

The thing that brought me to an acceptance of Biblical masculinity was not a poignantly laid-out exegetical argument against transsexuality nor a fire and brimstone diatribe against homosexuality but a man who gave me the space to speak about my desires openly and let me know he and God loved me nevertheless.

Genesis 1 is talking about biological sex—male and female—not what we have labeled gender identity or gender role. And it’s perfectly fine for males and females to resist cultural stereotypes as males and females.

Leaving aside the ethical question of transitioning, we need to really get to know someone on a practical level and enter their story before we give an opinion on whether they should make a life-altering decision.

Christian acceptance is always acceptance into a flawed community seeking holiness and repentance.

Paul is boldly declaring that women (who were usually treated very poorly in the first century) are given status equal to men in God’s kingdom—a beautiful statement that only makes sense if sex differences are real.25

And this is true, if by “gender” they mean biological sex. But that’s not the way the word gender is typically used today. When two people use one word in different ways, chaos ensues.

Men aren’t commanded to be masculine, and women aren’t commanded to be feminine. They’re both just commanded to be godly.

when people use the term “gender,” make sure you ask them what they mean.

it can be easy to adopt a depersonalized posture, one that forgets about the lives of real people. A posture of argumentation instead of listening. A posture of being right instead of being love.

Whatever interpretive hurdles exist, they all—on some level and to varying degrees—affirm that male and female sex distinctions are a creational good that should be honored.

It’s fundamental for discipleship—becoming more like Christ. We need to first understand who we are (ontology) before we know what it means to become who God wants us to be (discipleship). Ontology is integral to discipleship, because discipleship means living as we were designed to live—living as divine images.

If something is truly “biblical,” it needs to actually come from the Bible.

No matter what year it is, we still haven’t arrived. It’s important to keep our fallibility in mind whenever we’re tempted to overturn a biblical truth because it seems to clash with some settled perspective in science. Science is rarely settled.

Jesus’ sexed embodiment challenges the notion that biology is irrelevant to identity.

Paul is most certainly deconstructing social hierarchies associated with sex difference. But it’s unlikely that he’s doing away with sex difference itself.

Sometimes how we believe is just as important as what we believe

Better to sit down to listen and love a person before waxing eloquent on the nature of their experience.

one transgender person.” Trans* people are about as diverse as non-trans* people. What do Donald

Now, we do have to be extra cautious about making the biblical writers speak more directly to our current conversation than they intended. We have to understand what the Bible says on its own terms, in its own context, as it addresses its own situations.