We are all sinners, none of us are «freaks»: Christian beliefs in the age of transgenderism

In addition to the debate over gender-inclusive restrooms, the transgender movement is gaining momentum, with support from both major political parties in the United States. It poses a number of questions for Christians, whether they are ready for it or not, that we need to explore.

To understand the core beliefs that underlie the transgender movement, it is necessary to pay attention to new ways of defining and reimagining human nature. We hear this in personal stories, such as the best-selling book by Charles Mock, now Janet Mock, titled «Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love, and So Much More.».

Mock’s transformation story begins with a preface that makes it clear that words like «nature» or «natural» will not be used in the book, especially when it comes to people who don’t feel a disconnect between their biological sex and their chosen gender expression. Mock notes that «cisgender» will become a substitute for what might previously have been mistakenly called natural.

The new definition of gender is also coming from the mouths of judges in their ceremonial robes. Last summer, when the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in America, Justice Anthony Kennedy observed: «Restricting marriage to opposite-sex couples may have long seemed natural and just, but its inconsistency with the core meaning of the fundamental right to marry is now apparent» (Obergefell).

In short, now heterosexual marriage, even if it was natural, now "seemed natural" only to a narrow-minded and long-gone era.

For most judges and for Mock, the redefinition of marriage and reality begins with the erasure of any objective references to naturalness. And here Christians face a problem of terminology. This is not just a dispute about semantics.

In response, five core Christian beliefs in the transgender era can be identified.

1. Natural design, not tradition, is the solid basis for universal morality

Contrary to what Judge Kennedy said, when it comes to sexual practices and understanding of biological sex, nature is a reliable guide to follow, not a social construct to ignore. According to the apostle Paul, our concerns are not ideological or political—they are a matter of idolatry. The departure from God manifests itself in the distortion of natural patterns of sexuality, which is especially expressed in the distortion of biological sex:

«For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions: for their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones; and likewise also the men, leaving natural relations with women, burned in their passion for one another, men with men committing shameful acts and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their immorality» (Rom. 1:26–27).

For Paul, homosexual relations are «unnatural»—literally, «against nature.» At its core, the misuse of sexuality is a consequence of idolatry, but the obvious fallacy of this is that it encourages the use of gender for unnatural sexual relations. Such abuse of creation is rebellion against the Creator.

«"The strength of the Judeo-Christian view of sexuality lies not in its 'traditionality' but in its 'naturalness'.".

The natural design is a solid foundation for objective Christian morality. For Paul, the strength of the Judeo-Christian understanding of sexual relations lies not in their "traditionality" but in their "naturalness," which is rooted in universal and undeniable patterns of physical creation. Marriage cannot be created in a union between transgender or same-sex couples.

This truth—that God has placed sexuality within the gift of marriage—raises more questions than answers. So we continue to explore this issue.

2. Divine the idea of gender and sexual behavior is subordinated to the unchanging pattern of procreation

The Apostle Paul’s argument against homosexual practices is fundamental and has an ethical basis that becomes the cornerstone of all Christian thinking about the transgender revolution. However, as he deepens his principles, Paul organizes all human sexuality and gender expression according to the possibilities of procreation. Homosexual relations violate the natural pattern and are therefore unnatural.

God could have created the process of human reproduction in many other ways, but He chose only one: two physically mature people, with complementary sexes and unique DNA, form a new family unit and give birth to a child of the same human likeness, who upon conception receives its own unique DNA and one of two sexes, while inheriting the characteristics and likeness of both parents.

One couple, following the example of millions of other couples throughout history, creates a family unit. Following the natural pattern, marriage calls men and women to abandon immature, selfishly motivated casual sexual relations and move on to a self-sacrificing life as sexual beings living within the framework of God’s natural design.

This biological design of the family has a global significance, responding to the call to be image-bearers of God, to care for the created world. This is the call to procreation. And procreation requires marriage, bisexuality, and human sexuality (Gen. 1:27–28). This is a natural pattern that must be followed for the prosperity of the world.

«"God could have designed the process of human reproduction in a million other ways, but he chose only one.".

In this global plan, family unity is sustained through sexuality. «A married couple does not come to know each other through casual moments or one-time sexual intercourse,» writes ethicist Oliver O’Donovan. «Their moments of sexual union are focal points for a physical relationship that spans the entire span of their lives together.» Sexuality strengthens the monogamous bond and deepens the couple’s commitment as they accept the gift of children. Sexuality is not only a means of procreation but also a covenant creation for one couple that provides the best conditions for raising children. This is the Creator’s beautiful design and purpose. Nature calls for it.

«What marriage can do that other relationships cannot is to reveal the goodness of biological nature, bringing it to a teleological consummation in personal relationships,» O’Donovan writes. «Other relationships, however important and however rich in intimacy and fidelity, do not reveal the meaning of biological nature in this way. They float on the surface, like oil on water, remaining in physical form but not growing out of it.».

Biological sex, ordered according to God's creation, roots our bodies in the deepest and closest relationships He intended.

This ordering of biology maintains a natural pattern even in cultures where God’s design for marriage is distorted or rejected, even by court decisions. Despite human decrees, biological nature follows a pattern that continually renews humanity. «Individual cultures may distort this pattern; individuals may fall short of it. But it costs them dearly in both cases, for this pattern continually reaffirms itself as God’s creative design for human relationships on earth, and it will be with us in some form or another as our natural good» (O’Donovan).

3. Biological sex weaves us into the larger fabric of nature: past, present, and future

A major misconception in the discussion of transgenderism is that a person’s identity is defined, even in opposition, by the biological facts of transition. Transgender stories are based on the personal right to interrupt one’s biological human identity in the middle of one’s life story. Once the decision to transition is made, reality changes: one gender is considered authentic and the other is not.

At this stage, acknowledging the biology of transition is seen as devaluing the individual and is perceived as anti-trans rhetoric bordering on transphobia. For example, when journalist Piers Morgan said that Janet Mock was «formerly a man» and «was a boy until she was 18,» it sparked outrage from her on Twitter.

In simpler terms, Mock’s body developed naturally into adulthood with functioning genitals, which were later removed and surgically transformed into a sterile vagina. This may seem inconvenient, but it reflects a biological fact of her story—a fact that, when recalled, undermines the new identity and narrative.

According to God's design for procreation, biological nature is designed to root our identity in a larger bodily history—past, present, and future.

First, biological sex roots our present identity in past nature. «The body is not only an integral part of the human person; it is also the medium of human sociality and solidarity with the rest of material creation» (Bockem and Hart). The body defines our identity, connects us socially, and harmonizes us with the created order that exists outside of us. Because we are made from the dust of the earth, our bodies are biologically integrated into the past history of creation.

However, biological sex also roots our identity in the future of nature.

«"Sexual gender and practice weave our lives into a much larger, organic, created order that unfolds in history.".

If God's plan for human sexuality places us within a larger material history, then this not only means that this plan led to our existence, but also points to the future that lies ahead of us.

Biological sex places us in the order of nature, writes Alistair Roberts. Our physical sex «indicates our connection and belonging to the natural world outside us, a world with which we are meant to harmonize, and for which our bodies exist.» Our bodies are oriented toward a future that transgender ideas often seek to disrupt.

«Accepting the masculinity and femininity of our bodies and the natural relationship between man and woman involves recognizing that our bodies are not our property, but serve natural human goods, create greater realities, and express meaning that goes beyond ourselves.» In this relationship between man and woman, there is a natural opening to realities that go beyond their own.

Sexual practice and gender do not end with our personal preferences or autonomous identities; they weave our lives into a much larger, organic, created order that unfolds in history. This means that the birth of a child is not an unwanted disruption of sexual expression; on the contrary, the child is the fulfillment of a purpose—the final moment of the gift of human sexuality, completing the created design and ordering the entire sphere of social relations.

The key word here is «order.» When marriage produces and receives a child, the pattern of human sexuality demonstrates its order, and from this order flows all other sexual ethics.

But the transgender narrative attempts to achieve «freedom» by breaking off the biological drama halfway.

«Detached from these overarching processes and realities,» says Roberts, “sexuality and gender become properties of an abstract individual, no longer part of a larger drama, the author of his own autonomous narrative of self-realization, achieved through self-projection rather than genuine participation.”.

It is in this realm that the battle for the purpose of gender is waged. Transgender impulses separate men and women from the material past and the material future, amputating sexually active beings from true participation in that pattern. They oppose nature.

4. Given the limits and purposes of nature, biological sex cannot be transplanted

Biological sex and its associated gender identity are physical and psychological mysteries that would be difficult to explain if they were not so natural and universal. Puberty, menstruation, hormones, wet dreams, orgasms, feelings of attraction, falling in love, dating, waiting, marriage, sex, procreation, labor pains, the seasons of married life, raising children, and parenthood are all gender-specific experiences that are part of a single pattern, yet are composed of many elements experienced uniquely by men or women in their bodies within the framework of a shared sexual expression.

You cannot change your gender in the middle of your biological history because your gender includes how you have physically perceived the world since the beginning of life. At the chromosomal level, our biological gender has a long history of development in how we perceive the world as creatures.

«When we talk about transsexuals, they have a very unusual relationship with their bodies,» says Roberts. “For example, transsexuals don’t have a uterus, they don’t have a menstrual cycle, they don’t have a biological clock—they don’t have that relationship with their bodies that shapes their bodies. They’re not commanded to procreate. So they’re not part of the overall scheme. In many ways, it’s a feminization of the male body, but it’s still male, so it’s more like a dead end. So you’re not getting anywhere.”.

Even a uterus transplanted into a man's body will never replace all the formative biological experiences of true womanhood.

In other words, according to the creation model, chromosomes cannot be reworked, deleted, or erased from the software of our bodies. A «trans woman» may be able to «pass» as a woman on a visual level, but a man cannot transform into a biological woman with all the experiences and functions of natural femininity. There is no biological narrative. While medical advances allow us to suppress or alter some of the external features of our bodies, and to change the way we speak and dress, it is impossible to dismantle our bodies and rebuild them without simultaneously reducing all the important formative experiences that make biological sexual expression and gender authentic.

«"Fertile and functioning genitals transformed into disabled genitals is not progress of humanity, it is a mutilation of nature.".

«A »trans woman« can grow long hair, wear high heels, and inject estrogen into her body. A »trans man” can cut his hair short and inject testosterone into his body. All of this is an active opposition to the body’s internal programs. Unable to decipher ourselves from the genetics of our physical development, we are forced to rebuild anatomical aesthetics and force ourselves in a direction that contradicts nature.

The fact remains: «People who undergo sex reassignment surgery do not transform from male to female or vice versa» (McHugh). A woman’s connection to her female body, which unfolds in long stages throughout her life, cannot be recreated in a male body. A 20-year-old male body cannot become a female body through castration, resulting in a reconstructed vagina.

Fertile and functioning genitals transformed into disabled genitals are not human progress but a mutilation of nature. The act of surgical intervention renders the body denaturalized and now incapable of fitting into the larger constructed template for which it was intended. Medical technology has been called upon to resurrect the body from male to female, and the best it can physically construct is something akin to an artificial eunuch.

5. By resisting the transgender revolution, we restore the dignity of the natural order

The most vocal opponents of environmental pollution fall silent when it comes to technological attempts to denaturalize the human body. But these realities are not isolated. «The modern domination and abuse of the natural world is not, as is often claimed, the result of traditional Christian alienation, but rather the result of modern humanity’s acceptance of godlike power over the world»—and, in particular, godlike power over the human body (Bockham and Hart).

If transgenderism is an attempt to alleviate the perceived disharmony between body and soul—a spirit trapped in an ill-fitting body—then the hope of salvation relies on medical technology to make it happen. This false hope poses two big cultural questions for which Christians have answers.

First: are we creatures or machines?

This pressing question has two different outcomes. If we are creatures, we have purpose and meaning in our natural existence—but we also have natural limitations and boundaries. If we are machines, writes Russell Moore, «we believe in a Faustian myth about our unlimited power to reproduce ourselves.» To protect our humanity, we must guard ourselves against those technological possibilities that violate our nature.

Nature must always be protected from our technology, and our bodies with boundaries, for without these boundaries we wield divine technological powers over ourselves (and within ourselves), becoming our own creators—our own techno-replicators.

Second: can we escape from our biological body into another?

The Christian opposition to transtechnology is rooted in an ancient debate. Confronted with the transgender advocates and prophets of our age, we must understand that the divide between body and soul, body and mind, material and immaterial is an ancient conversation for Christians. For millennia, Christians have grappled with the fully divine and fully human nature of the incarnate Christ, and in these debates, the church has faced waves of ideological predecessors who have sought to reimagine the human body in their own ways.

The Church struggled with the Docetic ideology, which claimed that the physical body was merely a projection of the spirit.

The Church struggled with Manichaean and Flacian ideology, which claimed that the source of evil was in the material world and the physical body.

The Church struggled with Gnostic ideology, which claimed that the spirit was good and the material body was evil from which to flee.

Simply put, «the idea that we are men locked in women’s bodies, or women locked in men’s bodies, destroys the distinction between sex and gender and flirts with a gnostic, even docetic, indifference to bodily reality» (Vanhueser).

In these ancient lies, we hear echoes of modern transgender advocates:

• «"My body is fake.".
• «"My body is not the real me.".
• «"My body is a plastic and malleable projection of my mind.".

The church is ready to meet these anti-natural ideologies with a biblically informed theology, but also with an attention to natural design.

«"Medical technology is a false hope for those who feel trapped in an ill-fitting body.".

«It is not as if God created «persons» who simply have a male or female appearance» (Smith). No, there is a much deeper reality at work here. Biological sex is neither a physical prison from which the spirit must escape, nor is the body simply a mirage, a projection of the mind’s preferences. We cannot abandon our biological past, nor can we remake our material future. Our physical body, however broken and fallen, remains a gift to be received, embraced, and used in accordance with the Creator’s design in nature. In this age, the church stands in defense of the physical structures of our lives and resists the technologically based hopes of a posthuman cyborg self.

Broken, but the pattern continues

To be a creature made by another is a wondrous and mysterious thing. Yet to be a creature is also a fearful and dangerous thing. Because we cannot disregard the Creator’s creative will regarding gender, gender becomes a battleground in the conflict between the Creator’s will and the rebellious desires of His creation. We have developed a culture in which natural categories are relativized, and we are continually reassured of how «trans, bi, poly-ambi-omni» we are (Morris).

In this culture, heterosexual marriage honors and celebrates God's design for nature. The process of creating life is about advancing human flourishing and ordering all human sexual practices, helping us to draw the line between what is natural and what is unnatural.

This does not mean that every adult is obligated to marry and start a family. Many will be called to a lifelong single life, like Christ incarnate—and they are no less human for it. Some single people may struggle with same-sex attraction, while others may struggle with the pain of gender dysphoria. The church should be a welcoming place for brothers and sisters who are willing to care for them through their real pain and potential lifelong celibacy (for those who may never find a way of sexual expression that honors the Creator’s design). This is a real struggle, and Christians know better than anyone else that nature is broken.

Not everything works the way it should (especially for those born intersex).

Yet even with this brokenness of nature, with men born with biological ambiguity and even approaching intersexuality, the established template of binary sexuality remains certain and true (Matt. 19:1–12).

For those who are not celibate, the Creator calls for freedom of sexual expression within the confines of heterosexual marriage. The most intimate expressions of their gender in marriage find purpose as the couple welcomes new life, with all the fears, uncertainties, and mysteries of procreation.

This union, which is intended to embrace the other, is not threatened by the ethnic or class differences between man and woman. The natural pattern is not disrupted or threatened by adoption, temporary «birth control,» or even the tragic reality of infertility. For those who marry in this fallen world and seek to follow the Creator’s pattern of heterosexual monogamy, many will discover the brokenness of nature after marriage in order to welcome biological children into the world, but will find that they cannot do so. The grief of infertility does not invalidate marriage.

Nature is broken, but the pattern continues.

Sinners, not freaks

Eighty-eight years ago, G. K. Chesterton said, «These are the days when a Christian is expected to praise every creed but his own.» Today, we are offered a multitude of creeds that oblige us to participate in the celebration of the sexual revolution. One such creed is the creed of the French deconstructivist Jacques Derrida: «There is no nature, there are only the effects of nature.».

As a Church, we cannot so easily accept the dichotomy between sex and gender, we cannot reject natural laws, and we cannot celebrate human autonomy. But we can (and must) love. We empathize with those who, like Mock, live with painful memories of past sexual abuse. We care for those who feel the pain of gender dysphoria in their bodies. But into this broken world we also speak. We offer hope. We point forward to the resurrection of bodies that is yet to come.

«"We cannot reject natural laws, and we cannot celebrate human autonomy, but we can love.".

Until that great day when our bodies are transformed into things we cannot yet imagine (1 John 3:2), we will hold to our own creed: there is nature, there is anti-nature, and we are all sinners, each with our own brokenness. We are all in desperate need of grace to restore the nature of our bodies. Sexual expression is a loaded gun given to us for a good purpose, and it is directed by the law of nature. When this law is ignored, the consequences on a personal and social level are inevitable.

«As Christians, all we can do is express what we believe: that we are all sinners, and that none of us are freaks,» writes Russell Moore. «We must recognize that we are all called to repentance, and part of that repentance is to embrace the gender God created us with, even when it is difficult.».