What’s the Best Way to be Loving?

Last week I visited Episcopal Divinity School in Massachusetts to attend a workshop and panel discussion entitled “The Gender Continuum: Deconstructing the Myth of Binary Gender.”

As you might expect, it featured theological revisionism and some downright crazy ideas about sex and gender. You can read my coverage by clicking here. At one point in the workshop, the discussion leader asked if any of the approximately 25 people in the room knew that they were truly male or female. I was the only one to raise my hand!

The message of the workshop was simple: accept a radical redefinition of gender from male/female and embrace a wide continuum of gender types. If you insist that God made you male or female, you are complicit in the death of those who commit suicide from despair at having to conform to a pre-defined gender role.

That’s a blunt request. It assumes that gender confusion cannot be resolved in ways other than affirming an individual’s self-chosen gender identity. It also argues that those who challenge the workshop’s theme are perpetrators of injustice.

About half of the participants identified themselves as transgender. This wasn’t my first time covering a transgender event – in 2008 I attended a bizarre picnic during the United Methodist General Conference that was hosted by the group Affirmation, United Methodism’s unofficial transgender caucus. The following year, I covered a transgender panel discussion in Washington, D.C., at the Human Rights Campaign’s Clergy Call event.

Biblically orthodox believers can be excused for assuming that transsexuals are in the same “boat” as homosexuals – but that’s an oversimplification. Unlike the many homosexual events that I have covered for IRD, the transsexual events have an air of sadness about them rather than anger. These are astoundingly troubled people who often struggle with immense pains in their personal backgrounds. Unlike much of the rest of humanity, they have their “dirty laundry” on display for all to see, inviting judgment.

So how are Christians to relate to transsexuals? Do we confront their delusion, possibly compounding their pain, or do we ignore their gender identity confusion and hope that something in our lives will convict them?

In James 5, we are told, “Remember this: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of his way will save him from death and cover over a multitude of sins.” We are charged with loving others, even if that love is about speaking an uncomfortable truth.

Despite the presence of this workshop on the campus of Episcopal Divinity School, little was said about the biblical view of gender. Both the Old and New Testaments are clear. Genesis 1:27 says, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” Christ later quotes this verse when arguing against divorce. In Matthew 19:4 he notes, “Haven’t you read that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female?’” This is also seen in Mark 10:6.

This is not about cherry-picking verses that conform to our pre-determined position. God creates man and woman to complement each other — something repeatedly seen in the biblical narrative. Their biological sex is a reality and a gift. It is not fluid or based upon human perception. In a fallen world there is much self-destructive confusion about sex and everything else. But God created every man and woman in love, and God’s love in Jesus Christ can deliver every man and woman from all our confusion and sin.

IRD covers these events to show when the church is failing. We are to speak God’s truth to a world enveloped by delusion and sin – letting that world know that healing exists for the wounded, justice exists for the unfairly treated, and that a loving Father can work all things for good.