Being in ministry provides leaders with a front-row seat to the good, the bad, and the ugly of people’s lives. If I’ve learned anything through the years, it’s this: Life is messy. And it doesn’t come with a nicely packaged answer to suit every occasion. Consequently, ministry requires relational finesse, the ability to empathize, and a willingness to tactfully engage with emotionally difficult situations. Often, ministry is marked by trial and error. Two steps forward, one step back.
Here’s something else I’ve learned:
Ministry is hard.
It’s hard because people go through difficult times that will break your heart. I know what it’s like to walk with families through horrendous loss. I’ve officiated at funerals resulting from drug overdoses, suicides, and tragic car accidents. And that barely scratches the surface of the shattered lives into which I’ve been invited through hardship.
One of the most difficult issues confronting the church today is helping people navigate the complexities of their sexuality, especially when it includes gender dysphoria—the feeling of being trapped inside a wrong-gendered body. I witnessed the pain of this firsthand over lunch one day with a man whose son had recently undergone sex-reassignment surgery and would be coming home to visit in a few days. The father was having a hard time processing how he would react when he picked up his transgendered child at the airport.
Over my years in ministry, I’ve learned that empathy goes a long way in difficult situations such as this.
There are no easy answers, and my heart genuinely went out to both parties. It was easy for me to understand how challenging it was for the father to watch his son reject his male identity and insist that the parents now treat him as their daughter. Nothing could erase their love for their child, but neither did it remove the relational awkwardness they all now had to navigate.
Had I been talking to the son, I easily could have empathized with how brutal it must be to feel trapped inside the wrong body. I would not make light of the mental and emotional torture he had certainly been experiencing. Compassion was my primary emotion for everyone concerned.
If empathy doesn’t come naturally to you, just try to imagine what it would be like to look at yourself in the mirror and yet feel emotionally and mentally like a member of the opposite sex. That would be torturous, right? It’s no wonder that many in the trans community have felt such despair. Now imagine the fear of being rejected by those you love the most if you decide to move forward with sex reassignment. It doesn’t take much of a heart to break over how difficult this would be. In this instance, both the father and the son acknowledged the difficulty and at least tried to put themselves in the other’s shoes. But that’s a lot to process.
Validation and empathy are among the more positive capabilities of our being human. Call it exercising good people skills. But validation and empathy don’t equate to agreeing with someone else’s moral stance on a position that runs contrary to Scripture. Nowhere does the Bible advise us to compromise our beliefs in order to validate someone else’s. That said, here are a few points to remember about gender dysphoria and sex reassignment:
1. Feeling like a particular gender doesn’t make a person that gender.
The fact is, there’s no such thing as a true sex change. Sex reassignment doesn’t change a person’s chromosomes. Gender is a fixed biological reality at the most basic level of our being. It’s not something we figure out along life’s journey.
In 2018, news broke about Oli London, a Caucasian male from England, who reportedly spent more than $100,000 for multiple plastic surgeries to make him look like the K-pop star Jimin from the Korean boy band BTS. From there he moved on to identifying as a Korean woman, modeling himself after Rosé from the girl band Blackpink. Then, in November 2022, London announced he was returning to his biological sex—that of a male, though he still refers to himself as Korean—and expressing relief that he had not gone ahead with reassignment surgery, which he realized he would have regretted.1 Interestingly, London attributed his decision to return to his male identity to Christianity, saying, “Letting Jesus and God into my heart [has] saved my life. It’s brought me back to who I am as a person, finding God.”2 So there’s hope.
Some trans advocates might argue that Oli London is an outlier and not a good example because he obviously changed his mind and didn’t get the surgery. But I have to ask, what if he had gotten reassignment surgery and then changed his mind again? He would be filled with regret and have no way of fixing his mistake. This happens more often that you might think.
There was a time, not too long ago, when people suffering from gender dysphoria were told that their feelings were the problem; now they’re being told their physique is the issue. And here’s the irony in our culture: On the one hand, there are people who say that gender is a fluid social construct, based on societal norms, not on biology. On the other hand, people are still choosing gender reassignment surgery to change their appearance. If biology is nondeterminative for gender, why undergo reassignment surgery?
2. Our identity is rooted in God, the author of our gender.
God is the one who assigns gender, not we ourselves. The text of Genesis 1:27 is pretty straightforward: “God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” That’s saying something. The Bible contains 1,189 chapters, and we learn this lesson right away in chapter 1. If God created us as male or female and we seek to deny or reverse this, we are essentially rejecting the identity he has given us. The challenges for those struggling with their gender identity are real, but tinkering with one’s gender is not the answer. Our identity encompasses so much more than gender preference.
Because our identity is rooted in God, in whose image we are created, it is not reducible to our sexual preferences. As God’s image bearers, who are created as either male or female, we are also created as moral, rational, emotional, and volitional beings. We have a much broader identity to offer the world than just our sexuality. But that’s where our culture seems to have become fixated. People are being led to believe that sexuality is the key to understanding our humanity. So it’s no wonder that some people are demanding that we accept their gender preference at all costs.
But that’s the lie we want to expose.
Our identity as human beings is so much more than our sexuality. So much bigger. So much more detailed. We’re sexual beings, yes, but not merely sexual beings. The Bible doesn’t directly address the issues of gender dysphoria and sex reassignment. But what it does say is that we are fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of God, and we are born either male or female.3
There is much more that could be said on the topic, and we all must be prepared to engage in this conversation at some point without capitulating to the culture. In the meantime, we can validate as meaningful the emotions and experiences of gender-dysphoric people, demonstrate empathy toward them, and remind them of the truth that they were created by a loving God.
Though gender dysphoria can certainly have moral implications, as Christians, we must realize that simply questioning one’s gender doesn’t mean that someone is rebelling against God or trying to be sinful. Many people, especially young Gen Zers, are confused because of the social messaging they have received. We can hope and pray that our churches will become safe spaces for people who are dealing with gender dysphoria—by listening, validating, praying for, comforting, and redirecting those who are grappling with identity issues, all in an atmosphere of love, grace, acceptance, and truth.
1. Iris Jung, “Oli London detransitions from ‘Korean’ woman to British man,” Yahoo News, November 14, 2022, https://news.yahoo.com/oli-london-detransitions-korean-woman-001720404.html.
2. Edie Heipel, “De-transitioner Oli London shares conversion to Christianity,” Catholic News Agency, November 4, 2022, https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/252732/de-transitioner-oli-london-shares-conversion-to-christianity.
3. Genesis 1:27; Psalm 139:13-17.
Adapted from Does Christianity Still Make Sense?: A Former Skeptic Responds to Today’s Toughest Objections to Christianity by Bobby Conway. Copyright © 2024. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, a division of Tyndale House Ministries. All rights reserved.
Bobby Conway serves as lead pastor of Image Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, and is well known for his YouTube ministry, Christianity Still Makes Sense (formerly One Minute Apologist). He also serves as the cohost of Pastors’ Perspective, a nationally syndicated radio show on KWVE in Southern California. Bobby is the author of several books including The Fifth Gospel and Doubting Toward Faith. He holds a PhD in philosophy of religion from the University of Birmingham in England and resides in Charlotte with his wife, Heather. They have two adult children, Haley and Dawson.