The world and the Church have two very different definitions of love. At this moment in our culture, I find the difference can be reduced to this simple statement:

• The world loves by affirming the individual's truth. The Church loves by affirming God's truth. 

As Christ loved…

If Jesus Christ is a role model in how we love, we remember that he didn't try to control people. He always respected their dignity to choose for themselves. He was more willing to die for their "lostness" than to condemn them in his "rightness."  

Doctors don't criticize patients for having an ailment, and counselors don't condemn their counselees for their confusion. They listen to their story and express what Carl Rogers calls an "Unconditional Positive Regard." Similarly, the Church should have the absolute conviction that this confused or struggling person is infinitely valuable to their Father in heaven and that God's hopes are for their well-being and prosperity. We will be their personal friend in their journey even if they don't reform to our exact point of view on all matters of importance.

This relentless desire for the well-being of someone is rooted in the character of God's goodness. He takes no delight in punishment, judgment, brutality, poverty, or destruction. He loves life—yes, even his enemies. 

The key here, however, is to recognize that the doctor, the counselor, and the Heavenly Father each affirm there is a distinction between the diseased and the healthy, the suffering and the flourishing. In that distinction, there is an implicit recognition of some sort of verifiable truth in the world. There must be some pathway that leads to death and a pathway that leads to life. It's loving to help people choose the path of life. With that difference in prescription, Christians come to love people through the unwavering conviction that distasteful medicine will still do you good and delicious poison will still do you harm. So here are a few thoughts to help point our Trans* identity loved ones on a path of life. 

Gender Affirming Care, or Goodness of God

The world's antidote to gender confusion is "gender-affirming care." This is the tasty poison. In their rationale, since the individual is the source of their own truth, society must necessarily allow the individual to figure out what they want and who they are. This pathway leads from the experimentation of gender pronouns, names, and social norms to hormone treatment and surgical reassignment. All of these decisions are in an effort to alleviate an alienation from a person's own body, a disenchantment with oppressive gender roles, or deeply painful experiences they've suffered at the hands of others. 

Though in opposition to gender-affirming care, our message should be one of compassion and clarity, or as the Bible says, "grace and truth." The least we can do is sweeten the medicine with a spoonful of sugar.

STEP 1: Help our loved ones live in alignment with scientific and moral truths (not feelings or instincts.) 

Our biology is an immutable reality that determines who we are. I may not like my weight, my height, my abilities or lack of abilities, my hair, my diabetes, my allergies, or my gender. But I have to embrace these as true about me. There are 6,500 ways males are different from females. Sex is written on every cell of the human body, to the point that if you are ever wheeled into the emergency room (God forbid), doctors need to know your birth sex because of how different medications react to sex differences.  

The anorexic girl who hates her body or thinks she's fat doesn't have a healthy perception of her body. It would be harmful to indulge her fantasies by affirming her self-perceptions. We love her by healing her mind and emotions.

Healing the mind and emotions takes soul work. It requires healing from trauma and spiritual healing that helps me see my value as an individual. What does God say about me? We need to believe that God calls me lovely and desirable despite how insignificant, unworthy, or out-of-sort I feel about myself. Like a patient doctor, the Church can begin by asking strugglers questions, empathizing with why they might feel the way they feel, and gently leading them to the truth.

STEP 2: Watchful Waiting and Therapy 

Before Transgenderism had become a political movement, and "Trans" a political class of people, this incongruence between biological sex and perceived gender was considered a psychological condition. The person's mental perception did not align with physical reality. The traditional approach for helping people with gender dysphoria had been "watchful waiting and therapy." Out of the 1 in 10,000 children who experienced dysphoria, 4 out of 5 of them, if they allowed their body's natural hormones to run their course during puberty, would desist from their dysphoria or desire to transition_[1].

To this day, the most effective treatment is still the body's natural hormones. If we don't encourage premature transitions in our youth, 85%--90% of those who struggle will still return to their biological gender by the end of their young adult development. 

Talking Points: 

#1. It is not harmless to indulge kids who say they are the wrong gender_[2]. Hormonal treatment and surgical modifications are irreversible, leading to the deprivation or over saturation of hormones that harm the body, or to sterilization and other long-term effects. A twelve-year-old isn't ready to make a decision they may regret in 1, 5, or 10 years. Most twelve-year-old's change their mind weekly about their wardrobe or hairstyle. They aren't ready to irreversibly alter their body.

#2. There's no long-term study that shows that hormones cause an improvement in mental health_[3]. The truth here is that science is being tainted with politics and agenda. Gender-affirming care, Pharmaceutical companies, and political activists each, for their own reasons, want chemical drugs and surgery to be the solution. They want desperately to believe that chemically transitioning someone will help their mental well-being. The pressure is put on parents or teachers to believe that students will be happier if we let them transition. This is a false premise with no evidence to support it.

#3. A percentage of those who struggle with Gender Dysphoria (the recent rapid onset) have preexisting mental health conditions_[4]. The answer isn't to change their bodies; the answer is to help heal their minds. That has been the historical approach, one that respects biological and scientific realities. 

STEP 3: Questions to Ask In Therapy 

It's loving of us to slow down and listen to them. Hear them. Affirm who they are as a person (broader than sexuality or gender). Love them. And help them love themselves. It should be society's job to protect them from premature decisions that have body-and-life-altering consequences.

While we help them naturally wait out their biological development, we can also ask some hard questions. 

• In what ways do you feel unwanted, ashamed, or that you don't measure up?
• In what ways does being female or male feel uncomfortable to you?
• What is it that you don't like about yourself?
• What do you really want? What gives you a sense of meaning and purpose, and why? 
• What makes you think transitioning is going to solve the issue? What if it doesn't? 
• What does your loving heavenly Father have to say about you?
• What if God doesn't think your gender is a mistake but a blessing?

STEP 4: Guide Them To the Truth In Love

After caregivers, parents, and counselors have had the opportunity to listen, ask questions, and express their concerns for their loved ones, here are a few final talking points they can offer. 

Talking Points:

#1. It's normal to feel uncomfortable with your body. It's normal for everyone to feel uncomfortable or self-conscious about their bodies, especially adolescence. That doesn't mean you're the opposite gender. 

#2. You don't have to fit rigid gender stereotypes. You are unique, and God made you that way. I.e., women don't have to love the British Baking Show, and men don't have to join the Navy Seals and saw down trees with pocketknives. You are a unique, one-of-a-kind expression of maleness or femaleness. Gender expectations are socially constructed, not God-given.

#3. Embrace God's Grace. It can be difficult to accept our limitations, bodies, failures, and fears. But how does God want to be your source of comfort, strength, protection, and affirmation?

The wonderful news for the struggler is that God did not abandon us in our confusion. The sovereign-self model and the cultural narrative tells us to "figure it out on your own." This implies that you're on your own, and that's a very lonely place. The scriptures teach us that we can invite God into the hard places, the disjointed feelings, and the painful memories. It takes courage, but God promises to never leave us. He will never rebuke the struggler sincerely grappling with his truths.  

For more in depth resources on Gender & Sexuality you might want to watch Petra’s three-part seminar series here: https://petra.church/genderandsexuality/.