#STRask - What if God Intended for My Child to Transition from a Girl to a Boy?

Episode Date: October 10, 2024

Questions about how to respond to someone who says that maybe God intended for her daughter to transition from a girl to a boy and how kids in a small youth group with a child who identifies as non-binary can navigate that situation with respect and allegiance to the Word of God.   How do I respond to my sister who says that God doesn’t make mistakes and maybe he chose for her daughter to be trans as a challenge for her to overcome (i.e., he intended for her daughter to transition from a girl to a boy)? How can my 10- and 12-year-olds, who are in a small youth group with a child who identifies as non-binary, navigate this situation with respect as well as allegiance to the Word of God?

You're listening to Stand to Reason's Hashtag STR Ask podcast. Welcome, Greg Kogel. Welcome, Amy. All right. I'm not good with a small talk, Amy. All right. I'm not good with a small talk, Greg. Okay. We don't need any. Let's get down to the nitty gritty. All right.

We're going to start with a question from Nell. How do I respond to my sister's question, God doesn't make mistakes. What if God chose for them to be trans as a challenge for them to overcome? Here's the context. My sister means that God intended for her daughter to transition from a girl to a boy. This is untrue, but how do I help her understand this? Well, a couple things come to mind, and one of them is, though it's true that God doesn't make mistakes, the presumption is that everything that happens is something that God does. And if something happens like transsexual desires, then that must be God. But of course, if you apply that across the board to other behaviors that are clearly wrong,

you wouldn't use that kind of argument. You wouldn't say, yes, people broke into our house and stole our jewelry. But, of course, God doesn't make mistakes. So it must have been his will or his design or something for that to take place. And now here we're not talking about God's sovereignty because we understand in God's sovereignty, all is, in a certain sense, taken into consideration. There's nothing that happens apart from his knowledge or his permission. He's in control of it all. But obviously, that doesn't mean that everything that happens is what he wills in a moral sense to take place or specifically designs.

sense to take place, or specifically designs. He designed humans as male and female. So it just occurred to me that argument works against Nell's sister regarding, I guess, Nell's niece, because God said, and so did Jesus, he affirmed this in Matthew 19, in the beginning he made them male and female. And then that's chapter 1. And chapter 2, a man will leave his mother and father and cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one plus, et cetera. So notice that all of these statements presume cisgender, not transgender, that a person's sense of sex or gender, if you will, and their actual physical sex match. They were meant to go together. A person's perception of who they are and who they actually are go together. And so that's the mistake God didn't make. He didn't make a mistake when he set it up this way. Now, I think this kind of excuse, for lack of a better word, is offered

because people are emotionally, understandably, emotionally connected with the loved ones who are going through gender dysphoria. And they want to do what will cause the least amount of conflict in that relationship, which initially is to promote gender dysphoria and then try to find, especially for Christians, some kind of theological way of sanitizing that or baptizing it so it sounds right, but it's not. No, God didn't make any mistakes. Human beings make mistakes. God did it right when he made male and female and called it good. That wasn't a mistake. The mistake happened later when human beings get confused because of the fall

and because of the impact of society. I mean, this we cannot underestimate because the occurrence of gender dysphoria was virtually non-existent, non-existent, say, 10 years ago even. It was an infinitesimally small fraction, mostly boys between the ages of three and five. Now it's overwhelmingly adolescent girls. What happened? Well, there was a cultural influence that caused this incredible explosion with regards to the experience of gender dysphoria. And so, this is not God's mistake. This is human mistake. It's human confusion on those who are gender dysphoric, who need help and encouragement, just like a bulimic person, anorexic person,

needs help and encouragement, not affirmation of the thing. That just leads to more disaster. It's not loving your neighbor. So, I mean, that's the big picture here. And I think Nell can say to her sister, I guess, regarding her niece, that you're right. God doesn't make mistakes. And we know exactly how God wanted it when he set things up. How he created it. Yes. Genesis 1, Genesis 2, which Jesus cited when asked in Matthew 19 about divorce and remarriage.

Notice how he lays a foundation of the creation order. God doesn't make mistakes. Human beings make mistakes. And a mistake is being made now that is not good for your daughter. The problem here is you have to ground your what-ifs in something. Because you can say, what if this or that? It could be anything. You have to ground the what-if in the possibilities based on God's Word. So let's say I were to, you know, I think a comparable example would be, what if God created my daughter as a kleptomaniac and as a challenge to overcome?

That's a person who steals a lot. You just got to... Yes, a person who steals, yes. Compulsively. In the parallel situation, the challenge to overcome would be to get past the idea that she shouldn't be a kleptomaniac and instead to embrace that. So you can see that's not how it works. The challenge to overcome is our sin. We are in a fallen world, and the challenge that we overcome now is our sin in this fallen world. And it's the same for everyone. So if you have gone away from God's created order and the way He designed us and the

body that you have, then the goal is to conform yourself to reality and to truth, not to accept whatever it is that is against that. And the only way to know that is to look, again, to ground your what if. Your what if has to be grounded in truth. It can't just be whatever you think at the moment. So I think that's where she's really going wrong with this. And maybe if you can show her a parallel situation, and she might say, well, that's totally different because kleptomania is, you know, stealing things is wrong. And then you can say, oh, okay.

So now we've come to the problem. Is it wrong to live as a sex that you are not? Is it wrong or is it right? That's the question. The question isn't, is it a challenge to overcome? The question is, is it wrong or is it right? So's the question. The question isn't, is it a challenge to overcome? The question is, is it wrong or is it right? So that's how we determine which is the challenge. Is the challenge to accept your desires and embrace them, or is the challenge to conform your desires to God's created order? And that's what you have to determine from something objective

outside of yourself. It clearly is a challenge to overcome, but the overcoming, what that looks like, has to be defined by what's true. And I will add, and I think I spent some time in Street Smarts in the section where I deal with this, to make the point that this is a very emotionally charged issue. And people are deeply committed to a narrative in the culture that makes them feel comfortable with this distortion of mental health. And that's exactly what it is. It's a pathology. However, it isn't as if people are neutral on this and they just okay well i just want to figure out what's right and then i can do that because all of these other things are competing to push people in the wrong direction the unhealthy direction the unloving direction unloving in the long term

and this is where culture is at right now and this this is what makes it so hard. So my heart goes out to Nell's sister here, because especially for women, what we want to do is we want to be the peacemakers. We want to make people feel better. We want to nurture people. And so the temptation is constantly to bend what we think is right in order to make someone else feel better. That is the constant temptation. So the way you have to go into this is to understand that ultimately, if you indulge this, your child will be worse off.

And eventually she will come to you and say, why didn't you stand up to me and tell me the truth? Why didn't you love me enough to do that? Because real love takes, it is hard to love someone truly when you are denying them what they want because it would be bad for them. It's a lot easier to give in to them and to just avoid the conflict. But that is not real compassion and real love, as you pointed out, Greg. You have to be very, in order to love someone well and truly, you have to be very strong. And you have to be able to withstand the anger or the fallout from anything that might happen because of it. But ultimately, you don't want her coming back to you 10 years later saying, why did you let me destroy my body? Why didn't you stop me? So maybe you could say,

if she wants a what-if scenario, what if this happens 10 years from now? Why don't you go to sexchangeregret.com and read these stories of people who have changed their minds and wish that someone had told them the truth? Maybe that's worth considering too. Okay, Greg, let's go on to a question from Jenny. My 12 and 10-year-old have met a younger kid at a small youth group identifying as non-binary. What might be ways they can navigate this with respect as well as allegiance to the Word of God? Well, people may disagree with this, but 12 years old, I would just ignore it for the moment. I'd just ignore it. And the reason is, I can understand how someone who is a male could think they're a female. I can understand how someone who is a male could think they're a female.

I can understand how someone who's a female could think they're a male. This is classic gender dysphoria. I don't see how anybody could come up with the idea that they're non-binary. In other words, they're neither male nor female unless somebody suggested that idea to them. It's like I've said before, too. You know, they got like 60 or Google identifies 60 different genders. Nobody's going to come up with the idea psychologically. Oh, I think I'm an ampersand, you know, as an alternate, you know, gender.

you know, as an alternate, you know, gender. Because it's not on the radar. When somebody says they're non-binary or any of these other creative kind of genders, like an ampersand, this is a result of social pressure. This is a fad. And they want to be part of the fad. And I'll tell you why they want to be part of the fad is because there's a tremendous amount of social affirmation that comes along with it. I just read Natasha Crane's manuscript called One Culture Hates You. It'll come out in March. And she quotes an account,

first-person account, of a person who went into gender dis... Well, had a transsexual experience and then kind of reconverted. And the kind of transition regret, or however you phrased it earlier. And she tells what happened. She said, I was so tired of being called a white oppressor that I realized all I have to do is change my gender and everybody will treat me like a hero. So I did. So this is the impact of

critical theory on people's thinking. When everybody believes you're bad, and if you would just be different in a politically correct way, then you get approval, a lot more people are going to do it. I actually think this is what's going on in the non-binary declarations. I could be mistaken here, but I mean, just think about it. Why would anybody think they're no sex? I should say no gender. Oh, I'm non-binary. This is just part of the social contagion.

And so sometimes the best thing to do, it seems, maybe the best thing to do at 12 years old, just ignore it. Just ignore it. Same thing with pansexual. Really? So I think this is politics finding their way into the mind of a 12-year-old because it has some social appeal to it, but it has nothing to do with reality. And maybe that'll just go away after a while if you don't fuss about it. What do you think, Amy? Well, the thing about, I'm assuming this is because this person wants to have particular pronouns. But the thing about pronouns is you don't use them when you're talking to the person. Right. You just have normal conversations.

I don't say he when I'm talking to you and I'm referring to you. So I just, I think you're probably right. you. So I just, I think you're probably right. Like, I'm not sure how this will come up for them unless the person is saying, demanding that they agree to call them certain pronouns. Well, let me just put that to you, Greg. Let's say the student comes up to them and says, well, I just want you to know I'm non-binary. so I want you to refer to me as them from now on. How would you have her child respond to that? Actually, what I would, it just occurred to me that the proper non-binary pronoun is it. Them is plural.

There's only one of you. And maybe that's a question that could be asked. Wait a minute, there's only one of you. And maybe that's a question that could be asked. Wait a minute. There's only one of you. Why do you want to be called them? Do you think you're more than one? That's called a split personality, which I'm sure this person is not experiencing. This is all part of the fad of them. Why would anybody want to consider themselves a them? Because they're non-binary. The proper non-binary reference is it. Not he or she. It.

Nobody wants to be called an it. It's depersonalizing. I guess if somebody came up to me and said, I'd want to be called they, I'd say, wait a minute, that's plural. Do you think you're more than one individual? Ask that question. Do you think you're more than one individual? Ask that question. And then the other question would be, based on the observation you made, Amy, is that why would it matter how I refer to you when I'm talking to other people

and you're not even aware of it? Why can't I just say she or he, whatever the appropriate pronoun is, when I'm talking to other people? Now, I mean, I'm interested in that answer. And I also have suggestions in the book Street Smarts about this. Do you think people ought to live authentically with their beliefs? Well, yes, of course. Of course, that's the reason why people are promoting the gender stuff, right? Well, that's their authentic self, because that's they really fully believe. But we also have authentic selves.

And so if they say yes, which they will because that's their view, then the follow-up question is then why aren't you allowing me to be authentic to my own views? Because that's exactly what is happening. They are demanding that we speak in a way that is inconsistent with the way we actually believe. And by the way, there's a word that people use of Christians who say they believe one thing, but act a different way. And you know what that word is. Yeah, hypocrite.

A hypocrite. So why are you asking me, in fact, kind of demanding that I be a hypocrite. hypocritical, then that should apply to us just as well. And in the case of pronouns, I don't know what we're going to individually be able to do to change the culture, all right, the direction they're going. I think the thing that's going to change that is lawsuits, and it's already happening in England. But what we're asking for here is not that other people be the way we want them to be, but that we be allowed to be the way we want to be, to have our views. You can have your views. I'm not going to take away from your views. But you're demanding something more.

You're demanding that I act as if your views are true instead of me acting consistently with mine. That's what's going on here. So I'm trying to figure out how do we translate that to a 10 and 12 year old in the simplest possible way. And the first thing I would say is just emphasize with your child, thing I would say is just emphasize with your child, you can have a friend that you disagree with and it's okay. And just maybe if you can get that into their mind, it's okay if you disagree and you can still be friends. And maybe they can learn to communicate that to them too. Well, I hope the still be friends part does apply because you know how the left operates, my way or the highway. Sure. But I also think that's the place to start. And I also think that if you can help them to stay calm and not to react strongly or get angry or defensive, that also will help.

If they can just be as matter of fact as possible as they're talking to them and saying i i understand that's your view um i don't actually think that or maybe they could even because this is a uh sorry i'm going all over the place here but this is a youth group remember so that avenue is open to them also they could say hey i'm would you be interested? I just want to show you something in Genesis that I just want to understand how you connect that with what you're saying here. Because here it says God created them male and female. And I truly believe, you know, Jesus quotes this in Matthew 19, and I follow Jesus on this. And so I just can't agree with you on this. But we can still be friends. But I also think

that if you want to follow Jesus, that there's kind of an issue here. Yeah. I actually don't think a 12-year-old would be tempted to get angry if they get pushed on this. I think they're tempted to ridicule instead. After all, they're 12 years old. In other words, to make fun of the person who is demanding this of them and of course that's not on the table either right right and yeah i i think this all is a very good lesson in learning to be kind and be strong and and not to be afraid of of telling them what god has said it's a youth youth group after all. As Solzhenitsyn put it, live not by lies. I think that's a good rule to follow, but it's a hard one nowadays.

All right. Well, thank you, Nell and Jenny. All of these questions are so difficult, especially when we're dealing with children. And I think kids today are going to have to learn a lot of these things the hard way because we're still all trying to figure out how to respond to these things in a way that's honoring to God and still loving and truthful. But I think if you can get those core ideas down, we're honoring God, we're loving our neighbor, and we're being truthful. And part of loving is being truthful. That's not opposite to loving. If you can get those basic things down, the kids can figure out

how to kind of stay within those boundaries, but at least know what's important. So anyway, hopefully that helps you somewhat, Nell and Jenny. And we'd love to hear from you. If you have a question, you can give it to us on X with the hashtag STRask, or you can go to our website at str.org. This is Amy Hall and Greg Kogel for Stand to Reason.