In part 2 of this post, I turn to questions regarding gender identity. “Transgender” does not mean “extra gay.” As I mentioned in my last post, LBG focuses on questions of sexual orientation, whereas TQ+ concerns primarily gender identity.
Transgender people would generally say that their gender doesn’t match the body they were born in. As a result, trans people typically change how they look or “present” in how they dress, through hormone therapy, or through sexual reassignment surgeries.
A Few Issues Regarding Being Transgender and Gender Identity
When I did some teaching on the subject this summer, some points that stood out to me are that:
- All people, including transgender people, are made in the image of God.
- The struggle some people face regarding their gender identity is a real and difficult struggle.
- Every person has some misunderstanding of their own identity.
- Self-fulfillment and happiness should not be our ultimate goal.
If you ever wonder how you should respond to someone who identifies as LGBTQ+, the short answer is with love. And “love is patient, love is kind…” (1 Corinthians 13).
If you would like to hear more of my thinking on the subject, I invite you to listen to the audio from my teaching session here:
You can download the mp3 audio file by RIGHT clicking here.
Another Pentecostal Resource
It seems that Pentecostal organizations have been slow to write on this issue, so I could only find one public resource to share here:
- “Transgenderism, Transsexuality, and Gender Identity” (Assemblies of God, USA)
It is not distinctly Pentecostal as such, but this source does reflect how many Pentecostals are thinking about this topic.
Transformed is another helpful resource. It is from the Evangelical Alliance (in the UK). They have a couple good videos on their page too.
If you’re looking for a more in-depth resource, the standard book these days written from a conservative Christian perspective is Mark Yarhouse’s Understanding Gender Dysphoria: Navigating Transgender Issues in a Changing Culture.
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Andrew K. Gabriel, Ph.D., is the author of Simply Spirit-Filled: Experiencing God in the Presence and Power of the Holy Spirit as well as three academic books, including The Lord is the Spirit. He is a theology professor and VP of Academics at Horizon College and Seminary and serves on the Theological Study Commission for the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada. You can follow him on Facebook or on Twitter.
The resource by the Assemblies of God, asserting a “Theology of the Body” is itself a modern construct. When referring to Genesis 1:26, 27, one must consider what constitutes “Adam” in the first place. Is the female “Adam” or not? If it’s Adam & Eve before the fall, then God cloned Eve & introduced a sex change. She is not Adam and therefore not the image of God as some assert. But she was NOT Eve before the fall, but AFTER (Gen. 3:20). In which case, it was not Adam & Eve before the fall but male and female Adam who together are in the image of God. Adam is initially intersex, a view shared by rabbis throughout history. The question becomes, how is the image of God both male & female? If God be the Noumenal One, how does God realize that mysterious Other in phenomenality but in creation? Hence, that otherness is the passive, the female that lives in union with God, the active as the male Self. Reflectively, marriage awakens the creative instinct in humankind far beyond the body. Those intersex or trans, find that creativity in a different way, having that core of holiness that deserves to be recognized.
****you