Your thirteen-year-old comes home from school and tells you she’s actually a boy.

Or your son’s teacher emails to say he’s asked to be called by a new name and new pronouns, and the school has been honoring the request for weeks without telling you.

Or you’re sitting in a pew on Sunday morning, and you realize you have no idea what you believe about any of this — because nobody at church has ever talked about it.

This article is for you.

Not because I have a political agenda. Because the Bible has something to say, and most Christians have never been taught what it is. What follows is what Scripture actually teaches about gender, what it means for people who experience confusion about their bodies, and what every parent needs to understand about the world their children are growing up in.

What God Said on Day Six

The Bible’s answer to the gender question doesn’t start in Leviticus or Romans. It starts in Genesis 1.

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:27)

Three things are happening in this verse that matter for everything that follows.

First, gender is embedded in the image of God. Being created “male and female” is named in the same breath as being created “in the image of God.” Our maleness or femaleness is part of how we reflect God. Not because God has a body — He doesn’t. But because the male-female distinction reflects something about God’s character, His relational nature, and His design for creation.

Second, this is a binary. Male and female. Not a spectrum. Not a social construct. Not a feeling. A created reality, spoken into existence by the God who builds galaxies. The Hebrew text uses the same grammatical structure as “light and darkness” and “heaven and earth” in the preceding verses. These are categories of creation, not suggestions.

Third, this is pre-Fall. Gender distinction exists in paradise — before sin, before death, before anything went wrong. It is not a consequence of the Fall. It is not a tragedy to be overcome. It is part of the “very good” that God declared over His finished work (Genesis 1:31).

When Jesus was asked about marriage, He went straight back to Genesis:

“Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female?” (Matthew 19:4)

Jesus didn’t treat Genesis as mythology. He treated it as the authoritative foundation for understanding human identity. “From the beginning.” Not from the culture. Not from the individual’s feelings. From the beginning.

The Body Is Not a Costume

Modern gender ideology treats the body as raw material — something to be shaped, altered, or overridden by the inner self. If your feelings say you’re a woman, then you are a woman, regardless of what your chromosomes, hormones, and anatomy say.

The Bible says the opposite.

“Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20)

The body is not a container for the “real” you. The body is part of the real you. Christianity rejects the ancient Gnostic idea that the spirit is good and the body is irrelevant — and it rejects the modern version of the same idea, which says your inner sense of identity trumps the body God gave you.

“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” (Psalm 139:13-14)

God didn’t randomly assign you a body. He knitted it. The verb is deliberate — it implies craftsmanship, intention, design. Your biological sex is not a clerical error. It’s a purposeful act of the Creator.

Does that mean every feeling about your body is wrong? No. It means your feelings are not the final authority on who you are. God’s design is.

“Woe to him who strives with him who formed him, a pot among earthen pots! Does the clay say to him who forms it, ‘What are you making?'” (Isaiah 45:9)

The Fall Broke Everything — Including How We See Ourselves

Here’s where this gets pastorally important, because the next thing I say will determine whether someone who is struggling with their identity feels safe enough to keep reading.

Gender dysphoria — the experience of distress over a disconnect between your body and your felt sense of gender — is real.

It is not fabricated. It is not attention-seeking. It is not something people choose. And experiencing it is not a sin.

The Bible teaches that the Fall affected every part of us. Not just our behavior — our minds, our wills, our emotions, our bodies, our self-perception. Total depravity means total — every faculty is touched by the brokenness of living in a world that sin has disordered.

That includes how we experience our own bodies.

A person who experiences gender dysphoria is not experiencing something fundamentally different from the person who experiences depression, chronic pain, or disordered desire of any kind. These are all consequences of living between Genesis 3 and Revelation 21 — in a world where things are not yet what they will be.

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“For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.” (Romans 8:22-23)

Notice: the redemption of our bodies. Not rescue from our bodies. The Christian hope is not escape from the physical — it is the resurrection and glorification of the physical. R.C. Sproul said it plainly: “For Christians, redemption is of the body, not from the body.”

The critical distinction: Experiencing confusion is not sin. Embracing an identity that rejects God’s design is where the line gets crossed. Andrew Walker put it this way: “People are not sinning by experiencing gender dysphoria. Such feelings are a result of the Fall. However, sin occurs when people act on the dysphoria by embracing a transgender identity that rejects God’s good design.”

This distinction matters enormously. If we tell struggling people that their very experience of confusion is sinful, we drive them away from the only One who can help. If we affirm the confusion as authoritative truth, we lie to them. The narrow path — the biblical path — is to acknowledge the pain without affirming the prescription.

The Real War: Expressive Individualism vs. the Creator

This is not primarily about bathrooms or pronouns. It’s about who gets to tell you who you are.

Historian Carl Trueman traced the intellectual roots of the transgender movement in The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. His thesis: the idea that “I am a woman trapped in a man’s body” only makes sense within a philosophical framework that took centuries to build.

First, the self was psychologized — identity became about what you feel inside (Rousseau, the Romantics). Then the psychologized self was sexualized — your desires became the core of who you are (Freud). Then the sexualized self was politicized — denying someone’s sexual or gender identity became an act of oppression (Marx, the Frankfurt School, the New Left).

The end result is what philosopher Charles Taylor calls “expressive individualism”: the belief that each person finds meaning by expressing their inner feelings and desires, and that any external authority — Scripture, tradition, biology, the church — that contradicts those feelings is oppressive.

The Bible offers a fundamentally different vision. In Scripture, identity is not constructed. It is received.

Tim Keller said it this way: “When you trust Christ, you have the only identity on earth that is received instead of achieved.”

Your body was given to you. Your sex was designed by God. Your identity as male or female is part of His purposeful creation. This is not a burden. It is a gift — even when it doesn’t feel like one.

What Parents Need to Know

If you have children under eighteen, you need to understand four things about the world they are navigating.

1. The social environment has changed more than you think.

Self-identification as transgender among 13-to-17-year-olds more than doubled between 2017 and 2022. Among 18-to-24-year-olds, it increased fivefold. Nearly a quarter of Gen Z adults identify as LGBTQ+. Your child’s social world includes peers who identify as non-binary, genderfluid, or transgender — and social media algorithms that feed them content about gender exploration constantly.

This is not a distant cultural phenomenon. It is in your child’s phone, their friend group, and possibly their school curriculum.

2. Schools may not tell you.

In some districts, school policies allow — or require — staff to use a student’s preferred name and pronouns without notifying parents. Some policies explicitly prohibit “outing” a student to their family. If your child explores a new gender identity at school, you may be the last to know.

Ask your school directly: What is your policy on gender identity? Will you notify me if my child asks to be called by a different name or pronouns? Get it in writing. And if the answer isn’t satisfactory, have your state’s department of education and parental rights organizations on speed dial.

3. The medical pipeline moves fast.

The pathway from social transition (new name, new pronouns) to medical transition (puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, surgery) can move quickly. Organizations like Planned Parenthood operate on an “informed consent” model — in many locations, no psychological evaluation is required before starting hormone therapy. Puberty blockers are marketed as a “pause button,” but the Cass Review found that the evidence does not support this claim — most children who start blockers proceed to hormones.

Europe is pulling back. Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and the UK have all restricted medical interventions for minors. England’s Cass Review called the evidence base “weak.” The Tavistock clinic — the UK’s only youth gender clinic — was shut down after referrals exploded from 77 to over 2,700 in a decade. By 2025, NHS England had issued zero new hormone prescriptions to minors.

The United States has not yet followed Europe’s lead. Know what your state’s laws allow.

4. Your child needs you to be the adult in the room.

This means being both truthful and tender. Your child’s pain is real. Their confusion may be genuine. But a loving parent does not hand a distressed teenager a permanent medical solution to what may be a temporary psychological struggle.

Eighty to ninety-five percent of children who experience gender dysphoria before puberty will resolve that dysphoria naturally by adulthood — a phenomenon called “desistance.” This statistic alone should give every parent pause before pursuing irreversible interventions.

Love your child. Listen to your child. But do not outsource your child’s identity to a culture that cannot define what a woman is. Be a parent to your child — and sometimes, that means not being their friend. You have that responsibility before God.

How the Church Must Respond

With truth and with tears. Both. At the same time.

Andrew Walker wrote: “A transgender person ought to feel more loved and safe visiting a Bible-believing church than any other place in the world.” That is the standard. Not lower. That.

Here’s what that looks like:

Welcome people without conditions. A person struggling with gender dysphoria who walks into your church on Sunday morning should be met with the same hospitality you’d extend to anyone carrying any burden. You don’t demand that someone resolve their struggles before they sit in a pew.

Distinguish between the experience and the response. Experiencing confusion about your body is not sin. It is suffering. The church must be a place where people can name their suffering without being treated as monsters. But compassion does not mean affirmation of every response to that suffering. You can hold someone’s hand and still tell them the truth.

Offer a better identity, not just a prohibition. It is not enough to say “you are not transgender.” The church must tell people what they are: image-bearers of God, fearfully and wonderfully made, known and loved by a Creator who does not make mistakes. Rosaria Butterfield — a former lesbian professor who became a Reformed Christian — says it this way: identity is either in Adam or in Christ. There is no third option. And the identity Christ offers is “the only identity on earth that is received instead of achieved.”

Walk with people for the long haul. Faithful obedience may involve a lifetime of bearing a cross. Gender dysphoria may not resolve quickly — or at all, this side of eternity. The church must provide genuine community, real friendship, and ongoing presence — not just doctrinal correction followed by awkward silence.

Protect your children without demonizing struggling people. You can oppose curriculum that teaches five-year-olds to choose their pronouns and love the nineteen-year-old in your congregation who is wrestling with their identity. These are not contradictory positions. They are the same position: the truth is for everyone, and it is spoken in love.

The Promise at the End

The groaning of Romans 8 does not last forever. There is a day coming when every form of brokenness — including the disconnect between body and soul that gender dysphoria represents — will be healed. Not by a surgeon. By the Resurrection.

Jesus rose bodily. He rose male. His resurrection body was recognizable, touchable, real — and glorified. Augustine argued that both sexes will be preserved in the resurrection, because gender “is not a defect” but a feature of our eternal, embodied existence.

The body you have is not a mistake. And one day, it will be redeemed — not discarded, not altered by human hands, but transformed by the power of the God who knitted you together in the first place.

“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:4)

Every groan will be answered. Every confusion will be resolved. Every body will be made whole.

Until then, we hold the truth. We hold the people. We hold both at the same time.

That’s what the Bible says about gender. And it’s enough.

This article is a companion to “Tumbler Ridge: Where Is God When Children Die?”, “How Gender Ideology Conquered the West”, and “The Oldest Heresy in New Clothes”. See also: “What Does the Bible Say About Gender Identity?”

Sources and Recommended Reading:

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