Episode 253: LGBTQ Conversations: Transgender from Biblical Times to Now, Claire and Rob Smith (Reprise)

[00:00:00] Today's episode of Candid Conversations is not suitable for young listeners. Parents, please listen to this podcast without your children present. You may choose to share portions of this podcast with them later, but please listen to it first.

[00:00:14] Often people ask, is this an old thing or a new thing? And the answer is both. Certainly from a biblical point of view, I think we can say ever since the fall, all kinds of things have gone wrong with us in our minds and our bodies.

[00:00:30] For some people, some small percentage of people, one of the effects of sin in the world has been that they have felt misaligned with their bodies, like they're in the wrong body. And we have examples of this going back through history.

[00:00:45] And there are just a handful of references in scripture to these kinds of issues, references to cross-dressing and things, prohibitions against it, in Deuteronomy, for example. And so yeah, this is not a new thing, but nor is it a common thing historically.

[00:01:01] But of course, it's become increasingly common in our moment. Hello and welcome to Candid, where we never settle for less than the truth. I'm your host, Jonathan Youssef. Each week we'll tackle tough issues, answer your hard questions, and take a candid look at the Christian faith.

[00:01:19] In the past few years, we have seen the rise in debate over gender and transgenderism. We have seen debates over school and public bathroom designations. What makes a man a man and a woman a woman?

[00:01:34] Today we're talking with two friends of mine from Sydney, Australia, Rob and Claire Smith, who are husband and wife. Rob Smith lectures in theology, ethics, and music ministry at Sydney Missionary and Bible College. He also serves as the assistant director of ministry training and development for the

[00:01:52] Anglican Diocese of Sydney. He is currently undertaking doctoral studies in the theology of sex and gender. He's married to Claire. They have an adult son and a daughter-in-law. Claire Smith is a writer and women's Bible teacher.

[00:02:08] A nurse by background, Claire has a PhD in New Testament from Moore Theological College and is the author of God's Good Design, What the Bible Really Says About Men and Women. She and Rob are members of St. Andrew's Anglican Cathedral in Sydney.

[00:02:26] They have been contributors to Desiring God and the Gospel Coalition. Rob and Claire have a wealth of knowledge on this issue, and I am so glad we were able to have this conversation. Well, it's a privilege to have my good friends, Rob and Claire Smith.

[00:02:43] Rob, you actually were – you grew up at Moore College when dad was a student and you were sort of the young guy running around with the rugby ball. Dad says hello, by the way.

[00:02:57] But we've made some connections in my time in Sydney, and it's been a great privilege. Now, we're about to talk about a big issue, transgender, and I wonder if you could take a minute and just introduce yourselves to us, to our audience.

[00:03:15] Where do you get your expertise on this particular issue? Well, thanks, Jonathan. It's great to be with you, and I do remember your dad even from my childhood, and so please say hi to him from us.

[00:03:25] Well, I'll let Claire start in answering that question because she's actually been in some ways working on these things for a long time. Hello. Good to be with you. Well, I have a background in nursing before I studied theology and the last three decades.

[00:03:42] In various contexts, I've been researching and writing and speaking about gender, about men and women. At a more personal level, in my family, about six years ago, a university student member of my family transitioned gender. So from quite a personal aspect, this has touched our lives.

[00:04:08] And so really having a research background and a nursing background and then that personal contact made both of us really turn to start looking at this in a more detailed way. And also within our denomination here in Sydney, I've been involved at the organisational level

[00:04:27] in working out denominational response and understanding and chaired a committee at that level that has written reports and so on. So personal level, institutional level, and really also pastorally we've been involved with a number of people, but I'll let Rob talk about that.

[00:04:45] Yes, well my journey is more recent in some ways, it goes back to about 2012, I think, and I was working on a report for our diocesan doctrine commission on human sexuality and was doing some of the historical digging, trying to work out where we've come from,

[00:05:03] how we got here. And we're particularly looking at the whole sort of progress of the homosexual revolution. But I realised as I was reading that the transgender issue had really been in the air at least since

[00:05:18] the 1950s and had been tracking along with the progress of the same-sex revolution. And I just sort of had this light bulb moment, I realised the whole transgender issue is about to explode on us and we're completely unready for it because this was all pre-same-sex

[00:05:35] marriage even in the US. And that all our thinking was going into how do we respond to that prospect and how do we prepare for that eventuality and so on. There was very little work being done on the transgender question and so I started digging

[00:05:53] around looking for materials and there was a little bit out there but not a lot, certainly not much from an evangelical point of view. And so I began compiling what I could and gathering resources thinking somebody's got

[00:06:04] to do some work on this, someone really needs to make this their project. And it then dawned on me to look down the track that that was probably going to have to be me five years into a PhD on this and hopefully to finish that this year.

[00:06:19] Matthew 4 I think there's some confusion when we talk about sexuality and gender and sex and these terminologies sort of – sometimes they're used interchangeably and I know that's not correct. So I wonder if you could clarify some of the terminology for us.

[00:06:33] Peter Yeah, the terminology has changed a lot over the years and keeps changing. Once upon a time, the language was that of transsexuals who were distinguished from transvestites. So transvestites were usually again men who wore women's clothes, although of course it could be women wearing men's clothes.

[00:06:56] And then transsexuals were those who actually wanted to change sex and live as the other sex and usually take surgical steps in that direction. The language of transgenderism sort of came later and now it really seems to be an umbrella

[00:07:13] term that just covers anyone who adopts or believes they have a gender identity that in some way differs from their biology, their biological sex, their chromosomes fundamentally. So yeah, transgender is a rather elastic term and it does then raise the, I guess, issue

[00:07:37] that you have to work out what a person means when they use it. They say I'm transgender in what sense? Do they mean that and what have they done about that? And the answers would be different in different cases.

[00:07:48] So I guess it just requires pastorally a little bit of sensitivity and probing just to say well what does a person mean when they declare themselves to be transgender? Also there's been a shift in the medical terminology.

[00:08:04] So up until 2013, these gender identity issues were called gender identity disorder where the focus was on the mismatch between the biology and the felt gender. What changed then really as a result of ideology, not new medical research, was gender identity

[00:08:28] disorder became gender dysphoria where the focus is not on the mismatch but the focus is on the distress caused by the mismatch. And the effect of that in terms of treatment is that instead of trying to align biology

[00:08:47] with the felt gender, which was the previous therapeutic approach, now the focus is on alleviating the distress only. Which means that if you alleviate the distress by enabling someone to change genders, well then that's a valid therapeutic response.

[00:09:12] So the change in terminology actually reflects a deeper understanding of how we're going to respond to it. What's the real nature of the problem? Is the problem the mismatch or is the problem the distress? And now the focus is on the distress.

[00:09:27] And behind that, if I can just add another layer, behind that as Clare mentioned is a massive ideological shift. So again previously if you had that mismatch, the view was that something was wrong. Whereas now if you have that mismatch, there's actually nothing wrong because in terms of

[00:09:46] the current ideology, gender and sex are completely separate things. So if your gender is different to your sex, well that's actually in reality the case for everybody. It's just that for most people for some reason they seem to line up on the same side, which

[00:10:04] is where this language of cisgender comes from. But if they happen to line up on different sides, then well that's just as normal because sex and gender are actually completely unconnected in the current ideology. So that's the sort of underlying reason about this diagnostic and therapeutic shift.

[00:10:27] Matthew 14 Could you help us think through this theologically and then on the other end socially? So when did these types of issues arise? Have we seen them since the beginning or is this a newer concept and what sort of has pushed it into the public sphere?

[00:10:45] Jonathan, it's a great question and often people ask is this an old thing or a new thing? And the answer is both. Certainly from a biblical point of view I think we can say ever since the fall, all kinds

[00:11:01] of things have gone wrong with us in our minds and our bodies. And for some people, some small percentage of people, one of the effects of sin in the world has been that they have felt misaligned with their bodies, like they're in the wrong body.

[00:11:17] And we have examples of this going back through history and there are just a handful of references in scripture to these kinds of issues, references to cross-dressing and things, prohibitions against it in Deuteronomy for example.

[00:11:32] And so yeah, this is not a new thing but nor is it a common thing historically. But of course it's become increasingly common in our moment. But the beginnings of the contemporary moment go back, well really to the post-war period

[00:11:50] and particularly to surgical developments that really came out of doctors treating people and particularly children with intersex conditions and working out what surgical interventions might be helpful in different cases. That work sort of then got transferred across to people with gender issues who were saying,

[00:12:14] well if you can do certain things for people with an intersex problem, what can you do for us? And there's a famous case in the US, a US Marine I think he was, George Jorgensen, who became Christine Jorgensen in the 50s.

[00:12:32] And that was a very highly publicized and celebrated case of sex change. And really that sort of opened the floodgates and that work has grown and continued and expanded although in some instances been shut down.

[00:12:50] Johns Hopkins University Hospital was a famous case of a place that was doing these surgeries and then stopped them because they were completely unconvinced they were helping people. Although in recent times they've restarted them again. So there's a long story there and lots of permutations to it.

[00:13:12] What's happening in the present I think is again in large measure a result of ideology and social pressure or what sometimes people call social contagion. So even back in say 2016, the estimated prevalence of people with genuine gender disturbance was about one in 13,000 or something around that figure.

[00:13:37] I mean it's very hard to be precise but that was the ballpark estimate. Whereas now you get some surveys, some studies that are saying amongst teens it's like one in 300. So that's an astonishing escalation and you think really is there something in the water

[00:13:57] or what's going on here? And well it's really I think just an outworking of the ideology in the culture and particularly this idea that your gender actually has no inherent connection to your sex.

[00:14:13] And so there's no reason why, you know, just because your sex is male that you should feel like a man or be a man. And so we've got more and more kids experimenting with any number of the 117 genders that you'll

[00:14:29] find on Tumblr and well we're in a world of confusion. The balance between morality and ideology, you know, they seem opposed to each other in this instance. There's extremes on the spectrum, right? So there's a lot of voices that are speaking into this issue.

[00:14:52] There will be some who are on, I mean I'll use the left and right scale but I mean some are on the far right who are just absolutely opposed to any conversation about this giving any validity to anything.

[00:15:06] But then on the opposite end of the spectrum there's the forcing it down on everyone, insisting that it's, you know, that it has support from government institutions, that it's supported by religious organizations. And so, you know, there's not a lot of sane conversation taking place over this issue

[00:15:26] I don't feel. I always tend to hear the really the two extremes and so I guess I'm asking how do we navigate that middle ground? How do we navigate in between the sort of shouting voices from two extremes?

[00:15:39] I'll start with a couple of suggestions and then Rob can follow up from that. I think one of the things that struck me as we've been dealing with these things is that

[00:15:50] although we want to say that the body that God gave us means something and that sex and gender are linked together, there can be wrong understandings of that. We do actually have to listen to some of the critique, perhaps, of the way that culturally

[00:16:12] the understanding of the genders has been worked out. So for example, one of the things that you find is in particular actually with people with gender dysphoria is that they're operating with very, very rigid gender stereotypes.

[00:16:29] So to be a man means you're big and macho and you like big cars with loud exhaust pipes and you like sport and you drink beer and you know that sort of thing.

[00:16:42] And if you're a woman, you like pretty things and you like baking and you wear makeup and you have big hair and you know all the rest of it. And yet when you look at the scriptures, you realize well actually in the scriptures there

[00:16:56] are all sorts of different portrayals of men and women, but men and women are different. They're equally made in the image of God, but they're different. So we have to, there is a cultural element to what it means to live as a man and a woman,

[00:17:12] but it's not all cultural. When you're talking about the right and the left, there is a sense in which we can learn from some of the discussion that's going on around sex and gender to really go back to

[00:17:26] the scriptures and think, okay, well when we're talking about men and women, what are we talking about? What does it look like to be a man and a woman? And in different cultures and different ages, there will be different aspects of that.

[00:17:39] So that's one of the things that I'd say. Yeah. And there is, as you mentioned, a profound connection between ideology and ethics or morality or to put it even more philosophically, ontology and ethics.

[00:17:55] So if you take, as in some ways much of our culture does, the starting point of Jean-Paul Sartre who said there is no human nature because there is no God to have a conception of it.

[00:18:08] Well then the outworking of that ideological starting point is that we create our own natures and there's no outside pattern or voice or God who's telling us who and what we are. And so that changes your ethic, that opens the door for, I guess, endless exploration

[00:18:30] and no room for criticism. Whereas if we are a certain thing, if we'd be made a certain way and if indeed there is a God who has created us and revealed his will for us and taught us what is good for

[00:18:44] us, then obviously there's a certain ethic that flows out of that. And obviously scripture spells that ethic out to us. So I guess the fundamental problem that lies at the root of all this is a rejection of

[00:18:59] God and his ways and his word and his reality and therefore rejection of who we are as his image bearers and the connection between the body he's given us and the person he's made us to be.

[00:19:12] Once you cut God out of the picture, all of that is up for grabs and morality then gets redesigned accordingly. How do we as Christians now respond? And I have two tracks of thinking down that.

[00:19:26] In one sense, how do we respond to an individual who's going through this? The second set of that is really the public discourse issue. Do we engage in that conversation? Do we remain silent? And how much do we take part in that?

[00:19:42] And what do we say if we were to put ourselves in that situation? Yeah, and it's important to recognize there are people out there and Christians out there who are feeling that, who are experiencing gender disturbance, gender incongruence, gender

[00:19:58] dysphoria is a range of ways we can talk about it. So yeah, let me just affirm your distinction, which is really helpful, that we do need to think through what is the personal slash pastoral response here, as opposed to what is the sort of public slash political response.

[00:20:15] And there'll be overlap between the two, but they're quite different in other ways. So let me throw to Claire to start us off with the personal slash pastoral, and then we'll go from there.

[00:20:27] Well, I guess the first thing I'd want to say is to understand that a person's suffering from gender confusion or gender dysphoria is a person who is genuinely suffering. So the people that we've shared with pastorally are people who are deeply traumatized.

[00:20:48] I mean, I know people who, for example, just walking down the street and seeing the reflection of themselves in the window, the shop windows, is traumatic because the image that they see of the sex in the window is not how they experience themselves.

[00:21:06] So for example, you might go into their house and all the mirrors might be covered so that they can't get a glimpse of themselves. And I mean, none of us can escape our bodies.

[00:21:17] And so if what you're experiencing is a deep conflict with your body, that doesn't leave you, that's with you all the time. So I guess that's the first thing to realize is just a deep, deep compassion for someone who is really in a world of pain.

[00:21:37] The current example that I only heard of yesterday, speaking to a woman who was telling me of her brother who's in his 50s and now changing genders. He's a married man with children. And this is causing all kinds of trauma in the family more broadly.

[00:21:56] But I asked this woman how long had he felt like this? And she said, well, pretty much since childhood. And it's only recently come out that it all began with, well, basically an experience of sexual assault that he had to endure.

[00:22:13] And he's had that trauma now for 40 plus years that now has pushed him to this point where the only thing he can do is what he's doing. Now, we may want to say to him, no, actually, there are other possibilities and pathways here that are better.

[00:22:31] But the pain that you can just feel the pain behind the decades of pain there, that's just one that came to my attention just yesterday from a friend. Sorry, I've interrupted Claire. No, no, no. So and I mean, that really is the first place to start from.

[00:22:48] For those of us who are engaging with people in this, who are experiencing this, which is a place of deep compassion and humility. We don't know what it's like to experience those things. And so humility.

[00:23:04] And above all, I mean, I think I would want to say, I think the way that we respond to someone who is Christian is different to the way that we respond to someone who is not Christian.

[00:23:14] For someone who is not Christian, their greatest need is to know the Lord Jesus. Somebody in this situation is in a place of deep, deep unrest and longing for peace. And the main thing, the main need there really is to come to know Jesus because only in Jesus

[00:23:35] is true peace found. And so everything that you do is geared towards that. And beyond that, the two words that I use would be love and truth. And so we want to love people, but we also want to speak truth to them.

[00:23:52] And that's really what has guided our response to things like pronoun use and so on, which is we don't want, well, certainly I don't want what I say to communicate unreality. If God has given somebody a sexed body, I want to uphold the reality of the body that

[00:24:18] God has given. But I also want to do that in a caring way that recognizes the distress that the person is feeling. So for example, with pronouns, I think our approach is when we're with a person not to

[00:24:32] use gendered pronouns for that person and just actually to use their name and use the name that they've chosen. People change their name, you know, people have all sorts of funny nicknames and that sort of thing.

[00:24:46] So I'm not too precious about what name you're going to call somebody. But we have a language system that has gendered pronouns. And so I am not going to use the opposite sex pronoun than that person should have.

[00:25:05] So yeah, I guess we go for a path of pronoun avoidance rather than pronoun compliance or as some people say, pronoun resistance. Just, you know, there are three options. Do you comply with what the person wants or do you resist or do you avoid?

[00:25:23] And we tend to go the path of avoidance, certainly with a non-Christian person. Yeah. Okay. And then, you know, the next thing we're looking at here is the public discourse on the issue of what it means to be a Christian as Christians in the public sphere.

[00:25:37] What should that look like from us? Yeah, well, in fact, there's several layers in between, I guess, in as much as there's a great need to educate Christian pastors and Christian congregations about these issues

[00:25:53] and about what Scripture says about us as image bearers and about our sex and our gender. So in a sense, part of the public engagement is the teaching and educating of the body

[00:26:09] of Christ so that we might think well and live well and then know how to speak well when we have opportunity. Now, in terms of how do we speak well into the public space, I guess that's not always easily done.

[00:26:25] And we're certainly up against it in the present time because almost anything we say gets interpreted as hateful. Unless we're affirming, we're hating it is the way most people seem to think in the public space.

[00:26:38] But there is a little bit of pushback coming now, both in medicine and certainly from the domain of sports where people are, I think, are beginning to see this isn't working, can't work.

[00:26:48] Oh, and a number of the second wave feminists too sort of weighing in at this point, which is fascinating. Yes. Well, the feminists... Strongly opposed. Yes, the feminists are seeing what this is doing now for, I guess, women's safe spaces

[00:27:02] and just the whole idea of who is a woman and what is a woman. So there are very... we have various, you might call them co-belligerents or allies coming from unexpected quarters who are saying, hang on a sec, this doesn't work. This can't be right.

[00:27:21] And so I think it doesn't hurt to draw attention to these things and to, I guess, well, try and help people see the end point. If we embrace the ideology, it really does mean that a man, a big, bitter man can declare

[00:27:37] himself to be a woman and then enter into all the female sports arenas and win all the prizes and enter into female safe spaces and change rooms and showers. That's where the ideology goes, isn't it?

[00:27:52] I think it was a Canadian trans cyclist who was getting criticism for having won some events and this person's pushback was, well, you let me change my name, you let me change

[00:28:03] my birth certificate, you let me do all these things and now you're saying I can't win the prize for having won the race. Where's the logic in that? And the answer is, well, they're right. There is no logic in that.

[00:28:15] You're going to say yes down this end, on what basis do we stand up that end? And so helping people in the public space see that this can't actually work is part of what we can do.

[00:28:31] But again, as we were saying with the personal response to a non-Christian, what people need most of all is to know Christ and to come under his lordship and allow him to put his yoke on us and lead us and guide us.

[00:28:47] So somehow we need to not lose the gospel in our public engagement. Otherwise we're just kind of, well, I don't know, preaching either common sense or morality which is, well, could be worse but it's not really going to bring about the change that the gospel will bring.

[00:29:08] Matthew 15 Let me ask this because I'm just realizing we opened and talked about the origin being, you know, obviously when Adam and Eve fell, all mankind fell and, you know, then those things work themselves out in a myriad of different ways. This happens to be one of them.

[00:29:28] But I just wonder, you know, in your counseling and in your research, what are the things that are setting this issue off? Rob, you gave the example of the lady whose brother is identifying as transgender and the issue traced back to an abusive relationship.

[00:29:49] I'm assuming you'll say that that's not all the case, but is there sort of some patterns that you've noticed or seen that are creating this or something along those lines? Robert Redford Yeah, that's a great question. Thank you for letting me clarify.

[00:30:03] Yes, it's certainly not the case that there's always some abuse or something in the background of a person who has gender incongruence. It can be the case, but certainly not necessarily the case. And so we should never just assume that.

[00:30:18] And in some cases, it's pretty much impossible or often the medical people say inscrutable to try to work out what is the cause of this. There is no identifiable reason for some people. But in other cases, there are at least things you can put your finger on.

[00:30:36] They may not be the total explanation, but partial explanations. And certainly I know a number of cases where children have internalized a belief that their parents actually wanted a girl or wanted a boy, which maybe was true.

[00:30:53] Maybe they had rightly picked that up or maybe they'd imagined it, you know. So they internalized a belief, either a true or false belief. So that had been something that had worked its way through in them.

[00:31:07] Other cases, as Claire mentioned earlier, they embraced a very rigid sort of gender stereotype. So here's a girl who likes cricket or likes rough and tumble games. And the stereotype is that no girls aren't meant to be like that. They're meant to be placid and like coloring in.

[00:31:27] And so then the child's confused. Well, I thought I was a girl, but I like what the boys are doing. And so maybe I'm actually a boy. And kids often have very rigid views about all kinds of things. That's just part of being a kid.

[00:31:43] And so it's not surprising that kids can get confused if they're not helped. And what's happening today is that they're not being helped. They're being harmed by the ideology that's telling them, oh, well, OK. Yeah, you must be a boy if you like that.

[00:31:59] Or you must be a girl if you actually like dancing or you can pick whatever you want. You know, it's a smorgasbord here. You can chop and change. So this is where the ideology is creating a problem where there wasn't a problem.

[00:32:17] But in some cases, there is a problem of one reason or another or from multiplicity of reasons. As Rob just said, there is no this is what has caused gender dysphoria all the time,

[00:32:30] you know, universally sort of cause and effect because that's just not that's not the case. But there are there are strong correlations, for example, with family dysfunction, with other mental health issues like depression and anxiety.

[00:32:45] There's a high and an emerging recognition of a correlation between autism spectrum disorder and gender dysphoria, particularly with females, biological females. In particular, this new phenomenon, really, of rapid onset gender dysphoria, which they're seeing in adolescent, in particular adolescent girls who up until adolescence

[00:33:11] hadn't really demonstrated any gender incongruence. And yet suddenly in adolescence have this extreme experience of gender dysphoria. And there's a high correlation there of autism spectrum disorder or Asperger's with these biological girls. Well, and in many cases, as is being reported now in the secular media,

[00:33:39] what gives rise to this rapid onset is kind of excessive exposure to YouTube transition narrative stories and then things happening within the peer group. And, you know, kids are very impressionable and easily confused or easily pressured to fitting in with what's perceived to be the new norm.

[00:34:04] And the other footnote to that is it's just so easy to get onto the transition track. My family member went to the university counselling service, was immediately directed to a psychiatrist,

[00:34:20] had a one hour appointment with a psychiatrist who said, yes, you're transgender and started hormones the next week. So it's just such a rapid track. And the treatment protocol of giving adolescents puberty blockers, which has been, well is,

[00:34:44] presented as a sort of a way of buying time so that the teenager can work out their gender identity issues, actually is not a way of buying time because the evidence now shows that almost 100% of those who are put on puberty blockers

[00:35:00] progress to transition because they're being affirmed in the, it's accompanied by social transitioning, which is names, pronouns, clothes and so on. And so the mind is being trained in the gender opposed to the body.

[00:35:22] And so puberty blockers are not the sort of holding pattern that they're presented as, but rather a sort of one way street really. In line of what you're just talking about with your family member, how you have had that conversation with your family member,

[00:35:37] how it is that you have walked with them, counselled them through this really difficult and strenuous time for them? Well, I think the first thing I want to say before I get to the family member is to realise that the wider impact on the family,

[00:35:55] you know, sometimes the kid at school comes and a letter is sent home. Johnny's coming to school next week as Jane. And it's just sort of treated all as, you know, a simple, simple thing. Whatever the narrative, the truth is, the family is in crisis.

[00:36:12] This is a traumatic experience for the whole family of profound grief, of anxiety, of stress and so on. So that's the first thing, which is you're not dealing just with the individual. You're actually dealing with a whole network of relationships within a family and broader friend networks.

[00:36:36] In my family situation, the family members, it was not a Christian. And so that really did guide my engagement at that level. The suicide rate for people who transition is very high. So over 40 percent of transgender people attempt suicide.

[00:36:58] And the most reliable research, longitudinal research on the mental health outcomes of those who have transitioned, shows that the completed suicide rate of people who've transitioned is 19.1 times that of the general population. So you're looking at a very, very vulnerable section of our community.

[00:37:23] And so my main purpose is to communicate, love, stay in contact, help maintain all the relationships around the family member so that they know they're loved for the long term. Because really what you're looking at is a lifetime of needing love and support and connection and so on.

[00:37:51] So, for example, Rob and I were very involved in sharing with the wider family the decision of our family member to transition. For example, put aside an entire day to spend with the different grandparents so that they could actually come to terms with it,

[00:38:13] think it through and really be very involved in making sure that the family ties are as strong as possible so that that long term support is going to be there.

[00:38:25] I personally would have lunch with the family member every couple of weeks and just sort of just love them and talk through things

[00:38:38] and try and again, encourage staying connected with the family, encourage and push back and challenge some of the gender stereotypes to sort of shake up some of the quite rigid gender stereotypes.

[00:38:55] We've also been quite clear with our family member that we don't affirm or agree with the path they've taken, that we believe there is a better way. So they know that and there's been no dodging of that.

[00:39:13] But that doesn't stop us continuing to be present, continuing to listen and love and be whatever hope we can be with the, as Claire mentioned earlier,

[00:39:25] the fundamental goal of bringing them to Jesus and praying that they will find him and find peace in him and then begin to work out how to live under his lordship and to embrace the body that he's given them.

[00:39:42] You know, you raised something and I hate to kind of jump around like this, but the suicide issue.

[00:39:48] And I feel like that is the card that is held over when a parent discover or their child comes to them and says they feel this way and then they go to see a counselor and somebody says, well, almost essentially to prevent suicide, you need to affirm them or move forward with this.

[00:40:06] I feel like there's a lot of danger in that. Yes, and you're right. It is a bit like a sword that's hung over parents, particularly the line, well, would you rather have a live son or a dead daughter kind of line?

[00:40:20] And what's any parent meant to do with that? Now behind that whole, well, I guess way of putting things is just a disguising of this fact that Claire mentioned that that transitioning is no guarantee that suicide will be avoided.

[00:40:42] In fact, it may even increase the risk. So it certainly makes statistically makes no difference. So a person is just as likely to attempt suicide after transitioning as they were before, statistically. So, yeah, it's a bit of propaganda, sadly.

[00:41:00] Although the best research shows that there is a sort of honeymoon period. So typically after transitioning first five to 10 years or first five years in particular, and then things start dropping off, which is why I say the importance of staying connected for the long term.

[00:41:20] Because unfortunately, a lot of transgender people become very, very socially isolated. And this is recognised in even in the within the transgender academic world. There's this recognition of social isolation, of dropping out, becoming estranged from families and so on.

[00:41:41] And so really just doing everything that you can to keep those ties strong, both for the eternal well being of the person because you want to share the gospel with them, but also because they need it.

[00:41:55] As a group within our community, this is a very vulnerable group of people. For the parent who has a child who is starting to ask these questions or saying, well, I'm a girl, but I don't like playing with the dolls.

[00:42:09] You know, it's a matter of not panicking on the one hand and gently guiding on the other. Now, again, we don't want to get stuck in rigid, narrow gender stereotypes. I mean, the Bible certainly doesn't go there.

[00:42:27] It presents a range of ways of being a man, a range of ways of being a woman. And so one of the little, I suppose, awarenesses I've had more recently is that whilst gender is not a spectrum, I certainly wouldn't want to say that.

[00:42:42] There is a sense in which masculinity is a spectrum and femininity is a spectrum in that there are different ways of being a man, different ways of being a woman.

[00:42:49] So why should we say that all little boys have to want to do X or little girls want to do Y?

[00:42:56] So in a sense, I think parents can use it as an opportunity to say and teach and say, well, look, it's OK for boys to like whatever it is, girls to like whatever it is. So there's that, that, I guess, just relaxed approach.

[00:43:11] But also if the little boy or girl is really confused and identifying more as a girl or a boy when that's not what their biology is, then I guess that's where the gentle guiding can come in.

[00:43:28] So I was talking to a mother whose son has certainly been confused about his gender for some years. I think he's now perhaps six or seven.

[00:43:41] And she rang me to tell me that she had overheard her son say to his younger sister, I'm a boy and you're a girl. I used to think I was a girl, but I was just a bit confused. But now I know that I'm a boy.

[00:43:56] And the mother was just overjoyed, so overjoyed she contacted me to tell me this because they had been sort of doing this sort of gentle guiding, watchful waiting approach for a number of years, resisting taking the little boy to a gender clinic, which would have put him straight on a path toward transitioning.

[00:44:18] And now he's kind of resolved whatever the confusion was that was generating his misunderstanding of who he was. So that's a wonderful outcome. And in many cases, that's exactly what happens to children in the large, large majority of cases. Kids resolve their confusion.

[00:44:40] The other thing too I think we can do is perhaps as Christians, we haven't, evangelical Christians, we haven't thought enough about just the goodness of God's creation and the goodness of our bodies, what it means to be embodied people.

[00:44:56] And so with our children, to raise them with a knowledge that God gave you your body and isn't it wonderful? And the sort of revelatory nature of the body in showing you who you are and what godliness means as a boy and as a girl.

[00:45:17] So I think that's an important part too, which is upholding the sovereignty and wisdom of God. And if a child feels that I'm in the wrong body, then that's an opportunity to talk about God's wisdom and God's goodness and the body that he's given you.

[00:45:32] And it's a teaching opportunity, but I think it's a teaching opportunity that we all need to learn. Because I don't know that we've actually spent enough time thinking about that sort of thing. You're right.

[00:45:43] Sometimes I think for those of us who haven't had this struggle, we take it for granted, right? We sort of just take for granted the cultural things just sort of came naturally to us and we just sort of walked through those and never really had that struggle.

[00:45:58] But for the person that is struggling, it does make you ask, gosh, I've never actually had to consider this myself. And I think from a pastoral perspective, that would be helpful in counseling someone, in helping someone, even just as a friend to have that conversation. Yeah.

[00:46:17] And if your listeners want a good book to look at, it's very helpful not just on the transgender issue, but on a whole range of issues to do with our bodies.

[00:46:26] The book by Nancy Peercy called Love Thy Body really is an excellent treatment of the need for Christians broadly to think better and more biblically about our bodies.

[00:46:40] Is there anything you feel like we haven't discussed that you would love for the listeners to understand better or any sort of parting thoughts or something we feel like we've missed?

[00:46:50] One of the things we haven't really gone into in any depth is what Scripture has to say to help us in this whole domain.

[00:46:59] And I guess just to give a short summary of that, Scripture doesn't say a lot directly to the transgender question, but it says an enormous amount about what it means to be human, what it means to be sexual, what it means to be embodied, what the relationship is between our inner and outer person and all of those things.

[00:47:17] So there's a much, perhaps longer conversation we could have about all the details of that so that we can leave that perhaps for another day. But Scripture does have a lot to say that is of help to Christians as we try to think well about these issues.

[00:47:35] The thing that I'd want to mention just as we finish up is that we haven't talked a lot about what it looks like for Christians to live, who experience gender dysphoria, what it looks like for them to live faithfully, godliness in that situation.

[00:47:51] Rob and I are in contact with several brothers and sisters who had been living in their opposite gender, who either after coming to Christ or... People who had transitioned.

[00:48:04] That's right, people who had transitioned, who subsequent to coming to Christ or further on in their Christian life had been convicted that the Lord wanted them to return and live in their biological sex.

[00:48:18] And just seeing them doing that, a biological woman growing her hair, becoming comfortable with her body, doing what she can to reverse the surgical interventions that she'd had to find peace living as a woman. Very, very beautiful thing to see.

[00:48:40] Similarly with men that we know who'd been living as women returning out of faithfulness to Christ, having been convicted that the Lord wanted them to live in line with the body that he'd given them.

[00:48:53] And I guess what we don't want to be heard saying is that becoming a Christian is an instant cure for these things because it's not.

[00:49:03] For these brothers and sisters, this is going to be a lifelong journey where they're needing love and prayer and support, but where faithfulness is living in line with the body that God has given you.

[00:49:17] And seeking to do that in the fellowship of God's people with their love and support and knowing that God's grace is sufficient at every point. I'm so grateful that you guys have taken the time to sit and talk with us.

[00:49:31] And so I just wonder if, as we sort of depart from here, if both of you would actually pray for us and pray for those that will listen to this podcast. Sure, we'd love to do that. I'll start and you can finish.

[00:49:45] Heavenly Father, thank you for the conversation we've been able to have today. We do want to pray for our world, for the confusion in our world, for the destruction happening in our world.

[00:49:58] And pray, Lord, for the progress of the gospel of our Lord Jesus and for its healing and transforming power to be at work.

[00:50:10] We pray for the faithfulness of your people, that we might both be unafraid to share the love of Christ with others, and that we might live well before a watching world.

[00:50:23] And might be faithful witnesses, therefore, of what it means to be truly human and to know ourselves as your creatures, as men made in your image. And so, Father, we pray for our world. We pray for our church and pray you would have mercy in Jesus' name. Amen.

[00:50:44] And Heavenly Father, we pray for any listening to this who themselves know the burden of gender confusion or gender dysphoria, and for those who love them. And Father, we ask that you would meet them in their need, that you would provide comfort and strength and hope.

[00:51:07] And Father, we ask that you would enable any who are suffering under this burden to find Christian fellowship and pastoral care, and that you would meet them in that time of need, that you would bring healing and peace.

[00:51:23] And Father, the hope of the gospel and the hope of eternal life and a place where there will be no more tears or pain. And so, Father, we ask that you would meet the individual needs of those listening to this in your Son by your grace. Amen. Amen.

[00:51:42] Robyn Clare-Smith, thank you so much for taking the time to be on Candid. Thanks, Jocelyn. God bless. Candid is a podcast from Leading the Way with Dr. Michael Youssef. Don't forget to connect with our social media pages on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook,

[00:51:58] and subscribe to Candid Conversations on your favorite podcast platform so that you never miss an episode. While you're there, please leave a review. It helps people to find us. As always, thank you for listening to and sharing this episode.