Does God Care About Gender Identity?

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Collin Hansen
It’s been dubbed the gender revolution. And if you’re listening from anywhere in the West, you see it everywhere. Gender identity has been disconnected from biology, and what you feel about your body matters more than what you can see and what you can touch. Even children are encouraged to believe that they were born into the wrong gendered body. Now expect and sometimes even demand support from parents and other authorities, as they seek life altering drugs and surgeries to, quote confirm the gender with which they identify. For almost a decade, I’ve fielded questions from concerned parents, friends and pastors about this gender revolution. And that’s why I’m glad that Samuel Ferguson has written the booklet Does God care about gender identity, one of the first in a new series from the gospel coalition and crossway called hard questions. The other new titles are Why do we feel lonely at church by Jeremy Lindemann and his Christianity good for the world by Sharon James. You can buy these booklets anywhere, including Amazon just 7099 apiece. But you get the best deal at the gospel coalition store where you can purchase three copies for the price of two. Samuel Ferguson has been the rector of the Falls Church Anglican and Falls Church, Virginia since 2019. I first saw him writing on gender dysphoria all the way back in a 2015 book review for the gospel coalition. He also contributed to our 2022 article transformation of a transgender teen by Sarah zostera. He joins me on gospel bound to discuss this cultural revolution and address everything from parents to pronouns to the distressing experience of gender dysphoria. Sam, thank you for joining me on gospel bound.

Sam Ferguson
Thank you for having me, Colin, it’s an honor to get to spend some time with you.

Collin Hansen
All right, Sam, when did you first notice that something significant had changed in our culture?

Sam Ferguson
I first noticed this shift when I was in graduate school in England, in 2010, and 2011, when a classmate of mine, a self proclaimed agnostic, opened up to me about his own gender confusion, and told me that he was in a process of transitioning, and at that time, 2010 2011, it actually wasn’t in the news all the time. And it certainly was something that I didn’t have experience with personally. And walking with this friend, we really weren’t friends, we were classmates was the first occasion I had to not just think about it, theoretically, but also personally,

Collin Hansen
I wonder, wonder, Sam, you’re a pastor. And in many ways that brings you up close and personal to a lot of these questions. But at the same time, it might actually make other people wonder, why are you actually qualified to talk about these things? Just because you you’ve known some people or had some friends who’ve experienced this. They might be thinking, well, what are you going to do? You’re just going to quote Genesis 127 at me and call it good. So I mean, is this something that you anticipated that you were going to have to work through in pastoral ministry? Do you? Do you have a class on this? And tell us a little bit more about what your study is looked like?

Sam Ferguson
Yeah, that’s a great question, Colin, I mean, you wouldn’t want your pastor to prescribe chemotherapy to you. And so as a pastor, you do have to be careful to stay in your lane. But really, nobody’s in the lane of the transgender movement. It’s so new. And in seminary, you don’t have classes on this. biblical anthropology, which is the technical term for the study of being human, according to Scripture, and theology is really an underdeveloped area. And so coming into pastoral work, I certainly didn’t anticipate or feel prepared to help parents and help young people deal with the question of gender confusion, it was so new. And I think what pastors need to be able to do, however, is, is get underneath a cultural conversation, and try to understand it in terms of the core beliefs. It assumes, I mean, every every movement or ideology assumes a certain worldview, there’s hidden premises, about what it means to be human, about what you do with pain about where you find happiness. And that’s certainly true of the transgender movement. So as a pastor, I have felt I’ve had to think through this deeply with people, and then go to Scripture with fresh eyes looking at old texts that I’ve looked at before, like Genesis one, two and three accounts of the resurrection. You know, is Jesus embodied? Yes. Did he have a male body? Yes. What does that mean for how we think of our present body and basically create an architecture for that Being gendered as an embodied being, that could help people think through how they would analyze the current debate in terms of treatments. And really what is biblical in terms of where our gender is located, and whether or not we can change it. So, in short, Colin, I didn’t come into pastoral ministry wanting to talk about this, or feeling that I had been prepared. But it’s, it’s always come up in personal situations for me, with with real people and real families, and I haven’t had anywhere to send people. There’s very little written on it. And quite frankly, I feel like you can’t hand you can’t hand your church members over to culture on this one right now. And so I’ve I’ve tried to do my best humbly to dig into Scripture and offer some insights.

Collin Hansen
It seems a little odd, Sam, that you’d say something as important, as biblical anthropology hasn’t really been addressed as much as it should. Is that simply because that’s the way theology develops? And it’s always responding or dealing with contemporary issues at different times? Or is that reveal kind of a broader weakness? How do you account for that?

Sam Ferguson
I think, doctrine and theology, they don’t develop in a vacuum, they typically develop in relation to heresies or false teaching or questions. And so, you know, without realizing it, you know, the Council of Nicaea, and some of the early councils when they were dealing on the nature of Christ, we’re getting close to anthropology, right? But it was from a different angle, how is Christ fully God and fully man? And and the questions then, during the Reformation were around soteriology. What does it mean to be saved the nature of the Bible, the nature of authority. And then I think more recently, in some of the debates between faith and science, we’ve maybe wondered about the nature of the world and how we understand it from the Bible. And I think anthropology has been there in different conversations. But it’s come to the fore in a new way, where, where we have to ask questions about embodiment. And what does it mean to have a body? And what does it mean to be male or female visa vie your body? And I just don’t think we’ve ever had to ask the question, with the same cultural pressure that we do now. I mean, the notion that you could be born as a girl trapped in a male body, that that that that idea was completely nonsensical up till about 10 years ago. And now it’s commonplace. So I think it’s it’s the cultural situation, has just forced us to think more deeply about anthropology.

Collin Hansen
The same? Should we be surprised that this seems to correspond to the ubiquity of the internet?

Sam Ferguson
No, I think the the speed at which ideas spread now, because of the internet is obviously a lot faster. And so I think you’re more likely, well, I should rephrase that you, you’re less likely to be able to duck an issue. Just because you might not be in a, you know, coastal city, or in a town with a progressive school district. Everyone’s going to be asking these questions no matter what continent you’re on, or where you live in America.

Collin Hansen
Not to mention, if you’re a, if you’re a teenager, a preteen, you’re on Tiktok, you’re seeing all sorts of different messages come through their examples, models from other people’s lives, not to mention the fact that the internet itself seems to be a plausibility structure that makes disembodiment normal. We’re less physical, we feel less physical than any time before because the internet makes our, our lifestyle, so sedentary in so many ways, and it also digitizes our work, which also then androgynous is our work to a certain extent, because it eliminates some of the inherent sexual differences in terms of strength and things like that between men and women. So at least when I’m talking on the subject, it’s often it’s not a coincidence, at least to me that we’re having this conversation 2023 as opposed to 1993 seems to be some significant developments there in the middle. But let’s go back a little bit more into the kind of the nature of this dramatic and as you’ve been pointing out here, Sam, sudden change in Western culture. Do you see that simply as the logical extension of the sexual revolution, and specifically with what we’ve seen for decades now with homosexuality? Or do you see something or do you see this as a different branch? Does it come from that one or from somewhere else?

Sam Ferguson
That’s Good question, Colin. I would say that this is a manifestation of a deeper movement towards prising the autonomous individual on the one hand to personal freedom, and then moving towards intuitions or feelings, to understand who you are so kind of this Cartesian inward turn alongside the prising of personal freedom and so it’s in some ways you can once you start to see that that’s the air we breathe and then you start to see the obsession with identity that’s playing out I mean, I mean everybody what what is your identity and rather than being something you receive from external structures, family of origin, nationality, religion, identity is very much a project of self discovery now and self expression a do it yourself project is Brian Rosner likes to say it once you see that you really start to just realize this could come up anywhere. Anything that seems to be limiting human expression, I mean, even even the notion that we’re how a species a human that’s, that’s a biological reality. But once you turn identity into this nebulous feeling that you have, and then you prize the individuals autonomy over everyone else, you so suddenly still see almost like the booby trap has been set. And, and it’s very, that’s why I think talking about it is so hard, because it feels like you’re violating someone’s personal freedom and denying their existence and their identity. So I would say it developed over a period of time with a lot of philosophical underpinnings was aided by the sexual revolution, was probably aided by a larger movement towards androgyny and how we understand gender roles. I don’t think that’s unrelated. Like we’ve when the same sex marriage thing happened in 2015, what you saw was that marriage is no longer between a man and a woman, it’s between two persons. And once you realize that, that were persons were not men and women, you just start to see that a lot of these things come together to kind of undermine the idea of an embodied gender that limits your freedom of choice.

Collin Hansen
I think that that’s a really helpful explanation, Sam, of of a lot of the continuities, I wonder here about one of the DIS continuities that seems to be there in terms of the distinction between the no the LGB, maybe on the T, in that, in that description. So here’s what I’m seeing at least and tell me if I’m wrong on this, but so much of the gay rights movements momentum in the 1990s. In the 2000s, it seemed to gain traction on biological grounds. I’m simply born this way. You saw a lot of discussions, is there a gay gene or people are they inherit this, we don’t know how, but this is something that they can’t change. It’s an immutable characteristic of them. All we need to be able to do is strip away society’s constraints. Rousseau idea that we just need to get back to nature and nature is biology. Biology is genetics, genetics, will someday reveal that some people are simply born, same sex attracted. But it seems like this gender revolution that you’re writing about, is actually pretty different. It’s fluid now. And it’s a triumph of psychology over biology. You don’t hear anymore about the search of a gay gene, because that in and of itself, as you just pointed out, Sam, that also limits autonomy. Yeah, if you’re telling somebody they’re born this way, that they can only be attracted as a man to another man. That is that it’s very limiting, not to mention marriage there. Do you think I’m on the right track there? Are there any other differences that you that you might see, but it seems like some of the arguments about the transgender identity are quite different from what we heard for decades and gay rights?

Sam Ferguson
Absolutely, Colin, I mean, the and I don’t mean this just to be pejorative, but the movement is marked by profound incoherence. So on the one hand, it can’t define what a woman or a man is. And at the same time, a person can know inside, that they’re a woman or a man. But they can’t define what that is. And, and then the movements very concerned that a doctor would look at a baby based on their anatomy and chromosomes and assign it to sex at birth. But at the same time, as you said, the the gay movement, leverage the notion that you can be born a certain way. And so yeah, I mean, look, there’s no there’s no agreed upon metaphysic behind this movement. There’s no agreed upon notion that nature has meaning. And so you, you have a deep incoherence here, and I think, because the really the final authority is the cell You know, a very Nietzschean idea that you really, it’s the will to power, the will to the self to express itself is the core idea. Anything that would get in that way, even the idea that you are born gay eventually will have to be jettisoned. To say the self can be what it wants when it wants, as long as it doesn’t encroach on another selfs autonomy. And so I think the gender movement is simply really a continual outworking of the deeper ideology under the LGBTQ movement. And that’s why you see some some, some inner discord within the movement, even even how the transgender movement right now is sitting awkwardly alongside women’s rights, particularly in the arena of sports. And these two things just sit awkwardly together. And so yeah, I think there’s incoherence here and there are differences,

Collin Hansen
Gene 20s. And now another one of my guests this season on gospel Baum, and she wrote a new book called generations, people can listen to the interview and, and hear my perspective and her perspective on why I think that’s such a significant book. And I think though, the the part that stood out to me the most was about Gen Z. In that book, and we’re talking here, the generation behind millennials, these are teenagers up to a kind of early 20 Somethings now. And a research indicated that more than half of Gen Z, cannot conceive of there being only two sexes, or genders. In fact, it’s it’s really inconceivable of them. One thought I’m having here, Sam, as you mentioned, that the self has autonomy, so long as it does not infringe upon the autonomy of another adjacent self. But that’s not actually Nietzsche’s conclusions. His was actually the will to rule over others, as well, who were to power overmatch, exactly as, as Dostoevsky had covered in Crime and Punishment we’ve seen elsewhere. So most makes me wonder here is there. As younger generations are coming forward, I’m wondering if there won’t be that sort of live and let live Do your thing itself, but actually more of an assertion of, of dominance, as the younger generation loses any normative sense of the givenness of biology or the broader cultural and familial norms over the course of of millennia? It’s kind of a wide ranging thought. But do you have any, any sense of of what differences you particular particularly might see, among Gen Z on this topic?

Sam Ferguson
Yeah, I think, you know, I love the saying, reality has a way of sneaking up on you. And so even as the idea of, of a binary world of male, male and female becomes nonsensical to young people, we’re all still born, male or female, right. And so, I think there is, I believe, in what’s called Gender essentialism, meaning that your body does impact your gender identity. And I think that, you know, I think that’s significant in various ways. I know it’s, it’s easy to fall into kind of soldiers cultural stereotypes for how that’s played out. But I think what you’re going to see and you see some of it now, as you see some of these movements towards kind of classic masculinity. You could think of online personalities that have a lot of followers. And, and you also could think of the recent Barbie movie, which is gotten some some backlash, because it’s predicated somewhat on the notion of a binary world, right? And, and so many people want to see the Barbie movie. And I saw so many pictures of women dressing up in pink, really playing into the cultural stereotype to go. And I was observing this thinking, you know, it’s, it’s hard to articulate what’s going on. But there’s something deep in these gender norms, that I think we’re going to see people, they’re going to keep coming back to them. I think you’ll see it with young men in the arena of sports, in some situations, they’re gonna want to play football in a rough way. And, and so I do think there will probably be more space for talking about what is an appropriate kind of expression of masculinity or femininity, which are really important conversations. But there’s got to be some anchor there. I mean, the fact that a male gets a testosterone bath in utero, and then gets a testosterone bath during puberty, it has some type of effect that that I just think you can’t cancel out. And so yeah, I think I think we’ll have a lot of people who, who won’t ever say that they think there’s only two genders. And then we’re going to have a lot Are people grasping to fit into some type of mold where they can feel like a woman or feel like a man. And that’s just going to be an awkward situation. And I think it’s going to be a real challenge for the church, Colin and in how we talk about what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman. I think we have a lot of work to do, not just in not just in making the case that your body is your gender. But the harder question right now is going to be okay. So what does it mean to be masculine? What does it mean to be feminine? And that relates to roles in the church roles in the home, but also just these inclinations people? It’s a hard question.

Collin Hansen
But it occurs to me Sam hadn’t thought about this when I was preparing for this interview. But when I was working on my, my research on Tim Keller, and I went back into his course of study at Gordon Conwell with, with Elizabeth Elliott, I was reminded that one of the maybe it was the final assignment, I can’t recall that she assigned in her class on Christian communication was to write about what is what is manhood. And what is womanhood. And this was 1975 or so. And, as Kathy Keller and others have told me, it was the hardest assignment. That was like that was 1975. So your earlier I had mentioned, how much these things seem to owe to the effects of the internet. And yet, as you pointed out, there are philosophical underpinnings here that go to go back literally centuries with some of the people like Descartes that you’ve mentioned in here. And so it does appear to be an area that perhaps we were particularly vulnerable to, in the West. Because for whatever reasons, we simply had not, not sunk into and were not prepared for, for what was was coming there. Now, this next question may relate that I’m, I’ve had a lot of people ask me all the way from my podcast with my friend, Kevin D. Young, we had a question at the beginning of the summer about, have we reached peak pride? You know, is there going to be that backlash to reality that you had mentioned there? From from a Christian perspective? And then what are the other things that we’ve seen a lot of lately, in conservative media, and politics is a lot of discussion about, I mean, kind of stereotypically here, drag queen story hour. And there’s also quite a bit of pushback relation to what you’ve mentioned, biological men competing against women. So the question for you as a pastor is, Do you welcome some of that broader cultural and political pushback? A lot of it’s not Christian. A lot of it’s not very Christ like, but it is, in many ways more in accord with biological reality, it’s a bit of that snap back to reality. So how do you think about that, as a pastor, do you say, Okay, it’s good? Were there are other allies who are sort of joining this cause realizing that this is a problem? Or do you look at it and say, oh, yeah, that they may we may agree on something, but it seems sub Christian in some ways. How do you think about that?

Sam Ferguson
I mean, I, I’d have to take it case by case. But I, I think of an analogy with the advent of the ultrasound, which helped Christians that helped the Christian cause to try to say that a baby, and it’s mommy’s belly is a human being right. And so when cultural things come along, that that help they push in the same direction Christians are trying to push, I think I think we should welcome them without hitching our wagons to them, per se, because what’s going to happen is you’re going to find that there’s more of a political spirit to some of these things, and the church needs to be careful about how it participates in those things. But you know, I certainly think when I watch you know, in Europe, as I was researching for this, this little book, Does God care about gender identity, I this I realized how many countries in Europe, were dialing back access for, for minors, to to gender transition therapy and various forms, you know, puberty blockers, etc. And I thought that was a great thing. And that was just based on empirical data. They were not a Christian movement. Exactly. They just said, look it for, you know, for the sake of the common good, and for these young people, we can’t say that these treatments are working. We don’t know what their effects will be. And young people don’t seem to be doing better per se, in a way that can justify this treatment. So I think, you know, I think you started this question with We’re talking how you and Kevin Do Young, we’re asking how we hit like peak pride threshold. And I’ve wondered that same thing. I live in Washington DC. And so when when pride month comes, it’s a pretty big deal. And I almost felt a fatigue this summer in the city, like, Okay, we we’ve done a lot of marching over the last five years. And, you know, we can’t we get it. That’s not to say there wasn’t a lot of activity still. But I do, I do think that one of the ways God has made the world right, this is Romans one, is that even in a fallen world, the natural world explain something about spiritual realities, right, that we should know that God exists based on the natural world, right? That seems to be what Paul’s saying in Romans one. And I take from that, that reality has its own kind of forced upon the human soul and psyche. And you can only cut against the grain for so long. And so I do, I do think you can, you can’t be wrong forever, in a sense. So I do think we’re going to see a lot of I mean, we’re wealthy enough in the West, we can afford to be wrong for a long time. If you were poor, and in India, you just couldn’t afford to go get a transgender transition, right? You have to go get a job. And so this is a luxury of the elite West is what it is. But I do think we’ll see, I welcome incongruency. And as much as it helps us push back towards biblical reality

Collin Hansen
makes a lot of sense. When you’re talking with Christians on this subject, your church members or others, certainly when you’re thinking about the audience for for this for this booklet, what’s the biggest misconception you come across from Christians when it comes to this subject?

Sam Ferguson
One of the, it depends what depends what age group I’m dealing with. So if I’m dealing with you know, speaking of that book generations, you mentioned, if I’m dealing with a baby, baby boomer or older, the assumption is I’m talking about homosexuality, or same sex attraction or, and, and I have to very kind of clearly explain to people that T in LGBT is is different, it doesn’t necessarily mean that someone has same sex attraction at all, it may have nothing to do with sexual orientation. And so I always find with Christians in older generations is important to clarify, and they’re not doing anything wrong. They just didn’t grow up with all these acronyms. And I think the the biggest misconception I run into with younger Christians and non Christian so I’m I’m lumping them together is that this is about a culture war. That that pastors that one of think clearly and biblically about gender identity, want to have a culture? Well, first of all, I’m not sure that we really understand what we mean by culture war, I think there’s certain wars and culture like the civil rights movement that are worth fighting. But I think this is not at all what this is. This is about being faithful to God, and answering the questions that come to you as a pastor or a parent. And when a young person wants to dye their hair or get a piercing, that’s one thing, when they want to permanently alter their body with completely novel treatments. You have a duty to them and God to think deeply about it and speak clearly about it. So that’s what I just often feel that with young Christians, oh, you’re just kind of getting into a culture war. And I just want to say, No, I, I’m just trying to pastor people. And, and, and really, I have to answer to God one day for how I do that, you know, and so I knew that that’s the misconception I see with younger Christians.

Collin Hansen
Let’s stay on that pastoral track there, Sam, because this is so much of what we do with the gospel coalition, and so much of what we’re hoping for, that church leaders and members of churches will be helped by your booklet by others in the hard question series. But let’s talk to parents and let’s talk to parents, especially of young children, younger children that haven’t yet entered this fray. What would be something that you think that these parents need to start doing? And what would be something that you think that they need to stop doing?

Sam Ferguson
Yeah. Actually, just first, say, my heart goes out to these parents, my church is filled with them, filled with them, and and I love them so much. And I’d say what they need to start doing is thinking about age appropriate, healthy ways to celebrate gender. So one of the things I tried to do in our church is encourage our music team to do at least one song a Sunday where the men sing apart and the women sing apart. And then we sing together because that’s That’s an acoustic aesthetic way that the reality of gender difference hits you. And it’s beautiful. It’s one of the reasons gender difference will persist in heaven. Even though we’re not given insects in heaven, we sing a whole lot. And you got to have those male and female voices beautiful. So, so and pointing out, you know, and I know little boys and girls, their voices haven’t the boy’s voice has changed yet, but noticing that, I think also, again, in age appropriate ways, an age appropriate is a complex thing now because kids are coming home from school, asking questions about sexuality earlier is, is reminding children, that standing behind every one of their friends is one man and one woman. Even if the friend Has Two Mommies, only one man and one woman create another human being like it is as much as our modern world wants to create modern families. This is another way reality sneaks up on you, right? Even if you’re cooking this up in a petri dish in a lab, women can’t produce sperm men can’t produce eggs. And so you’ve you’ve just got this reality to say God has made it that every little person you see, you can tell this to your kids as as a one man and one woman behind them. And that’s how God made the world that that men and women are real things. And, and so I think parents should think about really healthy ways to point out the goodness of gender. I tell parents to not freak out if their kids don’t like gender specific play. It’s not that big of a deal for a little while. You know, it don’t Don’t overreact about that. But um, that’s that’s one thing. I would say, say to parents, I think Did you? Did you have a second question there?

Collin Hansen
I think you just answered it. Because I said, what do they need to stop doing? And it sounds like your answer is Stop freaking out. Do you have another one?

Sam Ferguson
Yeah. I mean, technology. It’s like, you know, decades ago, our culture realized that nicotine was bad, right? And all the restaurants you know, I grew up in when I was little, you know, you could spill smoked. Well, you can’t you can’t smoke now, right? Why can secondhand smoke is bad? Well, your kids are breathing, secondhand smoke, you hand your kid an iPhone. It’s like putting your kid in a restaurant. And although they’re not smoking, everyone around them is smoking. And so you have to start realize secondhand smoke is real. And so I think parents have to think really creatively about tech. We have some families in our church that have attention intentionally kind of moved in the same neighborhood. Some are doing homeschool costs, some are at other schools, but they’re they they pull their families together in friend groups. And together, they don’t give their kids phones. And so their kids aren’t the only you know, 11 year old that doesn’t have a phone, and then they find other activities for them to do. But again, I think the secondhand smoke image is is the best way to think about what it means for your kid to be able to get onto the internet and look at Tik Tok, look at YouTube. I mean, look at Twitter, I mean, these, these things are going to present them with an alternative reality. And it’s like crack cocaine. I mean, the images are vivid, that people are attractive, they’re smiling, they’re happy. And they’re constant. And there’s music playing. I mean, it’s not a fair fight. And you’re just a little kid, you know, it’s like, of course, you’re going to be influenced by this. So parents, you know, give a kid your don’t don’t give your kid smartphones or access to technology without really thinking it through. And I know that’s really hard, but it’s not impossible.

Collin Hansen
And a couple more questions here for Sam Ferguson about his new booklet Does God care about gender identity? This is gonna sound maybe, to listeners or to you, Sam is a gotcha question. It’s not intended to be one. It’s just where we are right now. What about pronouns? Would you honor a request for preferred pronouns in a school? With your children, with a co worker? How do you think this? Yeah,

Sam Ferguson
yeah, I think it through in different contexts. And again, I think families have to think through this. I mean, look, look, the there’s this ethos I feel in our culture right now. Where we’re so afraid to tell a kid something they don’t want to hear, want to hear. And I just want to say parents, show compassion. Listen to your kids, but don’t throw up. Don’t give up. Don’t give away your authority. There. The Bible has a lot to say about the goodness of parenting in an actual structure where parents have authority and kids obey. And so the in the home 18 and under, I wouldn’t incur are using pronouns, different pronouns, and there are a few reasons one, you’re the mom or dad, like the kids don’t dictate the language you use in the house, to the all the studies say that if you practice softer, transitioning, soft transitioning is pronouns and shifting in dress, that kind of thing. If you practice soft transitioning, you increase the likelihood that gender dysphoria will persist. You don’t decrease it. So you think you’re, you’re using a short term palliative, which actually is going to make things harder in the long run. So I don’t encourage it in the home. But I wouldn’t, you know, if if, you know, parents get in these situations, and this, this has happened in situations, I’ve been in pastorally, and the young person says, I’m going to commit suicide. If, if I don’t, you know, get to transition genders. I mean, that’s, that’s just a super difficult situation to be in. Now, I’ve walked families through that where I’ve been meeting with the child monthly for a year. And, and you know, I meet with the kid and we do a Bible study. And then I walk with the mom to the car and answer her questions. And so I let families kind of think that through but my, you know, the data seems to suggest it, I don’t think in the long run, it’s helpful. I think, if a parent can say, you know, what, if you want to tweak your name, if you want to go with a nickname, that feels a little bit more gender neutral, I’d be comfortable with that nickname. But please, don’t ask me to use pronouns. And I’m gonna say more about the pronouns in a second. But on this topic, I think it’s another helpful thing to tell parents, the kind of cap cultural capital you have now, when you’re interacting with someone is when you appeal to your identity. So kids will say, This is my identity, it’s my gender identity, how can you not respect it? And I think parents should come back and say, but this is my faith identity. And my faith identity has certain implications for how I view gender. So you’re asking me, to deny my faith identity, so I can accept your gender identity, so we’re going to have to at least meet halfway. And this is a process of teaching your kids civility? And to say, Look, you can’t I have a faith identity, which believes in a creator, that major body that roots pronouns in biology, and you’re asking me to deny my faith identity right. Now, why would you do that? So I think there’s an element with where parents can think through kind of creating space for their kids to respect them in this area on their kids own terms.

Collin Hansen
I hadn’t thought about that before. But that’s getting back a little bit to what we had discussed earlier with the, with the, with the pronouns of, or with the autonomy, that autonomy is a mirage, that we can simply all be free floating selves. Yeah, our selves are going to inevitably bounce off each other all the time. And so it’s a way of saying, it’s not, it’s not a way of reducing our faith to justice identity, as a way of showing that you don’t get to just pull certain cards. And

Sam Ferguson
it’s, yeah, it’s you want to put the kid in a situation, to have to do the very thing to you, that they’re accusing you of doing to them. Right, so you have to say, so you’re gonna reject my identity, right now, by making me use a pronoun. That’s the kind of you want to be intolerant, right? So you start to teach them, we’re gonna have to meet halfway. It’s like two balloons that are expanding that we’re gonna pop each other. It’s like, at some point, you have to stop expanding, right and say, if we’re going to live in this room together, we can only get so big that’s inside the home. I think parents need to think through how to kind of draw out some of the inconsistencies in their kids thinking to not not give up their authority, be loving, listening, and then in the workplace. I mean, look, we’re in a secular world. You know, I’ve been reading a lot in John 14 Lately, we’re, you know, God so loved the world that He gave His only son, John 316. But then all this talk and John about the world hating us. I just think you’re out, you’re out in the world, I think you’re gonna have to do what your company wants to do, or you’re going to have to resign. I walked a couple years ago, walked with a teacher through this, it did end up resigning because he didn’t want to use the pronouns. And I think that’s that’s an area of Christian conscience. And everyone’s going to have to to follow their conscience before the Lord teachers in schools again, you’re going to have to see that your school’s policy and decide whether or not and think it through over the summer thinker through before you take the job. If I’m put in this situation, either need to resign or realize I’m in a situation where I can go along with this and I think Christians need to show one another some grace in these situations when they when they come down differently in the workplace. But this is my opinion, I’d be very open to hearing you know, some pushback on this, but there’s just some thoughts on pronouns. Yeah, a couple of

Collin Hansen
things for me to add on that one of them. And at the gospel coalition where we’re researching these things right now, but a lot of things related to transgender identities and pronouns and workplaces are just now making their way through the courts. And so it’s the same thing we’re talking about here that it’s different rights that are colliding. So it does infringe on the teachers rights at some level if the teacher has to use those pronouns. So we’ve been seeing a push, especially in recent years with the Supreme Court, that leans toward the ability to be able to abstain for religious reasons from participating in things that go against the conscience. So it’s entirely possible that something that may now seem like a make or break, I have to resign thing, because I can’t in good conscience do this and deny reality might be something that even within perhaps, a short time a year two, year three, or something like that might reverse to the point where the Supreme Court does not allow schools to be able to require a teacher to do that. So that’s just something to kind of stay tuned on. Another thing I was talking with a church leader, years ago, and we were talking about pronouns, and and he was taking a hard stance against acknowledging them using them, my colleague, Joe Carter, longtime colleague, you know, they’re in Northern Virginia with you, he’s been a staunch advocate of not using pronouns that are not correct, because, as he describes, it’s, it’s a denial of reality. And as Christians, we don’t deny reality. But one of the things that I’ve said is, if we’re going to take that stance as church leaders, perhaps that is necessary, but if we do, we must be in a position to be able to provide financially and otherwise for our friends and, and colleagues, we’re in this position, I just find it’s often easy, Sam, for you and I to sit on a podcast talking about what should happen when you and I are probably not going to lose our jobs for this. And so that’s I just want church leaders to think through that, when they’re considering all the different positions is just to say, if you if you decide this is a really important issue, and we do not want to deny reality, we’re going to say that we don’t we don’t think any members of our church should do that either. No matter what position they’re in, be prepared for the consequences, because the consequences may be exactly what you said, Sam, that they will not be able to be in any number of different jobs today, especially those that that are government funded, and affiliated. Does that make sense?

Sam Ferguson
It does make sense. And I read a lot of JoJo Carter’s material. I never met him, but love his stuff. And I hear I hear him. I mean, I in my gut, sometimes. I just kind of lean in that direction. The hard. No, but I think you’re exactly right. pastorally I think we have to recognize the complexity of the situation people people are in and I I like what you said about the Supreme Court, these things are moving through the courts, it could be that that we ended up with some air coverage. Those are the freedom of speech and religious freedom. And that would be a huge boon. There still will be a social cost. Yeah, exactly. You may not get fired, but you may be the social pariah. But you’re right, Colin, I think we need to end pastorally it’s good to take it case by case and avoid too many blanket statements with with being overly prescriptive, I would say,

Collin Hansen
and we have seen this in the last 15 years with homosexuality related issues. I have some friends who have in, in the zeal of their faiths have said, it’s not enough for me to simply sort of let something go, I need to actually confront in the workplace. And in those cases, I am not the person pulling back the reins, saying, no, no, no, don’t do that you don’t understand there’s going to be a social cost because at some level, or even a financial cost, because I’m thinking I mean, Jesus pretty much promised us that when we tell the truth about him the way the truth and the life, people are not gonna always love us for that. So I don’t want to hold them back the differences at the same time, I don’t want to mandate every single decision they have to navigate in that in that scenario. And that’s where I want to allow for that conscience to come in if it’s not something that I can find in terms of strategy and tactics. That’s overwhelmingly obvious from Scripture. You know, I can only imagine Sam, people reading your booklet, people listening to this podcast now and and even in years to come. Many of them will be, I think, especially church leaders and think about people with the booklet church leaders pastor’s parents who are wanting desperately even perhaps listening or watching and, and hoping for some help. But of course, we want to come back I think in the end here and think about somebody who’s listening or watching and, and is experiencing gender dysphoria. And why don’t you close with a word for that person? Somebody who’s listening, watching and say I, I feel exactly like that. I feel like I’m trapped in the body. Yeah.

Sam Ferguson
I appreciate that question. I mean, for those who do read the book, you know, and if it’s not clear already, I, I think to be upfront I, it’s, I don’t believe biblically you can ever support a gender transition. It is not in touch with reality. And that’s a hard thing to say to someone who feels trapped in their body. I think many of the cases today, particularly with teenagers are a manifestation of social contagion. But I have at least personally known one man, actually two, who, who had real gender dysphoria from as early as they can remember. And when you you know, that’s the case, when you hear someone who was secretly you know, trying on their sister’s undergarments or going into the bathroom, or the dressing room at TJ Maxx to put on women’s clothes secretly. Bruce Jenner was like this, right? If you really understand his pathology, back when he was an Olympic athlete, sometimes he’d wear women’s underwear under his clothes. And, and so if, if that’s you, I just want to say I, I in no way understand your pain from experiencing it. But I know I’ve walked with a few people who experienced something similar. And I think it must be brutal, to feel like your body’s chafing you that you’re in the wrong skin. But I would simply say, you’ve got to ask yourself the question, what’s your pathway towards hope. And my basic thesis is that Christianity has a lot to say to people in pain. I think Christianity makes the case that to be human is to have dysphoria. Dysphoria just means in congruence between the way you feel on the inside and how things are on the outside, Christian speak of the fall is plunged into sin and brokenness in exile, darkened passions, broken hearts, ailing bodies. And what the Bible will say to you is that the path out of that is not transitioning. It’s not changing yourself on the outside, its transformation. And this is the biblical word. And it’s interesting because it uses the same prefix trans transformation. It’s the language Paul uses. And that word trans is from a Latin preposition, which just means means to move into a different state, really, to move from pain into wholeness. And the biblical promise of transformation starts on the inside. were transformed in our inner heart in our minds. And so it’s submitting your heart and your mind to the Lord Jesus who loves you and made you it’s, it’s a transformation that promises a ultimate perfecting of the body. One day in the resurrection, Paul says in Philippians, 321, that Jesus, He will change he will transform our lowly body to be a glorious body like his own. And it’s a path of transformation, that that is not conducted with a scalpel, or in a man made community. But it’s done by the gentle touch of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit that was involved in your creation that’s involved in your redemption. And it’s carried out not alone, but in the community of a local church. And so I would I would just say to someone with gender dysphoria that these deep questions Who Am I? Is there hope for me that Christianity addresses these head on and and tells you that who you are, is really who’s you are, that your god you’re his is his son or daughter he made you and that he does have a pathway of transformation for you that you can start on today. It’s not easy, but it’s profoundly deep and it’s not cosmetic, begins with your soul. And so it’s a gamble for you probably right. But I don’t think the movement of transitioning offers you a high enough ceiling. I really don’t. It’s always going to be cosmetic, you’re cutting against the grain of creation, and and humbly, I just want something better for you. And I believe Jesus holds that out. So that’s what I would say and and pray that God will be with you.

Collin Hansen
And then, I guess this week on gospel bound has been Samuel Ferguson from false Church Anglican Falls Church, Virginia. You can read more in his new booklet Does God care about gender identity in the Gospel coalition crossway series hard questions we’ve got. We’ve got both copies for anybody who wants to buy copies, read them together with their friends, their church and other leaders in their church and find those at the gospel coalition store. Sam, thank you for for navigating such difficult questions with such eloquence and grace and balance and ultimately biblical perspective. Thanks, Sam.

Sam Ferguson
Thank you, Colin.