What Gives Us the Right to Label Transgender Impulses as Wrong?
00:00:00.000 | This week we are talking with Rob Smith, a theologian who lectures in systematic
00:00:08.800 | theology and ethics at Sydney Missionary and Bible College in Australia. He
00:00:12.800 | approaches the topic of the transgender revolution as a biblical theologian, as a
00:00:17.600 | historian of the movement, and as a pastor whose own family has been touched
00:00:21.520 | by the realities and the tensions of gender dysphoria. Rob, we Christians hear
00:00:26.960 | it all the time. Transgender is an issue of what someone wants to do with his or
00:00:31.760 | her own body. It's not abortion. It's not murder. It is the choice of a
00:00:38.600 | person who wants to change his or her own body. So what would you say to the
00:00:43.640 | transgender community that says to Christians, "Hey, leave us alone. If you
00:00:48.080 | think we're hurting ourselves, we're only hurting ourselves. So be it. What I do
00:00:52.760 | with my own body is none of your own business." What is the proper Christian
00:00:57.480 | response to that opposition? Yes, this is a great question that I guess is a
00:01:04.000 | challenging one for many. We are really told to back off. Even non-Christian
00:01:10.600 | friends of mine who, for example, just to jump over to the issue of same-sex
00:01:15.680 | marriage, who would say, "Look, I don't understand same-sex attraction and I'm
00:01:21.240 | not in favor of same-sex marriage, but who am I to, as it were, impose my
00:01:26.720 | view or stand in the way of what others would like to do?" And so similarly
00:01:33.400 | here, why not just let people do what they want to do? Now I guess one
00:01:39.320 | way of answering that is to say, "Well, we care about you. One of our love of our
00:01:44.920 | neighbors is to desire their good. And if you think somebody is acting against
00:01:49.840 | their own self-interest, then we at least have, I think, a duty or
00:01:54.360 | responsibility to say something." Just as we have, I think, a duty and
00:01:59.240 | responsibility to do what we can to stop people self-harming, committing
00:02:05.500 | suicide or damaging themselves in some way. Of course, we do it
00:02:12.560 | with all kinds of other things. I was looking at big adverts yesterday on
00:02:16.600 | the side of a bus saying, "Smoking causes cancer and smoking kills."
00:02:22.200 | There we are warning people not to engage in activity, even though it
00:02:26.720 | doesn't seem to stop some. So it is part of loving our neighbor to speak up.
00:02:32.760 | But I think the other thing perhaps to ponder is that when a person hurts
00:02:39.840 | themselves, it does hurt others. It hurts those who love them. It affects their
00:02:46.160 | relationships. And again, I've certainly seen this with people who have, I
00:02:53.800 | guess, tried to resolve their gender dysphoria by transitioning. It puts, well,
00:03:00.920 | enormous strain on relationships, if not in some cases destroys them and tears
00:03:06.920 | families apart. And I guess what's at the heart of that is you're watching
00:03:13.160 | someone you love go through, well, basically self-mutilation in an attempt
00:03:18.840 | to destroy the person that they were and replace that person with someone else,
00:03:25.560 | with another name. And that has a profound impact on relationships. Now, it
00:03:32.320 | doesn't have to destroy them. And certainly in many cases where Christian
00:03:36.720 | people have hung in there and walked alongside those who've made some of
00:03:42.880 | these choices and said, "We don't agree, but we're not going anywhere. We're going
00:03:48.880 | to keep loving you and reaching out to you, and we want to be there to care for
00:03:54.320 | you. But we still think what you're doing to yourself is actually tragic,
00:04:00.480 | and may well be something you come to later regret." And that's, I guess, a
00:04:04.480 | thing we ought to be aware of, that the instance of regret is astronomically
00:04:09.280 | high. And of course, those who take these radical steps of sex reassignment
00:04:14.280 | surgery, well, there's just so much that cannot then be undone. You know, once
00:04:19.360 | things have been cut off, they can't be put back on again. And it's
00:04:25.200 | heartbreaking to see. So I guess that's how I would respond to that.
00:04:31.640 | Obviously, there are certain freedoms people have, and we can't in the end stop
00:04:35.480 | people who are of age making use of these sorts of things that are
00:04:40.640 | available to them, which of course raises another question, but they should be
00:04:43.880 | available to them. But that's a harder question to answer, and
00:04:48.960 | perhaps that genie's out of the bottle, sadly. Yeah, I mean, we've sped right
00:04:54.240 | past the ethical medical question about breaking healthy bodies. But I'm thinking
00:04:59.640 | now of my next question. This is certainly not true of you, but what do
00:05:03.840 | you say to critics of Christians who imply that if you don't have a personal
00:05:08.080 | network of close transgender friends, you have no basis on which to oppose the
00:05:13.520 | transgender revolution? Does that question make sense? Yeah, it does,
00:05:19.760 | and it's, I guess, again, a common challenge that's put to Christians on a
00:05:24.840 | range of fronts. And of course, not all of us do or can have transgender
00:05:31.680 | friends. You don't just go out and decide, "I'm going to get some transgender
00:05:35.480 | friends now." Those of us who do know transgender people, that's something
00:05:41.920 | that's just sort of happened under God's providence in life. Now, obviously, if
00:05:47.040 | you do know those who are either suffering gender dysphoria or sought to
00:05:53.000 | transition from one gender to another, then that will perhaps give you a
00:05:57.720 | certain insight into, again, the distress at the heart of gender dysphoria and
00:06:03.760 | why some people feel driven to resolve that distress this way. But even if
00:06:10.440 | you don't have those relationships, we all have the capacity to read and
00:06:14.480 | understand and to develop insight and compassion and have enough of a
00:06:21.140 | grasp of issues to speak to them and to raise our questions about them in
00:06:26.880 | an appropriate way, oppose them. So, yeah, look, again, I think it's just a way
00:06:32.760 | of trying to silence any objection, I think, to come at things this way.
00:06:38.080 | But it does, I suppose, put the onus on Christians to at least get as good a
00:06:43.240 | grasp on things as we can, whether or not we actually have personal contact or
00:06:49.520 | connection with transgender friends. And one of the things, of course, it's
00:06:55.480 | good to do. I mean, if a person really wants to understand these issues better
00:06:59.040 | than they've never, ever spoken to a transgender person, well, there are
00:07:02.800 | obviously ways of making contact with people or asking a friend of a
00:07:09.240 | friend and say, "Look, I'd just like to sit down and hear your story and
00:07:13.960 | understand what it's like to be you and how you got to where you got to and
00:07:20.440 | just listen." That itself can be a useful thing to do, not as a way of just
00:07:25.960 | changing your view. And sadly, I think, I guess this is one of the ways that, again,
00:07:33.920 | Christians can be silenced or have our views muzzled. It's by saying, "Look,
00:07:41.120 | who are you to deny my story? Or if you listen to my story, then
00:07:46.240 | that will cause you to back off." Well, I think, no, we need to listen to
00:07:50.680 | stories and make sense of those stories in the light of Scripture, and where
00:07:55.760 | appropriate, respond and advise or what have you.
00:08:00.480 | Yeah, tough love. And with tough love, I think you bring a very warm pastoral
00:08:06.720 | tone whenever you talk about this issue, as listeners, I think, can tell in this
00:08:09.960 | conversation. This is true of your lectures as well. I want to commend you
00:08:13.200 | for that. Well, thank you. Yes, certainly. I mean, tone is huge because Christians
00:08:17.320 | engage in what seems to be two different conversations. So keep talking about this.
00:08:22.520 | How do we as Christians winsomely confront the profits of transgender
00:08:28.000 | revolution in our culture, especially in the political realm, while not alienating
00:08:33.540 | those who are more quietly wrestling with transgender impulses and loving
00:08:39.360 | them pastorally? How do we pull both of these things off well? Yeah, this is one
00:08:45.000 | of the challenges because we're not dealing with a one-size-fits-all
00:08:51.600 | situation. We've got, on the one hand, you've got advocates,
00:08:57.080 | activists, ideologues, experimenters who are really determined to
00:09:02.640 | reconstruct society and deconstruct gender and destroy the concept of a
00:09:08.520 | gender binary. That's a dangerous ideology, I think. It's
00:09:15.440 | already reaping havoc in Western society. And so, yeah, that does
00:09:21.560 | need to be challenged. It does need to be opposed. Of course, anything we challenge
00:09:24.880 | or oppose, we need to do that with, as Paul says, with graciousness
00:09:31.600 | and seasoned with salt and, as Peter says, with gentleness and respect. So we need
00:09:37.640 | to engage with civility and we need to know what we're talking about. We've got
00:09:43.200 | to be careful we don't overstate and overreach. We need to be on top of
00:09:47.440 | sometimes facts and figures and if we're going to engage meaningfully and
00:09:52.280 | helpfully. So there's a whole manner of engagement there, but we need to engage.
00:09:58.880 | Now, on the other hand, of course, you've got the pastoral context that you
00:10:03.880 | mentioned, people who are genuine sufferers with whom we are trying to
00:10:07.360 | build relationships and provide love and care and support and
00:10:12.840 | what have you. And so, yeah, juggling those two things is not always easy.
00:10:18.760 | And, well, just to perhaps give you a little personal insight, I suppose, you know,
00:10:25.160 | sometimes when my wife and I have spoken publicly on these issues in a certain
00:10:29.920 | forum and we've wondered whether people we're talking to personally might become
00:10:36.880 | aware of that lecture or even listen to it, we've sort of given them a
00:10:43.360 | heads-up on that and said, "Look, we just want you to know we're going to be
00:10:45.680 | speaking about these issues just so there's no surprise there." I suppose
00:10:51.920 | even just to think in terms of, say, a pastor who decides to preach on this.
00:10:56.800 | He's got somebody he knows in the congregation with whom he's already in
00:11:00.960 | conversation who is struggling with agendas for a very right and appropriate
00:11:05.840 | to go to them beforehand and say, "Listen, I'm going to be preaching about this on
00:11:08.760 | Sunday. This is not a way of getting at you. It's not my way
00:11:12.480 | of trying to say things to you that I'm too afraid to say to you face to face.
00:11:16.320 | This is for the benefit of the congregation, and so I just want you to
00:11:22.240 | know that up front." Again, there are ways, I guess, of just managing that
00:11:28.360 | tension between saying what some may perceive as harder things in a
00:11:33.080 | public sphere and softer things in a private context. But at the end of the
00:11:40.120 | day, the truth is the truth. Our message is the same, and I guess our
00:11:45.200 | political engagement and pastoral practice can't be two completely
00:11:49.040 | separate things. It's the same understanding that's generating both.
00:11:52.800 | It's the common love of neighbor that is generating both. It's a
00:11:58.640 | concern for individuals and society that's generating both. So I think you
00:12:03.920 | can juggle, but yeah, I think we just got to work with that tension.
00:12:07.120 | Yeah, we sure do. Thank you, Rob. Rob will join us again tomorrow, and we will
00:12:11.280 | tackle a very somber topic in this discussion, and it concerns the high
00:12:15.440 | suicide rates among transgender folks who feel the brokenness of life,
00:12:19.840 | especially painfully. So do sex change operations curtail suicide rates, and
00:12:27.040 | what do the stats say? There are seasons when this podcast is heavy. This is one
00:12:31.760 | of them. But thank you for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast with guest
00:12:35.520 | Rob Smith from Sydney, Australia. For more details about the podcast, to
00:12:39.280 | subscribe to the audio feed or send us a question of your own, go to our home at
00:12:42.480 | desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn. I'm your host Tony Reiki. We'll see you tomorrow.
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