How can we minister to those with gender dysphoria? - GotQuestions.org Podcast Episode 10

Welcome to the Got Questions podcast. On today's show, we're going to be talking about a difficult issue but a very important one in light of what's going on in our culture today.

With me, I have Dr. Sandra Glahn, a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary and co -editor of the book

Sanctified Sexuality, and we'll have a link to where you can purchase this book online in the comments field on YouTube and on our podcast page.

So Dr. Glahn, welcome to the show. Thank you. It's my pleasure to be here. So the question

I want to talk about today is how do we speak truth and love based on Ephesians 4 .15

to those who are struggling with the various forms of gender dysphoria or homosexuality, lesbianism, et cetera, when no matter how lovingly we attempt to tell them what the

Bible says about that behavior or that orientation, it's not received in love.

So Dr. Glahn, what pointers, what advice, what guidance and counsel can you give us to help us know how to minister to people who are struggling with these issues?

I love that you're asking that question. I think it's a really important question for the church to be asking ourselves.

What does it look like to be Christ -like in these conversations? What does it look like to tell the truth in love?

And I think the first place to start is by looking at what is the truth in the first place.

So obviously we start in Scripture, but I think there are some things we've sometimes missed in the conversation.

For example, we have at times been quick in the church to say God made them male and female, which he did in Genesis, but that was a pre -fall state and something very traumatic happened in Genesis, you know, recorded in Genesis 3.

So God made people to be fruitful and multiply, but I went through infertility and pregnancy loss, right?

So there are ramifications from the fall that are not caused by me or people that are experiencing this.

But so that can come into play, particularly when we are thinking about gender dysphoria, because it's often confused with intersex.

So first of all, we have to just even begin with what are we talking about? What is the truth? So in a course

I teach at the seminary or co -teach, we have students watch a film that's a documentary on people who are born with ambiguous genitalia.

And many of my students didn't know that was such a thing. They're at a master's level, but they did not realize that a person could be born today with XXY chromosomes, which means that that's not a clear male or clear female, either or binary.

And but the minute we often the minute we'll say that there are people who aren't born in a binary,

Christians will be very concerned and start using words like liberalism, you know, worried about us when what we're talking about is is what what the wisdom authors tell us to do, which is look at the natural world and grow wise.

So the first thing we have to ask, as I said, is what are the scriptures say? But also what does general revelation, for lack of a better word, what is what is the world around us tell us?

So one of the things that happened back when the AIDS crisis was really beginning to take off and I'm old enough to to have gone to, you know, to work every day with people who self -identified as gay, who who were losing friends left and right.

I lost some friends to the AIDS crisis. And at the time, there was a lot of conversation about how this is caused by sin.

When, you know, we just didn't know that much about the cause, actually. And so the U .S. church sort of stigmatized it.

And so what we didn't see was a lot of Christians running into to minister to AIDS patients. But the church in Africa handled it much differently than the

U .S. church. They they looked at that and said, regardless of the cause,

Jesus has mercy and we're going to care. And they brought governments together. They they trained in safe sex and they acknowledged that you shouldn't be having immoral relationships.

But they also acknowledged that there was this horrible pandemic that was killing people. And and so I hope that we gain some wisdom from that to say, first of all, there are some of these conditions where we there are some things we still don't know.

For example, how much of of gender dysphoria, which is when the birth you're what you're assigned with at birth, what's on your birth certificate, your your male or female is typically determined and written on your birth certificate.

But you feel psychologically like you're a mismatch with that.

So is there something happening in our vaccines that's attaching to our DNA as little children are developing?

We don't know that yet. Is is there something a hormonal contribution? We don't know that yet.

Is it is it a choice? Well, there is some evidence that there's socialization involved, but not necessarily always, which means when we talk about this, we can go to Jesus interacting with a man born blind.

And when people say who sent this man or his parents, we say, you know, this could be a situation where nobody sent intersex.

It would be a really direct example. And with with gender dysphoria, the there are many things we just don't know that the experts really don't know yet.

So what we do know, though, is that Jesus talked about three kinds of eunuchs and some are born eunuchs, some are made eunuchs and some are eunuchs for the kingdom.

And I take that to mean some are born with physical configurations that make it impossible to reproduce.

Some of some people are castrated, maybe against their will. Daniel could have been such a person.

And then you have and certainly the Ethiopian eunuch could have been he could have been in the first or second category.

And then the third category would be someone who chooses not to reproduce for the sake of the kingdom, somebody probably who's choosing celibacy.

But but Jesus in that very first category, referring to somebody who's born eunuch, there there's really a long history of that word meaning more than simply castration.

And he seems to be acknowledging that there are physical conditions, but he also in that same context assumes these people are not going to marry.

And so we you know, that's that's a question that we wrestle with of what is the purpose of marriage and you know, who what is

God's design for marriage and all of that may come into play. That was a long answer to a short question, but but we have to first go to the scriptures and say, what does it say when it comes to same sex attraction?

The scriptures seem to differentiate between behavior of living that out and and our attractions.

It would it would appear that that to be attracted to somebody that I'm not supposed to be pursuing a relationship with is not a sin.

It's what I do with that attraction. It's not a sin to be tempted. It is a sin to act on the temptation.

And often in the church, we've said things like it's a sin to be gay and we need to clarify.

Are we talking about same sex attraction or are we talking about, you know, same sex sex?

And there seems to be a big difference. Well, for sure.

One of the realizations I've come to on the journey, I mean, coming from a church background where it was it's a choice.

It's all a choice. It's 100 percent a choice. If you're attracted to the same sex, it's you're choosing to be that way.

And that's how I was taught and brought up. I know a lot of the people were. But then just ministering to people, asking these type of questions and whether online and in person.

Eventually, I think God got it through my thick skull that, you know, if people can be born intersex, be born with confused or mismatched genitalia, then how can we say someone could not also be born with something miswired in their brain that causes them to be attracted to the same sex instead of the opposite sex?

I mean, so many things play into something like that, that saying it, is it a choice?

We don't have enough to decide, like you said, what is truly the cause, whether it's the combination of multiple factors.

So lumping everyone in the same category. It's not Christlike.

It's not Christlike. It's not biblical. And it's cruel. Do some people choose it?

I believe so. I've met people who, due to experiences they've gone through, they hate men or hate women and decided,

I just want to be with people of the same gender. Well, that's more of the choice factor.

But if people are born intersex, how can we say they could not also be born with some sort of confusion as to why am

I biologically male and not attracted to? Females. So like you said, saying it is a choice is not the best starting point at all.

And a really great starting point is humility, you know, of approaching it with,

I don't know. But this leads then to a conversation which relates to another question you had asked me, which is what about identity?

Why does it why do people seem so wrapped up in their identity? And part of it is trying to convince people,

I'm really not choosing this. And it can be really, really frustrating to be barred from a

Bible study, you know, treated like you are choosing it and it's a sin. And therefore, you know, the beginning has to be who am

I and what what am I doing? And and if you're bumping up against someone who thinks that you're choosing this and it's it's completely in your control, then you can hear somebody like that saying,

I'm attracted. I can't help my attraction. Like it becomes a big point of conversation simply because people are banging their heads against the wall looking for some empathy in this.

And I think another another factor with identity is we have to even there ask ourselves, what are we talking about when we're talking about identity?

I am a professor, as you said, I'm a woman, I'm a wife, I'm a writer. All of those are identities that so in that sense, there are things they're descriptors.

There are ways that I describe myself. Being a woman isn't going to change, but being a professor will, you know, at some point

I will always be a mother. I may not always be alive for my daughter and vice versa, but that's that's not changing.

But then I have lots of other roles that totally change all the time. You know,

I was a student recently and now I'm not a student anymore. And so sometimes when people are self -identifying as gay

Christians, they are simply trying to identify without an entire paragraph or half a page explanation of experiencing same sex attraction and all the things that goes with that.

And so it isn't always somebody making it more important than their

Christianity. Their Christianity is central and that's a modifier. So, again, we have to ask some questions before we give some answers.

So that's the that's the struggle. And I mean, a good friend have been talking about this a lot recently, just having experienced utter failure multiple times of trying to, like I said at the beginning, speak the truth and love.

And I'm really I really do love you, but I cannot, biblically speaking, deny the fact that every time the

Bible speaks of homosexual behavior, it clearly identifies it as sinful, as immoral, as unnatural.

So I can't, as a Bible -believing Christian, escape that fact. But that does not change how

I feel about you as a person, does not change the fact that I believe you are equally created in the image and likeness of God as I am.

But I cannot, again, as a biblically committed Christian, excuse the behavior or say that you feel that way and you've always felt that way.

Therefore, it's OK to engage in that behavior. I can't go there. And yet that seems to be where many of them want us to go.

So I think you raise an important question, and that is what what is the context where the conversation is happening?

When I when I worked with with people who were not only gay, but, you know, going to gay bars and having very lascivious relationships, they knew

I was a Christian. They invited me to eat lunch with them. They weren't claiming to be Christians at all. And so I saw that as a compliment, as Jesus hung out with all kinds of people and even was scandalizing, you know, how can you hang out with somebody who's ripping us off as a tax collector?

And he's like of such that these are the people God loves. So with those people,

I don't get the sense that Jesus walked into the tax collector dinner and and said, you know, you're ripping people off.

He built a relationship with them. But but you get to a point then when you've built a relationship where you can ask, can we have a conversation about this?

Permission. And then it begins with questions and not like nosy questions, but like, what are you comfortable telling me?

What are you comfortable talking about? Do you what do you run into from Christians on this?

How has your family dealt with this so that you have some clue, the heartache that they're experiencing or the hard heartedness they might be?

Like, you know, there's there's there are verses about don't throw your pearls before swine, like don't try to have a conversation on any subject with somebody who doesn't want to have that conversation.

Right. And so so some of that is is wisdom. Some of that is gauging what is my relationship with this person?

And so, you know, our students who are where it is our job to train them, what

Romans 1 says. And so we're very direct with what Romans 1 says and what it means.

But a student coming and asking to be taught is very different from someone in the cafeteria inviting you in to have a meal with them.

And so I think this is where we really need to constantly walk in the spirit, which is constantly be asking,

Lord, with this person, what does love look like with that person? What does love look like?

Are they inviting me to have a conversation? Because if they're not, it's really not my place to in the same way that with former colleagues,

I would never have if I knew they were committing adultery, I would never have brought it up unless I were invited to bring it up.

But that's different from someone in the church. Like I'm talking about in the marketplace, in the office, you know, it's none of my business what

I've heard on the elevator to have an opinion and go confront them about that. But it is my business if it's a it's a member of my youth group.

Like it really depends on what is their relationship? How have

I shown love in the beginning? And I think this is where we have sometimes misunderstood what's happening with the woman at the well, because we think that Jesus starts with her sin when he says you've had five husbands and the one you have now isn't your own, when it's much more likely that she had been widowed multiple times and now had to be a concubine in order to eat.

And if that's the case, he wasn't starting with her sin. He was starting with her heartache and saying,

God sees you in your multiple losses. She probably wasn't a 25 year old beauty.

She was probably a woman over 50 missing teeth who, in order to eat, had to share a husband because that was pretty much what happened to a widow in Palestine.

Right. And that's that's how the church understood that story up until the Reformation.

And so if that's true, Jesus begins with compassion. He definitely deals with sin, but but his starting place is very much more often.

I see you. I'm the God who sees I see you. That's powerful.

I love your description of waiting for an invitation. So if we built a relationship with someone who's struggling, whether it's gender dysphoria or sexual orientation, the first thing we do when we discover that about them doesn't need to be, you know what the

Bible says about that. If they ask us, well, then what do you believe the Bible says about this?

Then that's the invitation. But generally speaking, with any other sinful behavior, even if we discover it or notice in someone, it's not our place to bring that up right away.

And it's not very likely unless the Holy Spirit is working on the person. It's not going to be received very well until we've earned that level of trust and respect.

And they can tell, OK, this person genuinely cares about me as a person, makes them more likely to listen to what we have to say.

So it's the invitation concept, whether it's a legitimate invitation of them saying, what do you think about this?

Or it's just you built a relationship so you can have the conversation and have it not come across in a non -threatening way.

But so many people who struggle with these issues, their experience with Christians have been the protesters on parades or the churches who say horrible things where they're barely kind of sort of speaking the truth, but absolutely free of love.

And that's been their primary experience. So one of us even seeking to speak the truth in love, often love has to come first until they're ready to receive the truth.

Yes. And even an early question can be, what has been your experience with the church on this? And chances are they've even

Googled, you know, what's right and wrong on this. What have you found out? What kind of questions have you asked?

What have people said to you? What labels have you felt were unfairly attached? Like really hearing them, because the chances are we may have to say less than we think once we have an opportunity, because it very well is not the first time they've heard this.

In fact, because so often the church has opened the door with, you know, guns blazing, then we have to, if we're talking to somebody who's had that experience and so many have, we need to go and counteract that messaging by being the one who cares, by listening and by saying,

Jesus really loves you. Jesus loves you. And Jesus loves the world.

Yeah. And then us having his example to follow. No one ever doubted

Jesus' love for them when he was here on earth. I mean, maybe the

Pharisees, but they deserved it. But they also knew where he stood, right?

Like they knew where he stood. He wasn't compromising by going to the house of sinful people.

He wasn't compromising. Nobody viewed him as being, well, the Pharisees did view him as being unrighteous, but the people themselves never questioned

Jesus' integrity by the fact that he showed up and shared meals with them.

He found a way to hold the line on truth while not letting that be a thing that injured people before they understood that he cared about that.

He really cared. It wasn't just building a relationship with them to have the conversation even. He just flat cared.

It's very true. And it's if we could only get to the point where, I mean, ultimately, truth is often going to offend those who are not ready to receive it.

But if we could even get to a point where seeking to encourage and minister someone who's struggling with any of these sexual or gender dysphoric type of issues to be able to say,

I don't agree with you and what you said is even hurtful, but I still,

I know you care about me and love me. So thank you for sharing that.

To even get to that point, I think would be a tremendous win because if someone can hear you say something that offends them and they disagree with and yet still detect love in you, that's powerful.

I had a lesbian friend who said to me, I hate what you believe and we can't be friends.

And then she came back a year later and asked me to lunch and she said, I want to ask your forgiveness.

I did to you the very thing that I've hated people doing to me, which is where we have a difference of belief.

They cut me off. And she said, I don't like what you believe, but I recognize that you believe it because you're committed to scripture.

And I respect that. And I thought that took a tremendous amount of humility for her to acknowledge that, but not just like, write me a note, right?

She said it to my face to restore that relationship. And I would certainly hope that we could do the same, that we could say,

I disagree with how you're processing this, but I am not going to let that be a thing that cuts off our friendship.

And I'm not going to let that be a thing that makes me just write you off in every area of life.

That's powerful. So thank you, Dr. Glahn, for your time today and for the reminder about sometimes speaking the truth and love meaning means waiting for the right timing to speak the truth aspect of that, to make sure they understand and know that we love them before we speak the truth.

That's a difficult balance to achieve, but vitally important. So thank you for your encouragement today.

And thank you for being on the show. Thank you. And so this is the

Got Questions podcast. Hope our conversation has been encouraging you today and hope it gives you a little more readiness to know how to seek to minister to people who are struggling with all the various sexual orientation and gender identity issues that are out there.