“You created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. … My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. … Your eyes saw my unformed body.” — Psalm 139:13, 139:15-16 NIV
Transgender athlete Lia Thomas gained global attention in December 2021 by shattering collegiate women’s swimming team records. Before coming out as transgender in 2019, Thomas had competed on the University of Pennsylvania’s men’s team. After a year’s hiatus and female hormone therapy, the biological male joined the women’s team and immediately outswam teammates and opponents.
Regarding recent accomplishments, Thomas says, “I’m very proud of my times and my ability to keep swimming … I’m happy with them and my coaches are happy with them … that’s what matters to me.”
Thomas is happy with her records and maybe her fame, but will her new identity lead to long-term contentment? Biblical fact, medical research, and testimonials from former transgenders indicate that many who choose sex-reassignment surgery continue to battle the psychological and emotional conflicts they encountered before their transition. If their surgically created persona is their true identity, why aren’t they truthfully satisfied?
Biblical Fact
The Bible sheds light on their dissatisfaction in Ephesians 2:10: “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (NIV).
The word translated handiwork in verse 10 was used to describe fabric woven thread by thread to create a tapestry. In other words, God wove every facet of our identity—personality, interests, talents, and abilities—into our DNA. These components work together to create a whole person. Changing the outward appearance mars a person’s wholeness and generates an inner conflict.
Ephesians 2:10 also reveals that God prepared in advance the works and accomplishments that would bring us the most joy. The Greek word, proetoimazō, can be translated “rendered fit to receive.” God designed us in a specific way so we would be “fit to receive” the works He has purposed for us to do. When someone alters his or her appearance, mindset, and lifestyle to create an identity that contradicts God’s workmanship and his purposes, that person is destined to be unhappy.
Medical Research
Medical research suggests that the dissatisfaction of those who transition may be linked to their physical well-being. Risks associated with feminizing or masculinizing hormone therapy include blood clots, infertility, Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, sleep apnea, and stroke. The research also indicates that “the risk of infertility increases with long-term use of hormones, especially when hormone therapy is initiated before puberty.”
In addition to medical risks, emotional and psychological risks are heightened for those who suffer from gender dysphoria, especially among adolescents: “Female to male adolescents reported the highest rate of attempted suicide (50.8%), followed by adolescents who identified as not exclusively male or female (41.8%), male to female adolescents (29.9%), questioning adolescents (27.9%), female adolescents (17.9%), and male adolescents (9.8%).
The Bible links a person’s identity to both body and spirit. Malachi 2:15 says, “You belong to him in body and spirit.” Similarly, 1 Thessalonians 5:23 says, “May your whole spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless at the coming of the Lord.” Physical alterations do not change a person’s inner makeup; instead, they create discord between body and spirit that may have grave physical and mental consequences.
Testimonial Truth
In 2019, when the suicide of trans comedian Daphne Dorman gained national attention, Gillian Branstetter, media relations manager for the National Center for Transgender Equality, claimed that the high suicide rate among transgenders is “the product of a transphobic society that isolates trans people from support and resources and surrounds them with constant messages in the news, movies, and sometimes comedy that they are freakish, wrong, and unlovable.”
Yet the transgenders who come to me for counseling say the conflict arises within them, not from a “transphobic society”:
“I believed many lies about myself. But in reality, God had not made a mistake in creating me with a male body. He planned every aspect of my being from the beginning. … There was never a woman inside my body, longing to be expressed. … Satan had created a stronghold of deception in my mind. With God’s spiritual weapons, I had to take deliberate steps to tear down the lies and replace them with His truth. I was male, not female.”
“This week I have determined to put an end to the personal insanity I have lived called transgenderism, and its final nightmarish, freakish end of sex-reassignment surgery—the frontal lobotomy of the twentieth century.”
“Way too many people have undergone expensive and invasive surgical procedures only to discover the transmogrification did not bring about their fantasized results. They longed to be free of feeling like a social misfit, only to discover that their masculine or feminine internal conflicts remained very much the same following surgery. The best earthly surgeon can never reach the depths of the wounded soul.”
“For a while, I felt like I was really a man. That’s what everybody wanted. I also felt like I’d accomplished something. I felt satisfied in the lie, but in reality, I was not. If I had been truly satisfied, I wouldn’t have questioned what I did.”
Those who struggle with gender identity cannot solve their inner conflicts through surgery or through achievements made possible by their new identity. Swimmer Lia Thomas and all who embrace a false gender will ultimately be dissatisfied. As is true of every person, the transgender’s path to peace is embracing their God-given biological identity and living within the boundaries He established:
“The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.” — Romans 8:6 NIV
