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Transgender Identity

Martin Davie has written an interesting review of a recent book on transgender issues. Towards the article he highlights five important theological truths about transgender identity:  

1.  Sex means the way that human bodies are configured to play a particular role as males or females in sexual reproduction.

2. Human beings are made up of bodies and souls and, for the reason just given, their sexual identity is determined by their bodies.

3. Intersex conditions are a result of disorders of human sexual development, which point to the inherently dimorphic nature of human sexuality by being developments which serve no positive functional purpose.

4. It is impossible for either hormones or surgery to actually change someone’s sex.

5. The sex into which we have been born is to be welcomed and lived out as a good gift from God because it is an integral part of who God made us to be, and that rejecting it and adopting an alternative artificial identity instead is consequently a sinful rejection of God’s will. 

6. Transgender people, like all other people, are both the victims and agents of sin. They are victims of sin in that they have sinful desires which they did not choose, and they are agents of sin in so far as these desires lead them to reject their God-given sexual identity.

I have not read widely on the subject but I found this very helpful. The last point is particularly important all sinners are both victims and active participants in sin. And we should add that Jesus has come to save repentant sinners and give them a new life in God. There is hope of transformation in Jesus for a transgender person through the redemptive power of the death of Jesus and the work of the Holy Spirit. 

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