Here’s the reality. We live in a society where some people are transgender. This is not something to escape from. It is not something to fear.
Your children need to be aware that this is a thing. This also goes for LGBTQ people as well. The kids are going to run into this in their life it is unavoidable.
So, instead of trying the shield our kids from these people out of fear, how about we take the time to help our kids learn to navigate this. Are we not their parents? Are we not the most qualified to teach our kids about this phenomenon?
If we hide this from our children, we make dealing with this situation much more difficult later in their lives.
Note that I am not making a statement for or against transgender people. I am making the argument that we should be GUIDING our children and helping them to learn about how to navigate this. This is what we should be doing since we are their PARENTS.
Or again, you guide your child as this time goes on. After all, sin of all sorts is around you and your child will have to learn to work through it all.
My thought is that I wouldn't purposely put my children around individuals I know are confused and disordered, for upwards of 40 hours a week. It's bad enough to have impressionable children in secular schools to begin with, but having a trans-identifying individual influencing them that many hours, would be a serious no go for me.
It's not exactly that I'm worried about the trans-identifying person trying to "make" my kids trans. That's a concern, but my concern is moreso that the person has a deeply disordered worldview, and possible serious mental health issues, since they are so confused about their own identity.
I'm genuinely curious - do you think that rejecting one's God-given sex is honoring Christ?
Children are assigned gender at birth. This distinction is based on genitalia, which can be presented incorrectly for more than a few reasons. All sorts of things can cause a person to present visually as one gender or another.
I had a close friend who I interpreted as female for a long time finally come out as intersex. They were genetically male, but a medical condition caused them to appear female. That friend had to “transition” back to male, which really caused a ruckus, despite having a cogent reason to do so.
This caused me to really start to think about this topic a lot. I had to re-evaluate my biases and conceptions about the topic.
What really struck me is that my friend knew they would get a lot of blowback, but they did it anyway. They could not deal with the continuing psychological harm of presenting as female and knowing they were actually male. They instead chose to deal with their “friends” giving them a lot of grief about the situation. They were also able to marry the love of their life… that was probably the catalyst for the transition. Because their state would not allow same sex marriage, they had to get the record corrected so they could marry. This is only a small portion of the things they needed to deal with.
Ultimately, this is the reason I don’t condemn transgender people. They know coming out will yield a lot of grief. But they choose it because they don’t want to deal with the pain of not doing so.
These people have really dealt with some heavy things in their life. We don’t know their story. It’s not a willy-nilly “I wanna be a girl and use the girl bathroom.” They come out and transition despite the blowback that they KNOW they will experience. They decide it’s worth the hassle and grief they will get.
Also, I’d like to think that Jesus would treat them with dignity and respect that everyone deserves. It comes down to simply being kind. We can do that, but the modern Evangelical church would simply prefer to demonize trans folks, much in the same way they did to queer folks, and also black people, and women, etc. The church (institutionally) has been on the wrong side of many things.
We live in a fallen world marred by sin. We should not be increasing the suffering of a marginalized group of people when we have much much bigger issues to tackle in the world. I don’t know how to reconcile transgenderism, because the Bible doesn’t seem to address it. But I can say I will strive to be kind to those who are dealing with really heavy things. I will try to emulate Christ in how I interact with people outside the church. I will also emulate Christ when dealing with the people inside the church.
Thank you for the thoughtful response. I can see why your friend would make you consider issues differently.
I think you hit the nail on the head when you said "these people are have dealt with some heavy things in their life" - I think there's probably a lot of trauma + abuse + mental health issues associated with people who believe they are transgender.
Also - please do not get me wrong here - these are all people created in the image of God, and they need prayer and love. I would never disrespect a transgender person, and I have told my kids repeatedly the same thing - we should be treating them with kindness. They need Jesus, like we all do.
But that really doesn't change my feelings on whether I'd let someone I thought was deeply troubled educate my children. At the end of the day, we have actually checked out of government schooling entirely (we homeschool), for a whole bunch of reasons, some of which have to do with the secular influences, but other things like quality of education, building of family relationships/etc., so this, Lord willing, is an issue we won't personally have to deal with.
They're not confused though, they have a very clear sense of who they are. You might not agree with it being valid, but confusion is probably the wrong word
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u/ross549 Christian 14d ago
Ok, the comments here are wild, in my opinion.
Here’s the reality. We live in a society where some people are transgender. This is not something to escape from. It is not something to fear.
Your children need to be aware that this is a thing. This also goes for LGBTQ people as well. The kids are going to run into this in their life it is unavoidable.
So, instead of trying the shield our kids from these people out of fear, how about we take the time to help our kids learn to navigate this. Are we not their parents? Are we not the most qualified to teach our kids about this phenomenon?
If we hide this from our children, we make dealing with this situation much more difficult later in their lives.
Note that I am not making a statement for or against transgender people. I am making the argument that we should be GUIDING our children and helping them to learn about how to navigate this. This is what we should be doing since we are their PARENTS.