Gender issues

This morning I read an article from the BBC about transgender children.  This is a very rare phenomenon, but apparently instances are growing very rapidly, which the article attributes to growing social acceptance.  There is a lot that could be said about the article - I'd like to deconstruct the idea that people have an internal identity which they need to be allowed to discover, for example - but the bigger question on how my mind is this: how do we, those of us who believe that gender is a good gift, respond to a society that increasingly sees things otherwise?  Here are a few of my thoughts this morning, but I can't pretend to have done nearly enough work on the topic.  Perhaps you have better thoughts you could share?

Firstly, in terms of our fundamental teaching in churches, we need to present a robust doctrine of creation in the context of the gospel.  That gospel context is all important.  If we teach creation without the gospel, all we do is hold up an ideal picture of reality which clearly doesn't match our experience of the world or ourselves.  In the area of gender specifically, we need to teach that God made gender, and gives it to us as a gift, but also that we, fallen people in a fallen world, do not experience that gift as he intended - and finally, we need to teach that we can look forward to the redemption of gender and our experience of it in the new creation!

Secondly, we need to make sure we teach and model the range of legitimate expressions of gender.  We need to avoid taking a particular cultural expression of masculinity (for example) and absolutising it, as if this and only this is the way to be a man.  I think a lot of complementarian literature, particularly coming out of the States, falls into this trap.

Thirdly, we need to recognise that gender is a calling as well as a gift and we need to acknowledge that (as with every calling from God) it is not something the individual is meant to work out by themselves.  Church communities need to be places where people are able to admit to finding gender a difficult calling, and places where people can ask for, and receive, help.  My guess is that quite a lot of us - maybe most of us - find gender difficult in different ways and to a greater or lesser extent, and honesty about this would surely help.

Fourthly, we need to ensure that in our teaching there is no implicit contradiction between a good gift and a cross.  The prevailing culture insists that if something feels like death, it must be death - if it feels hard to bear, we shouldn't bear it.  The gospel insists that cross-bearing - which is hard, and which feels like death - is part and parcel of the path to real life.

Fifthly, all of this needs to happen in a fellowship of people who believe that Jesus, and Jesus alone, defines who we are.  Gender, although important, is not the absolute foundation of our identity, which is found in Christ.