No Love Without Truth

I was surprised when a mother began to cry as we discussed our truthXchange booklet, Letter to a Friend: Transgenderism and Kids. To my relief, her tears were not because the text had offended her. Rather, she was overwhelmed with thanks to read a Christian resource that encourages parents to refrain from using the false names and pronouns of their gender-confused children. Many well-meaning friends had encouraged her to use “pronoun hospitality” when speaking to or about her child. Others had given her resources like Preston Sprinkle’s book, Embodied, which explicitly encourages such practice. “I felt like I was being told to go against my own conscience,” she said through her tears. Even though “I had a knot in my stomach all the time, I had to ignore how wrong it felt because if I didn’t, [my child]* would be in danger. I kept thinking, ‘How can lying really help [my child]?’ It only gave [my child] a false sense that I was going along with confusion somehow—that the life [my child] was choosing was good. And it’s not. It’s not good.”

Increasingly, Christians are facing this predicament. Our children, neighbors, extended family, and community members imbibe the lie that males and females can somehow change the sex with which God created them. Christians are also misled by ministries such as the Center for Faith, Gender and Sexuality (among others). Such influences are leading them to believe that they should change their language to reflect the internal desires of their confused loved ones. Those who encourage such practice reason that “pronoun hospitality” is a small accommodation, which will create comfort for the confused individual and will thus maintain a relationship with Christians and the church. We’re told that we’re to be kind, and that speaking to or about the person according to their sexed reality is unkind; this small accommodation may be a lifesaving measure to someone who might otherwise decide on self harm or suicide. Believing that it’s the only truly loving thing they can do, many Christians go along with the social transition of the people in their lives, even if they have a sense of guilt for lying.

Christians who make this decision are misled. From both a biblical and a medical perspective, accommodating a person in their gender confusion by using their preferred language is wrong. Let’s deal first with the Biblical issue. Scripture makes clear that God created us in his image and has ordained our identity, whether male or female. The language we use to refer to these image bearers should reflect the absolute authority that God has over his creation. Only he is Creator, and we are his creation. Our language should honor not only God, but those caught up in the transition issue by lovingly speaking truth. The language of the culture may have changed to reflect the false belief that males and females are interchangeable, but we are called to speak truth in love. Jesus told us that we must “love our neighbor as ourselves.” Paul tells us in 1 Cor 13:6 that “love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.” The 9th commandment tells us that we “shall not bear false witness against our neighbor.” Using a chosen name or pronouns that do not reflect the truth about a person made in God’s image is a violation not only of the truth, but of love.

The biblical command to love by “rejoicing with the truth” is better for the wellbeing of our loved ones than accommodating their confusion or rebellion against God’s creation with our words. Medical studies back this up. The American Psychological Association cautions that socially transitioning a gender dysphoric person too soon may solidify a cross-gender identity that will be “challenging to reverse if cross-gender feelings do not persist.” Regarding children, the Endocrine Society states that social transition is associated with the persistence of gender dysphoria as a child progresses into adolescence. Ken Zucker, editor in chief of the Archives of Sexual Behavior says, “Gender social transition of prepubertal children will increase dramatically the rate of gender dysphoria persistence when compared to follow-up studies of children with gender dysphoria who did not receive this type of psychosocial intervention and, oddly enough, might be characterized as iatrogenic.” (Iatrogenic means relating to an illness caused by medical intervention.) Studies have shown that children who are gender confused generally grow out of that gender confusion, usually by puberty if not before. However, kids who are socially transitioned generally go on to pursue medicalized steps of attempted (never successful) gender change at shocking rates. Consider this: Conservatively, children with gender dysphoria who are not socially transitioned desist from gender confusion about 85% of the time (some studies show ever higher rates of desistance). A study published in the medical journal Pediatrics in May 2022 showed children who were socially transitioned persisted in their gender confusion approximately 97.5% of the time.

In other words, our words have power. Social transition is an active measure that has an effect. The effect of social transition also extends to the people around the person who is confused. I recently spoke to a woman who contacted me asking for resources to help a tween girl whose best friend now identified as a boy. The girl had been encouraged by her family and school to honor the chosen name and male pronouns requested by her friend, and she did so. However, over the year and a half since that time, she had begun to struggle with anxiety, depression, confusion and distrust. She was devastated by the loss of her childhood girlfriend who now seemed an entirely different person, but she didn’t feel she could express the root of her upset without risking the safety of the trans-identified child. She also had anxiety about her own body, and was struggling with how to know whether things were true or not. Her own sense of reality wasn’t trustworthy (the girl I called a friend wasn’t really a girl), nor was that of the adults around her (we all see a girl, but are saying she’s really a boy). As a result, she had pulled in on herself, socially isolating and struggling deeply. A similar account was shared by a mother in Dr. Myriam Grossman’s excellent book, Lost in Trans Nation: A Child Psychiatrist’s Guide Out of the Madness. about her son’s response to a boy he knew coming to school dressed as a girl after Summer vacation. “…my child, he’s ten…and he was explaining to me about his friend who transitioned…his first question, of course, was ‘did this child grow a vagina over the summer?…can I grow a vagina over the summer? How do I know I’m not next?’ And my son asked me, ‘well, how do I know if I’m a boy?’ And I was just like, this is scary, and it is disorienting our children.” This mother is a therapist who had previously issued letters in support of hormones and surgery for gender confused minors. But her son’s confusion and its implications caused her to change her mind. Dr. Miriam Grossman discussed something called the Stroop effect in her book. I quote, “The Stroop effect demonstrates that brain function is impacted when presented with a mismatched or incongruent stimulus. For example, it’s quicker and easier to read “red” if the word appears in red rather than in another color. If “red” appears in green, it takes longer to read, and there is a higher likelihood of error. This has been tested and proved repeatedly.” If simply reading the name of a color printed in another color causes enough cognitive dissonance to register in studies, imagine how much greater the mental strain on a child who is trying to use words to describe a person she knows is a girl as a boy – especially when the stakes placed on a mistake are claimed to be as high as causing the gender confused child to commit suicide. When I was approached by the person concerned for the tween girl, I suggested that perhaps more than resources, the child needed to be told the truth and to be allowed to speak the truth about her friend as well.

As Christians in America today, we live in a culture that has forgotten the essential distinction between God the Creator and his creation. As the writer of Hebrews puts it, “By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. (Heb 10:3)” Reality itself was spoken into unalterable being by the only uncreated One. As Image Bearers, we have also been given language and though our words do not have the reality creating-power of God, they still carry great weight. Proverbs 18:21a tells us, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue.” In a very real sense when we choose words that encourage people or even comfort them in their delusions, we are pushing them towards spiritual and physical death.

On a physical level, people who are affirmed in their gender confusion go on to seek medical interventions to change by scalpel and drug what their thoughts and words cannot. As a result, our culture is now facing (along with many countries in the West) a growing scandal as the stories of mutilated, sterilized, and irreversibly damaged detransitioners come out in waves. One common denominator amongst these courageous individuals is the way that all the affirmation they received from doctors, friends, family members, therapists, teachers and others caused them to feel trapped into medical intervention when they began to have doubts because they could not conceive of how to retreat from their choices in the face of so much social pressure. While the groups of people around them often offered their affirmation as comfort and love, in the end it all added up to a weight that caused many to move forward with medical procedures they’d begun to doubt. Even lovingly intended lies still carry the power of death in them.

On a spiritual level, the damage is just as bad. Laura Perry Smalts, who lived as for 9 years attempting to present herself as a man, kindly shared her story with me several years ago. She describes getting to a point where she realized she’d been living a lie, and she needed desperately to know what the truth was. As she sat, thinking about all of the doctors, therapists, and fellow LGBTQ identified people she’d surrounded herself with for years she wondered, “Who will tell me the truth? Who has never lied to me?” And immediately she knew the answer. It was her mother and her father who had always refused to use her chosen male name or pronouns. While she had for years accused them of hatred because of their refusal to honor her trans identity, she suddenly saw those hurtful words for what they were: love. Proverbs 27:6 says, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy.” For Laura, the wounds lovingly inflicted by her family ended up being a healing balm on her soul, leading her back to a relationship with the Lord, a thriving place in the heart of her truth telling church, and reconciliation and joy with her female self, created by her loving God. I thank God that Laura’s family refused through 9 painful years to try to comfort Laura or draw her back in by giving into the lies she wanted to be told. Let us show the same courage by remembering that no love is real love that does not “rejoice in the truth.”