He makes all things new
Note: This article is part of a series I’ll be doing where I’ll engage with common arguments against gender transition. While I understand that people may not be persuaded by my rationale here, I hope they will at least see that there is much room for differing opinions.
The Argument
I’ve recently heard an argument that gender transition is bringing about “a new life” in a way that only God is supposed to be able to do. That is, that the “new” life is a substitute for the “rebirth” we have in Christ, or the resurrection to come. Those making this argument may state, among other things:
“Deadname”: The word “deadname” implies that a trans person considers their pre-transition person to be “dead”.
New Names: That we are to receive a new name from God, not ourselves (citations: Isaiah 62:2, Revelation 2:17, Revelation 3:12)
New Life: That it brings about a new life in a way that is supposed to be done by the rebirth in Christ.
New Body: That it makes “a new body” using technology instead of awaiting the resurrection
I’ll tackle each of these separately.
"Deadname"
Argument: trans people calling their original name their “deadname” means they think that consider themselves to have been “born again”, something only Christ can do.
For those unfamiliar, the word “deadname” refers to the name a trans person had prior to transition. It can also be used as a verb, as in, “You really shouldn’t deadname trans people.” The term didn’t exist prior to 2012, and wasn’t popularized until Caitlyn Jenner came out in 2015. A transgender person frequently (but not always) changes their name because at least in English, names are frequently gendered. A trans person named “Jamie” may not need to change their name, though, since “Jamie” is commonly used for both men and women in the United States. But a trans woman who was originally named “George” might choose to change their name to “Georgia” or a completely unrelated feminine name.
For example, I changed my middle name from “James” to “Jamie”, because it was a family name and I wanted to preserve that, while at least making the name a “neutral” gendered name. My former first name has no feminine or neutral variation, so I needed an entirely new name, and I chose Celeste, with input from my wife and parents. Going through life with my former name but a feminine presentation would have been, frankly, confusing to everyone.
But what of the term “deadname”? Does it imply some sort of rebirth?
It should be noted that not all trans people even like the word “deadname”. The podcast “Gender Rebels” covered this concept, particularly at the end of the linked episode, in which Faith (a trans woman) is quite emphatic that her life now is a continuation of her life from pre-transition. Therefore, she doesn’t love the word “deadname” for exactly the reasons this argument makes - that it could be perceived as considering the pre-transition self to be dead.
I’ve heard other trans people say they don’t like the term because it’s just a really harsh word, and it feels unnecessarily judgmental, particularly around one’s parents.
That said, my general sense of the word is that it implies that the pre-transition name is dead, not the pre-transition self. It’s deliberately harsh, because it was chosen to convey the harshness of someone calling a trans person by their deadname. In fact, the very common practice of simply feminizing (James —> Jamie) or masculinizing (Ellen —> Elliot) one’s given name shows that they want to preserve a link to the pre-transition self.
For me, I tend to use “former name” or “old name” when talking about the name I had before transition, but will use “deadname” as a verb if I see an anti-trans person intentionally referring to a trans person by their previous name. Other trans people may vary on these. For example, if a trans person was kicked out of their house for being trans, and abused or disowned by their parents, they may choose an entirely new name (including last name), and be incredibly offended by the use of the former name. Others are very anxious that anti-trans people will find out their former name and use it to harass them, and so go to great lengths to prevent their former name from being widely known.
Either way, in this life, we have names. Some people have gender neutral names like “Jamie”, “Taylor”, or “Peyton”. But some people have highly gendered names (Sarah, John), and so a gender transition ends up pretty much requiring a new name.
In summary: “deadname” does not refer to some kind of rebirth, but rather the deprecated nature of the previous name or the act of maliciously using it.
“We Receive New Names from God”
Should names come from God? First, I’ll note that many people change their names. In this article, we have people changing their names for a variety of reasons:
Marriage/Divorce
Newly discovered family history
Strained family relationship
Name has been tarnished by a public figure (People named “Hussein” changed their name after the former leader of Iraq became an infamous figure and I can only imagine that men named “Adolf” did the same in the first half of the 20th century)
Being confused with someone else in an inconvenient way (the article refers to someone who had debt collectors after him because his name matched someone who had money problems).
They just want to.
And of course, transgender people.
This is a commonly accepted practice. It’s worth noting that even changing a woman’s last name upon marriage is not a biblical practice. It’s a modern convention, but I see no one arguing that it’s an invalid one.
Additionally, let’s look at the verses cited for this argument:
Isaiah 62:2
“The nations shall see your rigteousness and all the kings your glory, and you shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the LORD will give.” It goes on in verse 4, “You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate, but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her…”
This verse is quite clearly referring to Israel, but saying that Israel has come to be known as “Forsaken”, but will not be named that anymore. It’s about an entire people - God’s people, not an individual person.
Revelation 2:17
“…To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.”
It’s Revelation, so it’s tricky, but first observe - it’s odd that this new name would only be known to ones self, right? It sounds almost like a secret name the recipient is to be called by God, but no one else.
The ESV Study Notes say:
The new name, given to the one who holds fast to Jesus’ name (2:13), may refer to the Holy Spirit’s work of conforming believers to the holiness of Christ (Rom 8:29). The manna and the white stone suggest differing types of eternal blessings and rewards, as appropriate in each situation."
The NIV Study Notes say only that “new name” refers to “The name of the victor” (who I am supposing would be Christ), but also says that the white stone may have been for the purpose of admission to the Messianic banquet.
I see nothing in this passage to imply that we will have some sort of new name we will go by for all of eternity.
Revelation 3:12
The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God. Never shall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven and my own new name.”
In this passage, we see Christ writing his own new name on the believer, not a new name for the believer. This matches the common Christian belief that Christ’s righteousness and character are attributed to the Christian.
Summary
I honestly don’t see anything in these passages that indicates that God will give individuals a new name. The Isaiah passage is about Israel being renamed from “Forsaken”. The Revelation verses are both directed to two of the specific seven churches who receive letters. Do the Christians in the other five not receive new names? There are of course a few instances of God or others renaming individuals in the Bible (Sarai —> Sarah, Abram —> Abraham), but it’s not even close to a universal practice, and there’s no command for NT churches to make it a regular practice.
But let’s say that God will give us a new name. Ok, fine - but we have a name in this life, given by our parents. Many people change theirs, with or without consent of their parents. People have immediately started calling my wife by her new preferred name, which isn’t related to her previous one in any way, but then use this argument to state that I should not change my name. It’s inconsistent at best.
“It’s a new life and only God can do that”
This one is simply false. I’ve seen Brett McCracken from The Gospel Coalition similarly argue that some large life change is a “new life” and that only God should do that. He made this argument to seemingly be against women escaping from sexual abuse (no really).
People use “new life” metaphors all the time.
Jobs: “In my previous life as a [profession]”.
Marriage: “As you start your new life together.”
Prison release: “As you start your new life as a free man.”
Moving: “As we begin our new life in California.”
This is not a rare phrase. So yes, trans people might say “in my past life”, but they mean it in the colloquial sense, not the rebirth-in-Jesus sense.
If I were to say that any part of my life feels “new”, it’s the recovery from the spiritual trauma I endured in The Network. For that, as one friend said, I am, “building a new life.” And in most senses, that feels true, but I also am fully aware that I’m the same person.
This argument relies on portraying transition as being a “resurrection” of sorts, and trans people (at least the ones I know) simply don’t see it that way. They see it as repair of something that was not working well, which is something done all the time for almost every person.
"New Body"
This argument says that transition is using technology to do what only God can do: specifically, give us a resurrected and perfected body.
The problem is that no trans person would characterize their body as “new” except in one of the colloquial senses above. Many gyms will market themselves in January by saying, “New Year, New You”. Someone getting a major fashion update might introduce themselves as “The new [name]”. Is it objectively true? Not at all - it’s only true in a “updated” sense of the word.
For a trans person, the vast majority of the person’s body remains the same. Most of my skeleton will remain identical (except where surgically altered). My heart, lungs, stomach, and all other major organs won’t change. A few things like hair and skin will change but only to a small degree. Even the facial feminization surgery I intend to have will likely only change my brow bone and nose - surgeries commonly done on non-trans people all the time.
Another argument might be “if the body is wrong, it’s God’s job to fix it.” But this is the kind of anti-medicalism seen in Christian Scientists. If this is someone’s sincere conviction, then I’m in no way going to stop them. But most Christians disagree with that, seeing modern medicine as a gift from God. We use it to address every manner of birth abnormality or childhood developmental illness or issue. PKU, Cleft Palate, birth marks, intersex anatomy (the treatment of which is controversial), and any number of other issues.
All a trans person is saying is this, medically: The trans person developed with inconsistent sex traits. Common examples of this:
Gynecomastia: male development of larger (female-like) breast tissue, caused by abnormally high amounts of estrogen in the male body, particularly infancy, adolescence, or over the age of 50. It occurs in 35% of men, and 25,000 men in the US had breast reductions to treat it in 2019.
Hirsutism: female development of significant (male-like) facial hair. Affects 5-15% of women, frequently caused by abnormally high rates of testosterone in someone assigned female at birth.
Both of those examples occur far more commonly than trans individuals (<1%). There’s a number of medical theories that have been put forward to ascertain how someone ends up transgender, just like one might study how Gynecomastia or Hirsutism happens. But the how is less interesting for this discussion than the fact that these occur. And a trans person is one whose brain is quite literally saying (by controlling the mouth and vocal cords), “I am not the same gender that my body appears.”
Think of it this way - a person shows a variety of primary and secondary sex characteristics. That includes everything from the externally visible genitalia all the way to the typical thickness of hair. But there are subtler differences as well. Females typically have lower lung capacity and smaller hearts. The bone structure develops differently as well - with men typically having a wider collarbone and women having wider hips. And every single one of these exists on a spectrum. That is to say, you can find a woman with hirsutism and a man with alopecia totalis such that the woman grows a fuller beard. You can find a man with gynecomastia who has larger breast tissue than a woman with a smaller bust. Obviously many women are taller than many men. I’m 6’2”, but I’ve known several women taller than me.
Which all leads to one thing: most attributes exist as overlapping bell-curves, and any given individual may have a mix of female and male characteristics. The most common situation is to be pretty much all the same way or all the other way, but it’s hardly universal. And medical interventions to “fix” characteristics that don’t “match” are quite common, even when those characteristics do not affect physical health in any way other than remedying the way the individual feels about their appearance.
Given that neural rewiring is our capabilities as people in 2023, it should come as no surprise that all attempts at making trans people feel like the gender that their body appears to be (conversion therapy) have failed catastrophically, including deaths by suicide. At this point the medical community is in full agreement that trans people are real. And furthermore, they agree that the only treatment, and therefore the best treatment, is gender affirming care.
This is not creating a “new body” any more than someone receiving any number of other treatments for any number of other issues.
“Perfected”
Let’s also quickly acknowledge that few trans people would say that their body is now “perfect”. I’ll take estrogen until the day I die, medical advances notwithstanding. I’ll never have a voice that just happens to sound feminine. I’ll always be 6’2” and pretty obviously not a “cis woman.” And this matches most cis people - very few of whom feel that their body is “perfect.”
“Resurrection”
I also take exception to the idea that resurrection would be wrong even if we could do it. And in fact, we do it all the time. People routinely are brought back by defibrillators, or a combination of life support and other interventions. We do it all the time. Devin Hamlin is an NFL player who had a heart attack on the field while playing. News reports said that he was given CPR for close to 10 minutes. And then he attended the Super Bowl, healthy, a little over a month later.
I heard no one at the time saying, “they should have let him stay dead.”
Summary
Yes, Jesus will make all things new. This gives trans Christians hope for our resurrection.
But I know of no situation in life in which that means we should not try to repair brokenness that we see in this world. No homeowner has a broken window and says, “Jesus will make all things new, so I’ll leave it broken.” No parent looks at a child with cancer and says, “Jesus will make all things new, so I will let this child die.”
This argument honestly just feels like those making it are either:
In good faith, but simply misunderstanding what gender transition is.
In bad faith, using an argument they would use for nothing else, just because transition makes them uncomfortable.
In the former, I totally get it - and I urge these people to consider my words above, and do more research on trans people. For the latter, anything I say is unlikely to make any difference.
I hope this will help people understand what gender transition is. A fixing of what doesn’t work, as we all do with so many things in life.
Thanks for reading.