What of the resurrection?
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
Jesus, walked out of the tomb. What does that mean for trans people?
Christians believe in the resurrection. It’s central to our faith, with Paul writing in 1st Corinthians 15:19 that, “If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.” Furthermore, we believe that this will be an embodied resurrection. Not “life everlasting as spirits” or “reincarnation as a new person”, but rather a resurrection of our earthly body. Famously, Jesus’ body after his resurrection was marked by the scars from his death on the cross, further adding weight to a continuation of our earthly bodies.
The argument then is this: if our eternal existence includes our earthly body, are trans individuals right to undergo gender transition? Put differently, is the apparent gender of the body a perfect indicator of what the gender of the person will be for eternity?
This argument entails something called “gender essentialism”, which is taken in this argument to mean that the apparent gender of the body is in fact what will be the gender of the person in eternity, and therefore it is wrong to change it in this life. A corollary to this is the idea that one cannot “choose” their gender. They are born one way, and they will be that way in eternity.
One might support this argument further by saying that “male” and “female” are concepts found throughout the Bible. For example, the church is the “bride” of Christ. The argument may include the idea that since even the church is gendered, that gender is an essential part of our reality.
What is “Bodily Resurrection”?
Before we get into the rest, I need to spend a moment talking about what “bodily resurrection” means. It would seem to mean something like “the body that dies comes back to life.” Easy enough for bodies that are in tact after death. But consider that the Bible actually promises that our bodies will return to dust, in both Genesis 3:19 and Ecclesiastes 3:20. And indeed, that’s what we see for most. Any body that is dead for several hundred years will have decayed into dust. This is why it’s so rare to find skeletons that are thousands of years old - they have to be intentionally or accidentally preserved to last that long. Perhaps a modern casket may lengthen that time period somewhat, but it’s only a delay. And of course, many bodies are cremated. What happens when that happens?
All organic material is burned. The burning process is not simply a dehydration, but a chemical change, in which you are left with ash (carbon) and gasses (water vapor, CO2, CO). Only some of the water was unchanged and released in gaseous form.
The ashes are typically then spread, maybe at sea or from a cliff top.
I had always imagined that, at the resurrection, there’d be some form of reassembly of my body from all the pieces of it across the world, in something that looks kind of like the opposite of the Thanos Snap. But does that make any sense?
The atoms that constituted the person are now destined to their next portion of the ecosystem. (and the next and the next over centuries or millenia)
Randall Munroe of the web comic xkcd observes that every water molecule inside your body was almost certainly part of a dinosaur at some point, and in fact his math supports it having been part of many of them.
Let’s say Bill dies. Bill is then cremated or left to decay. Either way, nearly all of Bill is released back into the environment at some point. Some parts of Bill end up as water, which is taken up into clouds, and then become rain in Iowa. In turn, the rain becomes corn, and the corn is eaten by Joe. Joe dies later that day.
So there’s a tiny bit of water that was part of both Bill and Joe at their death. Which of them gets it back? What happens to the other one? And is God really tagging each atom in our body, each proton, each neutron, each electron, as, “To be returned to Bill’s right thumb at time of resurrection”?
Maybe. But I don’’t see anything in the Bible that requires it.
Furthermore, I know of no one who actually believes we will get our bodies back exactly as they were at time of death. At minimum, some deaths are due to the body having some issue - cancer, a neurological disorder, heart disease, etc. Other bodies will simply appear very old (or, sadly, very young). Every Christian I know of talks of some version of a “perfected” body, in which maladies, disabilities, deformities, injuries, etc. are all fixed. Is this true? I mean, we’ll have to wait and see, but I know many who would not consider the resurrection of a 95-yo body that died of ALS, exactly as it was, to be “good news”.
So I’ll go with this: The resurrection means that we will have bodies that are broadly similar to our bodies in this life - not new, but recognizable to those who knew us. They’ll be composed of the body we had in life plus enough to repair it, or just out of dust if necessary, as God did with Adam so many years ago.
We won’t have the option to configure it - nor will we all look the same as each other. We’ll have a “very good” version of the body we had in this life, and we’ll love it. It’s not new, since it resembles what we had, but it also is new (as Jesus says, he will make all things new), since it’s restored to an unmarred state.
What about elective modifications?
Many people make modifications to their bodies in this life. In the United States, it’s near universal that women will have their ears pierced. One site told me that 17% of men will have their ears pierced. Nearly half of Americans have at least one tattoo, according to another site. Getting your hair cut is pretty universal, and many people also color it - some natural colors, some not so natural. Many men will use treatments to regrow hair they are losing. A huge number of people get some form of plastic surgery or laser hair removal. Orthodontia is quite common, as is removing things like skin tags or moles. My wife has had Lasik. And of course there’s daily stuff like makeup or selecting clothing that flatters one’s appearance.
I am aware of pastors who oppose tattoos and plastic surgery, but neither on what I believe to be terribly robust theological grounds. I’ve heard one pastor argue that people should let their hair go gray, but also had very weak and inconsistent grounds.
So what will happen to all these things in eternity? I suspect that some will not carry over, because they were done out of vanity and the individual will know in eternity that they did not need them. But others like Lasik or orthdontia seem like we’ll likely all have good vision and straight teeth.
What about Jesus?
For Jesus, he’d been dead for 3 days prior to his resurrection. He walked out of the tomb, and then was seen by many. Famously, he uses the scars in his hands, feet, and side to prove that it’s really him. On the other hand, we are told that he was beaten so badly prior to the cross that he was unrecognizable (Isaiah 52:14, prophetically). Those scars are not mentioned at all post resurrection. Furthermore, descriptions of Jesus in Revelation (after the ascension) include no such scars. Finally, at least once, his disciples didn’t even recognize him (John 21, though the text does not add what would have been helpful, “because of his disfiguring scars”).
Luke 24 (the “Road to Emmaus”) has references of:
“But their eyes were kept from recognizing him.”
"And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight."
So clearly, something is odd here - there is a supernatural working both here and on the two occasions where Jesus appears in a room where the door was locked (John 20 and 21). Christ is appearing physically, but is (at risk of sounding like I’m describing a superhero) capable of altering the way others perceive him. He’s even appearing in places that he could not get into naturally. He did neither of these things prior to the crucifixion.
Additionally, people who had spent three years with him did not recognize him, but no reference is made to him being disfigured.
What to make of this? I don’t know. But it seems at least plausible to me that he kept the specific scars from the cross in order to prove his resurrection. I think it’d be horrific to imagine that some martyrs will keep all their scars from their torture and execution for all eternity. Maybe I’m wrong, but we just don’t know.
But our God is one who heals and mends. He makes the blind see and the lame walk. He cures the ill. I see no reason to believe that these would not be the case in eternity.
Gender Essentialism
Let’s define "gender essentialism". It could mean any of the following things, or a combination thereof (certain combinations might not make sense, obviously).
The concept of male and female are essential to reality as God has designed it.
There must be men and there must be women.
Certain people must have been specifically male or specifically female (e.g. "Jesus had to be a man", "Adam and Eve had to be capable of and inclined to procreation")
Each and every person's gender is an innate, immutable, eternal, and essential attribute of their being.
That innate gender must be either male or female.
If a person's anatomy is easily categorized as male or easily categorized as female, then the person's anatomy always reflects that person's "innate gender."
I find #’s 1-3 to be true, or at least not worth debating. That leaves us with only three remaining questions:
How many genders are there? Male and female only? Or more? This affects non-binary individuals.
Is each person’s gender innate?
If “yes” to #2, how does one determine what someone’s innate and fixed gender is?
And a bonus question: How sure are we of our answers and what happens if we determine it incorrectly?
If it helps for my particular case, we can ignore question #1, since my transition is male-to-female. That said, the concept of eight genders, including trans men and trans women, existed in Jewish culture. Eunuchs are mentioned by Jesus (Matthew 19), and the Ethiopian Eunuch is baptized in the book of Acts. People most frequently point to Genesis 1:27 (“Male and female he created them”), but I’ve addressed this before - there are multiple binaries stated that are obviously incomplete in Genesis 1.
So let’s assume the following answers:
Are there more genders than male to female? Doesn’t matter for male-to-female transition (but my view is that, yes, there are more genders than just male and female - I’ll address that in a future article)
Is gender innate? Yes - gender is innate.
So far, I suspect that anti-trans people are in full agreement with these positions.
Ok, now we go to #3. "How do you determine which gender a person is?"
The anti-trans view: If the observable anatomy at birth is easily classified one way or the other, then the person is that gender, 100.0000% of the time, no exceptions. Intersex people (who are not easily classified) are the exception, and still have a true gender, it's just indeterminant from anatomy.
The trans-affirming view: The anatomy is a strong indicator and is usually accurate, but just like there's any number of other birth defects, sometimes the anatomy does not align to the person's "True gender". While someone who is anti-trans would rightly caution against gnostic dismissal of the body, that's not what I (or other trans Christians) argue. I fully agree that I will have this body resurrected, but also made "perfect". I have a high view that the body is part of a person, just like the mind, soul, and heart are (I'll come back to this in a moment).
I hope that it’s obvious: there is no particularly obvious biblical basis for a conclusion either way. All manner of birth abnormalities exist that I wholeheartedly believe will be corrected in eternity: conjoined twins, dwarfism, missing/underdeveloped limbs/fingers/toes, motor disabilities, mental disabilities, blindness, deafness, brittle bones, etc. We even see Jesus himself miraculously cure a man "blind from birth", indicating that Jesus does not agree that his blindness is innate to him, even though it had always been that way and a core part of that man's identity (so core was it, that we don’t even know the man’s name - just his condition). Note also that "defects" don't need to be from genetics, they can happen due to developmental abnormalities or injury at any point in the development or life of a person.
The easiest way to describe gender dysphoria is this: the person's mind/heart feel like a different gender than that person's body. That is, there is internal misalignment. There are basically two views on how to address it:
Trans-affirming: Those who argue that we should do what we can to make the body match the mind/heart
Anti-trans: Those who argue that we should do what we can to make the mind/heart match the body
I argue that these two sides effectively agree: there is some need to align some aspect of a person's gender experience to the rest of them. In other words, they both agree that transition of part of the person is necessary. They just disagree on which part can and should transition.
There are two additional options that I find abhorrent, let me mention those briefly:
Tell the person to live with the dissonance. This, to me, is like telling a blind or deaf person to live with their blindness or deafness even though we could alleviate it. This only makes sense if you believe that the mismatch is actually an eternal part of the person (which would be quite odd, especially taking a gender essentialist viewpoint), or have some sort of anti-medical view like Christian Scientists in which any interference with the body is incorrect. I reject both of these views and I suspect most readers of this do as well.
Assert that the person is wrong about their perception of their mind/heart (this is really just a particularly toxic variant on the anti-trans view). While it makes sense to me to provide as much resourcing as possible for the person to come to an informed view. For example, it’s important to check to make sure that they're not just suffering from body dysmorphia ("I don't look like Superman"). But at some point you have to trust that each person knows their own mind/heart best. It is arrogant to pretend that we know someone better than they know themselves. Multitudes of trans people have declared that they experience gender dysphoria, and then satisfaction upon transition. Note: this is different than something like anorexia, where the individual has a skewed self-perception, but if they follow through trying to correct it, it can result in serious illness or death.
Option 2 (transition the mind/heart) has been tried, for decades, to disastrous results (results with a literal death toll as subjects of it turn to self-harm, unhealthy coping mechanisms, and suicide). "Conversion therapy" has been tried and tried and tried, by both Christians and non-Christians. It has been shown, just like gay conversion therapy, to be ineffective and even dangerous. The founders of Exodus International (a leading Christian anti-gay conversion therapy group) have renounced it and shut down the group.
Which leaves us with Option 1, also known as “gender affirming care.” Gender affirming care includes the following, though each trans person determines which components of it make sense to them:
Social Transition: Changing name, pronouns, style, and voice training.
Medical Transition: Hormones and Surgeries.
You can read more about what all is included in those options. It’s incredibly important to note that each trans person determines what’s right for them, and when. Some do basically everything. Some change a name or pronouns and nothing else. In particularly hostile social environments, they may not do anything other than acknowledge to themselves that they are trans.
Gender affirming care is supported by every leading medical group in the United States. Studies show a remarkable (73%) drop in suicide attempts (even with much of our society being vicious towards trans people). Studies also show a remarkably low rate (<3%) of “detransition.” Another study shows a <1% regret rate for gender affirming surgeries, which might indicate that by the time someone gets to doing those surgeries, they are quite confident in their gender identity.
The small percentage of detransitioners are fully deserving of care as they do so. It’s also worth determining whether there are gaps in the screening process that could better prevent these cases or catch them before they do more dramatic transition steps. But this is true with almost any life decision. I just left my job at Microsoft, and in fact my career in tech (probably). Does this mean people shouldn't go into tech careers? Hardly. 25% of marriages end in divorce, but I see no one arguing that we should abolish marriage based on this statistic. Roughly 700 SBC pastors have been credibly accused of sexual abuse. Based on 47,000 congregations, that means roughly 1.4% of congregations had a sex abuser as a pastor (and the real number, experts agree, is much higher, at least because some of these pastors worked in multiple congregations). Is anyone trying to abolish the office of pastor? And yes, other denominations have faced similar issues - so it’s not just an SBC thing.
In summary, we know that those who choose to proceed with gender transition generally:
Are high risk for various issues if they do not transition
Dramatically reduce that risk if they do transition
Rarely regret their decision to transition
What does this mean? It means I can agree entirely with the view of gender essentialism, with one slight change from how anti-trans people might mean it: I would argue that I am transitioning precisely because I believe my essential gender is female, not male. If I believed that my internal sense of gender was changeable (which, I've essentially attempted for 30+ years), then I'd probably do that because it’s cheaper and involves fewer knives and needles. But my experience and pretty much all other trans individuals' experience is that such a thing is just not possible.
What of the Resurrection?
So, to answer the question directly, “What of the resurreection?” I'm excited about it. Because on that day, I believe that, like the blind being able to see, my body will be fixed in the right ways. I will have, for eternity, a wonderful feminine body. I do wonder if I will bear marks of having gone through transition. I certainly expect that I'll know that in this life I was trans. But will my voice just naturally sound feminine, instead of having to coerce it to do so? Will my facial structure appear more naturally feminine instead of just whatever I can accomplish with hormones, skin care, makeup, and facial feminization surgery? I don't know, and I'm comfortable not knowing.
But what if I’m wrong?
At the moment, in some Christian circles, being transgender is the absolute worst thing that could happen. Over 350 bills have been proposed in the first seven weeks of this year targeted at trans people, in 35 states. Brett McCracken of The Gospel Coalition just wrote an article in which he called a movie “anti-Christian” for including a trans man. What was the movie? “Women Talking” - a movie about women finding out they are being drugged and raped in their mennonite colony, and deciding to leave. That’s right - a movie about women escaping sexual abuse is “anti-Christian” just for including a trans man (who McCracken misgenders intentionally).
But let’s actually consider: if I am wrong, then I suspect that Jesus will tell me "so... you got that wrong - but I've fixed it, and now your body, mind, heart, and soul are male now, through-and-through. Welcome." I'm not bothered by that prospect. I can imagine no world in which Jesus says, “you followed me, you confessed me as Lord, you loved me and loved your neighbor. But you also took feminizing hormones and had surgeries to reshape your body into what you thought was right for you, so away from me, I never knew you.” It’s not a salvation level thing. That doesn’t mean flippancy, it just means we need to keep it in perspective.
And if I’m right about transition, Jesus will still tell me I got something wrong. Maybe it was working for a massive tech company. Maybe it was saving for retirement. Maybe it was driving a full-size truck and harming the environment. Maybe it was my participation in The Network or Mars Hill Church. Maybe it was the things I’ve said about them since I left. Perhaps it’s that I should have done more for the poor, or spent less money on a smart phone. There’s any number of things that I might be doing wrong. As always, my hope is fully on the grace of Christ. I try to do right, by loving God and loving my neighbor as myself, and growing in both as I move forward in life. And I trust that the grace of Christ will cover the areas where I unknowingly do that imperfectly.
I don’t mind getting things wrong that I’ve done my best to get right. I mind getting things wrong because I didn’t try, or if I let biases cause me to not listen well. In this case, I feel confident that I have done the best that I can. And I’m confident that I’ll learn more about something in the future and it’ll shift my actions in some way or another.
On the other hand, if anti-trans folks are wrong, then they are supporting rhetoric, actions, and laws that lead to the suicides, depressions, and murders of trans people, including teenagers. I suspect the words from Jesus toward those people would be far stronger, though still not salvation-level. But I think he’ll give a reminder that he meant it when he said, “love your neighbor” and “my burden is light.”
In Summary
For me, my body is still my body - I am transitioning precisely because of being "body positive", as some Christians say. The Bible tells me to care for my body as a wise steward, and that’s exactly what I’m doing. I believe that parts of my body are not consistent with my gender, and I’m moving to fix those parts. If we take the body seriously as a part of us, then if the body has some malady, it's incumbent upon us to address that, and care for the body to the degree that we can. It’s just good stewardship. I’m fortunate to live in an era where I have more options than just social transition. And I look forward to the resurrection when my body will be exactly as God designed it, without impact of this fallen world, whatever that might look like.