UPDATED Today’s AMI Devotional QT, originally posted on January 3, 2019, is provided by Pastor Ryun Chang.
Devotional Thought for This Morning
“What Do You Say When Your Child Says I Feel Like a Boy/Girl?”
Ephesians 2:12 (ESV)
“Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ . . . having no hope and without God in the world.”
Romans 15:7 (NIV)
“Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.”
While reading the best-selling textbook Women, Men, and Society, I came across several genetic conditions that raised an important pastoral question: How do we minister to people who look one way but feel another? Before addressing that, it helps to understand what the science actually says.
Klinefelter Syndrome (XXY)
Klinefelter syndrome affects roughly one in every five hundred male births. These individuals have an extra X chromosome in addition to the typical male XY pair. They are “phenotypically males but with a tendency toward femaleness” (e.g., enlarged breasts, sparse body hair, long limbs, etc.).
Turner Syndrome (X)
Turner syndrome affects about one in 2,500 females. These women are missing one X chromosome from the usual XX pair. As adults, they “have virtually no ovaries, lack most sexual characteristics, and are sterile.”
Do these conditions create transsexual tension? According to Women, Men, and Society, generally no: Turner syndrome females show “stereotypical femininity” despite lacking female sex hormones (p. 36). Many XXY males “are no different from XY men in terms of social and emotional characteristics” (p. 36).
Of course, there are a few complex cases. For instance, some genetic males are born with female-appearing genitalia because their bodies were “unresponsive to the androgens their testes secrete” during prenatal development (p. 38). Raised as girls, they later masculinize at puberty when testosterone surges (p. 39).
Julianne Imperato-McGinley’s research in a Dominican village found that these individuals “experience little difficulty” adopting a male identity at puberty (p. 39). The textbook’s rebuttal—that transitions are “sometimes not as smooth”—is weak and unconvincing.
But enough about chromosomes and hormones. The deeper question is pastoral: How do we walk with people who feel a painful disconnect between their bodies and their inner sense of self? If you’re like me—someone who never struggled with gender identity—you may feel unqualified to understand their experience. Yet our own stories may contain moments that help us empathize.
In the late 1970s, at my predominantly white college in Virginia, I became painfully self-conscious about my Asian features. My self-loathing was so intense that I sometimes hated myself for being Asian. Looking one way but wishing I looked another, I longed to appear white. Once, to seem taller like my Caucasian friends, I carved out the sole of an old shoe and inserted it into my Nike high-tops to gain an inch. Before long, I was enslaved to those shoes—I couldn’t go anywhere without them.
Later, at UCLA, I met Stanley Sue, a clinical psychology professor of Chinese descent. His research described people like me as “marginal men,” who believed that rejecting their Asian heritage was the key to acceptance by whites. That was me—young, insecure, and easily influenced. Pejoratively labeled a “banana”—yellow on the outside, white on the inside—I often felt frustrated, anxious, and hypersensitive when people didn’t perceive me the way I wished.
I wonder if this is, in some small way, similar to what young men or women feel when they long to identify as the opposite sex. Not identical—but perhaps emotionally adjacent enough to help me empathize.
I would gently share that the rejection of ourselves ultimately stems from the brokenness within, born of our separation from our Creator and our desire to live independently of His guidance (Rom. 3:11–12).
And then I would share this from my heart: Thirty-eight years removed from those miserable days, I no longer struggle with that confusion. How did this “inner healing” come?
First, at age twenty, my Creator found me. That encounter began the long process of accepting myself as God uniquely made me.
Second, I found a Christian community where my worth wasn’t tied to appearance or ability but to Christ’s unconditional acceptance. In time, I ditched the shoes.
Third, as I matured in Christ, my focus shifted from myself to others who also felt alienated from themselves because they were alienated from their Maker.
This is how I would speak to those confused about their sexuality—those who believe that self-acceptance and happiness lie in becoming someone else. Share your story. Let them know they are not alone. And point them gently toward the One who heals our fractured identities.
Prayer: Father, we are living in a time when the foundations You established are being dismantled by otherwise intelligent people acting foolishly. We fear for our children and their future. Lord, we cannot do this. Help us. Help our kids. Please. Amen.
Bible Reading for Today: Isaiah 19
Lunch Break Study
Romans 12:2: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
Proverbs 22:24-25: “Make no friendship with a man given to anger, nor go with a wrathful man, 25 lest you learn his ways and entangle yourself in a snare.”
Proverbs 22:6: “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.”
Questions to Consider
1. What do these three passages assume about human behavior?
2. What is one factor that parents hold to increase the possibility that their children will walk in the Lord and uphold biblical values later in life?
3. Is a positive outcome guaranteed if the parents diligently ply themselves to “train up a child in the way he should go?” If not, then, what are we do to?
Notes
1. These passages imply that our cultural condition, including pop culture, peer groups and authority figures, can and will affect how we live, even our personality and faith.
2. Parents can control the environment in which their children grow up. Wise parenting discerns good influences from bad, so that their children are given every opportunity not to conform to secular beliefs and values, and model behaviors that are unhealthy and harmful.
3. Ultimately, human behaviors are not formulaic, meaning nothing we do guarantees a positive outcome. To believe otherwise is to uphold positivism, a belief that applying observed facts about human behavior that elicit happiness will always produce harmony and order. This may work with pets, but not with inherently sinful humans endowed with freewill. Despite even a perfect upbringing, at any given moment one bad choice can undo much of good parenting. That’s why we seek God’s help while parenting on our knees and seek His grace and mercy when all of us fall short—that is one great lesson we must model for our kids.
Evening Reflection
How was your day? Did something happen today that reminded you of your brokenness from within? Yes, the believers can still experience brokenness, because we are both sinners and righteous at the same time. Observing from my own life, I’d describe brokenness as feeling self-condemning, shameful, lonesome, etc. How would you describe it from your own experience? Whether it is the same or different from mine, its short and long-term resolution is the same. The Hebrews writers puts it like this: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. 16 Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb. 4:15). Shall we go to God right now?
