Audio Transcript

We got our first question about so-called ‘gender pronoun hospitality’ exactly five years ago, in December of 2019, and many others since. Most recently is this urgent question from an anonymous elder: “Pastor John, hello and thank you for this podcast and for taking my question. I serve as an elder at my church. We are blessed with a college nearby where we have an active ministry presence. There we team up with a large parachurch ministry helping churches serve college campuses.

“During a recent training session, this ministry asked us to consider using ‘gender pronoun hospitality’ on our local campus, a suggestion that has now come before the elders of the church to see if we will allow our members, and those we support locally who work on the campus, to do so. The argument is that there are times when, for the sake of evangelism, one may decide to call a person by their chosen gender if such an act removes a possible barrier in sharing the gospel. The ask for our church is for a person to have the freedom, in the moment, to do this, limited to evangelism contexts, limited to conversations with those who are not believers. If someone claims to be a follower of Christ, such ‘pronoun hospitality’ would not apply. But Article 7 in the Nashville Statement seems to me to show no wiggle room here. Pastor John, what do you think of this so-called ‘gender pronoun hospitality’?”

I see five issues that need to be addressed in this question. I’ll take them from what I think is the least to the most important first.

1. Alternative Address

When you’re dealing directly with a person who says he is a woman or she is a man, the pronoun that you use is you, not he or she. “Hello. How are you?” So, it may be possible to engage a person directly without touching the issue of pronouns. Now, of course, that doesn’t work when dealing with proper names. Is Andy now Angie? You may not even know that Angie was once Andy. So, stepping into the conversation, you may not have any choice unless you simply avoid the name, which is possible.

2. Misleading Slogan

Even in a slogan, I think connecting the beautiful biblical word “hospitality” with the unbiblical concept of “gender pronoun” is unhelpful and misleading. Now, I know it’s just a catchphrase, but catchphrases reveal things. We ought to be hospitable, but we ought not to be affirming of pronouns that designate a destructive choice and a false view of reality. It is possible to be hospitable and honest.

3. Compromised Word

The very use of the word gender is a compromise with sinful views of reality. I think we should be using the word sex everywhere. We are distinguishing male and female, and I think the word gender should be reserved for the reality-distorting designation that it is.

“A woman does not become a man nor a man a woman by changing names or performing surgeries or taking hormones.”

Gender (as a designation for persons, not grammar) was pushed into our vocabulary by radical feminists fifty years ago, in the seventies, who believed that the givenness of sexual distinctions forever condemned women to kinds of existence they may or may not want. Therefore, to create the freedom to define their existence, “gender” was used as an alternative to “sex” because gender can be chosen and sex can’t be. Sex is bondage; gender is freedom — so it was thought. I think using the word “gender” where the right word is “sex” is like using the word “marriage” for a relationship between two men or two women. It’s not marriage. It is so-called “marriage.”

In our present context, maleness and femaleness are sexes, not genders.

4. Forthright Evangelism

How much of the gospel’s implications and purifying power should be shared up front in evangelism? Peter stated the gospel like this in 1 Peter 2:24: “[Christ] bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.” So, Peter attaches the substitutionary death of Jesus with the sin-conquering effect of that death in one sentence. When the rich young ruler asked how to inherit eternal life, Jesus said, “Sell what you possess and give to the poor . . . and come, follow me” (Matthew 19:21). He led with an effect or a fruit of the gospel.

Now, we don’t always do that, but we might sometimes. It would go like this, perhaps: “I know you intend to change your sex, but you are my friend, and I think there’s a better way. Jesus has a better way forward for you. He’s full of grace. He’s full of forgiveness. May I share that with you?” That’s legitimate evangelism from the get-go, and it might be a good way.

5. Serious Issue

Finally, this is the most important issue, I think. How serious is the issue when a man claims to be a woman or a woman claims to be a man? How serious is that? Now, you can judge what I think the answer is from these ten points. They go by very fast, and you can pause and think about them.

1. It defies God. The Nashville Statement is right to say, “Self-conception as male or female should be defined by God’s holy purposes in creation and redemption as revealed in Scripture.” But calling a man a woman or a woman a man defies that holy purpose of God. It defies God.

2. It involves living a lie. A woman does not become a man nor a man a woman by wanting it to be so or by changing names or performing surgeries or taking hormones. It is a life built on a lie.

3. Being a man or a woman is not like being left-handed or right-handed. It goes far deeper and touches the depths of our created nature.

4. It regularly leads to destructive and irreversible surgeries and treatments.

5. When that happens, it destroys the God-designed potential of procreation and will bring — I say will bring, not might bring — sooner or later profound and sometimes suicidal regret.

6. It expresses the deeply anti-God commitment to human autonomy over against the will of God. “I will decide the essence of my being, not God.”

7. It contributes to the cultural disorder of sexuality that tends to undermine God’s pattern from male and female and, thus, confuses and destabilizes our young people and increases the prevalence of sexual dysphoria and treats it as a legitimate guide to future happiness, which it isn’t.

8. It overlooks alternative ways forward that take seriously a person’s sexual confusion or rebellion and yet lead people out of dissatisfaction into new hope and embrace of their God-given sexuality through Christ.

9. It is the prelude to future perversions in which a person marries an animal and chooses to no longer be he or she, but now demands the pronoun it. Just go to Wikipedia and look up “human-animal marriage” if you think I’m overstating things. This is not far-fetched. It is consistent with a worldview that says, “I, not God, define my essence.” We don’t want to encourage that progress, which has already gone tragically too far.

10. Therefore, the greatest possible care should be taken before one gives any impression of approving or even being mildly disagreeable toward so-called transgenderism.