On Shame and the Gender of Souls

The Fishhook

This may seem to be a bit of a heavy topic, but I assume writing is like fishing: the line doesn't go very deep until you put weights on it. It may also seem controversial, but, as in fishing, the pointy part is right down there with the weights, and it does no good to drop a line if there's no chance of it sinking into something and sticking there. 

I could probably hyperextend the analogy to include how the topic is sort of slimy and dirty, how you have to wash your hands after you deal with it, and maybe how you can buy it in styrofoam bowls from overgrown convenience stores, but suffice to say, this bit has been the bait, the worm if you will. I don't know what fish see as appetizing in worms, but I hear it's just the movement that attracts them.

Wiggle, wiggle.

Big Question: Do Souls have Gender?

My Problem

There is a question with which I have struggled for years (the question, not the actual content, to be clear), a question for which I have never heard a satisfactory answer until a few stars recently aligned: What is a Christian response to the intersex person? How does the existence of hermaphroditic person fit into a Biblical worldview? And what should we make of people who claim to be "women in men's bodies" and vice versa?

This fact, for me, seemed to contradict the creation account of humans in Genesis 1:27:

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

Where is transgender in that list of two? "and"? It doesn't seem to be included. Should we deny the issue (impossible) or deny the accuracy of scripture (possibly more impossible)? We seem to be borne down by the horns of a furious dilemma, and it is intent on causing is great injury.


First, let's look at why God created them male and female. In the detailed creation account in Genesis 2:19:

Then the LORD God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him."

In the big picture, we realize that marriage, while good for us, was given majorly to teach us about God, or in a less human-centric manner of speaking, to display himself in his creation. Elsewhere in scripture we see the union of a man with a woman as intended to stand for Christ's relationship with His Church, (Eph 5), and even in the creation story, God says "let us make man in our image." God is, within himself, a relationship. (this is the trinity, and I talked about that already.) Marriage was given for us to recognize and feel the intimacy with which God knows himself. The paradox is made abundantly evident in Gen. 2 when God tells them that "they shall become one flesh."

Soul Sex

This raises the question, then: how is a person male or female? One would think the answer lies within (or without, depending on the gender and the temperature of the room), but this is obviously not the case when we include intersex people. The question then is, what is a person really? In most people's worldviews (those with whom it seems profitable to reason at all), a person is not their body, but something other, something more mysterious and etherial, a soul or spirit. To say, then, that a person is a man or woman (even more directly stated when a person claims to be a "man in a woman's body"), is to say that the soul has a gender. But is this so? 


To address the problem scripturally, let's go to Jesus for the inside scoop. In Matthew 22:30, Jesus was in the middle of another sticky dilemma posed by some wily Pharisees, concerning to whom a woman would be married if she had seven husbands in succession and a "series of unfortunate accidents" happened to occur. (I frankly think that in this situation, the third through seventh husbands should have thought a bit harder about jumping on that train in the first place, but this is tangential.) Jesus makes the statement:

For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.

Interesting, considering the fact that (a) God said, "it is not good for man to be alone", (b) male and female were created by God for companionship and to illustrate His image, and He called them good in Gen. 1. What could this mean? 


The paradox is alleviated when we recognize that souls do not need (or, I believe, have) genders. In heaven, the intimacy of sex is not required, for we can fully realize the intimacy of God in spirit and in truth. The image of God portrayed by marriage is unnecessary, being only a dim image of the true God who will be as present and ubiquitous as light in heaven. And rationally, souls don't need to reproduce (they're eternal), so why in light of all these reasons, would a soul need to have a gender or a sexual orientation at all?


This leaves us with saying that the core of a person doesn't actually have a gender, but that their gender is defined by their physical body. Not just transgendered people, but you, me and my girlfriend. We don't have genders, but our bodies do.

Shame and Self

By now, we should be realizing that the problem is less fundamental than we thought (or possibly more). That is, less physical (soulal?), and more a problem of morals, or sensations. It's not the case that a "female soul" is born into a "male body", because no such female soul exists. The question is, why does it feel that way? For a Christian, the answer to this should be obvious: according to Biblical Christian doctrine (and from self-examination), a person can feel this way because the body is flawed. 

We know that chemicals in the body can alter sensations. This is nothing more than the physical inducing sensations to the conscious part of us (the soul), same as when you drop a brick on your foot. And nobody said that this body itself was right. In fact, it's very clear in scripture that it is not, it is very flawed. Our sinful self-worship brings about new evil into the world every day, and through Adam's sin, death came to every man and a curse over the whole world.

So does this mean that some are flawed more than others? Nope. If a person is flawed in any way, they are flawed. There is no talk of "more flawed." If the human race were a building, there would be beams broken halfway through, and some with tiny cracks. Some may look better, but they'll both fail when the building is loaded. 

Whether your struggle against the physical is being stranded between genders (physically or emotionally), being attracted to the same sex, to children, having misplaced attraction to the opposite sex, having a penchant to lie, being a kleptomaniac, being unable to focus, rage, anything, these are all flaws, and they all have the same effect. No one person is more flawed than another. We're all broken, and we need to look to God for healing.

Who are we, really?

I believe the one most crucial thing we learn from this investigation is that we are not defined by our inherent sinful tendencies, nor by our physical forms, but by our spirits. Our culture tells us that we, if attracted to the same sex, are homosexual or bisexual. That we, if gender-confused, are intersex. It also tells us that if we have a compulsion to steal we are kleptomaniacs, that if we lie habitually we are compulsive liars. Compulsive eaters, pedophiles, psychopaths, perverts. It claims these things are part of "us". This is a lie. "We" have none of these traits, but the body we inhabit is twisted towards these things. 

The sin is not in feeling these things, but in defining ourselves by them. If I feel attracted to men, it's no different from if I feel attracted to lying to save face: if I recognize it as wrong and turn from it, seeking God's hand to pull me out of it, nothing comes of it. But when I say, "Well, I must be a liar, and I can't deny myself. I suppose God made me to lie," when we accept it as who we are and justify our actions through that, this is when it begins to be sin. 

Christ has promised to save us from such sin. In my own life, I struggle a hard struggle against lust for women to whom I am not married, a perversion of the attraction which I am to feel towards my wife, to be intimate with her and know her in every possible way. But by the grace of God, He is encouraging and empowering my soul and renewing my mind to resist this temptation, and become more aware of the "way of escape" referred to in 1 Corinthians 10:13. He has promised salvation, not only from guilt of the crimes we have committed, but freedom from the slavery to the ones we feel are inevitable. Praise God!

Transgendered, gay, liar, thief, murderer, adulterer, all are equal in the sight of God: condemned if they haven't accepted Christ, but fully justified and washed clean from sin if they have. Romans 8:1-2 says

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.

You are not a sinner. You have been set free. Go be free! 


Thanks for reading this far. I almost didn't expect it.


-Seth