Compassionate and Biblically Faithful Care for Trans People (in The Living Church)
Church potluck table conversations increasingly include the latest cable news story about trans athletes or drag story times. Christians find it difficult to avoid political arguments about trans topics. The U.S. Supreme Court heard a trans case in 2025, deliberating whether states can prohibit minors from medical transition.
Yet while these political debates are provocative, more important theological questions remain: What were God’s intentions for biological sex and what we might describe as “felt” gender? How did the Fall affect sex and gender? How is God inviting Christians to steward enduring places of disjunction, woundedness, or brokenness of various kinds, and how is God calling the Church to come alongside those believers carrying heavy burdens?
However, when teens or adults choose to tell you about their gender incongruence[1], they’re often not ready for emotionally loaded theological questions.
Many have already experienced painful rejection from believers, leading to doubt about God’s love for them and the safety of their family or church. They’re burdened by hesitation and fear, and forced conversation about gender ethics will rarely be the most effective first step to minister to the individual well.
Parents and pastors know that they first need to build trust and rapport with the trans person that might eventually make space for heavier theological conversation. As leaders patiently wait for the Holy Spirit to move (and perhaps convict), how can they embody the compassion of Christ as they disciple Christians navigating gender incongruence?
Here are six suggestions for empathetic care for trans people while holding fast to biblical wisdom for gender ethics:
Adopt a posture of empathy and compassion
Prioritize addressing mental health challenges
Honor their lack of choice and explore morally neutral relief
Support acceptance of brokenness and suffering
Give them permission to reject cultural gender stereotypes
Encourage them to share their stories and practice hospitality
1. Adopt a general posture of empathy and compassion
Different extremes in the debate about gender incongruence offer trans people equally unhelpful advice.
One side yells, “Just be normal!” This side ignores the reality that trans people did not choose to experience gender incongruence and that there is no proven combination of counseling or spiritual practices to eliminate gender incongruence. Those on this extreme minimize the daily, painful reality of navigating enduring gender incongruence. They seem to forget that trans people are also made in the image of God, are valued by God, and that Christians should greatly value trans people as well.
The other side yells, “Transition or suicide!” This extreme ultimatum suggests that transition is an effective intervention to address mental illness (including suicidality) and that those who hesitate to bless hormonal and surgical transition are increasing suicidality. It forecloses all conversation and reflection.
Both extremes should be resisted. Instead, it’s important to believe trans people when they describe their experience. Honor that faithfully stewarding gender incongruence will be costly, and it will demand the support of trans people’s siblings in Christ.
Remind trans Christians that Jesus cares for them and is with them in the pain and mess of life. While it is painfully difficult to live in a world (and a body) burdened by brokenness, brokenness will not be our experience forever. We have a hope and a future in Jesus for resurrected bodies and life when all will be made right in God’s providence and ordering of his creation.
Finally, take your time to build rapport with trans Christians. Patiently invest in relationships to earn their trust. And don’t be surprised when walking together is at times difficult and complicated.
2. Prioritize addressing mental-health challenges
There are some tragic statistics Christians should face. Forty-one percent of trans people attempt suicide, as compared to 1.6 percent of the general population. Trans suicide rates rose even higher for those who lost a job due to bias (55%), were harassed/bullied in school (51%), had low household income (61%), were the victim of physical assault (61%), or were the victim of sexual assault (65%).
Scientific studies have found that trans people are generally at greater risk of mental illness, experiencing higher rates of borderline personality disorder, schizophrenia, obsessive compulsive disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and autism spectrum disorder compared to the general population.
Before jumping into heavy theological questions or difficult discernment about transition, help them gather the resources they need to care for any co-occurring mental-health conditions they’re experiencing.
Particularly if the individual is battling suicidality, the following interventions have been scientifically proven to effectively reduce depression and suicidality:
Talk therapy with a counselor to address grief/loss
Regular exercise/physical activity
Anti-depressants
A broader community of social support
If trans persons you’re supporting are struggling with suicidality, help them find a therapist or counselor, go with them on walks, and help them maintain and deepen connections with safe friends and family.
3. Honor their lack of choice and explore morally neutral relief
Trans people don’t choose to experience gender incongruence, but they do have the responsibility to faithfully steward what they have received, including their material bodies, as given.
Support trans Christians as they consider morally neutral options in the range of social transition that might provide relief from the gender incongruence.
Help them weigh each possibility and carefully follow where the Lord leads. Help them resolve what they can and manage what they must.
4. Support their acceptance of some enduring brokenness and hardship
Even if trans Christians you’re supporting take some morally neutral steps to reduce their distress, they’ll likely continue to experience some level of persisting and painful gender incongruence. And while hormonal and surgical transition
5. Give permission to reject cultural gender stereotypes
American culture has arbitrarily attributed preferences and affinities to gender that have nothing inherently to do with biological sex. For example, consider the uncritical axiom boys that must like sports, and therefore if a boy does not like sports he must not be a boy, or be less of a boy along some nebulous imagined gender spectrum. The challenge is that many Americans genuinely hold gender stereotypes like these, and are more willing to offer surgery and hormones than reconsider their assumptions.
6. Encourage them to share their stories and practice hospitality
Trans Christians need to share about their experiences to be fully known and fully loved. They need to share their stories, and they need to see their siblings in Christ respond with curiosity and compassion.
At the same time, our churches need to hear the stories of trans Christians who are faithfully stewarding their brokenness. Cisgender Christians can learn from the courage and resiliency of trans Christians, and cisgender Christians can gain self-awareness about the ways cultural gender stereotypes haunt them by empathizing with trans Christians.
Pastors and parents also need to encourage trans Christians to gather with other trans Christians. Among those with shared experiences, Christians navigating gender incongruence will find unique support and understanding.
Each of these opportunities for Christian fellowship can contribute to greater spiritual growth, discovering shared meaning in suffering, and enjoying healthy intimacy in a community of believers.
As churches make space for trans people to share their stories, one of the most immediate challenges Christians then face is how to address the question of pronouns and names. It may be an act of grace to mirror what this person says to you; allow this new friend to speak and then reflect what has been said. Is this a denial of God’s created order? Perhaps a different way to look at this subject is this posture of mirroring in order to diffuse tension and open the door to a relationship. This is a hard question and simple answers from both extremes (see above) reduce relationships to “positions.”
Continue building trust and trusting the Holy Spirit
After a long season of implementing these suggestions, continuing to build rapport, and continuing to pray for the Holy Spirit to move, you may discern an opening to enter deeper conversation about theology and the ethics of transition. This will space will, in God’s time, allow us as individuals and communities to think theologically about biological sex and felt gender, the effect of the Fall, and how God is inviting Christians to steward the gift of life, including our bodies washed in baptism, nourished at the Lord’s table, and bound for resurrection and God’s perfection.
Listen to our interview with Pieter Valk on this topic on The Living Church Podcast.
[1] In this article, I’ll use the term “gender incongruence” to refer to an acute sense that one’s gender does not correspond with the experience typically associated with the person’s biological sex. I’ll use the term “trans” as a general term for someone who experiences gender incongruence. For a deeper dive on vocabulary/labels, check out https://equipyourcommunity.org/on-labels-pronouns-names/.
