Answering Kids’ Hardest Questions: Can I Choose to Be a Boy or a Girl?
This article is part of the Answering Kids’ Hardest Questions series.
God Established Creation Order
Parents, sometimes we get really hard questions like, “Can I choose to be a boy or girl?” or “Can a boy be trapped in a girl’s body?” We think God has a lot to say in his word about this. When we are approached with questions like that, the first thing we want to do is go to Genesis 1. When we look at Genesis 1, we see this notion of creation order. And creation order is giving us this picture of a creation that is fixed, it’s stable, it’s not something that we can bob and weave in and out of. God establishes the creation that we are going to live within.
One of the things that God does in Genesis 1 is establish right from the outset that there is this species called male and female. And being male and female has a special task tied to it, which is to be fruitful, to exercise dominion, and to multiply. But when God makes us males and females, that’s fundamentally an embodied reality. That means it’s a physical reality. It means it’s something that is evident down to the level of our genetics, down to the level of our chromosomes.
Our world is telling us that we can trust ourselves, we can trust our psychology. But that’s something that’s subjective. We need something that’s objective, something that’s outside of us. And that’s why we need an authoritative word from Scripture.
What Do I Say When . . . ?
Andrew T. Walker, Christian Walker
In a world filled with cultural confusion, this book provides busy Christian parents with quick and trustworthy answers to questions their children may ask about life’s toughest topics, including abortion, sexuality, technology, political engagement, and more.
And when we look at Scripture, again, we see this notion of creation order, that God’s design is good, it’s objective, and it’s immutable—meaning that we cannot become male or female based on our choice. It’s something that we recognize as a good gift from God.
If I were to talk to my five-year-old daughter about this, I wouldn’t necessarily use the word gender. I would start by telling her that God made boys and girls. I would explain to her that we call them male and female, and that’s really good. And then I would tell her that God created boys and girls, males and females, to be different. Our bodies were made differently. God made us different. And that is really good.
We live in a really challenging world, but God has equipped us with his word.
And then we would also talk about how boys like to do boy things. Boys typically like to play with trucks and trains and build things and hunt and play with guns. And girls like to do girl things like play with dolls and kitchens and paint and do ballerina things. And that’s really good too. And maybe boys might like to play with kitchens and dolls, and maybe girls might like to play with trains and trucks. And if a boy plays with a girl thing that doesn’t make him a girl. And if a girl plays with a boy thing that doesn’t make him a boy. We can’t change how God made us. And that’s really good too.
If you have an older child who might be struggling with feelings that they may be trapped in a different kind of body, I would encourage you to stick with them because we’ve had parents of older children tell us that they really will come back. Those feelings that are deceiving them now may just be a phase that they’re going through or something that they’re struggling with. When their mind and their body are at odds with each other, they just really need equal measures of truth and grace.
As parents, we need to pray for them, love them, be with them, and stay with them through those hard times. So parents, don’t give up. We live in a really challenging world, but God has equipped us with his word.
Andrew T. Walker and Christian Walker are the authors of What Do I Say When . . . ?: A Parent’s Guide to Navigating Cultural Chaos for Children and Teens.
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