What do you do if your eleven year old son tells you confidently that he is actually a girl and wants to be given a new name and be allowed to wear feminine clothing? On the National Public Radio (NPR) program All Things Considered (aired May 8th, 2008), reporter Alix Spiegel tells the story of a family in just such a situation. She reports on how parents Danielle and Robert have “come to accept” their son’s identity and also how they are looking to modern medical science for help in reinforcing this new identity. The help that they have found is truly shocking.
Danielle and Robert were confronted early with their son’s (born Armand; now called Violet) fondness for feminine clothing and his desire to be identified as a girl. Danielle and Robert were uncomfortable with Armand’s insistence, but he became explosive and angry if they did not allow him to “express who he really was”. Robert recalls, “… looking at each other, going what is happening? Why is this child so unhappy? What have we done?” Armand even threatened to do himself harm if he wasn’t allowed to live as a female. As Danielle relates, his insistence finally overcame their reservations:
“You know, to hear your child say, you know, I don’t want to be on this earth anymore unless I can be who I am and you see the desperation in her face … we have seen his desperation, and this child just, why can’t I be this way? Why, you know, why can’t you accept me? Why can’t people see me for who I am? I mean, it just became very real for us, how this child was screaming out and saying, hey, you know, listen to me. This is who I am. And I need to be me.”
Armand's difficulty in accepting his gender is an extreme demonstration of the effects of sin on our nature as humans and our ability to know who and what we are. This is tragic because Armand and his family were not inclined to seek the counsel of the One who really knows who and what we are. How do any of us truly know ourselves apart from a relationship with the God of whom David wrote, “O LORD, you have searched me and you know me … you perceive my thoughts from afar … you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD … you have laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.” (Ps. 139:1-6 [NIV]) Instead of seeking to understand their son and his struggle through the lens of biblical truth, Armand’s parents were led by a psychologist to understand that he was in truth a girl and that their best course of action was to accept it.
This is precisely what they have done. They say that acceptance of their son’s new gender has brought “a liberating clarity” to their home. Robert tells his extended family that, “I did have a son, but I found out that I really never did have a son. What I have is two daughters. Armand is transgender, and what that means is that, even though he has a male body, she’s really a girl. And her name is Violet.” He goes on to reason that everyone else makes a discovery similar to Armand with the only difference being that, “It just happened that their gender identity and their anatomy matched.” In other words, your biological gender is not an expression of God’s created design for you; it is an accident of happenstance. God’s design is subordinated to a person’s desires in determining what is really real. This way of understanding the world has placed Armand, a boy on the verge of puberty, in the awkward position of being in a “near impossible fight … against [his] own body.” His older sister Melina describes the situation this way:
“You know she’s getting hair in some places and stuff, and you know, she just feels – every day she says that she feels a little bit more manly, which is really hard for her because just waking up, for her, that’s a big shock. So, she said that she doesn’t like taking the shower. She hates undressing. She hates going to the pool.”
This situtation had Armand’s father asking the question, “How do we help this child … develop in a way that is consistent with who she is?” He believes that he has found the answer in Dr. Norman Spack an endocrinologist at Children’s Hospital in Boston.
Dr. Spack’s solution is to give Armand monthly injections of hormone blockers that will prevent his body from producing testosterone. According to Spiegel, “For the next three or four years, while she is on this medication, her body will grow bigger, but not mature sexually.” This is shocking enough, but Dr. Spack’s treatment goes even further. Again Spiegel:
“So, that’s the first stage of treatment, but there’s another stage … Once children have postponed puberty for several years, at around the age 16, they can choose to begin maturing sexually into the opposite gender, the gender that they want to become. To do that, they begin taking the hormones of the opposite sex. [Dr.] Spack said this treatment can help make a transgender male almost indistinguishable from a biological male.”
In Dr. Spack’s mind, this is a monumental leap forward because it will allow misidentified people to blossom into their true selves without the anxiety of living in a body that they do not want. He says that in doing this kind of work, “You start to realize what’s really important in this world … and I don’t think there’s anything as [important as] who you are.” The Christian faith has always placed premium on men and women knowing themselves truly, but as John Calvin observed, true knowledge of who we are is intimately linked with knowing who God is. He writes, “Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected together by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other.” (Institutes 1:1) When our quest for self-knowledge is cut free from our quest for the living God then we, like Armand, can be led into many previously unthinkable scenarios. Let us remember Isaiah's dire description of the people of his country who had ignored God’s truth for their lives, “They do not perceive the Lord’s actions, and they do not see the work of His hands. Therefore My people go into exile because they lack knowledge …” (5:12-13 [HCS]) The knowledge people lack is often true knowledge of themselves in light of God’s truth. May we be people who perceive the actions of God and see the work of His hands and who help our children to see them as well.
You can listen to the All Things Considered report here:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90273278
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