Answering Kids’ Hardest Questions: Can I Choose to Be a Boy or a Girl?

This text is a part of the Answering Kids’ Hardest Questions sequence.

God Established Creation Order

Dad and mom, typically we get actually laborious questions like, “Can I select to be a boy or woman?” or “Can a boy be trapped in a lady’s physique?” We expect God has lots to say in his phrase about this. After we are approached with questions like that, the very first thing we need to do is go to Genesis 1. After we take a look at Genesis 1, we see this notion of creation order. And creation order is giving us this image of a creation that’s fastened, it’s secure, it’s not one thing that we will bob and weave out and in of. God establishes the creation that we’re going to dwell inside.

One of many issues that God does in Genesis 1 is set up proper from the outset that there’s this species known as female and male. And being female and male has a particular activity tied to it, which is to be fruitful, to train dominion, and to multiply. However when God makes us women and men, that’s basically an embodied actuality. Which means it’s a bodily actuality. It means it’s one thing that’s evident right down to the extent of our genetics, right down to the extent of our chromosomes.

Our world is telling us that we will belief ourselves, we will belief our psychology. However that’s one thing that’s subjective. We’d like one thing that’s goal, one thing that’s outdoors of us. And that’s why we want an authoritative phrase from Scripture.

And after we take a look at Scripture, once more, we see this notion of creation order, that God’s design is sweet, it’s goal, and it’s immutable—that means that we can not turn out to be male or feminine primarily based on our selection. It’s one thing that we acknowledge as reward from God.

If I had been to speak to my five-year-old daughter about this, I wouldn’t essentially use the phrase gender. I’d begin by telling her that God made girls and boys. I’d clarify to her that we name them female and male, and that’s actually good. After which I’d inform her that God created girls and boys, women and men, to be completely different. Our our bodies had been made otherwise. God made us completely different. And that’s actually good.

We dwell in a very difficult world, however God has geared up us along with his phrase.

After which we’d additionally speak about how boys love to do boy issues. Boys sometimes wish to play with vans and trains and construct issues and hunt and play with weapons. And women love to do woman issues like play with dolls and kitchens and paint and do ballerina issues. And that’s actually good too. And perhaps boys may wish to play with kitchens and dolls, and perhaps women may wish to play with trains and vans. And if a boy performs with a lady factor that doesn’t make him a lady. And if a lady performs with a boy factor that doesn’t make him a boy. We are able to’t change how God made us. And that’s actually good too.

In case you have an older little one who is perhaps fighting emotions that they could be trapped in a special type of physique, I’d encourage you to stay with them as a result of we’ve had mother and father of older youngsters inform us that they actually will come again. These emotions which might be deceiving them now could be a section that they’re going via or one thing that they’re fighting. When their thoughts and their physique are at odds with one another, they simply really want equal measures of reality and charm.

As mother and father, we have to pray for them, love them, be with them, and stick with them via these laborious occasions. So mother and father, don’t surrender. We dwell in a very difficult world, however God has geared up us along with his phrase.

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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