WHAT ABOUT SEXUALITY & GENDER?

The body reveals meaning that desire alone cannot alter.

Sexuality and gender reach into the deepest layers of human identity. They touch the body, the mind, the heart, and the longing to belong. Few subjects today carry more personal weight, more public debate, or more quiet confusion.

The Bible speaks clearly about human design and moral boundaries, yet it never speaks without also revealing the dignity and the beauty of this order for every person made in God’s image. Truth and compassion do not stand opposed. They belong together, because both flow from the same source.

This subject therefore deserves careful attention, honest reasoning, and deep gentleness. Every person carries desires, struggles, and questions that form part of their story. Christianity does not begin with rejection. It begins with the affirmation that every human being bears immeasurable worth.

When Identity Presses Against the Body: Lessons From History

Human history reveals a consistent pattern. People have often reshaped their bodies in pursuit of belonging, beauty, or identity, even when the cost proved severe.

In nineteenth century Europe, women wore corsets pulled so tightly that their ribs shifted and their organs compressed. Breathing became shallow. Fainting occurred regularly. Medical records describe long term internal damage. The body resisted, yet social expectation prevailed.

In imperial China, young girls underwent foot binding, a process that deliberately broke and reshaped the bones of the feet to produce the culturally desired form. The procedure caused lifelong pain, permanent disability, and dependence on others for movement. Families submitted their daughters to this suffering because acceptance, marriage prospects, and social standing depended upon it.

These practices did not arise from cruelty but rather emerged from longing to belong, and to be seen as beautiful. To align oneself with an ideal that promised acceptance.

Today, medical technology allows alteration with astonishing precision. Steel enters living flesh. Skin opens under the blade. Bone, tissue, and structure yield to deliberate human intervention. Surgical procedures reshape features, remove what is unwanted, and construct what the body did not originally possess. These acts reach beneath the surface of just decoration, but as physical transformation at the deepest level the body allows.

Many of these interventions arise from the same ancient human impulse that shaped earlier practices. A person feels a distance between inner perception and outward form, and seeks to resolve that tension by changing the body itself. The hope rests in the belief that if the body can be brought into alignment with the mind, peace will follow.

Yet the gravity of the act reveals the depth of the conflict. The body resists by nature. It must be opened, altered, and forced to conform. This alone shows that something profoundly real is being crossed. Flesh does not reshape itself by agreement. No, it must be cut.

This reality does not diminish compassion, it actually deepens it. It shows how strong the human longing for coherence truly is, and how far people will go to find rest within themselves. And we understand that longing and desire.

Yet history invites a careful question. When the body must be forced, cut, restrained, or reshaped in order to achieve peace, has peace truly been found, or has the conflict simply moved deeper?

There was a time when a girl who did not conform to traditional feminine behaviour was simply called a tomboy. She climbed trees, ran freely and was wild. She lived outside expectations, yet she did not conclude that her body itself was wrong. Her personality expressed individuality without demanding physical transformation.

This distinction matters. Personality allows wide variation. Identity unfolds across countless expressions. The human body itself, however, remains a given reality, not an obstacle to overcome, but a foundation upon which life unfolds.

Scripture affirms this grounding truth:

“Shall the thing formed say to Him who formed it, ‘Why have you made me like this?’” (Romans 9:20)

Every desire can either serve life or quietly work against it. Some strengthen what is good. Others move us in directions we never truly wanted, even while we recognise the harm they cause.

A father may raise his voice and strike his child in anger, then sit alone afterwards with his head in his hands, filled with sorrow, wishing he could take the moment back. His love for his child remains real, yet something within him overcame his better judgment. He feels the fracture inside himself, the painful distance between who he wants to be and what he has done.

A person may reach again for alcohol, remembering clearly the promises made and the consequences already suffered, yet feeling drawn by a familiar pull that seems stronger than reason in that moment. The body participates in what the mind itself does not fully desire.

Another may stand before a mirror and feel estranged from their own physical form, focusing on what feels foreign or wrong to them, wishing they could step outside their own skin and live as someone else. The discomfort feels real. The longing for peace feels sincere. Nothing about that struggle is trivial.

These moments reveal something deeply human. The conflict between desire and truth lives within all of us in different forms. No one stands untouched by it. The wish to escape oneself, to silence inner tension, or to become someone else arises from the same vulnerable place where confusion and longing meet.

This recognition should never produce distance between people and call for compassion. Every person knows, in some measure, what it means to feel divided within themselves.

The question raised in Romans is aware of that struggle and gently redirects it. The One who formed the body understands it fully and sees clearly what we cannot always see ourselves.

Peace begins where the burden of redefining ourselves gives way to the quiet trust that we were not formed by accident, and that the One who formed us has not made a mistake.

Created With Meaning: The Body Is Not Accidental

The biblical account opens with a deliberate act of creation:

“So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” (Genesis 1:27)

Human embodiment arises from intention, not randomness. Male and female exist as complementary expressions of humanity. This distinction involves far more than reproductive function. It shapes physiology, hormonal patterns, emotional tendencies, and relational expression.

The body speaks a language of meaning. Chromosomes guide development from the earliest stage. Hormones influence structure, strength, and neurological formation. These differences exist across every culture and era. They do not erase individuality, yet they establish a shared framework.

Scripture presents this design as good:

“God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good.” (Genesis 1:31)

This affirmation includes the body itself. Physical existence carries dignity because God Himself formed it.

Male and Female: Distinct Yet Deeply Connected

Scientific research consistently observes structural and functional differences between male and female brains. These findings never erase overlap or individuality, yet they reveal meaningful patterns.

Studies using neuroimaging have shown that female brains often display greater connectivity between hemispheres, allowing simultaneous processing of emotion, language, and memory. This contributes to a remarkable ability to integrate multiple streams of information at once. Conversation, emotional awareness, sensory perception, and relational interpretation frequently operate together in an ongoing flow.

Male brains, by contrast, tend to exhibit stronger connectivity within specific regions, especially those involved in focused attention and spatial reasoning. This often supports intense concentration on a single task without distraction.

In everyday life, this difference appears in familiar ways. A man may become so absorbed in repairing something that he barely hears his name spoken beside him, while a woman may notice the tone of voice, the emotional atmosphere, the unfinished conversation from yesterday, and the missing object on the table, all at once. He enters one room of thought and closes the door. She walks through the entire house and turns on every light.

Neither approach reflects superiority. Each expresses strength in its own way. Together they create balance.

Scripture reflects this partnership from the beginning:

“It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make a helper suitable for him.” (Genesis 2:18)

The word “suitable” carries the meaning of corresponding strength. It describes complement, not inferiority.

Embodiment Includes Experiences That Cannot Be Shared

Certain realities belong uniquely to one sex. Pregnancy stands among the clearest examples, but there is also menstruation, with its quiet monthly rhythm that prepares the body for life, and menopause, when that long season closes and the body enters a different kind of balance. These processes are expressions of biological design, involving complex hormonal shifts that influence energy, mood, temperature, and physical stability. They shape the lived experience of women in ways no man can physically share, however deeply he may care or seek to understand.

In the same way, the male body follows its own distinct patterns. Testosterone shapes muscle density, bone structure, and physical strength, but also influences risk tolerance, competitiveness, and focused drive. Male physiology tends to produce greater upper body strength and faster bursts of force, while female physiology often supports endurance, resilience, and remarkable tolerance of prolonged physical strain, especially evident in childbirth itself.

Even at the level of perception and response, differences appear. Men often experience emotional stress with a rise in cortisol that inclines them toward withdrawal and concentrated problem solving, while women frequently experience the same stress with increased oxytocin, inclining them toward connection, communication, and relational repair. One moves inward to resolve. The other moves outward to restore.

Needless to say that neither pattern reflects weakness. Each revealing a different form of strength.

These differences do not confine personality, as every person carries a unique blend of traits, and overlap exists across many areas. Yet the underlying structure of the body remains real and meaningful. It forms the quiet framework within which individuality unfolds.

A man may stand beside a woman through pregnancy, offering love, protection, and support, yet he cannot feel the internal movement of life growing within his own body. A woman may admire the physical strength of a man, yet her own body carries capacities he will never possess. These distinctions are not limitations imposed without purpose. They are expressions of a design in which humanity exists as two complementary forms, each revealing something the other does not.

Psalm 139 speaks with reverence about the body’s formation:

“For You formed my inward parts; You wove me together in my mother’s womb. I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” (Psalm 139:13–14)

The body belongs to God’s craftsmanship.

Desire Is Powerful, Yet Desire Alone Does Not Define What Is Good

Every human being experiences desires that arise without conscious choice. Some involve generosity and love. Others involve impulses that lead toward harm, selfishness, or distortion.

Scripture describes the universal nature of this internal struggle:

“Each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own desire.” (James 1:14)

Desire itself does not establish moral truth. Strength of feeling does not determine goodness. Human experience includes many desires that must be guided, disciplined, or restrained.

This principle applies across every area of life, including sexuality. The Christian view does not isolate one group as uniquely broken. It recognises that all people live with disordered desires in various forms.

Jesus Himself taught that moral transformation begins in the heart:

“For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, sexual immoralities, thefts, murders, adulteries.” (Mark 7:21)

This diagnosis includes everyone.

What Scripture Says About Same Sex Desire and Conduct

The Bible speaks directly about sexual conduct, always within the larger context of human dignity, brokenness, and redemption. Its words are neither careless nor cruel and arise from a vision of human flourishing rooted in creation itself.

Paul writes:

“For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men.