THE QUESTION above is one we all ask.  It is one of what are called the Big Questions of Life.

Where have I come from?, Why do I exist?, and What happens when  I die? are similar.

To answer the question, Who am I?, we need to  start near the beginning.  That is what our parents and grand parents did.  In fact that, it seems, is what all people in all cultures have always done.  But things change.  We live at  a time when much has and is changing.  And the pace of it is quite fast.

Who am I?  Most people begin to answer the question by stating their name.  Names are important, for two reasons.

One, our name, when spoken, usually elicits a response from us.  We do not ignore it.  Instead we sit up, listen to and answer the one who calls.

Secondly, our name usually tells others that we are a boy or a girl.  For example, Andrew, John and George are boys’ names.  Whilst Andrea, Joanna and Georgina are girls’ names.The names we are given depend upon our sex.  I refer to our biological sex.  At the moment of birth for the vast majority of us we were seen to be either a boy or a girl.  And that is what was expected.  Hence the question asked is usually: Is it a boy?  Or, Is it a girl?

It is important to note that, although accepted by people, this way of behaving is not a social construct (something invented by people).  Rather it is a natural response to the way things are.  Put another way, a mid-wife or doctor does not determine our sex (boy or girl).  He or she simply describes what is seen.

None of this surprises us.  Why not?  Because since the beginning it has been that sexual beings exist in both a male and female form.  That is true for cats, cattle, dogs, horses and people.  The list is enormous.  Moreover, we also see that this arrangement (of male and female) is essential for the continuation and survival of these species.  A baby requires a Daddy as well as a Mummy.  Conception occurs when an egg (from a woman) and sperm (from a man) meet and join.

With the advances of medical science the normal process leading to conception (coitus) can be changed.  In vitro fertilisation (that is fertilisation outside a womb) is possible.  Problems encountered at the time of birth may be alleviated by  surgery.  The last century has seen the possibility of a caesarean section become an option when it is deemed medically suitable.

A related but very different development has been the possibility of treatment (medical and surgical) to those who question their physical identity as a man or woman.  A technical term you may hear is gender dysphoria.  Put simply, it is used of those who believe that they are a person who is in the wrong body –  for example, a woman in a man’s body.

The condition raises important questions.  You will quickly see how it relates to our main question: Who am I?  What are we to make of such claims?  What should be done?  Should those who think they have the wrong biological sex be encouraged to live as a person of the opposite sex?  In particular, should gender reassignment surgery be offered to them?  What should Christians do?

Let me lay before you some guiding principles.  I believe they are derived from the Bible, the guide and rule that God has given to mankind.  We can learn from the way things are (The Book of Creation).  But we need the Bible (The Book of God’s Word).  Without it we have no way to be confident that our ideas are in anyway accurate or authoritative.

The Bible begins with creation.  It asserts that the universe was made by God.  In particular it states that mankind is special.  This is our first principle.  Of all created beings we alone are created in the image or likeness of God.  That does not mean that God has a body like us.  He is Spirit.  Rather it means that, like Him, we can choose, communicate, and be creative (but not out of nothing as God can and did).  Moreover, unlike other creatures, we are able to do these things not in a crude but in a sophisticated way.

God who made us in his image also created us male or female.  That is a lesson to be learned from Genesis chapters 1 and 2.  That is what God designed and fashioned.  The helper he created for the first man was a woman.  And so we learn that the idea of being male or female is not an invention of mankind.  It is not a social construct as some argue today.  Instead it is given by God.  That is our second principle.

There is a related lesson to be learned.  It is that our bodies are God given.  As a result your identity of who you are, be it male or female, is directly related to the body you have at birth.  That is our third principle.

This is true for all of us.  The person who has a male body is created a man; the person who has a female body a woman.  This binary (two part) structure is God-given.  It is not the product of chance.  Nor is it an invention of mankind.  It is an essential element of the goodness of the order created by God.  Five times he informs us that what he created was “good” (see Genesis 1:10, 12, 18, 21 and 25).  On a sixth occasion, after our creation as male and female, God declares that everything he made was “very good” (Genesis 1:31).  That is our fourth principle: what God appoints is good – very good.

A fifth principle follows from it.  To dislike our biological sex is to show disrespect for that which God says is (very) good.  It is, in effect, to put yourself above God.  It is to argue that what you feel or think matters more than what God has given to you and revealed to us all.

We recognise that there are some (very few) who are born with what may be termed ambiguous genitalia or chromosomal deficiencies  This does not mean that they are not fully human.  Of course they are.  Rather their condition demonstrates to us that our fallenness (we are not what we should be) is not just spiritual.  It is also evident in the physical realm.  Some suffer from Down’s Syndrome.  Some are born blind or deaf.  Some have heart defects.  The list of what could be wrong, it seems, is almost endless.  Yet each of us is called to live to the glory of God, not despising our defects or fragility.  Rather we are to look to him.  We are to ask for grace to accept what we are.  And we are to pray for grace that we might become what only he can re-make us to be.

Thus, if you are a biological male, you may pray that the Lord would teach you from his Word and enable you by his Spirit to live as a man.  And, if you are a female, you may pray that you would be the woman God=q calls you to be.

In the light of the principles listed – and we could add to the list – we find ourselves seriously questioning what is happening in our generation.  Gender re-assignment surgery does not and cannot turn a man into a woman or a woman into a man.  As indicated above, our sex is also chromosomal.  It is in our DNA which cannot be changed.

What we all need is the teaching of God’s Word, the Bible.  It alone provides the definitive answer to the question of self-identity.  It tells us who we are, what we are made to be, and how we can become what God created us to be.

EPC  28 August 2016