Transgenderism, Artificial Intelligence, and Defending the Faith

When you hear the words “gender and sexuality,” what comes to mind? Today, these words are loaded with meaning that they did not have even twenty years ago. Our culture now sees things we once defined clearly and simply through a spectrum in which one’s choices and feelings determine ultimate good and evil. We have distorted reality to fit idolatrous agendas, and this self-determination redefines human identity.

Christians are under relentless pressure and attack from Christ’s enemies. How can we stand firm when those who reject Christ suppress the truth in unrighteousness (Rom. 1:18)? We are called to honor God and always be prepared to answer anyone who asks why we have hope (1 Pet. 3:15a). Amid so many offensives against the Christian faith, how can followers of Christ answer the world “with gentleness and respect” (1 Pet. 3:15b)?

Thinking God’s Thoughts After Him

Cornelius Van Til (1895–1987), a late professor at Westminster Theological Seminary, helps us think effectively about answering unbelievers. The word “apologetics” comes from the Greek apologíā, a speech made in defense of something.

Van Til taught that “the Reformed apologist will point out again and again that the only method that will lead to the truth in any field is that method which recognizes the fact that man is a creature of God, that he must therefore seek to think God’s thoughts after him.”[1]

Our goal is not to assert our own thoughts, beliefs, or agendas but to rightly reflect God’s truth. Therefore, Van Til suggests two foundations for Christian apologetics: God’s sovereign, covenant faithfulness and his eternal self-sufficiency. Because God is the Creator, the world works as he designed it to work. God is the starting point for all human thought, reasoning, morality, and meaning.[2] Without God and his revealed Word, there is no reference point to make sense of the world or any human experience.

Believers can learn how to defend the Christian faith through this framework of theology where God and his revealed Word stand supreme for determining truth. Our foundation is the Lord. Any time we evaluate arguments and philosophies, our ground for truth can be nothing other than our unchanging, covenant-keeping Creator as revealed in his Word.

Van Til recommended two practical steps as we speak about Christ:

1. Move to the unbeliever’s position to show that it cannot be lived or thought consistently.
2. Ask the unbeliever to move to the Christian position to show how it alone can answer those inconsistencies.[3]

The goal is to reveal the inconsistencies in worldviews that disregard the Creator, and to demonstrate how Christianity resolves those problems. But how can we apply this apologetic framework?

Transgenderism: Only the Gospel Grants Status and Belonging

Transgender ideology rejects the biological gender binary of male and female. It states that gender is a fluid spectrum, and individuals can discover their gender through a journey combining personal choices and internal feelings. Gender is understood as separate from an individual’s physical body.

Transgenderism goes against God’s Word and his created order, placing ultimate importance on people choosing their own gender instead of accepting God’s design. The transgender narrative creates many inconsistencies. Attempting to match one’s inward perception of gender to an artificial construction of the external self through surgeries leaves many physically impaired, sick, and with limited life opportunities. Transgenderism offers false promises of status and belonging; it can’t deliver real peace or relief from internal discord. This has, indeed, led to many stories of detransitioners attempting to restore the way they used to be and look.

Though the negatives are clear, transgenderism does seek to protect each person’s distinctiveness. It acknowledges the suffering of those who struggle with their gender and seeks to create a space where all are enabled to grow through loving support and care. This is not foreign to Christians. We, too, seek to honor the dignity and value of each person, knowing we are created in the image of God (see Gen. 1:27; 1 Pet. 4:19). Human flourishing is based upon God’s love, and the Christian response to the gospel is selflessly serving those who are in pain with compassion and care.

Transgenderism and Christianity see gender dysphoria from different perspectives. Transgenderism seeks to remedy what is perceived as a disconnect between the physical body and gender identity through medical intervention, personal feelings, and individual choice. But Christians see that this division is essentially spiritual. The final solution, therefore, is not found in surgeries but only through repentance and faith in the saving power of Jesus Christ.

Transgenderism calls gender identity a journey of self-discovery and reconstruction, but humanity’s purpose can only be found in Christ. In Christ, there is true freedom and the deepest level of knowing God and being known and loved by him. In Christ, we receive a renewed heavenly identity that is forever fulfilled and secured in his eternal promises (Phil. 3:20–21; 1 Pet. 1:3–9). In Christ, we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28). In him, our final status and belonging shall never perish but be fulfilled.

Stepping toward the transgender position, we see its failure to satisfy because it is based on a wrong understanding of the Creator and his creatures. From this perspective, we can then ask unbelievers to step toward us and examine the holistic, soul-satisfying promises of Christ.

Artificial Intelligence: Only the Gospel Fulfills Our Longing for Connection

Time magazine notes that artificial intelligence (AI) “has already had a pervasive impact on our lives. AIs are used to price medicine and houses, assemble cars, determine what ads we see on social media. But generative AI, a category of system that can be prompted to create wholly novel content, is much newer.”[4]

Since the advent of social media, generative AI has been introduced and used for programs like ChatGPT, which can respond to almost any question, and DALL-E, which is capable of creating any image people desire. Companies have also integrated bots for casual chatting, romantic relationships, pornography, and others that mimic human interaction and responses. Such AI responses include, but are not limited to, showing compassion, joyful and sorrowful emotions, sarcasm, affection, and more. AI’s bounding progress is difficult to comprehend, especially as companies make these programs available without charge to further test and improve them.

Many people are facing unpredictable consequences as companies capitalize on loneliness, depression, and lust to justify the creation and use of artificial companions meant to meet those in desperate search for social and emotional connection. “A relationship with an AI,” writes Andrew R. Chow, “could offer nearly all of the emotional support that a human partner does without any of the messy, complicated expectations of reciprocation.”[5]

Relating to and conversing with an artificial intelligence can only foster an artificial bond that hijacks the “messy” reality of what makes humans human.

1. AI-generated relationships do not create person-to-person relationships. They are synthetic in nature and not able to bear the weight of genuine relationships between people.
2. We can only question the ethical standards concerning privacy, reliability, and morality once AI has harmed the welfare of its users. A clear example is AI-generated pornography, where “deep fakes” of real people distorted reality and negatively impacted the lives of those involved.
3. Only the Lord creates perfectly. All human creation is finite and bound to termination. Generative AI is limited and imperfect.

To take a step toward the world’s position, we can acknowledge that AI technology has indeed helped people in many segments of life. From school classrooms to making automobiles, from smartphone apps to grammar corrections, AI technology has created new ways to tackle life’s challenges.

However, what began as synthetic will always be synthetic. A machine may mimic human responses, but it cannot capture the essence inherently belonging to humans. AI will never be able to take the place of a mother for an orphan, or a husband for a grieving wife. AI can never express how Christians have the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16b). Relationships among humans entail a depth of spirituality that an inhuman, artificial intelligence cannot comprehend nor represent.

Thus, Christians need to exercise wisdom in their use of AI technology, remembering that we are called to relationships that will bring both joys and sorrows, goodness and suffering. And we encourage unbelievers to step toward a Christian view by helping them see the depth and necessity of the real, human fellowship we have in Christ with our brothers and sisters.

The only righteous path for believers is to proclaim God’s sovereignty over our human relationships, calling every person to bow down and worship his holy name. AI-generated relationships cannot do that. Indeed, how can they lead people to worship God when companies are exploiting human brokenness and sin to generate profit and stir up our quest for finite satisfactions incapable of lasting until eternity? God’s relationship with his people, however, will last eternally (see Ex. 25:8–22; Ps. 16:11; John 1:14, 13:1; Rev. 21:3–7).

Loving, Seeking, Defending

I pray that this method of apologetics will help you to know the Lord and make him known. Though we may fade away, the Word of the Lord remains forever (Isa. 40:6–8; 1 Pet. 1:25). Beloved brothers and sisters, may we run with endurance this race set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. He saw the cross as the joy set before him (Heb. 12:1–2)! May we, too, suffer well as we face the questions of our era—faithfully loving, faithfully seeking, and faithfully defending the faith as we think God’s thoughts after him.

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[1] Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith, fourth edition, edited by K. Scott Oliphint (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing Company, 2008), 124.

[2] Ibid., 121-122, 326-332.

[3] Ibid., 123.

[4] TIME Magazine, “Artificial Intelligence” (June 26, 2024), 9.

[5] Ibid., 75.