Dale Johnson: I am thrilled to have with us today, Dr. Dan Dionne. He went to medical school at George Washington University in Washington, DC. He and his wife Kelly live in Spokane, Washington, where he has practiced primary care internal medicine for 34 years. He became ACBC certified in 2016, and he enjoys teaching on medical subjects for us here at ACBC. He serves as a lay elder of biblical counseling at Faith Bible Church and he had the honor of contributing two chapters to the second edition of the Christian Counselors Medical Desk Reference. He and his wife Kelly have raised three children who are all married and are loving their nine, delightful grandchildren. In his free time, he loves cycling, woodworking, fly-fishing, music, reading, and travel. Brother, it’s good to have you with us today.
Dan Dionne: Thank you, Dale. It’s good to be back.
Dale Johnson: We are diving into a very difficult topic; One that is especially hot and inflammatory in the days in which we live. We want to look back at this in such a way to make sure that we’re making biblical sense of the chaos that is happening in our world. I want you to talk as a medical doctor, which you are, and to give us some sense of this. Maybe for many of us who aren’t in the medical world, we hear about this transgender stuff, and it seems like it just hit the floor so quickly, and it has moved in so quickly. Now, it seems that this terminology dominates culturally and societally in so many places. Describe what you can as a medical doctor about the movement itself, thetransgender movement.
Dan Dionne: Well, as you might remember, a couple of years ago, you asked me to write a paper on this subject. And I said, “Okay.” I had no idea what I was really getting myself into and my wife Kelly did a lot of the research for me. She would send me articles and she’d say, “Oh this is dark! Oh, this is sad.” So, as I was studying and putting that paper together, I did find some things I think it can be helpful for all believers. and I’m going to speak first as a medical doctor because that’s where we want to start. When I went to medical school, I took an oath. It was the Hippocratic oath, and I was to first “do no harm,” but the reality is that for thousands of years, doctors have been doing harm and usually they think they’re doing it for the right reasons. They think that they’re helping people. They have a theory about how the body works and they’re going to practice based on that theory. Even as far back as Dr. Luke, there are stories like the book of Mark where it says that she spent all her money on physicians and did not get better. She actually was worse; So, that is a reality. And I just want to apologize to everyone because doctors are not perfect. And yet, they really do get up in the morning and want to help people. And so, the real problem is that they have the wrong facts, the wrong science, that they’re basing things off of wrong things. In the last 150 years, science has gotten a lot better, and you can really do some amazing things to relieve suffering and help people. But even now, especially with this transgender movement, there are doctors that are doing harm to people that are miserable and unhappy. The doctors actually think they’re helping and it’s really because they’re making the wrong assumptions.
Dale Johnson: That’s such a helpful perspective, to be honest. Because it’s almost like the cultural oppression with this gender identity construct, it’s so oppressive. We almost feel awkward to say something like that. We’re dealing with people who are hurting deeply and are we actually helping them by putting them under a knife or encouraging what has seemed to add to their suffering and vexation. Okay, that’s the medical perspective. As we think about transgender stuff, we move into biblical counseling. How do we as biblical counselors think about this whole transgender movement in counseling? Those who may struggle with transgender ideology or are these types of constructs in their mind? The way that this comes to me, a lot of times Dan would be, you know, a family member who’s a concerned family member. They’re not sure what to do. They have a son, or a daughter is wrestling with some of these ideologies. How do we approach this as biblical counselors.
Dan Dionne: For the last few years, they’ve called this gender dysphoria as one of the diagnoses. And I would just like to point out that dysphoria is a feelings word. And if you’re a biblical counselor, we like to figure out what people are feeling, but then we want to trace it back to: what are they thinking? And then we want to figure out what God is thinking of what God says. And so, as the biblical counselor, you want to go right back to what God said in Genesis 1, He calls His creation male and female, and He calls it good. And then Jesus reaffirms that in Matthew 19, where He says, “He who created them from the beginning, made them male and female.” So, God’s Word is always going to be our authority on that. And I believe that the transgender movement exists because the Bible is not authoritative for most people anymore. People don’t want to know what God has to say. And the transgender person really needs to hear you, the counselor, speak the truth and love. And they need to be actually, lovingly, confronted with their rebellion against God’s design for their life. And these people, like I said, are incredibly unhappy, and they actually are believing a lie that they’d be happier, if they had the different sex then they were born with it, the sex that God chose for them. And so, as a counselor, you want to get them to the place where they actually want to know, what does God think? What does God want from me? And I think, because it is a frightening subject, every counselor is going to need courage. We, as parents, as friends, as counselors—we all need courage in this area.
Dale Johnson: Yeah. Very good call with courage is definitely the order of the day when we’re dealing with such sensitive subjects. And I want to talk about this, maybe a little closer. When we often have access to parents, and the parents have really wrestled. You know, if we think about what they’ve experienced, they’ve sort of been on this journey with this child: Watching them maybe dabble in certain areas, or the child may bring up some sort of pattern of thinking, or “Mom, what do you think about this?” Or, you know, “I think I would like to dress this way.” Or, you know, just the parent has walked through this experientially, and now this is becoming such a burden to them. We may have access to parents, and so what are some of the things that we would do. So, you mentioned we want to have courage, but we also want to do this with compassion, the way that Christ did as He was patient with so many. How do we talk to the parents of a child who is wrestling with this transgender ideology?
Dan Dionne: Whenever I talk about parenting, I always say, “God gave you children so you can suffer.” And that’s the only way I grow is when I’m suffering, God uses suffering for my growth and these parents are suffering incredibly. And I think they need to be reminded that it’s actually not their job to save their child. It is their job to be a faithful parent. Like it says in the Ephesians 6:4, “They want to bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” So, I think when your child starts saying these things, there’s an instructing to do, and there is the need to tell truth to your child. And it is frightening, because parents worry, “We’ll if I don’t use your names, or your pronouns, you might run away or you might be taken away. My state might take you away from me.” They are really frightened by those things, and that does actually happen in our society now. And so, I think parents are often tempted to compromise on some of those issues because they want to keep the lines of communication open. And I want my kid to know that I still love them. And also like, if you are parents, sometimes you’ll hear these lies where they’ll say, “Would you rather have a transgender child or a dead child?” Sadly, some kids do commit suicide, because they’re so unhappy. Those things are all bouncing around in a parent’s heart. And the passage that I think is the most challenging for me in this area is Matthew 10:34-39. And if I can read it, that would be great:
“Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household.
“He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it.”
And you don’t want to deny Christ in this way. And this is a heavy passage about not wanting to deny Christ, by speaking lies. People are asking us to speak. So, the other good news though, is that parents should never give up on their kids. Because they just need to keep praying and loving them and showing them that they love them, because God can still save them. Even if they’ve gone through all those surgeries and had all those hormone changes God’s, the one that’s going to rescue your child.
Dale Johnson: Yeah, that’s right. And man, what a difficult burden that somebody has to bear, and to think that we, as the church, can come alongside and bear that burden with him, with the courage to speak some of the truths that you were just describing. But also, the parent vacillates back and forth between, you know, “I want to speak the truth to my child. I don’t want them to walk into this deception.” But then also, as you mentioned, some of the fears of what the government may threaten us with, or the threat of our child committing suicide. And then on the other side that the parent, wrestles with, “Am I enabling it in some way?” These are very difficult conversations to have, but for us to engage in that world can be very important. And just as you mentioned, reminding parents the truth of the Scripture and who it is that does the saving. And who we want to bring our child before truly. Now, we may sometimes (and this may be rare) but we may sometimes also have access to talking with the child, as they are wrestling through this process of transgender. There are all sorts of laws we’ve talked about another podcast about how state-licensed folks are limited in what they can say and do. And we still have religious freedom to gently talk to a child about some of the things you mentioned at the beginning about God making us male and female and so on. But there is an occasion where we may get to speak to a child who has gone through this whole process. They realize it did not make them happier, it did not make them better. We’re seeing those statistics rise actually in detransitioning. What do we do if we get opportunity to speak life into a person who’s been in that transgender world for maybe quite some time, who is considering this whole process of detransitioning?
Dan Dionne: Well, again, you want to speak the truth in love. And I think things I would say are, “You thought you knew what would make you happy. You thought that God had made you the wrong gender, and you decided that He was the one that was mistaken. Of course, God doesn’t make mistakes. And every one of us needs a relationship with the Lord.” That means that they’re actually going to have to recognize that their transgender choices were acts of defiance and rebellion against God. So, they need to repent, just like all the rest of us of their sins: their wrong thoughts are on the emotions. And course they’ve been wanting peace and joy this whole time, and they haven’t found it. But He is our ultimate source of inner peace and joy and so they need to repent. They need to submit. They need to learn how to read their Bible. They need to learn how to pray. They need to get plugged in at a church where they’re going to hear the Bible. They need to learn the “one another’s” that we all need in the Christian life. So again, if it’s a parent or a friend, you’re going to need courage to say those things.
Dale Johnson: And that is very difficult. And we’re talking about deep-seated, deep-rooted patterns of thinking by which it’s going to take time and processing, and that sort of leads us to another question. And I get my students to think about these types of questions where I say, “You know what, you’re engaged as the counselor, but really, we have the wealth of the church to engage. You should start thinking about: How can the church be involved in something like this? How can the church help with the resources that they have?” In this case, we’re talking about transgender folks who struggle with those constructs. What do you tell the church about loving transgender people? And let me just pause and say before you answer that; Some people would say, “well it doesn’t sound like, you know, if we’re telling somebody the truth, that is really that loving.” Well, when we come from a heart of compassion and mercy which is the heart of Christ, the tenderness of Christ toward people who are suffering and people who are finding themselves deeply in sin, it is loving. It is compassionate for us to with gentleness and kindness to speak the truth. So, talk with us a little bit about how a church can truly love be patient with those who struggle with this.
Dan Dionne: One of the things that I’ve noticed in the past is if your child is kind of going off the rails or having trouble, parents are often very ashamed and rather than reaching out to the church and saying, “I need help, I need prayer, our child needs prayer.” They often just fade away or move away or stop coming to the church. So, I think we as a church really need to look out for parents whose kids are suffering and who are going off the rails. Like I said, because those parents are ashamed, and they may not feel the love of the church. They need to know that they need the church more than ever when this happens to support them. So, you can also ask them how to pray for their child. So, their child might not be coming to church. Their child might be gone and yet loving that parent would be, “Oh, tell me some details. I want to know how to pray for your child,” because we have lovely stories of churches and friends that have prayed for years for kids and then God does bring them back to Him. So, I think you also have to just remember that really this sin of transgenderism is no worse than any other sin. We’re all Sinners, and we all need God’s grace. I loved Heath Lambert’s book that came out last year about the great love of God. It seems like everybody I counsel really does not know how much God loves them. And the more I can help them see that the better.
Dale Johnson: So brilliant. Well said, brother. Thank you for your time and effort, for thinking about these very difficult subjects and helping us to think and not be afraid about the medical side or the way the government and culture kind of oppresses this idea. But you really in a gentle way are helping us as a church, to think about how we can be empowered with the gospel to minister the great love of God to people, and that we would do that faithfully. So, thank you for leading us in that.
Dan Dionne: Thank you, Dale.
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