FAITH: What we teach around the dinner table

Recently, like many of you, I read a column about what parents should teach their children regarding sexuality and gender. I understand the thought behind it. Parents want to give their children a moral compass. People of faith want Scripture to matter. And in a rapidly changing culture, in a place with very conservative traditional values, questions that once seemed simple can suddenly feel quite complicated. 

But I also know people will read words like these and hear something very different. They heard the context described as a problem to overcome, a temptation to defeat, or a lifestyle from which God needs to rescue them. 

And before we debate anything else, I think people of faith should care about that rhetoric. Because our words have consequences. 

One thing we owe one another is accuracy. Sexual orientation and gender identity are not the same thing, and neither can be adequately explained by a Biology 101 diagram. Most human beings do, of course, develop along typical male or female biological pathways. But biology itself is more complicated than simply saying XX equals female and XY equals male in every circumstance. The National Academies notes that biological sex traits include chromosomes, hormones, reproductive anatomy and secondary sex characteristics, and that naturally occurring intersex variations can involve any of these. Even visibly atypical genital development occurs in roughly one out of every 2,000 births, while other variations may not become apparent until adolescence or adulthood. 

Acknowledging complexity does not require anyone to abandon faith. It just simply requires humility. 

Genesis 1:27 tells us that God created humanity “male and female.” But before that verse tells us anything about anatomy, it tells us something extraordinary about human worth: “God created humankind in his image.” That is the theological center of the sentence. 

Genesis also speaks through pairs: heavens and earth, day and night, land and sea. Biblical scholars have long recognized this kind of language as a way of describing the breadth and order of creation. It need not mean that nothing exists between the poles. Dawn exists between night and day. Marshlands exist between land and sea. Creation has always been more wonderfully textured than our categories sometimes allow.

The same care is necessary when discussing sexual orientation. The idea that a person simply chooses to be gay is not supported by the mainstream psychological evidence. The American Psychological Association reports that the core attractions associated with sexual orientation often emerge without prior sexual experience, that most people experience little or no sense of choosing those attractions, and that gay and lesbian orientations are not mental disorders. 

That matters because the column referenced cited psychologist Joseph Nicolosi and the reparative-therapy movement as though that represented settled scientific understanding. It does not. Contemporary psychological research has found no credible evidence that conversion efforts reliably change sexual orientation, while such efforts have been associated with depression, anxiety, isolation and increased suicide risk. And this is where our theology becomes more than an argument. 

In the CDC's 2023 national survey of American high-school students, 41% of LGBQ+ students said they had seriously considered suicide during the previous year, compared with 13% of heterosexual students. Nearly 20% reported attempting suicide, compared with 6% of heterosexual students. The CDC points to stigma, rejection, harassment and discrimination among the factors contributing to these disparities. Those numbers should make every pastor, parent and person of faith across every faith persuasion pay attention. 

Not because theological disagreement must disappear. Christians have disagreed about Scripture from the beginning of organized Christianity. We have disagreed about baptism, communion, divorce, women in ministry, war, wealth, predestination and a hundred other things while still managing to sit beside one another on Sunday morning. But disagreement can never suspend the command to love. 

The passage quoted in the earlier column from 2 Corinthians says, “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation.” But keep reading. The very next verse says that God has given us “the ministry of reconciliation.” 

The Gospel is not primarily a ministry of identifying everyone else's brokenness. It is a ministry of reconciliation—of repairing what has been divided, bringing people near, and recognizing the image of God even in someone whose life we do not completely understand. 

And the rainbow? Genesis says it is a sign of God's covenant with creation—a promise of mercy after destruction. Someone else finding hope in that ancient symbol does not take it away from God. Perhaps there is even something beautifully appropriate about people who have experienced rejection seeing a symbol of promise and deciding that it means hope.

So around our dinner tables, by all means, talk with our children about what we believe. But let us teach them something else, too. 

Teach them that the gay child sitting beside them at school is not an argument. The transgender teenager down the street is not a cultural threat. They are somebody's child. Somebody's grandchild. Somebody carrying hopes, fears, questions and wounds that we cannot see. Someone created that carries their holy story and purpose. 

Teach them that conviction does not require contempt. 

Teach them that questions are not dangerous. 

Teach them that truth never needs cruelty to defend it. 

And perhaps instead of asking only, “How do I make sure my children know what we believe?” we might also ask: 

“How do I raise the kind of child that another child feels safe sitting beside?” I would suspect that question belongs at a Christian dinner table, too.

Adam Johnson is a strategy consultant and ordained minister with two decades of experience in nonprofit leadership nationwide, currently the CEO of Habitat for Humanity of Jackson TN. He holds advanced degrees in nonprofit organization from the University of Memphis. Adam lives in Jackson with his wife, Kayla, and their daughter Josephine.