Expert: Marilyn - 3/4/2010

Question
What does the Bible say about issues surrounding transgenderism? More specifically about those who identify as transgendered and who are pursuing the necessary steps to change their outwards biological sex to reflect how they feel - for instance, a man undergoing sex reassignment surgery to become a woman and vice versa? I know the word transgendered did not exist when the Bible was created, but I am very curious as to what the Bible says about such things - what God's stance is on such things.

Answer
Hello Miriam;

When Adam sinned, death entered his body and all the potential lives he carried in his sperm. When he sinned he switched all humanity from living under God as our Over-King to satan as our over-king. Some of satan's nature--or sin--became part of our psychological and physical make up. The sin nature was overlaid upon the Image-of-God-goodness God had originally created. Our god-like natures remain within us, but are buried under the sin like nature imposed upon us when Adam fell.

Death has many manifestations: hatred, rage, abuse, cancer, alcoholism, adultery, lying, pride, covetousness...all the negative emotions and evil we humans are capable of.

Transgender issues are a manifestation of sin. All of us are born with particular weaknesses. One person may be born with a weakness toward anger, another a weakness toward addiction. Sometimes sins, such as child or spouse abuse, run in families. Transgenderism and homosexuality are manifestations of sin. God originally created all of us to be either male or female and this male or femaleness was meant to exist at the core of our beings--essentially, we will be male or female even in eternity. Just like the the natural desire to eat tasty food can be subverted by sin into indulgence which eventually leads to obesity and finally to death, sexuality can also be subverted by sin into perversions of all kinds like craving for children as sexual partners or animals or someone of the same gender and so on.

How a person falls into a particular sin, practicing it to the point where death is at last manifest can sometimes be complex. Sometimes the roots of a sin can go back generations.

God began with Adam and took Eve from him forming her from some of his flesh. He made two from one and in marriage the two become one again, Genesis 2:23 & 24. Together a mother and father are the Image of God for their children and the world. A husband and his wife were intended to love one another totally and function effectively as one body and mind in complete unity. We all crave this, we all want this, to find that one person with whom we feel completely at ease and with whom we can go into the world knowing we have an ally beside us through everything. But sin ruins this picture. Fathers are passive rather than functioning as heads of the home, mothers are aggressive taking over the lead; fathers and mothers hate one another and can't seem to hide this hatred from their children; fathers or mothers cheat on their spouses...the list is endless. For some children born into these malfunctioning marriages the Image of God that is supposed to be modeled, peace, unity, love, is twisted beyond recognition. They grow up confused in what it means to be male or female; they grow up to abuse or cheat on their own spouses; they grow up angry; they grow up homosexual etc....

The transgender person believes that his body is not aligned with his true, internal nature (I am using the formally acceptable generic pronoun "his" it's a lot easier than having to type his or her all the time). He thinks that a sex change operation will resolve the problem. The root problem isn't that his nature is out of whack with his body, the problem is sin. Sin happens to be manifesting in his life in this particular deadly way and is leading to a kind of death when he mutilates his body in an effort to achieve harmony.

Another definition of sin is disharmony between the original god-like nature we were given and the nature that has been overlaid upon it. The transgendered person feels this disharmony to the very core of his being.

God loves us, but He does not love sin. Part of the reason He doesn't live sin is because of what it does to us! We are not our sins. God knows what He originally intended when He breathed us into Adam in our potential--and it was not to be evil or tormented in anyway by disharmony within ourselves. That is why He sent Jesus to become a Man, because a man started this problem and only a man can finish it. Only a perfect, sinless Man can take the death penalty we all deserve and offer to us the "new birth," the new birth with the overlaid sin nature overlaid by Jesus' nature which gradually removes the sin nature and retrains our thinking, our very beings into into a new kind of human, one free of sin.

God loves us while we are angry, cheating on our spouses, beating our kids, eating too much chocolate, drinking too much alcohol, confused about our identities, whatever sinful thing we are doing. We are also called to love one another unconditionally--we are called to love the person not the sin. Putting this into practice is usually not easy.

The transgendered person, just like the alcoholic or the adulterer or whatever sin you care to name needs this redemption Jesus offers so that he can be restored to unity of heart and body.

Sincerely,

Marilyn

See: Genesis 1 & 2--God formed the man and breathed into him the breath of life (life is plural in the Hebrew--the breath of lives) and man became a living being (or another speaking spirit). God saw His creation as "very good."

Psalm 139;

John 1:29, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world";

"Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men...," Romans 5:12;

"There is no one righteous, not even one," Romans 3:10;

"...all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ (Christ means "The Anointed One") Jesus (Jesus means "He Shall Save" or simply "Savior"). God presented Him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in His Blood...," Romans 3:23-25;

"God demonstrates His love for us in this: While we were sinners, Christ died for us," Romans 5:8;

"We have been united with Him in His death, we will certainly also be united with  Him in His resurrection," Romans 6:5,

"When you were a slave to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death!...For the wages sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord,"

"...we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us," Romans 8:34;

I Corinthians 15:56, "The sting of death is sin...";

"God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God," II Corinthians 5:21.