Reply To: Transgender People of Faith
thom937Thanks for your reply, Christy. Wisdom from Spielsberg.
I want to push back a little, because I don’t believe Paul’s “there is no longer male or female–but all are one in Christ” is a condoning of cross-dressing–but too, I don’t believe that transgender expression is some out-in-left-field sin and that the rest of the gender-normative world is “doing okay.”
I do strongly agree that judgment is God’s, but Paul states in his letters to the Corinthians that we who claim to be in his Church are responsible for judging and correcting our own actions as well as actions of errant believers (1 Cor. 5:12).
To tie it back to your Ockham’s razor test (does is glorify God or me?), what are your thoughts GENERALLY (i.e. not limited to gender expression, but encompassing all of our life-choices and dreams) of 1 John 2:15:
“Do not love the world or the things in the world. If any one loves the world, love for the Father is not in him.”
I ask your thoughts because I have been puzzling over it in my own prayers, as well as in conversation with others: if God “so loved the world” (John 3:16), why are Christians “not to love the world”?
When we answer this question honestly and choose to love God instead of the world, I think that both questions of personal ambition (such as I wrestle with: what goals/dreams are worth pursuing?; what profit is there for God in my writing this story or starting this project?) and sexual self-actualization (How do I express my desire and my desire to be desired?) are supposed to become unimportant.
I can’t say that I have answered it honestly for myself yet. I do know though that always, to be a Christian means (on some basic level) denying oneself (Luke 14:33; Romans 6:2).
But I think the big danger is in forgeting that denying oneself IS NOT hating oneself. Ironically, I believe the world sometimes convinces us of a certain pathway to achievement or self-glory that is really founded on a kind of self-loathing (whether a self-loathing of our body as it is or a self-loathing of our hearts, our strengths and weaknesses as they are).
It is interesting to note that of all the things we can change about ourselves, our minds and our feelings are most capable of full and complete transformation.
