I Am Zay: April 2010

Letter to a Young Transgender Christian

Dear ________________, I’m humbled and honored that you are comfortable enough with me to see me as that “older and wiser” Christian you can confide it. May Christ’s love and wisdom be with us both.
As you know, I am not a transgender individual, though I know many who are. A few are genuinely close friends of mine (in fact, the closest to a “sister” I have used to be the closest to a “brother” so I know of what you speak, even though my knowledge does not lessen your grief or sense of bewilderment or your fear — fear of losing friends, most importantly fear of losing your family. This is not something anyone your age, or any age for that matter, would willingly choose. Though I have not experienced the pain which you express, I’ve seen it in the lives of people I love and care a great deal for. Being transgender and keeping strong in your faith is hard, I know. My heart goes out to you in your struggles.
Before I go any further, I wanted to remind you of something which I’m sure you know but can easily lose sight of in these times: you are a child of God! God loves you compassionately and more deeply than our limited human vocabulary or understanding can express. When we say, God loves us, it is such an inadequate expression of the reality in which we live, move and have our being. So, in your pain, in your suffering, in your fear, God the Father is still there, loving you no less than when you first became aware of God’s love; God the Son is still there, having been fully human, experiencing the pain and fear and reality of rejection himself; God the Spirit is still there, praying for you, St. Paul wrote, in ways that you cannot even begin to express, comforting you, bathing you in the knowledge and reality of the Triune God’s presence in our daily lives.
Don’t lose sight of that, no matter what comes down the road. I am so often comforted by St. Paul’s words found in his letter to the Roman Christians: “...for I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Allow me to paraphrase: “Nothing, my young friend, nothing — not rejection by your so-called friends or fellow students at the Christian college you attend, not persecution, not being treated like a pariah, not being kicked out of your church, not being temporarily rejected by loved ones, not your own feelings of self-doubt or even self-hatred, not your doubts about your own sense of self or your faith — nothing, nothing, nothing can get between you and God’s love for you in Christ.”
And many of those transgender folks (and a lot of the non-heterosexual folks I know) have had, and some still do have, a genuine Christian faith. They, like you, love God as revealed in Jesus of Nazareth, and seek to live out their Christian commitments in their daily lives. And there is a significant number of them who have, having been treated so harshly by their churches and by their Christian friends and loved ones, turned their backs on the Church, even to the point of rejecting their faith. I pray you never come to that point; but I also understand why so many of them do. I have come close to that point several times in my own life.
Like you, they all were faced with a variety of reactions from their fellow Christians and from those organized religious bodies of which they’ve be a part. Those reactions vary from immediate revulsion and rejection to an uninformed questioning about just how to respond.
In fact, — and here’s something I really hope you can understand — I’d say that transgender folks, in a lot of ways, present a much more difficult and deeper challenge to the Church as a whole and to individual Christians than do homosexual folks. And in a sense, this meeting of gender expression and Christian expression requires a little more patience on the part of folks like you. Let me explain.
For many Christians, the whole “gay” thing is easy, pretty much cut and dried. They point to two or three passages from the Hebrew and Christian scriptures — I’m sure you’re familiar with the most important: Leviticus, Romans, I Corinthians — and say, See, it’s clear. Having sex with someone of the same gender is considered sinful activity (at best, at worst they call such folks all sorts of hateful names). For more and more Christians, thankfully, it’s still easy, pretty much cut and dried. They interpret those passages in such a way as to take into account the historical and cultural contexts of those statements and say, The gospel is all about inclusion. Whosoever. What we experience today and call homosexual relationship is not what is being spoken of in those passages.
So, for both sides, they have what they feel is a pretty clear understanding of the biblical material and are comfortable in that understanding. The organized expressions of the Church — you know, those pesky entities known as denominations — are slowly catching up with those individuals. Slowly, but surely. Eventually, I believe, in those denominations which take the Bible seriously, as opposed to their version of literally, the gender of the person another person is in love with will not be an issue. Responsible, truly biblically based sexual ethics will eventually carry the day. It’s just a matter of time.
It is a matter of time, however, because people’s hearts and minds, formed by so long a history of bias and misinterpretation, are slow to change. That’s where patience on our part is needed. We can’t expect people who have been lied to for so long by their church leaders, even well-meaning ones, to be able to shift their attitudes overnight. And let me tell you very quickly, as much as you may want to, we can’t argue them into accepting our interpretation of the Bible. I had a professor in seminary who used to say all the time, “Belief cannot argue with unbelief; it can only preach to it.” That’s so true in this case because the most effective way a person’s thought and feelings are changed on this matter is simply by getting to know those faithful, loving, fellow Christians who happen to be homosexual, to one degree or another, in their orientation or transgender in their self-identification and expression — in other words, by the preaching of their faithful and loving lives.
But gender expression is, in so many ways, another matter altogether, my young friend. There’s no passage in the Bible that you can point to, regardless of how you interpret it, that speaks to a person strongly identifying themselves as one gender while their outward, physical appearance is the opposite gender. It just ain’t there. Or at least I’m not aware of it.
Now sure, there are those who will argue from the Bible that there are only two possible genders: male and female. After all, isn’t that what we read in the Genesis stories? God created humans; male and female.
While that may be true biologically in terms of genetics, when it comes to gender expression, we all live on a continuum and move back and forth on that continuum. Actually, you could read that Genesis text through a “gender lens” and say that humans, all of them, are male and female; that we all have masculine and feminine aspects in our personalities. Gender expression, after all, is a social construct, not a biologically determined fact of life. Sex is, our genetic makeup is, with rare exception, we are born with either male or female physical characteristics. But that doesn’t say a thing about how you are supposed to feel on the inside. In your case, you were born with the physical/genetic makeup of a male, but feel so strongly in your inner self that you are not. While what you may see in the mirror when you stand naked before it tells you that you are a man, your soul, if you will, is telling you that you’re a woman, not a man. And I’m not aware of a single word in either the Hebrew or Christian scriptures which speaks to that. And I know there’s nothing in there to tell us how men are supposed to look and behave and how women are to look and behave. Society and culture do that for us. They play a very large role in telling us how males and females are supposed to present themselves — from hair styles to the kind of clothes we wear to what activities we’re supposed to enjoy. And I think it’s the exception rather than the rule for anyone to have exclusively male characteristics in their behavior or exclusively female characteristics. My observation and my own experience bear that out.
This is all to say that while the Church, while individual Christians may think they have the whole sexual behavior thing figured out, when it comes to gender very few of them do. They don’t quite know what to make of transgender folks like yourself. Gay they understand. Straight they understand. Bisexual... well, most of them understand. But a biological man, as in your case, who really is convinced that there is this great incongruence between the inner self and the outer self: that, that they really have a hard time wrapping, as they say, their minds around. And you and I have to admit, that’s somewhat understandable.
Many Christians still have not quite grasped the truth of which St. Paul wrote in his letter to the churches that were in the region of Galatia: that in Christ, gender is out the window, so to speak, that in Christ there is neither male nor female. For whatever reason, they unfortunately still see one gender as superior to another. So especially when it comes to a biological male self-identifying as female it, you might say, disgusts them. This same failure to see the equality that is found in Christ when it comes to gender is actually behind, or underneath, a lot of the so-called homophobia among Christians as well, especially when it comes to male homosexuals, for in their view it involves a male acting like a female. a superior acting like an inferior — or to be a little more “Old Testament,” owners acting like property.
By the way, you may be interested to know that the proposed DSM-V (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders changes “gender dysphoria” to “gender incongruence” because it’s felt that “incongruence” better describes what’s really going on; an incongruence between what you experience and express when it comes to gender identification and — and this part is really cool — how you are expected to live based on your assigned gender.
But back to the response of the Church and individual Christians to you: what is not understandable — and in my mind, what is not permissible — is for those Christians who can’t quite “get” this whole transgender thing to reject someone God has not rejected, to turn away from someone to whom God is always turned, to call disgusting that which God as Creator has pronounced good.
How I pray I can help you to understand that: that you, as both a creation and child of God, have been declared by that Creator God, including the gender incongruity which exists in your life, as good.
You asked me, “How can I love my neighbor as myself, when I hate myself?” My heart broke when I read those words, yet at the same time I understand their source. That self-hatred has, to a large degree, its roots in the voices you’ve heard all your life and are hearing now in the rejection of you by your parents. It is not God’s voice, but it is, nevertheless, very powerful. I like to say it is a powerful voice which has no authority.
You even alluded to this in your letter when you said, “I still have echoes that come into my mind, telling me that being transgender is a sin and that God is punishing me because of it.”
Hearing those voices is an experience which we all who are “different” share. We’ve heard it from pulpits and parents, from friends and faith leaders. They have no authority to say such. God has pronounced you good. In fact, I’d argue that “being” something is never a sin. “Doing” something may be. Historically that’s how Christianity has defined sin (though I have some problems with that definition): transgressing the law of God. That’s behavior, not a state of being, not of essence. After all, we’re talking about inherent dignity here; we’re talking about what the Bible, in numerous places, refers to, one way or another, as the image of God. Yes, that’s it: My young transgender friend — you — yes, you — are the very image of God.
So my young friend, realize that this effort, this struggle, to bring your inner and outer selves into agreement is not going to be easy. But then God never promised easy. It will not be free from pain; but then God never promised pain free lives. Consider the life of our Lord, filled with both soul pain and body pain.
It well may created a great, temporary gulf between you and your parents; but you are not responsible for how your parents react. You are not acting in an “unloving” or disrespectful way by being true to yourself. Not at all. You haven’t “done” anything to them.
Go slow, I ask. Go slow as you explore this part of yourself and don’t make rash, uninformed decisions. Learn from others; learn from your mistakes. Think of it like getting to know a different you; getting to know anyone takes time.
And in all of this, be aware of God’s loving, accepting presence in your life. Wrap yourself in that awareness, in that love and acceptance. Pray. Pray often, daily, through out the day. Pray that God will work in your parent’s hearts; pray that you will be kept safe and act wisely. Pray that your love of Christ will only grow deeper through this. Pray that as you graduate and expect to be “forced” out into the world that God will give you your daily bread and provide for your needs. As you mentioned, “count your blessings.” Rejoice in God’s love; rejoice in your ongoing discovery of yourself.
I look forward to our continuing conversation and be assured of my prayers. And, in your life and mine, may the spirit of Christ be lived out.

http://david-gillespie.blogspot.com/

I Am Zay

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