"You can't be a Christian"

       Well, by any traditional measure of evangelical Christianity, Yes I can!

       I asked Jesus Christ into my life as my Lord and Savior and asked him to forgive me of all my sin on December 6th 1997. That was when I met Jesus and my life changed.

      I believe that Jesus is the Son of God, that He died and rose again, that He will come again and that we will all face judgment for what we have done with our lives. I believe that Jesus provides the only way to be reconciled to God, and that if we have truly heard the good news that our reaction to that good news determines our fate. It's my hearts reaction rather than any act that I do or don't do that seals my relationship with God.

The New Covenant Replaced the Old.

Hebrews 10:8-10

                "First He said, "Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings You did not desire, nor were You pleased with them" (although the law required them to be made). Then He said, "Here I am, I have come to do Your will." He sets aside the first to establish the second. And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all."

Hebrews 7:18-19

                "The former regulation is set aside because it was weak and useless (for the law made nothing perfect), and a better hope is introduced, by which we draw near to God."

Hebrews 8:13

                "By calling this covenant "new," He has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear."  

"But the Bible says you shouldn't"

Ah, Deuteronomy 22 verse 5:

"A woman shall not wear a man's apparel, nor shall a man put on a woman's garment; for whoever does such things is abhorrent to the LORD your God."

There are many lucid explanations of how to interpret that verse, or not. The first being simply, I am not a man.

Paul wrote to the Galatians, "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28). Jesus does not distinguish between genders - He sees people, we see boxes. There is so much medical evidence that gender is a scale and there is a cross-over point. The way we are treating the planet seems to mean that this cross-over point is being reached more and more often (read the one about the polar bears in Norway?).

The verse in Deuteronomy is just one of several, apparently unrelated, laws. Do you eat pork or bacon? Do you wear clothes made of more than one material? Do you eat meat cooked rare (eg. are you French?)? All of those are prohibited (see Leviticus 19:19, Deuteronomy 22:11 and Leviticus 19:26). Do you have a fence around your roof to stop people falling off? No? You sinner (see Deuteronomy 22:8).

Actually, this is a bit of a red herring. I am not a Jew. When the early Christians debated this issue, some were insistent that Gentiles should become as Jews. But Peter disagreed:

"Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of the disciples a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear? ... It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood." ( Acts 15:10, 19 and 20).

Namely that, as a Gentile, I am not constrained by the Jewish law. This frees me to wear clothes of more than one material and build roofs without parapets.

Also, what determines clothes as male or female in our society? If women can wear trousers (like in Bradford & Bingley's Marketing Campaign from January 2003, pictured) why can't men wear skirts? No-one bats an eyelid at Scotsmen wearing kilts or vicars (or Lords of the Realm) wearing robes. 300 years ago stockings were worn almost exclusively by men. I don't see much condemnation of women wearing trousers in Christian circles nowadays.

My view on the Deuteronomy verse - God was condemning behavior which was done as some form of perverted religious act. He wanted to keep the Jews special, not compromising their relationship with Him. It, together with most of the other laws in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, were to do with society at the time and cannot be applied using a half-baked and selective interpretation directly into our Western society.

Going back to the Hebrew, the literal translation of Deuteronomy 22:5 is: “Never cause or force a warriors weapon to be used by a woman or weak person; neither dress warriors armor on a woman or weak person for to Yahweh, God of Host, disgusting is such that do so.” Note the word used in Hebrew tow` ebah, for “disgusting”, is the same one used for eating pork and shell fish

This is born out by Jewish tradition and historical accounts. Jewish soldiers adopted women’s dress as a camouflage during military operations. Josephus, first-century historian, recorded this custom as part of the strategy of a band of soldiers led by John of Gishala:

“While they decked their hair, and put on women’s garments, and were besmeared with ointments: and that they might appear very comely, they had paint under their eyes, and imitated not only the or­naments, but also the busts of women . . . while their faces looked like the faces of women, they killed with their right hands; and when their gait was effeminate, they presently attacked men and became warriors . . . and drew their swords from under their finely dyed cloaks, and killed everybody whom they came upon.” (Whiston, 1777:242)

In Corinthians 6:9, the only word of concern is “effeminate,” which is used only in the KJV translation. The Greek word is malakoi which means soft, and has the sense of morally soft built on the usage of Jesus who, used the word to contrast John the Baptist with those that were rich. (Mathew 11:8 and Luke7:25).

I was originally going to go through and pick out the verses Leach does use but decided it was a non-issue. What he says can be summed up simply:  with God’s help and faith, you can conquer your transgender feelings (and, my note, something I feel that God does not have a problem with). From my own research I have found that historically we know that gender variance has been around as long as recorded history and there were those present that were inter-sexed and transgender.

Judeo-Christian-Moslem culture, drawing on a single verse in one old testament book, Deuteronomy 22-5, held that cross-dressing was an “abomination in the sight of the Lord”. Some biblical scholars hold that this line refers to a prohibition of the Hebrew people from participating in religious practices of the neighboring cultures, which included the followers of Cybele whose priestesses were post-operative male to female transsexuals. This single edict, surrounded by edicts that are seldom if ever followed today, save for the Ultra-Orthodox Jews, is sometimes quoted as sanctioning the worst transphobic treatment of transgender people. Other old testament laws detail the status of “eunuchs”, males whose genitals have been surgically removed. Primarily these laws prescribe a second class status to the eunuch, since they are no longer “men”, they do not have male privileges, including the right to “testify” in court... since they no longer have the required equipment, testicles. (This is not a pun, but literally the origin of the words... one needed testicles to testify... and the old testament really does refer to the story, or testimony, of patriarchy.) Thus, built into Judeo-Christian-Moslem is the assumption that MTF transgender people are untrustworthy abominations. This explains why Judeo-Christian-Moslem cultures have mistreated transgender people while other cultures have either tolerated, or sometimes, venerated transgender people, why Joan d’Arc was burned at the stake for wearing men’s vestments as well as armor, while the hijra of India have houses that have been in existence for hundreds of years.

"But God created male and female - read Genesis"

Well, that depends upon whether you take Genesis 1:27 as being proscriptive (that's all God created) or descriptive (that's the best way of describing the range that God had created). Also it may be God saying that "hey, I created women too - they should be treated as equals to men" - supported by the verse already quoted from Galatians. There is some evidence that Scripture also identifies in-betweens, for which the English translation is "eunuch". There are three references to eunuchs - firstly in Leviticus 21:20 where eunuchs are specifically forbidden from entering the temple, which meant that they couldn't worship. Taking things literally, I need glasses to see clearly enough to drive, so I have an "eye defect", and so would also be forbidden by the same verse. The second reference is in Isaiah 56:4-5 where God outlines the process by which a eunuch could be made clean and thereby enter the temple to worship. The final reference is in Acts 8:26-40 where God specifically sends Philip to minister to the eunuch in the chariot. This indicates a process, where God is reaching out to people of no obvious gender or who were previously excluded by the law from His presence.

Am I male or female? Well, I'm both and, perversely, neither at the same time. I'm simply me - I have no experience of what anyone else feels like, either male or female, so I can't place myself into either of those boxes. I have a male body, but it does seem like I have a female brain. My gender is not determined solely by what I look like but also by what I feel like - I have the classic transsexual dilemma where body and brain simply don't match up.

"But aren't you just homosexual?"

I'm not gay, but I can empathize with a lot of the experiences that gay Christians have gone through, in terms of coming to terms with themselves. I don't understand the homosexual desire - but then most people don't understand me. Applying that logic, I have no choice but to accept gays in the same way that Christ accepts me. And it means that I can't condemn the homosexual act without understanding the context in which it has taken place. Saying "love the sinner but hate the sin" when the "sin" is so bound up in someone's identity will always be interpreted as non-acceptance. It's easier to just say "love the sinner" without placing any value judgment on the acts they do or don't do. So that's cleared that up :)

"Why don't you ask for healing?"

I have, for years and years. We humans have a natural desire to belong, to feel normal. Ever since I was 4 or 5 I realized that I was not. My frequent prayer over the years has been "God, please take this away. Make me normal, I can't deal with it." But God hasn't. I stand to be corrected, but I've not come across any transgender person who has been healed by having the desire taken away. If I'm wrong, and you know someone (not just know about someone) or are one of those special people yourselves, please let me know!   Eventually, my prayers changed to "God, please help me be ME", and He has answered, by giving me the courage to do so.

I don't know why I have these feelings or urges. I just know I do. For years I have been told that I should resist the devil, and I can see that we should not let the flesh rule. But we are created as whole beings, God does not distinguish between physical, mental, spiritual and emotional. When I'm angry, my body reacts. When I sense the closeness of God, my body reacts. My body can assist and prevent worship and praise. All our different parts are linked, not separate. Trying to resist the urge to follow through with my transition is as hard as it is to resist the urge to eat. And modern medical research seems to indicate that the desire is innately wired into my brain, and probably has been since before birth.

"Isn't this all just self-justification?"

Just because "it feels right" doesn't mean it is right. The world is full of people who do things because they "feel right" and, as a result, intentionally or unintentionally harm other people. The worst example of these are religious extremists who kill others because "it is right" to do so. (And I'm pointing the finger firmly at Protestants, Catholics and Crusaders as well as Muslims, Jews, Hindus and Sikhs!).

In Judges 17 there is a passage about the lack of leadership in early Jewish society. It does seem that the passage is equally applicable today. The key is the following verse:

In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes.

The passage is all about how we can delude ourselves. I may well be deluded! Do I feel guilty about dressing? Yes, sometimes, but not as much as I used to. But how much of that guilt, if any, is from God, and how much is imposed by society/church? I've prayed while dressed, and didn't feel isolated from God. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong and I stand to be (and should be) corrected. If I'm right, what's your reaction?

"What about the sexual element?"

Most churches condemn masturbation. Why? Probably because, for most people, they encourage a fantasy life based on lust. Well, I can see that may be a problem. But what about my fantasy life, which doesn't really involve having sex with the girl, but being the girl? Is that lust? I don't know, but I don't think it is. Envy? Maybe.

The churches I have been in all have a major hang-up about sex out of marriage. Marriage as we understand it in the UK has only been in its current form since 1754. Marriage is a commitment with some ceremony to cement that. While church services are common (although less common now than 20 years ago), other ceremonies were equally, if not more common, before 1754. Additionally a lot of marriages in history were nothing more than business contracts - women having no role in society and being deemed to belong to either their father or their husband. Having said that, I do believe that what the Bible teaches in this area is fundamentally about commitment - divorce is not good news, nor is sleeping around, because sex should be within a context of a loving, committed relationship.

The upshot is that "church" tends to lay an immense amount of guilt on people. I've had that imposed on me for years, and I'm still working it through my system. For me, Christianity is, pure and simple, a relationship with God, and trying to do what He wants. By dressing in the privacy of my own home, how am I harming anyone else or causing anyone else to stumble? By the way, church society does not appear to be substantially different from ordinary society in this respect, except that ordinary society tends to be more accepting.

And questions for you...

What gender do you think God is? The early church thought of God as a Father (male), but understood the Holy Spirit to be female. Of course, it's quite absurd to attribute human characteristics, such as gender and sexuality, to God, but if God created man in His own image, where did "He" get women from?

Does God willingly create transsexuals? People with all sorts of "oddities" are born - people who cannot distinguish colors, people who are built the wrong way round. While opinion is still divided, there seems to be growing medical opinion that transsexuals are born, not made. God "willingly" allows people with all sorts of disabilities to be born, which we then work to correct. If that is acceptable, why is it not acceptable to "correct" Transexuality, for which current medical treatment is reassignment only - and only if the trans person wants it? It is only society that wishes to categorize people into two boxes, male and female. Any person who blurs that distinction becomes a problem for society, not necessarily for God.

Summary

So, God looks on me as an individual. He's not fussed about what I wear. He is concerned that I am free to live life to the full. I am not perfect, but God will get me there. As long as I listen to and obey Him, giving Him my life, and treat people right, what else is demanded?

Church - love the sinner, hate the sin. If you think what I'm doing is wrong, don't hate me because of what I do, love me despite what I do. Wasn't that what Jesus did? Some of His best friends were prostitutes. Read His words on the cross - "Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they're doing".

Thus, all Christians are under the authority of the New Covenant which is governed by the New Testament Scriptures:

Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.
(Ephesians 2:19-20)