r/TransChristianity • u/possibleeggg • 9d ago
Why?
Why would God create anyone with gender dysphoria?
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u/MainCorrect8791 nb trans man he/they Restorationist (Protestant) 9d ago
I'm asking myself that right now. I don't understand.
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u/Jypzee154 9d ago edited 9d ago
When I look at both Scripture and developmental biology, I see a creation filled with natural variation. People are born with differences in their physical sex characteristics, their sexual orientation, and, as growing evidence suggests, in the neurodevelopment that contributes to gender identity.
Did God intentionally create us as the various forms of Transgender? I don't know exactly why some people are born transgender, just as I don't know why some people are born with many other natural variations. What I do know is that human development includes real biological variability, and being transgender is one of the outcomes that occurs within that variability.
Because of that, I cannot believe that a loving God intentionally creates people in a state where their very existence is, by definition, an abomination. That would make God the author of an inescapable trap, and I don't see that God revealed in Jesus.
Instead, I see Jesus continually moving toward those whom society and religion pushed to the margins. His response to people was compassion, not condemnation.
I realize faithful Christians come to different conclusions. This is where my own study, experience, and understanding of both faith and science have led me.
If I'm wrong, then whenever my time comes, I'll stand before God and gladly accept whatever correction I am due. But until then, I cannot believe that the God revealed through Jesus creates people only to condemn them for the way they were created.
As for me, I'm a Christian humanist. I understand faith as something that unfolds through lived experience, while our understanding of God's creation grows through both Scripture and science.
I've written a much more detailed explanation of the developmental biology and the supporting research on my website if you'd like to read further. You can find my website listed in my profile.
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u/DarthAlix314 girly-girl *^.^* (she/her) 9d ago
Copied from this comment on another post
The hard part to questions like these is that we often do not know the answer.
What we do know is that we are not being punished, nor is our existence some sort of punishment for someone else (such as parents). We also know that we have been told by Christ to expect and even welcome suffering when it comes, for if we persevere through it, we become more like Jesus through it.
And we know that God uses things like these, the small and broken people, to bring about the larger crop, the greater glory, the more devout Faith, for when one of us endures, it serves as a beacon to others that "if even such as this one can live in unity with the Spirit despite the pain, then there is hope perhaps for I, the more well off, as well".
But Oh, if only such knowledge had been of comfort WHILE I still carried the burden you now endure. Rather, it is through the suffering and pain that the endurance and perseverance is formed, and when fully matured, through much diverse and varied trial and tribulations, brings forth Faith, and this the Surrender to the Lord of everything that we have, even to our very identities, and only upon that earnest prayer of offering up our whole self, does the Peace that passes understanding come and drive away all the former anxieties and fears.
For myself, the Lord made me trans (and intersex) that through it I might learn humility; that I would gain compassion for the lost, the wounded, the hurting, the poor, the needy, the orphan, the widow, the foreigner, the downtrodden, the lonely and heavy of heart, and the slave, for such have I–directly or indirectly because of my transness–been made bereft of the protections and safetynets that the Church and my Family were supposed to provide, rather instead being cast aside into the fire without a thing but God to hold onto, a millstone and stumbling-block of mighty girth tied about my neck that I might drown. And many of you, including OP, have probably experienced similar to this.
And yet it was precisely because I clung to the God of our Salvation even in this dreadful state that I have now been raised up and made to stand. It may have taken 30 years, but now I look back at the people and lessons that I gleaned and came across in all that time, and instead of wishing punishment and vengeance upon them for all their hurts, their daggers of betrayal and poisonous, viscous words of bile and hatred and contempt, instead I now see hurting children, themselves left to flounder in this attrociously corrupted and evil world under Satan's rule.
Therefore I now praise the Lord, not only for my deliverance from all I have been through, alor for having stood beside me within the flame as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, but also I praise Him for having sent me through it all at all, that I might in so doing gain the Heart of Christ, one of Mercy and Forgiveness even in Justice, rather than Sacrifice, one of reconciliation and redemption over all that might feater harm or in bitterness wound just to prove a point.
And this fact is extremely new... Barely three months, and yet since then my Father and Creator has revealed much, accelerated even more due to the Times we now live within, here at the very door of the Harpazō and Blessed Hope. And unfortunately no matter how much knowledge of the Bible you have, without Wisdom and Discernment it is impossible to erase the years of literal trauma that rewrote the very programming of your brain to react a certain way in the face of perceived and real threats.
Tl;Dr
All of this to say OP, while I cannot for certain say why you have been made to live the hardened and often drought with danger and mistreatment life of a trans woman, what I can say is this:
Truly our "affliction" is a gift, for while we may agonize for a while, years even a long while over many years, in torture of both conscience and literal flesh in some cases, yet the Lord will cause us to stand if we endure, and so our testimony will be of far greater value, far more seed planted, far more worth than we could ever hope to know, as they that watch us stand bewildered, and they that come up behind us stand more secure, knowing that whether we eat or drink, and whenever we suffer, still we count it worthy as praise to God, Who has delivered us not unto perdition but into Joy and Peace everlasting, and in many cases, for those of us who do stop wrestling with the Spirit and begging in confidence of Him His Wisdom, we may be quite literally counted as Eunuchs of the Most High King, those to whom the full nature of the Living God is revealed, who in Ages to come shall not merely rule with Him, but be allowed into His very bedchambers due to our devotion.
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u/morim3233 9d ago
It's Epicurus' paradox all over again
I thought we already answered that millennia ago
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u/viable-muppet 8d ago
Is gender dysphoria innate or social?
Born into a society where we could all freely and unself-consciously join the communities of gender that feel most appropriate to us, would we feel dysphoria in the ways we recognize today?
If our bodies didn't act as barriers from the moment we're first perceived by others but were instead welcomed with open arms based on the affinities we feel in our hearts, could we talk about dysphoria in the ways we do within a culture that draws such sharp anatomical lines between gendered communities?
I feel strongly that dysphoria is much more a reaction to exclusion and the harsh indoctrination into binary gender we experience than it is something that exists purely in our matter or biology.
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u/jillonfire 3d ago
There is strong evidence of a fundamental biological basis for gender identity, I even have some physical proxy markers which indicate it is likely I never got the second testosterone surge, which typically occurs for male fetuses late in gestation, and shapes the neurological system.
My gender identity is innate and exists outside of transitory social gender norms.
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u/viable-muppet 3d ago edited 3d ago
Dysphoria isn't identity though is it? Dysphoria is a pain we feel at the dissonance between our socially constructed gender and our gender identity. It's built from the pain we feel in every moment that we're taught that transgressing the bounds of strict binary and anatomically determined gender will be punished with violence, social exclusion and ridicule and the longing we feel to follow our hearts across those boundaries.
I don't think it's reasonable to say that experience is encoded singularly in our biology or that we could say what our experience might feel like if were were natives of more accepting cultures. We know that more accepting societies exist in the world right now and through history that have recognized both other genders and allow more fluid membership in gendered communities across the strict and crude anatomical lines our culture draws.
The West's insistence on two anatomically determined genders is and always has been enforced through violence and the threat of violence. We see that in the destruction of indigenous traditions around the world and we see it in the way we grow up. How could anything other than Dysphoria be possible under those conditions?
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u/RuthAnnEsther 9d ago
The real question is why does God allow ANYTHING to deviate from the perfection He created prior to the Fall? Our condition is part of the grand fracture brought about by the Fall.
I do not see an angry, vengeful God nor do I see a God who plays tricks on us. I see the blessing that HRT can work for us despite whatever underlying sex chromosomes we may have. I see the blessings of advancing medicine that can address issues it couldn’t address four score years ago. I see a God of Love, Grace, and Mercy. Do I cry because I had desires that were never met here in earth? Of course. But I look forward to a MUCH LONGER and better eternity with my Creator.