By Patricia Marie Allen
Disclaimer: Warning to all who may read this: This article contains explicit religious content. The views are my own and are based on my understanding of scripture, i.e. the Bible. I will present Christian theology and quote Bible verses throughout. If you have any opposing view of creation (the beginning of it all – call it what you may) other than the traditional Christian view, this may be offensive. If this applies to you then I ask you to choose now to either discontinue reading or to accept this as an opposing view and simply agree to disagree with me. While I may read your comments, I will not respond in an effort to defend my views… it’s not a point of discussion for me. I offer this only as another option for understanding our condition.
In the beginning…
The Beginning
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Genesis 1:1 New International Version (NIV)
Theological point 1) God created the heavens and the earth. That is, God created everything that is; everything in the earth and above it.
Genesis 1:26-27 (NIV)
26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
27 So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
Theological point 2) God created mankind in his own image. Not man but mankind.
OK, from here on out, it gets deep and I get into my personal theology.
The following occurs before the creation of Eve.
Genesis 2: 15-22
15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
18 The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”
19 Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.
But for Adam no suitable helper was found. 21 So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
Note that He, God, took THE man; all there was of mankind at the time, just the man (Adam) and put him in the garden (Gen 2:15). At this point Adam, in God’s image, was both male and female. IN GOD’S IMAGE! MALE AND FEMALE! (Gen 1:27)
From this, I determine that God, is neither male nor female but both. To test this theory, I once asked a Catholic priest, “Is God male or female?” and, without hesitation, he answered, “Both.” So if God is both, then Adam, in God’s image was created both.
It wasn’t until God determined that none of his other creations was a suitable helper for mankind that he created woman, Eve. Given that Carl Jung (1950s psychologist, look him up) observed that every male has some element of feminine in him and every woman has some element of masculine in her, I postulate that in the dividing of male and female of Adam in order to make Eve, that the residual effect of them originally being one creature left an indelible imprint causing what Carl Jung observed.
At this point in creation, all was good. As it was just as God desired it to be; perfect. However, God did not want preprogramed robots. Scripture is resplendent in its commands for man to choose one course or another.
Deuteronomy 30:19 “This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live.” (NIV)
Joshua 24:15 “But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” (NIV)
Proverbs 18:10 Choose my instruction instead of silver, knowledge rather than choice gold, (NIV)
The Fall
Adam, through Eve, chose to disobey God. (See Genesis 2:16 above) and eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Genesis 3:1 – 6
1Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”
4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.
And sin entered the world. Along with sin came death, “...for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” Note Genesis 2:9 “ The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” In Genesis 2:17 God said, “ but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” See how there were two trees. But God only forbid the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God did not forbid the tree of life. I believe that when God created mankind it was God’s intention that Adam (and now Eve) would eat of the tree of life and live forever; however, that to live forever required being without sin and so eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil made mankind sin and having sinned, mankind was now susceptible to death. But more than that, natural death, the death of the body, was only the observable consequences of sin. A natural death is the separation of the soul from the body. Spiritual death, which is of greater significance, is the separation of the soul from God.
The account of the fall continues; Genesis 3:7-13,
7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?”
10 He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
11 And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”
12 The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”
13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
Before this, Adam and Eve had an intimate relationship with God. They walked in the garden with him and communed with him. But now, because of their sin they could no longer be close to God. They were separated from God spiritually… the spiritual death. Natural death would come slowly, but spiritual death was immediate.
God proclaims this in verse 17 through 19.
17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. 18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”
God then sealed that spiritual death in 3 through 24
21 The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” 23 So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
Banned from eating of the tree of life.
As a result of this, Adam, who had been given authority over all the earth, surrendered his authority to Satan. There are many references in the New Testament of Satan being the ruler (god) of the earth.
Note that when Satan tempted Eve, she perverted the word of God. God said, “but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die” But Satan asked, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” and then told Eve, “You will not certainly die,”
In the same way Satan corrupted the word of God, he, by the authority that Adam surrendered to him, perverts God’s very creation, causing disease and pestilence.
Now I ask you, does God create the imperfect? Not according to Genesis. “God saw that it was good.” In Genesis chapter 1 after each segment of creation it says, “…and God saw it was good.” After God finished all creation he saw that it was “…very good.” Good isn’t imperfect. No, there is another source for the imperfect. See above… Satan. The source of all birth defects are Satan interfering in some way with the gestation of the baby. These are called congenital conditions or birth defects. Cleft palate, congenital heart disease, club foot, etc. However, as I’ve heard transgender (wrong body) is birth defect. As such it has the same source. No that doesn’t make a transgender person evil or sinful, no more than having a cleft palate, or a club foot does.
Conclusion:
Think of the explanation of transgender. It’s said that the hormonal influence on the fetus is somehow flawed and the brain develops feminine while the body develops male or vice versa. That happens for the same reason as a cleft palate or a club foot. Satan stuck his finger into the gestation process and stirred things up and the result is a mismatch between gender and the body.
In this case the birth defect isn’t physical, it’s in the inner workings of the mind and psyche. We haven’t the ability to change the working of the mind or psyche, so our only recourse is to bring the body into alignment with psyche/mind. SRS.
If there is a God, then there is also a Devil. We can easily see that there is good and evil in the world. If God is for us, then he is the source of good. Who then is the source of evil if not the Devil?
God didn't make us the way we are (not straight or cis). No, I'm sure that God intended that in all of us our gender identity and sexual preference would line up with the physical make up of our body and promote procreation. However, even a person living under a rock can see that's not the way things turned out. I’ve quoted the Bible. Using that as a reference, there was a point in time when, because God in his wisdom gave us free will, that mankind screwed up the perfection in the plan.
Enter the Devil. God had intended for us to have a close relationship with him within the rules he set down. The Devil had already screwed up his own relationship with God, which earned him being banned from any kind of relationship with God short of adversarial. Needless to say whatever God is for, the Devil is against... it's in his nature. Since God was for congruity between gender identity, sexual preference and physical make up in people the Devil was against it. So, now we're getting into my personal theology, one of the ways he could screw up God's perfect plan was to stick his finger into the gestation period of human procreation. The results, to name a few, are cleft palate, club foot, congenital heart defects, Cystic Fibrosis as well as gender dysphoria... not to mention all the other things that aren't perfect about the human race.
So, if we are going to place "blame" for the way things are, it's giving God a bad rap to say, "God made me this way." The truth is, to get what God wanted when he created mankind, i.e. a being similar to himself (angels weren't it, neither were animals) and who would love him and worship him of their own freewill, he had to give him freewill. Hence the freewill aspect we all enjoy. He had to give us and all creation the ability to not be what he would like it to be. The Devil, his adversary, steps in helping all creation to fall short of God's plan.
Now, does any of that affect how God feels about us? I have personal experience that says, no. God, as we see in the Holy Book, sees us as his children. I have two daughters. The oldest was a strong willed child and managed to get herself in a lot of trouble. Not only with me, but with the law. All good reasons for me to turn my back on her, much the same as God having good reason to turn his back on us. However, when my daughter was born, I decided to love her. Not because she deserved it, but because she was my daughter. Having made that decision, I continued to love her through all that trouble. She's 53 years old at the time of this writing and still my daughter, still hasn't quite got her act together, though she's made great progress, and I still love her and make sacrifices for her. While she's responsible for all her wrong doing, I still reach out to help her. I still want the best for her. I sometimes think that she's in my life to give me insight to how God feels about me.
God is greater than me, so when I fall short of his perfection, he doesn't give up on me. He understands that while I'm responsible for some, or even most of the bad things in my life (due to bad choices I've made) there are things that I had nothing to do with that don't line up with his perfection. One of these is my gender being incongruent with my physical make up. To him that's no different than if I had been born with a cleft palate and just as he doesn't have a problem with medical intervention to correct cleft palates, I'm sure he doesn't have a problem with medical intervention to correct body, gender incongruence.
So there you have it... Not God’s perfect plan, but still loved by him. Mankind in whatever condition they are in, is loved by God. None of the conditions that make us Trans has anything to do with God’s love for us, or our acceptance by him.
If the subject of God as “the” creator and having a relationship with God interests you, please visit, What truly happened at the fall of man? And How did the Fall affect humanity?
Comments
It is a bit dangerous
It is a bit dangerous to base your entire theology on the translation of the original texts. In Bereshit 1:25 (Genesis) it literally says G’d created “Adam” (Aleph, Dalet, Mem), which in biblical Hebrew, can mean both Man or Mankind (or a man named Adam). So the controversy remains.. Of COURSE *WE* all believe that it was meant as “humanity” or mankind…
The combination of “in the image of God”, “man and woman created them” can also mean that G’d is BOTH male and female. (In fact, all through the first part of the Torah, the Eternal One is referred to as ELOHIM which is a plural expression. So anything and everything if possible).
Also, “man and woman G’d created then” can be taken to mean that the first humans were BOTH (in essence: non binary) at the same time, And that later the Eternal One separated the different aspects of these humans in male and female.
And of course there is always the issue that all of Torah/Tenach and the bible were written down by fallible human beings with the understanding of things natural and spiritual of that age. And, even more important, written for people in that same era to understand.
Anne Margarete
Nicely Done
Patty, my question of how the Bible was written comes from knowing Constantine ordered everything put down about God and Jesus to be confiscated or destroyed. Then his own scribes wrote down the bits and pieces in the way they wanted taking parts of the Nag Hammadi Library scrolls, the Jewish Torah, Gnostic Gospels, and all the other written works of faith. Then they produced their own version which was the "Catholic Text in Latin" for one purpose only. Control of the masses and to enrich their own selves. If one wanted to get to Heaven the gate keepers were the Priests. The rich were assured passage to one's desire of ever lasting life when enough coin was laid in the Priests hand.
Those who transcribed the Catholic text were burned at the stake when caught. Hows that for love thy fellow man? The King of England and the Pope contested each other in a power struggle and came to an agreement of mutual fleecing of the masses was in the interest of each.
So much of this which was in the search engines when the net first began has been either pushed back to the last ten million hits one brings up in quest for certain details of religion or it died when all the search engines most of you never knew of died off themselves. Most schools of theology never touch this as they want their students to home in on Methodist, Baptist, Jehova Witness, Mormon, etc rather than finding out religion is a lie. I can promise with all my heart and soul believing in this religion or that religion is not going to get one to Heaven. What is in one's heart, their actions their deeds, their faith in God and accepting Jesus as their sacrifice for their sins is. I'm not going into why each must pay for one's sins as that is a long story itself.
How one believes or doesn't believe is up to each person. I wish the masses would stop thinking each preacher, rabbi, minister, has all the answers, or whom ever they are going to get their salvation on Sunday. I wish each person would talk to God themselves, listen to God's Messenger, and not get close to or deceived by Satan and his minions. Believing a replica of the cross is going to protect or save anyone is another one of my pet peeves. The Catholic Church started that and it got a lot of help when movies came out with exorcisms being performed as the Priest waved around the little trinket and banished the demons. I love the cross, its a reminder a couple pieces of wood were fastened together, nailing one to them was one of the most painful ways to slowly die. It's a reminder to have faith in God.
Is God male or female. He-She answered that when Moses asked. "I AM". Constantine wrote God as male because at that time and most still think of them as such, females are weak and subservient to man. It's one of the reasons, Mary, one of Jesus disciples, never was written into the bible as such.
Now I touch on the gist of your story with my own opinion. Transgender is a reward not punishment as so many have thought. Two have become One in life. Because of all the animosity and hate toward trans most never find their true place in life. Without spiritual guidance most feel their life is punishment not a gift. This is reinforced by the majority of bible thumpers, the red necks, and others who hate for no other reason than it's in their soul to hate.
God loves me and fortunately He has a sense of humor. He must because He made me. I don't need a thousand reasons why I am. I don't need to justify myself to anyone. I don't want gov passing laws giving me special rights because I'm part of the smallest minority. My rights don't supersede anyone else's rights.
Because so many use the Bible as a justification for their hate toward transgender, many try and justify their lives by doing the same. The bible was written for several reasons, one man's quest for power and control of the masses. Theology is a very rich and deep subject and we will never get the full truth as so much has been mistranslated besides being biased toward one interpretation, the Catholic Latin text.
Hugs Patty, I'm so pleased you brought this up and gave us your ideas on trans.
Barb
Life is a gift, don't waste it..
Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl
Everyone has an opinion
I believe nothing written in the Bible is more than morality fables and legends. There is absolutely no way to prove anything written in the Bible, so you either believe it or dismiss it. Given that evolution and carbon dating directly contradict anything written in Genesis, I think the bible is just a storybook, but that is my opinion. As for my being transgender being because of the devil, well that's all ten of the stupidest things I have heard this morning, and can be used as a basis for transphobia.
Human imperfection
All faiths are a gift of God, but partake of human imperfection, as they pass through the medium of humanity. God-given religion is beyond all speech. Imperfect men put it into such language as they can command, and their words are interpreted by other men equally imperfect. Whose interpretation must be held to be the right one?
Everyone is right from his own standpoint, but it is not impossible that everyone is wrong. Hence the necessity for tolerance, which does not mean indifference towards one’s own faith, but a more intelligent and purer love for it. Tolerance gives us spiritual insight, which is as far from fanaticism as the north pole is from the south. True knowledge of religion breaks down the barriers between faith and faith and gives rise to tolerance. Cultivation of tolerance for other faiths will impart to us a truer understanding of our own.
Gandi
Sarah
All I can say is
Thank God I'm an atheist.
Where angels fear to tread . . . .
You are bold to launch a religious discussion on a site dedicated to the trans community, since organized religion in general, and organized Christian religions in particular, have been purely awful to so many trans people.
While I have respect for other faiths and for nonbelief (and still greater respect, in some ways, for principled agnosticism), I am a theist, and a Christian, so I admired your effort and enjoyed your argument. With that said, I find myself unconvinced by it. In my heart and soul, I believe I am as God made me. I do not know why my soul should be female when my body is not, but I do not think it is a mistake, nor do I think it is the devil’s work.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this sensitive subject. I expressed some of my own through characters in a story I posted here, and did so with a fair bit of trepidation since I knew those discussions could trigger a lot of very bad memories for readers.
Emma