Did God create transgender? (2)

Part two: Now how shall we live?

In part one, from the Holy Bible I answered the title question with a clear, “No, God did not create transgender people.”

If God were responsible for creating me as transgender—for creating a person to have Down Syndrome, or autism, or twins to be conjoined, or any variation with which a person might enter the world, I will no longer believe in Him; He is not the God of love and mercy as He describes Himself. Rather, He would be nothing more than a mad scientist, one who enjoys zapping us with every difficult and terrible thing in order to watch us run around like chickens with our heads cut off.

He did not create us this way so that we are born with or acquire many and various things which do not meet the definition of “good.” In part one, I showed from the Holy Bible that all variations in humans arose from Adam’s disobedience, causing us to be fallen and fractured and mortal. That question answered, this one follows: “Now how shall we live?” which breaks down into a twofold, “How shall I act?” and, “How shall I treat others?”

As God in Christ is the Lord of all creation, considering no one better or worse than another (Acts 10:34), neither do I have any interest in being prejudicial. My twin goals are, first, to honor and glorify my Lord Jesus with a correct understanding of His Word and, second, to love my neighbor as I love myself, treating all people the way I would have them treat me.

What of those who are not Christians? In general, everything I shall suggest applies to everyone. Living ethically and honorably, treating all people with respect, is the job of all humans, whether Christian or Muslim or Hindu or animist or pagan or atheist.

The question is not how I came to be this way—artistic, musical, or athletic; autistic, transgender, or gay; good-looking, high-IQed, or sober-minded; cancer-ridden, Parkinson’s-plagued, or arthritis-twisted; enjoying great health, great wealth, or great fame—but what I do with it.

While I would never have requested that I live with this competition between my gender and sex, I am pleased with the many gifts the Lord gave me via my parents. If all people are given various positive things, yet also plagued with various negative things, how would one choose?

When asked, people often will tell you that they would not trade what they have. For one, we learn to use what we have, both the good and the bad. For another, what others have scares us more than what we have because theirs is unfamiliar and we have gotten to know and deal with ours. Finally, we know that no person is exempt from many and various conditions, illnesses, and diseases, and that we all die.

Each life comes down to: “This is who I am. Now how shall I live?” For all the good which most people achieve in life, we all are guilty of way too much bad. We constantly prove my saying about the attitude of everyone: The world revolves around me, regardless whether a person is an atheist or a serious practitioner of a religion.

We love to puff ourselves up. We are experts at putting others down. We easily and quickly reject that which is different from us, things of which we know nothing, things which are incompatible with our experience.

We are selfish.

As a people, we are sexually unethical. We gratify our self-centered desires with wasteful spending, as with gambling and when a lotto hits an obscene dollar amount, and with credit card debt to buy now and gouge ourselves for years with interest compounded upon interest. We indulge in excessive alcohol consumption. We carry out every behavior under the sun in which our only justification often is, “I deserve it.”

Prejudice, bigotry, judgmental—every form of unfair thinking against individuals and people groups is practiced by individuals in every people group. I am sad to report that among my trans friends, some have put down others for their slow pace in transitioning, for their not dressing well enough as their desired sex, and you name it. I shouldn’t be surprised; I used to listen to my brother pastors run down each other. I too easily played the game of boosting myself at the expense of others.

Cisgender, transgender, heterosexual, homosexual, pansexual, asexual? It doesn’t matter. I point no fingers at anyone without pointing the same fingers at myself. No one is exempt. All are guilty.

With my biblical definitions of what is good and not good, what is normal and abnormal, and that every person is either born with or will acquire any manner of things which God did not intend when He created, it means nothing to me what thing or things about you are variations from the pattern of being formed in God’s image.

Whether you are a fellow Christian or not, I only seek this from all people: How do you act? How do you treat others?

No one has permission to use bipolar disorder to justify bad behavior, or a hard life to excuse drunkenness, or personal desire to allow for sexual promiscuity, or transgender transitioning to justify leaving a spouse or spending exorbitant sums of money at a pace that exceeds the family’s budget, or being confined to a wheelchair to rationalize a “get this for me, get that for me” attitude, or “People gossip about me so I should be able to gossip about them,” or . . . you could name a dozen other things.

We constantly excuse our bad behavior. “Everyone’s doing it.” “He hit me first.” “She’s doesn’t deserve more than I have.” “They’re a bunch of jerks.”

I loathe “God does not make mistakes,” and “God made me this way” because they seem always to go with one’s excusing his behavior so that he can do whatever he wants. As the Lord had Solomon write in Ecclesiastes 1:9, there is nothing new under the sun. And as with all generations of humankind we tend toward creating God in our image, defining Him in ways which suit us, to make us feel better about ourselves, and to allow us to live as we desire.

A Christian can be transgender AND act ethically, living according to the Lord’s laws and precepts, which is this Christian’s daily task. People of other religions or no religion can be transgender AND act ethically according to the laws of conscience and of government.

Fill in the blank with whatever gifts or curses which inhabit you. With effort, you can be the way you are AND act ethically, honorably, charitably, humbly, graciously, and dare I suggest magnanimously.

We all are a combination of items from the menu which is humanity. Since we are in this together, how about if we do this together, engender peace so that we all might have a chance to prosper?

To enjoy life.

To enjoy each other.

And, for me and my fellow Christians, to glorify Christ because He has earned it and because we want everyone to know His love as we enjoy it and the blessings only He can provide, both now and forever.