(This is long but please do grab a beverage and read it:)
Hey kids, it's your ol' gay Christian auntie here with the theology. I pray the Lord be with me as I write this, and with you as you read it:
You know what hurts? When Christians take the Bible literally, and completely out of context, and use it to bash minorities over the head with. So lemme just point out a few things about Genesis 1 and 2 that your (by the sounds of it) extremely conservative evangelical pastor won't have pointed out to you.
What pronouns does God use in Genesis 1:26 onwards? "Let's make mankind in our image, in our likeness"... Please read the whole paragraph, the collective pronouns occur many times.
Oh. So what gender does that make God, then? If there's only male and female, then how can God be both? Or neither? Or, for that matter, plural??
You may say, "yeah but that's God. Humans have to be one or the other." Aight I hear you. Take a look at how God creates the world in Genesis 1. (that's where the famous quote comes from: Gen 1:27 "... In the image of God he created them, male and female he created them")
Genesis 1:3-4 - God creates light, and separates it from darkness
Genesis 1:6-8 - God separates the waters below (that's the earth, where we live) from the waters above (that's the heavens. As in, where God lives. Ancient Hebrews believed there was water above the sky. Obviously. Why not?)
Genesis 1:9 - God separates the dry land and the water.
He spends the other days adding in, among other things, animals - specifically, sea animals, birds, and land animals.
When taken literally, here are all the things God did NOT create: anywhere the water and land mix, including beaches, marshlands, swamps, flood planes, tidal ranges (all sinful. Haven't they read Genesis? They aren't supposed to mix!) Day and Night are okay, but not evening, morning, dawn, dusk, they're all mixing day and night together. (Bad. Sinful.) Also amphibians (land or water? Pick a side!)
I'm gonna stop there, cos you get it. Sounds ridiculous? That's because it is. But if we can look at Genesis and assume that all these were also created by God just because they don't fit the "one side or the other" rule, I think we can safely do the same with humans.
Then we get to Genesis 2. Which, from verse 4 onwards, is a completely different account of creation happening. They aren't the same story! They're two different accounts that tell us different things!
Wait, so there are two creation stories? Yup! You can tell because they contradict each other. Genesis 2 tells us that man is formed at a time when "no shrub has yet appeared on the earth, and no plant has yet sprung up". According to Genesis 1, this would be on Day 2, but Genesis 1 says it was Day 6 when man and women were created -?! And which one tells us the actual truth if they're both different?!?
I'm gonna stop you there. The beauty of these stories is that they are a window into a 4000 year old culture trying to understand its own existence. NOT the be-all and end-all of what actually, physically happened.
And the biggest take away is that God had the power to create everything we know about, and everything we don't. And that same God breathed their own life into our lungs, and loved and cherished us, and made us to be beautiful and different and unique. And a culture that didn't understand Chromosomes and microbiology and all those amazing crazy things that now give us the spectrum of gender and biological sex (as @epicartnerd mentioned above, it's biologically very complicated!) was trying to understand the magnitude of creation from a human perspective. They didn't get it wrong, necessarily - they wrote it how they understood it!
Something else to note, on the subject of woman as a 'sidekick' to man: ancient Jewish culture was extremely mysogenistic and hetero-normative. Women weren't educated. They weren't even fully human. These texts were written by men, FOR men. And yet they write this account of woman being created out of man's own body to be a "helper" (Gen 2:18). Same Hebrew word as is used to describe the Holy Spirit elsewhere in the Bible BTW. This picture echoes the way we see the trinity - Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three beings joined as one being, all in relationship and all equal. If we're in the business of taking things literally, that means woman are the same as the Holy Spirit, bro! (unless you couldn't tell, that was sarcasm. But that's interesting, isn't it? Women weren't created to be 'sidekicks' - that's just what our even MORE mysogenistic culture wants you to believe, and it's ingrained into some older Bible translations, so watch your translation!)
... I think I've info dumped enough. You get it. It's not as simple as you'd like it to be. The Bible never is, because life isn't simple. It's just easier on our brains to try and make it that way by pointing to a couple of ancient stories and saying that those are the rules, no argument.
Just remember that saying trans people shouldn't change their gender because it hurts to exist or that intersex people are not the way God intended is getting dangerously close to suggesting that people with profound physical or mental disabilities shouldn't seek medical help like surgeries and medication because that's "trying to change the way God made them". Just because you can't see the pain doesn't mean it isn't there.
I'm gonna end by saying this. OP is young, you guys. Like all of us, she's still learning and growing, and she'll have a bunch of conservative Christians who think the same way applauding in her inbox and comments for what she's said. If you go in there and rip her a new one for this, who do you think she's gonna listen to? The people who claim to love her, or the people who lash out?
That being said, if you're trans, intersex, gender non-conforming, or in any other way affected by the above post, your anger and pain is absolutely justified. I know this really hurts. I know this is just another person shouting loudly about something they don't fully understand. Another person who doesn't see you, doesn't understand the pain of gender dysphoria, and refuses to see your struggles and your experiences.
I see you. You're beautiful. You're just as God intended. And I will always do my best to create a safe space for you here.
You can be a Christian and express your gender however you see fit. It doesn't change the fact that Jesus died to save you and God loves you very much.
@bill2424 my sister in Christ, you're so lovely and there's so much good in you, and you bring so much joy to people here. But you need to try to see things from another perspective. You don't have to change what you believe, but you do need to think about the way you express those beliefs, and how, where and when might be appropriate to express them. At the end of the day, your blog is a public space. But also read the above, because it's difficult to hear, but things aren't as simple as you'd like them to be. Just think and pray about it. God is gonna use your faith for great things. That's why he wants you to learn.
@epicartnerd thank you for your grace, tolerance, and the bravery you've shown in speaking out, even though it's impacted your follower base.
As always, I'm not transgender, I just know and love people who are, so if there's anything I've said that you'd like to educate me on or expand on, I'm here to listen and to learn.
