19 Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.
Does honoring God with your body mean suffering horribly every minute of every day, and agonizing every single time you look into a mirror because the outward person you see there does not match who you are?
I repeat from earlier: the Bible is
silent on gender dysphoria -- and its NT treatment of eunuchs, the closest comparable issue, is one of compassion and inclusion.
I must confess I'm astonished at the profound lack of compassion on this board and in so many church congregations. People born with a birth defect they did not ask for are told to 'suck it up' and just suffer, by people who cannot possibly relate to what they are going through. And those most condemning of them fall back on a comforting refusal to believe it
is a birth defect, despite all evidence to the contrary, simply because they can't make a defect like this fit into the little God box they've built.
For most people, gender identity is one of the few certainties of life, a given in their own lives to which they never give a thought. And when someone is born for whom it is a deeply painful mismatch that agonizes at the
very core of their being, they are treated as if they just woke one day and said, "hey, wouldn't it be fun to be a girl!" All because their birth defect deals with gender, a subject that makes prudes, the Biblically illiterate and those who relish thinking themselves holier/less sinful than others uncomfortable.
This isn't about sex, and never was. I wish a lot of people in the Christian community would get their minds out of the gutter. A great many who transition to become outwardly who they have been inwardly
from childhood live lives of total celibacy and faith afterward.
How about we let these people handle their infirmity the same way we'd allow a parent to determine whether and how to deal with a child's birth defect. I doubt anyone here would go up to the worried parent of a baby born with a septal defect in her heart and say, "we really think you should leave the child the way God made her and not correct this." Good grief.
I can hear it now.
"But a heart defect isn't about sex...or rebellion...or carnality..." *sigh*
In any case, even if the misapplied verses of Deuteronomy, Romans and other books
did condemn these people,
which they do not, nothing the supposed 'reprobates' who suffer with gender dysphoria do or don't do as concerns their issue would cause a lack or loss of salvation. If they believe in Christ, they are justified
through that faith. Period. All the little, private sins we
all hide every day (as well as the big ones we pray no one ever finds out about) would disqualify
all of us from salvation if they had anything to do with it. Praise God and His astonishing, amazing grace that
all of our sins were nailed to the Cross, including those of gender dysphorics.
And at this point, if any of this comes across as condescending, fine.