Am I a mistake?

 An anonymous reader asks:- There are some people who will claim 'God does not make mistakes'. Given that you are what you are how do you address this type of abuse? 

Well this is quite a simple question, but inevitably the answer isn't quite so straight forward. First off I would say that this isn't necessarily abuse as much as misunderstanding, misunderstanding theology as much as it is misunderstanding what it means to be trans. As a Christian there are certain tenants of faith that I share with all other Christians, indeed a while back I wrote quite a lot about  those shared beliefs here. One of those shared beliefs is about the nature of God, what I might call "the three omnis". God is Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnipresent; all powerful, all knowing, and everywhere all the time. Therefore God can create us however they choose, they know what they have done and how we are made, and they are with us all the time, sharing our experience, our pains and our pleasures. Or to put it more simply God doesn't make mistakes ~ I think that is something that every person of faith would agree on, certainly among the Abrahamic faiths.

So, as the question asks how do I respond to this as a transgender Christian? Well, this leads me in two directions; lets start with the theological concept of original sin, that sin causing a fallen world where stuff just happens! The World we live in is not the World God originally intended for us, Genesis tells us of creation, the Garden of Eden, of how Adam was placed in the Garden to care for it (hence my claim to being a member of the oldest profession!) and gave Eve to be his companion. It also tells of how Adam and Eve disobeyed God and in consequence were excluded from the Garden and sin entered the World ~ since then bad things have happened because of our sin. This is an explanation of why we have wars, why people are born with disabilities, why there is disease, natural disasters and nasty people!

The Temptation of Eve by Elbert Weinberg,
a re-interpretation of the biblical story
 in which a serpent tempts Eve to
 eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge.
In this work, Weinberg re-imagines
 the snake as a hybrid form
with the body of a tree and a human
 face. Eve gives herself away
 to the temptation as she leans
 on the snake figure, almost melting into its form. 

The normal explanation is simplified into "We live in a fallen World" ~ fallen from grace and therefore outside of God's plan, I have never come across a Christian asking somebody with a congenital disability why they think God made a mistake? they simply accept that we live in a fallen World, I could use the same explanation for the existence of Transgender people. The misunderstanding is that being transgender is a choice rather than a congenital condition. We are not a mistake, but a consequence of sin, not our sin but the existence of sin which has marred creation and taken us out of God's plan. For me there are two problems with this idea, the theological one that it rather denies God's active intervention in our lives, that if God is omnipotent then They choose to allow pain, war, flood and famine etc. yet we also believe that God is good, that God is love so how can we reconcile these? I haven't been able to fully accept the idea of original sin ~ I generally just go with the "Shit Happens" school of thought.

However, having said all that, it's not actually my answer, the question is often phrased as "why do you think God made a mistake?" to that question my answer is "Why do you assume I think that?" I don't think God made a mistake, and I don't think that I am a mistake. I don't know why I am transgender, either medically or theologically, I simply know that I am. I also firmly believe that my transition is an answer to prayer, my own and other people's. It's a good few years ago now, but I remember coming home from church one Sunday, after I had suffered further rejection, going out into the garden, sitting down with a glass of wine, to be honest I was trying to decide just exactly how I was going to kill myself when the words of the old rhyme came to mind 

Nobody loves me
Everybody hates me
I'm going down the garden to eat worms

Urgh

At that point I heard God clearly say to me "I LOVE YOU" I instantly knew that I had to transition and that God was going to be walking at my side and supporting me throughout this journey. Do I think God made a mistake? No.

I don't know if God made me trans, or if it just happened, I don't know whether it's part of a master plan, or whether we're just playing the hand we've been dealt. I do know that God has been with me, and I do know that God has made positive use of me as a Transgender woman ~ I know that God loves me and does not think I am a mistake.

I have just reread the page here headed Christianity and Cross Dressing, I have changed in many ways since I wrote it in 2011, but in light of what I have just written here on the whole I think it still works.