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Pictured above is the program for church service at our local church (week of 5/12-5/18 2024), and when I read it (not someone who goes to church because I don't fit in the local congregation) I found I really liked how it was handled.

The big idea for this week's sermon is "Can a Christian be Gay or Trans"? (Or support those who are?)

TL;DR the sermon was well handled, if the program was any indication, and says "Don't Hate Gays for Being Gay!", and "Gender Transition isn't going to help people, but if they choose to take that plunge you are not to make their life worse; but also because Gender Culture can and has hurt people without making anything better we should probably help people separate the lies from the truth and letting them make their own decisions and choices", while reminding us "We are supposed to love our neighbors/enemies as we do ourselves, as God would want us to do and as He does us.", but in more detail.

Also, if you decide to look into this post, expect discomfort, whiplash, and rants. No holds barred. No section written completely in order.

I'll transpose sections of both program and personal thoughts directly as I write this.

Opening Cautions

This is a personal topic for many of us, let's approach it delicately.

Reminder: this series is "can a Christian..." [and] not "can a person..." (1 Corinthians 5:9-13)

[I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— 10 not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. 11 But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a [Believer in Christ] but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people.

12 What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? 13 God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked person from among you.”] New International Version

It is crucial that we seek to take the log out of our own eye before offering to take the splinter out of our neighbor's eye (Matthew 7:3-5)

[3 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.] NIV

Personal thoughts: The two bible verses here, which I've copy-pasted through a quick google search, bring up liars and hypocrisy. The general meaning brought up in First Corinthians is "Don't judge people who don't know better, we're not here to be the chat police on the people who don't know the standards we are being held to. But if someone says they're a Christian, but don't live up to the hype, don't bother. They're lying and probably trying to drag you into shit and you should just cut them out of your life because they will drag you down with them for the hell of it."

That covers Corinthians, so what about what Matthew is saying here?

Basic meaning? "Don't be a pot calling the kettle black." as the old saying goes. Or to be a little more internet-focused, "Why hate the guy with the furry-ears headband when you're prancing around in a fursuit? And why try to help fix his problem when yours is so much worse?"

Do you hate that I'm saying this? That it implies you might get called out by Jesus as a Pharisee - a hide-bound lip-service "believer" who sticks more to the rules than the message?

First: Get a life. Truth is Truth and we're supposed to support that.

Second: if I'm calling you out, then that's between you and God. Bring it up with Him and He'll direct you to ways to actually fix it. And then maybe let you fail to fix it on your own merits.

Can a Christian... Be Gay?

Direct Teaching: God created humans with opposite genders, and for sex to be enjoyed between opposite genders in a life-long covenant relationship (Genesis 2:21-25; matthew 19:3-6; 1 Corinthians 6:9-11)

3 Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”

4 “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’[a] 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’[b]? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

[direct mentions of Genesis chapters one and two]

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[a] and then closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib[b] he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. | 23 The man said, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” 24 That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.

[Verse 25 is irrelevant here, and this is basically a Magic-Not-Science explanation for sexual dimorphism for the early Jews, because they didn't really know what science was when Genesis was being written, and that a number of today's egotistical anthropologists would consider anyone before Egypt as an uncultured primitive. Also, I was advised to not leave in that last part, but it's not like I'm being completely inaccurate.]

9 Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men[a] 10 nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

Wisdom: What do you mean by "gay"?

Experiencing same-sex attraction.

Engaging in same-sex activity.

Identifying as part of the gay community.

The Point: All of us experience different temptations. The question is not whether or not someone experiences a specific temptation, but how they think about and respond to that temptation.

Personal thoughts: This one is harder for me to parse. But then everything about the logistics of love and romance are difficult for me to explain and understand.

What is most obvious from the get-go, however, is that different people have different tastes, and of course, how they go about chasing those tastes.

Obvious, extreme example ahoy: Rape can happen among (both by and to) men and women. And extra-marital sex - or for the more worldly, cheating on your partner - is a bad way to respond, and certainly not a Christian one.

And while using Matthew 19:6 to argue for polyamory is certainly possible, the biggest and best way to separate fact from fiction in a truth-based (supposedly or actually) religion is to go straight to the source material. In DnD, that's the Monster's Manual or the DM's Manual, etc. In Christianity, that's the Bible. And if there's conflict between multiple sources (NIV vs NLV vs King James versions, as an example) then try to find the most direct translation.

I'll be honest, I really want to take a tangent and bring up noted inconsistencies between the source materials of other religions, including Islam and some "Christian" cults) and the actual message they say they send, but I need to stay focused on the sermon program in front of me. Also I don't actually have the passages in question lined up already and I don't want to put in the effort to do that. Plus, love your neighbors even if you think they're wrong. Mostly because that's not the point here, and partly because I might be wrong.

Back to business: I'm not sure how to handle Corinthians chapter 6 (like I know how to handle anything in this section right?), but one of the big points here is how Luke is calling out to members of a church in Corinth, people that are choosing to become better people now that they are Christians; people who are being shown how to become better people, and are probably not having a good time right now with their non-Christian friends, who are probably making fun of them (and significantly worse) because they're "No Fun Anymore", because they're not going out and getting completely sloshed together, or are having qualms about tricking people out of their hard-earned savings, or just not having a whole lotta sex and sleeping around anymore, etc. There's a lotta things here that we villify in the U.S. today, and I'm not willing to sacrifice any kind of moral standing I have right now by editing the truth/source material, and we all agree that (excepting the Gays) everything on this list deserves to be there. So how do I handle their inclusion on the list?

I can see multiple reasons for their placement on this list, both good and bad. Some men might justify that Sex = Good, but Unexpected Kid = Bad, and Homosexual Sex = No Kid = Good! as one reason - though that also gives some a-holes "licence" to do terrible things to other men (rape, abuse, other mentally scarring things) and also sexual immorality such as sleeping around or cheating on your partner "without consequences", et cetera.

On the flip side argument, as just one, we have Eugenics. Which is good and bad for many reasons - the Good for passing on genes and lineages and so on, the bad for the fact that unlike animals our DNA has no error-checking whatsoever, and honestly just look it up and prepared to be incredibly horrified at what some people think and accept, even today. (including the FUCKING HOLOCAUST as one of the bad things.)

And now we move on to the next bit.

Can a Christian be trans?

Direct Teaching: God created us male or female, and we are to present ourselves as such (See above, and Deuteronomy 22:5)

Going back to the Hebrew, the literal translation of Deuteronomy 22:5 is: “Never cause or force a warriors weapon to be used by a woman or weak person; neither dress warriors armor on a woman or weak person for to Yahweh, God of Host, disgusting is such that do so.” Note the word used in Hebrew tow`ebah, [link]

To "transition" means to change something about yourself to reflect the gender you identify with:

Social: changing the way you dress and behave.

Hormonal: taking puberty blockers or hormone therapy.

Surgical: Having one or several procedures to change your anatomy.

The Point: the message of our culture is: healing can be found by changing your body to match your feelings; Christianity says: healing isn't found that way.

Personal thoughts:

I feel how we change and mark our bodies (tattooes, gender reassignment, etc) is up to us and our choices, because God respects our choices, and our right to make them. He gave us that right, and sticks to that self-given rule. (and if you bring up the Garden of Eden? He planned on Lucifer trying to fuck up His creations, He gave Adam and Eve the choice. That they didn't know the consequences of that choice is immaterial to this point - do we even know the consequences of our actions, half the time? Or most of the time? - He gave them a rule, He planted the Trees of Life and Knowledge without any particular barriers preventing them from eating from them beyond His command! It's right there in Genesis, the very beginning of the Bible, that Actions. Have. Consequences.)

But that leaves us with two major sticking points for me. Evolution, the mechanism by which our bodies were created (as theorized by science), left our bodies inefficient and prone to breaking, particularly when inbreeding makes any kind of play, due too the inefficiencies of the process. So improving on what's there (glasses/contacts, cybernetics, cosmetic surgery, tattoos for the the aesthetic, etc) is perfectly acceptable. But on the flip side, we have Gender Reassignment. This is where I upset people.

Gender Reassignment. Trans-masc Pyramidhead is an example of this surgical procedure that I find stupid. 80+% of his body is pure muscled masculinity. Adding surgical scars that imply his hips were actually wider than they are, or that he had significantly more estrogen in his body at one point kinda messes with his presence. And the pro-trans message one might get from viewing that picture, that piece of artwork, in isolation does not mesh at all with the fact that he is a remorseless video game monster! (also, I know nothing about Silent Hill, but his Frankenstein/Weird Concept existence, just, doesn't help in general)

And in a more real-life example?

A biological woman bottle-feeding her daughter for the first time did not have happy tears, because she physically could not breast-feed her child. Gender reassignment cut off her mammary glands when she was younger. And while voluntary, it still left her with bleeding emotional wounds when she had her child.

An old woman with Alzheimers contemplated her partner. He'd gone through reassignment while younger, and sometimes forgot significant amounts of (now) her life, such as the reassignment. On one notable example (s)he'd woken up, looked down upon the aging body, and freaked out: "What have you done to my body?!"

When I encountered that article, I had basically clicked away fast and tried to distract myself from the emotional discomfort that I was empathizing with. But now I bring it up to underscore the point.

One of the big things that came up in a recent talk with my dad (which was months ago and sounded like a bunch of conspiracy theories, included what sounded like a bunch of government/military shit that no one wants to own up to that I can absolutely believe even if I don't remember 80%+ of that), is that a lot of things we believe today was told to us by shills (liars) and hacks that don't deserve their medical degrees or et cetera. And Government/Military propaganda based not in the least in truth is certainly prevalent enough in fiction and history that we can believe they're doing it to our faces today and expecting us to thank them for it.

Humanity has told itself all kinds of lies, deluded itself with all kinds of ideas, and while I'm not trying to put anybody down, I feel that the popularization of Gender and Gender Reassignment, and the ways those things were treated by the media, is one of those. The way it got turned from a personal thing into a political thing. How some people, including and especially the creeps and politicians, tried to cash in on it while those with morals and integrity tried to keep it contained - and eventually just took a step back because of how out of control it was, those against seeing it as a degradation of their country and those for seeing themselves lumped in with terrible people and the movement itself turned into an excuse for the morally unhinged to take advantage of.

There's a reason I try to stay out of politics. Why I try to follow Caboose's example in Flamethrower's Other than the Sum of its Parts. And that reason is that anything Political is A) complicated and B) lied about. 98% of Gender Politics is completely unknown to me, as a result of those two reasons. And the other 2% I might just spew out randomly because someone I considered more knowledgeable than myself said it first.

----

Now that that's out of the way, we can get to the interesting bit.

I didn't like the first option for Deuteronomy (New International Reader's Version), so I kept looking a little further and found that. Remember how I mentioned earlier that when you're unsure of something, go to the source material?

We have the Bible in English, because it was first translated to Latin, but it started in the Hebrew.

The NIRV, when translated to plain language, says "Cross-dressing is a Sin!", but the original Hebrew is basically saying "Don't push somebody into a role they're not fit for!"

This is not confined to the LGBT community. It touches on the community, yes, but some people are made for that community, Christian and otherwise, but this verse also touches on gaslight/grooming, Toxic Masculinity/Feminity, attempts to control the universe and make it conform to your expectations, dozens of things that create trauma...

Well, at this point A) I've run out of ideas, and B) I really don't wanna look at all the shitty things this one verse covers. If you think I've listed all of them?

Oh, you sweet summer child.

Now, at this point, I think God wants to say something through me: Very Few People will benefit from Gender Reassignment.

Please Note that this is not None. And it is not limited to Physical Health Issues. But less than 1% of this world's population require it.

...and He's handing me back the mic.

So, let's look at that.

First is Reader Reaction: No. I am not doing this for attention. I've asked him to hold my hand through this, make sure my thoughts, and His Intent, comes through. This is not about me. This is about exploring His Message.

Second is population. <1% is a very small number... in statistics. In Global Population? Considering we have upwards of five Billion, just in India, then that leaves around fifty million people who can benefit from the surgery.

Third is the fact that I correct myself. It's not fifty million that can benefit, it's somewhere around that number that require it. More can benefit from it, but somewhere around... let's say twenty five million, actively need it. Who are they? God knows, I don't, nothing more needs to be said about this.

Fourth is that, while a statistically tiny number require it, more can benefit, yet Gender Reassignment isn't the only method of handling things. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph got Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh from the three wise men when Jesus was born. (which, didn't exactly last them long, because King Herod sent the Wise Men as part of a method to track down Jesus, due to fearing Jesus deposing him, and they needed to get out of the country! And they were expensive gifts, so they pawned them off and used the money to get out of there). I bring this up because, while the money was useful, it wasn't the only way they had to get out of the country. It was convenient to get outta there fast, and the Wise Men gave them the warning, but they coulda gotten outta there the slow way on foot and partially starved themselves for Jesus' sake, or hitched a ride in some caravan or with some smugglers or something. All of those were valid options - even if some of them were more attractive than others. Money and legal was still the best option of them all.

This is relevant, because while useful, gender reassignment isn't the only method of healing available. For some, Reassignment is a net neutral. For some, like the Alzheimer's patient I mentioned earlier, it can be a net negative - some good, lotta bad. And I don't know if you've noticed, but it's kinda permanent. That it's an option is, I feel, a good thing. But it's a lot easier to reprogram your mind than to surgically alter your body. Cheaper too. My suggestion? Try therapy first. You might accidentally-on-purpose dig up all sorts of things that are bothering you, and even find out that the body disphoria? It might not come from your body/self-perception/gender issues at all! (It still could, yes, but why fix the symptoms if it doesn't solve the problem? Pin down the problem first, then fix.)

Can a Christian... love and support unconditionally?

Love without conditions means acceptance without conditions, not approval without conditions.

This one is Big. No question. It means "I'm telling you not to hate the Gays. Just like you'd not hate a smoker specifically because they smoke, or an alcoholic specifically because they drink alcoholic drinks. Hate the tabacco, hate the alcohol, but don't hate the one addicted to them. Same thing is supposed to apply to The Gays."

Are you going to suddenly hate your child because they drive a Tacoma? Do you hate them because they decided they wanted nothing to do with the world's idea of gender roles, or gender at all, and decided to go completely 'genderless' and nonbinary? Are you going to hate them because they're suddenly going by neopronouns?

No?

Then why would you hate them, just because she likes girls, or he wants to marry a guy, or your nonbinary third likes them all (or no one in a romantic capacity)?

Or are you actually just that shallow?

God commanded us Christians to Love Deeply and Unconditionally. Friend, Enemy, lover, neighbor, child. To care about them all. Not to spread and perpetuate the cycle of hatred, fear, and violence.

There's a guy I knew, who turned out to be gay. I'm gay-adjacent (as in, not gay, but like it's all that hard for someone to make the mistake?), and while I know (now) that I probably handled the reveal badly enough to hurt his feelings, I didn't love/like him any less when I found out. I just tried to add a little physical distance - an unexplained act of "I respect that you are into guys, and I like you, but you're not my type". Matter of fact, I'm currently praying that he gets a partner, one who is basically a better version of me who's actually into him. (so, huggy-er than average, and willing to shower him with affection)

And this kind of command is kinda pointed at you non-Christians too. To be better than that. To be better than those who lie and deceive you for their own profit and amusement. To rise above the racism, no matter what form it takes.

To give one example of the challenge I'm handing out, I'll point you at a Tumblr story from a self-admitted tomboy I read once. (I forget the account name). She's a girl, she does guy things, and when someone from the LGBT community approached her, she told them straight out, "I'm a tomboy", and then they refused to accept that. Instead of accepting her words as shorthand for "I go by She/Her, and I do things society thinks only guys do", the other guy referred to her as a "They/Them", which really annoyed her. (also, don't @ her if you come up with her blog name, just show the post to your friends in the LGBT community as an example of "don't be like the jerks who hurt you. Instead, respect others and throw out Society's ideas of Gender Roles entirely")

Overall: One of the big things that stands out to me, is that it doesn't bring up Leviticus.

Leviticus 20 is, of course, the big chapter/verse people bring up when it comes to Anti LGBT speech/hatred. "An abomination to lie with another male as with a female", or whatever translation you prefer.

Doesn't really help that it's not really in-theme for that chapter to be translated as "Hate the Gays", when older translations of that passage mark it as "Don't have sex with children, and also leave animals alone when it comes to sex".

But all this also reminds us to respect each other. Our choices are our own. Us christians? We're not supposed to be here to judge you. We're supposed to be here to help guide you, show you the right way, help you up when you choose badly and fall, and help you heal. Remember the line, "You are the Salt of the Earth"? That's what it's supposed to mean.

And, yeah, we're kinda doing a bad job of it. But we're only human. Just like you.

Be safe, and love each other. With all the Evil in the world today, we're all going through our own shit. Let's not make it worse.

And, sorry for not posting for a long time? Just, haven't had anything worth posting.

#pro-lgbt #Bible Verses #someone needs to read this today #pieces of my life #Bible Discussion

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