I saw the following post in one of the Christian LGBT Facebook groups I belong to…

A Christian girl just very kindly reminded me that “you can love someone without loving what they do”, and I feel the need to make it clear that if you view queerness as “what someone does” rather than “who they are”, then you my friend, are not the loving person you claim to be.

Others commented in agreement. But I was struck by how easy it is to be the very person they claim is NOT a loving person.

What this post essentially was saying is that since you don’t love me because of what I do, I therefore don’t love you because of that. I mean, it’s the same thing. The girl’s words are the excuse for not loving them back. I can judge you because you are judging me.

You might be saying “But wait Laurie, they didn’t say they didn’t love the girl who said that.” And you’re right, they didn’t say “I’m not going to love you because of what you said”. But neither did the girl in the post. In fact, she said just the opposite. The person making the post took it as a lack of love which in their mind gave them permission to accuse the person of not genuinely feeling love toward them.

How do we reconcile all this? How can both be true?

This is common in the transgender community. We don’t feel loved by others Christians individually or our church at large and we start by resenting it and then calling it “hate”. Because if we don’t feel love, it must therefore be hate. Right?

No. We might interpret it as hate, yet it was meant to be love. How do we reconcile all this? How can both be true?

I have a good friend who has a brother in prison. Not jail, honest to goodness prison. There are many things that she disapproved about her brother, but she never, ever, didn’t not love him. She loves him now. And she communicates with him as best as possible. There was much about him to not like, but there was always love.

Well, in my experience as a transgender woman, we who are trans are very quick to call what is really nothing more than a lack of understanding as HATE . Now, there’s not much of a lack of understanding when it comes to my friend’s brother in prison, but when it comes to being transgender, I hope all my transgender friends who are Christian realize that for most people, this is a very new thing for them to understand, particularly family. Oh, they’ve heard about on television or in the news maybe, but never really gave it much thought. Most likely as Christians they probably assume being transgender is the same as homosexuality and for them the Bible is very clear on homosexuality (they don’t understand the evidence to the contrary). They aren’t being hateful, if anything they are (in there own way) trying to let us know that God has a “better” plan for us. Again, they DON’T understand and are working from their own perspective.

I met over Zoom with a professor of Old Testament from Biola University in southern California who also instructs on gender, creation and sexuality. He read my book and asked to talk with me. As we were talking, he stopped me mid-sentence because I said something that had struck him many times in the book—my (and I’m paraphrasing here) “spirit of forgiveness”. He was referring to how I don’t hold resentment toward those who haven’t treated me well in the past, be it family or pastors. Well, what else would Christ want us to do? Hate back? I don’t think that’s the Holy Spirit feeding the desire to feel resentment. I can’t find any scripture anywhere that would support that. Rather, just the opposite.

Lots and lots of verses about loving one another.

That’s what most Christians who are transgender know and understand, lots and lots of verses about love. Why? Because we’re good at throwing those verses in the face of Christians who don’t agree with us, and many times we do it in an accusatory and nearly judgmental fashion, being exactly like those who don’t agree with us. We are nothing more than a mirror image of those we seek acceptance from. And we let it fester.

I suppose I find it easy because I grew up never expecting my own family to understand—and they didn’t disappoint. So, I really didn’t expect many in the church to understand, and again I wasn’t disappointed—especially when it came to church leadership (at least within the evangelical community I’m at home with).
At this point in time, we have to face as Christians who are transgender, rejection is going to be a part of our life at some time. I know we hate it. It hurts. The closer we are to the people, the more it hurts. But don’t automatically assume it’s because they hate. I truly believe for many Christians is that they don’t understand—and yes, I get it that there are some Christians who don’t even want to try to understand. It’s much easier for them to keep their head buried in the sand and not try to explain or defend what they believe (let me introduce you to my family). For some they just don’t like the idea of someone who is transgender, it’s foreign and yes, a little scary. THOSE are the people who qualify as being “transphobic”. I’ve found many who as they get to know me find it harder to reconcile what they “believe” the Bible teaches with what they KNOW about me as a Christian who is transgender. I know people who have completely changed how they think about LGBT people, simply because they know me personally and my walk with Christ.

It’s up to us to show compassion.

When you think about the amount of grace that Jesus showed toward those who honestly and literally HATED him, don’t you think we can try to show a little of that toward those who don’t like that we’re transgender? Being called to be Christ-like, I think trying to come close to that is pretty exceptional (I wish I was).

I think we’re living in a time when in this area, it’s up to we who are Christians and are transgender to show the Church what it is to be a follower of Christ. It’s up to us to show compassion. It’s up to us to show forgiveness. It’s up to us to show love. Hate is not a fruit of the spirit in ANY translation of 1 Corinthians 13 that I can find. So don’t return hate for hate, even perceived hate for hate. If you EVER want people to understand that being transgender is not antithetical to being a Christian, then we are the ones that have to show it through our lives.
If you’re transgender you may never be “perfect” enough for some Christians, just be thankful those aren’t the people who will be at the gate into Heaven (I imagine the Lord will have a private conversation with them when their time comes).

Christians hating Christians is Satan’s perfect plan. It’s a house divided. We have an opportunity to teach the current generation and lead the way for future generations, so don’t let division stop us from loving those who “hate” us. That was Jesus’ instruction in Matthew 5. Simply loving those who love us gains us nothing, non-Christians do that.

Christians hating Christians is Satan’s perfect plan

In this age of social media, it’s easy to sit behind out keyboards and blast at people who disagree with us. Let’s all remember that this isn’t a social media war, we are fighting forces beyond our vision, beyond our touch that want to see us defeated and destroyed, not because we’re transgender, but because we call Jesus our Savior.

-Blessings

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