Transgender: Christian compassion, convictions and wisdom for today's big questions (Talking Points) by Vaughan Roberts

Author:Vaughan Roberts [Roberts, Vaughan]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781784981969
Publisher: The Good Book Company
Published: 2016-10-10T16:00:00+00:00

The Bible says: Your body is your sexual identity—let your mind be conformed to it.

A proper understanding of creation has to be the first building block if we are to understand the Christian perspective on transgender. But the next perspective will help us understand where we are today more clearly. Let’s turn to the fall.

4. Fall

We read about the next stage in the Bible’s story in Genesis Chapter 3.

Now the snake was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?’” The woman said to the snake, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

“You will not certainly die,” the snake said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realised that they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. Genesis 3 v 1-7

These well-known words are filled with profound meaning. The first humans were given great freedom: to enjoy and eat from every tree (Genesis 2 v 16), but with just one small prohibition, which was given for their protection. They were told not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2 v 17). The tree represents the fact that God alone has the authority to define what is good and what is evil, what is right and what is wrong. And by taking that fruit, human beings are saying, No! We’re not accepting that God alone is God. We’re going to take that authority for ourselves. We are going to decide what is right and what is wrong.

Satan, who appears in the story as a snake, tempts the man and woman with the promise that they can be like God. And what is it to be like God? It is to set the rules, to be in charge, to decide what is right and wrong. They believed the poisoned promise of the serpent—with disastrous results, not just for themselves, but for all their descendants and for the whole world.

Sin has now infected humanity, so all of us by nature follow in the way of Adam and Eve, in rebellion against God. And, because human beings were set over God’s world, it was, in some mysterious way, bound up with them. We might see

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