The Vastness of Sexuality and Faith

There have been a number of bills out in state legislatures trying to deny the trans community of basic human rights. There have also been a number of stories of young trans individuals who are receiving death threats from adults. I find this behavior to be horrifying to say the least. 

There should be no mystery that I am a Christian. I work with churches to help aid in conversations around comprehensive sexual health education to erase shame. Shame seems to be the pillar of our civilization. This has become evident to me when I started to learn that ‘original sin’ is nowhere in the bible but was created out of interpretation which puts sexuality at the forefront of sin and gender in a bind. We have gone centuries not adequately understanding our sexuality, nor having conversations needed to walk in community around this need for education. Instead we work it out in the silence of our heads and the skewed expectations we have encountered through whatever culture we have been raised in and shame passed down. Our history is a series of other people’s shame stories and it needs to stop. 

In human sexuality, I see God’s sense of creation more clearly and it is one of vast imagination and creativity. When I teach about gender, I talk about creation in church spaces. I ask people to write down their favorite animal, landmark, ocean species, flower, etc. When people read their answers there are a variety of answers. My response is, “We marvel at all the different species, beautiful sights, flowers, all the obscure animals.  We are amazed and are filled with wonder at the variety that we see before us. Why is it then that that sense of wonder and amazement falls short with humanity? If you think in binary terms there is more than one way to be a woman and there is more than one way to be a man. However,  we are not binary and that is proven with the intersex population. How can we learn to extend God’s imagination and creativity to humans as we do with nature?”

It’s okay to not understand everything about life fully. The same is true with our belief in God, that is why we have faith. Faith is the celebration of mystery. The same can be applied to life and the knowledge of creation. We can celebrate mystery in humans and knowing that if something isn’t our truth, that doesn’t mean it can’t be someone else’s truth. We were built to have differences and that’s okay. The funny thing is, we are also quite the same. This is telling in the womb when we are first conceived. Our genital tissue is the same for 6 weeks or so until the introduction of testosterone. Whether our body accepts it or not is what determines our sex organs which to be clear does not determine our identity. Our bodies are female before they can become male. So our genitals are what we call homologous parts. The clitoris becomes the penis. The vulva becomes the scrotum. The ovaries become the testes and so on. This shows how much more interconnected we are which makes a heck of a lot of sense of why we have various forms of attraction and identities that may or may not be congruent with our sex. 

Human nature has a need to organize, this is true — so we can make sense of the world. But, sometimes making sense and organizing limits our ability to see beyond and into the magic that surrounds us. We miss what is in the in-between. The trans community is a community I find beautiful and incredibly courageous. I believe society's biggest problem with this community is their fearlessness to live as they truly are. There are a lot of us who wish we could do the same. They are living into who they are without apology and isn’t that a beautiful thing? To me, the trans community represents a world of possibilities of God’s great potential for humanity. They are unique, beautiful, and they are also normal human beings navigating emotions and this world just like the rest of us. Saying that they are sub-human or freaks is first of all not true, but it’s also an insult to all of us. Our identities are not linear, they are like a helix, a kaleidoscope, a drawing made by a kindergartener who is not afraid to go outside the lines and use any color they desire. Most of us get too afraid to explore the fullness of who we are. Our expectations and rules around gender are limiting friends and it’s time to recognize that. History has shown us what happens when we treat others as less than or not worthy of --we all end up losing in the end. We need to embrace what we may not fully understand and encounter such spaces with wonder. One way to do this is to face our shame and make sure we don’t let it become another person’s history who never asked for it.  

As Christians we are called to love one another and to look out for another. Instead a lot of Christians are the ones yelling the loudest about those who are trans that they can’t use the restroom or play sports. I personally don’t think that is what God had in mind. If we take a moment of stillness to observe the beauty that surrounds us in nature and in all of humanity and the richness in cultures, skin colors, age, abilities, and languages, we will see the many ways we can explore connection.