Recently I saw someone online asking "Where did all these
genders come from?"
The scientific answer is that intersex, transgender, bigender,
gender fluid, agender people and so on have existed throughout
human history.
The Christian answer is "God made them"! We can see this very clearly
in the first chapter of Genesis.
In chapter 1 verses 3-5 we read:
God said, `Let there be light'; and there was light. And God saw
that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.
God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.
And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
God made the light and the darkness and the evening and the morning
and the twilight and the dawn, the sunset and the sunrise and all
the infinite gradations of light and shade in between.
In verses 9-10 we read:
And God said, `Let the waters under the sky be gathered together
into one place, and let the dry land appear.' And it was so.
God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered
together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.
God made the sea and the dry land, the lakes and rivers and streams
and pools, the wetlands and the marshes, the beaches and the tide pools.
All those shades of land and sea: the places that are sometimes
land and sometimes sea, the tops of the mountains that used
to be under the ocean, the seabed that used to be dry land and
everything in between.
In verse 20 and 24 we read:
And God said, `Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures,
and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.'
And God said, `Let the earth bring forth living creatures
of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals
of the earth of every kind.' And it was so.
God made the birds and the fish and the land animals.
Also God made the flying fish and the swimming penguins.
God made the amphibians which live in the water and on land.
God made the whales and the dolphins, which used to be land animals
but now live in the sea.
In verses 26-27 we read:
Then God said, `Let us make humankind in our image, according to
our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea,
and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all
the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that
creeps upon the earth.' So God created humankind in his image,
in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
God made the male and female the intersex the transgender,
the agender and bigender, the gender fluid (who, like the beaches,
sometimes feel male and sometimes feel female) and everything in between.
The rhetorical device being used repeatedly in Genesis is called
"merism": in which a combination of two contrasting parts of the whole
refer to the whole. The same device is used elsewhere in the Bible,
for example in Ps 95:4 the psalmist says "In his hand are the depths
of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also." The psalmist
is using the heights and the depths to include everything in between:
the lower slopes and the plains also belong to God!
In Rev 22:13 Jesus says "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first
and the last, the beginning and the end." He is the beginning
and the end and everything in between.
