How can transgendered people be religious?

[Angel On Acid]

I'm very atheist so I can't really understand this. How can you be happy for the body that god gave you? How can you be religious when there's religious groups that hate on us?

[cynthialee]

I am not Christian, but I do believe in the Goddess.

I believe that this life is a personal chalenge issued to us by the gods/demons as a learning oportunity for our eternal souls.

Also not all religions or even all christian churches are anti trans.

[Miniar]

Being religious doesn't automatically make one happy with what gave you.

[Lachlann]

Because there are religious groups that accept LGBT members. They're usually the ones that realize that all the passages in the bible about 'homosexuality' and such, aren't really about that. There's also nothing really about transsexuals in there, the only thing that comes close is a passage about it is the whole clothing thing... which had more to do with men dressing up as women to get away from wars and women dressing as men to get into them.

Jesus also pretty much came along and denounced a lot of things too. I don't think he intended for a religion, I think he intended for people to simply not be so zealous and not persecute people like they were. He was all about hanging with those who 'sinned'.

God also doesn't meddle in mortal affairs anymore. So it's not him that messed things up, it's just the course of natural error. The whole, "If God exists, then why was there an earthquake in Haiti or this in X place" arguments don't really work because he's backed off from these things a long time ago.

I'm not particularly religious myself, for other reasons, but I don't think a couple of religious groups that hate on a certain type of person should scare someone away from all religion.

[Sarah Louise]

I am a Christian.  I managed to come to terms with the issues.

Sarah L.

[spacial]

I'm very atheist so I can't really understand this. How can you be happy for the body that god gave you? How can you be religious when there's religious groups that hate on us?

There are groups claiming to represent all sorts of religions who behave is disgraceful ways.

There is no justification in Jesus teaching for any sort of hatred.

I can be happy with everything God gave me. But it's up to me to do the best I can with it. God didn't tell me to pull my teeth, but it sure beats toothache.

[kyril]

Same as anyone else can.

I'm not an atheist because I'm trans, or because I'm angry, or because I'm feeling sorry for myself, or because I feel wronged by religion, or because I hate religious people. I'm an atheist because I don't believe in a god or gods, never have, and likely never will, because I seem to be just as constitutionally incapable of believing in deities as I am incapable of being a girl or being attracted to girls (and I've tried all three).

But for people who do believe, being trans is no more an obstacle than being gay or having a chronic illness or a tragic bereavement. Religion gives comfort and purpose to many trans people same as it does to many cis people.

[Amy1177]

I myself am not religious at all but I am very spiritual and believe in both a God and Goddess.  Quite honestly it doesn't make any sense to me any other way.  I also believe that we choose our path before we get here and we are only here to experience for our soul's advancement and for the God and Goddess.  I also believe that we are an overall product of all of our experiences from all of our lives.  We are also male and female entities on the other side and can choose to come down here to experience the world and go through what we do and overcome those challenges.  Whether it be a female entity in male body (myself) or others who are a male entity in a female body.  Also you can expect if you were the opposite sex in life more than your current one than chances are you are going to be attracted to the same sex in this life.  I don't believe that has to be the case for everyone but we did choose our bodies and what we were going to deal with before we got here.  The Mother and Father God are waiting for us on the other side where nothing but pure happiness and love exist.  I absolutely believe the only hell you will find is the one we live in right now for if the Mother and Father God are absolutely perfect beings than we can't put human characteristics on them and they would never want us to suffer eternally for any reason.

[Dryad]

(Not) Having a deity doesn't answer all questions. Does the deity choose imperfection as another kind of perfection? After all; purity creates homogenization; maybe the deity simply chooses to let DNA run haywire, in order to get the best results? Sure; some people get to be the butt of the joke, but that doesn't make it bad, per sé.

Being religious doesn't mean one would assume that the deity/deities of choice simply hand everyone some cards, and some people get a better hand then others. A lot of people believe in a deity that advocates freedom of being (as long as it harms none). Mishaps are a drawback of freedom, after all, but the beauty of it is worth it, to most people.

If a deity exists, who would be as arrogant to claim to understand it? To know how it reasons? To know that would be to know everything, and I don't think anyone would be as arrogant as that...

So for the rest of us: I think religion is for those of us who believe. There is no moral reason to follow a religion. There is a myriad of psychological reasons to follow a religion. And then there's simple, pure faith.

[Sandy]

I do not really accept dogmatic religions, but I do have a very deep spiritual connection to something "out there".

In a clinical analysis, this condition is just like many other birth defects.  Neither praising or damning to the random quantum fluctuations that occurred when my parents DNA combined to form me.

Would I hate G(g)od(dess) if I were born with a club foot?  Should I despise that which passeth all understanding because I was not born perfect?  Hardly.

I don't particularly believe in predestination or being given an earthly task to do.  But I do know that not everyone can carry the burden of this blessing inside a curse.

We endure, we survive.  For whatever reason, we are here.  To search for a reason, an excuse, someone to blame it on, in the end really serves no purpose.  You can't go back and unmake your life.  You have arrived here because of the conditions in your life and your reaction to them.  All that you can do is go on from here.

I participate in a dogmatic religion because I am accepted there and I do enjoy communion and fellowship with my neighbors.  Some know about me, some don't, all of them don't care.

-Sandy

[MillieB]

In an almost bizarre twist of fate, fundamentalist Islam has no problem with transsexualism or srs, it does however decree that homosexuality should be punishable by death, and this kind of thinking (particulaly in Iran) can lead to gay men having srs due to external pressures despite the fact that they are not transsexual. I have seen bits in the bible to suggest that christianity is not particulaly anti trans either, but it is more like stuff about God only caring about the inner soul and not the external body and some stuff about eunarchs. To be honest, I think that it's all a load of old tosh but that's just my opinion. Although if you actually read any of the gospels then I think that Jesus said some pretty cool things. Seems to bear very little similarity to the rubbish spouted by modern christians though. Can't wait for the rapture so that there are a lot less of them around

[Fenrir]

I've found that too many people in general are quite at peace with hypocrisy, ƃuıxǝʌ. 
Yes, I agree with the doing-what-you-can-with-what-you've-got approach. Your body is not ideal, but I reckon that a benevolent God would not begrudge you doing what must be done about it. I do not think that living your life trying to act a different persona while trying to deal with your body not being right is in God's plan at all! At the basis of most religions is this: 'be a good person'. How can you do that if you are not a person at all, just an act of one? (I'm not sure if that sentence was grammatically correct, it looks clumsy...)
Also, where are all the Christians here? I thought we had quite a few around...?

[confused]

not all religions /religious people condone transsexualism .
and weather it was God , nature ,coincidence , or seamonkeys  that caused (e.g) my existence , the fact is there *are* a lot of things that i'm no happy about (no only body) and what makes me unhappy should/would only be changed by me , so religious or not it's my own life and my own happiness , no one else is affected by it , so i don't care what anyone/thing else think about my pursuit of happiness , that's what i used to think when i was religious , and that's what i think now that i'm agnostic

[spacial]

I find it rather strange when people assume that everything has to be perfect, therefore, anything less than perfection must be God's fault.

Perhaps I should be asking, why do you think everything has to be perfect?

What exactly is perfect?

In a perfect world, we would all have perfect bodies and never get sick. There would be no war, no poverty, no natural disasters.

The problem of a booming birth rate would also be perfection since most of us would die of utter boredom.

[LordKAT]

I find it rather strange when people assume that everything has to be perfect, therefore, anything less than perfection must be God's fault.

Perhaps I should be asking, why do you think everything has to be perfect?

What exactly is perfect?

In a perfect world, we would all have perfect bodies and never get sick. There would be no war, no poverty, no natural disasters.

The problem of a booming birth rate would also be perfection since most of us would die of utter boredom.

nah, in a perfect world, population control would be a natural phenomena, like after a kid or 2, your body becomes infertile, or something along those lines.

[justmeinoz]

Easy.  As Galileo said, "The Bible tells me how to go to Heaven, not how the Heavens go". The same principal can be applied to every aspect of life, including GID.  Christian faith is not complicated, but some people seem to want to make it so.

Jesus message is about abolishing the artificial barriers that prevent people from connecting, and breaking down hierarchies. If someone is using the Bible to push a particular barrow, they are probably being selective in their use of the Old Testament, or putting the Letters of St Paul, for instance, above Jesus parables and other "direct" quotes.

Either way they are building walls, not pulling them down, and have missed the point completely. I pity them for leading stunted lives.

[Seras]

I find it rather strange when people assume that everything has to be perfect, therefore, anything less than perfection must be God's fault.

Perhaps I should be asking, why do you think everything has to be perfect?

What exactly is perfect?

In a perfect world, we would all have perfect bodies and never get sick. There would be no war, no poverty, no natural disasters.

The problem of a booming birth rate would also be perfection since most of us would die of utter boredom.

Well according to the Bible it is, kind of. All was perfect in Eden until Adam ate the apple. Leading to God unleashing disease, ageing, natural disaster etc. You can pin it on Adam for succumbing to temptation or on God for unleashing it.

Either way the explanation for how God the perfect being can only create a perfect creation makes sense in my eyes. If you are a perfect being, 100% perfect in every way. Then how could that which you make not be perfect also? After all all that you make is a reflection of yourself, creating an imperfect thing shows you to be imperfect. Virtue of your flawed ability in creating that imperfect thing.

However in my opinion the whole lets put an apple there, create a snake to tempt them and then unleash "hell" upon them if they succumb to it. Questions the perfection of his moral values.

By the way I am not religious, agnosticism is the only philosophical defencible position in my eyes. It is non-comittal

[justmeinoz]

That's only if you look at the Western Churches though.
As I understand it, the Orthodox have a different interpretation of the Garden of Eden story, and are working from the Greek Bible, not the King James or RC translations.

[MillieB]

When you look at it like that, you realise that we have based a whole society on a story about a talking snake conning some guy into eating an apple

Is that really the best we can do?

[Seras]

Well of course the whole thing is a metaphor.

But even if it is a metaphor God set up the temptation trap somehow!