Coming out

When I was 7 I knew when I grew up I wanted to work with computers or be a pastor. Now that I am grown up I work with computers and will be one of Gods representatives to the LGBT community, particularly the transgender community.

My new name is Christine Spencer. I grew up Christopher Spencer.

While I had such clarity on what I wanted to be when I grew up I also had a secret. Many of my earliest memories are of me cross dressing and thinking I was a girl. I couldn't reconcile that with my body and I thought it was wrong. I knew girls do some things and boys do others. So despite these feelings and despite all the times I snuck on my mothers earrings (clip ons), or wore my sisters or mothers clothes...I told no one. I wanted to be good and I thought I was bad. It was a form of self loathing that only in the last few years have I begun to get over. In coming out now, I have made a choice. I have chosen to stop hating myself and with that choice comes the recognition that many people from family to friends to strangers will hate me for it.

As a child, I often dreamed I was a girl. I loved many girl things and many boy things. I often hid that I loved the girl things like playing paper dolls with my sister and watching girl shows like My Little Pony, Care Bears, and Strawberry Shortcake.

I could never quite reconcile it within myself and honestly I didn't want to. I wanted it to go away.

By high school I knew I liked girls. I thought surely this meant I was a boy but liking girls didn't really change my inner self, I still felt I was feeling more like a girl. I did boy activities but I wasn't fitting in. A large part of my childhood is lost to me now because I was not enjoying it.

When my puberty hit, I started to have breasts. Possibly that was because I was gaining weight fast but it could be something more. In any case, I have had breasts since. This was a source of both great comfort and great pain.

I remember once at scout camp where I was working on a life guarding merit badge and some little kid maybe 8 years old asked their father why I had breasts. It was devastating. He said what I thought, what I wondered, what haunted me.

Even today, I wonder if under the physical male shell there isn't more going on. It's probably nothing. I am probably in just a regular mans body but I am not like other men. I am also not fully like women.

Being trans is best understood if you think of a sliding scale with different points on the line. Some men are all men...Some women are all women...but in between we have a wide variety of people with different tastes and visions of themselves which they express in their clothing choices, in their mannerisms, and in their relationships. None of us are exactly alike.

Most people identify very closely to the lines that match their bodies but many are in between and some, like me, cross over to the other side. It's neither wrong or right, it just is. You are how your mind sees you to yourself and after a lifetime of trying to change it and believe I am not on the other side of the line...I accepted I was and I accepted that it just is.

I think I prayed more prayers than stars in the sky asking to have it changed. God never answered me until I felt him call me Christine and later when he woke me up to start They Know Not...which has not received the attention it has deserved.

All that praying with no answers...but I didn't lose faith because God has been good to me. He has blessed me by answering other prayers, saving my life (on more than one occasion), and giving me my wife and children. Many lessons also have been learned over my life because of him.

Today, I am able and called to come out boldly because of his love and his enduring grace. I can do it with my heart clean having rejected and grown out of much of my sin nature by his guidance without fear that I am letting him down. Without fear that I am lying to myself. Without fear that I am slandering his name.

My God is good. There are none like him. He created the heavens and the Earth and all things in them. His power and vision are unmatched.

It's a mighty small box painted around God if people think he can't create people like me. Clearly he does because I am a witness to it and so are millions of other believers. Our experiences are different, our walks on paths less traveled but our destinations are the same.

I'm out. I'm me. I'm going to reach people that are lost. If you have a problem with that, you are not standing against me...but against God who stands behind me. Leading me from behind much like a driver in a car steers the wheels of the car.

I take the Bible very seriously. I still believe the Earth and all creation are young. I don't believe our story stopped with the early church. I don't believe that the Bible is the end only the guidebook from which we can learn about God. We are his messengers. His people.

He entrusted us with sharing his love in every generation across all time and to all people. My job is to share it with others like me. Standing against someone in Gods name does not bring them closer to God. It does not change them in a positive way. Degrading them does not uphold How precious and wonderfully made they are to God.

Doing these things does not lift up God, it pulls God from their grasp. They get lost and abandoned. This has devastating consequences which are well detailed in study after study.

That is not how God works. It's fruits are layed bare for those with eyes to see. It is because of this that I must come out and pick up my cross.

I am Christine Spencer, trans-woman, follower of Christ, servant to all.

Love and grace to all who read these words. I pray you can understand.

In Re: to http://thesouthend.wayne.edu/index.php/article/2011/05/detroit_seminary_hosts_lgbtq_dialogue_session

I'm a trans woman.  I am not impressed with this event at all if the reporting here is accurate.

First of all, there is no way that 150 out of 300 people are gay or lesbian unless you have an event that is targeted to or organized by gay people.  Certainly not at a church service.  Try 20-40 out of 300.

Next, gay men should be men.  Trans-women should not be.  I don't know what was meant by that but be careful, you might just marginalize the community I belong to and that's not right...particularly from a group that knows what it's like.

Third and probably most importantly, if you believe you are gay and can't be saved, you need to stop being gay.  If you can't God must be a real cruel master.  What father would create someone in the impossible situation of being something they can't be?

Here's what I believe.  I believe Jesus taught about love.  He was right their criticizing the super religious and told them that they "strained at a gnat and swallowed the camel."  They didn't get it then and they don't get it now.  Same people in different stripes.

Jesus said do as they say not as they do.  Love like they say...not like they do.  Selfless love esteeming others as more important than you and humbly seeking God through prayer is where we LGBT Christians need to be.  We should act as peacemakers between the very conservative and the LGBT community as LGBT members of faith.

We must bridge that gap and extend the love of God to our LGBT brothers and sisters and welcome them into his kingdom.  We can't sit in shame and silence while others whom he loves are lost to lies and confusion.

The purpose of marriage is to prevent the married couple from sinning.  It's blessed and sanctified by God for that reason.  Just because the examples in the Bible didn't include gay people doesn't mean God never intended it.  Just as Jesus saves and sanctifies the church, marriage saves and sanctifies the couple in it from sin.  God graciously allows us through marriage many blessings and many of those blessings also would be of great benefit to gay and lesbian couples.

God made bridges when people needed him too.  He granted GRACE.  He parted the sea.  He guided the stones to fell a giant.  GOD is GOOD.  GOD ALWAYS MAKES A WAY and as the church it is our job to make that way for those that are lost and hurting and needing his love.  We were extended the authority to act and we have every right and obligation to do so.

If we get lost in the rule of the law we lose sight of grace.  Jesus said there is a time and a season for all things and extending marriage to committed same sex couples and accepting the truth of others who are different so that Gods message of love is not LOST on them has come.

Paul asked the question should we continue to sin so that grace should abound and answered it for us also.  Not all things are beneficial so of course not...

Yet this is one thing where we can see the harm and feel the pain.  We can also see how that is overcome by people learning to accept themselves.  We can see the joy and goodness that flows from someone who lives in what they believe to be their truth.  Even if you think it is not what God intended, how can you suggest that they should be stuck being miserable and feeling despised by God?  How can anyone of faith reconcile our loving God with that pain?

Studies conclusively show that if a family accepts and loves their gay child the child will thrive but if the child faces rejection, judgement, or condemnation the risks all across the board are worse.

BY ALL THAT IS HOLY AND GOOD...judge the FRUITS of the actions!  WHICH ARE FROM GOD?

Know it in your heart.  God loves gay people too.  If you can't see this and your heart is so hard then Paul's words in 1 Timothy 4 are for you:

¹ The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. ² Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron. ³ They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth. ⁴ For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, ⁵ because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.

 Everything God created is good.  LGBT people are born that way.  They almost always try not to be who they are sometimes to the point where they give up on themselves and attempt suicide. (well over 20% have attempted.  Higher numbers in the trans community).  It's often but not always a narrow and hard road.  Particularly at first.  If you can't see the pain then there is something wrong.  If you can't have compassion then there is something wrong.

The Church will overthrow and tear down this wall.  Gods people can not be held apart any longer.  His message will prevail.  You watch.  You see.  Millions will be saved!

The great commission

Matthew 28:

18 Then Jesus came to them and said,“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them ina the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

This was what Jesus asked of his disciples.  Go, make believers...and they did.  Today we have 2.1 Billion believers in the world.  Those believers represent some of the richest and poorest people in the world.  They represent people in big cities and small towns.  They represent people of all walks of life and diverse life experiences.

In the general population recent studies have indicated 8.9% of the population is lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transsexual (LGBT).  Many of them remain hidden.  If that number held into the Christian population then almost 187 million people are in the Church already, however, all indications are that is not the case.  The simple truth is the church has made them feel unwelcome.  The church has persecuted them even to the point of bearing false witness and murdering them.  Mind you, not every one...but many.

What weighs heavily on my heart is to think that it's likely that 603 million people don't hear the same gospel the same way as the 2.1 billion believers.  To them it's like going to church and finding the doors are closed and boarded up.  They hear that God hates them and is sending them to hell.

My soul cries out for these people.  Can't we preach righteousness without judgement?  Can't we preach love without conditions?  Can't we preach tolerance without limitations?

If we really believe that what God wants is us with him, why would so many have to feel like the doors aren't and never were open to them?

I promise that it is my goal to pry those doors open and rush the gates of heaven with as many of my 603 million LGBT friends as I can take with me.

Matthew 3

7But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? 8Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. 9And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. 10The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

11“I baptize you withb water for repentance. But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. 12His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

I am telling you the truth here, the Church is not the one holding the winnowing fork.  That is reserved for Jesus.  Shame on us for ever trying to wield it at the harvest.  

Imagine.

I am a mostly-closeted transsexual woman and a Christian. I am also married and have three children. I write this as a believer to believers.

Galatians 1:8-9 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!

Galatians 5:12-14 You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Here it is place the law bare before you. Love me as you would yourself.

Put yourself in my shoes. Imagine feeling that something is wrong about you begging and pleading with God to make it go away. Imagine feeling like you had to be something even though you weren’t. Imagine hating yourself and wanting to die. Imagine a day where you decide the world would be better off without you. Imagine failing.

Imagine then accepting who you are. Imagine making peace with God. Imagine telling your parents, siblings, and others.

What would you want? What would love be?

Would you want to be forced to out yourself every time you have to go pee? Would you want to have people that will kill you for no more reason than because you are expressing your truth?

Why would you tolerate or accept as normal a violent reaction? Why would you assume that I am a rapist or a child molester?
Why would you deny me in your church?
Why would you avoid me?

Are you living as Jesus did? Do you really know him?

I am your neighbor.

This is my cross and millions of others carry it too.

As a believer, I am asking you to reconsider your actions. I am telling you I am not your enemy. The anger and hatred that you might feel towards me does not come from God. Your pity is also not from God.

Moreover, I am warning you if your actions cause Gods children to turn from him, he will hold you accountable.

There are an estimated 100 million to 600 million LGBT people in the world and the vast majority of them believe that God is mean and evil or a fairy tale because the leaders of Christian movements say words that make them feel hated.

Why would someone you are loving think you hate them?

Because they are being killed, beaten, taunted, and generally condemned for doing nothing more than expressing their inner truth.

You want to love your neighbor as yourself? Put yourself in my shoes. Hear what is being said.

There are always examples of people living a life that is filled with horrible sin and debauchery but you can’t possibly expect that to change when the message from the majority of believers is that God doesn’t really accept them. Doesn’t want them in their church. Doesn’t recognize their loved ones. Takes joy in their affliction.

Change that message and watch all of HEAVEN open up with a revival larger than any before. Imagine 400 million people turned to God.

Imagine.

Is your town next for protecting perversion?

Dave Welch, a pastor from Houston, writes an oped piece for wnd.com asking "Is your town next for protecting perversion?"

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=233133


That's how he sees people.  Perverts.

He wants to make sure that people like me are continuously harassed and treated with contempt so we never forget our place.  It is difficult to see him as anything other than how I view the southern pastors that never spoke against the evil racism of the deep south...where all those "colored people" needed to be kept in their place.

It's just the colored people are now LGBTIQ people.

I think it is ignorance though.  He can't know what it's like because he is not in the situation.  He seems lacking in empathy.

Pastor Welch, you slander me in calling me a pervert and you harm me by wanting me treated less than equal.

You like James 4....please carry on.

James 4:
¹¹ Brothers and sisters, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister^[d] or judges them speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. ¹² There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you—who are you to judge your neighbor?

Homosexuality is a threat?

Gregg Everhart tells us that homosexuality is a threat.
http://www.the-dispatch.com/article/20101123/LETTERS/101129948/-1/news?p=all&tc=pgall

I question the two main points he makes because he fails to see the forest through the trees.  Let's look at his points one at a time:

It is medically unhealthy, life threatening, it is nonsensible, and unnatural (They cannot reproduce). The statistics prove much higher percentages of child molestation, diseases (AIDS, venereal, etc), mental illness and suicide than heterosexual.

This is a chicken or egg situation.  He is saying that LGBT people are more messed up than heterosexual people.  Which he claims is borne out statistically.  He is in fact, correct.  The problem is, he doesn't think it through to the next step, why?  In essence he just says "You can't be LGBT because you will be sick so we won't allow it."  That ignores the *FACT* that there are people that are and always have been LGBT.  So what to do with us?  Kill us?  Is that his Christian response, it's been done before.


I want to make an assertion.  I assert that LGBT people are the same as everyone else.  THE SAME.  Statistics can be used to deceive and that is just what Gregg is doing.  It's a slight of hand trick.  


The failure is in not asking the question, WHY?  THE why question gets to the sin.  It can help us uncover the truth. 


Why more child molesters?  Question:  What percentage of the child molesters are openly LGBT?  I would assert that it is very very few.  The vast majority live a life pretending to be something they aren't and so when they inevitably need to express their intimate needs they use a child.  


Children are the logical choice for someone so out of touch with who they are.  Their innocence and easy to gain trust mean that the person can seek that need for human companionship and love without exposing their horrible LGBT self.  Thus they commit an unspeakable crime that makes them UTTERLY deserving of hell because they failed to get the love and companionship that they needed in a healthy and mutually consenting relationship with another adult.


When LGBT activists press for equal rights what they are saying is "We want the freedom to have HEALTHY mutually consenting relationships with other adults and to be treated as equal under the law."  These people are not the people that Gregg rightfully has problems with but rather they are the healthy ones yet the healthy ones get attacked by Gregg...not the sick ones.


Why are the sick ones sick?  Because of people like Gregg that make them hate themselves because they BELIEVE that homosexuality is a threat...and they hate themselves for it.


Increased prevalence of venereal diseases?  Again, a symptom not the problem.  The problem is that more people in the LGBT community are doing self destructive behavior.  I am talking about prostitution, drugs, and cruising.  Again you absolutely have to ask the WHY question.


The answers here vary a bit.  Prostitution is more common because we frequently have employment discrimination and can't find gainful employment...because people like Gregg don't like us and either fire us or make sure to complain to our employers.


Drugs, because of that self hatred and need to escape the reality of who they are and the life they live.


Cruising, because they have been told and believe that they aren't worthy of a mutually exclusive and beneficial relationship.


None of these things are good but EVERY ONE OF THEM has a root cause that points back to the DESTRUCTIVE message that their lives are wrong as perpetrated by Gregg.


Suicide?  Come on.  If they buy the message, they act out in horrible ways or they turn it in on themselves.  


Being true to who we are is a brave and courageous thing.  We have been marginalized and attacked all through history because we are different.  We march to the tune of a different drummer than people like you Gregg but if you fail to see the harm you are doing and your implicit shame in this it is you that will answer to God for it.  Your crimes against his people are great and you have not repented of your sin.


Please Gregg, stop.  Ask the why questions and employ some empathy.  You are not under attack.  Your families are not under attack.  We desperately need a better way, Gregg.  We need your help.


We need to have the institution of marriage.  We need to have that ideal of what we *SHOULD* be living like.  A structure that lifts up and glorifies God because MARRIAGE teaches people agape love.  Self sacrificial love.  LGBT people do have that in many cases but the structure of marriage will cement that for so many more.  


We need acceptance and not rebuke.  We need mutual respect and understanding.  


Gregg, a recent study by an online dating site shows that LGBT people are looking for other LGBT people for relationships.  Gregg, no one is looking for you or your families to become LGBT, we would rather be just friends.

It is a direct threat to our traditional family structure that God designed and our forefathers honored and instituted in our laws. Read Leviticus 18:22 and Romans 1:26-32. 

So Gregg, do you know what is being said in these verses?  They are about two different things.  One is a cleanliness issue. Anal sex is dirty and dangerous and yes it is more likely to transmit diseases.  That is the Leviticus verse.  It's a safety issue that God wanted to help people be safer.  It's still true today, but like eating pig and shell fish, we have better sanitation practices that mitigate most of the risks given stable monogamous relationships.


There are a few other versus in Leviticus that have been related to LGBT people when actually they are about the practices of other religions...which is exactly what you see talked about in Romans.  You just have to look a right before the verses you mention.


I make no excuse for drug use, uncommitted sexual relationships, worshiping idols, or pedophiles...they are sick.  Every one of them but they are no worse or better than anyone else.  We all have sins we have shamefully committed.  


What we have as Christians though is an eternal God who loves us.  He loved us so much that he gave us his son as a sacrifice for our inequities so that we might have eternal life with him.  That is both a gift and a responsibility.  It requires us only to ask Jesus who stands at the door waiting to welcome us and to love abundantly both God and all people.


Gregg, I am not a threat to you but I am transsexual.  I would be happy for you to be in Gods kingdom with me.  However, just as you think I am in gross violation of Gods law and at risk of Hell I believe you are the one at risk of Hell.  I care for you too much Gregg to allow you to go to Hell without a word spoken.  Repent of the false doctrine that God condemns people to hell because of who they are rather than the EVIL and WICKED things they do.


Gregg, what you and so many Christians mean for good is being used by the deceiver to achieve great wickedness.  Our faith is litterally under attack because of the perceived hypocrisy of it. 


While God created man and woman his absence from restoring our human genes is causing a slow and constant degradation in our DNA.  Generational curses are passed from parents to children with new breakdowns occurring at a genetic level with every new generation.  


We know for a fact that some people have genetic structures of both sexes.  Do you deny their existence was Gods doing?  We know for a fact that some people feel a disconnect, as I do, with the gender we were born in.  We know for a fact that some people feel an innate attraction to people of their own gender.  Do you deny us because of what you can not see or know?  Is the collective testimony of millions of people not sufficient?  The strong biological indicators?  


Cancer attacks from the inside out usually hiding beneath the surface...just a minor mutation.  You don't deny it but years ago no one knew.  Killed from the inside unknown killer.  


The politically correctness being shown by people is because we are FAR MORE AFRAID of judging wrong than of failing to judge.  You should be too.


While we may not know why God is allowing this, it is happening and because you can NOT justify MURDERING us before God you have no choice but to live with us.  


Even if you will not be my friend, can we avoid being enemies?  Can you give me the respect I deserve because I am a creation of our loving father just like you are?


-Christine

Experts fear copycat suicides after bullying cases | bullying, experts, attention - Local News - WRGB CBS 6 Albany

Experts fear copycat suicides after bullying cases | bullying, experts, attention - Local News - WRGB CBS 6 Albany

Experts know that these suicides have been happening every day for a long time. It used to be that LGBT people would simply be hunted down and killed, then people learned if they could make it bad enough for people...they would take care of it themselves.

Any expert knows this.

They were going to kill themselves anyway. Now they are killing themselves with notes making sure everyone knows.

That's not a copy cat, that's notification.

People don't kill themselves just to make a point. They kill themselves because they see it as the best possible action.

The job of society then is to teach people that it is not the best action.

It gets better. We do care. You are not alone.

Now if their parents and friends would step in an fufill the role of society, we might just see an impact.

No Christians, you CAN NOT tell someone that they are sick and wrong and expect them to feel like you love them.

Your job, Christians, is not to defend God. Your job is to love abundantly. If love doesn't feel like love, you are doing it wrong.

Got it? Get it. Now.