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What is it?: Transgender is an umbrella term. It encompasses all individuals from transvestites to transsexuals to androgynes. Basically speaking, a transgendered person is someone who was assigned a sex at birth that they feel does not match up with their mental gender completely or at all. Sex being one's biological body. Gender being one's own identity of themselves, who they are, how they behave, etc.
Gender issues begin as early as eight weeks in the womb. At this time the brain should be getting signals from the developing genitalia to determine what gender to make the mind. Normally the messages from the genitals reach the brain fine, and the correct gender is assigned to match up with the body. For whatever reason ...stress, alcohol, diet, illness on the mothers part ...sometimes the signals get confused. One can end up with a perfect female brain and sadly be in a male body. Growing up these children will know what gender they truly are, and often suffer great confusion because of it.
Imagine yourself as you are. And pretend you're suddenly trapped in the body of the opposite sex. Everyone calls you by a name that doesn't feel right. The titles and pronouns used on you are not acceptable to you (eg. you're a male who's been terribly named Martha ...people address you as Miss, she, her ...etc).
Now realize there's no escaping the body you have and the way people view you.
You're in a prison.
Luckily, there is hope. You can get sex re-assignment thanks to the technologies of today. Surgery, hormones, name change ... It all seems like some sort of miracle.

The questions I have for you are ...:
Do you view transgenderism as a birth defect or a perversion chosen by the individual?
Does God accept those who change their biological sex to match their gender?
Is transgenderism one of many of God's tests on humanity?
How do you think you would cope with being a transgendered person?

Ask any Christian and they will tell you that what God does, He does for a reason, and even if we don't know the reason, it's alright, because He does, and He is working everything for your benefit.

I highly, highly doubt a person would choose to be transgendered. There is so much stress and pain and aggravation that comes with something like that, that you'd have to be a masochist to truly choose to be transgendered.

Does God accept those who change their biological sex? Absolutely. He made them, He loves them, and He has wonderful plans for them. Whether or not their act was acceptable is hard to say. But whatever reason God had for putting them into the body they had should probably be worked out by the individual. I'm not saying that by any means it would be an easy task, but God never gives us more than we can handle. He wants to test us, bring us through fire, so that when we come out we are more beautiful than when we came in. Transgendered individuals are not freaks of nature, they are not broken, there is nothing wrong with them. How is being in the body of the opposite sex different from being morbidly obese (assuming that it is entirely genetic and you have done everything you can to try and change it)? Both are not something you would choose if you had to, but God has a reason for it. Though .... maybe this was a bad example, because God would definitely condone surgery to fix the weight issue, whereas I'm not sure how God would feel about a person changing their sex. confused I would suggest taking it to God. Talk to Him about the situation He has given you. That's usually the best way to undersand what He's given to you.

I can't really say how I would cope, since you can never know what you would do. I can only hope that if I was in the situation I would cope as best I could. I would try to accept that this was what God had given me, and I would probably question His thinking, but in the end I hope I would realize that as scary and confusing as the situation is, He is doing it for me, and I hope I would continue to lean on Him to get me through the rougher bumps of being transgendered.

I feel that I'm bound by my own body, not because of gender, but because it's weak and inefficient. Is this of God?

Amen.