Queer

Hello everyone! I hope you are all doing well.

For those of you who don’t know: Hi, I’m Genderqueer and I’m a Christian. To a lot of people, my religion and my identity don’t particularly fit together. But I’m not here to talk about them cause really it's none of their business. This is about me and the internalized shame and struggle I used to carry about my identity alongside my faith. 

As I have mentioned before, I grew up in a very conservative church with your typical conservative church ideas. This of course included expected gender roles and ideals for girls and boys. As I have grown and made my own choices I have strayed away from these ideals, but they have left their mark. Every now and again I find myself mentally thinking I have to slip back into the expected female gender roles, or even that I need to switch over to complete masculinity or I won’t be valid as a genderqueer person. These thoughts are, of course, transphobic. No trans, nonbinary, or otherwise genderqueer person should feel forced to present themselves as a conventional binary depiction. However, I have found in my experience, that the conservative church lays the mental foundations for these thoughts and expectations in people. This leads a lot of genderqueer Christians to distance themselves from their churches and adds much stress.

So how do we move past this? In short, it's a long process. The things we learn as children lay the mental foundations for the rest of our lives. The best things I have found that help is in reclaiming parts of the Bible that are written against conventional gender. This can range from “Jesus never wore pants,” or “God is not bound by human gender,” to becoming a Biblical Literalist and reading Galatians 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” However you decide to go about fitting your identity and religion together, just know that God loves you for you regardless of if you cut your hair short or start hormones or even don’t change your body at all. God loves you. 

                                                                                    Until next time, 

                                                                                      Rune