r/OpenChristian

I’m posting because I genuinely don’t know where else to turn, and I’m hoping to hear from Christians who have experienced something similar.

My husband recently came out to me as transgender. He believes that he is a woman, and he still considers himself a Christian. He loves God and says that his faith is still very important to him.

I love my husband deeply, and I don’t want this post to come across as me attacking or judging him. I’m trying to understand something that I honestly cannot wrap my head around right now.

We are both Christians, and I was raised to believe that God created us male and female and that our biological sex is part of His design. Because of that, I’m struggling with the idea that someone can believe they are transgender while also believing that God created them and that they are following Christ.

For me personally, right now, those two things feel like they cannot coexist. I realize that may sound harsh, but I’m being honest about where my understanding is at this moment. I’m not trying to make a final judgment about my husband or anyone else. I’m trying to understand.

I have so many questions.

How do transgender Christians reconcile their identity with Scripture?

How do you understand passages about God creating us male and female?

If you believe that being transgender is compatible with Christianity, what changed or helped you understand the Bible differently?

And for Christians who have had a spouse come out as transgender, how did you process that? How did you reconcile your love for your spouse, your marriage, and your understanding of God’s design?

I’m also grieving. I feel like the future I thought we were going to have has suddenly become uncertain, and I’m scared. I love my husband, but I’m struggling with what this means for our marriage and for my own faith.

I’m not looking for people to tell me that my husband is evil or that he’s going to hell. I’m also not looking for people to tell me to blindly accept something I’m not currently able to understand.

I genuinely want to hear thoughtful Christian perspectives from people who have wrestled with this seriously.

If you’ve been in my position—or if you are a transgender Christian and can explain how you reconcile these things—I would really appreciate hearing your perspective.

Please be kind. I’m asking because I’m struggling, not because I want to hurt anyone. Thank you.

just have some really tough questions.

So most of my friends dont know god but are really good people. When they die does god just go, hey you heard about me but never put anytime believing in me so you're going to hell. I feel like thats wrong but then again in the bible it says that the only way to heaven is to have a relationship and believe in jesus.

What im trying to say is people might hear about god but think religion is bad so they dont want to believe. But they live their life's perfectly good, are they going to hell?

Also it feels like I know I have a choice to believe in God but it feels like if dont believe then im going to hell. That just seems so messed up like, and feels like forced love or else. I dont really know how the afterlife will play out or how to get into heaven. Also i dont want to go against any athiests but can only cristians answer to this post.

I’m not really sure if this is the place for this, but I figured I’d post anyway. I’m 27 and have been agnostic for the last 8 years, it’s not that I didn’t believe originally, but I fell away from church after I was outed as a lesbian at the age of 19. I think over the years my frustration with the lack of acceptance and people constantly telling me my love was wrong made it basically impossible for me to believe anymore.

Anyway, over the last year or so I have felt a desire to go back to church, to find that community again and feel that sense of life beyond this, but because of me pulling away for so long, I don’t know HOW to believe anymore. Do I just go to church even if I don’t believe and hope it finds me? Or is this something I need to do alone?

Any advice would be amazing, Thank you.

As a deist, I have a worry about my own position. Deism encourages individual thinking: no clergy, no doctrine, just each person reasoning their way to God. Christianity, by contrast, is held together by shared belief: a community, a creed and leaders who keep everyone roughly on the same page. My worry is that individual thinking has no ceiling. When everyone reasons alone, you can't know how far any one person's thinking will go, or whether it will end somewhere harmful, to others or to the faith itself. The strongest objection is that shared belief has caused far bigger disasters. Crusades and holy wars weren't led by lone thinkers; they were carried out by groups acting together on a common certainty. A lone extremist can only do so much damage without followers. That's true. But a community at least has guardrails: shared norms that catch a person before they drift too far. And that's where the real problem lies. Christians have churches, and Muslims have mosques. Where do people like us go? Deism's greatest strength, having no institution, is also its greatest weakness: there's nowhere to gather, compare our thinking and keep each other honest. Is there really a community for people like us, or are we each building our guardrails alone?

Hello,

I am a convinced Christian universalist, however I have struggled about what, if anything, that changes about the traditional interpretation of marriage in the Bible as being between a man and woman. I honestly want to support gay marriage, as I believe that its unfair that someone wouldn't be allowed to express their love in a monogamous marriage just because they are not heterosexual, however I feel like the Bible is more convincing when it comes to universalism than it does for permitting gay marriage. If anyone has changed their mind, and can perhaps share their perspective, or proovide (academic) resources that helped, I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks!

I don't really know where to begin, but I need to say this somewhere. I was raised Muslim, and for years I have struggled with questions about faith, identity, and where I truly belong. Outwardly, I have often tried to fit into what was expected of me, even withdrawing my Christianity and trying to suppress what was happening in my heart. But Jesus kept finding His way back to me.

For more than a year especially, I have tried to be honest with myself about this. I've read the Gospels, thought deeply about Jesus, His life, His words, His suffering and His resurrection, and I keep coming back to the same conclusion: Jesus is my Lord.

No other religion feels like home to me in the same way Christianity does. There is something about Jesus that reaches somewhere deep inside me. I don't just admire Him intellectually. I love Him.

But there is another part of myself that I am also hiding: I am gay. And honestly, that makes everything even more complicated.

I don't feel at home in many churches because so many Christians and churches are unfortunately not accepting of LGBTQ people. At the same time, I don't want to give up Jesus. I don't want to choose between my love for Christ and being honest about who I am. Right now, I feel most at home with progressive Christianity, where I can believe in Jesus while also being accepted as a gay person. I know Christianity is much bigger than any one church, but I still desperately want a Christian community where I don't have to hide either my faith or myself.

Sometimes I feel like I've failed Jesus. I've been afraid. I've withdrawn from Christianity because I was trying to fit in because of my background and former religion. I have to keep much of this secret from my family and from people around me, and that hurts more than I can explain. I don't know when I'll be able to tell them. Maybe someday I will be able to openly say, I am a Christian. I love Jesus. And I am gay.

For now, I carry Jesus quietly in my heart. And honestly, that's the one place where nobody can take Him away from me. Jesus is my Lord and Savior. I love Him, and I don't want to lose Him.

So please, if you're reading this, pray for me. Pray that I find peace, courage, a safe Christian community, and a way forward. If anyone knows good resources, books, or online YouTube channels where I can watch sermons for LGBTQ-affirming/progressive Christianity, I would genuinely appreciate them!

i find myself with a person who claims that even if jesus's sacrifice fulfilled the old covenant and made a new one, that homosexuality is still a sin because it is written in leviticus. and even kowing that those laws were directed towards the israelites of mount sinai, they still claim that what's written in there are sins still.

to quote the person in question, they said:

His covenant aims to ensure we stop judging on earth what will be judged in heaven; that does not mean it ceases to be a sin.
When He saved the woman from being stoned, what did He tell her?
"Go and sin no more," for the Levitical law established that sexual immorality was a sin, and whatever Jesus did not implicitly annul remains a sin.
That is why we know that eating pork or wearing garments made of mixed fabrics is not a sin, whereas those other things certainly are.
In this instance, the only thing open to criticism is how Christians treat sinners—a point on which I agree; no one deserves to be mistreated because of their sin, for: "let the one who is without sin cast the first stone."His covenant aims to ensure we stop judging on earth what will be judged in heaven; that does not mean it ceases to be a sin.
When He saved the woman from being stoned, what did He tell her?
"Go and sin no more," for the Levitical law established that sexual immorality was a sin, and whatever Jesus did not implicitly annul remains a sin.
That is why we know that eating pork or wearing garments made of mixed fabrics is not a sin, whereas those other things certainly are.
In this instance, the only thing open to criticism is how Christians treat sinners—a point on which I agree; no one deserves to be mistreated because of their sin, for: "let the one who is without sin cast the first stone."

the main point is, i don't think homosexuality is a sin, but how does someone explain that to someone who thinks that all of leviticus still applies unless jesus directly denied it as a sin?

I struggled to title this one. I am a pretty confused deconstruct-ed? (or -ing?) former evangelical. These days I'm liberal-leaning Anglican but to be honest with quite a lot of agnosticism hiding in there.

I'm asking myself what about my Christian beliefs or practice actually depends on the possibility that God is definitely there or could actually do something, act in the present day, whether physically or spiritually (and whether or not God might in fact choose to act)?

If somehow I could know that God wasn't real, would anything about my beliefs or practice actually have to change?

Forgive me if I'm being unclear. What should actually be the solid substance of a progressive faith, that resists being reduced to a social justice club decorated with cross symbols? To what extent can I actually expect to connect with God in a way that isn't just theoretical, abstract, literary, academic?

I've done countless alter calls, recited the "sinners prayer", given my heart and life over to Jesus Christ, confessed and professed that He died for my sins and rose from the dead and I read my Bible regularly to spend time "rooted in the Word". I still don't know how to have "a relationship with Jesus".

I feel spiritually empty. Mired down with past sins that I struggle forgiving myself for. I don't feel saved, forgiven, loved or redeemed by God or by Jesus. I also have a very difficult time loving others, especially fellow brothers in Christ.

I also probably have what people used to call a "Mute Spirit". I have trouble talking, find myself struggling to participate in group activities and I don't know how to "evangelize and tell others about everything Jesus has done for me".

I know that faith isn't about feelings but what about the fullness of joy that Christ says He will give in the gospels. Please pray for me that I can come to know God and Jesus better and have a real relationship with them and claim all the promises the Bible says they are ready to bestow.

Hey everyone. I'm new to progressive Christianity, and I come from an evangelical and fundamentalist upbringing. I am trying to find a new study bible that can help me figure stuff out, and also show it academically.

I have a NRSVue personal bible, and that translation seems good.

Any recommendations?