Letter: Transgender not recognized in the Bible

To the Editor:

In a recent letter, a religious person mentioned transgender discrimination. Transgender is not a recognized gender in the Bible. In the Bible, God created two genders, male and female. There is no mention of a transgender gender.

In the New Testament, Mark 6:9-11 states that, “But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

God makes it clear that any relationship other than this is an abomination or sin in I Corinthians 6:9-10 and many other scriptures. Various other references refer to sexual immorality, which includes adultery, fornication and unnatural relationships among men and women.

As to the greatest commandment, Jesus said in Mark 12: 28-31 “first to love the Lord your God with all your soul, all your heart and all your mind, and second, to love your neighbor as yourself.” To follow Jesus is to do both. But if you follow the first commandment, you are committed to God and His Word, the Bible. If you do the second, you are demonstrating the love that the biblical Jesus showed in order to bring sinners to repentance.

The reason Jesus died, and that He loves us, is to bring us to the saving knowledge of Him through repentance. The Bible also says in 2 Timothy 2:25, it states that we are to “gently instruct those who oppose the truth. Perhaps God will change those people’s hearts, and they will learn the truth.”

Susan Brambert Shields

Oswego