Can God make mistakes?

[DaisyJoy1]

If you're a Christian - of any denomination - do you believe that God can make mistakes by putting people in the wrong bodies? I am thinking specifically of transgender people, obviously.

If you do believe that God can make mistakes, how do you connect this with the rest of your faith?

If you don't believe that God can make mistakes, how can you explain why transgender people feel the way that they do?

I am a Christian and my (atheist) friend asked me about this and I just didn't know how to answer her. Of course I don't believe that God can make mistakes - I KNOW He can't make mistakes. So how does that make sense within the context of the feelings of transgender people?

Was just wondering what other Christian's personal thoughts were about this.

I'm curious to know, as a Christian, how you explain natural disasters, birth defects, diseases, disability etc? Are these God's mistakes?

Very interesting question Op. I’m not religious so clearly the wrong person to answer but I’m really intrigued. :) I wonder if a religious person would simply say not to question God and in that sense it means the person who believes he/she should have been born the opposite sex is mistaken?

The phrase “the lord works in mysterious ways” was coined so people don’t think god can make mistakes and don’t question it further.

Interested in this too, if you are confident that God doesn't make mistakes? Why are some people dealt such a shitty hand in life, such as being born into poverty or with a disability? It doesn't make sense to me especially in the context of Christianity where we supposedly only get one life. It feels that God is very unfair

because people with disabilities have terrible lives, dealt such an awful hand , have a much poorer quality of life than non disabled people? It’s really shitty to have a disability?

Putting a man in a woman’s body or vice versa is surely no more of a mistake, if you believe in god, than giving a child cancer, giving a blind person eyes that don’t work, having somebody born with a birth defect (eg: post thalidomide), giving a person schizophrenia so that they see/ hear/ believe thing that aren’t true, having conjoined twins who didn’t separate in the womb etc.

It’s surely no more of a mistake than placing volcanoes that can erupt and kill people, tectonic plates that can shift and cause earthquakes, diseases such as HIV and Ebola that can kill and harm people, droughts and plagues which cause famine etc. How cam you explain why God would do any of these things which must surely all appear like mistakes if god was loving and caring? Believing that god could put a person in the wrong body, if that’s how you view being transgender, seems a very small mistake in comparison having children born with life-limiting conditions for children to be born healthy only to develop an awful life limiting condition that will see them die in childhood (eg: SMA, battens disease, sanfillipo) or to get a cancer diagnosis etc. If occasionally putting a person in the ‘wrong’ body for their sex/ gender was the only mistake god made then the world would be a much, much better place!

My dgs was born with a disability and I don't believe a loving god would inflict suffering on any human let alone a baby.
So for me God either doesn't exist or isn't benevolent. Choosing not to be benevolent would be worse so I don't believe God exists.

I absolutely understand what you're saying. But the things you are comparing being transgender to are diseases and disasters.

So this is what I'm asking.

I'm sure we all agree that being transgender isn't a disease or a disaster? So I am wondering how it can be explained from a religious perspective.

God doesn't make mistakes.

A few theories, for when it looks like a mistake-
everything happens for a reason, that it's the right body, even if you don't like it.
you can learn and grow from your experience of being out of sorts with your body.
People make mistakes- God didn't intend for me to have an obese body, I did that! Also God didn't intend gender, so feeling trapped in the wrong gender is a societal issue not a God mistake.

What I'm trying to express (albeit not very well) is that we all know that there are things about God that we can't understand. Like you said, why are some people sick? Why do bad things happen?

But if being transgender is not a sickness or a bad thing, then how can it be understood from a religious perspective? Did God make a mistake?

I really appreciate everyone's thoughts but am most interested in hearing from other Christians on this issue, I understand that atheists/agnostics/people from other religions will have their own thoughts which are obviously welcome to share, but it's not really the question I'm asking (although still interested to hear all thoughts, would really appreciate ideas from practicing Christians if possible!)

This is really interesting and exactly the sort of thing I was wondering about. Thank you for sharing!

I'm sorry, I agree that it's so difficult to comprehend how anything bad can happen to an innocent baby 😢Well outside of our understanding, difficult to accept even as Christians.

Your initial question was, 'Do you believe that God can make mistakes by putting people in the wrong bodies?' So I think it was relevant to ask. I am a Christian by the way and it wasn't meant to be antagonistic.

There's also the idea of this being an imperfect world, waiting for redemption.

There's a lot of traditional/theological thought about that- man's sin introduces everything that's wrong with the world. It's the Pandora's Box idea, I suppose.
God creates Eden.
Satan and man mess it up.
Jesus comes to put things right, and we're in the midst of that process now.
Eventually it will be redeemed.

I'm not keen on that one, personally.

Society and other people make mistakes. Treat your neighbor as you would like to be treated. This means allowing people to live their lives in peace regardless of how they choose to identify.
poverty and disability challenges are all human caused and not for a lack of resources.

God doesn't exist.

He did not say "you shall not be troubled", but that "you shall not be overcome".

Paraphrased from Mother Julian of Norwich

(I'm not religious, but I do like that one).

What about neurodisabilities like autism or ADHD etc; many neurodiverse people feel that being neurodiverse is an intrinsic part of them and very much positive thing but there are others who struggle and wish that they were neurotypical. It’s not a bad thing, it’s a difference. Why did god make this difference bough?

Clearly if there is a God then ‘he’ intended to give people different and even difficult things to deal with. Being transgender doesn’t have to be a bad thing, but that also doesn’t mean it was a mistake for god to make somebody transgender if you don’t believe god makes mistakes. Perhaps being transgender was the trial/ journey that god intended for those people to help shape them. I don’t understand why it has to be a mistake just because it isn’t a ‘bad’ thing. ‘Bad’ and ‘good’ are human concepts which may not be on god’s radar, god might not be looking at the many different types of people that have been put on the world in terms of whether the things they are going to go through are good/ bad.

I’m not a Christian and don’t believe in god but from talking to those who do and who worked alongside me as missionaries in some very devastating places my understanding of Christianity is that life on Earth isn’t the endgame, the end game is eternal life in heaven where things like your physical body won’t matter and it is your spiritual soul which matters. The trials and tribulations we face on earth are part of the journey towards heaven, they are things that can feel good or bad but which ultimately won’t matter in the end. What matters is building that relationship with god as you journey through your life regardless of the things that you face within life and working to follow god’s teachings in your day to day life. Putting a transgender person is the ‘wrong’ body is no more a mistake than giving a person a disability or chronic illness, it’s just a part of the journey that person has to work through on their way to becoming close enough to god to make it into heaven and receive eternal life. Ultimately at that point the physical body won’t matter.

A transgender person choosing to transition to rectify the fact they are in the ‘wrong’ body is presumably no different to a person with a chronic illness or disability receiving surgery or treatment etc to try and change, cure or alter that. If a person with a cleft lip gets in surgically fixed that doesn’t mean God made a mistake in making them that way, it means that was part of their journey and you could argue god also made the treatment which enabled them to be cured. The same with being transgender, if they were born with the ‘wrong’ body but can treat that with hormones and a social transition you could argue god made those things possible as well and that it was part of the intended journey for that person.

I don’t really understand why you are wanting to separate being transgender from all of the other things people do to ‘fix’ or change their minds or bodies (eg: surgery, transplants, prosthetics, amputations, medications, therapies etc) or why you think this issue specifically would be a mistake?

Interestingly I believe the CofE has accepted transitioned people as their new 'sex', provided they have a GRC. I think they can marry a transwoman and a man for example, despite being unable to marry two men, and I know there are trans ministers.

I find that (if I've understood it correctly) very interesting.

I genuinely can't comprehend in this day and age how people can still believe in God?,the Bible is the biggest fairy tale ever told and how can people really think there's a big man in the sky looking down on everybody?.Jesus did exist,there's scientific proof of that but as him being the son of God?,biologically it's impossible.Jesus was no more than a magician/conman who made people believe he could make wine from water or rise from the dead!.
If there was a God why would he allow babies to have cancer,or be raped and murdered while the murderer is allowed to live?.Why would he allow severely disabled people to be born severely disabled and have no quality of life,or for people to have such a shit life and suffer so much pain while others seem to breeze through life and are so fortunate?,it makes no sense to me.
The Church is the biggest cult ever known to man.

Here we go again 🙄

Maybe he put them on earth to challenge gender stereotypes, but the world is a fucked up place and won't let them do they feel they HAVE to change body in order to be more socially accepted as their chosen 'gender'

I genuinely can't comprehend in this day and age how people can still believe in God?,the Bible is the biggest fairy tale ever told and how can people really think there's a big man in the sky looking down on everybody?
I am a Christian and, in my experience, most of us certainly don't believe in a "big man in the sky looking down on everything".
I do believe in a overwhelming power that is trying to make the universe 'work' and I believe that Christ has been the person most able to explain that to us, albeit in an almost too simplistic manner.
I don't feel able to contribute much to the intelligent debate on this thread but I do agree with feeling trapped in the wrong gender is a societal issue not a God mistake

I've started a post and tagged you in it, @Vincitveritas . Come and have a look, see what you think.

I believe transgenderism is a human/societal issue.

The society we live in encourages and profits from people disliking themselves, believing there is something wrong with themselves.

I fully support other people to live in peace as they wish, but I don’t think God created transgenderism, humans did.

Our society perpetuates the trope that your value is based on your appearance and how well you fit into narrow desired stereotypes.

I don’t believe I was created for judgment by other humans (& the media). I was not born for that purpose.