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 an atheist, but if I were a Christian, I think my answer to this would be the same as it is as an atheist: there's no such thing as being put in the wrong body.

You aak 'How can you explain why transgender people feel the way they do?' Well, it's never easy to fully explain exactly why another person feels the way they do. But I'd say that transgender people probably mostly feel the way they do because of the way society has developed a bunch of unnecessary sex-based stereotypes over the millennia and imposed them pretty brutally, ensuring that anyone who doesn't fit in with the stereotypes assigned to their sex might question whether they truly belong to that sex.

Suggesting that god (or indeed biology) is 'wrong' or has made a mistake implies that there is something inherently wrong with being a 'feminine' man or a 'masculine' woman. Why should there be?

Thank you for all the comments! I'm reading through them all/will reply! But it's super late where I am now so might reply tomorrow instead, I'm sleepy and my brain isn't functioning. So for now, good night, and thank you everyone for sharing! 😊

I’m afraid your timing is a bit off there. St Paul was touring Asia and Europe establishing Christian churches within ten years of the Crucifixion. St. Peter was crucified in Rome sometime between AD 64 - 68 on the direct instruction of the Emperor Nero, who also blamed the Christians for the burning of Rome ( you know, the one he ‘Fiddled’ along to) in AD 64. The Emperor Claudius who preceded Nero attempted to expel the Christians from Rome.

God has created a diverse society and range of people, some who whose gender will not match their body? Some religions eg indigenous Canadians call them ‘spirit people’. It’s just another difference in humanity and shows us that perhaps gender isn’t as binary as we once thought and we can learn to love each other and coexist no matter how our bodies and minds are.

God doesn't make mistakes. People do.
You get the body you're given because of genetics and your parents' (and others') decisions. If you don't like bits of it you can change them. But your sex is what it is. You can wear what you want, call yourself what you want. What you can't do is assume that your rights should override those of others just because it suits you.

No one ever thought gender was binary, did they? It's a social construct. Sex is binary, though. I think some posters have a far more interventionist idea of God than I do, with God selecting the characteristics of each human baby. I don't think it was God who made me miscarry a baby who had an extra chromosome, or gave my son ADHD. It was just random.

Though I contradict myself sometimes, as I view my dc as blessings!

Interesting Rambling! With regard to the ND/Disability question, I thought the usual way to understand it was as having a disability alongside the ND? Or as you say, acquired ND via an injury.

I'm out of the loop though, with regards to ND and SEND type stuff.

In some ways I find the term helpful. It helps to know I’m not the only person who feels this way I guess. I have only discovered the term in the last few years (I’m in my 30s), as a teen I assumed I was straight and forced myself to go through with things with boys which deep down I didn’t want to do that I didn’t fall behind my peers. I thought it was normal to hate sex, for it to hurt, to cry through it and have nightmares for days afterward, to feel like your skin was crawling whenever you were touched, for sex to feel like a chore like hoovering you had to do to maintain the relationship, to have to secretly apply lube before a sexual encounter because your body was dry, to have to get blind drunk before you were able to go through with it. I thought it was normal never to masturbate or have a sexual fantasy or an orgasm and to feel no more physical attraction towards any person than you might feel towards a nice picture or item of clothing etc.

Then as I got older and listened to how people talk about sex and relationships I realised ‘fancying’ someone meant more than just thinking someone was aesthetically nice to look at and that people actually had urges pushing them towards other people/ sex and that they weren’t just driven to have sex because it was on their mental checklist but that there was a drive compelling them. I have never felt that towards a man or woman.

Maybe it is just a case of not meeting someone who floats my boat but it doesn’t feel that way, it feels like this part of be is intrinsically missing. I don’t particularly want to identify as asexual, I have questioned and hoped maybe I’m just gay but I don’t feel anything towards women and I have had times before where I have felt very romantically attracted to people but no sexual attraction at all which made the relationship awkward because I half wanted it to be more than friends but also didn’t want it to be sexual in any way which left those friendships in a strange place that I couldn’t really navigate. When I have then pushed myself to have sex with those friends thinking maybe it would become more I came away feeling almost violated (admittedly by myself) and the friendships immediately broke down because I felt so awful afterwards about it so if I do need to meet the right person I don’t know how I would possibly go about it. So in that way the label of asexual kind of helps in that there are days I can convince myself I’m not broken and that maybe this is just an orientation like being gay and that I’m no more broken than anyone else who deviates from being heterosexual but then I don’t know, maybe it is restrictive in some ways maybe the issue is that I’m just not putting myself out there enough or maybe the issue was I forced myself out there too much and now it’s a trauma response rather than an orientation, it’s hard to unpick!

No because god doesn't exist.

That's a terrible set of experiences, @MolkosTeenageAngst . There was much, much less pressure on us to be sexual in my day (making myself sound ancient). It was easier to take things at a pace you felt ready for. Yes, there were bad experiences. They were inflicted on me though (and affect me as your experiences do you), rather than sought out by me from a need to do what everyone else was doing. I am sorry.

It's a really interesting development of the question about whether we can be born in the wrong body.

I'm not religious but I have read this quote:

“God blessed me by making me transsexual for the same reason he made wheat but not bread and fruit but not wine: because he wants humanity to share in the act of creation. I am only doing the Good Works here on Earth as intended!” - Julian K Jarboe

Sorry I just don't understand that quote:

How do transsexuals share inGod's work of creation - oh, do you mean by (re)creating their gender? Surely that's more akin to turning wheat into rice or something?

Have you ever heard of the Cathars OP?
They were / are (very few still follow Catharism) an off shoot of Christianity.
They had a dualist believe. In a nutshell they believed that God was responsible for the human soul, and Nature was responsible for all the pain and suffering as well as the beauty and bounty of the Earth.
Sadly they were seen as Heretics and many didn't survive the inquisition. So in terms of 'being born in the wrong body' (by the way I'm pretty sure that's now accepted as not possible?) the Cathars would argue this is down to nature/ nurture and nothing to do with God. However God remains responsible for the soul and therefore the pearly gates still await (unless someone is an appalling human being in which case Bilzibob will have one shovelling coals to keep God's feet warm )

When I say Nature I mean as in Mother Nature, and that all though God was 'all powerful' he could not over-power the laws of nature.

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.

What denomination of Christianity are you? Because most do believe in a few mistakes

• Putting Adam and Eve in the same place as the forbidden tree was a mistake, it’s why God evicted them from Eden when the inevitable happened.
• Noah and the Ark only happened because God realised flooding to kill all humans & animals was a mistake.
• Killing Jobs children was a mistake as well.

thats it on the top of my head would have to re-read some theological texts to give you a fuller answer.

That’s some fairly unorthodox theology there. What denomination are you?

You are confusing biology for theology.

If you are asking this question then your understanding of God is rather simplistic. He may have set creation in motion but then evolution and biology took over - and they make "mistakes". Hence disease etc. I don't don't think transgender people are a 'mistake' in God's eyes they were made perfect. Not that I mean they should stay their assigned gender more that God sees the person not the gender.
God is here to be with us, to help us through life, not to be blamed for the things we don't like in life.

I saw an interesting video on Instagram a while ago by a trans person. They said God hadn't made a mistake putting them in the wrong body. But that they were exactly who God intended them to be - a trans person.

I'm not sure I agree with them, but it was interesting.

Personally I think gender is man made and nothing to do with God. I think it's a mental illness in the same way someone believing they are actually Lady Diana reincarnated is mentally ill. You can't be something you are not. No matter how much you wish you were.

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

God doesn't but we do and children can inherit our tendencies, strengths and weaknesses.

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

Inheritance, own freedom of thought, influence of society (the world) upon ideas surrounding gender and gender norms.

Maybe it is not a mistake, maybe that is exactly how God intended them to be, and to have a complex life. Maybe it's a challenge they need to go through, and the society around them needs to go through to become more accepting.
There are plenty of cultures in the world that have a less binary attitude to gender.

@Glittersparkle76

You state "Jesus did exist,there's scientific proof of that but as him being the son of God?"

We'd love to hear that scientific proof - nobody has shown any to date, and it's only been 2000-odd years...

Please don’t derail an existing thread that’s very clearly one Christian asking other Christians about a particular aspect of religious belief. You’re free to start your own thread if “I want scientific proof that Jesus is the son of God” is important to you.

The big man looking down on the world is white, obviously.