God created me to be a transgender man

Testimony of Taj M. Mith published on the Sojourours website (United States) on June 23, 2023, freely translated by Marcella

The word is a powerful act. We find it at the beginning of the Bible, when God creates the cosmos. The word makes life possible, declares and attributes, groups and separates. In many cases, a statement is a declaration of truth, personal or universal.

The word is a door open to new experiences; In other words, the word or language, makes and unravel the world as we know it. When I speak of me, I say the truth about what I am.
Thus, in a historical period characterized by the dissemination of anti -transassual language, particularly by Christianity, I feel the responsibility of saying something - anything - to revive the soul of those who identify themselves in the transsexual and Christian genre. The truth I want to say is this: God made me to be a transsexual.

I have not always felt like this: for a long time it seemed to me that I was an ambulating mistake. The truth is that my conception was random. The truth is that my birth and my early years were a heavy load.

La mia vita non è stata facile: per un uomo di colore come me, crescere e vivere a Vacaville, in California, ed è un’esperienza che non augurerei a nessuno, ma proprio le difficoltà mi hanno dato la forza di stare in piedi da solo, di aggrapparmi saldamente alla mia fede e di amare la mia comunità. Fin da ragazzo ho imparato ad essere fermamente me stesso per non essere travolto dalle tendenze del momento.

In Vacaville, i tratti salienti degli anni 90 ed inizi del 2000 sono stati il fondamentalismo biblico e l’ascesa di megachiese. La religione è sempre stata un argomento di mio interesse e qualcosa del cristianesimo mi ha sempre parlato al cuore . Ricordo la prima volta che entrai in una chiesa : mi sentii a casa e il mio spirito esultò di gioia. Io e mio fratello non abbiamo ricevuto un’educazione religiosa ; mia madre ci lasciò liberi di scegliere il nostro percorso spirituale e il mio conduceva alla chiesa tutte le domeniche, con chiunque avesse potuto accompagnarmi.

Per un certo periodo feci di una chiesa missionaria battista la mia casa. Là accettai Gesù Cristo come mio Signore e Salvatore. Dovetti lasciare solo perché la chiesa era in periferia, difficile da raggiungere per un bambino che non poteva servirsi dei mezzi pubblici. Più tardi, quando potei viaggiare solo, mi unii con degli amici ad un gruppo giovanile di un chiesa in espansione.
It was there that the "cool" boys went, those who played the guitar in the musical groups of prayer and mounted skateboards in the parking areas before resuming the evening lessons. I wanted to be with them, but I didn't do them. The questions I ask myself were too taboo and I was too curious to accept "offering it to God" as an answer.

Over time, it became evident that I was too different to stay. I should have denied myself or leave and I left. If God knew what I was even before I was born and yet he expected that I denied that truth, he was a cruel God. I said to myself: "If this is God, I don't want to know anymore", even if I wanted the opposite with all my heart.

In my room, in the silence of the night I felt the scream that climbed me from the soul in search of the warm embrace of God, just as I felt it when I was a child. I ardently wanted his love. I needed that love.

In fact, that love never left me, but in the years of my adolescence I was led to believe that my transsexuality was intrinsically sinful, as had been told to my ancestors for the color of our skin. I managed to throw these thoughts behind me, that my personality rejected and opposed. I wanted to be the pebble in their shoes and I transformed myself into an irremovable nonconformist, regardless of what others thought. To be honest, irremovability was only a facade: after all, I was so interested in the opinions of others, that he closed it to everything and everyone for the fear of being injured.

I went back to God in 2008, when, with the help of friends and mentors who encouraged and helped me, I began to reflect and deepen doubts and questions that I still asked myself on gender and sexuality. Those doubts led me to the discovery of such a great love that I could never have imagined.

God is too great to be contained in human language, in binary genres or in the experience of a single person. Even if we took the sum of everyone's experiences and the cosmos with all the truths of human existence from the beginning to today, we would only reveal a small part of God. He is all: past, present and future. He knew who I was from the beginning and supported my return to faith when I returned to myself. God created me to be a transsexual man. I am in that "and" between the distinction declared in Genesis 1: God created them male and female (v.27).

People with a single genre cannot see the world as I see it. I realize how ambiguous language in politics can have repercussions on entire populations; I see how some laws are used to exclude people in the name of "public security"; I realize how much the choice of words can perpetuate or stop prejudices.

This existence gives me the strength, together with my expansive brothers and sisters, to courageously use the words to open the way to the advent of the kingdom of God on this earth. People like me exist to contribute to the completion of the picture in constant evolution of humanity. We have always existed and we will continue to exist in the course of human history. This existence of ours is a gift.

Original text: God Created me to be a transgender man