Simply saying that being transgender or transitioning genders is wrong is a two cent answer to a million (billion) dollar question.
Like many issues, a person who has no personal experience with the struggle should not go around making cavalier, black and white statements about those who do. This doesn’t mean the Bible doesn’t apply, but it’s hypocritical and judgmental to conclude that your experience with a specific struggle is the same as someone else’s and thus, their response to it should come as simply and easily as yours does.
It is incorrect and unhelpful to assume that a transgender person has chosen to feel the way they do about their gender identity or that they can simply choose to identify in line with their biological body parts.
I was recently talking to a Christian parent whose child transitioned genders. Their child was developing bad body odor and they couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t take showers. Their child explained to them that they were so disturbed with seeing their own genitalia, feeling so much that it didn’t belong there, that they would rather smell bad than have to see this and be reminded of it.
If you are a man, imagine you step in the shower tomorrow morning and see you have breasts and a vagina.
If you are a woman, imagine stepping in the shower tomorrow morning and seeing you have a penis.
(And then being mocked, bullied and shamed for it.)
That’s a small taste of how it feels to be transgender.
To think someone is choosing these feelings is not only erroneous, it’s almost hateful. I don’t mean because you think this you are intentionally hating someone who is transgender, but how else are they to interpret it when their struggle is this real and you simply dismiss it by saying it’s their fault?
Things worsen in the church when we act as if a transgender person just prays harder or has more faith, that they’ll be able to choose to be straight and choose to identify with the gender they have the genitalia for. This only makes transgender people feel like God must hate them (causing them to hate themselves even more).