A story about Michael Berke, a pre-op male to female transgender, caught my eye because he has returned to his male gender with the help and guidance of Calvery Chapel in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. This was my story, different in some of the detail, but full of important similarities.
Will Michael and the church both have a happy ending?
I was blown away by how similar Michael story was with my own personal struggle to resolve my gender identity desires and face reality at the same time.
No two stories will ever be the same but the similarities are compelling between my walk to resolve issues in the psyche about my gender and Michael's troubling struggle.
I struggled with alcoholism and drug addiction and a long-running battle with my gender identity, never struggling with homosexuality. It was clearly an issue of gender comfort, that is, to have my outside to be consistent with how I felt inside. But my feeling continued to change back and forth from male to female, with some long periods as a female abruptly turning to male persona again and again.
After completing 4 months of treatment at a woman's rehab facility, I returned to attending church but this time as a female. I was warmly accepted within the church family as a transsgender. But my alcohol and drug recovery program demanded rigorous honesty in every part of my life. When I learned no true gender change could ever take place no matter how many hormones I ingested or surgical procedures I endured, I was and would always remain, a man. Nothing could change that. So I returned to my male gender.
I want to be an encouragement to Michael. I want him to understand that the world's view that a man can become a woman is a fraud. The world and all its skilled surgeons can only produce counterfeit genders. The surgery is not treatment, but it is a lifestyle choice.
I now serve in a large church as the director of care ministries guiding and helping others recover and have a new life in Christ. I want that for Michael also.
Both the church and Michael can have a happy ending--I'm the proof that in Christ is happiness.
Stay with it. You will have a win.
Walt
Is your church being transformed by the world's view to just accept people as they are? Or will your church be the place to show how the love of God will provide a way to restore broken lives?
Sin is death; restoring lives once dead has always been the purpose and mission of church. Making disciples for Jesus Christ out of broken lives is the evidence of the power and grace of Jesus Christ. The testimony of restored lives should include transsexuals and homosexuals. This is where your church can become the bride of Christ by giving new life to sin filled broken lives.
If, on the other hand, the purpose of your church is to only show tolerance and acceptance and make no attempt to use the power and grace to transform or restore the broken lives of transsexuals or homosexuals, then your church has been transformed by a world full of sin. That is not a church founded on scripture or Jesus Christ.
How should a church deal with the transsexual who comes to church on Sunday, one who is a man dressed as a woman? Here is how: tell them you love them and you want them to truly experience the awesome power and grace of Jesus Christ, and in order to do that they must leave the dress at home. Let them know they are welcome to come and worship Christ as a man, yes, a man, who struggles with gender identity. Deal with it in the same way you would deal with an alcoholic who comes to church on Sunday under the influence of alcohol. You would take them aside and guide them to your church alcohol recovery ministry.
Restoring a broken life starts with showing love and continues with setting boundaries and providing support and guidance. Others who have been restored give testimonies as proof, Jesus Christ will make good on his promise to restore broken lives.
The Church belongs to Jesus Christ and is the place to be transformed and restored to Christ. Without challenging hurting people to turn from sin and receive healing, the church settles for being just a building where broken lives stay broken, all in the name of acceptance and tolerance.
As a recovering transsexual myself on staff in a large church, I read more and more about churches falling into sin. As the director of Care Ministries and responsible for a variety of recovery, grief and counseling groups, I read stories about a new trend in other churches who ignore recovery for the sake of the "tolerance" and "acceptance" movement. In my studies of the Lord’s word this is sin on top of more sin. But this is the church, how can this be?
Christians who struggle with complex gender issues all too often follow the world view and turn their backs on Jesus Christ, when it is Jesus Christ who can and will restore them if they turn away from the world view. Churches, for reasons I cannot understand, appear to ignore the power and grace of Christ. Instead they support the supposedly “quick fix” of sex change surgery. Surgery is not the way to recovery but a personal relationship with Christ is, and that comes by turning your life over to Jesus and then placing your identity in Christ, not by giving your life to some surgeon who is done and gone once he gets your money.
The struggles we all face—and we all face struggles, whether it's gender, alcohol or other addictions—were given us by our creator as proof how much we need him, but it was not the Lord’s intention for us to be consumed by the struggles and addictions with sin, but for us to be transformed and healed from sin. Our sin nature will always tug away at our most vulnerable weakness by turning our eyes away from our Lord and savior. The seduction of sin can, and sadly too often will, keep us from a healing personal relationship with Jesus.
It is troubling to see the church moving so fast at becoming the enablers and co-dependents in partnership with the sin of transsexualism and homosexuality. The church has as its purpose to "transform" us from sin. The church was never intended to become a safe place to engage in sin. Jesus Christ can remove your sin desires and restore you as he did me to sanity, even removing the desire to be transsexual or homosexual.
The world wants so much to transform and hijack the church, but it is Christ whose purpose is to transform the world. Now it is time to go to battle, my friends of Jesus Christ. We have been on the sidelines long enough.
Walt Heyer, author of Trading My Sorrows
Have you ever known someone who suffered from cancer and the darn disease just started to slowly destroy a perfectly good person, eating away at the most important parts of their body? Well, the city of San Francisco is like a person with cancer, except that it is slowly destroying itself from the inside out. A sick city. A psychological cancer is slowly destroying the effectiveness and ability of San Francisco to be considered a healthy city.
San Francisco, without a doubt, has become a city to showcase, even elevate to prominence, people who openly act out sex or gender fantasies. The 58 year old Theresa Sparks is the prime example of such rewards given by the city of San Francisco. They have appointed Theresa, the CEO of a sex toy business, as the new President of San Francisco Police Commission. Could the next Chief of Police be a mob boss? Perhaps the San Francisco school board should be comprised of known pedophiles.
It is amazing to me that any city would reward and appoint a CEO of sex toy business to the police commission. I should not be surprised, however, since the entire city of San Francisco has been the real life stage for "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" live performances every day. But Theresa is not the issue. Theresa really got one over on the city. The issue is the city that promotes such craziness. Prior to preparing this note I sat and talked with the police chief of a city with a majority of homosexuals. He said no one connected with his city police department could be a bartender, let alone a CEO of a sex toy business.
Now before you blow a
gasket, hear this. I am a former transsexual who lived in San Francisco and was
employed by the FDIC. My home was near 17th Street and Judah. But, thankfully,
I discovered the truth, that is, the surgery can not
and will not change a man into a woman. I also discovered that the
surgery is a choice and so is recovery. Now I'm a recovering
transsexual, no more living lies for me. The "sex change surgery"
will allow you to enjoy a wonderful masquerade, but unfortunately not
to live the truth. Gender surgery is today the biggest social
scam of our time, but my congratulations to Theresa who made the San
Francisco Police Department a joke. Although it's not funny.
Theresa, president of the San Francisco police commission and CEO of a sex toy business. That is just the credential that should keep everyone safe and "in line." Sex toys and discounts for city employees?
Walt
Through friends at church I met Kaycee. She was fourteen years younger than me and traveled all over the world in her work. I, on the other hand, had come through some very tough times—alcoholism and mental illness—and worked from job to job without much direction. So I knew there was no possibility of a love interest developing between us. When she asked me to take the Myers-Briggs personality profile test for the fun of it, I kidded her, telling her: “I have no personality.” She reviewed her list of 35 personality traits she wanted in a soul-mate and was surprised that I had 34 that matched. Embarrassed, I said, “I have a list, too.” When she replied, “I know what’s on your list. You just want to make sure she’s breathing!” we laughed with gusto. Was love at work here? I wondered. “We’re friends—that’s all,” she said.
I invited her to a movie. Sitting next to her I had this incredible urge to hold her hand. Like a little kid, slowly I inched my hand toward hers. I waited until I got the nerve, then gently placed my hand on hers. Oh, oh, oh, the electricity, the chemistry! My past or her youth, it did not matter; this was the feeling of love and remarkably, she allowed my hand to stay on hers.
I was falling in love, but what about her? One day I asked if we could wash her red conversable and then go to a park just to sit and talk. We got to the park and walked across the grass to a bench, where I felt my heart race as I gasped and told her I loved her. She had this funny look on her face; when I started to walk away, over my shoulder I heard her say: “I love you, too.” I jumped into the air with joy.
Love overcomes all. When I thought life had gotten the best of me and figured that no one could ever love me, along came one who only saw my heart, not my scarred life and uneven past. They say love is blind, but my experience is that unconditional love inspires us to be our best. And through ten years of marriage to Kaycee, that awesome power called love has transformed and healed us both. That’s the story of love.
Transsexuals have hoodwinked today's society into believing they were born in the wrong body. Transsexualism is perhaps the most well organized and successful medical and psychological fraud ever. It is impossible to change gender except in Fantasyland. This is a joke on both the patient and society, and it is not funny.
Cut away all the body parts you want, install all the implants you can find and then take all the female hormones you can handle. If you started as a man, you end up as a man, but one now with no genitals, full of implants, and loaded with female hormones. It is a pitiful look at how far we will go to commit fraud.
I do not blame the patient who is hurting with a mental disorder. Like the anorexic who says they are fat when they weigh 80 lbs., the transsexual claims to be trapped in the wrong body. They both need extensive talk therapy, not surgery.
The lawmakers have been putty in the hands of the homosexual/transgender activists, changing birth records to support the fraud. How dumb can it get? Men walking around playing dress up and getting job. "Give me a break!" Too many phony people with phony birth records for me, let's get back to "real genders."
