In my struggle with crossdressing, many Bible verses have been helpful to me. I’ve studied them, memorized some of them, and often read them after failures. I’ll periodically mention and comment on some of them and how they relate to our fight with sexual sin. For those of you who are still struggling, it would surely help you to write some of these down and read them daily, or in times of temptation, or after a failure when you need to be built back up by God’s Word.
1 John 2:15-17
15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life — is not from the Father but is from the world. 17 And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.
It’s easy to think that crossdressing obsession is harmless, especially when you compare male crossdressers to real women. “They can wear a dress, why not I?” But it is not just that crossdressing is sinful, going against God’s design for men and women. It also easily becomes infatuation with the desires of the flesh, and the love of the world. Being overly infatuated with clothes and appearance and makeup is not only a problem for male to female crossdressers, but also for some women and some men. If any of us are too focused on the things of this world, too infatuated with fashion and appearance, too obsessed with clothing, then this is sinful love of the world.
It is not that these things are bad in essence. Clothing is okay. God even gave clothing to Adam and Eve after they sinned. It is not that the clothing is bad, but I think John here means an inordinate love of the things in the world. It’s one thing to appreciate things in the world that God has made. It’s quite another thing to have an inordinate love of them. A normal healthy person, with a healthy view of things in the world that God has made, I believe they would put on their pants and shirt and acknowledge that they look nice, and then move on to live their life and begin their day. They might go shopping once in a while and enjoy picking out some new clothes to wear. But when I look at how I was when crossdressing, this did not describe me at all. I was obsessed. I could look at fashion magazines for hours. I could try on new outfits of female clothing for hours nonstop, every possible combination of clothing you can think of. And when I was not crossdressing, I felt deprived, and stopped caring about anything else I was doing, just rushing through all else in life waiting for that opportunity to dress again. And if I had been ready to out myself, I would have spent all of my money and extra time shopping for new clothes that I did not need. This is excessive love for things in the world.
I know John probably did not have crossdressing in mind when he wrote this. But it always hits my heart and makes me think of crossdressing when I read it. Back when I was a young man and totally addicted to crossdressing every day, I was not focused on God’s kingdom and the things of Heaven. I was not focused on praising God and having him using me for his work. I was focused on the things of this world. I had taken something that was meant to be a good gift from God – that is, female clothing that adds beauty to this world and adorns real women. I took that good gift and focused on it to the exclusion of God, my family, my work, and everything else. I focused on it so much that I perverted it and diverted it from its true purpose and made myself ugly through it.
I think we tend to do this with many of the gifts that God has given us. We take alcohol, a good gift, and pervert it into harmful addiction. We take work, meant as a gift from God, and use it only to make money or make ourselves feel powerful. We take family, meant as a gift from God, and we idolize it and put all of our hopes on our family rather than God until we have suffocated our family members by putting them in the place of God. We take many of God’s good gifts in the world, and because we love them more than we ought to, we pervert them, and hurt our relationship with God and ourselves.
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