Healing

Body Dysphoria

by Mark Trodd
06/25/22
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Being comfortable in your own skin is something most people take for granted.  We may be disappointed with certain characteristics about ourselves, but we learn to accept them.  A young man wanted to be someone else, but all the other places were taken, so he decided to be himself.

 But sometimes people become so obsessed or despairing about themselves that they make more drastic choices and interventions. They may even see their own body as the enemy.  Body Dysphoria refers to a broad range of disorders where a person’s perceptions and obsessions about their own body become distorted. 

 Anorexia is a condition whereby someone has an intense fear of gaining weight and a distorted perception of themselves, such that they can starve themselves to death.  The road to recovery is hard and not always successful, but we would be rightly outraged if a doctor offered liposuction as a solution.  Gender Dysphoria is a condition whereby someone believes they have the wrong body.  If a 7-year-old boy believed he should be a girl and hated his penis, the old wisdom was to counsel and monitor the situation, because over 90% of such children grow out of it.  But current wisdom wants to begin them on the path to reassignment – beginning with drugs that suppress normal sexual development, and ending with an irreversible sex-change operation.  Body Integrity Identity Disorder leads people to hate or even seek to remove parts of their own body – including amputation.  

 Body Dysphoria is real for the people who struggle with it, but medical procedures rarely work, because the real issues go much deeper and often involve abuse.  The path to wellness is not an easy one. They deserve our understanding and compassion.  

From God’s perspective, every human being has value and purpose, no matter who we are or what we struggle with.  The world may try to press us into its various moulds, or tell us we can be whatever we want to be, but God wants to show us who we really are and why we are here.  You are a unique and irreplaceable individual - made in God’s image – not an accident of the universe. 

But there is a problem.  

Because we have all rebelled against the One who made us, we live in a fallen world where bad things happen and people behave badly – including ourselves.   We are both perpetrators and victims in a cycle of hurt that needs to be broken through truth and forgiveness.  Sin has distorted everything, but love motivated Jesus to come and break the cycle so we can be set free.

Jesus said, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it more abundantly.”  John 10:10

 Jesus took our sin upon Himself and overcame death, so we could find healing and hope – in this world and the next.  When He returns, He will sort out all the mess forever.  Those who place their hope in Him will not be disappointed.