A Christian Perspective on Dysmorphia

Been thinking a lot about my transgender friend, since he had his chest reconstruction surgery. I know the attitude of most Christians is that God doesn't make mistakes and that people who experience dysmorphia between their physical gender and the gender they feel in their soul are somehow wrong, ungrateful, or sinning. I can't think that.

While obviously I agree that God is perfect and that when He created this universe, He created it perfectly, I believe that since the Fall, sin has permeated and polluted our world. Genesis 3 supports this belief. Genesis 2 implies that human souls are created male and female. And so, I have no trouble following logic to the next step, which is that it is entirely possible, due to the aggregate pollution (both literal and metaphysical) of the world and the human genome, for a person to be born in the wrong-gendered body. 

I have never had this type of dysmorphia issue. I cannot even imagine how it must feel. Even though I was a complete tomboy growing up - I gravitated to the boys for play, I spent equal time or more with my Legos and little green soldiers as I did with my Barbies - I have always felt female. I cannot judge someone for feeling things that I have no personal context for understanding or even imagining. I am no position to determine whether someone who decides to travel the extraordinarily difficult road of changing gender - legally, physically, socially - is right or wrong to do so. 

What I can do is offer unconditional acceptance, encouragement, and support for someone who is facing such an enormous burden. I think that attitude correctly reflects Jesus Christ. I am not afraid to stand up for what is right, true, and moral, but this situation requires discretion, discernment, and most of all, love. I can respect my friend for choosing to spend the time, money, and emotional effort to make his outward appearance congruent with his inward identity without any judgment. And I can be grateful that God provided him a loving and supportive wife, since his decisions cost him his biological family.

What's left in an empty box?

The last few weeks, I have been more discouraged, depressed, and distressed than I can remember feeling in a long, long time. I have metaphorically banged my nose on more closed doors than ever before. This chapter of my life is coming to an end, but I don’t know what’s next, and I don’t know how to fulfill my responsibilities until whatever’s next arrives. I’m lost in the dark, swinging a lantern wildly and not seeing any path before my feet. All I see is . . . nothing.

I feel like God is scouring me out, like you would a cookpot, scrubbing away at stubborn stains until they gradually surrender to the inevitable and drift away down the drain. Preconceptions, expectations, even aspirations, have all disappeared, and every time I think there’s nothing left inside, I realize the loss of something else I only vaguely knew was there in the first place.

But what do you do when the cookpot’s clean? You fill it up again, with something new. Something good. Something useful. You can’t use the pot for its intended purpose until all of the previous gunk is wiped away.

I was reading Second Corinthians today, and the following passage, as well-known to me as it was already, struck me as particularly pertinent:

To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

2 Corinthians 12:7-10, New International Version.

I haven’t reached the point where I can say I’m delighting in these circumstances. Not when I’m having anxiety attacks like the one I had earlier today when I realized I’m going to have to do something that I don’t think I am physically able do. But I have reached the point of saying that I am weak. This thing must be done, and I must do it. But I can’t. So Christ will have to do it through me. And that is a glorious thing.

When Pandora opened the jar Zeus had given her, and released all the evil into the world, and the jar looked empty, there was one thing left. Even though I feel empty, I do have at least one thing left in my soul – hope.