{"id":695,"date":"2011-11-17T11:55:57","date_gmt":"2011-11-17T11:55:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/?p=695"},"modified":"2018-07-20T21:17:13","modified_gmt":"2018-07-20T21:17:13","slug":"body-dysmorphic-disorder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/2011\/11\/body-dysmorphic-disorder.html","title":{"rendered":"Body Dysmorphic Disorder"},"content":{"rendered":"

“The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; though all its parts are many, they form one body.\u00a0 So it is with Christ.\u00a0 For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body- whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free- and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.”<\/em>\u00a0 1 Corinthians 12:12,13<\/p>\n

“Body dysmorphic disorder.” \u00a0Have you heard of it? Apparently it’s when a person becomes so concerned about his or her body image and convinced that he or she has a defect of some sort that they spend crazy amounts of time in the mirror and find it hard to function. \u00a0So, for example- and we women are probably more\u00a0susceptible to\u00a0this, thanks to the messages the media sends us, but men are not immune either- an average-sized woman with an average-sized waist will look in the mirror and think she’s huge.\u00a0\u00a0That is body dysmorphia.\u00a0 It’s a bit like looking in a funny mirror and thinking what you see is reality.<\/p>\n

Sometimes I wonder if the church has body dysmorphia, too.\u00a0 Sure, we at least\u00a0pay lip service to the notion that we, the church, are “the body of Christ”- “one body” with “many parts” as the apostle Paul describes (1 Corinthians 12:12)- but then we spend\u00a0far too much time looking in the mirror complaining about our nose.\u00a0 Or our breasts.\u00a0 Or our love handles.<\/p>\n

We spend far\u00a0too much time looking\u00a0in the mirror when we could be looking at Him who is “the Head,” as Paul describes.\u00a0 We could be looking at Jesus.\u00a0 Instead,\u00a0these so-called “blemishes” become easy\u00a0excuses for not staying focused on Jesus and what Jesus wants for us.\u00a0 They become the obstacles we put up\u00a0to Jesus’ invitation to join Him\u00a0in the real\u00a0world\u00a0where the real action is.<\/p>\n

If you’ve ever been around Christians who stare at their navels rather than gaze at the world around them, then you know what I’m talking about.\u00a0 If you’ve ever sat in a group of other “body parts” and found that the conversation revolves around the problems with just one body part and how things would all be different in the church if that body part were not there or underwent major plastic surgery, then you know what I mean.\u00a0 If you’ve ever been the body part that all the rest of us would like to cover up as “private” when it’s as obvious as a birthmark on the forehead, then you have an appreciation for what I’m trying to say.<\/p>\n

Because wherever there is a church, there is a body and a\u00a0“mirror” of sorts.\u00a0 The stories we tell ourselves about who we are.\u00a0 The people in our congregation we look to to define us and those we would prefer not to.\u00a0 The ways we see ourselves that\u00a0clarify who we are and how we live.<\/p>\n

But what if, instead of obsessing about ourselves in the mirror, and doing all we could to change certain body parts because they’re annoying or ugly or embarassing, what if\u00a0we looked in the mirror and saw the face and head of Jesus?\u00a0 How would things change?\u00a0 Would we still be inclined to complain and belly ache about our church and its defects?\u00a0 Or, would we start to talk differently about all of the unique characteristics that make us who we are?\u00a0 The scar on our knee from a childhood bike-riding accident.\u00a0 Or, the way our shoulder clicks every so often when we move it.\u00a0 Or, the lazy eye that shows up sometimes\u00a0in pictures.\u00a0 And what if we learned to claim these things as good and lovely because they belong to a body with Jesus at the head?\u00a0 What if we chose to do this, even if it felt uncomfortable or against our nature?\u00a0 What if we prayed to be able to do this?\u00a0 What would change?\u00a0 How would our life together look?<\/p>\n

When I was a kid I had to wear braces because I had a crooked smile.\u00a0 My mother took me to\u00a0an orthodontist for an evaluation: after asking me several times\u00a0to bite down, smile and say “ah,” all the while quizzically looking at my\u00a0jaw in relation to my face, he turned to my mother and explained that while, at the whopping cost of $5,000 they could fix my crooked teeth, they would not be able to fix the assymetry of my face.\u00a0 At that, my\u00a0mother, who is one of the most soft-spoken, patient and slow-to-anger people I know, exclaimed that my face was “just right,” that there was nothing wrong with it, and that we would not be needing their services.<\/p>\n

When Jesus is “the Head,” there is a sense in which we don’t need to worry too much about whether we’re “just right” or not.\u00a0 We can rest in the assurance that we are.\u00a0 That because Jesus loves us and has called us to Himself, and has gathered all of our broken parts together to be in Him, we are okay.\u00a0 We are accepted.\u00a0 In fact, we are more than okay and accepted.\u00a0 We are lovely and loveable.\u00a0 In the same way that a mother can exclaim at the perfection of her child.\u00a0 And this assurance in itself should be enough to help us start acting more like we really are- not what we think we are- in the world around us.\u00a0 More beautiful.\u00a0 More loving.\u00a0 With parts that, with all their eccentricities, come together to make up Jesus and function like it, too.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; though all its parts are many, they form one body.\u00a0 So it is with Christ.\u00a0 For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body- whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free- and we were all given the one Spirit to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":461,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[119,126,6,25,14,15,91,5],"tags":[231,232,22,230,229],"class_list":["post-695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church","category-ecclesiology","category-feminism","category-jesus","category-love","category-mission","category-motherhood","category-women","tag-missrepresentation","tag-1-corinthians-12","tag-apostle-paul","tag-body-dysmorphia","tag-body-image"],"yoast_head":"\nBody Dysmorphic Disorder - Fellowship of Saints and Sinners<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/2011\/11\/body-dysmorphic-disorder.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Body Dysmorphic Disorder - 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