EPISODE 4 – Let’s talk about Dysphoria, Baby
Disclaimer – this podcast does not contain any advice for mental health concerns. If you have mental health concerns contact your GP and seek their advice. Know that I am praying for your healing.
You’re listening to the podcast, The Chaise Lounge Theologian which explores a systematic theology of mental health. In this episode four entitled ‘Let’s talk about Dysphoria, Baby’ I’m making one more visit into Genesis chapters 1 and 2, because there really is so very much in these two chapters. This, when you think about it, really isn’t that surprising. The entire world is being set up by its creator, God. Of course there are a large number of elements that need to be set in place.
I’ve already explored a range of facets of human identity: that humans work and humans rest. That animals are blessed but humans are blessed to rule over them, thereby identifying humans as being something more than just animals. And humans are relational beings because they have been made in the image of a God who is relational.
However, I’ve skipped over some very big topics connected to personal identity and relationships. I’ve skipped over them deliberately up until now because they need an entire episode to themselves.
Those topics are sex and sexuality – and all the elements within them.
Because this is a systematic theology, I’m going to be unapologetically biblical in my discussion of these topics. I can’t do a systematic theology without being biblical. Of course, there are different ways to interpret the Bible, but as always, I try to interpret the Bible based on what it’s saying, not based on what my culture tells me. To an extent I cannot help but bring some elements of my culture and personal background into my interpretation of any text, not just the Bible. No one can stop that from happening. Because it’s your personal context. But if we look at the context of this passage in the Bible, we see the creator God leaving his mark on his creation, by creating the pinnacle of his creation; the most blessed species on the planet – humanity. So we need to pay attention.
But neither am I going to disrespect those with different views to me or be discompassionate to them. I know too many people with different viewpoints to myself to want to do that. And I see too much political power playing with regards to these issues which I don’t wish to emulate, because it’s offensive, no matter who you are or what your opinion is on these matters.
Because playing games with people is utterly offensive. We do not play games with those made in the image of God because, anyone made in the image of God has inherent dignity and worth. They are a beautiful person with a beautiful soul and it is criminal to put people into a game and deny them the right to remove themselves from it. No human is a play thing to be manipulated and used in anyone’s particular cause or whim. Anyone who does so is displaying the working of a sick mind or a mind that is still operating as a little child who needs to grow up. Adults still playing with their dollies is just downright embarrassing. We do not play games with people, because people are not toys. They are not Ken and Barbie. Or Ken and Ken. They are not beans to be counted. They are not a statistic, an experiment or a case study. They are a real person, with a brain and a heart and emotions and desires and wishes. They are a human being who loves and is loved by others. To treat any of those things as something that can be played with and mocked and used in a game that you have created to attempt to gain something from – that, that is abhorrent.
Genesis chapters 1 and 2 says so.
Here are the relevant verses from Genesis chapter 1 again:
Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
Did you notice the difference there? This was no “And God said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light. God, the three in one, gets his hands dirty when making humanity.
There’s some identity firmness for you. Carefully crafted together by God to be in his image. Carefully crafted as male and female. Therefore they are two firm identities; and both male and female have Identity Importance, for both have been crafted by the master craftsman.
There are a few more things to notice here. First, there is male and female and no other. Also note that there is no difference here – or at the end of chapter two – between biological sex and gender identification. Male is Male. Female is Female. Man and Wife. There is no room, no suggestion that Eve may have felt that she identified differently to that of her biological sex. Male is Male. Female is Female.
Now, being made in His image, does this mean that God is both Male and Female? Short Answer: I don’t know. The text doesn’t say. However, we do know that in the New Testament we are told to pray to our Heavenly Father, such as in the opening of the famous, ‘The Lord’s Prayer’. So our thinking is framed in masculine terms when it comes to God. Whether that is to help us as human beings or whether God is some divine masculine being, I don’t know.
It is interesting that in some ancient Greek thinking there was the thought that an initial hermaphrodite being was split in two to create the first male and the first female. This idea is explored in one of Plato’s Symposiums. Is the God of the Bible, both genders like this being and thus being made in his image requires the sharing out of the sexual organs so as to create two different biological sexes?
Personally, I’m not sold on the God of the Bible being a hermaphrodite. Potentially biological sex is just part of the human physical reality of living in this world. We are not gods. And the eternal God prior to the creation of the world, was not human. Whatever gender God is – if any gender at all – perhaps our human minds do not have the capability or framework to understand it.
At any rate, the Bible at this point in Genesis 1, doesn’t give any constructs of gender. Male is Male. Female is Female. And that’s all at this point.
However, there have been plenty of times when the Church or groups of Christians have created very definite constructions of gender and gender expectations which may have been quite destructive for people’s mental health.
Let me share a personal example which I remember quite clearly. It’s the mid-to late 1990s and I’m sitting on a black chair in the back hall of my church. I’m listening to a Bible talk. We’ve split into guys and girls, so all the girls are getting one talk and the boys another.
The youth leader giving the talk says to the girls “Girls, you’re not really interested in sex. You’re interested in the relationship part.” Now, I was a teenager with raging hormones, so I sat there and thought “O Oh, I think there’s something wrong with me.” It took me the best part of ten years to realise that there was absolutely nothing wrong with me. I’d just been a teenager with raging hormones and a youth group leader had set themselves up as a sex therapist or endocrinologist – when they weren’t one – and had said something that was profoundly damaging to me.
This incident might have even been why, a few years down the track I sat myself down to do a different systematic theology, that on biblical femininity. Because I just had to find out what I was supposed to be. Well, that incident was the catalyst along with a few other things, including having two brothers and no sisters, and being called a tomboy because I dared to ride a bike, run, kick a football and swing a cricket bat from time to time. It was either that, or play by myself, which is boring. Yet last time I checked, the vast majority of females born on this planet are given arms and legs plus hands and feet. And my educated guess is that God gave these things to girls and women because he expects us to use them.
I genuinely believe that the church has a lot of apologising to do for the ways in which it has presented constructs and stereotypes of gender, and for the ways in which damage, significant psychological damage has been caused. And this happens when the church teaches things that are outside or beyond that which the Bible actually says.
I look back at that incident in my time at youth group now, as an adult and a high school teacher and I think “Who on earth is telling teenagers that they don’t have a sex drive? Good grief.”
And it’s not just the Protestant tradition that I’m a part of that has blame attached here. Germaine Greer, writing about the nuns at the school she attended, identifies the damage they caused by the manner in which they talked about sex. This psychological damage that Germaine Greer experienced, possibly explains why as a student she went on to do the things that she did at Sydney University and then why she wrote the books that she did, such as ‘The Female Eunuch’. I’m not speaking on Germaine Greer’s behalf I’m just taking an educated guess there.
However, I think it’s highly likely that modern Western society has caused just as many issues when it comes to that of Gender Dysphoria in young people.
In the DSM-V Gender Dysphoria “refers to the distress that may accompany the incongruence between one’s experienced or expressed gender and one’s assigned gender[1].”
This is evidently a significant issue connected to mental health and wellbeing. I know many might think that the Bible is being simplistic and naïve to have a binary division on gender. Yet, Genesis 1 is providing us with Identity Firmness and Identity Importance with this binary division. ‘Do you not understand how difficult; anxiety inducing and complicated my feelings are about my gender-based identity?’ A young person might ask. If you listened to my personal anecdote a moment ago, you might realise that the answer to that questions for me is – yes, actually I do know how confusing it is and I do understand that it’s not easy. And frankly I’m glad I was a teenager in the 1990s and not now, because the world around us is not helping at all.
The Bible really is on our side and wants us to have clarity, because God wants us to have clarity about who we are. It is Satan who is messing with our heads.
When I spent a year of my life exploring biblical femininity, I found the greatest clarity about who I was – as a real woman – and that God was on my side as a human and as a woman. He wanted me to know who I am.
If someone has never read the pages of the Bible they might find it a strange thing to say, but I found the best assistance for my Gender Dysphoria was to read the Bible. I’m not prescribing that. I’m just telling you that that’s my personal experience.
So, that’s an exploration of these issues from the passage in Genesis chapter 1. Here’s the passage from Genesis chapter 2 that expands further on these ideas:
But for Adamno suitable helper was found. So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.”
That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.
Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.
I know many people take issue with the word ‘helper’ being used to describe Eve, however, I also know of many who say the fact that God took the rib from Adam’s side is an indication of where Eve metaphorically ‘stood’ with Adam. Not behind him, not in front of him, but beside, in partnership with him.
God performs surgery on Adam. Poor bloke. He seems to have not even been alive for a day – whether literal or metaphorical – and he’s already going under the knife. But he seems to have recovered quickly and breaks out into something that we hope isn’t just some anaesthetic induced poetry.
“This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.”
Again, I know, many have an issue with the fact that Adam takes it upon himself to name this new creation ‘woman’. ‘Why didn’t he let her come up with her own name?’ they say. And also, in saying that she was taken out of him, he appears to be claiming some sort of superiority or control.
But is he? Or is he saying something far more full of wonder and excitement?
When teaching Shakespeare, the Elizabethan English is a little hard for some students to handle. Thankfully, there’s a series called “No Fear Shakespeare”. These books have the original text on one page of the double spread and a modern English vernacular version on the other page of the spread.
Here’s my ‘No Fear Genesis’ version of Adam’s post-surgery poetry. It goes like this:
“Wow, you’re like me. We’re the same. Different, but the same. We’re connected.”
I think he’s saying something far more positive; something like that.
If you did want to do a feminist read of Genesis 2, I think the next line is where you’d want to pull it out, where it says:
That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.
Have you noticed that in Genesis chapter 2, God speaks; and Adam speaks; But Eve has no voice. She is silent.
And then she’s just matchmade with Adam whether she likes it or not. I can see the feminist spin off of Genesis 2 now. “& Eve” it would probably be called.
In it, Eve bursts onto the scene, hears Adam’s poetry and defiantly declares to the powers that be: “You have got to be joking. I wouldn’t get with him even if we were the only two people on the planet. Look at him. He is odd. Clearly this is an attempt at coercion. What do you think this is? Saudi Arabia?” Then she’d saunter off, climb up into a tree and devise her own contraption to fend off and slay snakes.
I mean really, we don’t know. Maybe an outdoorsy guy who spends a little bit too much time with animals wasn’t Eve’s type.
Clearly, I jest. I think we can be confident that this is not what Eve might have done or said. Because Adam and Eve’s marriage wasn’t arranged by some megalomaniac conducting an observational research design on the two individuals that he’d literally moulded into the shape and being he wanted and then set in play to see what happened. No. God is not a mad scientist.
God is a loving creator. He saw Adam’s need for a companion, had compassion on him and made a helper ‘suitable for him’. This is a God Ordained relationship. Eve was made for Adam.
And yes, feminism is all about choices, choices, choices. But if you know the God of the Bible, you know that God gives the very best to those that leave the choice with Him. Various cultures have different ideas about these things, but in my culture, no one other than God has the right to chart our marital course like this. And we can trust God to choose well.
And in God’s choice there is a clear implication that God’s design for marriage is for it to be between a man and a woman. Any other arrangement is not the biblical design.
It is worthwhile noting that in the first two editions of the DSM, homosexuality was categorised as a mental disorder. In 1973 homosexuality in the DSM began a journey in which the language around it began shifting. This ultimately led to homosexuality ceasing to be considered a mental disorder of any category in the DSM in the late 1980s.
Interestingly I cannot think of any passage in the Bible – an ancient text – which refers to homosexuality as a mental disorder. Neither have I ever thought of my gay friends in this way. The Bible doesn’t speak of homosexuality as a disorder. In Romans 1, it says that, to those who engage in homosexuality and lesbianism, God then gives them over “to a depraved mind.” My OED tells me that depraved means “morally corrupt”. So the Bible views homosexuality as part of this trajectory.
The Bible’s assessment of homosexuality is not – and never has been – that of a disorder, but rather an indication of one living outside the moral codes of the Bible. Of course, there will be people who are offended by that. And understandably that offence can lead to strong responses against it. One thing I find it can lead to is that some people express their disagreement by pretending that the Bible says something different. They appear to bizarrely lose all basic reading comprehension skills and claim that ‘The bible doesn’t say XYZ, it really actually says ABC’. Whilst I understand the offence, I think it’s far better to just say if you agree or disagree. Please don’t claim that the Bible says something it doesn’t. That’s offensive as well.
And I am not going to apologise for repeating what the Bible says.
So the ‘leave and cleave’ is for man and wife. And in that ‘leave and cleave’ there are a few other psychology related elements to explore.
Differentiation is a word that is used frequently in both education and psychology. In education it means you are providing different work to different students according to their different learning needs. In psychology it means nothing of the sort. In psychology, differentiation means the ability to be your own independent self, usually in the context of a natural, normal part of growing up in which parents release their children to become independent, autonomous adults.
This is healthy. This is the usual trajectory of human development.
In Erik Erikson’s eight stages of psychosocial development[2] he places in every stage a crisis – which personally I think could be better termed a challenge – regardless, a crisis that must be overcome before one can move onto the next stage. Whilst there are many criticisms of Erikson’s stages, some of which I’ll address in a moment, he makes some decent points as well.
In the young adult stage he places the crisis of “Intimacy Vs Isolation”. All the crises are phrased in this binary manner: A versus B. The decent point in my opinion that Erikson is making here, is that from the stage of young adulthood onwards, it is normal, heathy and good for our wellbeing to ‘leave’. To differentiate and become autonomous, independent individuals. That is healthy and the usual trajectory of things.
Increasingly, due to economic pressures young adults are not doing the ‘leave’ part as much as they used to in the past. On this you can’t make a blanket statement to say that they are all failing Erikson’s crisis for their age, for you don’t know. It is possible to live under your parents’ roof and not be ‘still holding onto the apron strings’, so to speak. But for those who are, psychology suggests that this is not good for their wellbeing.
However, there is another element here. Parents who don’t allow the ‘leave and cleave’ or don’t allow the ‘leave and cleave’ to be done properly. Alfred Hitchcock’s famous film, The Birds is the best pop culture reference I can think of to explore this one. Now, there are multiple different interpretations of the film. One interpretation suggests that the attacking birds represent the overbearing mother of the protagonist, Mitch. This read in my opinion is definitely plausible. Mitch remains rather repressed, not because he keeps getting swooped by birds, but rather by what they symbolise, some serious Oedipal Tensions – hello Freud – Oedipal Tensions between Mitch and his mother. Oedipal tensions from mother to son, not the other way around. It’s a serious case of ‘Mummy, you need to let go.’ Because Mitch is a man – an adult – with his own brain and the absolute right to be his own autonomous being, charting his own course.
Let him leave and cleave, because that’s healthy for his wellbeing. Differentiation is a natural part of human development. And right at the start of the Bible, God knew that that was the case.
But I do want to question Erikson’s framework a little. And unsurprisingly there are feminist critiques of it that are none too happy with the binary options of ‘Intimacy Vs Isolation’. I think the Bible also takes issue with that binary. For is isolation really the only other option? And has a single person really ‘failed’ the stage of early adulthood development? That does seem rather offensive.
Yes, Adam and Eve set up a new family, but – here’s the biblical theology bit – Jesus reframes concepts of family in Matthew 12: 46-50 where it says:
While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside, wanting to speak to him. Someone told him, “Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.”
He replied to him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”
The church is family. The church is community. If we are experiencing isolation in the church, something has gone horribly, horribly wrong.
And also, being a single woman myself I’m not convinced that the Bible is chiefly concerned with my marital status. Here’s a random passage from the Book of Acts, written by the Luke with a gospel named after him:
On the Sabbath we went outside the city gate to the river, where we expected to find a place of prayer. We sat down and began to speak to the women who had gathered there. One of those listening was a woman from the city of Thyatira named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth. She was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message. When she and the members of her household were baptised, she invited us to her home. “If you consider me a believer in the Lord,” she said, “come and stay at my house.” And she persuaded us.
Here is a woman who is part of a household. Whether she was married or single we don’t know. Likely married. However, this isn’t what the text seems to focus on. It first addresses Lydia as her own person. A businesswoman, from a particular location, and a worshipper of God. Regardless of her marital status, here the Bible seems the most concerned with the fact that Lydia opens her heart to the message, makes her own money, worships God and has enough money to put the apostle Paul, Timothy, Silas and Luke up for a few nights.
The Bible places value on me as a person and the ways in which I use my means to serve God. Not my martial status. How liberating for my mental health.
But let me return to Adam and Eve, leaving and cleaving before I finish this episode. And let me read out the passage in context again:
Then the Lord God made a woman from the ribhe had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.”
That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh. Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.
Eve doesn’t have an issue with being a helper here. Because there are no issues. Here at the close of the chapter a picture is painted of what being in a perfect relationship is like. “Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.”
But what does that mean? It means of course, that Adam and Eve weren’t wearing clothes. But again, consulting the OED and the word ‘naked’ it also explores more metaphorical meanings, that is ‘of feelings and behaviour’ and lists the words ‘undisguised’, ‘exposed to harm’, ‘vulnerable’. But despite all these things, Adam and Eve ‘felt no shame’. What does the OED say about that word? ‘Humiliation’ ‘Distress’, ‘Conscious of Wrong/Foolishness’, ‘dishonour’, ‘regret’. Adam and Eve felt none of that.
Adam and Eve experienced the greatest intimacy the world has ever known. The greatest identity firmness the world has ever known. They could express their true identity; their true selves and experience no harm. Whilst they were vulnerable – which means you are exposed and there is an element of risk – Adam and Eve were totally safe with one another.
Nakedness in the right context is not shameful. It’s the devil who perverts everything and uses it for evil. Adam and Eve may have had no clothes but they had smiling minds. Or something like that.
In any type of relationship, to be able to be completely open and honest with another person and to know that taking the risk will not be one that leaves you out on a limb. That experience; that is going to do a world of good for your mental health.
And that is how God originally set up humanity to be able to connect with one another with that level of vulnerability and that level of safety coexisting. With that level of intimacy. That’s His design for His creation. What a good God.
And that brings me to the end of my exploration of Genesis chapters 1 and 2. There’s an awful lot in them to explore.
Until next time, keep looking up – To God.
Podcast Backing Track: “Pure” by Matt Wigdon. Licence purchased from Soundstripe
[1] American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). p.451.
[2] Very Well Mind (2026) ‘Erikson’s Stages of Psychosocial Development’
https://www.verywellmind.com/erik-eriksons-stages-of-psychosocial-development-2795740