What if God loves your body? From the archive
What if “your body is a temple” is not a shaming shamer, yelling at you to make your body worthy by doing xyz?
I’m experimenting with a new bonus for supporting subscribers: read aloud podcasts for posts. Today, the read aloud is available to all (just below). For access to future read alouds, upgrade your subscription. Supporting subscribers can access this read aloud as a podcast here.
[This week, I’ve been talking with my students about hierarchical dualism and body-denying distortions of Christian theology, and it prompted me to repost this piece, from the Church Blogmatics archive. I hope you find courage in it.]
Gentle reader,
This week, I’ve been thinking about how much we need to know that our bodies are included in the grace of God. I’ve been thinking of how much we’re taught that our bodies are something we’re supposed to get right, a kind of “work” for “righteousness.”
What if “your body is a temple” is a gift of grace?
A given?
A truth that just is yours, in Christ, through the power of the Spirit?
A status you cannot earn?
What if “your body is a temple” doesn’t mean you owe anything to the diet industry?
Not anything; not a penny, not a calorie?
What if “your body is a temple” doesn't mean you owe a single ounce of energy to Madison Avenue?
What if “your body is a temple” cannot be taken hostage by insurance companies wanting to charge you by the pound or by doctors who won’t look past your weight to see you?
What if “your body is a temple” is not a shaming ableist shamer, used to insist that you owe the rest of us good health, as if good health were earned through individual morality?
Floral mind #47, by Minas Halaj, shared under fair use. “The concept of beauty is a burdened one.” See the whole series at Halaj’s site.
What if “your body is a temple” is not a shaming gnostic shamer, used to convince you that attraction & desire can’t be good things?
That thighs and lips can’t be good things?
That the senses should somehow be anything but sensual?
What if “your body is a temple” declares the sacrilege of a ‘fitness’ industry focused on ‘attractiveness’ and the sacrilege of the corporations trying to sell you cosmetics and protein powders and endless, endless THINGS as you chase that supposed attractiveness and worth?
What if “your body is a temple” means what the Bible says it means:
“God’s Spirit dwells in you” (1 Cor 3:16) and “you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body” (1 Cor 6:20)?
What if “your body is a temple” means the Spirit, who is GOD, makes your very flesh the holy of holies?
What if “your body is a temple” means you’re beloved of the Father through the Son in the Spirit?
What if “your body is a temple” means you can “glorify God in your body” by praying that the Spirit would empower you to live like Jesus?
What if “your body is a temple” means you can “glorify God in your body” by lifting your hands in praise or bending your knees in worship?
What if “your body is a temple” means you can “glorify God in your body” by attending on the means of grace and coming to the Lord’s table to receive the body and blood that will sustain you, body and soul, day by day?
What if “your body is a temple” means you can “glorify God in your body” by seeking the fruit of the Spirit, serving the world God so loves, and faithfully pursuing good work?
Revelations, spectacle du Alvin Ailey city center theater, photograph by Michaud, Fernand (1929-2012). Photographe - 1992 - National Library of France
What if God-glorifying-temple-bodies DO have to do with food & health & sex but not in the ways a sinful world claims?
What if God-glorifying-temple-bodied-people move for joy and service and refuse to equate health with racist, classist, misogynist, ableist standards?
What if God-glorifying-temple-bodied-people eat for nourishment, eat for delight, eat in fellowship, without APOLOGIZING for savoring the joy of fat and salt and juice?
What if God-glorifying-temple-bodied-people eat and remember those who have no food and those for whom eating has become disordered?
And they work for food justice, for systems that can feed the hungry and sustain creation?
What if God-glorifying-temple-bodied-people treat sex as a good gift of God and dignify it through faithfulness and through fighting its denigration in systems and norms which hurt people?
What if God-glorifying-temple-bodied-people are the flesh and blood evidence that racism is heresy, white supremacy is heresy, nationalism is heresy, misogyny is heresy, the cult of youth is heresy?
What if “your body is a temple” means that God cherishes your stretch marks and your scars, your cellulite and your skin, your numbered hairs and tired feet, loving the story of a finite life lived for God’s glory, of self-giving, of repentance and relationship and love?
What if “your body is a temple” is demonstrated in baptism, confirmed in discipleship, proved most decisively in Jesus’s incarnate flesh, and anticipated in the resurrection of the dead?
Grace & peace,
BFJ
If this piece proves fruitful for you, I’d be grateful if you’d forward or share. This piece contains associate links. Want to support my work but can’t become a supporting subscriber? Buy me a coffee.
The cult of youth is a heresy. That’s so right. Our bodies may be frail as they get older, but they are precious to God in all their various iterations. He loves us, body and soul intertwined, inseparable.
This 72 year old temple is crumbling. Hard to fathom how this used and abused edifice can be a fitting place for the Holy Spirit to dwell.