Bodies: Male and Female
The Christian faith is based on the doctrine of the Incarnation--God became a man in flesh and blood. This is necessary to death, burial, and resurrection. It is necessary for the period of the gospels. It is part of the rituals of the church--we are baptized (a bodily act, one that for Baptists involves the whole body) because He was; we commemorate the gospel in the physical act of eating at the communion table. We sing songs about the body and blood of Christ.
The body we celebrate is a male body. It was the body of a stonemason (the real meaning of technon, or what we have always thought of as carpenter). It was a body that could survive beating and a 40-day fast. God came as a man, not a woman, for a lot of good reasons.
It is not lost on me that the new paganhood, the occult, celebrates, or worships (maybe fears) the female body. The female body is likened to the physical earth, the planet, which births, produces, is fecund and fertile. It is receptive, passive, fertilized; it is life-giving,
Women are, I think, ambivalent about their bodies. Along with the reality that all bodies get old, infirm, and painful (for me, it's back pain), women's bodies bleed inconveniently, gain weight due to unexpected hormone shifts, may or may not be fertile, are expected to conform to some foolish ideal of "beauty" that both men and women subscribe to. We wear ridiculous shoes. We do some pretty weird things to our hair and skin. We should be more in touch with our bodies but allow ourselves to let conditions go too long without treatment.
Christian women have reason for more ambivalence; too many times we've been told we're the cause of sin (in men), that our bodies are naturally tempting just by sheer existence, and that our bodies are weak and we are somehow less than because of our lack if musculature and upper body strength. I've never been one to want to prove myself stronger than a man by extreme sports; I'm pretty lazy in that regard. However, "weaker vessel" does not mean intellectually or morally. I do think some women are weaker emotionally, but not all.
The Point of this rambling: Christians do not have a right or reason to dislike our physical bodies, since the core of our faith is about embodiment; the gospel hinges on physicality. Our bodies will decay and die, to be replaced, not destroyed. That's something to think about deeply. Eating an occasional brownie is not succumbing to a sin on the order of Adam and Eve's choice to fall. It is also easier to control the body than the spirit and heart, so we talk about such control self-righteously. "It is what proceeds from the mouth, not what goes into it, that condemns us."
Interesting addition; in reading about the Assyrian Empire in Old Testament days, I found the assertion that when the Assyria Empire became monotheistic, women became less a part of leadership in society. The idea being, if there are pagan "female" deities, women would have more recognition. I can see the generalized truth in that, but Christianity debunks it, due to the way Jesus treated women (which we don't always respect or follow).
The body we celebrate is a male body. It was the body of a stonemason (the real meaning of technon, or what we have always thought of as carpenter). It was a body that could survive beating and a 40-day fast. God came as a man, not a woman, for a lot of good reasons.
It is not lost on me that the new paganhood, the occult, celebrates, or worships (maybe fears) the female body. The female body is likened to the physical earth, the planet, which births, produces, is fecund and fertile. It is receptive, passive, fertilized; it is life-giving,
Women are, I think, ambivalent about their bodies. Along with the reality that all bodies get old, infirm, and painful (for me, it's back pain), women's bodies bleed inconveniently, gain weight due to unexpected hormone shifts, may or may not be fertile, are expected to conform to some foolish ideal of "beauty" that both men and women subscribe to. We wear ridiculous shoes. We do some pretty weird things to our hair and skin. We should be more in touch with our bodies but allow ourselves to let conditions go too long without treatment.
Christian women have reason for more ambivalence; too many times we've been told we're the cause of sin (in men), that our bodies are naturally tempting just by sheer existence, and that our bodies are weak and we are somehow less than because of our lack if musculature and upper body strength. I've never been one to want to prove myself stronger than a man by extreme sports; I'm pretty lazy in that regard. However, "weaker vessel" does not mean intellectually or morally. I do think some women are weaker emotionally, but not all.
The Point of this rambling: Christians do not have a right or reason to dislike our physical bodies, since the core of our faith is about embodiment; the gospel hinges on physicality. Our bodies will decay and die, to be replaced, not destroyed. That's something to think about deeply. Eating an occasional brownie is not succumbing to a sin on the order of Adam and Eve's choice to fall. It is also easier to control the body than the spirit and heart, so we talk about such control self-righteously. "It is what proceeds from the mouth, not what goes into it, that condemns us."
Interesting addition; in reading about the Assyrian Empire in Old Testament days, I found the assertion that when the Assyria Empire became monotheistic, women became less a part of leadership in society. The idea being, if there are pagan "female" deities, women would have more recognition. I can see the generalized truth in that, but Christianity debunks it, due to the way Jesus treated women (which we don't always respect or follow).
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