Bodies and Christ

I don’t like Saint Paul, and I nev­er real­ly have, but today’s sec­ond read­ing from his let­ter to the Corinthi­ans [1 Cor 6:13c-15a, 17–20] and Fr.‘s homi­ly gave me a new angle of look­ing at the Church’s teach­ings regard­ing our bod­ies. Most of the time the only things I hear about the Church’s teach­ing regard­ing the body are crit­i­cisms of the restric­tive­ness of the require­ments; if we think of our bod­ies as loans from God, not actu­al­ly ours, but allowed for our use, then these things start to make sense not as restric­tions but as guides to the prop­er appre­ci­a­tion of our being. There real­ly is only one thing to keep in mind: each and every way in which we use our body should glo­ri­fy the guy who is let­ting us use it in the first place. That leaves plen­ty of lee­way for enjoy­ment of our bod­ies. The church does­n’t real­ly restrict the things we can eat or drink, but when those acts become more impor­tant than treat­ing our bod­ies with dig­ni­ty, they cease to be for the glo­ry of God, and you get glut­tony as the result. Seen from this angle, the con­text of rig­or­ous reli­gious pro­hi­bi­tions against abor­tion and sex-for-plea­sure makes more sense. One results in the destruc­tion of a body cre­at­ed by God and the oth­er is a bas­tardiza­tion of an act intend­ed for pro­cre­ation; nei­ther show the respect­ful use of a body that’s on loan from the man upstairs.

Sim­i­lar­ly, not using our phys­i­cal abil­i­ties for char­i­ta­ble actions or even small acts of self­less­ness are mis­us­es of the intend­ed pur­pos­es of the body. And you see, I’m so used to think­ing of what we’re not sup­posed to do with our bod­ies that I’ve got­ten away from the most impor­tant point. We are sup­posed to enjoy our bod­ies at every moment that we have one, but we’re sup­posed to enjoy them grate­ful­ly, not self­ish­ly.

Now whether all of this is an accept­ably under­stood inter­pre­ta­tion of God’s will is still up for debate [and the basis for my dis­like of the Church’s depen­dence on Paul’s epis­tles]. But if we assume that it is, this path is still a damn hard thing to do. Our ani­mal nature exerts pure­ly self­ish demands [but the expe­ri­ence of hav­ing an ani­mal nature is what should be appre­ci­at­ed] and social nature puts oth­er demands and oth­er temp­ta­tions that can eas­i­ly teach peo­ple to hate their bod­ies or the things their bod­ies do, or things done to their bod­ies. It is such a tough path to fol­low that it might not be much of a sur­prise that it is eas­i­er to focus on spir­i­tu­al and intel­lec­tu­al rela­tions and leave the body out of it alto­geth­er.