Your body is not bad!

I've been spending some time reflecting on the Men of Valor conference from this past weekend. Christopher West spoke incredibly eloquently about the Theology of the Body written by Pope John Paul II. Here is my attempt to summarize the key take away for me:

The body is good. It is not something to be killed, but something to be treasured. Our problem is that we do not treasure it enough. Our body is in fact the very way that God brings visibility to spiritual truth. We, the church, are the body of Christ - that is we are the physical reality of Christ in the world. Without our bodies we can not be what we were designed to be.

The quest for sexual purity is not one that requires us to put to death our desires, but to instead satisfy our desires in the only way that can result in ultimate satisfaction. Satisfaction that is shameless, pure, and beautiful - satisfaction that satisfies completely and does not set us on a quest for more. For those of us that are married, this satisfaction comes from the oneness we experience with our spouse. This oneness is a symbol of the oneness we will one day experience with Christ. For those of us that are single, this satisfaction comes from discovering that your desires can lead you to a oneness with Christ in such a way that you find a satisfaction in him that is impossible for a married person to experience. I admit, the married way sounds better to me, but I suspect this is because I do not accurately grasp what an undistracted life, completely and totally enveloped by God, would be like.

The problem is not that we have desires, but that we too often satisfy them in ways that miss the mark. The Bible calls 'missing the mark' sin - falling short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). Sin is simply taking a legitimate desire meant to point us to God, and satisfying it in a way that falls short of the mark. By falling short, we rob God of his glory, and rob ourselves of our joy. Here are some quotes that express this truth better than I ever could:

"The body, in fact, and only the body, is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and the divine. It has been created to transfer into the visible reality of the world the mystery hidden from eternity in God, and thus to be a sign of it" - Pope John Paul II

"I know some muddle-headed Christians have talked as if Christianity thought that sex, or the body - were bad in themselves. But they were wrong. Christianity is almost the only one of the great religions which thoroughly approves of the body - which believes that matter is good, that God Himself once took on a human body that some kind of body is going to be given to us even in Heaven and is going to be an essential part of our happiness." C.S. Lewis

"Every man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God" G.K. Chesterton