THE STREAM/ JOHN STONESTREET & G.S. MORRIS-
Anabaptist theologian Stanley Hauerwas once said that in 100 years, if Christians are known as those who do not kill their children or their elderly, we would have been doing something right. May we, in fact, be known for nothing less than these things, but I hope we’ll be known for far more. Specifically, Christians must be known as those who acknowledge created reality, in particular the goodness of the human body.
The Human Body — A Canvas of Self-Expression
This won’t be easy. Unthinkable a couple of decades ago, it’s now normal to deny the purpose, the meaning, and the goodness of the human body. Increasingly the body is seen, not as a given of reality, but as a fully morphable canvas of self-expression. Not only do we celebrate unnatural ways of using it, we see it as something to be reinvented and remodeled, even mutilated if that allows us to “be ourselves.”
Because Christians believe in a world created by God, including the human body, we must not allow what is considered normal to seem normal to us. We might be shocked and grieved, but we should always point to the truth of who we are, and oppose these ideas which destroy and degrade, rather than liberate human beings.
Wounded and Disfigured — Harm, Not Help
Any culture that denies what our bodies reveal about who we are must work hard to suppress the overwhelming evidence of reality. At times, like beach balls pushed below the water, this evidence re-emerges. For example, just before Christmas, New York Magazine released an issue with a cover photo of a person with a beard and body hair, wearing nothing but briefs, staring at readers. A massive scar dominates one leg. The headline reads: “My Penis, Myself: I didn’t need a penis to be a man. But I needed one to be me.”
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