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Temple

 Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies. (I Corinthians 6:19-20)

 

Before we deal with how well, or how badly, we live the reality of today’s passage, there’s a philosophical idea we need to address.  It’s a type of dualism.  According to this idea, the body and the soul are separate entities that strive against one another. This means that what the body does doesn’t matter because it’s the soul that lives forever. The body can be manipulated to better suit the “wearer.” This is how a man can be trapped in a woman’s body or vice versa. This is also where we get the “It’s my body, I can do what I want to with it” and “my body, my right” idea. Of course, while that is proclaimed, the moment a virus comes along, it gets dropped.

Christianity doesn’t teach that the is any less “you” than the soul or mind is. And that’s where our problem comes in. If the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, we should treat it as such. It should be cared for, treated with dignity, but also educated and disciplined.

This is where too many of us say, “Yeah, right.”  Often, our bodies seem like our gods, not a part of us. Our bodies want, and they want what they want now. Food is probably the thing that most tempts me to treat my body more like a brothel than a temple.

In addition to our bodies quoting Little Shop of Horrors, “Feed me!” we face the challenges of entropy. Things tend to break down. How can the body be a temple of the Holy Spirit when the roof leaks in four places and the hinges on the doors creek every time we try to open or close them? Or when the termites of COVID-19 get in and start eating away.

In all of this, the only answer I can come  up with is to take the matter to the Carpenter and ask for help, and to keep today’s passage in our minds – and perhaps on our refrigerators and mirrors

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