|
SHELTERING THE BODY
Lilian Calles Barger
A couple of years
ago I was invited to participate as a speaker at a Christian
college’s body-awareness week. The weeklong program had been
designed to address the rampant eating disorders and entrenched
negative views of the body found particularly among the female
students. The counseling office was overwhelmed by the need for
a healthy and redeeming view of the body it saw desperately
lacking among its students. Women, in unprecedented numbers,
were starving themselves, engaging in bulimia, and confessing
deep shame about their bodies. Some of the male students
responded with the attitude that these women needed to get over
their “personal sin” by repenting and straightening up. Other
young men claimed that they also suffered from the “lookism” in
our culture, which measures people’s worth by their appearance.
How does this happen at a Christian college and among young
people who have attended church all their lives? How does this
happen at places that promote themselves as nurturing a
Christian worldview and a certain degree of protection from the
culture?
It doesn’t take much
for us to see the distorted view of the body that our
contemporary culture promotes. Christians are not immune. Daily
we are surrounded by the message that to be a worthy human being
(and an acceptable woman) we must be young, thin, flawless, and
project White affluence: a message that is now globalized by
mass media. Advertising is rampant with the message that to be a
woman is to be a consumable object: always available “eye
candy.” A look at a Victoria’s Secret window display or a Calvin
Klein ad quickly proves this point.
The current
obsession with the body can lead us to believe that American
culture values the body above all else when, in actuality, it’s
the historically low view of the body that is still prevalent
today. As I explored in my book Eve’s Revenge: Women and a
Spirituality of the Body
(Brazos, 2003), today the
body is seen as a pliable carrying case for the true self—the
inner self. This inner self is frustrated by the limitations of
the body, and these limitations quickly become impediments to
self-actualization. Only by molding the body through a variety
of means including extreme dieting, exercise, and surgical
intervention can we be free to become who we wish to be. For
women, this includes striving for an unattainable and narrow
definition of beauty—a beauty standard that can only be reached
by fashion models through vigilant control and computer
enhancement. With the popularity of shows like The Swan
and Extreme Makeover, we are led to believe that with
enough money and determination we too can join the ranks of the
young and beautiful. Young people grow up surrounded by these
messages.
Within the Church
and throughout much of its history, the body, particularly a
woman’s body and its spiritual meaning, has been a source of
tension. Are women’s bodies “the devil’s gateway,” as early
Church father Tertullian claimed, or does the incarnation
through Mary’s womb affirm woman’s participation in the
redemptive plan? As God-bearer, Mary refutes the assumed “curse”
on women and instead takes on a prophetic role (Luke 1:47-49).
Historically, the
body, beauty, and virtue were tied up in a gnarly knot, which is
still evident today. Even as we insist that inner beauty is what
matters, a woman’s virtue is often judged by her physical
beauty. It’s an idea immortalized in cultural stories; the fairy
tale of the beautiful Cinderella and her wicked and ugly
stepsisters, as an example, is still a powerful cultural image.
Like Cinderella, women who are thin, pretty, and pulled together
are judged to display more virtue. Faith-based diet books such
as Help Lord, The Devil Wants Me Fat and the popular
Weigh Down diet connect “overweight” too closely with “ugly
sloth.” In these programs, dieting is no longer merely a health
endeavor but a display of spiritual discipline and a way to
control unruly flesh.
In the Christian
marriage market, culturally-defined beauty can quickly come to
equal purity of character and a submissive disposition. As a
young teen I heard the book of Esther interpreted this way.
Esther, who is biblically described as beautiful and yielded to
God, replaces the insubordinate Queen Vashti. In the instruction
I received, Esther’s beauty and obedience overshadowed her
courage and prophetic work. More recently, in the best-selling
book Captivating, John and Stasi Eldredge provide a
standard for Christian womanhood. Wrapped in superficial beauty,
women are encouraged to meet the essential desire of a man to
rescue a beautiful woman. For many women, being loved and a
narrow definition of beauty become too closely linked.
At the same time,
however, young Christian women are taught that too much physical
charm makes a woman dangerous and a prey for male lust. The
instruction to be pretty but not too sexy can be difficult for
young women, whose bodies are blooming, to navigate. When does
pretty become sexy? They find it difficult to fit the mold of
the “perfect Christian woman” who is both beautiful and
virtuous. They may be further perplexed by sexual harassment and
abuse from men in positions of authority. Growing up in the
Church and in culture, it’s easy for young women to see their
bodies as shameful and in need of being brought under control.
Several years ago I
attended a large cosmopolitan church, which had a program for
its eighth grade boys and girls designed to help them deal with
their emerging sexuality. Before I was going to allow my
children to participate in this program I wanted to know what
would be taught, so I attended the girls’ session. I was
appalled to hear the pastor’s wife tell the girls that it was
their responsibility to avert male lust by instituting a narrow
dress code, which included no sleeveless tops. The general tone
of the instruction on sexuality was that the young women had the
responsibility to set the sexual tone of romantic relationships.
Young men were viewed as unable to control themselves sexually.
In noting this, I am not suggesting that modesty is not valuable
as a Christian discipline. When modesty is presented with the
view that the female body is inherently seductive, however, it
can only cause harm. Is it any wonder that young women show up
on Christian college campuses with an ambivalent attitude
towards their bodies?
Eating disorders, a
negative body image, and a general disdain for the body are
complex issues resulting from social, psychological, and
spiritual factors that are too great to explore here. They touch
on issues of power, the meaning of food, beauty, and one’s
relationship to the community. Above all, I believe that for
those who struggle with these issues it’s never purely a
“personal” problem. Rather the culture’s and the Christian
community’s dysfunctional attitudes regarding embodiment readily
show up on the bodies of those with the least power. The college
campus which I visited didn’t merely have a problem of a few
women with poor body image. There was a deep-seated
community-wide theological problem that caused people who have
been called to freedom in Christ to succumb to the body-hating
attitude of the culture at large. Because women have less social
power and their bodies are viewed with suspicion, they become
the ones who more often live out the lie—a lie that renders
their bodies unsuitable vessels for God to use.
If we are to stand
as a distinctive community, Christians must regain a full-orbed
biblical understanding of embodiment and vehemently reject the
objectification of the body and the devaluing of its meaning.
The biblical worldview challenges the utilitarian view in which
the body is at our disposal to do what we will. Our biblical
basis is rooted in creation, the incarnation of God in Jesus,
and the promise of the resurrection. Creation teaches that we
are an intimate unity of body and soul and that our bodies are
good (Genesis 2:7). Created by God, we use our bodies to work
the earth, build relationships, and multiply (Genesis 1:28). In
this task, the man’s and woman’s bodies are seen as “one flesh”
(Genesis 2:23). Therefore, what is done to women’s bodies, and
how they are viewed, affects the whole community. The
incarnation further affirms the goodness of the body, and that
woman is also a means by which God brings redemption into the
world. The resurrection teaches us that God’s plan includes the
redemption of our bodies from decay and death (Romans 8:23).
These spiritual and historic truths provide a paradigm by which
we can build body-affirming churches that serve as a refuge from
cultural assault.
In The Rise of
Christianity, religion scholar Rodney Stark notes the key
body-affirming teachings that made the early Church a shelter
for women who were escaping the pagan practices of female
infanticide, coerced abortions, and obligatory marriages. The
Christian faith freed their bodies from the enslavement of pagan
culture and religion. The early Church was known for its care of
the sick, rescue of babies left to die of exposure, and the
burial of the dead. These practices made the Christian faith
distinctive and powerful in a pagan culture. Once again, as
today’s Church, we have the opportunity to reclaim our
distinctiveness and challenge the body-hating practices of our
day.
What’s important is
not only what we claim to believe, but also the body-affirming
practices that are inherent to Christianity. In Scripture we
have been given baptism, the laying on of hands, and the holy
meal as a way to bring our bodies into God’s redemptive plan. We
can build on these foundational practices by seeking ways to
share meals, tend to the physical needs of our community, and
embrace people who are desperate for community. As noted by a
therapist that I interviewed, people who habitually eat alone in
front of the television or out of a box are more likely to have
disordered eating, whether it’s eating too much or too little.
People who are seldom touched have greater difficulty believing
that their bodies matter. Christian practices that affirm the
body serve as antidotes for a body-assaulting culture.
It is through the
faith community’s transformation that our individual
dysfunctional relationship to our bodies will be healed. This is
a communal work of rediscovering a fresh understanding of the
body’s meaning in the Christian faith and the practices that
secure that meaning. This cannot be done if women’s bodies are
still seen as a source of sin. It cannot be done until men and
women work together as true partners in displaying God’s
salvation to the world. We bear witness to God’s salvation by
providing shelter from the assault on the body, and by living as
those who wait eagerly, not reluctantly, for the redemption of
the whole person.
Notes:
For further reading, please see my book
Eve’s Revenge: Women and a Spirituality of the Body.
|
