Embodiedness
Have you ever just sat and contemplated your own embodiedness? Do it now.
Sense the feeling of sitting or standing. Notice which muscles are being used. What is your face doing as you read this? Are you smiling, frowning, maybe your face is neutral. Maybe you just felt a breeze cross your skin. Are you hungry? Being hungry is human.
I find that far too often, our theologies don’t take into account our embodiedness; something that makes us part of the created realm. Often, we think of our bodies are evil—full of deceit, and desire, and longing. Maybe we don’t like how our bodies look or how we feel inside our bodies.
The fact is that when God created humanity in bodied form, we see that God called it good. (Gen. 1:31) Some will point to the fact here that on the day that God created humanity, God never says that They say it was good. But we see in Genesis 1:31, that God looks over all of creation, everything that was made, and calls it very good. This includes humanity and our bodies.
Our embodiedness is central to who we are as humans. Have you known any human or created being without a body? The answer is no, because then they weren’t human. To be human is to live an embodied experience. And we see that the body, and everything that comes with it, is central to the people we meet in Scripture. From Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to Mary, and Paul and Peter.
We also have God, who became embodied for us. We have given it the fancy name of the incarnation, but it is all about embodiedness. Christ, God the Son, took on human embodiedness. This means that He experienced everything that we do. He experienced emotions (John 11:35), he was angry (Matt. 21:12), and he felt hunger (Luke 4). Jesus was an embodied being, which means he felt and had to deal with His bodily existence.
If the body is sinful by nature, then Jesus wasn’t without sin because Jesus had a body. So then, if Jesus never sinned, and He was an embodied being, then why do we conclude that the body is inherently sinful? Some of you will point to the fact that Jesus is fully divine and therefore He is the one exception the sinful body belief. But that is a jump. If God was not able to be sinful, and God had a body in Jesus, then bodies can’t inherently be sinful. Bodies can sin, but bodies aren’t in and of themselves sinful. If theologies are going to be used, they must take into account this embodiedness that is God-designed.
God has given each and everyone of us a body. We are called to use our bodies to glorify God, and this can be done no matter what kind of body you have. For God to be worshipped by every nation, tribe and tongue means there will be a plethora of different bodies in heaven.
That means that your trans body is good. Your non-binary body is good. Your cis body is good. Your black body is good. You asian body is good. Yes, even your white body is good. Just because someone’s body doesn’t conform to how society views bodies, doesn’t make that body bad. It makes it different than yours, and there is nothing wrong with that.
God calls for diversity within the body of Christ, and this means that queer bodies belong.
They are what makes the Church unique. When someone tells you your body is bad, they are trying to exert power and control over your body. Control often leads to abuse and oppression, which is not the way of Jesus.
When we discuss theologies or contemporary ecclesial subjects (like queer inclusion) we have to remember that we are not talking about some theoretical or abstract idea. We are dealing with real embodied people. People who are created in the image of God, whether you see them that way or not.
Please note that this is not a full theology of embodiment, nor do I think that’s what is needed. This offers a brief reflection on embodiment. What is truly needed is for our theologies to be grounded in our embodiment.