So last week I ran across this very popular post on what looks to be a very propular blog, and, making a valiant effort to ignore the “Love Wins” sign off at the end of every post, I settled in and read it and walked away thinking, “that's clever”. It's like an obvious truism. It's not about the shape of your body, it's what you do with it. Of course. Then I read a couple of posts about how healing it was for other women to realize this, truly, for the first time. And then, 17 or so hours later, a low slow irritation began to niggle. Something's not exactly right, I thought, so I read it again. And then a third time.
She writes,
Whether your paintbrush is a tall paintbrush or a thin paintbrush or a stocky paintbrush or a scratched up paintbrush is completely irrelevant. What is relevant is that YOU HAVE A PAINTBRUSH which can be used to transfer your insides onto the canvas of your life- where others can see it and be inspired and comforted by it.
I mean, yes-ish. I wouldn't say completely irrelevant. I would say it's really very relevant because the shape and limitations of your body have a lot to say about what you can do and not do. If you are a marathon runner who eats carrots and drinks water, the canvas of your life is going to look a lot different from mine as I puff up my hill, dragging my dog along behind me. We can't do the same work. Moreso also, the transferring of my insides onto the canvas of my life….well, I'll leave that there for the moment.
Carrying on, she writes,
Your body is not your offering. It’s just a really amazing instrument which you can use to create your offering each day.
Ok, ok, except your body is supposed to be an offering. Paul writes in Romans 12,
I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
The body itself, not just the spirit and the soul and the mind, is part of the sacrifice, the living, breathing offering. The word sacrifice should conjure up the striking picture of the killing of an animal and the letting of the blood flow out upon the ground so that the body of the animal lay lifeless and dead. Jesus himself made a big big point of the fact that he was offering up his body to be broken and destroyed. It is his body that we are grafted into, made a part of. Christianity throughout time has fought, on various levels, to get people to pay attention to the fact that their bodies and their souls are connected. When they become disconnected, by death, that's terrible and not the original plan. The mind and the body go together. You cannot just discount your body as being merely an instrument because God doesn't do that. Of course, the author of this blog is anxious about women who carry on being sorely limited by their bodies, their minds affected and limited by the dissatisfaction they feel with their bodies. She writes,
Don’t curse your paintbrush. Don’t sit in a corner wishing you had a different paintbrush. You’re wasting time. You’ve got the one you got. Be grateful, because without it you’d have nothing with which to paint your life’s work. Your life’s work is the love you give and receive- and your body is the instrument you use to accept and offer love on your soul’s behalf. It’s a system.
Yes. As long as we can awknowledge that the body is not only an instrument. It's just that I expect it's easier if the body is only an instrument, a paint brush that I can do whatever I want with on the canvas of my life. In the first most obvious sense, if you think of your body as your paintbrush, belonging to you, you are the measure and determiner of the work you do with your body and the kind of love you give and recieve. This is good as far as it goes, but in evangelical Christianity today, and I mean like, this very morning, the great problem is the misuse and disregard of the scriptures that plainly say, your body is not your own and no you can't do whatever you want with it. It is not just an instrument. What you do with your body has a very great impact on your soul, not just in the giving and receiving of love (and what is love, when a person says that Love Wins, what kind of love are we talking about) but in terms of your ability to know and love God and be known by him. Reducing the body to an instrument is a key way that homosexuality and adultery have been justified to and in and by the church.
We are encouraged to obsess over our instrument’s SHAPE – but our body’s shape has no effect on it’s ability to accept and offer love for us. Just none.
Also, yes-ish. Except that the shape of your body does matter. A person who is handicapped and has to struggle to do basic and necessary things, and who might find that other people avert their gaze in embarrassment, or who constantly finds that people don't know whether to give a hug or shake hands or offer any greeting, that person would probably say that their body is a point of isolation, that the shape of the body has an affect on the kind of love they are even offered. Go read Henri Nowen for a few minutes before completely discounting the shapes and nature of the body. Actually, after you've read that, go read Isaiah describing how off putting the apparence of Jesus would be, how there would be nothing about him that compelled us to look at him.
The fact remains that women all over the world, and some men, struggle to be happy and to contentedly inhabit the shapes of their bodies. It might be helpful to trick the mind and say “this is a paintbrush, I should use this to do some work and to reach out to other people and to not be obsessed with myself”. But I would caution against going on in that kind of tricky thought pattern, because the fact is that Jesus loves you in your body. He plans, on the last day, to restore your body to glory and honor. What you do with your body, now, matters. And honestly, the bible is very concerned about the holiness of not just your heart, but of your body also.
I think my great consternation over this article might fall into two parts. The first is that Americans love to be pragmatic. Your body being your paintbrush affirms that which the average American evangelical wants–to just quickly solve problems and do stuff. Do we need people in church? Let's figure out what people want and give that to them. Do we want to be happy? Let's make happiness happen for ourselves. The result of this pragmatic view of the world and of God is a church that doesn't know the scripture, isn't interested to know, and is blessing gay marriage all over the place. If you begin by thinking of your body as an instrument with which you paint on the canvas of your life you may very well end, and many many many have, throwing rice at a gay wedding. And you will say, 'I'm all about giving and recieving of love' and 'love wins' without ever knowing and seeing that yes, Love Wins, God's love wins, on the cross, at a great and terrible price, but that many will eternally perish because they are unwilling to accept his love in their current and living body.
The second part of my consternation is how pelagian this kind of theology ends up being. What if, after reading this post, you still feel cruddy about your paintbrush? Too bad. Its on you to make something of your life, to paint on the glorious canvas of reality. That's just not possible for most of us. Most of us will go on hating our flesh until the day of our death. Many many many opportunities will be lost by me because I had a bad attitude about my body, because I couldn't get over the way my stomach, after giving birth six times, flaps when I toil up the hill, because I sat around wishing I was prettier and smarter and better. But guess what, It's Not About Me. Its about Jesus and his work. Its about his salvation of me, his redemption of the world on the cross, his continued sanctification of me day by day. There is a sweetness in struggling along with Jesus, on his terms, in the brokeness of my own body. My body is not just an instrument, a paintbrush, it is the location of Jesus' continual teaching and instruction, through the scriptures, so that I may glorify him. Which, honestly, I bet, is what the author of this blog is trying to say. Get over yourself. Do something. Yes, except that you can't get over yourself. You can't do anything, neither with the mind or with the body. Your body and mind and spirit and soul are broken by sin, by sorrow, by all kinds of evil. But God, while yet our bodies and hearts were torn assunder, gave himself up, even to death on the cross, the breaking of his own body, the spilling out of his blood, so that our bodies could live.
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