Blog
measured and found wanting
Many faith-based conversations about the body are sorely lacking. Sometimes, we overcorrect, rejecting anything to do with the body and treating it as less than spiritual. Youth leaders center women’s bodies in conversations around sexual purity and pastors center it around a husband’s fidelity. Other times, we spout trite Christian cliches as a verbal ascent to the goodness of the body. But in many ways, Christians are just co-opting cultural trends and “Christianizing” them. “Stewardship” can be just another word for diet and exercise. “Fearfully and wonderfully made” can be a sanitized version of “Real women have curves.” Or as one podcaster put it, “Instead of doing something to be thin, we are doing it to be healthy.” But the goal is the same. As she goes on to state, healthy is often synonymous with thinness.