Godlike Bling

I think God honors our decisions to augment our bodies as we see fit through piercings, tattoos, botox, implants....whatever we choose. Seems to me that such changes are part of the temporal realm, like glasses, artificial hearts, fillings etc. Just upgrades or repairs on the machine really. I think we have a very Puritanical relationship with our bodies. They are supposed to be sacred, yet we are ashamed to display them. We are given guidelines for their proper care and feeding, yet we are hung up on vanity issues associated with them. The whole mythos surrounding bodies is terrible conflicted and incongruent. We are drawn to visions of healthy, thirty-something perfected bodies but we shun the idea of the pursuit of physical perfection in the flesh. What’s up with that? Sex seems so taboo here, yet is the primary function in the CK. Sex. Lots of sex with perfected thirty-something bodies. Making spirit kids until, well, forever.

I often wonder at the imbalance presented in a theological approach to spiritual perfection that leaves out the same pursuit for the physical…. Mind, body and spirit are all integral.

What if we loved our bodies, wanted to maintain them and decorate them as a celebration of the gift that they really are instead of wanting to hide them beneath clothing, keep them secret, sacred and safe from sight…? Wouldn’t that be better? Tattoos are a celebration, piercings are a celebration, exercise, tanning, toning, lotioning, proper diet, passionate physical movement including satisfying sexual interaction are all excellent tributes to the miracle of our bodies. Our bodies are organs of sensate experience; they are the interface between the Creator and the physical, material world.

Why, I ask, in a church that believes in a God that has a physical body are we so at odds with our own at times?