"Tight lines" is a blessing fishermen offer each other, a wish for lines taut with the weight of good fish. May God grant that the lines written here be taut with His blessings.
Tuesday, 13 January 2009 | |||
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My Temple or His Temple? | |||
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I never ceased to be amazed at how Christian imagery and
ideas permeate our western culture, forming an unconscious background for
everyone, believer or not. I am also constantly amazed at how Christian
concepts are distorted and repackaged by the secular mind. For instance,
I suggested to a Bible class yesterday that the theory of evolution could
only have arisen within a culture saturated in the biblical, linear view
of history (in contrast to the ancient pagan/oriental view of an eternal
recycling of events). But my concern this week is with the secular transformation of the Christian image of the human body presented in I Corinthians 6:12-20. In verse 19, Paul asks the well-known rhetorical question, "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. . .?" (Please ignore the TNIV's pluralizing of the nouns and pronouns in this verse. It's silly fallout from its desire to achieve gender neutrality in verse 18.) I first became aware that the concept of the body as a temple remains in the general culture a few years ago. In a conversation with a young man living on the street, he told me that he did not smoke, "because my body is my temple." Since then I've become aware, and an Internet search confirms that, especially in new age circles, the description of the body as "my temple" is fairly common. Participants in yoga classes are encouraged to chant the phrase, "My body is my temple." You will, of course, immediately see the change from the biblical concept. Whereas Paul calls me to recognize my body as a temple of the Holy Spirit, the repackaged notion is that my body is *my* temple. Thus the contemporary mind transforms the biblical idea that my flesh and blood are an arena in which to worship God into the thought that in my body, by caring for my body, I may worship *myself.* That the individual body of the believer is a temple for the Holy Spirit connects back to Paul's thought in I Corinthians 3:16, 17 that the Church as whole, the Body of Christ, is a temple for God's Spirit. His thoughts at the end of chapter 6 focus that idea down so as to take aim at individual morality. We are both corporately and individually a temple of the Holy Spirit. Thus both good relationships with each other and individual holiness are to be the outcome. My aim this week is to remind us of the moral dimension of the body-temple concept, that its focus is on the Spirit of God, not on ourselves. Thus, while there may be some validity in utilizing this text to promote good physical health and self-care (there is after all a moral dimension to taking care of one's body -- it is wrong to do oneself harm), the bigger focus for Paul is on restricting immoral behavior in order to be a pure dwelling place for God's Spirit. It would be nice if Christians could be careful to recognize the distortion of Scripture in the "my body my temple" concept and avoid that phrasing in favor of a body concept which centers on the worship of God through right living. Let's recognize that one could cultivate a "temple" extremely well in the contemporary sense (good diet, regular exercise, avoidance of substance abuse, etc.) and yet be an extremely poor temple for the Spirit in the biblical sense because of immoral behavior. And if Hollywood's denizens are any clue, I suspect it happens all the time. | |||
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I am the pastor of Valley Covenant Church in Eugene, Oregon. I love to flyfish and hike along the beautiful rivers in our area. I welcome your comments as I share sermon work in progress and occasional other thoughts.
Thank you for visiting this blog. I invite you also to visit my web page.
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