Do
you hate your body? Statistics
show that a good portion of you would answer “yes” to that question. There are entire industries that rely
on us hating our bodies. Beauty
products like make-up, hair color all exploit at our insecurity about our bodies. In many advertisements women are
portrayed as unhealthily thin, and a body image is promoted that leads many
young girls into struggles with eating disorders. Even healthy products and services like exercise equipment
and gyms motivate us to change our behavior by preying on our low image of our
bodies.
Beyond that, most advertisements presume we hate
our bodies, even if they aren’t specifically selling us a product to improve
them. Think about it. Have you ever seen an out-of-shape
person in a car commercial? From
watching TV, one might even assume that the best way to get a hot body is to
drink beer, since, at least in commercials, it seems all the people with the
best bodies drink beer or at least attend beer-related events.
One would expect that Christian culture would offer
us an alternative to holding our bodies in low esteem, but sadly that is not
always the case. In Christianity,
it seems that not only do we hate our own bodies, we hate everyone else’s body
as well. In fact we hate the idea of
bodies.
For the most part, throughout much of Christian
history, the human body has been portrayed as something in which evil
resides. The body is where all
kinds of human lusts and desire fester that must be repressed and eventually
done away with.