Gravity: 2007

Theology of the body

A. God wanted his marital plan to be so obvious to us that He chiseled it into our very bodies.

Male and female are called to be one
It is a summary of everything God wants to tell us about Himself and who we are

B. Take a beautiful painting as an example of God's creation. What could be the most beautiful image worthy of painting? Of course - male and female - the CROWN OF CREATION!

Man and woman are naked without shame
Sin has destroyed and trashed the painting (God's plan)
In throwing away the painting, it has created a recipe for disaster in the form of puritanism (our culture is puritan in its thinking - hide sexuality)

C. It is a heresy to think: the spirit part of us is good, but the body part of us is bad.

If our body is evil, incarnation is blasphemy (The word was made flesh)

D. In response to Puritan culture and the secrecy of our sexuality - Two men responded.

1953 - Hugh Hefner founded Playboy. He basically picked that beautiful painting out of the trash (which was right), but he never took it out of its crumbled form (which is where he was wrong).
- Hugh Hefner said he founded porn as a response to Puritan Christianity.
- Like the rest of us, Hugh was starved of attention and love. Is it any wonder that our culture has an obsession with breasts? That is where we are fed from as children.
1950's - The second man to respond was JPII. He took the painting out of the trash AND straightened it out to show the beauty of male and female.
- Theology of the Body is the antidote to our culture of porn
- We are starved for knowledge of human sexuality so we go to the dumpster.
- Our hunger is not the problem - the problem is how we "satisfy" that hunger

E. Christ is the Word made flesh

A purely spiritual God is much more manageable than a God who wore diapers and literally bleeds to love us. Take that a step further - He tells us to "drink my blood"
The anti-Christ is he who is concentrated on separating Christ and the body.
Don't be afraid of the hunger. Don't deny it. Otherwise you will become like the pharisees - when Jesus comes, they don't even need Him because they are already following the rules.
Instead of denying the hunger, we must realize that Christ is the banquet that really satisfies.
This is Christianity - The invisible God makes Himself visible in the body!
Disordered sexuality is a foreshadowing of hell - it leaves us broken and in pain.

F. Naked without shame vs shameless nakedness

Prostitution vs Adam and Eve in the garden (Sistine Chapel is another example)
Lust is the problem, NOT the body
Do not assign evil to the body! Only assign evil to the heart. If we blame the body, we never have to convert our heart
The cure is redemption of the body - refer to Romans 8

G. Christ and the Church are the ultimate marriage

When we get to heaven, God does not push the "delete" button on our spouse. He puses the "complete" button. Christ and the Church are the ultimate marriage - our marriages here lead us to heaven.
If we don't think heaven is better than sex, sex has become our idol.

Christopher West ended with a great story.
Paraphrased - "A nun is being interviewed and the gentleman interviewing her says, "What you really want is sex, but you are disguising it with this 'union with God' stuff. She replied, "I beg to differ. The world really desires a union with God and disguises it with sex."