I can't help but think that our world, in its full scale fleshly materialism, is in the clutches of gnosticism. The whole world is obsessed with bodies. We want six pack abs, bulging biceps, and fuller busts. We associate beauty with a robotic, utilitarian, youthful type of body. You know, buns of steel. When we are forty-five, we regret that we no longer look twenty. Some still try. The body has a tendency to mature, and that involves stretching, bulging, and sagging. That is the reality of it. But we are obsessed with perfect bodies. Ones that are tight, hard, and don't wear out. That's not reality, it gnostic. It denies the fundamental physical reality of being a physical being in a fallen world.
This gnostic view of the body denies life. It is a view that says the primary purpose of the body is to give life to itself. But we know that to live we must lay aside our own life. This is easy for me to say as a guy. I don't see the effects of this as quickly. Laying aside my life physically may actually make me look stronger, tighter, and all of that. When I work, because I do work, my body for a time will improve. But what about my wife? What happens when she embraces the purpose of the body God has given her, and lays aside her life to give life? For starters, she gives life. Life grows inside of her. And then she starts to grow and change, and the world looks at her and says, 'eww'. She is uncomfortable often, and by accepting pregnancy she has accepted changes in her body that may never go away. Many in the world, and in the church, look at that kind of sacrifice and cannot fathom why she would do such a thing. It is because only by laying down our lives can we live, and she will not only live, but will have given life to another.
But it is not that she has accepted the idea of looking ugly to give life. Far from it! She has accepted a different idea of beauty. Hers is a more mature beauty. It is a beauty that in twenty years will not look like a girl's, but will look like the beauty of a woman who has given life to the covenant children of God. We will both one day be old and wrinkly. I hope we can look back through the years not regretting that we have lost our youth, but rejoicing that we have given it. I hope that we will look at the past not as somewhere we wish we could be still, but as somewhere that was a step to where we are going. Where we are going is a real world of real redeemed bodies. Mature ones that are more beautiful than any we can imagine here.
