Bogosity

Gen 2:7-9; 3:1-7

she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. 7Then the eyes of both were opened,

We’ve moved out of epiphany now and due to the early easter, have dived straight into lent. Lent is a time of repentance and self reflection. We’ve spent the first few weeks of the year thinking idealogically about justice, love, peace, happiness and healing. In lent, we’ll turn our eyes inward a bit and look at some of the practicalities, the dirt, the secrets, the ways we break things and work against God. It is about disharmony, oppression and violence – if not in action then in thoughts.

Usually I would take a reading like this and start sledging creationists but perhaps it is more helpful to look for something a bit more meaningful.

Last year I read an article called human monsters. I was moved by this article because it pointed out that we all possess the capability of great evil. The article points out that we like to demonise people who commit attrocities to distance ourselves from them, yet it is a mistake to think they are not human. It is perfectly human to hurt, lie, steal, corrupt and destroy. It might be survival instinct, the reading suggests that we have been this way since the beginning. We are all (most of us) born with a set of instincts that cause survival behaviour: crying, sucking, breathing. As we grow up, we are socialised and taught how to behave, how to control our impulses but they are always there – we struggle against our primal animal selves in order to attain things that are not primal or animal – the things we talked about through epiphany.

During the rise of christianity, the greeks influenced christian culture with the idea that the flesh is evil and the spirit is good. That idea can lead to some dodgy territory depending which way you go – one way is to decide that it is ok to do whatever you like with your body as long as your mind is clean – it’s an attractive idea – orgies of sex, food and violence can be justified with this thinking. Or you might decide to mistreat your body with flagelation and masochism in order to tame the flesh and free the mind.

But Jesus doesn’t teach that the body is evil or less important than the mind, even though you can see why the idea fits in with the biblical concept of sin. Jesus healed people’s bodies and in the church we say we believe in the resurection of the body. We believe that our restoration will be a redemption of our bodies as well, our body with it’s carnal desires will be at peace with our thoughts and spirit – we will be whole people – that’s what we are trying to acheive.