- Oct 31, 2008
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Tonight's topic in RCIA was suffering. Near the beginning our catechist went into a mini-lecture about our "hierarchy of values" and distinguished between whether our choices reflect a value of the body or the soul. She didn't reference him directly, but she basically iterated C.S. Lewis' quotation, "You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body." She emphasized the importance of our thinking in terms of our immortal soul in contrast to the mortal, temporal body. She also cited Plato, saying something to the effect of "Bad things cannot happen to good people" (I'm really butchering the phrase), but the essence was that whatever suffering we experience cannot harm our soul, only our bodies.
I didn't really think about this until just now otherwise I would've asked her, but because of my timing, I'm coming here.
The logic I came away with is that the body doesn't matter because it's going to die and rot away eventually and that our highest goal is for our souls to reach heaven. What I'm curious about is, how do we hold this in tension with the scripture that our body is a temple (1 Corinthians 6:19)? Also, should we be careful not to excessively diminish the importance of the body given the ultimate end of bodily resurrection?
It seems like if we don't unpack it further, that we run the risk of a view that says we can treat our bodies like amusement parks, fill them full of junk food, alcohol, drugs, and all-around abuse them as we please. I understand that hedonistic pleasure isn't the point of our existence, but at some level isn't there a Christian mandate to be good stewards, not only of the Earth, but of our own bodies?
I don't know if I'm necessarily confused on this point, but just more unsure of which direction our thinking is supposed to go in this regard.
I didn't really think about this until just now otherwise I would've asked her, but because of my timing, I'm coming here.
The logic I came away with is that the body doesn't matter because it's going to die and rot away eventually and that our highest goal is for our souls to reach heaven. What I'm curious about is, how do we hold this in tension with the scripture that our body is a temple (1 Corinthians 6:19)? Also, should we be careful not to excessively diminish the importance of the body given the ultimate end of bodily resurrection?
It seems like if we don't unpack it further, that we run the risk of a view that says we can treat our bodies like amusement parks, fill them full of junk food, alcohol, drugs, and all-around abuse them as we please. I understand that hedonistic pleasure isn't the point of our existence, but at some level isn't there a Christian mandate to be good stewards, not only of the Earth, but of our own bodies?
I don't know if I'm necessarily confused on this point, but just more unsure of which direction our thinking is supposed to go in this regard.