Our bodies are a curious thing. We live "through them", even with all of their limitations, their ailments, their weaknesses - until their death.
It is tempting to want to imagine a life without our bodies. Perhaps then we could imagine a world without suffering, without all the pain, induced by the ailments and diseases our bodies are prone to inherit; and all this before finally dying.
The temptation of this kind of escapism is fierce, and is lived out in cultures and societies that produce victims of a dualistic philosophy of human life: that is, a dualism between the body and the spirit, or the soul, of the human person. A dualism that places these two components - the body and the spirit, the soul - at odds with each other. In this dualistic mentality, death is viewed as a liberation of the soul from the body - an "escape" from the body that proved to be corruptible, finally to the point of being buried in a grave. This escapism was perhaps first articulated by Plato; it is an idea that still holds sway today.
Perhaps this is why it has become difficult for men and women to meet God, who became man. It is a scandal, even to well-meaning Christians, that God is also a human being. The dualism and escapism held by many has made it near impossible to behold a God who has a body, who suffered in his body, who lived in his body - and who does so still.
We should learn from this. Perhaps God is telling us something about what it means to be human. Perhaps we should learn that the meaning of human life is not to escape from the body. If the body was not an important part of the meaning of human life, but was something to be liberated from, then it would be incomprehensible that God should ever want to live in and through a human body.
But He did; and He does.
And this truth is, indeed, incomprehensible for many. We would indeed do well to learn from this. If we want to know what it means to be human, whom else should we look to than the One who not only created human nature, but lived in and through it as well?
Hopefully we can encounter the God who is human before we give into a temptation to escape our humanity.
Perhaps more scandalous than the fact that God is also a man is the fact that, in spite our experience with the weaknesses and ailments of our bodies, we should hope to have them restored to a superior degree in the future. And if this sounds especially peculiar or odd, let is not forget that the Man who once died was also raised from the dead in glorious fashion; a man, a human being, like us.
