While Some Eat With Their Eyes Others Just Don’t Eat

 

So we’ve been talking about things like fair trade, social justice, moral responsibility and the conscientious s capitalist. Often we get to arguing about where we should draw the line, who should decide what is ‘enough’, what is ‘too much’ and whether this is really just talk of pie in the sky.

I’ve never been involved in overseas or inner city missions and I live in one of the richest counties in the US. I own four automobiles, including my children’s. My house has cable TV and internet and air conditioning. We have three television sets, two computers, a dishwasher, washing machine and dryer, microwave oven, electric range, DVD players, XBox and PS2, multiple stereos and Lord knows how many defunct cell phones. We eat out at least a couple times a week and like to take drives in the country. I definitely would not hold myself up as an example of someone living a life of mere sufficiency.

So how am I leaving a bigger (or smaller) footprint on this planet than others? Where can I change? Honestly, I’m not ready to give up much, if any, of the things that I just rattled off. Other than turning the water off when I shave or brush my teeth, I can’t think of too many more ways in which I can make a difference. We’ve recycled for years and we keep a close eye on the thermostat and other appliances (because of the money). Now we look for certain labels in our garments or on our boxes, bottles and cans before we buy, but if they’re not available (or too expensive) we usually purchase what’s there.

But I waste quite a bit, and I always have. And most of you folks do as well – it’s just not in ways that are very visible. Some of you know I work in the culinary business and you probably can guess that my industry is responsible for a lot of wasted food. But before you start railing against McDonald’s and Red Lobster you must remember that they are driven by profits and none of them like throwing away food. The market (us) has demanded that a large line for waste be included on most food service P&L’s. If the operation is within budget then waste is not considered excessive. But it’s still waste. Nobody likes it.

The classic visible example of industry conservation has been the disappearance of the obligatory water glass. I remember years ago when (during a drought) we began serving water by request only. You wouldn’t believe the number of people who thought this was a personal affront. After all, how much can a glass of water cost? So you try explaining that it’s not just the 10 ounces of water in the glass, it’s the water used to make the ice as well as the water used to clean the glass (probably another 10-20 ounces).

Of course on top of that there is the energy needed to make the ice and run the dish machine. More soapy water goes down the drain, requiring energy demanding treatment or perhaps running off into the aquifer. The more glassware that’s used the more breakage occurs and the more glass goes into the landfill. More energy and resources are used to make more glasses. And don’t forget – half of the folks never touched their water, so it was often for nothing.

I used to spend an occasional shift working the dish machine just to get a feel for what was coming back from the dining room. This is how I found out that nobody was eating the dill pickle spear we served with all of our sandwiches. When I decided to pull the pickle off of the plate (and take 50 cents off the price) the uproar was loud and angry. Over a pickle. You would have thought the consumption of pickles was protected in our constitution. It was obvious that some people feel an entitlement to some things they become used to. Even fermented cucumbers that they don’t eat. (I stuck to my guns though – pickles ain’t cheap.) How many sandwiches have you seen come out with a slice of tomato, lettuce and onion on the side? I’ll bet at least half of those sides get tossed in the trash. But presentation is king and we all know that people ‘eat with their eyes’. But really they eat with their mouths and their mouths rarely eat the garnish.

Have you ever seen a salad ordered, with dressing on the side (dieters love this trick) but the server presented it dressed? I don’t know how many salads I’ve had to remake because of that unforgivable mistake. But then to see the same diner now take the ramekin of dressing and dump it all over the salad anyway…..jeesh!

How about the burger that should’ve been rare to medium rare and it came out just plain old medium rare? Many people who order in this fashion don’t have the correct nomenclature down. I’ve had customers who didn’t know the difference send their burgers back two or three times. At that point I would personally cook the burger and present it myself; just so all questions of doneness would be resolved. But two perfectly good hamburgers were now in the trash (or going down the drain).

As much flack as the QSR segment gets for ‘supersized’ foods the real culprit behind huge restaurant portions is the Cheesecake Factory. They started this long lived national trend of plating up excessive quantities. Now everyone does it. Real American food, served real big under real big ferns. The funny thing is, probably the most productive and efficient cuisine is from France. French chefs became the best at what they do because they did not have access to cheap and abundant high-quality food. When you are serving cow spleen you better know how to make a good sauce

So maybe you don’t dine out, you do your cooking at home. Do you think that Superfresh is going to sell every one of those tomatoes or bananas or heads of romaine that they put out on display? What about the chicken, beef and pork that we pick through, putting those with the oldest dates to the bottom of the pile? Or the fish that must be fresh, fresh, fresh? (even though only frozen fish is truly fresh in most grocery stores or restaurants). The look of abundance is inviting and appetizing – think of each grocery department as a great big cornucopia of foods. To achieve that effect a lot more perishable food must be displayed than is prudent or necessary. The consumer market demands this look while the food markets’ dumpsters need to be emptied daily.

Many schools receive a Federal partial subsidy for free lunches they provide poorer students. In order to qualify for these subsidies each child must be served the mandated components of a nutritional meal, whether they eat it or not. So quite a lot of vegetables and fruit end up in many school’s trashcans. To demonstrate a higher level of respect for high school students it is required that they be offered a varied choice of entrees at lunch time. This means that more food is prepared than would otherwise be necessary (who knows what dish will move on a particular day and of course no one wants to run out of anything). Salad bars are being strongly encouraged, but of course salad bars and buffets are very wasteful – nothing can be saved from a self-serve line – even in restaurants or at catered events.

So, there seems to be much more to this problem of personal excess than meets the eye. And we have only touched upon three segments of one American industry. Maybe we can be more globally and locally responsible while saving some of our money as well.

http://www.p2pays.org/ref%5C06/05483.pdf

http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/FoodReview/Jan1997/Jan97a.pdf

http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/advice/19990402c.asp

To Church or Not to Church: Revisited

Jonathan Brink over on Missio Dei wrote an interesting and imaginative piece on this topic: “Jesus and Leadership Structure”. Here is an excerpt:

When Jesus said the provocative words, “Come follow me,” there must have been a chill that ran up the spine of the disciple’s backs. Imagine the moment. Ordinary people being called by an extraordinary man. This was the man who healed people, restoring their dignity and inviting them out of oppression. He touched lepers without harm, turned water into wine and caused the fish to flood the nets. To follow Him was an epic call, a moment to be part of something good. What did He see that they didn’t? His very invitation invited them into a larger mission of restoration.

But imagine for a second, after calling his disciples to follow him, he proceeded to invite them to come to the local synagogue on Sunday morning for a couple of hours and Wednesday night for another couple of hours. Forget following him around and watching Him do things. And when they got to there, he sat them down and led them through a couple of songs. Everyone sat in the same direction facing Jesus as they listened to him speak from behind a small upright box. The message was on average an hour long, tightly scripted with an introductory joke to arouse the crowd and was primarily about how to “not sin”. It usually included three points, a story from His personal life, and a summary to wrap it all up. He always finished with a challenge to his disciples to do better and closed with another song. At some point in the process he passed a large basket around expecting them to put a little something in to pay the rent and help build a larger meeting place. The reality was that those in setup were tired of unpacking and packing up each time they met in this rented building. A new, obviously larger building just made sense. As long as those in the crowd showed up, the disciples were good. Invite their friend and they were better. Serve on a committee and they were golden. Under this scenario you have to imagine the original call to “Come follow me” seems to lose its impact, doesn’t it?

http://jonathanbrink.com/2007/10/10/jesus-and-leadership-structure/

If interested in the earlier discussion that we had on this subject you may see it here;

http://sharpiron.wordpress.com/2007/09/12/to-church-or-not-to-church-that-is-the-question/

Opening Church Windows

Here is an excerpt from a letter by a minister of the Roman Catholic faith, Dennis Teall-Fleming. It was sent to Tony Jones, the National Coordinator for Emergent Village and he included it in today’s newsletter. It’s a pretty obvious analogy and helps someone like me, having been raised Roman Catholic, to put the Emerging Church idea into a better perspective.

The Second Vatican Council took place in the Catholic Church from 1962 to 1965. Called by Pope John XXIII, finished by Pope Paul VI, it was the first time in over four centuries that the Catholic Church really took a look around and said, “Hey, there’s a whole wide world out there, that isn’t so bad….maybe we oughta find out what’s going on in it, and see if it has anything to do with our community of faith”. The opening lines of The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (in Latin, Gaudium et Spes) set the tone for this new way of being church: “The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the people of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ. Indeed, nothing genuinely human fails to raise an echo in their hearts”. No longer would, or could, Catholics remain isolated, insular, or reactionary to the world, or others in it. The Catholic Church’s new mission became the world itself, and its transformation would transform the Church as well.

That seems to be what’s happening in Emergent. The people involved seem to all of a sudden see that there’s a big, wide world out there that we all live in- and most of it isn’t even considered “Christian”!- and somehow they have to do everything they can to learn more about it. Somehow everything they’ve learned up to this point – about being a Christian, about being part of the Church – has to change, so that they can truly be a follower of Christ every day of the week. Emergent seems to be a kind of Evangelical Vatican II, for many Christians that got their institutional start a hundred years ago- and maybe not even that long for others!

Pope John XXIII’s legendary quip about Vatican II was that he convened the Council because he wanted to let a little fresh air into the Church by opening up a few windows. I hope the Emergent conversation can do the same for my Evangelical friends, and I look forward to being a part of it for those in my own neighborhood.

I particularly like that line of Pope John’s about fresh air. With all the attention, both positive and negative, that has been given some of the leaders in the Emerging Church as well as some of the hysterical fears of the “movement” itself (I am now officially declaring ‘conversation’ as being too vague of a description – take note) I think that it is prudent to remember the impact that Pope John’s Vatican council had on the Church. To this day there are elements within the Roman church that think of John XXIII as a pawn of Satan, yet most Catholics and Protestants would fervently disagree. Perhaps the Emerging movement is just picking up where Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli left off ; opening up windows and doors for a church that suffers from the symptoms of long term theological OCD.

Why Can’t Christians Sing Some Other Songs?

On an earlier thread BuddyO suggested that I set up a page like “Some Good Books” but this time we could list our favorite songs. Soon after making an attempt, I gave up. The task seemed impossible. I initially tried to limit the list to my top ten favorite songs. Then my top 20. I soon realized that 100 would be too small of a number and even then I would likely forget one or two. My tastes run the gamut from Buddy Guy to Beethoven, Pat Metheny to Neil Young, Sinatra to Sabbath.

Looking over my list I noticed that there weren’t any Christian praise or worship songs. At that moment some popped into mind; “Amazing Grace”, “It is Well with My Soul”, “Ave Maria” and maybe one or two more. Other than maybe “He Reigns” by the Newsboys I couldn’t think of any modern praise songs that I might put on my list of 100 (or more) all time great songs.

This past weekend I got involved in a discussion over the appropriateness of using secular music in worship services. In particular some people were concerned about Bono and U2 becoming so popular among many outwardly spoken Christians. They seemed to think that this style of music is lacking in the proper decorum and respect and perhaps is even Satanic. And these aren’t old folks talking.

I was reminded of a debate I had with some friends in my old church over whether or not it was acceptable to invite secular performers to play at our outdoor fundraising events. My argument was that, if the Christian artists weren’t attracting people, what was the point of throwing good money after bad. In fact, if the secular performers could draw some of the ‘unsaved’ to our church, where they might just be exposed to the Gospel, wouldn’t that be a ‘good’ thing? Why weren’t the “Christian” artists drawing an audience? I have a few theories;

<!1 They were singing to the converted. To everyone else the message was lost.

<!2 They weren’t very original. Seems like they all use the same play list of about two dozen songs.

<!3 Their music, relatively speaking, isn’t all that good. (At least that which isn’t found on the approved master play list). Much of it is as safe as elevator music. Lyrical pablum.

On the other hand there are a number of secular songs out there that are very spiritual, if not even outright religious in nature. And they’re pretty good on top of it. Does someone need to be labeled a “Christian Artist”, devoting all their music to overt praise and worship songs, to be considered spiritually acceptable? Or is it possible that there may be some very talented people, who in their own fashion, are relating to God musically? Duke Ellington once said that every piece he composed was a prayer sent to heaven. Perhaps we could liven up some of our services by playing some of this ‘other’ music.

Whenever I say your name, whenever I call to mind your face
I’m already praying
Whatever bread’s in my mouth, whatever the sweetest wine that I taste
Wherever I lay me down, wherever I rest my weary head to sleep
Whenever I hurt and cry, whenever I’m forced to lie awake and have to weep
Whenever I’m on the floor
Whatever it was that I believed before
Whenever I say your name, whenever I say it loud, I’m already praying

Whenever I say your name,
No matter how long it takes,
One day we’ll be together

Whenever I say your name,
let there be no mistake
that day will last forever

-Sting

To Church or Not To Church – That Is the Question

Some of the comments on the last couple of posts (“Osteen in the Lobby” and “Sounds Like the Devil”) have touched on something that I have been struggling with for some time:

Is today’s typical church paradigm even close to what Jesus envisioned two thousand years ago? And if it’s not, how important is this? After all, our society, culture, government and lifestyles are radically different than then. But these things are very different today than they were 150 years ago when the newer paradigm was first becoming common.

If we find the present situation wanting, then what do we do? Find a church that most closely fits our perception of how it should be? Or do we work towards remaking the church, a relatively slow and laborious process, something that the ‘emergent’ conversation is so much about.

Or, as my good friend BuddyO is attempting, do we toss that paradigm aside and try something ‘new’. Rather than;

…rely solely on ‘the Pastor of the Day’ to tell them what God has to say to them (for some reason a seminary degree makes a pastor more qualified to tell me what God has to say to me than I do..?….?Yet another black mark for the modern church.)

Wouldn’t it be better for a small group to gather and read and meditate on a scripture then come together and hear what it speaks to one another?

Buddy is a close friend of mine and has been my Christian mentor for over five years. Not having been with the church as long as him may be the reason I have had a greater tendency to question the status quo (and at times entertain ideas with the flavor of ‘heresy’). I’ve felt that the church has lost much of its relevance for quite some time. Now, someone else is putting their money where my mouth is and I’ve got cold feet. Buddy is working through some of this on his website:

http://www.rev22.wordpress.com/

Last year there was an article in ‘Christianity Today’ about Mark Barna, church analyist and guru at large. In it he said this:

Are you worried about the church where you were baptized, taught, married, and given Communion? That’s only a “congregational-formatted ministry,” one of many ways to “develop and live a faith-centered life. We made it up.” Writes Barna, “Whether you become a Revolutionary immersed in, minimally involved in, or completely disassociated from a local church is irrelevant to me (and, within boundaries, to God).”

Barna illustrates with two fictional characters who “eliminated church life from their busy schedules.” Why? They did not find a ministry “that was sufficiently stimulating” and “their church, although better than average, still seems flat.” Too bad for the lowly local church that people today insist on having “unique, highly personalized church experiences.”

So where are the Revolutionaries going? To “mini-movements” such as home schooling, house churches, Bible studies at work, and Chris Tomlin worship concerts. What matters is a godly life, so “if a local church facilitates that kind of [godly] life, then it is good. And if a person is able to live a godly life outside of a congregation-based faith, then that, too, is good.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/january/13.69.html

So, what do you think.

I Have a New Article on TheOoze

Some of you may remember the story about Sherri, one of God’s itinerant workers and how we met one day in Western Maryland. She’s the lady that has devoted her life to spreading the Gospel across this country on the back of a bike.  TheOoze has decided to publish this story and it comes out today; “The Apostle Sherri: Bicycle Disciple”. Please check it out on: http://www.theooze.com/articles/article.cfm?id=1818

If you’ve never visited that web site I think you’ll be pleased with what you find there.

Christian Yin Yang (feminine characteristics of God)

In my community church we make a decided effort to remove any unnecessary masculine pronouns from our worship reading materials. At first blush this might seem to be just a case of political correctness. But some people, many of them women, have voiced their concerns over what they perceive as an overtly patriarchal depiction of God. One result of this, they say, is the unwarranted and insensitive exclusion of women from leadership roles in much of the Church. The new found fascination with the “Gospel of Mary Magdelene” and the book and movie “The Da Vinci Code” has been attributed to the sense of loss and lack of completeness that some Christians feel in a church that over-emphasizes the maleness of God as both father and son. Do their complaints have any validity? In the Hebrew Scriptures, the book of Proverbs personifies wisdom as a woman, which is apparently no mere poetic tool, as the Hebrew word for wisdom is Sophia. Whenever God’s wisdom is proclaimed then the feminine name ‘Sophia’ (with it’s corresponding feminine pronoun) is used.

Wisdom (Sophia) calls aloud in the street, she raises her voice in the public squares; at the head of the noisy streets she cries out, in the gateways of the city she makes her speech: Proverbs 1: 20-21

Jesus’ “Way”, as well as Jesus himself, is often talked of as having to do with his, or God’s, wisdom. Jesus’ (or Wisdom’s) way is also alluded to in the Hebrew Scriptures, as in this example from the book of Job;

God understands the way of Wisdom and He knows the place of it [Wisdom is with God alone]. Job 28:23

When written in Hebrew, this last scripture verse would use Sophia instead of Wisdom and feminine pronouns instead of the gender neutral word;’it’. It would also seem to anticipate this statement of Jesus’ found in John’s gospel;

“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.” John 14:6-7

In John’s Gospel Jesus is seen as wisdom, or in the Greek; Logos. When you replace the phrase ‘the Word’ (or Logos) in John’s opening lines with the word ‘Wisdom’ it works just as well. Being a Jew, John would have known that the Hebrew word for Logos was Sohia and in that case would have used the feminine pronoun. When read this way it has a much different ring to it:

In the beginning was Wisdom, and Wisdom was with God, and Wisdom was God. She was in the beginning with God. All things were made through her, and without her was not any thing made that was made. In her was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. John 1

So, is the Church guilty of editing God’s feminine qualities out of the Bible? It is stressed that God has no gender, that we only use masculine terms because we need to use something, and masculine pronouns sound so much more poetic than impersonal, gender-neutral ones. Of course, Jesus did refer to God the Father, not God the Mother. But what about Jesus’ (or the Holy Spirit’s) qualities? If the marriage between man and woman is analogous to the bond that exists within the Trinity perhaps it makes sense to see God as not without gender but instead both male and female.

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. Genesis 1:27

Buddhism as a Model for the Emerging Church

I had a conversation recently with someone who is a leader in a local mainline denomination. She asked what “emerging church concepts” could be used to help envigorate her congregation.

I replied that I didn’t believe that there are any ‘concepts’ that the emerging church could claim to have innovated. In fact, I think the suggestion might be contradictory to the whole idea of ‘emergence’. It’s not that there is a single source of new information about doing church or envisioning theology or investigating doctrine….it’s more along the lines of sharing struggles, concerns and success stories with other members of the greater Church. And in this process letting Jesus take the lead.

So, if a paradigm is not working, rather than continue to work harder at it because it always worked in the past, we might instead take a look at what some other churches are doing well. Or even what some traditions may have done in the more distant past (before the Enlightenment)

For example; in my faith community (even though we consider ourselves to be progressively minded) we have begun to realize that we do children’s Sunday school pretty much the same way every one else is doing it. Not that there is anything really wrong with that model, but if we are willing to explore new ways of helping people relate to God (things that may work better in 21st century suburbia than they did in small town America circa 1950) then why aren’t we just as interested in investing that same effort with our children? Is it because we expect children to be bored with Bible lessons anyway but if we throw enough scripture at them something just might stick? Are we really helping children and young people to become atttracted to Jesus Christ? Or do we resign ourselves to adding another dry course to their already overburdened school load, turning the Bible into just another text book. Children are so different from one another and very rarely do they relate to things in the same way. It’s not much different for adults.

Further along in ‘The World’s Religions’ by Huston Smith I came across something that helped me to articulate to my friend what the idea of emergence is like. Smith gives a Buddhist analogy for describing how the different streams of that religion help different people find their ways to God;

It is like we are all on one side of a river, the wrong side, the side that is apart from God (enlightenment). On this side we are consumed by the conventional wisdom of the culture, obsessed with ourselves and insensitive to the other. On the other side lies enlightenment, the Way. Each faith tradition is much like a raft designed to help people journey across that river to the side where he or she will find God and comfortably live with Him. But once we get to the other side we should no longer hold onto an undue attraction for the raft that helped get us there.

I am not suggesting that the raft (or the tradition) should be abandoned but at some point, if it has done it’s job well, it need not be the focus of our communion with God. We now are able to walk freely among other settlers of this land, exploring it as we continue to grow on our journey with God, sharing our joys with our brothers and sisters. It is not productive to worry ourselves over how each of our ‘rafts’ were built, other than in exploring new ways to build better (or improve existing) rafts for crossing the river, in hope that those left on the other side may be enticed into following.

Jesus enticed us into following, and he did so not through the offices of church or religion. It’s almost as if he left the raft itself, swimming freely, almost effortlessly, not against the current but somehow reversing the river’s flow. Janice in Great Expectations puts it this way:

“Yes, He upset the status quo, yes He ’subverted the empire’, yes, He challenged just about everything the culture AND the community of faith thought and did, and yet ~ He did it with integrity. He didn’t sink to the level of those around Him, He rose above. He took the higher ground. The higher ground of REAL love. And I wonder at my fellow travelers (and myself) and if we are searching for that higher ground, if we are really acting in love, or if there is something else driving us. Jesus sets the bar really high and some days I am appalled by how far I am from reflecting His image. But that is my calling ~ To follow in His way. The way of loving the unlovely, caring for the less than desirable, speaking up against injustices and doing it all in REAL love. Perfect love and with integrity.”

www.http://gracexpectations.blogspot.com

In many ways I think the ‘emergent movement’ is just a new label for the older ‘ecumenical movement’. Yet it seems that some people held a view of spiritual tolerance long before the Christian church split into so many different ways of relating towards God.

The Bible as Poetic Metaphor

In his book “Taking the Bible Seriously but Not Literally” Marcus Borg discusses some of the different ways in which Christians see the Bible. First there are the Natural Literalists, those who say the Bible is the direct Word of God, essentially dictated to the scribes through the Holy Spirit. This has been a common way of viewing the Bible since medieval times and there is essentially little conflict within the person who holds this view. God said it so it is true. End of story.

More common in varying degrees within today’s church is something called Conscious Literalism, in which we decide, based upon our reasoning abilities, upon which parts of the Bible are factual and which are metaphorical. This creates much tension within the Christian who holds to this view, whether they be conservative or liberal. Essentially, the Conscious Literalist still holds the Bible to be the Word of God but they will concede that certain parts of it are no longer relevant to today’s world. Conflict comes into play when we decide what parts are relevant. For example, in Leviticus homosexuality is punishable by death but right beside this is an admonishment to not wear clothing with blended fabrics. Who is to decide?

Borg postulates that though some of the bible is most probably factual and some is most probably metaphorical all of it is true, especially as it helps us to participate in a relational experience of God. The Old Testament, he says, is written by Jewish men and describes Israel’s developing relationship with God, from the cultural and linguistic perspective of the ancient Jews. The New Testament, on the other hand, is written by early Christians and is projected from their particular cultural and linguistic world view.
Since the different scriptures were selected as canon and compiled at various points through out history they obviously were not considered infallible or inerrant at the time of their writing. In fact the inerrancy of scripture was not proposed until after the protestant reformation, making this particular dogmatic claim very much a part of modern society. This has presented us with a situation in which the Bible is always being judged according to the epistemological and ontological criteria of this past age, resulting in debates over its truthfulness as determined by its factual and historical accuracy. This obviously is not the best way of presenting the Bible to unbelievers as well as believers.

Borg suggests that the Bible should be looked at in a sacramental way, sacred in that it is a place in which we can meet God. The official sacraments of the church (two Protestant, seven Catholic) are points in which the spirit of god is manifest in the actions that are taking place. I agree with Borg that there are many more sacraments than seven. God can be found in art, music, literature, nature, athletics, service, sacrifice etc. etc.

When looked at this way, the Bible is not a static book of absolutes but a living, breathing, adapting bridge between us and the sacred spirit of God. It is very much like a lens in which we may view the world and also see God. It is important to revere the object of our focus, not the instrument that allows this to happen.

What are your thoughts?

Beached (how ‘perfect’ will my body be in heaven?)

One grey and windy day at the beach I was contemplating Genesis, particularly how it relates to the Resurrection. Actually it wasn’t the weather that had me thinking about the Resurrection, it was yesterday’s bikinis.

Deep into my middle years I have grudgingly come to accept the fact aging will not (I hope!) be a brief stage to my life, that I will probably not wake up tomorrow with all my hair and much less of my gut. Normally I am not the type to be too terribly concerned about the miles I am racking up on this once new and limited edition, but a visit to the beach always seems to bring it to the forefront of my thoughts. Needless to say, my Speedo days are long gone (honestly, they were never there) and I am reminded of this whenever I pass by the half naked young bathing beauties and the sun tanned surfer dudes. Recently, though, I have started to become more comfortable with this leaky and creaky old body of mine and have even reached the point where I no longer try to suck my gut in for hours at a time. (How do you spell relief? B-I-G-T-E-E-S-H-I-R-T.)

A look around a crowded beach will reveal a multitude of various body styles, only some of whom you would expect to see on the cover of a magazine at the Safeway. I would assume that many, if not most, are completely comfortable with the appearance of their bodies, considering the various stages of immodest attire. But based upon what I hear almost every day, this is not the case. Most of us struggle with some type of dissatisfaction with our bodies, the more ‘perfect’ the body usually means the more intense the neurosis. But what constitutes a perfect body? Outside of ailments and injuries, what makes a body imperfect? What makes one more attractive than another? Does ‘beauty’ have anything to do with it at all?

I hear a lot of talk from people who seem to be obsessed by the promise of a New Earth, populated by people with resurrected new and perfect bodies. I for one have had a tendency to not be too impressed or concerned with this prophecy. I don’t know why, but I just can’t get real excited about the ‘new and perfect body’ ideal. Those of us who suffer with severe disabilities of either the physical or psychological type would have much to look forward to of course. But should we expect to have bodies that resemble the statues of David or Venus? (with all the body parts, obviously). I think wishful thinking of this sort helps to reinforce many of our current insecurities.

I have always looked at original sin as another way of looking at our own initial self awareness. Personal pride. Contrary to the more prudish out there, after they had eaten from the Tree of Knowledge, I don’t think that it was sexual awareness that caused Adam and Eve to be ashamed of their nakedness. I think more likely they just felt that they did not look very good naked. The way most of us feel. (Those of you that don’t feel this way have other issues to deal with. We’ll talk later.) Before the serpent came into the picture, who knew?

So the next time you hear talk about the resurrection, try to avoid thinking about the New Earth being filled with billions of extras from Baywatch. I know it’s tempting, but the chances are that you will be just as beautiful then as you are now. After all beauty is in the eye of the Beholder.