Made in the Image of God

Before having a baby, I didn't think that much about my body. I wasn't particularly bothered by any aspect of it but I didn't really love it either... I just kind of used it and tried to keep it healthy and otherwise ignored it. After having a baby, my body jumped up on center stage and started screaming for my attention in a way it never had before, even during the tumultuous changes of adolescence. Suddenly my belly looked different, my breasts were bigger, I was producing milk, another human being (albeit a tiny one) was visibly and tangibly depending on my body for his very life, I hurt in unexpected places, and a line across my abdomen was raised and numb. Every time I changed, or took a shower, or went to the bathroom, or nursed my baby (so essentially all the time), the changes in my body stood out to me, and I didn't like them.

At first it was really hard. I wanted my old body back, and I wanted to have it to myself again. No more stretch marks, loose muscles, or scars; no more semi-continuous physical touch; no more worrying about "overdoing it" in the simple everyday activities of life; no more struggling to balance my baby's and my husband's needs for physical closeness. I would try on my old pre-pregnancy jeans and get depressed, or catch a glimpse of myself wandering the house in pajamas and feel ugly and inadequate.

But as time went by, something surprising began to happen. The negative feelings were born of the difficulty of the transition from a pre-pregnant body, through pregnancy, to a post-pregnant body, and they were natural. Change can be hard, and it takes time to adjust. And because those feelings were simply a product of the transition, they didn't stick around forever.

One day I looked at the dark web of lines on my abdomen and thought, I am a life-giver.

I looked at my lopsided, leaking breasts and thought, I am a life-sustainer.

I looked at my weary arms after rocking my baby to sleep and thought, I am a comforter.

I looked at the curves of my body curled around my baby as he nursed away his tears and thought, I am a safe haven and a place of rest.

In the blurred-together days and endless nights of those first few weeks, my body had somehow, in all its raw and rough reality, began to take on the image of God as it never had before, and in so doing, reminded me how God is all those things to me: the giver and sustainer of my life, my comforter when I am sorrowful or discouraged, my refuge from the fears and toils of life. How can I look at my body and think it is ugly, when it is a witness to me of the goodness and faithfulness of God? It is beautiful, when it shows me His image, because He is beautiful. We read in Genesis that we are made in the image of God, but I think we forget that this includes our physical bodies just as much as our spiritual, emotional and rational capacities. I know I had never thought of it that way before, anyway. God has left testimonies of Himself in the smallest, most physical and material details of our lives, so that we don't need to be deep and profound thinkers to see His presence and be reminded of His character, and if we open our eyes to those glimpses of Him, I think, our lives will be more beautiful. The things we take for granted, the things we hardly think about, even the things that we dislike - they are worth looking at a second time, with new eyes, to see if we can find a picture of God within them.

Marriage in the Church

An acquaintance of mine recently remarried. She's a friend of mine on Facebook because I know her family well, but I'm not particularly close with her. She and her new husband look incredibly happy together, and all of our mutual friends were congratulating her on her wedding. But I didn't. Honestly, I'm confused by the whole situation. I don't know why she divorced her first husband (or even if she initiated the divorce). I do know that she still seems passionate about following and serving God, and probably is a lot better at those things than I am. It just gnaws away inside me that this is her second husband, that the vows she made the first time around have been broken, and that the community around her - the church community, the Christian community - spoke no words of sorrow or rebuke over the brokenness and is now publicly rejoicing in her new marriage. I don't know her story, and knowing her family I doubt that this divorce was entered into lightly, so I don't want to judge her specifically. For all I know, her first husband was abusive and unfaithful. But it makes me think. And in general, I see the church rejoicing at the beginning of marriages (which is all well and good) but sitting back silently when those marriages falter and fail.

Marriage is not strengthened when divorce is accepted.

The institution of marriage is a good thing, a God-ordained thing, meant to bring joy and sanctification to the participants and designed to represent the relationship between Christ and the church. So it is both natural and fitting that the church community should (in general) rejoice and celebrate the coming together of two people in marriage! But the intent and design of marriage necessitate boundaries and limitations to it. We would not rejoice if a father tried to marry his daughter, or if a man tried to marry multiple women, or if a friend tried to marry someone we knew to be abusive; those of us with more strictly Biblical views would also not rejoice if a man tried to marry another man, or if a Christian tried to marry an unbeliever. Some of those marriages act against the first purpose of marriage by destroying the spouses' joy or by making it more difficult for them to walk with God and grow in their faith; others work against the second purpose by twisting that imagery and distorting our understanding of the relationship between God and us as the church. Seeing the immediate and temporal happiness of the individuals entering into one of those skewed marriages might make it natural for us to want to rejoice in their coming together - but it might not be fitting if the relationship is inherently flawed.

One could respond that all relationships are flawed to some degree, and that no marriage adequately represents the relationship of Christ to the church, and I would of course agree. My own sin puts strain on my own marriage every day, eats away at my joy and my husband's joy, and dims our marital reflection of Christ. But incest, polygamy, and homosexuality are insurmountable obstacles to accurately reflecting the relationship between Christ and the church, no matter how happy and committed the individuals may be. On the other hand, a mismatched marriage would have the essence and character needed to reflect that relationship, and thus not be inherently flawed, but it may be unwise for a myriad of reasons. So I think the church should be firm about rejecting the first type of relationship (those which are in essence unable to reflect the full Biblical imagery of marriage) and should counsel against the second type but provide as much support as possible to those already in the midst of one (so that a bad situation might possibly redeemed, and the significant sin or area of discord used as a catalyst for sanctification and increased faith).

Divorce is difficult for me, however, because I'm often unsure of which category it falls into. Clearly, it destroys entirely the Christological imagery of marriage. Christ will not "divorce" or abandon His church, and our lack of faithfulness will not tear apart the relationship either. But I know that after a divorce people can go on to do great things and become great men and women of faith, and that God will even use the divorce to draw them to Himself. And the church should play a role in that redemptive work. Our judgment of the sin should not push the sinner farther away from Christ; rather, we should seek to respond in a way that pulls the sinner deep into the love whose depth and length and width and height are said to be beyond comprehension. The challenge is to do this well without compromising the truth that divorce hurts individuals, families, and society, Christians and unbelievers alike, by twisting our understanding of Christ's commitment and love for us.

So should I rejoice in a remarriage following divorce? I have, once, when the man remarrying had been abandoned by his wife in middle age for no reason other than her own feelings and whims. But even then I wondered if he should have let her go or if he should have continued to pursue her in love as long as possible, like Christ pursues us when we turn to our idols of comfort or power or respect. It's not a black and white issue, and I think culturally we are inclined to prioritize happiness over commitment. We might say that we value redemption more than atonement... we encourage people to simply move on and start over instead of taking the time to wrestle with and repent of the past. When someone vows before God to be committed to another person for a lifetime, and shoulders the mantle of reflecting God in one particular relationship just as he or she has endeavored to reflect Him as an individual, it is a serious matter. It is not to be entered into frivolously. That is why the whole church stands together (or should, at any rate) in witness to and support of the couple making those vows. It is an equally serious matter when those vows are broken, and yet the church does nothing. We rejoice when the oath-breaker stands a second time to make those same promises to a different person than before - but do we provide the counsel and support needed to make sure that this time the promises will be kept through the hard times once the swell of romantic love has ebbed away?

It breaks my heart to see so many marriages foundering on the shoals of life, to see the church dimming its warning lighthouse beacon, to see her members laboring on the shore to pick up the pieces instead of helping steer the ship to safer seas, or throwing together hasty and poorly-built boats instead of taking the time to construct sea-worthy vessels before sending them out from port. Should we be there to help people rebuild after a divorce? Of course. But we should be working even harder to keep that shipwreck from happening in the first place, instead of just counting on the skills of the rescue team. Our marriages are not simply private contracts that only hurt or help the individuals directly involved; they are also public statements of the nature of Christ and His relationship to His people, and we as the church need to fight for them, stand beside them, and give them the supplies and guidance they need to sail safely across the ocean of time.