Playing devil's advocate, the Bible definitely wasn't written for 2024. I hear Christians say this all the time regarding the Old Testament. Even the New Testament is full of agricultural parables that don't make any sense to modern people.

Don't take that as support for that pastor though. I think "there is something wrong with me and my body" is a near universal concern. I worry that people with a trans outlook will interpret that as a gender problem. For Christians, however, that concern is due to our bodies being sinful. So instead of looking for ways to purify our bodies and our souls through Christian practices, they look to change their bodies to another gender.

But maybe I'm being too Augustinian about the whole thing, and maybe other Christian traditions aren't quite so negative about the physical body.

" For Christians, however, that concern is due to our bodies being sinful."

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The Roman Catholic Church does not teach this, to be clear. Is this what you believe?

I really wish ELCA would distance itself from being Lutheran.

It was really difficult to choose an emoji for that.

eyeroll because ELCA is ridiculous, Sad face because this is such a farce. Cool face because I'm the cool kind of Lutheran, popcorn emoji because the ELCA ain't my problem, winky face, etc. So many options that fit appropriately.

Agreed. Our bodes are temples of the Holy Spirit.

" this, I could easily afford the Catholic Indulgences of the 1500s."

Interestingly is that monetary contributions during this time were scaled based on a person's wealth.

swimmerbabe11 said:

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I think the issue is that we are not a body and we are not a soul. A body isn't a suitcase..it is part of a person. When I was chewing on this thought, my mind first went to Matthew where Christ says that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak...however, he's not saying that our skin and bones are the problem, but rather the carnal sinful nature that is at war with our sanctified selves. If you say the body is the problem, you are steering very heavily into gnosticism.

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Agree.

"Mo' Money, Mo' Problems"

famously attributed to Pope Leo X.

You forgot the "cha-ching" part. lol

But seriously, read where that jingle was made up. Kinda like a medieval disinformation campaign.

Isn't a "transvestite" just someone (typically a male) that derives pleasure from dressing as the opposite sex? Reading that this person is a cisgender female identifying as a male. I had images of Tim Burton in mind.

PabloSerna said:

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" For Christians, however, that concern is due to our bodies being sinful."

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The Roman Catholic Church does not teach this, to be clear. Is this what you believe?

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Yes and no. It's sometimes hard to parse my childhood influences from my adult study. I can remember countless altar calls that started with the idea that people carry an inherent sense of their own wrongness. It's a sense that we are incomplete, misaligned, out of place, or defective in some inexpressible way. I don't know how universal this subjective feeling is, but it seemed to work on a lot of people during the sermon. The follow up reveals that this uncomfortable situation is derived from our sinfulness. Our sin keeps us from being perfect and godly, and we have in inherent sense of this. This sensation should then be a driving motivation to become more godly and reduce this internal dissonance. To that extent I guess I believe this much.

As far as the physical body being sinful, that's a bit of a hodgepodge of New Testament of images such as "the sins of the flesh", and the Old Testament idea that nearly all bodily functions make someone ritually unclean and unfit to come near to God. We also have the whole idea regarding Adam and Eve and either original or ancestral sin, and the fundamental physical defectiveness that we have compared to them prior to their fall. So I don't necessary think physical bodies are sinful (a better word is probably unideal or imperfect) inherently. Jesus' resurrected body and the original bodies of Adam and Eve were not this way. But I do think that our current physical bodies are imperfect and flawed, and therefore sinful by that definition.

I would be interested in hearing you expand on what you mean by the body being sinful. On face value it seems to border on gnosticism. At least that's the way I read it, and my apologies if it isn't what you meant. Funny enough, I believe Augustine actually refuted that belief. The body is not sinful. It is good because God created it. Man is not a soul with a body, nor a body with a soul, but has both a body and a soul.

Interesting side bit is that the rosary was given to us to combat the heresy that body = bad, soul = good.

God bless, my friend.

The BQ Jock said:

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I would be interested in hearing you expand on what you mean by the body being sinful. On face value it seems to border on gnosticism. At least that's the way I read it, and my apologies if it isn't what you meant. Funny enough, I believe Augustine actually refuted that belief. The body is not sinful. It is good because God created it. Man is not a soul with a body, nor a body with a soul, but has both a body and a soul.

Interesting side bit is that the rosary was given to us to combat the heresy that body = bad, soul = good.

God bless, my friend.

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Same to you! I went into a bit more detail in the second paragraph above your post. I'm not sure how else to say it, as it is probably more of a general ingrained feeling than a logical position.

Ah, I see it. Sorry, I have a bad habit of not getting to the end of a thread before responding. Lol

Reading comprehension in short supply.

I guess that everyone should just re-write the entire Bible with the values that they personally prefer? Now that we are getting AI, you can cross that with the surveillance state and ChatGPT version 56 will probably be able to write your new Bible for you that has every value in it that you want to have in it.

I want a new copy of the Bible that replaces "Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar" with "tax is theft".

I doubt I will get it, though.