WHAT IS THEOLOGY OF THE BODY? | Why God Gave Us Bodies | Christopher West

ever asked yourself questions like Who am I why am I here how can I be happy why do I have all these longings in my body and soul and what am I supposed to do with them what does it mean to be a man what does it mean to be a woman what's it mean to be human in this video we'll look at how John Paul the second theology of the body provides compelling eye-opening life-changing answers to these questions and more coming right up hi everybody I'm Christopher west from the theology of the body Institute here to unfold in these videos how our earthly bodies reveal the secrets of heaven if you're new to this channel and you're interested in diving deeply into what it means to be human consider subscribing so what is the theology of the body and why should we care first of all theology of the body is an extensive collection of talks that john paul ii delivered in this volume between 1979 and 1984 now that may seem like ancient history to many of us but this man I'm telling you this man was ahead of his time way back in the early 80s john paul ii was unfolding for us in his theology of the body talks a vision of human embodiment particularly as it concerns our creation as male and female what does it mean that God made us this way God knows we are desperately in need of a compelling answer to that question in the world today and I'll never forget the first time I discovered this theology the body in the early 90s when I first read it I I felt like I was holding in my hands the answer to the crisis of our time somehow I don't know how this guy was able to put his finger on the deepest questions and yearnings of my being and show me a path to learn how to redirect those desires towards everything true good and beautiful he told me for the first time I had heard it in my life he told me that that ache I felt inside my whole life is called eros er OS and he told me God gave us eros to be like the fuel of a rocket that has the power to launch us to the Stars to infinity and beyond he told me Christ doesn't want us to repress our erotic desires Christ wants us to experience he says the fullness of eros which is the upward impulse of the hue spirit towards the true the good and the beautiful so that what is erotic he says might also become true good and beautiful this was so compelling to me I knew then I would spend the rest of my life studying this theology of the body and sharing it with the world now here it is in a nutshell bear with me he took five years to unfold it I'm just scratching the surface of the surfaces surface here but if this piques your interest to want to learn more this video will have served its purpose theology the body is divided into two parts the first part is called the words of Christ and the second part is called the sacrament there are three key words of Christ that john paul ii looks at to give us what he calls a complete or a total vision of what it means to be human these are words that point us back to the beginning before sin words that look at how sin has distorted our experience of the body and sexuality and the words of Jesus that point us to our destiny of the resurrection of the body so let's look briefly at each of these the first key word Jesus says to the Pharisees Moses allowed you to divorce your wives because of the hardness of your heart many says but from the beginning it was not so see there was this original beautiful wonderful plan that God had for making us male and female this beautiful plan that God had for human sexuality that has somehow gone wrong in our fallen broken world let me give you a visual here I want you to imagine that this is a painting of man and woman just as God made us to be when we were naked and felt no shape nakedness without shame man and woman naked without shame john paul ii says is the key that unlocks the whole biblical story of what it means to be human because they discover in their nakedness without shame exactly what I was saying earlier that erotic desire is meant to be like the fuel of a rocket that launches us to something infinite something he turn their naked bodies revealed the plan of Holy Communion think about it a man's body does not make sense by itself a woman's body does not make sense by itself seen in light of each other they discover and we today we discover and less more blind we discover that man and woman are destined to enter into a Holy Communion a life-giving holy communion but this Holy Communion as we'll learn in a few minutes it's just a little little glimmer of a much greater holy communion this holy communion is a sign a sacrament and precisely because this holy communion points to something far greater a heavenly destiny the enemy doesn't want us to understand our bodies theologically so the enemy got in the mix and that vision of the body got all twisted up and distorted and here's the classic mistake of religious people I put that in quotes religious people encounter the crumpled up version of the painting and they think it's trash and they throw it away Christ comes into the world takes on a body to redeem our bodies he doesn't want us to throw this away Christ wants to redeem us he wants to UNCHR umple this distorted picture of the human body so that we might rediscover who we really are in the Sermon on the Mount now we're at the second key word of Jesus Jesus says if you even look at another person lustfully in other words if you look at another person like this as an object to gratify and satisfy your own selfish desires you've already committed adultery in your heart what is adultery the word to adulterate means precisely this to alter to twist to distort the original purpose of something and what is it if not to adulterate when we treat another human being as an object for our selfish pleasure this is the pornographic version of the story of our humanity when we go to porn we're going to a twisted of crumpled-up distortion of the human story to satisfy a base lustful desire Christ wants to shine his merciful healing light into all of those distortions so we can rediscover who we really are this is called according to st. Paul the redemption of our bodies in this redemption of our bodies we can begin living it even here and now but it is not fulfilled until we reach what Jesus himself calls the resurrection of the body and here third key word of Jesus Jesus says in the resurrection we're no longer given in marriage why why are we no longer given in marriage in the resurrection does God just all of a sudden push the delete button on all of this mystery of human sexuality no God does not push the delete button God pushes the complete button what do I mean the Bible begins with the marriage of man and woman with this painting but the Bible ends with a vision of an eternal union the marriage between Christ and the church God and humanity now we can understand why Jesus says we're no longer given in this kind of marriage in eternity why because you no longer need a sign to point you to Disneyland when you're in Disneyland right when you've arrived at your heavenly destiny you no longer need the sign or the sacrament to point you there this is what the union of man and woman is in the eternal plan of God it is a sign which is to say it is a sacrament of our eternal destiny marriage with love eternal that is our destiny and this brings us to part two of the theology of the body called the sacrament where john paul ii reflects primarily on ephesians chapter 5 and primarily within that chapter he reflects on verses 31 to 32 he says and here we have the crowning theme of all of Scripture he says this here in these two verses which I'll share with you just a moment he says we have a summary of everything God wants to tell us about who he is who we are why we're here how to find happiness what our ultimate destiny is and how to get there okay what does he say Paul says quoting right out of the book of Genesis for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two will become one flesh then he says this is a great mystery and it refers to Christ and the church think about that for a moment how does that refer to Christ in the church Christ left his father in heaven Christ left the home of his mother on earth to give up his body for his bride so that we the Bride of Christ might become one flesh with him where do we become one flesh with Christ it's called Holy Communion the Eucharist you see this Holy Communion that original beautiful plan of God for making us male and female this is only the glimmer this is only the foreshadowing this is only the sign and sacrament that points us to our eternal destiny union with God forever in a bliss and ecstasy that is only dimly foreshadowed by that joy and delight of the two becoming one flesh see our bodies are not only biological our bodies are Theological they tell a divine story come and become one who sees Jesus says come become one who sees the greatness that God has chiseled in our bodies Lord open our eyes to the wonder of the theology of our bodies if you've enjoyed this video please let us know by liking it and sharing your comments and let someone else know by sharing it also if you subscribe and hit the notification bell you will be the first to know when we post another video unfolding how your body reveals the secrets of heaven until then hey in this video hi everybody I'm Christopher put up

Channel: Theology of the Body Institute

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Id: IvFa7elKtkY

Length: 11min 58sec (718 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 28 2020