Know thyself . . . and its tent!

Qu'appelle Valley 

“Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’”

“So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1, 26 & 27, NIV)

We could talk endlessly about the Judeo-Christian creation allegory in Genesis, could look at how “humankind” today is reflected in the history of origins as the writers of that sacred text visualized it. We could even go to the internet and type in “man creates god” and be led to all kinds of sources that contend that “man created God in his own image; in the image of man created he God.” Either way, we would hit on the basic question, what then is mankind that his image should reflect God, and what is God that his nature and being should be the template for mankind?

I’m thinking today about only one aspect of the mankind in the image of God question, and that is that part of us that is called, “the human body,” in German, “menschlicher Körper,” in Spanish, “cuerpo humano.” That part of us that the Apostle Paul likened to a tent in which we live for a time. Obviously, tents are material and they decay, wear out, go to landfill, but if our bodies are no more than convenient shelters that house our real self, then the quintessential “me” is not the tent, but the “me” that lives in the tent.

“For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.” (II Corinthians 5:1-4)

But the human body is decidedly more than a tent, or a house or a hotel room, to be occupied for a brief time and then vacated. It means more in our culture than a suitcase, than a jewelry box whose sole purposes are to protect what’s really important—travel clothing and jewelry. So why have we become such tent worshippers? If your tent is old, obese, skinny, bent, or disfigured, do you really deserve to have the essential you thrown out with your less-than-perfect tent?

We primp and preen, pump iron, get face lifts, put on make-up and turn and bend in front of mirrors because we know there’ll be a judgment made about the contents based on the arbitrary standards set for suitcases, boxes and tents.

St. Paul is struggling with this very basic conundrum. His tent was imperfect (he makes reference to a chronic thorn in his side) and like us, he knew his tent to be mortal, vulnerable to decay and death. Tents, houses, boxes and suitcases, I remind myself, are merely temporary abodes.

My struggle to understand is informed much more these days by the science and scholarship to which St. Paul obviously had no access. Anatomically, we know that the essential self dwells in our brain but that our brain is inextricably part of our body, our tent. When our heart stops feeding our brain, our self disappears, consciousness ceases. On the question of whether or not there exists a soul independent of body/brain, I’m agnostic; I just don’t know. I see this but faintly as in a dirty mirror, darkly, as St. Paul admitted to be his case as well. (1 Corinthians 13:12)

Consider for a moment why it is that for sexual partners, men and women look for one who lives in an attractive tent, often neglecting to find out enough about the person living inside the tent. This is not a hard and fast rule, but our bodies’ genetically-governed propensity to be attracted to an appropriate mate for procreation is at play here. Sexual arousal in men is far more likely to be triggered by the exposed breast of a fulsome, fecund maiden than by her ability to calculate the square root of a given number. (Admitting at the same time that human nature is fluid and volatile, and gender and sexual propensities and characteristics are various, not static.)

How many have been seduced by a tent, only to be undone by a disappointing essential self resident in the tent, the part to which their biology possibly blinded them? The procreative urge was at one time in our evolution essential for survival but is now, arguably, antithetical to it (e.g. overpopulation + food insecurity). We continue to neglect the study and teaching of this in favour of a literalization of a creation allegory and Paul’s tent. We need it all to understand ourselves better. Without the coordination of our various wisdoms, we’re bound to mire in the kind of confusion that currently surrounds, for instance, our laws and mores, our crimes and misdemeanors surrounding sexuality.

A teenager who has trouble controlling her weight, who doesn’t possess an hour-glass figure may say—and many have—that they hate their bodies. Men who lack a muscular, athletic configuration likewise. But to hate one’s body seems absurd; our bodies stand between us and oblivion, no matter what their shape. We do horrible things to each other and ourselves, impose unnecessary hurdles in the way of people longing to live confident, self-respecting lives. Part of that is surely our willful ignorance about what it means to be human, our lack of a grasp on the history and prehistory of how we became human in the first place.

One of our oldest maxims—and still valid—is given to us by ancient Greece: “Know Thyself.” So here’s a thought: 1 Corinthians 6:19 “. . . or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?” If our bodies are temples, and if the essential self resides in this temple, and if God’s home is inside the essential self, wouldn’t that be a pretty good reason to honour and protect ours and everyone else’s bodies . . . at all costs?

I give the last words to two sages of the ages:

William Shakespeare: “What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason; how infinite in faculties, in form and moving; how express and admirable in action; how like an angel in apprehension; how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals. And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?” (Hamlet II, ii)

King David: “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” (Psalm 139:4, NIV)