If Christians are ever going to fully love God and others with our bodies, we must learn how to enjoy them.
Christianity has a conflicted history with the body. From gnosticism to asceticism, self-flagellation to neglect in pursuit of "higher things", we have not yet come to peace with the body's role in enjoying God forever (Westminster Shorter Catechism #1). Modern Christians with our diets and apprehensions about sex are just as alienated from our bodies as our pre-Enlightenment and Puritan predecessors. Not knowing what to do with our appetites and apprehensions, more often than not, we ignore them. Our bodies are left out of the story of salvation.
This book explores the activities of the body-- both mundane and transcendent-- in light of the Biblical story. The Creation of a good world, incarnation of Jesus, and future Resurrection of the dead illumine and inform the experience of embodiment. The Christian worldview possesses, but rarely employs a narrative of freedom and pleasure within life-giving boundaries. A narrative that can change the way a teenager looks at herself in the mirror and the way a husband encounters his wife's sexuality. It can enhance our worship and our play. This book welcomes the human body in from the cold, into the warmth of the Gospel and the joy of living.