Claiming Consent in the Body of Christ
Editor’s note: This is one of the Top 15 2020 CBE Writing Contest winners.
[Trigger warning: themes related to sexual abuse]
For forty years, I have continued to show up to church. I bring my childish body, my teenage body, my womanly body, my middle-aged body back to the orange pews, the green padded chairs, those grey stacking chairs we dragged across the cement floor in the cold church basement every time I went. I keep returning to collect the pieces of me that are shattered and scattered across platforms, hallways, and classrooms, believing that the Divine Body, broken for me, would run his nail-pierced hands across my own collected scars and make them disappear.
I first heard Sunday school lessons that frightened me, and later sermons as an adult that confused me by loudly proclaiming my worthlessness as a sinful, suspicious human and a female human, no less.
I was told I would never be good enough, and year after year, I believed them until those tapes were fused into my heart, crushing my tender soul. I longed to be worthy, to truly belong to the body and to the One whose body I pledged allegiance.
I was also told over and over again that the body of Christ was broken for me, but I could not understand to what end? If Christ’s body was broken for me so that I could become whole, why was my female body continually being broken apart?
Surrender. Repent. Repeat.
Please continue reading the original article published here https://www.cbeinternational.org/resource/article/mutuality-blog-magazine/claiming-consent-body-christ
Writers note: This article was submitted and won as one of the Top 15 submissions in the Christians For Biblical Equality 2020 writing contest. I have been researching and writing on this topic for the past few months. I find myself drawn to the body of Jesus in new ways recently, liberating ways. Examining the ancient texts through a lens of consent, modelled by Jesus has created a lot of questions. But it has also unleashed new awareness of the intentionality of an incarnate God inhabiting a physical body and choosing to walk alongside us in some of the most joyous and heartbreaking human experiences. As for women, we must reclaim full personhood and full agency over our bodies as lived out liberation enacted by Jesus. His life and death compel nothing less.
