tradition has failed to make a profound connection between our spirituality and our humanity, between the mystery of God on the one hand, and the mystery of the human body on the other.27
As a static participant in our sexual sin, the penis often makes us men feel “unholy.” It is usually excluded from our spiritual life. Yet, realizing how often my penis is involved in sin reminds me that I need to pray over it at least as often as I pray over the other parts of my body. I also do this because I need to be reminded that my genitals, just like the rest of me, were crafted by God.
Christian blogger Ethan Renoe wrote:
One of my theology professors would always say we postmodern people do theology like this: And then he would crouch and cover up his crotch, like an embarrassed child who had jumped out of the bath and been caught by the babysitter. We will talk about God in relation to anything but our genitals.28
Minister David Hatton points out the symbolism of the female body: “The woman’s body has breasts for a physical reason: to feed babies; but also for a spiritual reason: to display our Maker’s own nurturing nature (Isaiah 66:11,13).”29
In his book The Names of God, Nathan Stone makes a relevant observation about the Hebrew root of the name El Shaddai:
It is quite likely that there is some connection between the name Shaddai and the root from which some modern scholars think it is derived, but in view of the circumstances under which it is often used and in view of the translation of another word almost exactly like it, we believe it has another derivation and a more significant meaning than that of special power. Shaddai itself occurs forty-eight times in the Old Testament and is translated “almighty.” The other word so like it, and from which we believe it to be derived, occurs twenty-four times and is translated “breast.” As connected with the word breast, the title Shaddai signifies one who nourishes, supplies, satisfies. Connected with the word for God, El, it then becomes the “One mighty to nourish, satisfy, supply.” Naturally with God the idea would be intensified, and it comes to mean the One who “sheds forth” and “pours” out sustenance and blessing. In this sense, then, God is the all-sufficient, the all-bountiful.30
Stone goes on to provide an example:
Jacob upon his deathbed, blessing his sons and forecasting their future, says in Genesis 49:24–25, concerning Joseph: “His strong arms stayed limber, because of the hand of the Mighty One of Jacob . . . because of your father’s God [El], who helps you, because of the Almighty [Shaddai], who blesses you with blessings of the heavens above, blessings of the deep that lies below, blessings of the breast and womb.” The distinction and significance of names here is quite striking and obvious. It is God as El who helps, but it is God as Shaddai who abundantly blesses with all manner of blessings, and blessings of the breast . . . The point is that the word translated “breast” in these passages is the Hebrew shad from which is derived Shaddai, the name of God translated “almighty” in our Bibles.31
Affirming the symbolic intention of the female breast, the prophet Isaiah had this to say about Israel’s future restoration:
Whereas you have been forsaken and hated, So that no one went through you, I will make you an eternal excellence, a joy of many generations. You shall drink the milk of the Gentiles, and milk the breast of kings; you shall know that I, the Lord, am your Savior and your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.32
Isaiah goes on to call upon the people to stop mourning Jerusalem, but instead rejoice in its’ redemption:
That you may feed and be satisfied with the consolation of her bosom,
That you may drink deeply and be delighted with the abundance of her glory.
For thus says the Lord: “Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river,
And the glory of the Gentiles like a flowing stream. Then you shall feed;
On her sides shall you be carried, and be dandled on her knees. As one whom his mother comforts, So I will comfort you; and you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.33
Even the Apostle Peter instructs, “as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious.”34
All this spiritual inference about the body, and I haven’t even started talking about sex yet.
Chapter 2—A Red Light in the Bedroom
Perhaps it is because the body, and not just our own, has gotten us into so much trouble that we have unconsciously come to associate it with carnality. Consider the battle we fight to stay pure each time we pass a sexually explicit billboard while driving, visit a website we know we shouldn’t, or allow impropriety into our fantasy life. The guilt of our sexual misgivings has forged into our Christian ethic the belief that the body is at war with the spirit.
Even using the word purity to describe victory in this context, connotes that if we lose our battle against the body, we’ll be contaminated by it. Carmen Renee Berry wrote:
When it comes to our actual bodies, Christian discourse takes a dramatic turn toward blame. We have pointed to our bodies, sometimes referred to as “flesh,” as the source of sin. Due, in part, to translation problems, our physical bodies and our sinful natures have been seen as synonymous.35
But it is not the body that contaminates us, nor is the body our enemy in battle. According to the Apostle Paul:
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.36
The addition of “and blood” to this passage indicates that Paul was using “flesh” to describe literal bodies, rather than man’s sinful nature. Similar comparisons are made in at least fifteen other New Testament passages. As it turns out, the word translated “flesh” in these passages is actually represented by one of four Greek words which are used interchangeably, sometimes referring to the literal body in a morally neutral context, and other times referring to the carnal nature in a more figurative sense. Clapp wrote:
Casual readers of the New Testament are sometimes confused by references to sinful flesh, especially in the writings of Paul. But an only slightly closer reading reveals that flesh is a technical term for Paul . . . The “works of the flesh” include such attitudes and behaviors as quarreling and envy, matters more of spirit than of the physical body.37
So it becomes clear that our battle is not against our body, or the bodies of others; it is the “darkness of this age” that seeks to contaminate. When Jesus presented adultery as a sin that can occur absent from the body, he implicated the heart, not the body, as the source of this transgression:
You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.38
According to Christopher West:
As a result of sin, our experience of sex has become terribly distorted. In the midst of these distortions, we can tend to think that there must be something wrong with sex itself (the “body–bad/sex–dirty” mentality stems from this). But the distortions we know so well are not at the core of sex. At the core of sex we discover a sign of God’s own goodness.39
Perhaps it is this distortion that has influenced some theologians to interpret the sexual references in Song of Solomon
