Christopher West - Our Bodies Tell Gods Story: Discovering the Divine Plan for Love, Sex, and Gender

Eric Metaxas

In case anyone has missed it, the Western church is facing a serious reckoning with its inability to respond effectively to the secular worlds challenges regarding the meaning of sex, gender, marriage, and the family. And what could be more central to human life than the meaning of these most central of human concepts? The popular culture has been telling us a saccharine, rainbow-hued fairy tale about our bodies and about human love that innumerable people have nonetheless found more compelling and appealing than anything theyve probably ever heard in church. But it strikes meand the author of this wonderful bookthat that is because we in the church havent been properly equipped to understand that our bodies tell a true story that is more glorious and transcendent and powerful and multidimensional and resonant and satisfying than weve ever imagined. As Christopher West illuminates for us in this much-needed and timely work, our bodies tell God s story.

The Enlightenment has taught us an infinity of things about the workings of the human body as a biological organism. But when it comes to the deepest meaning of our creation as male and female, the Enlightenment, ironically, has left us fumbling in the dark. It tells a story that is ultimately reductionist and that is therefore only part of the larger and grander story; and in being only part of the larger story but purporting to be the whole story, it is what we might accurately call a lie and a fiction. The body is not only biological. To say that we are only biological is like saying that Albert Einstein and Mother Teresa and Mozart were only clumps of cells. As West correctly asserts, Since were made in the image of God as male and female, the body... is also theological . It tells an astounding divine story.... This means that when we get the body and sex wrong, we get the divine story wrong as well.

Could this possibly explain why embracing the values of the sexual revolution has coincided with a widespread loss of biblical faith in general? Sex is not just about sex, posits West. The way we understand and express our sexuality points to our deepest-held convictions about who we are, who God is, who Jesus is, what the church is (or should be), the meaning of love, the ordering of society, and the mystery of the universe.

These are bold claims, but they are also indisputably and powerfully and dramatically true. And if you read this book you will see that West backs them up so that we can all see how true and inescapable they are. Of course these are not just his ideas. His task in this first-of-its-kind book is to make accessible for a broad Christian readership the insights of someone whom many consider the greatest Christian leader of the twentieth century. In my book Seven Men: And the Secret of Their Greatness , I wrote that there is much to be said for the view that that title belongs to the man who led the worlds Catholics into the twenty-first century: John Paul II. Christian history will surely remember him for his fearless witness to Christ in the face of state-sponsored atheism (he was one of the key figures in the collapse of communism across Europe); for his tireless efforts in building bridges across denominational lines (he even reached out to Protestant and Orthodox Christians, asking them to help him reenvision the papacy); and for his courageous defense of the dignity of human life in the face of powerful ideological threats against it.

Today, however, as Christians in the culture and in their own congregations and families continue to grappleand sometimes fail to grapplewith the near total eclipse of the biblical meaning of sex, gender, and marriage, its becoming increasingly evident that John Paul IIs greatest legacy may prove to be an extensive collection of biblical reflections he gave on the theology of the human body. This bold, compelling, hopeful, and healing vision of our creation as male and female has been hailed by Catholics and Protestants alike as an antidote to the sexual crisis now plaguing the church and the world. For that antidote to spread, however, the keen insights of these dense and scholarly lectures need to be put in a language that average believers can understand.

Which brings us back to Christopher West and the happy gift of this book.

West began teaching John Paul IIs Theology of the Body to a primarily Catholic audience in the mid-1990sefforts that soon found him authoring bestselling books and lecturing around the globe. When a committee at Focus on the Family charged with drafting an official statement on sexuality solicited Wests assistance in the early 2000s, West took up the task of translating John Paul IIs biblical reflections for believers who would rarely (if ever) pick up something authored by a pope. Having been raised Catholic but evangelized largely by Protestant believers during his college years, West is fluent in both languages, so to speak, which makes him the perfect candidate to write this book. In his introduction, West mentions the debt of gratitude he feels toward his Protestant brothers and sisters for inspiring him with their commitment to Christ and their love for Gods Word. As you enter more and more into this study of Gods Word, you will surely agree with me that we also owe him our gratitude for making John Paul IIs Theology of the Body accessible and relatable to the whole body of Christ.