Having some vanity is a part of brave dating.

I grew up in the church, have been a youth pastor since the early 1980s (and every decade since) and have never learned nor taught any of this.

Some of you haven’t been as fortunate. You are who I’m writing to.

Purity culture taught you that your body was evil because of the temptation it posed to men, while fundamentalism taught you that your body was evil because you were born totally depraved.

So you have learned to not listen to your body. You have learned to turn your body off. You have never celebrated your body as good.

Your body is good and designed to worship. When you do feel connected to God, you feel it in your body, right? You feel it. These moments are memorable.

Jesus rose from the grave with his body intact. Luke 24:39 – Look at my hands. Look at my feet. You can see that it’s really me. Touch me and make sure that I am not a ghost, because ghosts don’t have bodies, as you see that I do.”

Jesus was born as a baby with a body. This is the incarnation.

In the incarnation, God entered not just the beauty and wonder of embodiment but also its shame. Jesus had bad breath. He may have wet the bed. His nose may have been lumpy or his teeth crooked. He stank. He covered his nakedness.

But because of the embodied life, death, and resurrection of Christ, we who are in Christ are ‘clothed in Christ.’ The shame of embodiment—and ultimately the shame of sin—that Adam and Eve could not cover with fig leaves is resolved permanently in Christ himself. –Tish Harrison Warren, Liturgy of the Ordinary, p. 40

Our embodied Savior is a part of our redemption.

Is the body the meeting of heaven and earth? Think deeper about that one.

God created us with bodies and called them good. Your bodily presence is good simply by the very act of your creation.

Too often, women, we’ve felt like we’ve had to apologize for the space we take up with our bodies.

Too often, women, we believe to find love we have to shut off our bodies. We believe the lie that we need to divide physical intimacy from emotional intimacy. You have been taught to devalue the human that you are with, to other the body. And to devalue you. You are to disassociate your body from who you are as a whole person.

Can you say that your body is good? Can you have a little vanity about your body? Yes. “But.” I hear the but in your head. Women struggle to say we are proud of our accomplishments, which also includes our bodies.

You are not wooed to God by shame. That is not how God pursues you. So any narrative around the body that promotes shame about your body is not for you. You are invited to wholly love God with your mind, soul, spirit, and body.

Anything else is disembodiment. Historically and currently there have been lots of false belief systems that encourage disembodiment and all have been called out to be anti-Christian. Such as Gnosticism, Hermeticism, Christian mysticism, shamanism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism.

What is one more thing that makes the Christian faith different? It celebrates the body.

Too bad too many church teachings have not taught this.

Yet the message is clearly Biblical. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 – Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.

Your body matters. It is good. It is to be celebrated. The Holy Spirit joins you there. You united with your Creator through the Holy Spirit in your body have only a brave faith of a life waiting for you.

Isaiah 46:4 is a special verse that says God really cares about my beautiful aging body–and yours–I will be your God throughout your lifetime—until your hair is white with age. I made you, and I will care for you. I will carry you along and save you. That gives me some vanity.

Make your dating decisions from this vantage point. (It is an advantage.) The Holy Spirit will join you there too.

Order your own set of these Body Blessings cards from Revelation Wellness.

If this sounds like a Dove commercial to you this is exactly why those Dove commercials are so good for our souls. It is so good to hear the body celebrated.