Editorial July 21, 1986 Issue

Respecting the body

CAROLYN B. SWAN

A character in a newspaper comic strip was recently depicted sizing himself up in a full-length mirror. "I've reached the age," he confessed to the friend standing beside him, "where it's harder and harder for me to think of my body as a temple."^{Bob Thaves, "Frank and Ernest." Copyright © 1986 Newspaper Enterprise Association, Inc. Used by permission .}

Some might agree that it's hard at any age to think so highly of one's body. In fact, this cartoon might well set one to wondering why anybody would think of it as a temple at all! And this should turn us to the Bible. For it is there we find the allusion to body as temple. In a letter, the Christian Apostle Paul asks the members of the church at Corinth with apparent astonishment, "What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?"^{I Cor. 6:19.}

This verse is surrounded by rebukes to the libertine views of some of the converts at Corinth, who mistakenly assumed that their Christian freedom gave them license to follow their own inclinations about sexual indulgence and ignore their obligation to obey God's commands or have concern for others' welfare. Such rebukes are timely and important and bear directly on the meaning of the verse. Yet the verse also lends itself to a much broader meaning. A full spiritual understanding of what it means to see that one's body is the temple of the Holy Spirit takes study and progress in healing practice. But we can easily recognize that this Bible statement involves obedience not only to the Seventh Commandment, "Thou shalt not commit adultery," but to the other nine as well.^{See Ex. 20:3–17 .}

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