Hatred of our own bodies leads to an inability to love others.

Ephesians 5:29 "After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church--"

Ever since I first read this verse I had questions about it.  I mean I know people who seem to hate their own bodies.  They don't feed and care for it, in fact some of them starve, poison, and abuse their bodies.  Now for some who are addicts or self medicating, it isn't their bodies they are hating when they are poisoning it, it is in fact out of a love for their bodies, and a desire to escape some kind of pain that they are futilely engaging in this destructive activity.  And then there are some people who abuse their bodies out of ignorance, or out of a desire for pleasure, which doesn't fit into the category of hatred.

However there seems to be many others who actually hate their bodies.  I got to thinking this morning about this. To me it is common to think of a person hating their own body.  I wonder if this is a cultural concept that the Apostle Paul's culture may not have been familiar with, but that my culture is very familiar with.  I read articles all the time about how people in our culture are subjected to an unrealistic and unacheivable concept of what their body should look like.  This bombardment of unrealistic expectations eventually leads them to hate their own bodies, and they starve and cut and poison themselves in a vain attempt to live up to the fantastical standard set by marketers and media.

Has the prolific bombardment of a mass media inculcation of what ultimately becomes self hatred created a cultural reality where we do in fact find it common for people to hate their own bodies?  Something that possibly earlier cultures who were free of this bombardment would have been unfamiliar with?  What does a culture of self hatred cause with regard to our ability to relate to God?  What does it cause with regard to our ability to relate to each other?

I think it is very significant. The second greatest commandment according to Christ regards self love as the standard by which we are able to love others.

Mark 12:31 "And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these."

Hatred of our own bodies leads to an inability to love others.

Firewall words

It's amazing to me how much thought we are restricted from thinking because of how ideas have been packaged and presented to us.  Tools such as humiliation, praise, punishment, association, authority, etc are used to cause us to think, or not think a certain way about certain ideas.  There are words and ideas that create a sort of firewall around certain concepts.  Anarchy is one of those words.  When it comes up most people have been conditioned not to think beyond it because they have been told that anything regarding it is bad, etc.  So even if a very rational argument is presented, the fact that it is presented on the other side of the firewall means that the person will not even consider it, their mind unwilling to traverse the firewall and enter into a "restricted zone" of thought.  This is a way of controlling the thought lives of people and keeping their thoughts safely within what is acceptable and controllable.

I am struggling to find my own firewall words and learning to think through them and explore the ideas on the other side.  Not necessarily to accept those ideas, but at least to have a reason as to why I think they way I do about the idea.

Here is a quick list of some other firewall words I could think of off the top of my head. Some of which may trigger a mental shutdown in your mind with either a positive or negative connotation or possibly just a specific connotation, but in any case basically irrational and impulsive:

Constitution
Democracy
Federal
Anarchy
Pentagram
Muslim
Soda
Drugs
Medicine
Gay
Money
Jesus
Work
Church
Food
Democrat
Republican
Gun
Israel
Immigrant
Fuel
Country
Spirit
Authority
Law
Sin
God
School

Obviously I probably can't actually recognize the firewall words that I am currently being bound by because, well, they are firewall words and my mind won't go there.  What I am trying to do is notice when my mind does this and humble myself and at least entertain the argument, even if it is in the restricted zone.

Can you think of some firewall words?

Is a person without a body still a person?

All the people you know either have or had at some point, a body.  Is having a physical body a requirement for being a person?  When their body dies, it seems that the person doesn't.  Because the person has already been defined in your mind, and even though they are no longer in their body, their person still exists, more than simply a memory, but the definition of them as a person that sets them apart from all the other things your mind knows about.  So the person part of a person doesn't seem to need the body to be a person. You might say, "well that's just your idea of the person, since they no longer have a body, you can no longer interact with them, so they are no longer a part of the relationship".  But is interaction required for a person to be a person?  What if they moved far away, do they cease being a person to me?

It might be argued that any relationship with the person after they have died, or have moved far away, is simply an interaction with your idea of the person.  But how different is that really than our interactions with the person while they are still living, or close to us?  We don't live inside the physical brains of other people, we only relate to them from within our minds, and with our ideas of them.  Once we get to know a person we can even seem to know how they would respond to certain questions or circumstance.  So even after they are gone we ask ourselves, "What would so and so do?" and our minds access that person and return to us an answer, just as if we had asked the person.  What comes first the person or the body?

Is the idea of the person that survives the body still the person?  I can't see how it could be argued that it is not.  Person-hood is clearly a distinct trait from physical existence.  A person is such a clearly defined concept that we can even continue to relate to the person after they have died, or moved far away.

Did their body create their person?  Can we create a person who did not first have a body and relate to them similarly?  Would not fictional characters fit this definition?  Is a fictional character a "real" person in this sense, or does physical life alone set the criteria to be a person?  A fictional character is obviously not a human being, but is it a real person?  Some of the greatest ones surely seem to be, they "take on a life of their own" so to speak in the minds of the people who relate to them.

If a person can be created by means of fiction, are there persons that exist by other means, other than by means of fiction or by being a human?  Are there persons that exist or have existed that never had a body, and were never imagined into existence by another person, only related to by them?

Just some questions I have about persons.

God the eye-light thing in my mind during an allergic reaction.

Last night this whole allergic reaction thing was still getting to me.  I was laying in bed and was wheezing pretty bad, and I had taken some prescription meds that were supposed to help, but I still couldn't sleep.  These meds had also relaxed me like these kind of meds tend to do, but I still had an annoying wheeze that was keeping me up.  I was praying to God a frustrated prayer for healing, but also a prayer that I could, you know, live right and stuff and know Him better. 

All of the sudden I saw a vision in my mind's eye of some evil faces with condemning scowls looking at me, some had lightening and fire shooting out at me and my spirit calmly said "look beyond all that", and then I saw that these scary faces were illuminated by distorting the light of God that was shining on me.   There was just a single point of light now, but it was dimmed so that I could look directly at it. The point of light then took the shape of an eye and I could see that God was looking at me and I was looking at Him, or at least a vision of Him as an eye-light thing. 

I said God please heal me, and tell me what I should do with my life to be happy and please you.    The word's of Christ came immediately to my mind "I only do what I see my Father doing."  I then realized that if I was looking at God's eye-light vision thing that I was aiming in the wrong direction to be able to see what He was seeing.  So my spirit said, "You'll need to turn around to see".  Since I was sick I assumed that when I turned around somehow I would be provided relief from the wheezing, but instead I rolled over and my eyes immediately fell upon my wife and one of my daughters laying there asleep.  "This is what I am seeing for you to be doing, it's right in front of you every day." was the phrase that rang through my spirit.  It struck me very deeply, and confirmed in me a conviction that I need to prune some activities from my life and focus more on my wife and family.

The wheezing didn't stop then, I actually had to get up and go sleep in a chair because it was more comfortable to breathe.  This morning I got up to go to my weekly meeting I have with my friends at a local restaurant where we talk, pray, and discuss many things, but mostly spiritual things.  One of my good friends noticed I was still having trouble breathing, and told the group "let's pray for Dax right now", and so they did, and over the course of the conversation after that my lungs loosened and my breathing eased.

I think God sees me increasing my love for family first and also friends, and spending less time on things over which I have little influence or control and that cause me the kind of stress that even my allopathic doctor blamed for bringing upon this allergic episode to begin with.