Item 1: a cover story in Christianity Today about evangelical Christians who rent out their wombs as reproductive surrogates, in order to help those who cannot conceive;
Item 2: an essay in First Things by an evangelical professor lamenting the heterodoxy of her Christian students, who cheerfully call their bodies “meat suits” while doubting the resurrection of the flesh;
Item 3: an article in The Wall Street Journal by a biologist decrying the evolutionary “botch” that is the human body.
Each of these items crossed my field of vision in the space of a few weeks this spring. And I’m not even counting the continuing drip of #MeToo fallout. Clearly, the body is a vexed site of controversy.
What is the body for, anyway? The materialist has one answer: for nothing in particular. It’s just an accidental confluence of DNA, fluky environmental factors, and the inexorable march of time, in which change is the only constant. Don’t get too attached to this iteration of humanity, because it won’t last.
To read more, access the article at https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/culture-of-life/whats-a-body-for.