Design Distorted?
Gnosticism, Descartes, and the Emperor's New Clothes
I recently read the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes to my kids. Are you familiar with that folktale? It’s a story of a vain, clothing-obsessed Emperor who was tricked by two con men. They played to his vanity and promised to weave him a fine cloth and make a cloak that was visible only to the wise and competent. They pretended to weave this magical cloth for days and to sew with care and precision. When the Emperor’s officials would check the progress, they pretended to see the cloth, fearing the Emperor would discover they were foolish and unfit for their office. And so the farce persisted, to the point of the Emperor donning the non-existent clothing and parading himself through his kingdom. Everyone was too afraid to voice the truth. Everyone that is but one young child willing to call out the truth: “The Emperor isn’t wearing any clothes!”
The gender ideology of our day would have us believe that we can put on a magical cloak and parade ourselves through the streets, secure only in our vanity or ideologies. We know that God’s good design declares the reality of our created bodies, but along the way, a con has distorted the way we think about and view our bodies.
While it’s tempting to think all of the gender ideology and distortion is a sign of our time or new to us, all of this is rooted in philosophy and thought from hundreds and thousands of years ago. First, we have the heresy of Gnosticism that assailed the early Church. Troublesome in so many ways, but of the body specifically, Gnostics believed that it was the mind/soul that was of greater value and the body as a lesser good, even going so far as to believe the body and bodiliness were inherently evil. More recently, Nancy Pearcey gives a helpful distinction of the worldly view of the body in talking about a higher and lower person. She credits this in part to the philosopher from the 1600s, René Descartes, and his idea that “I think, therefore I am”. Rather than viewing ourselves as a whole person, an embodied soul, it’s more common to think of ourselves as split: the higher person (soul/personality/spirit/etc) and the lower person (physical body). Naturally then, the higher person is of greater consequence, and your true person, it is what dictates reality. As this way of thinking becomes commonplace, it is woefully easy to view your physical body as a mere shell for your true self, and suddenly, you can treat it as an outfit able to be changed when it no longer suits you. Truly, there is nothing new under the sun.
Dear Christian, we do not aim to be known by our outrage over gender ideology, but may we be known by our knowledgeable, grace-filled proclamation of truth. We must hold the innocent conviction of the young child in the folktale, declaring the reality of the body. The body declares the person. We are not just thinking persons with a body to house us, we are embodied souls, a whole person created in the image of God. Our gender is determined and it is good. Our bodies have been distorted by the curse, but the original design has not been changed. Our distortion is seen in the decay, disease, and death that our bodies face, not in their design.
As the idea of bodies as a shell for our true self becomes more widely accepted, the permission to hate one's body has as well. When we reject the goodness of creation, we also reject the goodness of the order that God provided. No longer will we revere the goodness of male and female, of embodiment, of good work, of marriage, and relationship with the Lord, but we will instead see this as a design to hold us captive and something to be liberated from. But the world offers no true freedom in its plan to liberate. Don’t be deceived, my friend. The order God has given—for us to live as created male and female, to marry, to work, and to be in relationship with the Lord—is where we will find freedom and fulfillment.
As believers, we joyfully and graciously reject the notion of the world’s view of a higher and lower person and proclaim the goodness of the Creator’s order. We await together the full restoration of our bodies when our Savior calls us home.