In our continuation of reading A Body of Praise, Taylor expands his discussion of the body’s connection to worship. While he has already mentioned how culture is an aspect of our body in worship, he goes back in time to see how the church has responded to our bodies in worship. He described how the Medieval church responded to kneeling while the early Greco-Roman church would never consider kneeling as an element of worship. I found this interesting because in my worship culture, kneeling, dancing, and hand raising is very normal. And I wondered how similar this may be to the Jewish culture, but maybe not the “early church.” What Taylor was saying was that we have to consider culture when we consider worship practices and theology throughout history. If we don’t, then we idealize incorrectly how the early church operated. They also existed within their own time, their own context, their own social norms, and those may be different from how we should respond in our times and cultures. I think it is important to guard our responses and view of the early church as we prescribe their traditions to our culture and world today. I think there is great value in taking the example of the early church, especially because of their proximity to Jesus’ life on earth, but I think, like other parts of the Bible, not all of it can be directly transferred to our contemporary church bodies. We need to be aware of the stumbling blocks that exist for us simply because of where we live in time and space, and that is not a bad thing. It is about honoring the body and members of the body, keeping the purity and integrity of their connection with God. There is a balance of doing new things that bring new elements of worship and God’s character to people while also caring for the physical, social, and cultural place that people are at.
In chapter 4, Taylor starts by telling two tales and how they create a worldview of our bodies. The first tale was the familiar tale from Genesis of Adam and Eve. Through this illustration he basically explains how it is common for people to believe that the Fall totally ruined all goodness about our bodies and we are just living in these sin machines until we are restored. The second tale, however, is about the Christian who knows their body is good, but fallen, waiting to be redeemed. That this very physical aspect of our bodies is indeed a key element of what it means to be made in the image of God, Imago Dei. Not just made in his image because we share his qualities and attributes, but a real element of our bodies being an image of God.
Taylor is showing us that the human body is actually good. He goes throughout Scripture and looks at passages where the body is often described or talked about negatively, but he seeks to look at them through God’s redeeming character. That it must have been good enough for him to take on, the Creator put on his own image, and he was still God. It almost reminds me of the mindset, “If it was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me!” Our bodies are not sinful by default. They do not simply exist and are sinful. God made them good, and they still are good. So, we don’t have to be ashamed of our bodies when we enter into worship. We don’t have to disassociate from our bodies when we talk to God as if that is what he wants, he wants our whole selves. Heart, soul, mind, and body, that is how we love the LORD our God.
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