I have found bits of Matthew 18 coming to mind over the last few days as the "drug induced alopecia" has taken hold. Despite my worst fears, the loss of my hair has not reduced me to gibbering wreck, rather it just feels like one more step on the road to health. It's been a tall stile, if I hold to my long-distance footpath metaphor, and it teases me with the prospect of another just ahead when the residual more tenacious hairs (around 10% of total, those in the 'rest' rather than the 'growth' phase apparently) are shorn and shaved. Nonetheless, the over-riding feeling is a sense that it is 'better to be bald and alive rather than hairy (can't think of a nice word!) and dead.' All of which took me to Matthew 18 with its injunction to amputate parts of the anatomy that lead to sin/stumbling in order to enter life rather than retaining them and burning.
It made me wonder about the way in which we imagine resurrections bodies/life in heaven - if we actually give any thought to it all. Mostly people seem to imagine their current body perfected, at least perfected as per some beauty magazine. A kind of permanent, perfected 25 year-old self in full health and with perfect faculties. Which doesn't quite fit with Matthew 18. And it buys into a lie about what 'perfection' and 'normality' really are anyway. I recall many years ago hearing of someone who was a lifelong wheelchair user saying that in their imagination everyone in heaven had a wheelchair; and why not - who defines 'normal' or 'whole' as being able to walk or run unaided?
I've also found myself wondering what other little challenges to the 'body beautiful' myth might be justified. Jesus told people that there would be no marriage in heaven, presumably, in part, as there is no need for procreation. Which seems to render a lot of body parts redundant. And so it could go on if we actually took the time and effort to wonder just what really matters, just what of our physicality might (and it can only be might, because we don't know for sure it will be physical anyway) survive into eternity.
The necessity to amputate rather than burn is a scary one. The necessity to endure temporary or permanent disfigurement in order to live, if undesired, is a copable one. The idea that wholeness is not measured by number or function of limbs, organs or hairs is vital to enabling us to accept and love ourselves as we are - made in God's image and likeness. Which makes me wonder... is God bald?! ;-)
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My mother had cerebral palsy. She was assured that, in heaven, she would have a perfect body. She told me about this later, and commented that, although she appreciated the sentiment behind the comment, since her lifelong sense of self - and of who she was in God - was deeply determined by her body and its challenges and delights, she couldn't imagine how she would be who she was in glory if her body was not HER body. She then followed it up by commenting that the whole thing was beyond imagination anyway, so she'd just wait and see. A sensible visionary, my mother!