The Theology of Your Womb: A Biblical View of the Female Body
POSTED BY
Chelsey Geisz
READ TIME
4 Minutes
Throughout your Christian journey, you’ve probably spent countless hours growing your head knowledge about God. You may have also tended to your heart through healing ministries. But have you ever stopped to consider the importance of the body in your spiritual life?
If you’re like most Christian women, you have a complicated relationship with your body. After all, many of us have grown up viewing the body as bad and the spirit as good. Unfortunately, generations of Christians have arrived at this unbiblical (and in fact heretical) stance through a misinterpretation of Paul’s elevation of the Spirit over the flesh in verses like Romans 8:1-7 and Galatians 5:16-26.
At first glance, these passages read like a condemnation of the body, but biblical scholars agree that when Paul uses the term “flesh” here, he’s actually referring to a whole person (body and soul) separated from God’s indwelling Spirit.1
If we understand Paul’s writing through this lens, Jesus’s words in John 6:63 make sense: when we are cut off from the Spirit, “the flesh counts for nothing.” However, when we live according to the Spirit, our body actually becomes the sacred dwelling space of God (1 Cor. 6:19).
Christianity's unique embrace of the body
Although human brokenness has distorted the meaning of the embodiment almost beyond recognition, the Christian church always maintained the goodness of the body.
As C.S. Lewis states, “Christianity is almost the only one of the great religions which thoroughly approves of the body—which believes that matter is good, that God himself once took on a human body, that some kind of body is going to be given to us even in heaven and is going to be an essential part of our happiness.”
We do not honor God by rejecting the body he created for us—in fact, in rejecting his good creation, we reject the Creator too. Rather, we glorify God when we welcome his Spirit into our entire personhood and embrace embodiment in our spiritual life.
Your body is theological - it reveals God
Your body is not just a house or cage for your soul. Your body is you! The body is a profound union of the physical and spiritual, and it reveals your full personhood. Just think—if you didn’t have a body, how would we know you? Who would you be? But we can’t stop there.
Your body is actually theological. As John Paul II writes, “The body, in fact, and only the body, is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and divine.”
Genesis 1:27 says that we were created in the image of God as male and female. You’ve probably heard that hundreds of times, but what does it mean? Theologian Christopher West puts it this way: “The very design of our sexually differentiated bodies reveals something about the mystery of God.”
You study the Bible because you want to know God, but if the Bible’s words are true, then the unique features of your female body also reflect and reveal God’s nature.
Finding God in the womb
By studying the natural revelation of God’s creation all around us, it’s evident that our Maker loves to use cycles. You can observe cyclical patterns in the four seasons, the water cycle, and many other natural processes that rely on cycles for balance, sustainability, and renewal. Even the church has traditionally used a calendar with four main seasons to bring balance and wholeness to the spiritual life.
God designed creation to reach maturity through cycles of life, death, and rebirth—so much so that this cyclical pattern is one of God’s main fingerprints throughout all of creation.
As a woman, you have this divine fingerprint stamped into your very body. If you’re in your bleeding years, your womb experiences its own cycle of death and rebirth each month. And because your sexual organs and related hormones profoundly affect the rest of your being, you are a seasonal creature by nature!
This cyclical aspect of your body also contains theological meaning; as scholar Christy Angelle Bauman writes, “The life cycle of the uterus mirrors the imago Dei, the image of God as a creator.”
This means that when you connect with the story and seasons of your womb, you connect with the spiritual cycle of waiting, growth, death, and rebirth that echoes throughout all of God’s creation. Coming home to the profound symbolic meaning of your female cycle allows you to embrace the fullness of your embodied experience—the messy parts included!
The CycleWise Approach
CycleWise exists to help Christian women like you discover and honor the image of God in your female body. One of the most powerful ways to do this is by learning how to flow with the rhythm of female embodiment rather than against it.
Not only can you learn how to connect with the cyclical pattern of your body and embrace your inner seasons, the CycleWise approach also helps you understand the powerful gifts that come with living into this cycle of creation and renewal each month. After all, God created every inch of you on purpose, and getting in touch with the way he made you can transform every aspect of your life.
Would you like to learn how to use this feminine superpower for good? Aligning with your God-given design can unlock greater joy and ease in your relationships, radiant energy in your body, heightened self-understanding, and increased depth and richness in your walk with God.
Bauman, Christy Angelle, et al. Theology of the Womb: Knowing God through the Body of a Woman. Cascade Books, 2019.
West, Christopher. Our Bodies Tell Gods Story: Discovering the Divine Plan for Love, Sex, and Gender. Brazos Press, a Division of Baker Publishing Group, 2020.
HI, FRIEND!
I'm Chelsey.
I believe that you were fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of God, and therefore, your body reveals divine truth. My calling is to help you step into the full, electric power of your female design to discover who God created you to be.
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