“This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh... That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.” (Gen 2:23-24)
Forget the sacredness of this text, the gender issues and the folkloristic simplicity of the statements. The bible writer is making two statements: one, “this is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh”, and two, “this is why a man leaves his father and mother” to become “united to his wife, and they become one flesh”.
Both statements affirm that every man, every woman and every LGBTIQ+ person is “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” with others. This flies in the face of the strident claim made by our so-called progressive culture claiming that “This is my body!”
I am no biologist but a simple person who loves and is enchanted by the miracles of nature. All creatures, including we humans, are generated by other creatures we usually call parents. Our bodies can only originate in human parent-bodies with whom we are “one flesh”. This is not doctrine or indoctrination, neither is it faith, belief or custom. It is pure fact.
But, marvel of marvels, this clump of ‘cells of my cells’, ‘tissues of my tissues’ that we call parents, are capable of generating a unique, unrepeatable, independent being. We call it ‘baby’, ‘child’, ‘woman’, ‘man’, ‘LGBTIQ+’ or whatever, simply because each original being thus begotten is not destined to remain just a clump of cells. Those cells become human when he/she discovers the ability and dignity to say: “This is me”.
Unfortunately, transformations do not stop there. ‘This is me’ too quickly becomes ‘this is mine’. So, our inborn fragility and insecurity soon make us say ‘it is either us or them’, forgetting that from the very beginning it has always been ‘this is us and them’. No wonder that instead of a shared adventure, life becomes an open war.
Our inborn fragility and insecurity soon make us say ‘it is either us or them’, forgetting that from the very beginning it has always been ‘this is us and them’
We humans have received a gift coming from beyond – the freedom to choose. Nature is dethroned and humanity enthroned when we become ‘us’ by free choice and not just by natural or cellular necessity.
Instinctively, overawed by the marvellousness of this miracle-gift, we can take the logical, reasonable and extremely comforting step of going beyond the ‘me’ and ‘you’. We can forget all about ‘me’ and decide to make it all about ‘us’.
What makes us truly human is choosing love – and therefore, God!
It is this choice that makes us parents, brothers and sisters, friends and lovers. This is the supreme gift – love in its most beautiful wrapping: a body endowed with the freedom to choose death or life.
One choice is to say: “This is my body, mine and mine alone. Life is all about me” in a dehumanising self-centredness which only leads to loneliness, despair and death.
Another choice is to say with Jesus: “This is my body, given for you. Take and eat. Because I love you, life is all about us and not just about me!” This makes us divinely other-centred and therefore truly human.
It is only what we lovingly give that is really ours. My body does indeed become my choice when it becomes the source of a real, meaningful and lasting life.