YOUR BODY A TEMPLE

"Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?" (1 Corinthians 6:19 NRSV)

Flannery O’Connor’s short story "A Temple of the Holy Ghost" tells of a precocious twelve-year-old girl and two country boys who have come to court her visiting cousins.  The girl overhears her teenage cousins mock a nun, Sister Perpetua, who has suggested a formula to use in fending off fresh young men in the back seats of cars. "Stop sir!  I am a Temple of the Holy Ghost!" the nun taught the girls to say.  The cousins think such advice is hilarious.  The twelve-year-old girl, however, is moved.  The news that she is the dwelling place of God makes her feel as if somebody has given her a present.  She takes it seriously.

The nun’s formula comes from a passage, 1 Corinthians 6, that is among Paul's strongest and most strange.  In trying to shock the Corinthians out of their wild behavior, Paul uses this astonishing argument: "Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ Himself?  Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute?  Never!  Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, 'The two will become one flesh.'"

-- Philip Yancey in Rumors of Another World


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