Thoughts On: John 2:13-22

The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, "Take these things away; do not make my Father's house a house of trade." His disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for your house will consume me."

John 2:13-17, ESV

We live in a culture where women are seen as commodities. I am sure men are also seen as such, and we’ve all got problems with this specific issue, but I am a woman and I have felt the degrading attention of the male gaze, so I will speak to what I know. I also know that in Christianity we are often the worst offenders. There are standards for a Christian wife that are nearly impossible to keep up with, and there are rules we are asked to follow that make us feel ashamed of our bodies and of our dignity. I work in a church that is trying hard to fight these norms, but still, they are engrained in most women who grew up conservative.

I have felt this lie permeate from the walls of old places of worship and into my own life - I am a commodity to be traded. 

Honestly, I don’t have much to say on the subject. The lie hurts and it makes women do stupid things. It makes us compete with one another to have more to trade than the woman next to us, and it makes us envious of the commodities another woman has acquired that we have not. It is frustrating and it is painful, but I don’t think it will ever stop if we keep repeating the lie. We must identify the truth.

In 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 we read as Paul asks “or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” 

I am a temple of God. That is the truth. That is where this lie will unravel.

As I read about Jesus cleansing the temple of trade, I feel the anger. I feel the heat and the passion, because the last few years have been filled with a cleansing of my own temple. When Jesus took the sacrifice for our sins, and when the Holy Spirit came to enter our souls, we became the new temples, and that was where it all started.

The moment I became the home of God, I began to notice a problem. I had been trading myself, my dreams and my fears and my desires, for a long time. As the Holy Spirit began to settle down into my life, I felt uneasiness swell up as I traded myself out like a commodity to be bought. I had no boundaries and no way of protecting sacred space, and so I sold out. I traded. But the zeal of our God does not put up with such shenanigans, and soon I became aware: I could not go on like this. 

It took a long time to come out of that space of trading and bartering my soul. I'm still coming out of it. There is a lot of healing that must take place for one to come to terms with oneself without trying to sell out to someone else, but I'm working on it, and it is good, honest work. Somedays I enjoy it and others I don't at all, but that's what hard work is, and I'm glad to be a part of it.

So now I have begun a new journey. One where I don’t have to be anything but what God created me to be. One where the Holy Spirit runs my home, and my body, and my dreams. I am beginning a life where my boundaries are sacred, just like the temple is sacred. I will not trade myself anymore. God loves me too much, and he’s making his home in me. It's worth it to be free.