God Loves Us In Any Size! - Divorce Minister
Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure.
-Ephesians 1:4-5, NLT
Body shaming is alive and well in the Christian culture.
Sadly, it is even associated in blaming faithful spouses for their parterns’ infidelity. A few years back now, Pastor Mark Driscoll got himself in some hot water by making statements implying disgraced Pastor Ted Haggard cheated–or was helped in that direction–by a wife who got fat.
The Christian culture’s complicated relationship with our physical bodies has a long, ignominious history. If you are interested, I recommend reading Born Again Bodies by R. Marie Griffith. She details how the various streams of American Christianity and its offshoots have created an environment where bodies are treated as a markers of salvation or damnation.
The male counterpart to this sort of shaming is shaming over income or wealth as Pastor Tim Keller points out in his book, The Meaning of Marriage. Both ideas are ungodly, pagan treatment of people.
God does not accept or reject us based on how much we weigh or how much money is in our bank accounts!
He knew us and chose us from the foundation of the world as Ephesians 1:4 tells us. God knew what size we would be and how much we would earn in our lifetimes. And He chose us! Alleged deficiencies in either category are not valid excuses for being sinned against. No such excuse exists.
