About

The world is funny, isn’t it?One minute, we are all gathered to watch grown men hurtle their bodies through time and space, aiming to inflict enough force to flatten their opponents. We cheer, yell, clap, scream at the impact. We watch these games, knowing that there are precious brains under the helmets that aren’t designed to absorb such brutality. We know that men who spend their careers knocking heads often suffer grave consequences. Such sacrifice is honored in our patriarchal culture. Male aggression is not just normalized, it’s lauded.The second quarter ends and instead of flipping the channel and engaging the family in a round of charades, we all watch the familiar show with some strange, feigned shock at the sight of breasts and bottoms while we clutch our pearls and reach for our phones.The screen is flashing with sequins and there are women everywhere, flipping, turning, rolling, singing, gyrating. It’s a whole production.Small screens flash, too. Christian social media is immediately ablaze.“Trash.”“Don’t they know God didn’t design their bodies to be used this way?”“This is not empowering to women.”“Disgraceful!”“I wouldn’t want my daughter to see a performance like that.”I am not here to offer a moral admonition to Shakira or J-Lo. I’m sure they wouldn’t be terribly interested in my opinion on the matter, anyway. I bet you wouldn’t, either. Enough has been said already.I am not here to pass judgment on any of my dear friends who found the performance inappropriate or even offensive.I am wondering, though, if there aren’t some important questions we should pause to consider.First, why is a free, adult woman choosing to dress and move provocatively on a stage a cause for such uproar? Is it that her body is a temple? Is that why so many of us took to the internet, exclaiming disgust and outrage?If so, why is the violence and injury the players were visiting upon each other moments prior a thing to celebrate and revel in? Are these hulking men’s bodies not temples for the Spirit of God, the same as Jennifer’s and Shakira’s? Do those bodies not also deserve tender care and preservation and protection?What are we really saying about our bodies as temples of the living God when we can’t abide the sight of a woman commanding an audience of thousands with her body for a few minutes at an event where men professionally visit violence upon each other for hours on end to our great glee?  Where is our lament for the bruises, the breaks, the irreversible damage professional football can cause?Here is the NFL player arrest record from 2019. Where is our outrage with the NFL players who beat their women, even their pregnant women? What about the players who abuse animals? Drugs, guns, DUIs, these all get a pass but rump shakers like Shakira and J-Lo we will not abide. We light up the night with our critique of them.I watched the performance again a few minutes ago and I was reminded of the story of the woman who had been caught in the act with someone else’s husband. Now, she lived in a time and a place where women were considered property or dogs and we can’t gloss over that. I think we have a lot of reasons to wonder whether she had actually committed any sin at all or if she may have merely been the victim of a man and the harsh, patriarchal culture of her time. I digress.When Jesus entered into her story, he did not shame or mock her or announce his disappointment in the way she was existing in her body. He did not call attention to her body at all.What Jesus did do, however, was call out the violence and name the secret shame of the men who foamed with the desire to break her will and her body and to beat the flame of life right out of her. He shattered the patriarchy, at least for that moment, simultaneously holding the mob to account and liberating the woman in a way that only the God-man could have.I don’t know what Jesus thinks about rump-shaking, whether the rump belongs to a white cheerleader or a Latina singer. Maybe I’ll ask him about it one day, but I have a feeling when I find myself face to face I’ll think of something better to ask. Maybe I'll ask Him how He felt when J-Lo and Shakira used their platform to speak truth to power in the name of the thousands of little children who have been separated from their parents in the name of America First.I don’t know what Jesus thinks about football. I am positive I won’t ask Him about that.I think I do know, as much as any of us know anything, what Jesus thinks about women and little children and violence and shaming mobs.That’s all I have to say about that.