I am not a fan of scary movies. Watching people blow off zombie heads or hunt ghosts in abandoned mental hospitals gives some an adrenaline rush. I just get a sense of stress and anxiety. Please don’t play dramatic music leading up to a jump scare. No, thank you. 

Regardless of your feelings towards scary movies, you have to admit that there is a bizarre social fascination with zombies and ghosts. We generally consent that they are things to be feared. Where does that fear come from?

Innately, we recognize that something is not quite right. Zombies are bodies without souls. Ghosts are souls without bodies. We fear them because we know they are unnatural, contrary to nature. 

We were made complete as both body and soul. We are our bodies. We are our souls. Body-soul composite. 

The heresy of Gnosticism bleeds into many social and psychological trains of thought, including gender dysphoria. Regarding gender confusion and accommodating the distress involved with gender dysphoria, Gnosticism downplays the value of the body in favor of the soul. 

Gnosticism describes two opposing forces at work in the world: God, the creator of the immaterial, and the devil, the creator of the material. God created the soul. The devil created the body. Therefore, we should elevate the soul as a product of good and reject the body as a product of evil. 

Applied to accommodating gender dysphoria, according to Gnosticism, the body cannot be trusted and one’s sole identity rests in the soul. One’s mental perception, or self-identification, of gender identity supersedes any bodily, sexual expression. The only solution for integration, then, rests in sex reassignment surgery. The body must align with the mind. 

Though sex reassignment surgery may appear as the solution to relieving distress and confusion, it actually causes further integration and disorder within the human person. Reason and Revelation both uphold the dignity of the human person as unified body and soul. 

A Human Person Possesses A Body

First off, a human person necessarily possesses a body. Simple as that. There is a clear distinction between ghosts and people. Those terms are not used synonymously.

For all the 90’s babies out there, think Backstreet Boys.

Everybody-uh

Has a body-uh

Everbody-uh, has a body, right?

via GIPHY

The Body Connects Us To The Physical And Immaterial World

Secondly, reason demonstrates that the body necessarily connects us to the physical and immaterial world. 

As you read this article, you simultaneously sense and understand the words. Your body, your eyes read the words, while your immaterial self, the mental self, the soul connects the words to learned concepts. The one subject of you, the reader, both sees and thinks (body uses its eyes to read the words. The soul or mental self comprehends the words by abstraction and assigns meaning to information gained by the senses. 

St. Thomas Aquinas notes that the person “is conscious of both [body and soul] that he understands and that he senses. But one cannot sense without a body; therefore, the body must be some part of a man” (Summa Theologiae, Part I on the Union of the Body and Soul). 

Revelation upholds the value of the body through the resurrection of the body and its role in redemption. Human persons experience the separation of body and soul through death as a result of the condition of sin. In response, Christ gives humanity hope in the future resurrection through his own experience of suffering and death. As a Divine Person taking on human nature, Christ redeems and restores humanity to unified body and soul through His bodily ascension into eternity.

“[M]an is not allowed to despise his bodily life, rather he is obliged to regard his body as good and honorable since God has created it and will raise it up on the last day” (The Church in the  Modern World, 14). 

Though we may find the thrill in shooting up zombies or sucking up ghosts through a vacuum, we know that there are better ways to live fully as both body and soul, destined for a bodily resurrection in the eternal New Heaven and the New Earth. 

God created out of love. Sin entered the world. Mosquitos are a direct result of the fall. Jesus is Lord and redeems man. Truth. 

More Catholic Resources

A Christian Response To Gender Dysphoria

How To Pray the Rosary? A Step-By-Step Visual Guide

The Ultimate Visual Guide to the Rosary: How to Pray the Rosary, 15 Promises, the History, and More!

The 15 Promises Of The Rosary According To The Virgin Mary

7 Surprising Things That Happen When You Pray the Rosary More Often

Listen as the King of Rock Sings to the Queen of Heaven: Elvis Presley Sings the Rosary

Pray A 15 Minute Rosary Set To Space, AC Window, Jazz, FIREWORKS & More

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash