Without meaning to get too personal, how do you feel about your body?

I asked this question because many of us go to extremes where the body is concerned.

On the one extreme there are those who effectively worship it.

We celebrate physical beauty as if it were a moral virtue and the gym becomes our church.

On the other extreme there are those who think of the body as an obstacle to true spirituality.

That view of the body is what we might call Gnostic.

Gnosticism was a prominent movement that grew up around the church in the second century,

although it was partly of pre-Christian origin.

It was a cocktail of Persian, Egyptian, Jewish and Christian ideas with some Greek philosophy

thrown in.

The word gnosis itself is Greek and means knowing or having knowledge.

Knowing knowledge is a significant part of Gnosticism.

To say you were a Gnostic was to say, I know something you don't.

I'm in on the secret.

I've been enlightened.

I've woken up.

I'm spiritually on a higher level.

You get a hint of that in the way Simon Majer says described in the Book of Acts.

He's been called the first Gnostic, and according to Acts chapter 8, he amazed the people

of Samaria, saying that he himself was somebody great.

As well as thinking you're kind of a big deal spiritually, Gnostic's also have a thing

about the body.

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