We are spiritual beings living in a physical world. Our bodies are the packaging for our minds and consciousness. They are kind of like words. Words don’t mean anything by themselves; they only have meaning because of the concepts they represent and convey. Words are the packaging. Similarly, our bodies don’t mean much without the unique personhood that each body represents.

But without words, we cannot share ideas and express ourselves fully to others. Certainly there is non-verbal communication, but without shared words, one cannot be sure of agreement with others in understanding an idea. Words are relational in nature. Our bodies are also relational in nature. Perhaps we could exist as disembodied spirits, but it is through our physical senses that we experience beauty, sensuality, and pleasure, all of which contribute to our relational existence with others.

Our physical experience is a large part of being human. We strive for comfort, not just mentally and emotionally, but physically. We gain emotional well-being through physical touch. We find satisfaction through seeing reflections of ourselves, and are attracted to others’ physical manifestations, all the while knowing that our physical selves only partially represent the complex beings housed inside. We crave scent, taste, sound, color, and texture. Our physical bodies are mysteriously intertwined with our “real selves,” our inner persons.

Certainly one could argue that while physical reality matters, your individual physical reality doesn’t matter and that changing it to match your inner person really isn’t important. Perhaps they would have a point. And if one believes in a future heaven where we’ll have new bodies and there will be neither male nor female, maybe it seems less important.

However, even if heaven is a future reality, we don’t live there now. We are born into a physical world where sex and gender do matter, from a practical standpoint if for nothing else. Pragmatically, it matters if you’re male or female because in human biology, females provide the ova and males provide the sperm. Females gestate babies and can nurture them post-birth through lactation. Historically this dichotomy meant females doing more domestic tasks and males doing more hunting and protecting. Throughout much of history, survival was not a sure thing, so procreation was a top priority, meaning females needed to be pregnant and nursing babies year after year to ensure both male progeny and enough births to sustain the species when mortality was quite tenuous. As females were preoccupied with childbearing and child-rearing responsibilities, males took on the other necessary roles for subsisting – protecting their species from predators and providing nutritive sustenance through hunting and farming.

We’ve obviously come a long way as a physical species, and the human population has continued to snowball. The estimated population in 2015 was 7.3 billion with predictions that we’ll reach 11.2 billion by the year 2100. So our physical roles as male and female matter less than they used to since life doesn’t only revolve around procreation and keeping the species alive. Does that mean that it no longer matters which sex one is? We still have sex-specific capabilities regarding childbearing, but women need not be pregnant so often and men can be involved in child-rearing more readily due in part to technologies that help mothers provide breast milk for their infants even if breastfeeding directly is not always desired or possible.

These changes have allowed women to gain independence and bring more equality between men and women. And the changes have definitely been physical. They might have been borne out of an idea in someone’s mind, but without physical demonstration, the changes to infant mortality and new ways of feeding and caring for children wouldn’t have brought about the ability for women to be more independent of their offspring and men to become more involved.

Thinking about both our physical reality and our underlying consciousness makes me think about Ecclesiastes, one of my favorite Biblical books. In current translations, one reads, “Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.” Others replace vanity with meaningless or futile. But in studying for my recent Old Testament class, I discovered that the Hebrew word translated as vanity is “hebel.” According to Strong’s Concordance, the original meaning was breath or vapor, also translated breeze or mist.

Reading the book with the original meaning of “hebel” in mind gives it a whole new feel. The reminder is that our experience is but a breath or a vapor, fleeting but fundamental to sustaining life.

So how do these ideas tie together? For me, it’s the concept that everything matters, and nothing matters at the same time. Our pursuits here on earth are necessary for sustaining life, but they are fleeting and will dissipate and evaporate. Our physical lives are necessary and a part of the whole. But they are temporary. There is a time for everything. And God is mysterious, though present.

Ecclesiastes 3:9-15

“What gain have the workers from their toil? I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil. I know that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it; God has done this, so that all should stand in awe before him. That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already is; and God seeks out what has gone by.”

To everything (turn, turn, turn)

There is a season (turn, turn, turn)

And a time for every purpose under heaven

Everything matters, nothing matters