If the words of Paul sound harsh, it is because they are–and I am glad that they are. To those who treat other people as bottomless vessels for pain, Paul delivers these rebukes: “This is not lawful. This does not please God. Christ is not in this.”

There is no single, correct mode of embodiment. For those who regard themselves as part of the body of Jesus, part of the family that grows from Jesus’s body, that one body is really many bodies, complicated bodies, with hands, blood, some foreskins, and a whole lot of multi-colored flesh.