PMS is not a sin of the flesh
(RNS) — The ancient Greeks believed the female body was particularly tainted and inferior. Women were seen as less rational than men and driven by instincts, and as such, they were closer to animals than to men. A woman’s uterus (Gk.: Hysterika) was a troublesome creature that roamed throughout her body, driving her mad with urges to have sex. Quipped Hippocrates, “What is woman? Disease.” We can thank him for the term “hysteria,” which later became a catchall phrase for “women’s disease.”
The ancient church father Tertullian, in his treatise “On the Apparel of Women,” broke into a tirade against women: “And do you not know that you are (each) an Eve? You are the devil’s gateway. … You destroyed so easily God’s image: Man.”
It was Tertullian I was thinking of as I read Rachel Jones’ recent article, “PMS: The Monthly Fight with the Flesh,” on The Gospel Coalition website. Jones, who suffers with premenstrual syndrome, commonly referred to as PMS, believes her struggle offers a window into the spiritual reality of the war of the flesh against the Spirit. Jones invokes the Apostle Paul’s words from his letter to the Galatians, “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.”
Online reaction to Jones’ argument was swift. Many women expressed feeling shamed by the post, which seemed to equate PMS symptoms, which she called “a fight with the flesh,” with sin.
Many of the theologians in the ancient church, including Paul, were influenced by Hellenistic (Greek) philosophy, which promoted the idea that spirit was superior to the body. In the course of time, Paul’s usage of the flesh became synonymous with the body. In order to fight the flesh, Christians have denigrated the body and waged all war against it.
Jones is not ignorant of how Paul uses the phrase “the flesh.” His purpose, she wrote, is to refer to “the whole person as under the impulses of sin.” But in advising Christian women about how to deal with PMS, Jones jumps to the role of the body as the battleground on which the war against sin is fought and stays there.
A better reading of Paul’s use of the word “flesh” would be to include the dimensions of the mind, the affections and the will. To fight this fight is to have the mind of Christ, to love as God loves, and to live in obedience to God’s will.
But even if Jones were to restrict herself to emotions, she too readily identifies negative emotions as sinful. They are not. This is the real danger of Jones’ argument. In a conservative Christian world where pleasantness and niceness define a Christian woman, negative emotions are already too often considered shameful. Jones not only supports this view, she perpetuates images of women as ruled by their hormones, which in turn serves the ideology that women are designed by God to submit to the leadership of men.
Photo by Hung Vu/Pixabay/Creative Commons
As a Wesleyan, I am of the persuasion that salvation means the healing of creation. The gospel witness is a package deal offering the possibility of the transformation of the whole human existence: mind, body and spirit. This healing is in process, but it is very real and deep. The Holy Spirit is always at work transforming our nature — our mind, our affections and our will into that of Christ’s. Sanctification is possible to the degree that the frailty of human flesh can radiate with the divine life. We can love as God loves.
The Christian life, in other words, is not a continual struggle with the body. Of course our bodies are affected by sin. We get sick. We die. Our bodies suffer the consequences of our addictions. Jones notes, rightly, that at the dawn of creation God declared humans as “good,” but her article nonetheless makes our embodied state the problem. They are not. In particular, women’s bodies are not the problem. Our hormones are not problematic.
In fact, hormones are women’s friends. They work to transform our bodies from childhood to adulthood. They give us the ability to bear children and to enjoy a fulfilling sexual life. At midlife, the shifts in our hormones during perimenopause create space for the most liberating stage of life.
In and of themselves, hormones don’t cause PMS. Research has failed to show any appreciable difference between hormone levels of women who suffer from PMS and those who don’t. In her book “The Wisdom of Menopause,” Christiane Northrup, a noted researcher on women’s health, notes that what causes PMS is a “particular combination of a woman’s hormone levels and her preexisting brain chemistry along with her life situation.”
During the mid- to latter part of the 20th century PMS became a popular catchall for a long list of symptoms, and for a time it seemed every woman experienced some form of it. The fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV), published in 1994, changed the name of PMS to premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), and narrowed the criteria for the diagnosis to five out of the 11 existing symptoms. As a result of more stringent criteria, PMDD or PMS is not nearly as common as we once thought it was.
This real physical/mental disorder calls for treatment involving a combination of drugs and mental health therapy. There seems to be genetic susceptibility with PMDD, with a heritability range between 30% and 80%. A history of trauma has also been linked to PMDD. (For a good review of recent studies on PMDD click here.) Like any disease, it is properly understood not so much a gateway for sin as part of creation’s groaning for its final healing.
It’s not, as Jones advises, something women facing days of PMS can triumph over by resolving to walk in the Spirit’s power and choosing not to be a slave to sin. Exhorting women to remain vigilant, Jones urges us to try harder to overcome the temptations of the flesh that present themselves each month.
Instead of trying harder, could it be that women with PMDD need to try softer? In her significant and timely book, “Try Softer,” therapist Aundi Kolber advises that “ … there are truly times when the best, healthiest, most productive thing we can do is not to try harder, but rather to try softer, to compassionately listen to our needs so we can move through pain — and ultimately life — with more gentleness and resilience.” Trying softer means accepting the message that we are beloved. Reader, let’s try that.
(Cheryl Bridges Johns holds the Robert E. Fisher Chair of Spiritual Renewal at Pentecostal Theological Seminary. Her book, “Seven Transforming Gifts of Menopause: An Unexpected Spiritual Journey” (Brazos Press), will be released on March 17. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)