3 Ways Women’s Cycles Point to Human Dignity
It seems that everyone’s talking about periods these days. Whether it’s in relation to the tampon tax, menstrual health, global development, green issues, or gender identity, menstruation is the subject of a burgeoning range of podcasts, articles, and books (including one I’ve just published of my own).
The message—from secular quarters at least—is pretty consistent: we need to throw off our embarrassment, end the stigma, remove barriers, reduce inequality, and set people free from period shame.
In other words: periods matter.
While Christians won’t affirm everything that our culture says about periods, we can affirm this basic instinct: periods matter, because people matter; and menstrual cycles point us to human dignity. We see that in Scripture in at least three ways.
1. The Createdness of Our Bodies
At least part of the narrative around periods is focused on education: too many women don’t really know how their bodies work. While menstruation typically lasts just a few days each month, it’s just one element of a cycle that is running every day of the month. The menstrual cycle involves four different hormones that work together to build the womb lining, select and mature one of the ovary’s 300,000 available eggs, and release it into the fallopian tube. It is, if we pause to think about it, incredible. And that’s just one set of organs and glands: our bodies contain a whole number of systems—from our circulatory system to our immune system—that keep us alive and healthy. The more we learn about them, the more we discover to marvel at.
As Christians, we’re told where we should point our wonder: at our Creator God who made us. When the psalmist considers that God “formed [his] inward parts”, he responds in worship (Psalm 139:13–14). The complexity of our bodies tells us something about the one who designed them. But they also tell us something about ourselves: we are created, formed, designed; indeed, we are made “in the image of God” (Genesis 1:27). And with that comes great dignity.
2. The Creative Power of Our Bodies
Women’s cycles also remind us of something else: not only do we have the dignity of being created, but we also have the privilege of creating. The whole menstrual cycle is geared towards the goal of conceiving and bearing new life. Yes, human procreation is of a different order to God’s; but to hold a newborn baby is to get the sense that the arrival of new life into the world, though entirely natural, is nevertheless nothing short of miraculous. Again, we find that Scripture affirms the goodness of this design. When God first made man and woman in his image, his first words to them were: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28).
God could have chosen to go on making human beings himself, without our involvement; he could have designed a big cabbage patch where he formed new batches of babies out of the dust of the ground. But he didn’t. He chose to involve us in the process.
And people not only fulfill God’s mandate as biological mothers and fathers, but every Christian—regardless of whether or not you are a parent—has an equally vital role to play as a spiritual mother or father in their church family. It takes a village to raise a child, and it takes a church to raise a disciple. We can marvel at God’s grace to humanity in this.
3. The Sanctity of Life
Another key theme in our culture’s conversation around periods is the call to throw off social and religious taboos around periods. And when we look at the Old Testament, it’s fair to say that it’s not entirely positive about menstruation. Indeed, the regulations of Leviticus 15 meant that women were unclean for the duration of their period, and anything they sat or lay down on became unclean too. As such, women were barred from taking part in the religious and community life of Israel for a significant proportion of every month. We may think this sounds more than a little unfair.
Interpreting the reason behind these Levitical laws is not entirely straightforward (and is something I give much more space to in my book, A Brief Theology of Periods (Yes, Really).) But what if these regulations point not just to shame, but also to dignity? One of the reasons menstruation appears to have been associated with uncleanness is because of its association with blood (see Leviticus 20:18)—and “a life of a creature is in the blood” (Leviticus 17:11). So it may be that blood outside of the body, by implication, speaks of death. As such, it speaks of the intrusion of sin into God’s good world, of the frustration of God’s creation mandate, of the need for atonement, and of the horrifying and terrifying reality of death.
But there’s a flip side to this too. Death is only an aberration if life is sacred. Life is not cheap; it is not meaningless. It is, in the words of Genesis 1, inherently good. And it is what Jesus came to restore to us. When an unclean woman suffering from prolonged menstrual bleeding reached out to Jesus, he didn’t recoil in disgust. Nor did he diminish her problem. Instead, he lovingly restored her health, her life, and her dignity. And he graciously offers to do the same for us, too.
Our culture is eager to throw off the cloak of shame around periods—and with good reason. But without the foundation of a biblical worldview, we’re left exposed. This means that Christians have something uniquely valuable to bring to the conversation around periods, as we point to the true and meaningful dignity that is found in being created by God, in his image, and redeemed by his Son.