Before one even begins.

John Paul II starts TOB (theology of the body) with the argument where the Pharisees ask Jesus of Nazareth why Moses allowed divorce and when he apparently does not. Christ responds: because of the HARDNESS of your HEARTS Moses allowed this, but, in the BEGINNING, it was not so. Now John Paul II wants to underscore two things here: 1^st: The hardness of heart. TOB is an invitation to think about very deep things that affect each one of us emotionally and in many other ways. Hence, basics for starting is to ask oneself: am I willing to think about this in a non-biased way? Or do I have all the answers ready before I even start? Am I willing to overcome my own hardness of heart? And in this sense, TOB is a call to trust the deepest yearnings of the heart. If the heart is sometimes hardened, then there is also a natural way for the heart to be. In other words, John Paul II says: dig out your heart from underneath all the dirt that is perhaps thrown on top of it, look at its deepest longings, because they are exactly right. 2^nd: The “beginning”: This refers to the first book of the Jewish and Christian Bible, Genesis. Christ invites us to go back to the “Beginning” but not simply chronologically speaking, but beginning in the sense of “original” – that, which is in the depths of each and every one of us. Genesis is your story, and it´s mine. John Paul II speaks of Genesis being written in a “mythical language” – not in the sense that everything there is just a myth, but in the sense that sometimes a thousand words will not say as much as a picture, an image: fruit, garden, tree, nakedness, shame etc. etc. will start speaking vo