FALSE NARRATIVE: MY BODY HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH MY SPIRITUAL LIFE

A dominant narrative—even if only implicit—is that our bodies have nothing to do with our spiritual lives. Except, perhaps, to get in the way. Whether we are aware of it or not, we live with a dualistic view of the human person: we are spirits who have bodies. Our spirits are good and our bodies are bad, so the narrative goes. This narrative, that the body is an impediment, goes all the way back to the Greek philosophers, in particular to Plato. Plato believed the body was a kind of “prison for the soul” and gladly longed for the soul’s release from the body. The false narrative is that our souls are pure and good and holy, but our bodies are sullied and sinful.

Most of the people I know, including myself, see the body as a commodity. We see it as a physical entity, and we evaluate it on the basis of its appearance, size, strength, or ability. The gorgeous, the overweight, the muscular, or the skilled are what we focus on instead of the person behind those physical traits, because we are trained to see the physical first. Many of us spend our lives feeling bad about our bodies. They are too tall, too short, too fat, or too thin; they are misshapen or wrinkled or blemished. And many of us spend a great deal of time and money and energy trying to get our bodies to look better or perform better.

In short, the dominant narrative about our bodies is that they have nothing to do with our spiritual lives except hinder us in our spiritual formation. In truth, our bodies are an essential and indispensable aspect of our spiritual formation. Everything we do in the spiritual life (pray, love, serve, study, worship) involves our bodies. Yet there is very little teaching in our churches about the role and significance and sacredness of our bodies in spiritual formation. The body is seen as a source of sin, or shame, or an obstacle to growth. Seeing our bodies—our good and beautiful bodies—as sacred instruments is essential if we are to live a vibrant life and have wellness in our embodied soul.

TRUE NARRATIVE: I HAVE A SACRED BODY

It is surprising that Christians have had trouble viewing the body as sacred. When God created Adam and Eve in physical bodies, he declared these embodied people as “very good” (Genesis 1:31). Even more than this, our entire faith is built on the incarnation—the belief that God became human and took on a body in the form of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus had a body, corpus Christi, and we know instinctively that his body was and is sacred. But we must remember that Jesus came as an infant. He had a body exactly like ours, though he never sinned. Perhaps that is why theologian Ray Anderson believes our anthropology, how we understand the human person, should begin with Jesus and not Adam. If we start with Adam, we are likely to start with the fall, which may explain why we have such low views of the body.

Your body is sacred. It is the location of your person. If I want to interact with you, I must do it via your body—even if it is over a Zoom call. In fact, the challenge many of us had during the coronavirus pandemic was the loss of connection to real bodies; pixels and speakers are no replacement for actual bodies and live voices. The miracle that is you is and will always be embodied. God’s design for the human person is to be embodied. God loves matter—God made a lot of it. And God loves human bodies—God made a lot of them. There are over seven billion of them living on this planet right now. They come in all shapes and sizes and skin colors.

Your body is not a commodity. It is not something to be used or abused. And it is certainly not irrelevant in your spiritual life. It is a sacred, intricately designed organism that is an inextricable part of you. I will never be able to find you anywhere other than in your body.

To be sure, our bodies are sacred in the eyes of God. Our bodies are deeply connected to our souls, making us one. In order to see this, we need to start by looking at the relationship between the body and the soul.

BODY AND SOUL

It was Saint Thomas Aquinas who coined the Latin phrase anima forma corporis, which means “the soul is the form of the body.” The soul, as I said previously, is defined as the first principle of life for all humankind. Anima (the Latin word for “soul”) animates that which is alive. We are a soul and at the same time a body. We must avoid dualism; human beings are a unity. The soul is in the body, and the body is in the soul. Put simply, we do not have souls—we are souls; we do not have bodies—we are bodies. And they are united. Our body needs our soul in order to live and move—to animate it. And our soul needs our body in order to reveal itself, to be made known, and to act. In this sense, the body is the instrument of the soul. They need each other. Together, they make us who we are. As Jennifer M. Rosner points out, “The body is not an accidental feature of our humanity; rather, our bodies fundamentally constitute what it means to be human.”

You—body and soul—are one of the most amazing beings on this planet. As Annie Grace states, “Your mind can do more than any computer. In fact, it creates computers. Your body is self-regulating, self-healing, and self-aware. It alerts you to the tiniest problems and is programmed to protect you, ensuring your survival. It is infinitely more complex than the most intelligent technology. It is priceless.” There is so much information contained in a single cell of your body that it would take volumes of books to write out all of that information.

Your body came into being “factory loaded” with an amazing set of capacities. Your body knows how to distinguish colors and tastes even before you encounter the color green or the taste of honey. Your body already knows how to breathe, to eat, to see, and to drive a car long before you know what a car is. It is within you. God designed your body this way. When the doctor taps your knee and you kick out your leg? Your body already knows this. When the love of your life kisses you and your whole body trembles—your body already knows this, long before it happens.

Our bodies are also capable of learning so much more knowledge, knowledge that will need to be acquired. Your body has the ability to drive a car when you are a child, but it is not able to do so yet; it is not capable of mastering a two-thousand-pound vehicle at high speeds. So you start with a tricycle, then a bicycle with training wheels, then a bike without training wheels; your body is learning. And one day it will be ready to drive a car. And one day down the road (pun intended), you will find yourself driving on a long stretch of road without even thinking. Your body will be driving the car practically without your mind or will.

SIN AND GRACE IN OUR BODIES

Your body is also equipped with many urges. When it needs food, you feel hungry; when it needs water, you feel thirsty. Once when hiking I realized that I had forgotten to bring a canteen. I realized this a few miles up the mountain on a hot day. Soon I was focused on only one thing: water. Thankfully a passerby offered me a precious drink; I would have paid him a hundred dollars for that drink. The water was delicious and sent a cascade of pleasure through my body. The vital urges of the body are in place to keep us alive and well. But those urges can become obsessive—this happens when the body’s urge overrides the will.

In our bodies we sometimes feel a compulsion to act in ways that are contrary to what our souls and minds and will want. This is how the apostle Paul explains it:

Sin comes to dwell in our bodies. Our bodies are not to blame; the sin is. The person addicted to food or sex may try to blame their bodies, but their bodies are not to blame.

The word for this is compulsion. That is what Paul is describing in Romans 7. This is how desires can come to rule us. In short, sin becomes embedded in us, and we try in vain to shake it. But it can be broken, and Paul says so in the last verse: “Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Grace, the power of God in our lives, can break the power of sin in our bodies.

This why Paul encouraged the Christians at Rome to

By grace, the power of God in our lives, we can begin to present our bodies to God as instruments of righteousness. Jesus has not only taken away the guilt of our sin, he has broken the power of sin. The cross is ground zero for the war against sin, not destroying all sin but defeating it, so we can walk in freedom. It is now our job, as those who have been made alive in Christ, to retrain our bodies to become instruments of goodness.

The body can become an enemy or an ally in our spiritual formation in Christlikeness. When properly cared for, rested, nurtured, and connected to the deepest longings of the soul—the transcendent—our bodies can become our allies. In order for that to happen, we must learn how to have dominion over our bodies. Paul used the metaphor of an athlete to illustrate how to treat our bodies:

Self-control is required of an athlete. Olympic athletes rise early and train hard, and are careful about what they eat and how much they sleep. They pay attention to stretching and weight training, because they know that optimum performance demands it.

The same applies to our spiritual lives. We have bodies—that is God’s arrangement for our lives—and they are wonderful and beautiful in their own ways. They are our bodies given to us so that we can offer them to God. Again, Paul states it beautifully: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1).

Of course, living bodies do not want to be sacrificed. They tend to crawl off the altar! What Paul means is that we are to present our bodies to God, to say, in effect, “God, this body is yours. You have given it to me as a gift. And I want to offer it to you as a gift in return. I am wholly yours—not only in my mind and will and spirit, but also in my body.” It is a form of spiritual worship, because our bodies are sacred. The Christian story illustrates this best out of all the world’s religions.

FIVE SIGNS THAT OUR BODIES ARE SACRED

The Christian story, the story centered around the biblical witness and person of Jesus, is a strong affirmation of the value of the human body. There are five parts to the story that are clear signs that point to the sacred nature of the body. They are:

1. 1. Creation

2. 2. Incarnation

3. 3. Church

4. 4. Eucharist

5. 5. Glorification

1. God created bodies—and it was good. The creation story in Genesis tells that when God created the physical universe, God deemed it as good, in fact, very good: “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). The Hebrew word tov, which we translate as “good,” means more than simply good. Tov, according to Bible scholar Scot McKnight, means magnificent, perfect, wonderful. Tov is a perfect sunset, a glorious work of art, a magnificent athletic feat, and an act of sacrificial love. It is everything good and right and true and beautiful.

At the center of the creation story is the creation of humankind. Genesis says:

This verse occurs right before the “very good” of Genesis 1:31. Many Christians begin their theological anthropology at Genesis 3—the story of the fall. But this is a mistake. We must begin our understanding of the human person—including the human body—with Genesis 1. While the fall is an important part of the story, it is not where we begin. If we start with Genesis 3, we easily slip into the mistaken view that the body is evil. But before the fall, the body is, in fact, good. Very good. It is the very artwork of God. The fall does not eradicate it. The body is forever tov.

2. The incarnation: God took on a body. As a response to the fall, God became human. We refer to this as the doctrine of the incarnation. The Latin word, carne, means “flesh” or “meat.” When we have chili con carne, we are having “chili with meat.” The incarnation means “God with meat.” God took on flesh; Jesus took on not only a soul and a spirit, but also a body. This must not be passed over too quickly: God took on a body. This was unheard of in the religions and philosophies of antiquity. The strongest affirmation of the importance of the body, of its sacred nature, is that God himself took one on. And Jesus was not a mere ghost; he did not “seem” to be human—he was fully human.

As such, Jesus experienced every bodily sensation we feel, except he did not sin. He hungered, thirsted, suffered, felt fear and sorrow, and he even aged. If scholars are correct in thinking he died around the age of thirty, he must have experienced bodily decline. I like to think that Jesus noticed a wrinkle or a gray hair. Jesus suffered physically, and he also died physically. We are told that he had a body when he was resurrected—again, he was not a ghost. And that same body ascended. And that same body exists today. Jesus became a human in a body and remains so even today. This is an incredible affirmation of the body.

3. The church: the body of Christ. After Jesus rose from the dead and before he ascended into heaven, he told his followers to wait in Jerusalem for the Holy Spirit to empower them. They would form not just a community, not just a group; they would become members of his “body.” The church is the body of Christ. When we join the church we become members of Jesus’ body. And not merely members of Jesus’ body, but members of one another: “So we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another” (Romans 12:5). This is not just a pretty sentiment; it is an actual reality.

The early church understood this. Being the body of Christ was ground for their unity despite their outer diversity. In Christ there is no longer Jew or Greek, male or female, slave or free; there is no caste system or financial stratum—we are all one in Christ. In Christ, people are no longer a source of opposition, or superiority, or inferiority, or exclusion. When I enter the church sanctuary each Sunday, I pause to remind myself that I am experiencing and participating in the body of Jesus of which I am a member, as are all the people I see.

4. Eucharist: this is my body. And when the church gathered, Jesus instructed them, they were to have a meal in remembrance of him. On the night in which he was betrayed, Jesus took bread, broke it, gave it to his disciples, and said, “‘This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ And he did the same with the cup after supper, saying, ‘This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood’” (Luke 22:19-20). Paul tells the Corinthian Christ-followers, “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Corinthians 11:26).

Every time a Christian takes Communion, also known as the Lord’s Supper or the Eucharist (three names for the same sacrament), they are taking in the body and blood of Jesus. This is based on Jesus’ words: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them” (John 6:56). It is in Communion that the body of Christ becomes a part of us. And not only that, Communion transforms us into the body of Jesus. Saint Nicholas Cabasilas writes, “While natural food is changed into him who feeds on it . . . here it is entirely opposite. The Bread of Life himself changes those who feed on him and transforms and assimilates them into himself.”

John Calvin famously noted that he believed this, but the change Communion works within us is a miracle too lofty to understand: “Now if anyone should ask me how this takes place, I shall not be ashamed to confess that it is a secret too lofty for either my mind to comprehend or my words to declare. And, to speak more plainly, I rather experience than understand it.”

I like to think of it this way: when I eat a peanut butter sandwich, it loses its original state and is absorbed into me. The sandwich becomes a part of Jim. But when I take Communion, it is reversed: I become a part of Jesus. As Calvin said, it is too lofty for me to comprehend. But this I know and feel: when I partake of the Lord’s Supper, I have a more tangible sense that “I am one in whom Christ dwells and delights.”

5. Glorification: the resurrection of the body. Finally, one of the greatest affirmations of the sacredness of the body is the Christian teaching that we will be resurrected with bodies. One of the affirmations we say in the Apostles’ Creed is “We believe in the resurrection of the body.” This does not only mean Jesus’ body, but our own as well. What do we mean by this? In short, it means that our actual bodies will somehow be reassembled and resurrected into all-new bodies. I find that many Christians assume our current bodies will be discarded and we will be given entirely new bodies of a completely different nature. In fact, I find many Christians whose beliefs about heaven are more Greek than Hebrew, more informed by cartoons and movies than by the Bible.

The New Testament is unequivocal in its teaching that we are and will always be embodied beings. We will never be ghost-like souls. The Christian teaching is that when we die, our souls become detached from our current bodies. Our current bodies will begin the natural process of decay and disintegration. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” as they say. However, although the body is detached from the soul, it is not separated from it. The body along with the soul awaits the final resurrection.

Christianity teaches us that our life after death will also be embodied. Our current bodies are perishable—we are all going to die—but we will be resurrected and will be given new bodies just as Jesus’ resurrection was, and is and will forever be, in a body.

This is what is known as glorification, which is the subject of chapter eleven. Our current bodies will be delivered from all past sicknesses and will recover complete wholeness.

This does not mean we shall put on a different body. We shall each put on again our own body. But this new body will be reconstructed, reconstituted, and will have attained another mode of existence—one that will be free from the imperfections, weaknesses, corruptibility, and mortality that characterizes its present nature.

The new body we will receive, our resurrection body, will not live under the limitations and constraints of our present bodies. Our bodies and our souls will be perfectly united and will work in unison. They will not work against us, but will be our allies in godliness. These bodies will not be subject to illness or suffering or death. Our bodies will achieve their ultimate destiny: to be transformed and transfigured.

But one thing we must be sure of: we will have bodies. As Christians, we must purge our minds of the dualistic notion of a ghost-like existence. Jesus had a real body that was touched (as Thomas requested), that was hungry (he ate with his disciples on the beach), and that physically ascended into the heavens, defying gravity.

THE BODY AS THE BRIDGE TO TRANSCENDENCE

The original design and plan for the human body is to interact with the transcendent dimension and, more specifically, to connect us to God. We cannot engage in a relationship with God apart from our bodies. Writing in the fourth century, Macarius of Egypt wrote,

Notice that Macarius does not say God longs to dwell in our souls only. God “created man’s body and soul” as a fitting place for God to dwell. And what’s more, he says God “takes pleasure” in our bodies, bodies that are made according to God’s own image.

All Christian spiritual formation practices—from prayer to worship to solitude—involve the body. Some are directed at the body more than others, such as fasting and vigils, where the appetites of the body for food and sleep are forgone for a time as a means of training the body, and thus, the soul. But even in prayer we see how the body is involved. Making the sign of the cross, kneeling, closing one’s eyes, bowing one’s head, raising one’s arms, and even laying prostrate on the ground, are all postures of prayer in which the body’s position reflects the inner condition of the soul. In traditions where incense is used, the smell alerts the mind, through the body, that our prayers are rising to God. You are indirectly aware of the spiritual dimension through the sensory realm. Through the senses you discover the sacredness of every person, every flower, every stone. Through your eyes and feet you discover that you stand on holy ground.

When our soul participates in divine peace, brought about by grace, it communicates this to our body. God’s divine beauty, reflected in the soul, is transmitted to the body, which in turn becomes radiant. During a particularly moving Maundy Thursday service, I remember serving Communion and seeing a countenance I had never before seen on the faces of the people. Their bodies—particularly their faces—were glowing with the light of Christ. For many years the people who attended this service would speak of this night, this service, as a sacred space, a thin place where heaven seemed to touch the earth in a palpable way.

Joel Clarkson, author of Sensing God, tells the story about feeling spiritually dry when he was in seminary and how he went home to Colorado to ask his mother for advice. While they were sitting outside among the pine trees, sipping coffee, his mother’s advice came in this form. She pointed to the beautiful elements of creation and said, “Don’t worry about feeling close to God. He’s reaching out to you at this very moment in these elements. It’s his gift to you. To the whole world.” Clarkson concludes, “Before anything else is true, existence comes to us as a gift of God’s grace.”

Not only is our existence a gift of grace, so is the existence of pine trees and so is the existence of our bodily ability to apprehend them. Our bodies are bridges to transcendence. Those glorious moments when God through beauty reaches out to us and touches our souls, he does so through our bodies. If we did not have bodies, God could not reach us. God sings his love to you in birdsong. God smiles at you in maple trees. God charms you with the color green. He gave you eyes to see sunsets, ears to hear rainfall, a nose to smell a rose. God’s massive love appears in the small fragments. God is loving you in these moments, even if you do not know it. And if you did not have a body, you never could.

RESPECT YOURSELF

I have noticed that, as Christians, we are not very good at loving and respecting and caring for our bodies. And we are seldom happy with our bodies. We want them to look more attractive, or be stronger or leaner. We also often see them as obstacles to our holiness. For many of us, women and men, our bodies are sources of shame and temptation. Many women, for example, feel guilt and shame when their bodies do not “bounce back” after pregnancy. And of course, aging is a cause of shame for both men and women, as we look in the mirror and see sagging and drooping, wrinkles and aging spots that remind us we are no longer young.

But an essential part of what makes you good and beautiful is your amazing body. It is constantly working to serve you; it is, in fact, you. Your body is the only one you will ever have. A way we glorify God is to treat our body as a sacred vessel of honor, to love and care for it as we would a great treasure. Not because we should, but because it is.