Every Body Matters, Chapter 2: Heads without Bodies

This post is part of a series dis­cussing Every Body Mat­ters by Gary Thomas. Click here to see other posts in this series.  

Have you ever done what Chris­tian­ity Today colum­nist Car­olyn Arends wrote about: “spir­i­tu­al­iz­ing” a ten­dency toward avoid­ing phys­i­cal fit­ness by focus­ing on “soul things: instead of “body things?” How can Chris­tians keep these two are­nas of stew­ard­ship in appro­pri­ate balance?

Oh sure; I’ve some­times been guilty of think­ing that work­out fiends were sim­ply wor­ship­ing their own bod­ies, wast­ing time, or at the least, invest­ing in only tem­po­rary rewards. While I still think there’s a real dan­ger in plac­ing such enor­mous empha­sis on the phys­i­cal realm, there’s an equal and oppo­site dan­ger in neglect­ing the body entirely. It takes wis­dom, dis­cern­ment, and atten­tive­ness to the Holy Spirit for each believer to strike the right bal­ance in their own lives.

 Have you ever noticed, as Karen did, a con­nec­tion between your spir­i­tual dis­ci­pline and phys­i­cal dis­ci­pline? How so? Reflect on how this con­nec­tion might be expe­ri­enced in your life in every­day ways.

An improve­ment in my phys­i­cal con­di­tion has always resulted in bet­ter men­tal clar­ity and self-discipline over­all, but I’m not sure I’ve ever noticed a spir­i­tual con­nec­tion until now.

Can you pin­point other “soul” issues that could be helped by focus­ing on phys­i­cal fit­ness? How often do you hear of pas­tors and coun­selors sug­gest­ing that phys­i­cal fit­ness can help in the process of heal­ing and recovery?

I’ve bat­tled depres­sion at sev­eral points in my life and a few years ago, one of my coun­selors sug­gested mild phys­i­cal activ­ity as one strat­egy. She rec­om­mended tak­ing reg­u­lar walks along with med­i­ta­tion as a way to relieve stress and build some calm into my day. Though I never made either a long-term daily habit, I did find them help­ful at the time.

Reread 2 Corinthi­ans 7:1: “Dear friends, let us purify our­selves from every­thing that con­t­a­m­i­nates body and spirit, per­fect­ing holi­ness out of rev­er­ence for God.” Cor­rect doc­trine (what we believe) is an essen­tial com­po­nent of true faith, but what does this verse teach us about how our com­mit­ment to Christ calls us to some­thing beyond that?

Christ wants not just our hearts and minds, but our bod­ies as well. For some, this may mean a spe­cific call­ing as demand­ing as ded­i­cat­ing our phys­i­cal selves to work across the globe as mis­sion­ar­ies. For all of us, it means a gen­eral call­ing to ded­i­cate these ves­sels of the Holy Spirit to his ser­vice no mat­ter where we are placed. At the very least, we are charged with sup­port­ing our bod­ies with the best health and fit­ness of which we are capable.

The apos­tle Paul in 1 Corinthi­ans 6:20 tells us to “honor God with [our] bod­ies,” but in 1 Thes­sa­lo­ni­ans 4:4, he seems to sug­gest this isn’t some­thing we do nat­u­rally: “Each of you should learn to con­trol your own body in a way that is holy and hon­or­able.” How might this “learn­ing” be expe­ri­enced in your life?

I agree that phys­i­cal dis­ci­pline is not innate! For me, it involves a repeated choice to set aside com­fort and crav­ings and choose what is good for me. Some­times that involves exer­tion when I feel lazy, good nutri­tion when I’d rather eat some junk, or using my body and ener­gies for ser­vice or fel­low­ship when I’d pre­fer to stay on the couch. This learn­ing of phys­i­cal dis­ci­pline is such a slow process for me, and like most mean­ing­ful endeav­ors, it usu­ally involves plain old hard work along with some level of per­sonal discomfort.

Karen says, “Peo­ple want to hear about grace and about how much God loves then, about how they are good enough just as they are. There’s a lot of truth in that, but the mes­sage about weight in our churches is that it’s rude to say to some­one that they need to lose weight– so we just don’t address it.” Do you agree that this is the cur­rent trend? What do you think of it? What would an ideal approach or response toward these issues look like?

I’m still not sure that peo­ple should call oth­ers out on their weight in gen­eral, but I do think that there’s room for that kind of spe­cific con­ver­sa­tion in the con­text of a lov­ing friend­ship where peo­ple are open with each other. One response could be team­ing up with a friend to build exer­cise habits or edu­cat­ing oth­ers about nutri­tion and risky health choices. I think there’s a way to com­mu­ni­cate con­cern for another per­son, and prob­a­bly even rebuke and cor­rec­tion, if needed, with­out load­ing on addi­tional judg­ment or shame on a per­son who likely already feels the weight of embar­rass­ment too keenly.

 Favorite quotes from this chapter

The curse of today is that so many Chris­tians equate bod­ily sins with sex­ual sins. The only pos­si­ble bod­ily sin, in their minds, is related to lust. If they’re not sin­ning sex­u­ally, they believe these verses don’t apply to them. The con­tem­po­rary age of the church is the only gen­er­a­tion that has believed this.

… though exer­cise and stay­ing in shape require a lot of work and even reg­u­lar pain, not being in shape requires its own pains and labors. If I’m going to hurt in this fallen world– and every­one of us will– I’d rather hurt and be sore get­ting in shape than hurt and be sore because my body isn’t fit.

I can’t wait to hear your thoughts; join the dis­cus­sion in the com­ments or over in the Face­book group.