“I am not my hair
I am not this skin
I am the soul that lives within“
– India Arie
Am I my body? Is my body me?
It may sound like an odd question, but I think many of us would like to think that our bodies aren’t really us. Particularly for those who have been physically or sexually abused, our bodies can feel like a battle site, rather than a home. Or for those of us bullied or discriminated against for the way we look, it feels good to sing along with India Arie: ‘I am not this skin / I am the soul that lives within.’
I frequently look at my body like an unreliable ally in a battle to be loved and liked. The idea that the real me is somewhere other than my fading, achy and baggy body is very attractive. The real me is beautiful (if only my body would show it). The real me is self-controlled (if only my body would act it).
What has shaped this view of bodies?
The idea that our real selves lie beyond our bodies is actually really common – so much so that it has seeped into our songs (above), and stories, and in the way we think about the world. Take sex, for example. If my body isn’t intricately tied to my being, then having sex won’t affect my being that much. It’s ‘just sex’. Our culture has bought the idea that our true selves are distinct from our bodies, and it shows in the way we think of sex as a casual event.
This is an outworking of what Nancy Pearcey calls ‘two story thinking’ in her excellent book Love Thy Body. She provides several examples of thinkers that have shaped our world – from Thomas Hobbes (‘nasty, brutish and short’) to Renee Descartes (‘I think therefore I am’) to Judith Butler (I can choose my gender) – and how they rely on a divided way of viewing ourselves and the world:
Mind
_______
Body
Where it leads: re-thinking what it means to be human
We see this dualism perhaps most starkly today in the way transgenderism is presented. People undergo hormone therapy and surgeries to make their bodies fit ‘the real me’. I might be a girl in my body, but that’s not who I really am. And while lots of the examples of this might feel innocuous, it’s also changing the criteria on which we consider people to be…well…people.
If a human body isn’t necessarily the essence of personhood, and instead true being is found elsewhere, then having a body won’t necessarily qualify you for human rights. It’s this kind of two-story thinking that gives the foundation (under layers of other reasons) for considering abortion as a compassionate act. Abortion relies on the idea that a someone isn’t a human until they are a particular age/stage/gestation – even though they have a human body. Known as ‘personhood theory’, the idea that someone’s capabilities or capacities are what endow a being with human rights is pervasive.
And it’s dangerous. Because although this two-story way of viewing the world promises freedom and self-realisation, it doesn’t seem to be delivering it. One of the most notable social movements of the last decade has been #metoo. If ever we thought that sex was ‘just sex’, the countless stories of how people’s whole lives have been impacted by negative sexual experiences should give us pause for thought.
The fascinating and devastating book The Body Keeps the Score charts the manifold ways in which emotional abuse can have lasting physical impacts; and how physical abuse has emotional impacts. The author shows how biological effects of trauma on the physically strongest (soldiers) and weakest (young girls) chart the connectedness between body, mind and spirit.
Christianity gives us a better story about our bodies
This interconnectedness is how the Bible presents the whole person. Not just a body, not a spirit ‘just’ sitting in a body, but a body and spirit. Both made in God’s image; both broken by sin; both redeemed in Jesus Christ. Our bodies matter. Not just because of what’s inside them (which, for those who follow Jesus, is God’s spirit – 1 Cor 6:19) but because they are valuable in themselves. They were created by God, they bear God’s image, and they were redeemed by the blood of Jesus (1 Cor 6:20).
I think those of us who are Christians have often failed to grasp this. We excuse all sorts of laziness in our bodies, compensating by focussing on our learning or our Bible knowledge. Or we do what we want with our bodies – including obsessing over how we look – forgetting that our bodies are as much the Lord’s as our hearts; and that obedience to him is a physical, bodily affair (Rom 12:1) – not just a matter of our minds. Or we think that somehow that physical sin – for example sexual sin – isn’t as forgive-able by Jesus as sins of our hearts – covetousness, pride, envy.
And finally, I think this has contributed to our huge confusion over gender (by which I mean sex, but if I wrote ‘sex’, you would have thought I meant something else…). In the church, you will often find two distinct camps. On one side, there are those who want to squash any difference between men and women. ‘Why should I do xyz just because I have a uterus?’ On the other, there are those who act as if the differences between men and women mainly reside in some inner spirit realm – ‘Men are better at…’ – without ever referencing the chief difference between us: our bodies. Men are physically stronger, women’s bodies have in-built human-growers – and while our culture allows us to hide many of these differences, they shape us in all sorts of ways.
Some practical applications
But that’s a whole other blog. For now, let me leave you with three applications from this brief theology of bodies:
First, enjoy your body. It’s good. It’s not a mistake. It’s good. Particularly if you are a teenager, let me just say it louder: YOUR BODY IS GOOD. I know you don’t think so just now, in which case listen to what God says – he made it and he knows what he is doing: IT IS GOOD.
But second, our bodies are broken! The pain you feel over a sense of not belonging in this skin – that’s real. It’s a sign that we’re in an out-of-kilter world, waiting for the redemption of the new creation. And it means that Christians of all people will hold out compassion and kindness to those whose bodies carry the scars of living a world waiting to be put right.
And finally, obedience to Jesus is physical – it’s about what our mouths say, how our hands give, where our feet walk. So don’t settle for a salvation that ends with right-thinking. Worship God with your body – it’s what you were made for.
