What Is Your Body Saying About You?
I have a friend who would often make fun of herself for her weight and her size, and then would get hurt by anybody who laughed at her jokes. Her humor was mostly self-deprecation. She would complain to me about how she hated the way she looked but then couldn’t keep her commitments of eating healthier or working out, no matter what she tried. She would then laugh that off in some joke about how small her self control was. She was a contradiction in the things that she said, did and really wanted for herself.
A few years ago, my mentor called me out for being more willing and able to keep commitments to the people around me than I ever was to myself. “How will you know how to honor others when you refuse to honor yourself?” Ouch. Since that moment, I have actively tried to grow in honoring myself. If I look in the mirror and I hate what I see, then how is it honoring to myself to continue to eat unhealthily? And, on the other side of the same coin, how is it honoring to myself to push myself in a workout until I throw up so that I can have the body I want?
As humans, we have lost our respect and honor for the human body. We have become a society that celebrates “looking fit” over “being healthy.” We celebrate doing more, rather than being real. It seems to me as though the foundation of what God designed humanity to be like has been distorted and flipped on its head.
If we go back to Genesis 1-3, when God created everything — humanity included — it says, “God saw everything that He had made and indeed, it was very good.”
God made the world good, and it is good that the world is good.
Sure, two chapters later we see that sin entered the world through Adam and Eve’s choices, but just because it entered the world doesn’t make that creation itself now evil. We can’t let the brokenness and distortion of sin make cease the goodness that still exists. We have to keep looking for the good. If what he created is good, then it is worth saving, redeeming, recreating, etc. God looked at humanity and said it was very good. Sin doesn’t make that untrue anymore.
But, when sin entered the scene for Adam and Eve, what were some of the very first effects? They hid from God and created coverings for themselves with fig leaves. Removing ourselves from connection with other people and God… and hiding our bodies. Isolation and shame.
The deepest irony to me is that we are a generation today that is more willing and unafraid to show as much skin as we can and are constantly connected to people through our phones and social media… yet when I look at people, I see the same thing as in Genesis 3. Isolation. Shame. Some people hide their bodies by showing off their bodies. Some people isolate by surrounding themselves with other people. Either way, it’s become a part of how we are in the world. Just because it is the way it is doesn’t mean it is the way it should be.
All throughout the books of Deuteronomy, 1 Kings and Nehemiah, the author repeats the phrase “at the place the LORD will cause (or choose) His name to dwell.” This is indicating the location of the Temple that Solomon built during his reign. For hundreds of years there had been no physical location for the Spirit of the Lord to dwell among his people. In Exodus, God would temporarily descend and meet with Moses on Mount Sinai and in the Tent of Meeting. It wasn’t until the Temple was built that God’s presence remained in a certain location. While it wasn’t contained or restricted to that one location, because God is omnipresent, it was the location God chose to dwell among his people.
Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 3 and 6 that our bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit. For every person in Corinth listening to this letter being read, they would have immediately thought of the history they’d grown up hearing and the Temple they’d heard about and some had even seen. But, Paul flips it on them. He says, “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?”
That temple you know about? The one with the pages on pages of rules and guidelines about how to treat it and take care of it? The one where people died from disrespect and lack of honor to it? That temple is now you. You are the temple that God has caused his name to dwell in. That carries a weight and a responsibility that you need to acknowledge.
Jesus says in John 15 that we are called to abide in him and he will abide in us. Another way to interpret that word abide is to make your home, your dwelling.
God has made his home in you, and you have made your home in him.
When I think of my body in that light, honor comes easy. My body is the home of the God of the universe, the King of Kings, the Everlasting One, the Prince of Peace, the Redeemer, the Creator, and the list goes on. My body is the place that HE has chosen to dwell within.
Bob Goff says this: “We're not what we say we believe; we're the sum of everything we do about it.”
How you treat your body matters because your body matters. What God has created is a good gift that should be honored and cherished. How you treat your body matters because it’s not only about you! How you treat your body is indicative of how you feel about God’s creation.
The way that we treat our bodies is indicative of what we believe about God. If I believe that God makes good things and then mistreat my body by forcing it past the limits that are healthy or eating the things that I know will hurt me, then I am saying that God’s good creations are not good enough.
But also friend, how you speak to and about your body matters. In Matthew 12:33-37 it says, “Either make the tree good and its fruit good or make the tree bad and its fruit bad, for the tree is known by its fruit… Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks! The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. I tell you, on the day of judgment, people will give an account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”
There’s a phrase in the psychology world called disassociation that I have personally struggled with in much of my life. I had a few near-death experiences that came with lots of trauma and baggage that I only started to work through years later. One of them was getting sick with Typhoid fever and being left with lots of health issues afterward. During my first session in counseling with a therapist, the Lord spoke to me through my counselor and told me, “There’s a difference between coping and healing.” Over the three years since my illness, I had learned to cope with the way my body reacted, but I had never healed the relationship between me and my body. My counselor pointed out to me that even the words I used when telling the story of my sickness were dissociative.
“Disassociation is defined (in the simplest way) as the process whereby an individual feels disconnected or begins to disconnect from their memories, emotions, thoughts, feelings and even their identity. It is a coping mechanism and technique often used when someone is experiencing trauma of some sort and the only way they can escape or face the pain and horror and live through their ordeal is by separating their mental self from their physical self” (from www.betterhelp.com).
In other words, I would say things like “my body had a reaction,” not “I reacted to these foods.” Or “My body has issues,” not “I have issues.” While these words may seem really simple, they can have a profound impact on our connection with ourselves, the Lord and even other people. When we disassociate, we are not integrated. When we are not integrated, we are not being the holistic being that God designed. Therefore we are unable to interact, love, listen, lead, etc. in the way we were created to.
Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks… If my words are disconnected, hurtful and dishonoring, then what is that saying about my heart? What kind of home is my body?
This past year was insane and highly traumatic — mentally, emotionally, spiritually, relationally. It is far easier to remove ourselves in order to cope than to choose to lean in and truly heal. But the thing is… you can only cope with something for so long before it will demand to be dealt with. But healing? Healing is all about the process, and healing is good.
God’s response to Adam and Eve’s shame and isolation was to speak to them and find them. He drew near to where they were, he spoke to what they needed, and an animal was the first death so that he could provide them with covering.
Friend, your body is good, your body matters, and your body is a home. Let’s be more whole, healed and holistic people together.
