Introduction

When I read the Bible, I see bodies everywhere. The creation of our bodies took time and contemplation, mud, and breath. God knit us together in our mother’s wombs, one cell at a time. I see bodies in Genesis 1, when God created humans in God’s image, looked at them and called them very good. I see bodies in Genesis 2, where it takes God time and care to create a suitable partner who makes Adam’s heart sing. I see bodies celebrated in the love poetry of Song of Songs, and I marvel at how God took on a body in Jesus and became fully human. The Word became flesh. Jesus built a body-centered ministry, healing and restoring bodies with compassion and mercy. He understood how the Empire valued some bodies and crushed others. He wept and bled. Fasted and prayed. Power seeped from his spit and his cloak. He understood the importance of bread, wine, and oil in the body. On the cross, Jesus felt abandonment by God in his body as he died. Then that body resurrected, found his friends, and allowed Thomas to explore his body’s wounds so that he could believe.

So why is the church so afraid of bodies? And how can inhabiting our bodies more deeply be a courageous act of faith?

Greek culture used to think of the human body as a source of admiration and pleasure. That shifted with Plato and the Stoics, who deeply influenced Western thought, including the formation of the early Christian Church. Plato and the Stoics were skeptical of the body. Stoics valued lack of passion as the highest virtue. The mind’s job was to control the body and suppress emotion. Plato said sacred love was that of the immortal soul, and profane love was that of the body. He did not believe the senses inform the soul.

Mind–body dualism considers the body dirty and mortal, something to be transcended. Self-control, lack of emotion, living in the mind, and denying the body became the goal of spiritual enlightenment and divine favor. As James B. Nelson writes in Embodiment, “Women are identified with the body, and men with spirit.” The highest place in society was held by elite males-- politicians, and philosophers-- who lived and work in the mind. Women and laborers were inferior, bleeding, breastfeeding, and living and working in the body.

You can see Plato and the Stoic’s influence on the Church fathers, like Jerome, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin, who were skeptical of their libido as one example of their bodies overriding their minds. Fear-driven lists of thou shall nots and cardinal sins abounded, leading to repression and suppression of the body. A Christian ethic that celebrates suffering, self-denial, and self-control, and also material achievement was born and lives on. We cannot be too loud or take up too much space. Pleasure and desire are stifled. Sex is only acceptable between one man and one woman in the context of marriage, for the sake of procreation. Bodies are seen as unruly things to be controlled. This dualism remains alive today in our mind-over-matter mentality.

Yet mind–body dualism is simply not working. Our bodies are wise, and we can only override their signals for so long. Trauma happens to our bodies, so that is also where the listening and healing needs to happen. We cannot think our way out of a feeling problem. Ignoring our bodies delays healing. By inhabiting our messy, powerful bodies, we can contend with both the trauma that has happened to us and the trauma we have inherited.

What is more, our bodies are an incredible gift! When we opt into our lives, loving and tending to the body we have been given, when we use our senses and bask in what our bodies can do, we honor our creator. Living in and from our bodies is a prayer of thanksgiving for life.

 This study invites us to stand in opposition to mind–body dualism. It seeks to go back to the God who created our bodies very good and Jesus who centered the restoration of bodies in his ministry. We will breathe consciously, study the Bible, write bits of our body stories, and move our bodies together in community in hope of deeper embodiment. Thus, we will work to dissolve the lines between the mind and the body that dismiss the connection and power of our bodies. Engaging in this work, you may experience real barriers, especially if you identify as White, male, heterosexual, able, Western, or Christian, in part because of the stronghold of mind–body dualism. Be patient with yourself. Some of the barriers may be very old. Honor your ancestors and engage in the subversive and freeing work of embodied storytelling.

Be gentle with yourself.

What does being gentle with yourself mean right now?