Body and Spirit: War or Peace?

Forget everything you’ve learned from the misguided dualists who teach that the body, being material, is inferior to the spirit in your walk with Christ. 

In Jesus Christ, body and spirit are redeemed together. The spirit brings serenity to the body—a visceral peace that nothing outside of Christ can bring. On the other hand, the body informs the spirit with its needs for healthy sleep, nutrition, and exercise.  

Overly emphasizing either the body or the spirit is like saying your right leg is more important than your left leg, and then hopping on that leg for the rest of your life.

 When the apostle Paul speaks of a war between the flesh and the spirit, he doesn’t mean you should abandon bodily cares so that you can be a pure spirit. He means that bodily appetites have limited horizons. 

The goal of life is not contained in fancy clothes, prestigious quarters, or satiating the salivary glands. The goal is to develop a mindset based on trusting in the Lord’s help for physical provisions (home, food, clothing, education, health), while seeking above all else the Father’s will for you. When you seek the balance of bodily health and spiritual guidance, you’ll find they both contribute to a wholesome human nature.

Listen to Christ’s overview: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?...But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Mt 6: 25; 33).

By the same token, the body is a complex machine that needs quality care. Do you have a runaway compulsion for sweets, food, alcohol, smoking, drugs, or sex? If so, Christ doesn’t get on your case and carp at you to give these up, but sends the Holy Spirit to help you, like through a Twelve-Step group that specializes in breaking addictions. Thank God, you are not left alone to battle a force that is physically devastating and spiritually demoralizing.

Twelve-Step groups like Alcoholics Anonymous, Nicotine Anonymous, and Overeaters Anonymous work wonders because they restore balance to the body and spirit. You gain a reprieve from out-of-control appetites by participating in a spiritual fellowship whose foundation is trust in God and service to others. Many of these meetings end by reciting the Lord’s Prayer.

Your spirituality needs attention just like the body. Opening your spirit to God does not require being religious. It simply requires sincerity, transparency, and humility. You can ask God for these qualities and the Holy Spirit will make sure they become part of your individuality in Christ. Equally important are eating and drinking the Word of God, relating to others who know and love Christ, and helping people whenever you can. 

So there you have it, a short course in understanding Body and Spirit. Along with Mind and Heart (previous blog), these complimentary dimensions comprise human nature, providing you with a reliable set of checks and balances for cultivating your individuality in Christ.

 

What Constitutes Human Nature?

This question of what makes up human nature has baffled people for eons.

Books by theologians, philosophers, and psychologists abound with varying views about what comprises human nature. Most positions emphasize one facet of humanness as all-important. 

Rationalists teach that the mind is the key to understanding human nature. 

Romantics argue that the heart is the crucial thing. 

Hedonists say no, the body and its pleasures should prevail. 

And Gnostics say the spirit alone is real. 

But the Self Compass approach asks why not combine all the parts that God has made in us, so we can function with a complete package? As you might expect, the compass model presents the case for holistic human nature, suggesting that since Christ, the God-person, experienced and expressed his mind and heart, body and spirit, then perhaps you and I should, too.

The Human Nature Compass

                                                                          

The compass approach is intuitive. Common sense tells you that the mind is for thinking, the heart for feeling, the body for sensing, and the spirit for communing with God. Simple though it is, the Human Nature Compass combines the sophistication of a multifaceted model with the witness of Jesus Christ’s human nature as revealed in the Gospels.

Jesus affirmed our human natures as he affirmed his own, because Christ values the whole of our humanness. In fact, many Gospel stories reflect his complimentary use of a holistic human nature. 

Do you remember when he ran across a woman who was hemorrhaging from an embarrassing female disorder? Jesus sensed her touch of his robe, even though a crowd was pressing him from all sides, and in that touch she was healed. Turning to face her, he thought about how helping her would offend those religious folks who judged her as “unclean.” Nevertheless, he felt compassion for her twelve years of torment. With spiritual authority he extended kinship to her in the family of God: “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace” (Lk 8: 43-48). 

There is a message here. I think of it this way: when God created the cosmos, he paused to say, “It is very good.” Then, in the fullness of time, God sent his Son to become fully human. In taking human nature forever into the Godhead, Christ says to us: 

“You are my kin—

I’ve made your human nature very good, too.”