The Lord is for the body? No fooling!
April Fool’s Day wasn’t a big thing in my house growing up, but apparently it was in my friend Dave’s. I met Dave in Romania when we became missionaries, and we soon became close friends and ministry partners. I quickly learned, however, that to be a close friend or family member of Dave’s is to be welcomed into his wondrous world of good-natured trickery every April 1st.
I was easy prey for his shenanigans in the early years of our relationship because I wasn’t expecting it. But even once I had wised up, Dave kept getting me. Every. Single. Year. I tried everything, including setting Outlook reminders on March 31 warning myself to be ready. Sometimes I disbelieved something outlandish he would tell me, thinking “YES, I had finally figured it out!”, only to discover that he had purposely saved that crazy truth to tell me on April 1st, and therefore had once again successfully tricked me.
Dave is in the middle, with his wife Jennifer on the left, and me on the right (2008). Doesn’t he just look like he’s up to something?
But after 17 years (no exaggeration!) of being tricked, 2020 proved to be my breakthrough year. Not only did I successfully identify his trick attempt, but for the first time I actually fooled him as well. It was a glorious moment, and it once again proved the reliability of the old adage, “Fool me 17 times, shame on you. Fool me 18 times, shame on me!” ☺
This kind of fooling is fun … well, at least most of the time! But there is another kind of fooling that was downright destructive in my life: the lies of the evil one regarding the worth of my body.
Growing up in my teens and into my adult life, I didn’t think I had any particular issues with my body. I was lean, but didn’t struggle with anorexia or bulimia. I exercised a lot, eventually running five marathons in my forties, but I didn’t feel that it was compulsive. I cringed a bit when I started graying in my late twenties, but didn’t care enough to do anything about it. I thought I had a fairly healthy relationship with my body.
That illusion crashed down in the fall of 2017.
I woke up that September 26 with symptoms of significant lightheadedness, weakness in my arms and legs, and profound fatigue. I saw many specialists in Romania, ruling out numerous possibilities over the following three months until God brought me to just the right doctor – an endocrinologist named Dr. Slabescu. He asked me many questions about my lifestyle, work habits, exercise program, diet, family responsibilities, etc. Dr. Slabescu aptly summed it all up by saying, “You’re 50 years old, but you’re living the lifestyle of a 25 year old.”
Revealingly, I replied, “Oh, thanks a lot!”
I’ll never forget what he said next. With sobering compassion, he looked me right in the eyes and said, “The fact that you took what I just said as a compliment is your problem.” Ouch!
But Dr. Slabescu was spot on. After some more testing, he diagnosed me with adrenal fatigue, a condition in which the body’s cortisol levels are very low due to overtaxing its stress response. As we continued to meet, he told me that my body had surely been sending me various warning signs over the past months and maybe even years, but that I had been ignoring them. Dr. Slabescu also told me that I “would have to become like a new person, one who can slow down and smell the roses”. Even in the moment, I sensed the Holy Spirit’s voice behind the doctor’s voice, inviting me into a new way of living.
But it didn’t come easily.
As the weeks and months of feeling so exhausted lingered on, I remember feeling bitter toward my body. “You betrayed me! Your whole purpose is to keep up with my mission work and exercise goals, and you failed!” I was harsh. I was brutal. And I justified such venom because I thought, “It’s just me. This is between me and my body. I’m not hurting anyone.”
Photo credit: Philipp Pilz (Unsplash)
Oh, how wrong I was.
I remember God lovingly confronting me in early 2018 with these words, “Don, there’s somebody you’re being unkind to, and it’s not OK with me.” “Who, Lord?” “It’s yourself! You’re treating your body with contempt, as if it had failed you. But your body has been trying for a long time to get your attention, wanting you to know that it’s tired and exceeding its limits. Your drivenness to achieve and meet your own standards has led you to develop a master/slave relationship with your body. What would it look like to treat your body like a trusted friend rather than a slave you order around without mercy?”
Oh, what words of amazing grace and piercing truth!
I was deeply convicted, but so thankful for the kindness of God that led me to repentance. A new world was opened up to me. A pathway to wholeness and shalom, to rest and joy, to acceptance and appreciation.
Photo credit: Rhonda Reynard
As God graciously “reconciled” me to my body, I began to realize for the first time how the evil one had fooled me all these years. He had convinced me that my body was at best, merely a tool to be used for the kingdom of God, and at worst, a menace to be distrusted, tamed, and enslaved.
I don’t remember anyone ever explicitly teaching me to believe such things about my body. Perhaps it was more something I “caught” than was actually “taught”. Perhaps my own particular struggles as a boy and young man led me to be more vulnerable to such distortions. I’m honestly not sure. What I do know, however, is that God has been graciously restoring to me a biblical understanding of our physical bodies.
For example, consider these truths from 1 Corinthians 6:13b-20:
V. 13: The body is meant “for the Lord, and the Lord for the body”. Wow!
V. 14a: Jesus was bodily raised from the dead, and will dwell forever in His glorified body. Please pause and think about that for just a moment – the Son of God, who existed eternally without a human body before the Incarnation, will never now be apart from His resurrection body throughout all eternity to come. The Lord truly is meant for the body!
V. 14b: Like Jesus, these very bodies we inhabit will one day be raised from the dead and become transformed just like His.
Vv. 15-18: Our physical bodies are members of Jesus Himself. The Spirit of Jesus doesn’t evacuate our bodies, even when we sin in the worst imaginable way.
Vv. 19-20: Our physical bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, and He dwells within them. Our bodies were bought with a price, and so God is now their owner (we are His stewards). And as in any temple which God has made and declared to be holy, our bodies are places which God desires to be, deserves to be, and indeed can be glorified.
It is no exaggeration to state that God is highly invested in the human body in every way. I truly cannot imagine what more the Lord could do to drive home this point to me.
But in this season of Lent as we eagerly anticipate the events of Good Friday and Easter Sunday, let’s consider one more timely thought from the Scriptures: Jesus engaged His own physical body as a holy temple which existed to glorify God. Just as He doesn’t evacuate our bodies now, no matter how heinous our sin, Jesus did not evacuate His own body on the cross to avoid torment or the ugliness of “becoming sin for us”.
The Gnostics emerging in New Testament times believed that matter is evil and therefore the Christ couldn’t have had a real body (or at least must have left the human Jesus before He was crucified). But the Bible teaches that the incarnate Son of God Himself hung on the cross, drinking every bit of the cup the Father had prepared for Him, until His work was finished to the glory of God. His commitment to the worth and glory of His physical body (even and especially when He was bearing our sin) is a model to us all.
The devil tries to fool us into believing that our bodies are either everything or nothing – that they must either be worshiped and obsessed over, or despised and consumed. Jesus shows us a far better way. As we look up at Him on the cross again this Easter season, what might it be like to then look down at our own bodies with renewed wonder, gratitude, and desire to worship the Lord in this beautiful, holy place He loves to call His own?
Photo credit: Thanti Riess (Unsplash)
Written by: Don Reynard
If you’d like more on this subject, I encourage you to read Rosalyn’s blog post entitled, “Of Brains on Sticks and Precious Jars”, in which she makes some great observations and asks several powerful questions from key Scriptures.