An Embodied Christianity

One of the loveliest verses I’ve read about Jesus is in Luke 4:40, “Now when the sun was setting all those who had any who were sick with various diseases brought them to Him, and He laid hands on every one of them, and healed them.”

Can’t you see it? The sun is setting in a flood of colours over the western sky. There is tension in the air as the desperate press into the center of the crowd where He stands with arms outstretched, unhurried, peacefully touching them all. The suspense is broken by the joy of those who are healed as they erupt in surprised applause.

“The Messiah cares for our bodies?”

Today I hope to bring a little curiosity and wonder to those who have focused on crucifying the flesh but struggle to regard your temple as valuable and worthy of intentional care. An embodied Christianity is a faith that cares deeply about the incarnation, a theology that is functional and practical and that employs all of our senses in a deeply pleasurable relationship with God. An embodied Christianity understands the reason Jesus became human flesh and walked and talked and ate with His followers.

Think of the time the disciples were trying to shut down the desperation in a few blind men and Jesus stops, notices, pays attention, touches, and heals (Matt 20:299-34). What about the woman who was known to be sinful who comes uninvited with an alabaster box to anoint His feet and Jesus sits receiving her touch as the Pharisees scorn His attention towards her (Luke 7:36-50)?

“If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner.”

Jesus allowed a sinful woman to touch Him.

There is a remarkable reason He didn’t fly down one day for a few hours and die for us. He chose an embodied incarnation so that we could learn about Him with all of our personhood. He chose to surround Himself with the desperate and the diseased and lived among us as Emmanuel.

This Emmanuel cared when human bodies were sick and even when they were just hungry.

Remember when 5,000 people were listening to Him speak for hours and He noticed they were hungry and ordered them all to sit in smaller groups (Luke 6:1-14)? I think this is very significant because I have sat in long bible school days where healthy nourishment and relational connection were dismissed as quite unnecessary. Jesus cared for everyone’s emotional and physical parts as He parted the crowd and passed the bread. In 1 Kings 17, God tells Elijah to escape to a specific brook where he could drink, and then says “I have commanded ravens to feed you there.”

I’m sitting here now wishing God would give me a little solo time by a stream and make birds come with some starch and protein morning and evening. That’s some easy food prep.

Some segments of Christianity have dreadfully misunderstood the value of the body and teach only to suppress, deny, crucify, and properly cover it. The natural outcome of this is a demographic of people who are constantly fighting healthy created desire, pleasure, and joy. At some point this becomes exhausting and performance driven and many fight extensive anxiety and depression or pursue other avenues of a forbidden pleasure to assuage the deep agony within. We are created to deeply desire and pursue pleasure.

It is this ruthless determination of the wicked to find happiness in whatever sinful or perverse experience imaginable that hardens the believing heart against its own impulse for pleasure. Not wanting to be classed among those who reject Jesus, many Christians have wrongly assumed the problem is their passion and have taken whatever steps they believe will effectively suppress and stifle its expression.

Sam Storms¹

The normal emotions of a young girl being constantly suppressed by “don’t be vain” and “don’t walk like that” or “that dress will seduce men” slide quietly under the surface of a very tense and anxious body trying to please. This body will often have a very hard time enjoying enjoying much of anything at all because she has disassociated from God-given desire by crucifying it entirely. It is our own heads at war with our bodies that cause this dichotomy, not God. A very extreme example of this is the ascetic practices of self harm, deprivation or extreme isolation that are intended to bring right relationship to God. Somewhere in the history of Christianity we have developed an interesting bend towards believing that the hardest denials are our Christian duty. The Gnostics (a heretical movement in the second century) for example, believed that all matter, including our physical bodies is inherently evil. Knowledge was the only way to overcome our physical beings and the material world.²

The righteous ought to differ from the lost in choosing the right paths of happiness not in seeking to rid themselves of the desire itself. The problem isn’t in the passion; it’s in the paths.³

Jonathan Edwards

Let me clarify by saying I believe we are commanded to die to the flesh by bringing our sinful desires under the lordship of Christ. When we become led by our own desires and emotions and physical needs without aligning and renewing them to what is pure and good, the outcome can be disastrous. All desire however is not sinful and pleasure is created by God Himself and if we allow ourselves the delight of engaging all of our renewed senses in enjoying Him and His gifts to us our bodies are thankful and at rest.

1 Corinthians 6: 19 says “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own,  for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”

What does it mean to glorify God in our bodies?

The Holy Spirit lives in my physical body. For this reason, I work out three times a week and move my body somehow every day. I die to my desire for comfort when I wake up early and work out hard. I like good ice cream but I don’t feel well the next morning if I eat a lot so I die to that desire so that I can feel my best for Jesus, my family, and myself. I make a lot of small and hard decisions every day to be my strongest and healthiest physical self. Some mornings I chug a lot of chlorophyll water. Some days all I need is a quiet walk. Other days I push myself.

Every day I tune into how my body is feeling and try to pay attention.

This does not mean becoming self obsessed but is a natural outflow of living like the Holy Spirit truly lives in our bodies. I care enough to pay money for the best vitamins and minerals. I work on the health of my hair and skin and prepare nutritious meals for as many people as possible. Our bodies are fearfully and wonderfully made and when we believe that we can live in a beautiful synergy with the created plan of God and reach out and touch others with a kindness that cares about their whole person. By no means am I vouching to disregard our spiritual needs for the sake of our physical body, because this is also disastrous! I am simply considering the effect of glibly disregarding physical needs under the mask of spiritual terminology.

What happens when the body of Christ disregards the body as unimportant?

When any part of our personhood is undermined or deemed unimportant, the environment becomes unsafe. When someone is perceived to have spiritual oppression in their lives and suddenly things get loud and forceful, I am always looking into the face of the individual. Do they feel safe? Recently I was introduced to the idea that when we are praying for the power of the devil to be broken over someone we should not be touching them. I have yet to hear anything biblical about that claim and have listened to the pain that it has caused. Imagine a young woman facing severe anxiety, sitting close to the person she feels safest with in the counselling room. A safe hand is on her arm, but when the counsellor starts praying he asks that no one is touching her. Immediately her body goes into panic and high alert and her brain stuck in her limbic system, cannot comprehend anything that is prayed or said to her. Feeling foolish and ashamed, she leaves the office trying to calm her racing body.

Imagine then if the visible shaking of her hands and trembling of her body was mistaken as demonic? If physical signs of trauma are not dealt with gently and with curiosity, but taken over with loud control more trauma is done and the body is further convinced of not being safe. Postpartum psychosis, panic attacks, and other mental health disorders can take time to untangle and understand. A quick label of the “spirit of anxiety” or “spirit of murder” further isolates, confuses, and sometimes traumatises the vulnerable. Furthermore, this language is not biblical.

What if someone is completely demonised or even oppressed heavily by demons? I have seen a human body overtaken by supernatural darkness many times and am learning to lean in close with dignity and respect for their whole person. Demons don’t need us to yell for them to hear. Eric and I have seen many come free with gentle, steady, words, some quiet worship, and scripture reading. We avoid having many people in the room, and are constantly caring for their physical body by putting a pillow under their head, removing furniture they could hit, and maintaining their dignity as much as possible. This is true for those suffering from severe mental breakdown or psychosis as well. In all of these scenarios the individuals feel deep shame and confusion when they are finally cognitive and verbal. They will need you to be a gentle presence providing nourishment for a very weary body, and making sure they are as clean and comfortable as possible.

I am learning to ask genuinely curious questions instead of grasping for a solid diagnoses. Much individual autonomy is taken from the suffering in the church when eager prayer teams surround a struggling individual and label them with all sorts of demons and prophetic words without once asking a question. Deliverance done biblically is always gentle and unhurried. Prophecy done biblically always asks a question allowing the receiver to weigh and decide if it resonates with them (1 Cor. 14:29). The labelling and diagnosing generally only enhances the fragmentation survivors are facing and creates more confusion.

We cannot expect the suffering to be safe enough to heal when we have projected all sorts of demons and diagnoses on them and when they ask for prayer quickly surround them to pronounce them what we think they are. This is a recipe for much hurt in the church, and the reason some stand in the corners at any mention of prayer and prophecy.

One of my first questions when I am sitting with someone having a very bad day is, “Have you eaten?” because why would I expect them to sit on a hard chair in a drab room and feel better with just a slow conversation? I try to have quick pretty things around to eat with a spot of tea, and I almost always cook extra curry or eggs so there is quick protein in the house. This is modelling Jesus’ early morning protein fish fry for the hungry disciples who were working all night (John 21:1-13).

Severe mental health disorders are real. Demonisation is real. Psychotic episodes are real. The reality of life is that we will brush shoulders with individuals in despair fighting inner battles that might slowly manifest in physical maladies. There are usually no quick and easy diagnoses and I think the church could do much better by developing a gentle curiosity and humble posture of learning when faced with things none of us fully understand.

Freedom is also real. I have seen those afflicted by demons stand tall in powerful praise. I have seen traumatised bodies slowly start resting and enjoying life. I believe fully in the resurrection power of Christ at work in all of us and sometimes someone has a powerful and relatively short encounter that is life-altering and healing. I pray for those encounters and I praise when they happen and everywhere in-between I reach out with both my hands to an anxious body, grasping tightly and looking gently into their eyes to ask a question.

Can I entreat the Body of Christ to join me? Let go of the need to always label and diagnose and control the narrative. Get genuinely curious about the way the body responds. Develop an understanding of safe and healing touch and do it as often as you can. Becoming a nourisher of bodies by providing beautiful platters of food to those who come by your home. In doing this, we model Jesus as we give personhood to the suffering by honouring every part of their created being, employing all the senses into a deeply holistic and pleasurable relationship with the church and Christ Himself.

Photo by Galina Kondratenko on Unsplash

Footnotes:

1. This is a quote from Sam Storms remarkable book Pleasures Forevermore (p. 37) on the life changing power of enjoying God ↩︎
2. Gnosticism Origins, Beliefs and Conflicts (November 21, 2023) study.com ↩︎
3. Sam Storms quotes Jonathan Edwards in his book Pleasures Forevermore (p. 37) ↩︎