Disembodied Religion

One area in which I have noticed a major problem is the tendency of the Church and Christians to think of their spirit and their body as separate and independent of one another. Adam made the same mistake. We see this throughout American society and its loss of tradition and "common sense" (God) Ways - e.g., in food, family, work, health, & education. I was awakened to this problem by the poignant words of Wendell Berry. Berry is not a pastor or theologian, but a farmer and a writer. Nevertheless he is one of the most concise and clarifying voices on the intrinsic costs of industrialized agribusiness.  We are reminded of the derivation of the word agriculture, the thing sustaining human life and society based in the soil.  Berry eloquently connects the incalculable losses to our society with the voluntary extinction of the family farm, the communities traditionally constituted by family farms, and the death of America, a consequence of the death of the small farming town.  What does this have to do with God and Scripture?

In his masterful The Unsettling of America, Berry states,

“Perhaps the fundamental damage of the specialist system—the damage from which all other damages issue—has been the isolation of the body. At some point we began to assume that the life of the body would be the business of grocers and medical doctors, who need take no interest in the spirit, whereas the life of the spirit would be the business of the churches, which would have at best only a negative interest in the body. In the same way we begin to see nothing wrong with putting the body—most often somebody else’s body, but frequently our own—to a task that insulted the mind and demeaned the spirit. And we began to find it easier than ever to prefer our own bodies to the bodies of other creatures and to abuse, exploit, and otherwise hold in contempt those other bodies for the greater good or comfort of our own.

The isolation of the body sets it into direct conflict with everything else in Creation” (p.108).

For he who has ears to hear, Berry hits with the force of a biblical prophet. This “contempt for the body” (p.109) is disrespecting of Creator and simply irrational. Christians await a bodily resurrection, but during our mission here on earth, God gives us a body made "in His image" that He expects to be used wisely and well.  It is a shallow faith that ignores the welfare of one’s own body, even for the benefit of the soul. It’s actually a deception that one can truly benefit the soul at the expense of the body. And it needs to be understood that Berry is correct when he draws the conclusion that to undervalue one’s own body, one will necessarily undervalue the bodies of other people and creatures. To some degree, it actually infers our lack of Faith in the Creator and our earthly mission.

God created the world and called it good. We are called to be stewards of His Creation, which means to manage it the way He wants. But since Christians have disembodied their religion, they are dull to the errors of modern agriculture, and much of today’s technological advances.  Our souls will suffer the same corruption that the Creation suffers. 

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We encourage you to find practical applications for all this. Start simply. Change your ways. Reset your worldview. Clean up your habits.  Make a list like the one below for your family and Church, and do these things not for carnal purposes, but to honor God's Word and do them to the glory of the Creator, God.

• Educate yourself about the Ways our ancxestors followed and why they were important. At the same time, become aware of how harmful 
• Consider growing as much of your own food as possible. As you choose this way, understand that what you are doing is connecting to God’s Creation. Adam was a gardener/farmer.  Jesus used farming in much of His teaching. Slow down and get in the soil and consider it worship to the Creator.  "Grow together" with family, friends, new acquaintances, and Church. It is no coincidence that research on improving physical and mental health repeatedly point to immersion in nature - from gut bacteria to sunshine and sweat.
• Treat your body as though you expect to accomplish mightily in the work of the Lord.  Consider that the seeds of our next physical body are already in our current physical body (1 Cor 15:35-38). 
• Learn what's going on in agriculture today. Many young people don't even know where food comes from (e.g., what is bacon or a chicken "nugget")?  It is harming you and your family in incredible and numerous ways? Stop and think about the impact industrialized agriculture has had on the American family - the common unit of churches, communities and societies.  They did it all with your approval and financing, while they were distracting and awing you with deceptive marketing about the future of genetic engineering and GPS farm implements no family farmer could afford. Eat their food with understanding - if you eat it at all. 
• Don't eat fake food and chemicalized food - whether "fresh" or packaged.  
• Start cooking again. Do it together.  Teach the young, so they can take care of themselves. It is said that, "health begins in the kitchen".
• "Cheap" food is expensive in the long-run. 
• Support local family farms. Take part. Go to their defense in your community and in government. Spend on local business. Pray for their success. 
• Slow down. Everything about American life is to getting bigger, faster, and more artificial - and most of it isn't good.  Find ways to push against the error of today's ways. 
• Keep to the principle of the Sabbath (not in a legalistic way) but give yourself and your family self-imposed limits. 
• Choose fellowship over consumption and money (earning and spending).  Create. Use these as guides to define boundaries for young people using electronics. Electronics should only be for healthy communicating and creating... nothing idle or evil. Trade your television for a piano and a stack of board games.
• Love your neighbor as yourself. 
• Refuse to profit in ways that are not virtuous or not mutually beneficial.
• Be thrifty for the sake of stewardship and for the sake of your own soul. 
• Be a steward of the body God gave you and use it to His great glory. 

- JM, Pastor, USA

Psalm 19:

1 The heavens declare the glory of God;

   the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

2 Day after day they pour forth speech;

   night after night they reveal knowledge.

3 They have no speech, they use no words;

   no sound is heard from them.

Romans 1:20

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

Genesis 1:1, 31

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth...  God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.