Beyond the Bone Mech
Finding Peace in God’s Design for Your Physicality
In our world of instant information and digital hyper-connectivity, a strange paradox has emerged: we have never been more connected, yet many of us have never felt more lost. Think about it, we are living through a mental health crisis, particularly among the young people. Suicide rates for young adults have climbed to levels never before imagined.
Why?
At least part of the answer lies in how we view ourselves. Western culture often tells us that our true self is simply an abstract mind. You are a "ghost in a machine" (or as one popular meme puts it: a mind piloting a bone mech with meat armor.) In this view, our bodies are just shells, costumes, or sleeves (apologies to Altered Carbon) that we must manipulate to match our internal feeling.
The Burden of Self-Definition
This "digital gnosticism" places a crushing weight on our shoulders. If your identity is something you have to create and project into the world at the exact same time that technology opens up the whole world to our finger tips the problem is massively intensified. How can you have unique meaning and purpose when you have to stand out in a crowd of billions? You become responsible for defining your own worth, your own gender, your own purpose, and your own beauty… you own everything. The pressure is unbearable and our collective mental health shows it.
The Biblical Counter-Narrative
This cultural pressure is purely and simply unmanagable. But the good news is that you don’t have to figure out who you are. You have already been defined by your Creator and designer. Because he made you and knows you intimately (see Psalm 139:13-18) his design for you genuinely is your deepest satisfaction. And while that may be triggering for some of us to read, its important to remember God’s identity as our creator. This means that His design for you is not a cage or a trap. In the same way that a fence makes a playground safe for kids to play, God’s design for his creation is the very blueprint for your flourishing.
You Don't Have a Body - You Are a Body
The Bible presents a radically different view of humanity. In the opening movements of Psalm 139, King David reflects on the omniscience and omnipresence"of God. He realizes that he cannot escape God’s knowledge and precense, not because God is some sort of cosmic policeman or disapointed parent, but because God is a Master Builder (apologies to the Lego Movie) who has good in mind for his creation! David writes, "For it was you who created my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb." This is a fundamental shift in perspective. Your body is not a bone mech you happen to inhabit. You are a unity. You are body and spirit. This means you are, in a very literal sense your body. Your DNA, your physical limitations, your biological sex, and your very bones are the result of God’s intentional, poetic craftsmanship. God didn't use leftovers or scraps to make you. He knit you remarkably and wondrously.
This isn’t said to ignore the reality of sin, the curse, and the limitations of our physicality. There are such things as disabilities, aging, injuries, sickness, mental illness. All of there experiences are real and they effect the way we experience and learn from our physical bodies. But its so important to remember, in a culture where hatred and shame of our own bodies is so prevalent, that the defining bedrock of your physicality is not your limitations or brokenness, but rather the inherent goodness of God’s design and image stamped into our bodies.
Finding Peace in Physicality
When we accept our embodiment as a gift rather than an obstacle, we find a unique kind of peace. We stop viewing our physical limits as failures and start viewing them as boundaries within which we are called to live and serve. No matter who you are, there are things currently true about your body that won’t be true in heaven when all effects of the curse are redeemed. And yet, your body speaks to your identity. It tells you that you were made to engage the world physically. You are a being mean to work, to rest, to touch, and to be present.
In the Gospel, we see the ultimate validation of the body: Jesus Christ did not remain a distant spirit. He took on flesh. He had a heartbeat. He had tired feet. He rose from the dead in a physical body. When he returns to restore all things, he will raise up his family bodily. Our bodies will be a part of the experience of heaven and redemption. This proves that your physicality is sacred, precious, and destined for eternity.
