In my last post, on how to love mothering again I wrote about the importance of self care. Which led me to reflect on the question whether self-care is a godly practice for Christians?

This title has a bit of irony because of course, God doesn’t need self-care. He is all powerful and in-exhaustive. So, the real question is: does God consider it good for His people to practice self-care?

Although, self-care is a recent buzz word covering everything from mindfulness, healthy eating, to star gazing, it is not a new concept.

At its core, self-care, is about actively participating in ones well being in order to be better for oneself and in the service of others- Raphailia Michael .

Despite the fact that self-care is created by psychologists and the culture of our day, it celebrates a deeply Christian ideal – EMBODIMENT. The Christian Ideal of Embodiment is one that the church easily loses sight of.

Embodiment is one of the key concepts I have been studying at Regent College and it has deeply changed how I walk with Christ and serve His people. I know understanding this concept better will benefit your life greatly!

So grab a cup of something warm and get comfortable, this is going to be good.

Embodiment is a pillar concept here at SHU, we believe that one of keys to transformation comes through our connection with God, in our bodies not despite them.

So, what the heck is embodiment?

Just hear me out—and think how does the fact that God placed you in a body with defined limits and distinct faculties tangibly affect your everyday spirituality and Christian living? Do you take into account your physical limitations set by God as a good creator?

Reflecting on Embodiment in Everyday Living

• Do you get 7-8 hours of sleep each night? (This is healthy for most adults)

• Do you primarily eat God- made foods that nourish and fuel your whole body?

• Do you move your body everyday? Whether its through exercise, dance or sports your body was made to move ( I know I’m working on this one).

• How often to do you spend outside connecting with God’s creation?

• Do you connect with others in deep and meaningful ways?

• Do you limit your practice with disembodied activities like social media and tech devices?

• Do you listen to your body when it is signaling you with cues of anxiety, depression, or exhaustion?

• How do you tangibly participate in the story of God throughout the calendar year? (I can’t wait to write more on this in future blogs, it is a personal favorite of mine.)

• Do you have self-awareness? Do you know where you get your energy from? Do you know your personality? Check out Matt’s blog series on the Enneagram to learn more about this.

• Do you reflect on your own story regularly with God and the church? Do you know your triggers? Your trauma? The hurt and pains that stand between you and God, and you and others?

 This list isn’t meant to judge you or give you another to-do list to become a better Christian. This list was meant to inform you, how the concept of embodiment tangibly affects your daily living.

I have struggled and failed to do several things on this list well, but I have found that true transformation comes when I first recognize I am small… I am fragile…I am a human!

Embodiment–THE LOST KEY

Adam is called the dirt man in Hebrew and Eve the mother of all living. We are earthy organic beings on purpose–God breathed His life into a fleshy body and called it good. We are not simply trapped in our bodies, we are a part of our bodies.

This key has been lost in translation due to the prevailing Greek influence in the Christian world, but the Hebrew saw body, mind and spirit connected– affecting one another. God made us intricately connected beings on purpose.

Especially in the Western Church today, it is tempting for us to either over emphasize academia or experience as the primary means of connecting with God BUT it is in the BALANCE of both good theology and good practice that our whole person will be renewed by God.

As James K. Smith, has brilliantly brought this to the church’s attention in his book, ” You are what You Love. ” We are being formed by what we do in our daily practices and habits which is shaping our hearts affections. This has been a blind spot in the church for too long and doing so has let the marketing schemes of the world take up primary real estate in our hearts.

It is easy to become disconnected from our bodies in attempts to be “spiritual” but that is a heresy called Gnosticism ( An anti-Christian belief that the body is bad and the answer for salvation is to escape the body!) Don’t forget brothers & sisters salvation came in a body!

When we underestimate the body, we overestimate our “spirituality”, and loose sight of our deep humanity & desperate need of God.

However, As Christians I know that we often hear an opposite message about the body.. Indeed, Jesus says, ” We shall not live by bread alone” and scripture proclaims , “The heart is deceitfully wicked above all us” and we are to ” Deny the flesh” or ” beat our bodies into submission”.

How do we think clearly about these conflicting messages? Is the body good or bad? Like many scriptural matters we have to look at context to read through the nuances. We will look more deeply at this below .

To begin answering this question I will share my own story of trying to be spiritual by denying my body, followed by 5 scriptural insights that reveal the body is good.

My story of subtle self-destruction in the church

As a young zealous Christian who enjoyed serving in the church, I was told by many that a life of ministry would be a perfect fit for me. So I began working at the office of my home church and quite quickly at age 21, I was promoted to a staff position in a mega church.

I managed the coffee house and bookstore with a team of 40 plus volunteers. This was the opportunity of a lifetime or so it seemed… I was shocked to discover how emotionally and physically draining this all was. I remember often crying on the floor overwhelmed by both the logistics of the task and my own internal struggles.

I couldn’t keep up with demands of this lifestyle but felt unable to talk to anyone about it because the culture among the staff celebrated “burning the midnight oil“. It was considered normal and even godly to be constantly overwhelmed. It was all just too much without anyone to guide me through the stress of it all.

After years of trudging through I became a shell of a person and disconnected with God. I didn’t have time to eat , I didn’t have any real social interactions outside of constant working relationships. I was depressed. I lived off junk food and coffee, stopped caring about my appearance, and slept in till the very minute I had to be at church.

I was burnt out!

Being burnt out made it very easy for me to step right into a dark place that took years to come out of. Sadly, I have heard this story far too many times to count especially among Christians.

This story is why I am so passionate about recognizing the bodies needs.

Self-care is not salvific but it is prescriptive— like the balm of Gilead we use it as a tool to heal our wounds and continue in the good fight of faith.

When we acknowledge our bodily needs we are acknowledging our limits, we are putting aside pride and saying we’re created beings whom God made with natural needs for rest, recreation, nourishment, and connection.

Anything in life worth doing will come with stress, but when we consistently ignore our basic needs and suffer through burn out, we act as if we don’t need God nor His faithful community, and we put ourselves in grave danger for walking into SIN. Its not an excuse to sin but, a symptom of pride and people pleasing.

5 Key Reasons God reveals the Body is Good

1. The Incarnation

Salvation came in a body—the word was made flesh! In doing this Jesus proclaimed the significance of the body–affirming its value.

Albeit the incarnation was the humiliation of God, it was still God’s means of salvation, which declares the significance of the body.

God could have saved us in any form but He rescued us in a very earthy way. From the stinky barn he was born in, to the naked display of his bruised and bloody body.

Even while Jesus walked this earth he did so in a radically human way. He chose to be around “ordinary” people from fisherman to farmers, to the marginalized— like prostitutes, tax collectors and lepers. He worked with his hands as a carpenter. He was even accused of being a drunkard and a glutton because He was often at parties.

Not only was Jesus born in the flesh but even after he conquered death, He returned in the FLESH! Yes, with some super abilities, but still a man– with scars, who ate breakfast on a beach, walked and talked on the road, whom John confirms, they touched and handled.

We don’t know what our bodies will be like without sin but we get a sense from these glimpses of Christ’s life on earth before, during, and after the resurrection. Just as Jesus was the most divine man to ever walk this earth He was also the most human.

The resurrection of the body is a dangerous idea especially in the AI, wired world we all live in . As Christians, we need to be clear about what we think about the body. The Bible declares from Genesis to the gospels and beyond, that God cares deeply about this physical world from the intricate design of each creature, to Christ healing the sick and feeding the hungry–matter, matters to God.

2. We are visceral creatures

God has made the body to function through our faculties on purpose. We are not just brains on sticks we’re visceral creatures wired to sense and feel in multiple ways. As Christians we are to recognize the body as a good thing made by a good God.

God has implanted wisdom within our bodies via intuition, imagination, and sensation. These are constructed as cues to guide us and connect us back to the Father. We are to love God with our whole person– body, soul & mind.

We certainly don’t live by every whim of our faculties nor declare that our experience is the only way to know truth but we recognize these God-given faculties as we are continually being renewed by God in the same way we use our minds and logic that are being redeemed.

3. We are Image Bearers of God

If you read the Genesis creation account, compared to Ancient Near Eastern texts, you will understand the Cosmos are a reflection of the temples that ANE peoples used to worship their gods.

The Hebrews wrote in this way to confront the idol worshipers of their day and so that the people of God would understand the one true God in their own cultural context.These temples always had an image/statue in the middle so that one could come and worship the idol.

We know that the Bible says we’re not to worship images of God because the creator cannot be created.However, there is an image that God puts forth in this grand temple of the universe…

What does God set as His image? Who does He put His likeness on to? HUMANITY!!! YOU & ME –we’re made in HIS image & likeness.

We are made to be the tiny idols of God…a reflection of God…we are NOT God but we are holy in the fact that we point to God. We are made as priests, gardeners, children–to steward and God’s gifts with love and kindness as we depend on HIM.

Therefore, we are instructed to love our neighbors as ourselves because each person is an icon of God. A tiny picture of Gods person. This is another clue that the human body matters to God.

4.Sacraments

Since the conception of God’s people they have been marking God’s story with them in tangible ways from Jacob’s rock statues to the Passover, all the way into the New Testament sacraments, and the church’s sacred practices like Ash Wednesday.

Jesus initiated sacraments like communion and baptism in the church so, that each of us could not just read about salvation and new birth, but re-enact it!

We are to experience the work of Christ in our bodies every time we come to the Lord’s table, we embody what He did for us as we partake in the elements of Christ.

Every time we witness a new believer proclaim their faith and love for God with water washing over them in baptism, we remember the very real work of God on the whole person.

God has given us the sacraments, times and seasons, feasts and festivals as a real way to participate and embody God’s continuing story of rescue among his people. Again, the sacraments point us back to the truth that God declares experience in the body is good and holy.

5.Sabbath

We didn’t always have a weekend folks, to us in the modern world having a day off or two doesn’t seem like a big deal but, it is significant gift from our Judaeo-Christian worldview.

One of the key markers of Jewish followers was practicing Sabbath, time set aside to worship God and rest in Him. God went to WAR with Egypt over Sabbath. God not only rescued His people from an evil empire of harsh slavery and brutal injustice but He rescued them so they can worship Him in the wilderness.

In fact Pharaoh accuses the Israelite’s of being lazy! Sabbath rest was a practice that directly contradicted their culture. The world view that the early Hebrews broke out of believed that people were just pawns, manual laborers to work for the god of the day–Pharaoh.

In the world around us there are idols of industry, consumerism, entertainment, etc but do we have idols in the church that prevent us from rest?

Do we run churches like CEO businesses and treat congregants like capital? I know I have been guilty of treating people in the church like volunteer capital and its NOT okay. The church is is the BODY of Christ it is the FAMILY of God! People are not capital they are image bearers.

Does that mean we give up service to the Kingdom of God and just worry about ourselves? NO! We serve in a posture of honesty before God, recognizing our limited capacities in an authentic way while pushing towards the way of the master to serve GOD and others wholeheartedly.

I’m talking to all you serve-a-holic Christians who are trying to prove your worth before God. Remember this, we serve God out of His love and acceptance for us on the cross NOT to earn it! We live by grace and we love by grace.

I don’t care if its sister so and so, or pastor charming asking, you are first in service to God as a finite creature. You’re not a super hero you can’t bear above the limits God has placed on YOU.

If we’re serving so much that our lives are hurting and falling apart we need to question if we’re using service as self-avoidance of our own growth or to esteem our own self worth.

We may need to say NO to someone, we may need to PRAY that God will give us the ability to say YES to someone, we may need to QUESTION ones request (are they asking you to bear what is their own load?) we bear burdens when others are overwhelmed but not so others can be lazy.

So what’s the verdict on self-care?

I hope all of these concepts surrounding the doctrine of embodiment and why God has said the body is good has enriched your understanding. We often want to point to the divinity of Christ but we so desperately need his humanity too.

I believe the movement towards self-care is a good and godly reaction from our culture who has been saturated with dis-embodied virtual reality of our modern life. As Christians, it is easy to see all the things that are going wrong in the world but I am excited to celebrate what is going right, it means God is on the move

Self care is our culture recognizing their human fragility and limits, this is pointing to their need for a creator, they’re a created being with set boundaries and, so are YOU!

Well friends, thank you so much for taking the time to read this longer post with me I hope that it encouraged you and caused you to think deeply about your faith in practice around self-care. I would love to hear your thoughts and questions about self-care, please comment below if you make space for self-care why or why not?