Dieting, Botox, and Honoring Jesus with Your Body

Undistracting attractiveness is John Piper’s term for it.

It’s a vision for the Christian to steer a middle course between idolizing our bodies and neglecting them. It includes giving our bodies enough attention — with sleep, diet, exercise, and upkeep — to avoid being distractingly unattractive, and reining in our impulses to pursue a self-focused attractiveness that distracts.

Deeper Than Dieting, Botox, and Plastic Surgery

Your body is a precious gift from God. And the Bible is clear about its highest purpose: To make God look good.

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. (1 Corinthians 6:19–20)

And so Paul writes, “It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death” (Philippians 1:20).

Beneath the flashpoints of dieting and exercise, botox and plastic surgery, lies this question for the Christian: Are we using our bodies in such a way that God is seen to be more precious than our bodies?    Continue at David Mathis

The Mind, Body, and Medications

In my ongoing study of the subject of mental/emotional illness, counseling, and the church; I found a very helpful chapter in the recently released book, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling. The final chapter, “The Complex Mind/Body Connection,” is written by Dr. Laura Hendrickson. As a trained medical doctor, and board-certified psychiatrist, Laura brings insight that is appreciated within the biblical counseling world.

In this chapter, Laura explores the complexity of our humanity and seeks to bring biblically-informed wisdom to bear upon the mind, body, and psychiatric medication. In this post, I will summarize and highlight her main conclusions. For the full benefit you would do well to get yourself a copy of Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling.

There Is Mystery in this Body, which Is Made by God. Just as Christians have many misconceptions about emotions [the subject of the preceding chapter] so “the body fares little better, perhaps worse, in our mind’s eye.” But it is important to remember that “our emotions and our bodies are God’s idea….The interrelationship between body and soul defies our capacity to fully comprehend. The complexity of the mind-body, soul-brain connection is both majestic and deeply troubling to many.” Hendrickson then refers to the Biblical Counseling Coalition’s Confessional Statement, and reflects upon the dozen drafts of the portion that addresses the mind/body connection. This section of the confession closes with the following paragraph: “We recognize the complexity of the relationship between the body and soul (Genesis 2:7). Because of this, we seek to remain sensitive to physical factors and organic issues that affect people’s lives. In our desire to help people comprehensively, we seek to apply God’s Word to people’s lives amid bodily strengths and weaknesses. We encourage a thorough assessment and sound treatment for any suspected physical problems.”    Continue at Paul Tautges

Psychiatric Medication and the Image of God

Watch any daytime talk show with an expert medical guest or flip through Time magazine's colorful diagrams, and you'll see that the latest emphasis in neurology, the brain's causal influence on human behavior, has leaked down to the popular level. Many of these experts consider the human being primarily as a physical creature whose actions, feelings, and thoughts for the most part simply manifest neurological activity. Undesirable feelings or behavior, then, should be addressed by ever-more-precise medical methods.

Many Christians have correctly seen the incredible danger such an understanding poses to a biblical worldview, which involves realities beyond what can be seen, touched, or medicated. In other words, we know that a human being involves more than the body. But we also know that the body is a vital aspect of our being as designed by God. So we begin to answer this question---How should Christians think about psychiatric medication?---by considering at least two aspects of what it means for people to be made as the image of God.

1. The Image of God as Union Between Soul and Body

 

The immaterial soul does not function independently of the material body. The soul is not a "ghost in the machine" whose function is autonomous of corporeal mechanisms. God intentionally designed humankind to represent himself in the physical world---a psychosomatic unity comprising both a soul that reflects the immaterial God and also a body that grounds him in material creation.

The keystone passage introducing the image of God is Genesis 1:26: "Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness'." Biblical scholar D. J. A. Clines has pointed out that this phrase is better translated, "Let us make man as our image" for grammatical reasons as well as for historical-contextual reasons. Man, as the image of God, is the physical representation of God's presence in creation.   Continue at Jeremy Pierre

Why Death Matters

Though the focus of my theology of human embodiment has thus far been on life in the body, one of the great inevitabilities of life is death. Ecclesiastes describes the inescapable finality of death (Eccl. 9:2-3), speaking of it in terms of an appointment that all people have (Eccl. 3:1-2). Specifically, “It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment” (Heb. 9:27). Because of universal human sinfulness (Rom. 5:12-19; 1 Cor. 15:21-22), death inevitably comes to all human beings.

Scripture presents physical death as the cessation of the functioning of the material aspect of human nature. The body ceases its physiological activity, and the life principle that energized the body is withdrawn from it (Eccl. 12:7; cf. Gen. 3:19; James 2:26). Continue Reading>>>

Living Today in Light of the Future Resurrection of the Body and the Renewal of Creation

Body and Soul (and Spirit?)

The Christian View of Death—Absent From The Body and Present with the Lord