Recently I sat through a gospel presentation by a well known evangelist. It was a formulaic and familiar sermon that began by driving home our sinfulness and followed with Jesus' offer of a home in heaven (instead of hell) after death. These presentations never quite do it for me since they stress too much a salvation that is transactional and is centred less on Jesus the pearl of great price and more on my getting a ticket outta here!
What struck me most however, or jarred with me, was a casual erm... sort of well, heretical statement right at the start. Here's what he said:
As human beings we are body and soul. [see image of human outline with an oval shaped 'soul' in the centre of it] When we die, our body goes into the grave [image of empty body falling off screen] and our soul, which is the real you, appears before God...
Did you catch the heretical bit? Don't worry if you didn't, most people don't. I quizzed a couple of mature Christians in the room afterwards and they didn't spot it either.
Let's play it again, only this time slow it down...
...when we die, our body goes into the grave and our soul, w h i c h i s t h e R E A L Y O U, a p p e a r s before God...
Did you spot it that time?
It's the popular, but erroneous idea that the real me, the true me, the authentic me is the immaterial component of my humanity. I even heard it from an older woman in my church recently, someone I'd consider an exemplar of the faith. Upon the untimely death of her husband she told me "I'm not bothered about what happens to his body since it isn't him, it's just a shell, the real him is in heaven."
Compare that with the creation of mankind in Genesis:
"Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature." (Genesis 2:7)
As humans we are both 'dusty' and 'breath-y', both moulded clay and lively wind, earthy and heavenly.
Clay without breath is simply inanimate matter but a spirit without a host is just a wandering wind, a gale that blows without any direction and lacks all agency.
To be human is to be made of both. For a human, to be 'out of our bodies' is likened to nakedness and vulnerability, not authenticity and freedom. Whilst it's true that the Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5 that being away from the body is desirable (since we are "at home with the Lord" 2 Cor 5:6), he also counters in Philippians by saying that being in the body is still good since it means "fruitful labour" (Phil 1:22).
Which is better, bodiless union with Christ or embodied ministry for Christ? Thankfully, long term, we don't have to choose. In the end that which is "mortal" will be "swallowed up by life" (2 Cor. 5:8), and when that occurs, the promise is that we will be fully clothed and fully united as body and soul/spirit.
The metaphor that Paul develops in 2 Corinthians of tents and houses is helpful here:
"For we know that if the tent, which is our earthly home, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life." (2 Cor. 5:4-5)
Notice he doesn't say anything about the 'true you' being the disembodied you. He acknowledges the limitations of our earthly bodies, he calls them tents, but the goal isn't to sleep under a starry sky away from canvas or covering, no the goal is to put on 'solid walls and a roof'. Our final heavenly (elsewhere 'spiritual') bodies will enjoy a more harmonious union between spirit and body since the two will have become fully one.
It's true that life under the sun in this body/soul life can often feel like a clunky one. We experience self-consciousness, grapple with split desires and often feel 'at war' within ourselves. At both one and the same time we inhabit the power and possibility of the mind, and the limitations of the body. We 'soar to world's unknown in our dreams' but at times struggle to get out of bed or put on our shoes. We cough up phlegm in public spaces, fart involuntarily, bleed through sanitary towels and get hot flushes for no reason. We plan to pray but fall asleep, plan to exercise but eat donuts and we're often ashamed of our own lack of productivity and achievement.
We are a species who are often confused and fascinated by the mix of natures within ourselves, mystified at how both Dr Jeckel and Mr Hyde seem able to reside so neatly within one person.
Typically, across differing traditions, the answer has been to disassociate our body from our spirit. The body has been called a prison, and we have fantasised about a future where we'll be rid of its restraints. The after life that many faiths have imagined has been a bodiless place, a floaty and ethereal existence.
This isn't the Christian vision of the future.
Instead we're taught that the terrestrial world is good, that matter is good, that bodies are good. We're taught that it's to this tangible, touchable and at times smelly world that God came. You see, Christ took on flesh with all its incumbrance and awkwardness. Full divinity and full humanity resided in one being, a defecating, snivelling, itchy being. When we say that the spirit of a person is the 'true' them, we inadvertently present ourselves as being more spiritual than God(!).
This world, not some immaterial ghostly one, is the world God loves and calls good and it's the union of body and breath (or spirit) that makes us us.
The real me is not without a body.
In 'Being Human' Jo Frost and Peter Lynas write "we are embodied souls and ensouled bodies." and elsewhere "We are called to be faithful bodies, not to have a body we use faithfully"
Beautiful.
We have an odd relationship with ourselves, our bodies and spirit set ajar from each other following sin's intrusion, but one day this will be put right and we will enter a stage of existence more physical and more embodied than we can imagine.
In fact, let's imagine:
Imagine an experience of limitless agency, where you burst with youthful vitality and enjoy a perfect harmony between body and soul. What a life that will be. "If one could run without getting tired,” writes C. S. Lewis in The Last Battle, “I don't think one would often want to do anything else."
On that day my body will not be limited by or confined to the laws of gravity or the impositions of matter. It will be fully united with my spirit and so should my spirit desire an audience with God or a visit to family, my body will not hold it back from being there in an instant. We glimpse this in Jesus' post-resurrection appearances, he is there one minute and not the next, he's on a road walking to Emmaus and breaking bread until all of sudden, he isn't.
Since my flesh will have been finally put to death it will no longer lead me away from beauty and purity. No longer will I see something in God's good world and twist or distort it for my selfish gain. No longer will my body partner with corruption but instead it will delight only in doing what my Father delights in. All will be satisfying labour only without the pain of futility and frustration. My plans will be accomplished, I won't have to cancel because of sickness and I won't be disappointed by another's moral failure. This, and a million things more, is the reason why we must resist the easy to swallow, but ultimately shallow and superficial heresy of the true you being the inner you.
You do not have a body, you are one and a spirit too.
"We must constantly be on our guard against a reductionist understanding of what it means to be human, both from out culture and misguided parts of the church."
Jo Frost & Peter Lynas