![]() We are homesick for a place we have never yet been, an eternal home on the farthest horizon. The longing for permanence, the sense of nakedness, of being out of place, the groaning of our ageing bodies, these are signposts to a far off place. For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. ![]() ![]() 'Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. He has also set eternity in the hearts of me. ![]() 'He has made everything beautiful in its time. We are made for eternity, even if we are only en route. Like sheep they are destined for the grave,Īll the same, we are not to despair. 'But man, despite his riches, does not endure The authors of the Bible did not shrink from hard realities, the transience of man's life, which sometimes feels as insignificant as an animal's: Such is the fragility of every human body, yours and mine. If left to thaw for just a moment, it would melt away into a gooey mess. The artist Mark Quinn captured this in a sculpture of his head made with his own frozen blood. Bertrand Russell lamented "when I die, I rot". We stab, mutilate and brand human flesh, like we would cattle.Īnd like all meat, our bodies poised to putrefy, the moment the heart stops. The body needs taming, sometimes by piercing and tattooing, which taken to extremes can dehumanise. Our bodies respond stubbornly to our requests, they are easily fatigued like a beast of burden. How else does Western culture describe the body? Just as a cow can be seen as steak on the hoof, so the human body can be seen as so much meat. So when God looks at you, he does not see a disembodied soul, but an integrated whole. Adam found this out when Eve was surgically removed from his thorax! Rather it is the family likeness to our creator, all that makes us human that images our creator.Īnd just as the heavenly father exists eternally in family relationship, we are not made as individual units off the assembly line, but as mutually interdependent family. The distinctiveness of man, the image, is not an extra circuit board that generates mind, or a design feature like opposable thumbs. The Man came alive-a living soul! (3)'īut whilst animals are also nephesh, man is different, unique in bearing the image of God: 'God formed Man out of dirt from the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life. He is even described like a Great Physician performing the kiss of life: Rather He is the potter, the tailor, or even the chef, an artist caught up with His physical creation:Īnd knit me together with bones and sinews?' (2) Moreover, God is not the Grand Engineer winding up the mechanism and disappearing from the scene. The Hebrew word nephesh refers to a living unity, a soul fleshed out. We do not have bodies, rather, we are living bodies. To separate body and soul would be extraordinary to the Hebrew authors, even miraculous (1). Firstly, the Bible does not reduce a person to an automaton. Contrary to popular opinion, the Bible is far more positive about the body than pagan thought. I want to contrast our culture's view of the body with a Christian approach. Our bodies are like the larger mechanism of the universe in miniature, winding down until they reach maximum entropy, cold and dead. No wonder our culture is hopeless about the future. If my body is just an organic machine, what is its future? When any other machine malfunctions, it becomes scrap, like an obsolete mobile. Am I really just a computer made of meat? Am I really no more than a sum of my parts, 43kg of oxygen, 16 kg carbon, 7kg hydrogen, 1.8kg nitrogen and a few trace elements? Is my body simply the vehicle for my selfish genes? It's a useful model when learning about hormones or kidneys, but less satisfying for describing whole people. Medics are merely body mechanics, hired to repair them. Medical schools teach students to treat the body as a self-regulating machine.
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