A Temple of the Lord

I spent last week eating healthfully and going to the gym.  Your first reaction is probably an approving, “Good for you, Shane!”  And indeed, heaven knows I need to work on my health, since every academic year I seem to do my best to drown my body’s best efforts at longevity in excessive caffeine, sugar, sedentariness, and sleep deprivation.  If our bodies are a temple of the Lord, I have been damned a thousand times over for its wanton desecration. 

But, I’ll be honest: last week’s veggies and gym sessions weren’t peace offerings to assuage my wronged God.  And as few calories as I was eating and as many hours as I was spending in the gym, it’s a bit excessive to try to spin it as “being healthy.”  And it’s not like I particularly need physical strength—few of us do: athletes, military/intelligence personnel, and those in some labor intensive industries such as construction.   So why would I care so much? 

If I’m honest with myself, I can only conclude I had an extremely simple reason—I wanted to be more attractive.  This is absolutely normal, right?  How many guy want to bulk up?  How many girls want to slim down?  And it makes sense, considering that despite disputed efficacy, the body-building supplement industry was worth $2.7 billion in 2008, and the diet industry was worth a whopping $60 billion in 2011.  And our popular media agrees: Stephanie Meyers seems to excuse Edward Cullen for his rather obsessive stalking with frequent reference to his “marble Adonis” body.  But, again, this is absolutely normal, right?   I just watched Thor—what guy doesn’t want a body like Chris Hemsworth?

Probably Christ for one. The Bible talks about many aspects of His life and death—but it seems remarkably thin on Jesus’ workout regimens.  In His years preaching on Earth, God somehow didn’t see fit to mention, “Blessed are the hot.”

So why do we strive so much to have a “hot body”?  I don’t need it for my career; I don’t need it to be healthy.  Well, what is “being hot”?  It seems to be generally a measure of how much you can make another person “want” you merely upon looking at you.  When Jesus warns, “everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart?”  (Matthew 5:27) he is speaking about this exact thing we are attempting to evoke with our workout regimens and protein supplements.

If we actually succeed in this, we are literally leading those around us to sin.  Sure, it fans our ego to have all the girls or boys talking about us, and perhaps we can’t help but wonder if anyone would date is if we’re not attractive enough.  But if we accomplish in making all those who look at us covet us, we have converted our body into a temple to ourselves, not a temple to the Lord.

This is not to say we should never work out or eat healthfully: being healthy, staying fit, making sure we’re able to do what is required of us are all deeply ingrained in the Catholic Tradition.  From the very beginning of religious orders, the Benedictines have divided each day into care for the body, mind, and soul, and the Jesuits have always discussed cura personalis—care for the whole person.  But we must be careful not to go too far, or act in an immodest way (why did you just take your shirt off in front of all those people?  And what exactly is the purpose of that plunging neckline?).

After all, for all the care we can spend sculpting our bodies for possible human lovers, how many of us spend that same amount of time sculpting our soul for God?  The Church teaches that our bodies are sacramental; what we do with them—and why—have eternal reverberations in our soul. 

Honestly, my reckless disregard for my physical health during the school year is against my faith.  I’m not Jesus; when I destroy my temple, it takes more than 3 days for to rebuild it.  But with the modern world telling us we’ll never have a boyfriend or girlfriend unless we have a certain body, it is so easy to fall prey to the other extreme, and allow our bodies to become idols.

Or perhaps it’s not just society.  Perhaps we fear, deep down, we’re the ones who are shallow.  If we have the right body, we’ll probably end up having our pick of physically attractive partners, and we'll never have to stop and reflect that we don't look with heaven’s eyes and see the whole person, but merely life on the surface.

Because above all, if love is skin-deep, then true covenantal marriage is impossible, and if we cannot overcome desire to possess others’ bodies, then even our closest relationship with our spouse will be tainted with sin.