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.
