We aren’t just spiritual and emotional beings, we’re physical ones too. Please take care of your body. It’s so important to recognize that your brain is a part of it too and is also affected by not getting enough food or sleep or doing something repetitive for too long.
Christians often forget that the cure for feeling bad isn’t always just being more spiritual. When Elijah was fleeing from Jezebel and was so disheartened he wanted God to take his life, God didn’t tell him to pray more, He sent an angel to feed him.
God made us physical beings who need to take care of ourselves. He made us reliant on food, water, sleep, exercise, and socializing just as He made us need Him.
We often would love to pretend that we’re only intellectual and physical things are beneath us but God likes how He created us and He made us to live in a physical body in a physical world as well as to have a mind and a spirit.
Isn’t that last paragraph a summation of Theology of the Body? I am no expert on JPII’s work but the whole thing is basically written about how the body is holy and good, and how to use and care for it according to God’s intentions for it.
There is a grave heresy among Christian circles today that say that the body is “just a container” for the soul, and often misquote C.S. Lewis for saying we are souls with a body (not true, and Lewis never said this). However, such thinking has lead Christians to embrace sins and unhealthy mindsets about our health, and it meddles with our understanding of God and His Will for us.
We are both soul AND body, both are holy and good, and both made in the Image of God. That has profound ramifications for us as human beings that many people take for granted or do not fully understand.
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