I’m a big fan of understanding systems theory. Systems theory is the recognition that individual components are a part of a greater whole and therefore the interconnectedness of all of the components is important.
Our body is a system of systems. Nerves, muscles, skeleton, circulation and many more are systems that all have to work together. When one thing begins to fail, it affects the rest of the systems. Moving beyond our bodies into groups of people, each of these is another system. Your family, workplace, friend groups, church, hobby groups, government, Lion’s Club, each one of them is a system. A group with expressed and unexpressed rules, those in formal and informal positions of power, those who are not. I could go on and on.
The chapter today wants to acknowledge our body as a system to which we should be aware. Our body is the center of our Spiritual life. The Bible calls our body a temple of the living God. From the opening page of my blog
“We are not wasted space, we are temples of a Holy Being greater than ourselves, temples to be inhabited and brought to life. -Rich Mullins
The body is my primary place of dominion. I can control my thoughts, my hands, my eye movement, what I touch and what I pull my hand away from when it’s important. I might not be able to have dominion anywhere else, but when it comes to my body…
The danger lies in our desire to have dominion over others who make different choices than I do. Depending on the vast nature of those differences, it can create varying reactions in us. Jesus tossed tables around the Temple and healed people without fixing their theology, there is a range of appropriate reaction.
Like many things in life this body of ours can be used to gratify itself or function as a tool to bless others. In a recent sermon I spoke about the Olympic Athletes that train in Colorado Springs Colorado. The news story was specifically about their diets. The report centered on the idea that food for these athletes wasn’t really the pleasure center that it is for most of us. Food is simply fuel to take care of the greater need of physical peak performance. Just like a high-end engine doesn’t work on the cheapest gasoline, so it is with these Olympic athletes. What they put in their bodies is a means to an end, not the end itself.
So it is with this temple of mine (that isn’t mine!) The older I get, the more my body pays for eating like a 10-year-old. And the older I get spiritually, that observation applies to my heart as well.
11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. I Corinthians 13:11-12
Truth, Grace, and Time 