A Fart Inspired Meditation

Jesus Died For Our Bodies

Probably the single most deluding subconscious “Christian” conviction from which I had to free myself after almost forty years was that we HAVE bodies as opposed to we ARE our bodies. Indeed, we are certainly MORE than our bodies, but we are most definitely not merely souls WITH discardable bodies. I say “subconscious” because I had come to a cognitive and intellectual understanding of this a number of years ago, but the habits of my life were formed by an unspoken notion that I was a soul with an appendage I called “body”. A missed prayer was spiritual slippage, but indulging in four chocolate cookies and three glasses of milk was completely inconsequential spiritually. Feeling bloated was only an idiosyncratic physical factoid that only affected me as an individual unless I had gas; it had nothing to say to me spiritually about my relationship to the universe and to its Creator. Farting may be impolite or crass, but there was no category in my brain where that gaseous air could be an unconscious tell that belied my claim to worship only One God. The odor is not the “fragrance of Christ” as St. Paul admonishes us to be. One does not sniff and say, “This man has been with God.” That’s laughably obvious. But I never thought it had the potential of being an indication of rebellion that exposed the worship of other gods, namely bad food and too much of it. The five physical senses of my body had no information to give to the mysterious immaterial part of me I called “heart” and the immaterial “heart” into which I wanted Jesus to come had no connection whatsoever to the beating in my chest.

Ironically, this confusion came from my Christian roots (even though it is Christian thought that ultimately cleared things up for me). Fat pastors lectured me on the terrors of hell and the damnable trifecta of alcohol, tobacco, and sex outside of marriage. This unholy trinity seemed to be the only demons of the material world that had any kind of immaterial consequence.

This is hyperbole, of course, but I was a teenager when I was beginning to own the values of Christianity. And there were confusing signals: gluttons made a spiritual sacrament of virginity, the loss of which was said to mar our souls. We were indoctrinated that physical aromas always through “petting” would have permanent spiritual effect on our souls and mar the best of our future relationships irremediably. All this even though butter-clogged arteries and the consumption of unquantifiable amounts of sugar apparently were considered holy rites of the redeemed, necessary privileges not to be denied, privileges that sometimes led them to extreme suffering. In our midweek prayer meetings, we practically canonized sickness as akin to martyrdom. We pleaded with God to heal the Job-like sufferers who languished in their hospital beds while chugging Coca-cola and Krispy-Kreme donuts as if there was nothing dissonant in those scenarios. Anyone that might have dared to say — had it crossed anyone’s mind — that the Divine plan for healing might include a little less sugar and one less helping of mashed potatoes before one could reasonably expect to approach the Divine with any semblance of reverent sincerity would have been thrown out of church as a legalistic apostate with barbaric insensitivity. The feelings of the poor sick one would have been irreparably hurt. And we all knew that hurt feelings was the worst thing that could ever befall a saint, especially one suffering as a martyr with the effects of cheap and fast food because they never, never failed — no, not once! — to bow their heads and bless it even in public! They prayed God’s blessing on the poison, but they still got sick.

As a maturing Christian I came to truly believe that God is not only going to redeem the immaterial part of me, but also the material part of me. Because one part of me without the other part of me makes me less me. Now, it seems to me that no one (especially One that is infinitely wise) would redeem anything that has no value. And it also seems reasonable that the best way to honor anyone is to share in their values. So, taking care of anything that is going to eventually be redeemed (soul, body, earth) seems not only rational, but godly.

Yet none of this factored into the “joy of my salvation” until I started consciously inculcating body habits that honored the Redeemer of body as the Creator of body. If the Redeemer would pay so much for a body it seems to me that respecting his value of body would take into consideration his original design of body as Creator. In other words, if the inhabitants of the house I have built have torn up my property I may benevolently let them continue to live in it if they are truly repentant. But I do not expect that they keep on destroying my house they live in simply on the fact that I intend to renovate it. I’d like to see that they, however clumsily, are trying to clean up the debris in anticipation of the great restoration to show that they will truly love my design and inhabit the newly restored place worthily. Naturally, their pitiful attempts to pick up the debris and take out the trash will not ever approach a completely remodeled and updated mansion I have in mind, but the habits of orderliness and the energy invested in making things better will bring great joy to them and to me since I will be working beside them. By their new habits, they will be saying, “We like your plan.”

I do not judge on these matters. I can not. The impetus of this whole thought was my bloated feeling. However, I have sanctified — and, yes, I truly see it as sanctification — to the point that I can pass up an Oreo with some regularity. However, I am completely incapable of saying no to the second or third Oreo once I’ve capitulated to the first.

Until the ultimate restoration I need undeserved grace. And antacid. But my habits are more and more starting to say that I think more highly of the Designer’s design than I did before.

I pray and meditate each morning in spiritual exercise. But I also know that too much food and too little sleep will possibly have a more negative impact on my patience and kindness than missing my daily reading. Because I’m not just an embodied soul; I am body. And so much more.