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BODY ISSUES AMONG
"THE BODY"
Malia K.H. Freeburg
Recent news is permeated with two contradictory “epidemics” characterizing
Americans: anorexia and obesity. However, maybe the larger
paradox is the way in which the Church has embraced the same
standards of beauty that the larger culture has. In many cases,
the Church has adopted cultural standards of beauty and views
physical bodies as representations of spirituality. This appears
to be a modern version of the “health and wealth” gospel in that
“Christ is reflected in one’s physical appearance.”
Americans excel at
taking things to the extremes. This is particularly evident in
the way that we eat. According to the National Institutes of
Health, obesity and excess weight together are the second
leading cause of preventable death in the United States, close
behind tobacco use. An estimated 300,000 deaths per year are due
to the obesity epidemic
[1]. On the
opposite extreme, bulimia and anorexia are at an all-time high
throughout the world, and experts are blaming American culture
for their prevalence
[2]. Just weeks ago, Ana Carolina Reston,
21, a model from Brazil, died from a systemic
infection related to anorexia, and Uruguayan model Luisel Ramos died of the same
cause during an August fashion show in Montevideo
[3].
Further illustrating
our complicated relationship with body image is the strong
presence of discrimination against the obese. Despite the
prevalence of obesity in America, it is one of the last legal
forms of prejudice in our country
[4]. A
literature review by psychology professors from Yale University
reviews information from multiple studies on discriminatory
attitudes and behaviors against obese individuals. They found
clear and consistent stigmatization, and in some cases
discrimination, documented in three important areas of living:
employment, education, and health care. Among the findings are
that 28% of teachers in one study said that becoming obese is
the worst thing that can happen to a person; that 24% of nurses
said that they are "repulsed" by obese persons; and, controlling
for income and grades, that parents provide less college support
for their overweight children than for their thin children
[5].
As mainstream
culture continues to obsess about weight and body issues, one
would hope the Church would be free of these dominating thoughts
and that it might offer a more biblical and healthy message. If
anyone would have an enlightened perspective on body issues, we
would hope that it would be the people who are privileged to
have their self-worth and identity in Jesus Christ. Sadly, this
is not the case. As I heard many times from several sociology
professors in college, “the Church almost always follows the
mainstream culture.” R. Marie Griffith, a professor at Princeton
expands that, among Christians, like the larger American
culture, “body type has come to seem a virtually infallible
touchstone of the worth of persons about whom one knows nothing
else, as well as the value—indeed the deepest truths—of one’s
own self: a vital component of subjectivity”
[6].
For the past six
years I have lived and worked with college students as a
Resident Director at a Christian university. These are a few of
the many stories that my students have shared with me on how the
Church has perpetuated misguided images of their bodies:
A high school
student is told by her youth pastor that she should lose weight
in order to be more attractive to the males in the youth group.
In the process of trying to lose weight, the student develops an
extreme case of bulimia and is hospitalized. Individuals within
her church refer to her disease as a sign of her vanity and use
her as an example as someone who has “fallen into sin.”
A college student
volunteers with a local youth group so that she can mentor high
school females. Amongst the things she teaches them is how to
purge after they have overeaten. She does not question the
impact of this lesson until after one of her students is
hospitalized for bulimia. She had been taught the same lesson by
her own youth leader.
A sophomore in
college stops playing on the basketball team, and he gains some
weight as a result of his decreased physical activity. He is
confronted by the head of the worship team and told that he
cannot continue to be a part of leadership within the Church
until he loses the weight that he has gained. He is told that he
is a bad example to the community, and that he is not reflecting
that Christ is the “head of his temple”.
An overweight,
female is meeting with her Christian therapist and expressing
the pain she is experiencing as a result of her mother’s
long-term affair. The therapist tells her, “Your mom has stopped
the affair, but you are continuing to live in your own gluttony.
You are the bigger sinner; why can’t you just forgive your mom?
It might help you start eating less.”
A pastor’s
daughter overhears her parents talking about how they have
failed as parents because both of their daughters are
overweight. Shortly after, her parents tell her that they do not
feel comfortable having her eat meals in their home when she is
visiting from college, because they don’t want to contribute any
more weight to her body. They tell her that instead they would
be happy to meet with her between meals or at the local gym.
Sadly, rather than
being a haven from the images that the world asks us to accept,
some of our churches embrace those same standards as a way of
reflecting Christ. As a result, many of the individual bodies
within our larger Body are plagued with identity issues much
deeper than the physical ones that the rest of the world
experiences; they face spiritual shame as well. In the words of
one person in reference to her weight, “My biggest sin is out
there, glaring, for everyone to see.” As a result, I fear that
some churches have more damaging ideals of personal appearance
than many in Hollywood.
Spirituality and
faith have been associated with body image and beauty since
before the Puritans
[7]. The body has
long been thought to represent the true self within. Christians
today often refer to 1 Corinthians, where Paul refers to the
body as a temple of the Holy Spirit. Hence, in this line of
thinking, a body that “looks good” is a way of saying, “I have
Jesus.” and it is a testimony to Christ’s transforming power.
“Slim is how God meant us to be," reasons Judy Halliday, founder
of Thin Within, a "grace-oriented" approach to weight loss. Her
program explains "how to reconnect with God and achieve the
weight that God meant for them to be."
[8].
Today, books
categorized as Christian life and spirituality make up about 40%
of all self-help books, and a sizeable portion of this genre is
devoted to weight loss
[9]. Ranging
from one of the first diet devotionals, by Deborah Pierce in
1960, I Prayed Myself Slim: the secrets of a happily married
fashion model who was known to her schoolmates as fatty, fatty,
two-by-four, to the Weigh Down Diet that permeated
evangelical churches and universities throughout the 1990’s, to
today’s Holy Land Diet, some Christians are used to
viewing diets as a part of their faith. I recently talked to an
individual who was on the “Jesus Diet” because she desires for
her life to reflect the way that Christ lived his. She was
eating only foods that the Bible specifically mentions Jesus
eating: bread, water, wine, and fish. She has her adolescent
children on the same diet, and their family has been eating like
this for six months.
While founders of
Christian dieting groups say that they are more focused on
glorifying God and being obedient as opposed to looking good,
they still conform to the larger cultural standards of beauty
[10]. For many, it has replaced or brought
confusion to the biblical discipline of fasting. I have listened
to more Christian college students than I can count tell me they
are going to celebrate lent by fasting so that they can lose
weight.
Many religious
groups emphasize dietary restrictions in everyday life, such as
kosher laws, or during special occasions, such as fasting during
Ramadan. These practices hold a variety of meanings, and
religious leaders talk about them in different ways. Thus,
spiritual “dieting” is common, but the form that it is taking in
contemporary evangelical life is specific to our subculture
[11]. As opposed to a being a way of
honoring and relating to God, fasting is viewed by some
Christians as a way of “spiritually supporting” their own weight
loss efforts. Although healthy weight-loss can be excellent for
one’s health, this is not the intended purpose of fasting.
Christ came to
transform our hearts and our minds through being in deeper
relationship with him. “For in him we live, and move, and having
our being” (Acts 17:28). One of the significant things that we
can learn from the life of Christ is that he never focused on
physical attributes of individuals (John 6:33). From the
befriending a Samaritan woman who had five husbands and was
living with a man to whom she was not married (John 4:7-26), to
healing a disabled man whose community thought he was living in
sin (John 5:8), to performing a job that was meant only for
servants (John 13:2-17), Jesus transcended harmful cultural
ideas and offered a model for the Church and the larger
community to adopt. Together, as the Body, we are called to do
the same.
Physical health is
important. Christ did care for the physical aspects of
individuals. However, he cared for the emotional and spiritual
aspects as well, and he never viewed the appearance of an
individual as a reflection of his or her heart (Mark 5:24-34).
Some of the examples in this article are extreme, and they
reflect only some Christians. However, I believe they do help to
depict the prevalence of mixing personal spirituality with
physical appearance in our American, Christian culture. Amongst
us, there are individuals who are hurting and victims of
physical prejudice and pain. It would be exciting if the Church
could indeed be testimony of Christ’s transforming power, not
through our physical appearances, but through the ways in which
we care for the marginalized in our midst. The Bible, instead of
being a recipe book of what we should and shouldn’t eat or drink
should be, “a book that calls us together and helps create a
community, a community that is a catalyst for God’s work in our
world”
[12].
Notes
1. From the
West Virginia Health
Statistic Center.
[back to text]
2.
Ellen Walters and Kenneth Kendler: Anorexia nervosa and
anorexic-like syndromes in a population based female twin
sample. The American Journal of Psychiatry 2005,
p. 64-75.
[back
to text]
3. From
www.CNN.com,
November 17, 2006.
[back to text]
4. Rebecca Puhl and Kelly D.
Brownell, “Bias, Discrimination, and Obesity,” 2001, The North
American Association for the Study of Obesity
[back to text]
5. Rebecca Puhl and Kelly D. Brownell, “Bias, Discrimination, and Obesity.”
2001, The North American Association for the Study of Obesity
[back to text]
6. R. Marie Griffith, Born Again Bodies: Flesh and
Spirit in American
Christianity, Berkeley, Ca: University of California Press,
2004, p. 7.
[back to text]
7.
R. Marie Griffith, Born Again Bodies:
Flesh and Spirit in American Christianity.
[back to text]
8. Judy and Arthur
Holliday, Thin Within, p. 9.
[back to text]
9. R. Marie Griffith, Born Again Bodies:
Flesh and Spirit in American Christianity, p. 2.
[back to text]
10. R. Marie Griffith, Born Again Bodies: Flesh and
Spirit in
American Christianity.
[back to text]
11. R.
Marie Griffith, Born Again Bodies: Flesh and
Spirit in
American Christianity.
[back to text]
12. Brian D. McLaren, A New Kind of Christian: a
Tale of
Two Friends on a
Spiritual Journey,
p. 53.
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to text]
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