What’s the matter with matter?
“My home is in heaven. I’m just traveling through this world.” Many of us may be familiar with this quote from Billy Graham. It is certainly a comforting image, hopeful that whatever troubles we may find in this mortal life, we will spend eternity with God in our true home. Unfortunately, without proper framing, this can fit into a popular theology in our time claiming that the world is ultimately bad and full of suffering. We just have to survive as long as we can until we make our escape. The world is like a prison, uncomfortable and frightening. We are longing to go to our true home. There are two problems with this way of looking at the world.
One, it ignores Genesis 1. When God created the world, God made everything good. God set humans on earth to care for it. The original intention was that the earth would be our home where God would dwell with us. Doubtless, there is suffering and hardship in this world, but there is also unfathomable beauty and magnificence. Spend some time on the coast, listening to the breakers crash against the shore with thundering pops and sprays of salty ocean water, or wander beneath the shade of fruit trees swaying in the summer breeze. Climb to the top of a mountain and gaze upon the land below, stretching out to the misty horizon in all directions, beautifully carved by glaciers and geological processes over hundreds of thousands of years, home to countless plants and animals. Bear witness to the glory and wonder God wove into creation, and you will find it hard to wish for a home away from here. This world is good.
The second problem is that if we imagine the world as transient, a fleeting dream that afflicts us as much as it supports us, then we are less likely to care for it. Our production and consumption for the sake of our own comfort over the last century and a half has caused damage to the world. Species have gone extinct due to habitat loss. Pollution has destroyed once prime habitats. Overfishing has depleted the food supply along coasts, destabilizing the food webs there. And climate change, something which human industry has contributed to, has affected coastlines, the range of some animals, and other factors that impact the world. If we continue to live as if earth isn’t our home, it won’t be a home for anyone before long.
But all that aside, when we read Romans 8, we are reminded again of this dichotomy, though on a more personal level. Paul talks about the war between flesh and spirit, and we may want to read this as a conflict between the fallen earth and the purity of heaven. Paul sets up this simple dichotomy: flesh is bad, and spirit is good. We are to walk by spirit, not according to the flesh. Death is the consequence of being overly concerned with the flesh. Without thinking too deeply about it, we might come to a simple conclusion about what these two things are. Flesh is material stuff, our bodies, the urges they have, the things we can see and perceive with our other senses. Spirit is the stuff of God, invisible and mystical, immutable and powerful beyond measure. In thinking this way, we draw dangerously close to rejecting this world and our bodies, forgetting that God made them good in the first place. But what else could Paul mean?
This creates a bit of a puzzle for us, and before I go on to propose a solution, I should say that it is quite possible that Paul really does view flesh and earthly stuff as bad. Paul may have been impacted by Greek thought—he was educated enough to read and write in Greek—adopting the view that there was some idealistic realm of forms that earth could only seek to copy. Paul may have had a different worldview than the author of the first chapter of Genesis. One of the great things about the Bible is that so many ways of looking at things are represented.
With that caveat in mind, there is a way we could read Paul that fits with both Genesis and Lutheran theology. Instead of thinking about flesh and spirit as opposite worlds of substance, we can think of them as different sources of energy. We can choose to get electricity for our homes from purely the local electrical system or we can supplement it with solar panels on our houses. We can choose to fuel our bodies with candy and coffee or plenty of sleep and well balanced meals. I suspect most of us have had moments when we needed to supplement ourselves to stay awake. Maybe we’ve had a long car ride to get through or we’ve been particularly busy between work and a family event. When that happens, we often turn to caffeine. It energizes us enough to keep going a little longer, but it often isn’t enough. While it is better than being tired, we aren’t quite as aware while on a caffeine high as we are well rested. Eventually, we will crash and burn. Sometimes we get cranky and snap at people because our body chemistry is off and we are severely overtired. As much as coffee can be helpful for a quick burst, when we try to rely on it for energy for a long time, it backfires.
The flesh is a bit like coffee. To rely on the flesh is to rely on our own strength, our own will, our own bodies. The problem is that when our bodies are the things encouraging us to sin, feeling urges that pressure us to forsake trust in God in favor of taking action for immediate gratification, it isn’t really something worth relying upon. How can our will, which seems to come from our brain, be trusted to overcome the parts of our brain that are fighting against it? Sometimes, a strong will can prevail, but not forever. Every human willpower eventually fails. It isn’t that the body is bad. God has given us our bodies as gifts to live and move, to care for our loved ones and make art, to climb mountains and lay on beaches. The problem comes when we rely on our bodies to overcome their own worst desires. We can’t do it on our own, not forever. Even if we can make a few good decisions from time to time, coffee won’t get us across the entire country on a road trip without some sleep, and the flesh won’t save us from itself.
To rely on the spirit is to rely on God, not our own strength. Our bodies may be good, but they aren’t good enough to overcome the power of sin. So when we walk according to the Spirit, we are submitting our lives to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Instead of trusting ourselves to overcome temptation and go out and work for the Kingdom, we rest in the power of the Holy Spirit to motivate us and keep us safe from our unhealthy desires. Of course, we will fail from time to time. Sometimes, our faith is shaken and we turn to what we know, ourselves. But the deeper we connect with God, the more we can trust the Holy Spirit to guide our lives. While it may be more fun to reject the world and condemn our bodies, trusting that God will fix things in the future, polluting the land and surviving on sugar and caffeine, God’s path is always more sustainable. We can enjoy the world and bodies God has given us, take care of them, get plenty of rest, and trust that God will keep us on track when we aren’t strong enough to do it ourselves.
