I believe that the life we are invited into in God, is a life of goodness. It is a life of making choices that lead to flourishing - our own, and the flourishing of those around us. In this context, I use a lot of words interchangeably. I might say wholeness, health, goodness, vitality, abundance. And when I use these words, I am referring to every dimension of who we are. So yes, I want to be spiritually healthy; I also want to be physically healthy. I want to be moving towards greater emotional wholeness; I also want to experience increasing relational wholeness.
C.S. Lewis, in his book Mere Christianity, says it this way:
- Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.
That state of war or state of harmony with oneself is something we experience at every level of our being. In my thinking, in my emotions, in my body, in my motivations, in my desires, in the way I am living out my values, in my vocation, in my consuming of entertainment, food, and stuff … in all this, I am moving either towards a state of harmony that sets me up for flourishing, or away from it.
I hope you can hear in these descriptions the level of integration with which we are designed to function. One way or another, every part of who I am impacts on every other part. You’ll have noticed this, perhaps, when your body feels sluggish and you struggle to think clearly. Or when you are in a relational conflict, and you have a knot in your stomach. Or when you are sick, and you find it hard to connect with God. Or when you look in the mirror and don’t like what you see, and then find it hard to enjoy intimate closeness with your nearest and dearest.
Every part of us that has been bent away from goodness and fullness of life is invited to get straightened out by the work of Jesus, and directed instead towards what leads to flourishing, vitality and abundance. Not just for ourselves, but for those around us. When was the last time you thought about your body in this regard? What might it look like for the way you live in your body to be in a process of rescue and re-orientation towards all that leads to life and vitality?