What God Has to Say About Our Bodies with Sam Allberry
“We’re not our bodies. They’re just containers. What really matters is what’s inside.”
I hear words like that all the time. What’s really surprising is that I also hear them from Christians. It seems that we may be struggling to understand what the Bible teaches about the body and its importance, not just now but for eternity.
That’s why I’m glad to interview Sam Allberry about his new book What God Has to Say About Our Bodies.
Key Ideas
- Our culture has shifted to emphasize who we feel ourselves to be deep down inside. We tend to see our bodies as incidental.
- Our culture tends to view the body as a blank canvas upon which we can express our identities.
- Our standards of beauty have become increasingly unrealistic.
- Christians often misunderstand the afterlife, seeing it as a non-physical existence.
- A biblical view of eternity takes the pressure off having to squeeze everything into life before we die.
- When we struggle with our bodies, including how they’ve been treated by others, we can know we’re not alone, and that the Bible addresses such issues.
- We can listen well to the struggles of others without feeling superior or condemning.
- Our biological sex is a gift from God.
- The Bible gives us a broader range of what it means to be male or female than society often does.
- Much of discipleship in the New Testament is expressed in bodily terms.
Quotes
“We’re being presented with a vision of male beauty and attractiveness that is increasingly unattainable even for the people whose images we’re seeing.”
“We all feel uglier now than we used to.”
“The glory to come is going to make what we go through now feel so trivial by comparison.”
“I can actually give myself to the service of others if I really do believe in what the Bible says about my resurrection.”
“Having a sense of our own shared fallenness can help. It stops us from being aloof, it stops us from being superior or condemning or judgmental.”
“I can receive my biological sex as a gift from God. And sometimes for some people, that will be a very long process to get to the point where they can do that.”
“The Bible gives us a far more liberating way of thinking about what it is like to be a man or to be a woman, and then our culture often does.”
“Every Christian I meet needs some encouragement today, and goodness knows I do.”
Episode Links
Books mentioned:
- What God Has to Say About Our Bodies by Sam Allberry
Transcript
Download a PDF transcript of this episode.
