The Corpse And The Ghost

Last night I dreamed I was in two places at once: on the ground and in the air. On the ground, I was a corpse, a body without a soul. And in the air, I was a ghost, a soul without a body.

Both visions of myself disturbed and disgusted me. In the dream I felt that the separation of my body and soul had to be the result of a great evil since in each form of myself, a corpse and a ghost, I had lost my human nature. Without my human nature, I had lost my ability to truly live. As a corpse, I could not feel or emote love. As a spirit, I could not show or express the love that I felt. Without the union of my body and soul, I could not truly be myself.

This dream caused me to ponder upon what it means to be a human being. It also enlightened me as to why I am so disturbed by ghosts and corpses. A body is not meant to be without a soul and a soul is not meant to be without a body.

In contemplating all this, it dawned on me that this is what death is: the separation of body and soul. It also dawned on me that this exactly why Jesus came, died, and rose. Jesus came not just to redeem our soul, but also to redeem our bodies. He came to restore our human nature.

How do we know this?

We know this because of who man and woman were created to be before their sin. We also know this because, Jesus, after his Resurrection, ascends into Heaven with his body and his soul. Bear with me…

When God first creates man and woman, Adam and Eve, they are naked. To be shamelessly naked means complete trust in another person. Nakedness means vulnerability. Adam and Eve’s nakedness not only demonstrates their complete trust and vulnerability with one another, it also represents their total innocence. They had no sin.

To sin, means to use yourself or someone else wrongly. It means to use yourself or someone else in a selfish way. To use yourself or someone else in a selfish way results in separation from God, self, neighbor, and creation. When Adam and Eve sinned, this is what happened. And as a result, humanity began to deform.

What does this mean? Well, Christianity teaches that the soul is the form of the body. What happens when the body dies? It deforms. In other words, the soul leaves the body. So, sin separates us from ourselves and as a result we die. Our soul leaves our body.

But, The Good News is, Jesus saves us from our sins. Through his complete innocence and giving of himself, body and soul on the cross, and by rising again, he shows us that he wants to restore us to our original, pre-sin, human nature. Jesus rose body and soul showing us that we will one day be complete again. Our death will not last forever, in fact, our life will be restored eternally, and we will no longer be separated from God, self, neighbor, and creation.

If we follow in the footsteps of Christ as we are called to do, we will rise body and soul too. We will not stay as a corpse and as a ghost as I was in my dream. We will be complete in our human nature: innocent, bodily, soulful, eternal beings!

Why is this important? Why is union of our body and soul so valuable that God came down in the form of a human being, died, and rose from the dead?

The answer is because our call to goodness, holiness, and happiness is written in the design of our bodies. Without our bodies, our human spirit cannot realize its fullest potential for doing good. Without realizing its fullest potential for doing good, we cannot achieve our call to holiness. Without holiness, we cannot be happy.

But first, what is holiness and how do our bodies carry it out? In his talk given at Theology of the Body Virtual Conference titled, “Theology of the Body: So What? Who Cares? What’s In It For Me? A New Vision for the Universal Call to Holiness,” Dr. Gregory Popcak defines holiness in five major points:

1.  Holiness is relational

2.  Holiness is incarnational

3.  Holiness comes from consecrating our desires to Christ

4.  Holiness comes from testing our actions

5.  Holiness is embracing our universal longing for more

Let’s start with Dr. Gregory Popcak’s first point. Holiness is relational. What does this mean and how do our bodies carry out our human desire for relational holiness?

If we go back to Genesis, we see that Adam, in his original solitude, although one with God, was still lonely. He still felt incomplete and God even said, “…It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a suitable partner for him” (Genesis 2:18, NAB). Even in our original pre-sin creation, God did not make us to be alone. We are meant for relationship and our physical bodies help carry out this need for relationship in multiple ways.

Dr. Gregory Popcak makes an interesting point in his virtual talk. He notes a psychologist who remarked that all animals on earth walk around with their hardest side out for protection. When an animal shows you its soft side it is displaying an act of trust and intimacy.

 Humans, on the other hand, always walk and put forth their soft side because our bodies do not allow us to conveniently walk around otherwise. Why is this? Our bodies are designed to be constantly communicating our need for intimacy and our need to love and be loved. Our bodies are designed for union. For relation. Unfortunately, sin breaks this down. Fortunately love, repairs and rebuilds. Relationships are holy because God designed us as relational beings. When we fulfill our holy call to relationship, through our bodies, we achieve happiness.

Dr. Gregory Popcak’s second point expands on the first: Holiness is incarnational. This means that we cannot love from afar. We cannot simply sit down and gush love by spiritually “sending good thoughts.” No. Love requires work. We must carry that love out with our bodies, through a listening ear, a hug, sex, helping someone move, feeding the hungry, etc. To genuinely love is to show affection, not just feel affection. Doing good for others builds community through service. To heal the damage sin has done we must use our bodies. God shows us this by becoming human himself and giving his body up for us on the cross. This ultimate act of love and giving up of his body through his death and resurrection shows us the importance our body has when it comes to giving love in this world and in the next. When we use our bodies to give love, we fulfill our calling and thus, achieve true happiness.

Point three: Holiness comes from consecrating our desires to Christ. How do our bodies help us do this?

It is because of our bodies that we can feel and fulfill the desires of our spirit. It is because of the emotions and chemical reactions within our bodies that we can know what we desire. When we know what we desire we can go to Christ with what we desire, and we can give others the opportunity for Christ to work through them. We cannot meet our desires alone. We need God and we need others to have those desires met. To meet our desires and to meet the desires of others, is an act of love. To carry out this act of love, we must use our bodies. When our desires are met, we achieve the happiness God wants us to have.

       (I’d like to add that desires are not a bad thing. Desires are good. They come from God. Sin can often distort and misuse desire, but that does not make the desire bad. If we go to God with our desires, he will help us meet those desires and help use what we desire for goodness, holiness, and happiness.)

Point four: Holiness requires us to test our actions. Without our bodies we cannot act. To test our actions, we must make sure that everything we do is an act of love. Dr. Gregory Popcak points out that the opposite of love is not hate, it is use. Remember, to sin is to use oneself or another selfishly. When we love, we build someone up. We affirm their personhood by making sure that they become the best person they can be. When we use someone, we depersonalize them, crushing their personhood and keeping them from reaching their full potential of a human being. The more we love, the more we use our bodies to work for the good of ourselves and others. We work to build people up in their personhood so that they can become their best and happiest selves.

       And finally, point five: Holiness requires us to embrace the universal longing for more.

       God has built it into our bodies to long for perfection. Where else can this idea come from? Nothing in this world is perfect. Nothing. How can we imagine what is perfect if perfection does not exist in this world? The answer is that our desire for perfection is really our desire for God. It is our desire to be perfect with God. If we do our best to be good and holy in this life, if we rely on Christ and his mercy, we will receive perfection in Heaven with our resurrected bodies. Imagine what good we can do, what more happiness we will have when we are perfected in body and soul in Heaven with Christ.