The very recent changes at play in Christianity also offer a ray of hope: eco-friendly Christians. The newborn environmental Christian movement points to several passages in scriptures that make environmental protection a religious duty. Revelation 11:18, for example, promises God's wrath against “those who destroy the earth.”
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If the earth is God's creation, in fact, hurting it by mismanaging its resources is nothing short of a sin against God.
On this issue, as usual, the Bible offers ammunition to both sides. I don't particularly care to debate theology; I'm interested in results. And the environmental consequences of the different interpretations of Christianity speak loud and clear. One side casts Christianity as one of the prime enemies of human survival on earth. The other side offers us a Christianity that can work as positive force in the fight against extinction. It doesn't take a genius to figure out which version we should support and encourage.
Whether people embrace Animistic ideas, an environmentally friendly Christianity, or any other religion makes no difference to me. As long as one's beliefs drive them to protect the only planet we have, they are fine with me.
We need new rituals to awaken us to the fact that we are not separate from the land, water, and sky. We need ceremonies putting us back in touch, and urging us to conserve the resources that give life to everything in existence. We need to once again think as part of something greater, to view reality from a place higher than the narrow confines of a shortsighted ego. Empathy toward other living things should be one of the very first lessons instilled by all religions.
Rather than encouraging a materialism built on overconsumption and accumulation, the religions of the future have the mission to entice us to follow a whole different type of materialism. It's the materialism that finds joy in the world of living matter, that looks at the material plane as a source of living beauty and inspiration. It reminds us that nature is essential medicine for the human psyche. Moved by a deep appreciation for the physical universe, it shakes us away from dangerous delusions, and brings us back home to live here and now, on this awe-inspiring round ball. If we want to have a future, we need to nourish this religious reverence reminding us of the ecstasy of what it means to be a human being, standing between earth and sky.
There is more reason in your body than in your best wisdom
.
—Friedrich Nietzsche,
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Once upon a time, writing this book had seemed like a good idea. After years of taking notes and tossing these ideas in my head, I couldn't wait for the moment when I would finally sit down to write. But that was about a thousand work hours ago. Now the only thing I feel is that I have been sitting at this damned computer for too long. My eyes are glazed, my back aches, and my muscle tone is packing its bags, ready to walk out on me. Out of the window, summer in Southern California is in full bloom, but I might as well be in the depths of winter in Alaska because the computer screen gets jealous anytime I look away. It screams, cries, and threatens divorce and is only placated when I promise that from now on it will have my undivided attention.
And so I am trapped in this room, surrounded by thoughts, words, and books—not enough fresh air coming through here. Too many hours of mental strain are aging me prematurely. I swear I can hear the sounds of the neurons in my overworked mind reaching a boiling point. The body, in the meantime, is left behind, forgotten, sinking in the chair, its desperate requests to go out, move, and play falling on deaf ears.
Every minute that goes by, my mood gets worse, and my energy goes stale. If a good preacher got a hold of me now, it wouldn't take much effort to convince me that I'm a worthless sinner in need of redemption. I'm just a few steps away from confessing my sins and asking for forgiveness. Hell, I feel so bad I have almost degenerated into a scholar, one of the gloomy ghosts haunting the halls of academia—their lives, and the lives of anyone coming in contact with them, ebbing away under the weight of too many theories and not enough action.
But then . . . as I await a coup de grace to free me from my misery, something inside reminds me I still have a spine. Not all hope is lost. My destiny is not to be bossed around by a psycho, domineering computer with control issues. If you have a problem with it, screw you, evil, glowing screen. I'm out of here. The computer goes hysterical, calls me names, and throws dishes in my direction, but I'm long gone.
For the next three hours, I lull my mind to sleep as I stretch, pump iron, run six miles, and sweat enough to cause a minor flood. Inside the temple that is the gym, I remember my barbaric nature. I remember I'm a healthy, adult mammal, with raw, powerful energies flowing through my veins. I am more than my brain. I'm tendons, muscles, and ligaments. I'm nerves, bones, and blood. I feel the joy of vitality at last returning.
By now, you may be wondering what's the point of all this. Why this overly dramatic tale of a sick, symbiotic relationship with a control-freak computer? Why the gross story of finding solace in sweating like a pig? Where am I going with this stuff?
It's about bringing the body to the forefront. Every philosophy and religion that ever existed has had to come to terms with the physical dimension of existence. Our bodies have been the object of scorn and disdain by some, and fascination and attraction by others. But in either case, our beliefs and attitudes about the body affect our lives profoundly.
If I was planning to keep my argument as a big mystery and reveal it only at the end of this chapter, I'm afraid the preceding paragraphs just blew it for me. Psychic powers are clearly not required to figure out what stance toward the body I'll be supporting. But despite the lack of a climactic, surprise ending, I hope the next pages can help clarify how different religious outlooks on the body lead to dramatically different consequences.
This is not the time and place to delve into an extensive overview of the ways in which the human body appears in the eyes of world religions. The topic is so rich and so vast that entire scholarly books can be written about it. Anyone seriously interested would do well to explore the already existing literature on this issue. Here, at the risk of being overly simplistic, we'll just skim the surface in order to focus on the results caused by certain beliefs.
As a good rule of thumb, typically the more emphasis a religion places on spending eternity as a disembodied soul in the afterlife, the less importance it will attribute to the body. In their view, the
body is little more than clothing shed by the soul as it will move on to bigger and better things. This can be seen in many branches of Christianity, to a significant extent in Islam, some versions of Judaism, and at least a few schools of Buddhism and Hinduism. On the opposite side of the spectrum are the many Animistic cultures that focus primarily on life in this world.
In the West, Judaism and Islam praise the body and the physical nature of reality. This enlightened outlook, however, is often negated by innumerable, very restrictive rules regarding what we can and cannot do with our bodies.
Similarly, no single, clear-cut position on this issue characterizes all Asian religions. Depending on which variation of Taoism, Hinduism, or Buddhism you practice, you may find a very relaxed, life-affirming celebration of the body or a rigorously ascetic approach which views the body as a source of dangerous distraction that can keep the soul from reaching its transcendental goals. A strong dualism pitting the soul against the body is clearly alive and well in some of these traditions. But in Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism, for every push toward denying the senses and denigrating the body we also find other currents pulling in the opposite direction.
But no major religion has consistently expressed a harsher view toward the body than Christianity. Saint Paul spells this out very clearly. “While we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord,” he wrote, quickly adding how preferable it was to “be away from the body and at home with the Lord.”
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Paul's condemnation of the physical aspects of reality ended up shaping the very character of Christianity through the ages.
So, what is that bugged Paul so much about the world of the senses? Well, he arrived to Christianity carrying heavy baggage inherited from certain currents of Greek philosophy. Even though,
traditionally, Greek culture honored the ideal of physical and mental health, some philosophical schools—Orphism, for example—preached a stark dualism pitting body and soul as bitter enemies. According to Orphists, the human body is a prison for the soul. The physical is an obstacle to overcome in order to become truly spiritual. These thoughts were shared by only a minority of Greeks at the time, but they struck a chord in Paul. He introduced them into Christianity with momentous consequences, altering the future of this religion, and the history of the Western world. After appropriating these ideas for his new religion, Paul colored them with overtones of Christian theology. Body and soul in his view were competitors in a tug of war, with the soul yearning for heaven and the body trapping it on earth. But because the life of the body lasts only a few years whereas the soul is eternal, the soul will pull through and win the contest. If we accept this premise, it only makes sense to take the next step along with Paul, and consider the body as a hindrance standing in the way of dedicating our limited time and energies to spiritual pursuits.
This dualistic idea of competition between body and soul was heightened in Paul's mind by what he perceived to be the imminent end of the world. In several passages throughout the New Testament, Paul makes it clear that—like many early Christians—he expects the apocalypse to be knocking at the door any minute. This sense of urgency is what spurred Paul to take the mind-body opposition in more a more drastic direction. If at any moment the curtains may fall and the show can end, the logical consequence is to dedicate all of one's being to spirituality.
Let's give up the world of the flesh, preaches Paul, in order to commit ourselves 100 percent to the spirit. In the battle between good and evil that is at the theological roots of Christianity, the body
and the world of the senses take attention away from the spiritual. With its dazzling show of colors, shapes, sounds, taste, and very intense physical drives, the world of the senses gets us lost in the sensual experience of life and induces us to chase what Paul considers temporary gratification at the expense of eternal salvation. Even pleasure, according to this line of thinking, can easily turn into a tool for the Devil to lead us away from a purer, more spiritual lifestyle. And so, propping up these ideas as articles of faith, Paul sets the stage for a negative view of the body to prevail throughout much of Christian history.
Following Paul's lead, many early Christians turned self-repression into a path toward sainthood. Extreme physical deprivation, and the occasional act of self-torture, often characterized the lives of Christian hermits who turned to the desert to escape the temptations of the flesh while they waited for Judgment Day to come. Perhaps in an effort to repel the Devil by grossing him out, early hermits ate the most foul substances, and competed with each other for who could do the weirdest, most disturbing things to their own bodies. For example, the Church Father Origen castrated himself; Ammonius burned his skin with red-hot irons for the sake of keeping sensual temptations at bay.
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Approaching these holy men downwind was risky business even for demons, since stinking beyond belief and never bathing were regarded as badges of spiritual progress. Why? Because paying too much attention to the body was seen as immodest and downright sinful. Viewing cleanliness as the doorway to hell didn't exactly do wonders for hygienic conditions, and this attitude indirectly contributed to the spreading of diseases.
Thanks to Paul's influence, from its inception Christianity declared war on the human body and its instincts. The battle between the material and the spiritual raged on throughout the West even
more viciously than it did among the body-hating, world-denying traditions of East Asia. But even though Christianity takes the gold medal in this contest, many are the religions that dismiss the concrete, physical, biological dimension of existence as a primitive condition that we need to transcend. In their eyes, our nature is something to be improved upon thanks to intellectual and/or spiritual detachment from the material world. The goal of these religions is to repress natural instincts in favor of what they consider civilized behavior. Ultimately, what they want is to domesticate human beings.
In case it's not clear, I am not a big fan of this way of thinking. By approaching the body with awkward discomfort, instilling shame about sexuality, promoting horror for everything that is natural, and rejecting the senses as distractions, these religions are against life. Condemnation and scorn for the flowering of physical energies are the symptoms of a mindset that sees life as a sin to be amended.
Their ideology is so odd, masochist, and counterintuitive as to make us wonder, why the hatred for nature? What's so bad about the human body? Why repress our instincts and distance ourselves from the physical world? There are several possible answers, but one stands out in my mind as the most likely candidate. The fear of the body comes from the refusal to recognize our animal nature. And the obsessive desire to view ourselves as something other than animals stems from the biggest fear of all: the fear of death. It is no mystery that any physical body that breathes and lives is destined to die and decompose. Clearly, the annihilation of our bodies—one of the defining characteristics making us who we are—doesn't sit well with most people. So, what to do . . .
Here we go: problem solved. As long as we believe that, unlike other animals, we are more than our bodies, then we can hold on to the notion that death will not be able to strike us down. It may
dismantle our bodies, but it won't reach our essence because our disembodied souls will go on living. Diminishing the importance of the body and emphasizing the belief in a pure, immaterial spirit is a way to deny the power death has in our lives. As we are about to see, however, this choice of not enjoying fully the physical nature of our world comes with many very unpleasant side effects.