getting your relationship right with exercise
Our culture has a strange relationship with exercise. What used to be a quirky hobby back in the 1960s and 70s is now seen by many as an everyday necessity. Whether it’s because of a more sedentary lifestyle, grocery stores filled with processed food, or just being able to afford more high-calorie food, one thing is true, many people make exercise a top priority in their lives.
And in many ways, that’s a good thing! Like we saw last week, we are called by God to steward the gift of our bodies and to use them to honor what He’s created. There’s a great temptation, though, to use exercise not to honor God but rather ourselves.
This is especially true in the achievement class, the group of young(ish) people who spend their twenties and thirties pursuing an aspirational lifestyle. This group, which has taken over most major and regional cities, doesn’t use exercise to honor God but instead sees it as the way to ensure you look your best and obtain a successful life.
In a Vogue article entitled, Are We Too Obsessed with Fitness?, the author argues that “we live in a society that is increasingly fixated on fitness.” She says that we’ll squeeze in an online yoga class or late-night workout, all to handle the “mounting pressure to not only stay fit but sculpt a toned, fit-looking body.” While lots of people in the United States ignore exercise completely, for many young people, outside of work, exercise is the most important thing in their lives.
Why is exercise so important for our generation? Because we live in an appearance and image-driven culture. Whether you like it or not, we all know that we are constantly judged based on how we look, which factors into which work, social, and dating opportunities open up for us.
And so many obsess over exercise, pursuing it with a religious fervor. In New York City, Sunday mornings aren’t reserved for church, but rather for exercise classes. Exercise lulls high-achievers in with the promise of self-improvement and a sense of control over how others perceive you. Because of this, exercise has shifted from something important to something ultimate.
In this culture of exercise, your body then becomes the social proof of your success, since a thin, fit body shows that you are healthy, well-off, and going places, since you have the time, money, and self-discipline to eat the healthiest food, buy the best exercising apparel, and work out at the nicest gyms and classes.
This all shows the broken relationship our culture has with exercise. We don’t view our bodies as a gift to steward but rather as a treasure to build up and use to create social wealth, whether in real life or on social media. Our bodies and appearance become our treasure, the thing that we value above almost everything else, and exercise isn’t just exercise, but rather how we get more and more.
Consider this example from Naomi Watt’s book The Beauty Myth. As the author talked to woman after woman about their lives, she found that the number one life goal for the overwhelming majority of the women was to lose ten pounds. A slimmer body was their treasure, and no doubt the pursuit of it drove many of their decisions in life. And while the author didn’t talk to men, this life goal isn’t unique to women. We’re all tempted to think, “If I could just lose ten pounds, then my life would be so much better.”
So what’s the problem with treating your body and your appearance as your treasure? Jesus explained why it doesn’t work in the Sermon on the Mount. He said:
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Jesus wants us to realize the foolishness of turning any earthly thing into our treasure, even if it is a good thing like a healthy and fit body. Why is this such a bad idea? Because when you make an earthly thing your treasure, it will be subject to the decaying forces of this broken world, causing it to eventually break down.
Young people believe that if they attack the aging process with an unnatural ferocity, then they’ll be able to ensure that they never get old, or at least always look young for their age.
But no matter how much you exercise, everybody’s body is growing older and falling apart. You might be able to use exercise and healthy eating to forestall this physical slide, but eventually, time will catch up to you. It’s always shocking when you realize that your grandparents were once your age.
The point of Jesus’ message isn’t to convince you that exercise or earthly things are bad, but rather to show you that unless your treasure is eternal, you’re setting yourself up for major disappointment. Jesus wants you to spend your life storing up treasure in heaven, something that will last for all of eternity.
So how do you course correct your relationship with exercise? You have to treasure your spiritual fitness over your physical fitness. The Apostle Paul shows us how these two interact in 1 Timothy 4. He says:
“For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.”
Paul isn’t anti-exercise. He recognizes that physical training is important. But, he challenges us to recognize that physical training is not anywhere near as valuable as spiritual training. Godliness, or being spiritually healthy, is what Paul wants us to set our hearts on because it will bring a reward both in this life and in the life to come.
So where are you, do you value spiritual exercise more than physical exercise? If I’m honest, it’s much easier to exercise at the gym for an hour than to spend an hour alone with God. We prioritize our physical health because it’s obvious when we’re physically lazy and out of shape. We get embarrassed when our clothes don’t fit right or when a past picture shows a slimmer self.
But too often we ignore our spiritual health since there are no physical ways to see when you’re spiritually out of shape. This disinterest in spiritual exercise creates a false front; on the outside we look good, but on the inside we are spiritually sluggish, weak, and overweight.
While everyone talks about the Covid Fifteen, the weight everyone seemed to gain while we were sitting around waiting for the pandemic to end, few people talk about how the pandemic affected our spiritual health. A wide swath of young people stopped going to church for two years, and while everything has reopened, in my anecdotal experience, many young people have gone back to the gym but not to church.
And so my question for both myself and you: what is your greatest treasure: your physical appearance or your relationship with God? As Jesus says, the thing that your heart gravitates towards shows you what you’re actually treasuring. Unfortunately, our hearts too often display that we value our physical health more than our spiritual health.
Too often, I’ve noticed how my heart is unconcerned with my spiritual sin, but when I eat too much fast food or junk food my heart and conscience are troubled; I feel more distraught when I eat 1400 calories at Taco Bell than when I break one of God’s 10 Commandments. This guilt exposes that in reality, my heart is treasuring my bodily appearance more than a relationship with God.
What’s the point of all of this? I want to encourage you, and myself, to make spiritual exercise more of a priority than physical exercise. A healthy body is a great thing to use to serve God, but a terrible treasure to try to hold onto as you get older. Physical exercise is good, but spiritual exercise stores up an eternal treasure that will never go away.
So how can we make spiritual exercise more important in our lives than physical exercise? You have to understand what the gospel promises about your body. The typical approach to exercise is to use it in hopes of getting a (more) perfect body. But when you let the gospel flood your heart, you see that because of Christ’s resurrection from the dead, God is going to give you the perfect body that you yearn for.
Paul describes this in 1 Corinthians 15:
“But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power;
Paul shows us that the only real answer for the brokenness of our bodies is the resurrection of the dead. Because Jesus was bodily resurrected from the dead, God promises to do the same with our bodies. While exercise may keep our perishable bodies from falling apart as quickly, the only lasting answer is Jesus’ second coming, when we will receive the imperishable and glorified bodies that we yearn for.
The gospel is not against the body but rather tells us that our exercising is just a feeble attempt to do what Jesus has done for us through His bodily resurrection: to give us a completely healthy body that will last forever.
When you realize that it’s only in heaven that your body will become everything that you want it to be, it will heal your relationship with exercise in this life. You can use exercise to steward God’s gift of a body to you, but you don’t have to use exercise to create the “perfect” body or to try to live forever.
This is hard, since this life feels so real and heaven seems so far away. But Paul encourages you to set your vision not on the temporary, but rather on the eternal:
“Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
I encourage you to use your life not to become the best-looking person that you can be, but rather to store up a spiritual treasure of incredible worth in heaven. It’s not easy to remember this, much less to live it out, but as you let the gospel renew your heart, it will allow you to treasure your eternal relationship with God more than your temporary appearance.
