understanding how you approach exercise
When I hit 30, I came to the dreaded realization that I needed to start exercising. The number on the scale had started to creep up, my shirts were fitting a little tighter, and absent some sort of change, I wasn’t headed on the right trajectory. I’m not much of a runner, so I got a basic membership at a lower-price gym in New York City and tried to go as often as I could.
In the five-ish years that I’ve been exercising in New York City, I’ve become interested in the role exercise plays in the life of a modern young adult. Exercise is a big deal for young people, and every year they spend thousands of dollars at places like CrossFit, SoulCycle, Equinox, and Peloton. While many in our culture are uninterested in exercise, exercise-obsessed young people arrive at their workout of choice wearing high-end athleisure, follow intense workouts, and then afterward proclaim that it’s the best part of their day.
For most, exercise is considered an unquestioned good. But while exercise is often a good thing, too many people in our culture pursue physical health because they’re spiritually unhealthy. To understand why the obsessive interest in exercise flows out of spiritual problems, we need to examine the two main approaches that people take toward exercise in our culture. They are:
Exercise for self-optimization
Exercise for self-adoration.
These two approaches dominate our exercise culture yet flow out of a heart that’s not in a healthy place.
first approach: exercise for self-optimization
People who take this first approach to exercise see working out as a way to optimize their lives. They view their body as a machine and exercise as a way to improve and optimize that machine’s performance. These people exercise because they believe that if their personal machine works better, they’ll get more done and be more successful.
One example of this approach was a high-end gym that I walked by in San Francisco. The gym had a large poster in the window featuring two ripped people standing next to the tagline: “Turn your body into a machine!” For young people, especially in work-driven places like San Francisco and NYC, exercise is seen as the way to tune up your personal machine and ensure that you are as productive as possible.
When you see exercise as a way to optimize your body, then science becomes your avenue to better performance. These people choose what to eat through the lens of nutritional science. They follow the popular food fads, hoping that the right combination of food, vitamins, and supplements will help their bodies run as effectively as possible.
Because optimizers treat their bodies like a machine they see their food as fuel. Eating is not just eating, but rather refueling the body so that it can reach peak performance. This helps explain why there is such a huge health food movement among young people, whether they want to buy expensive green juices, organic salads, or supplements and vitamins. People hope that if they can give their bodies the best fuel possible, they’ll optimize their personal machines to be as efficient and effective as possible.
What’s the promise of the self-optimizing approach to exercise? We believe that if we can optimize our bodies, then we’ll be more productive. After all, if their body is a machine, then the desired outcome is increased output; we want to get more done, whether that’s at work, at home, or in our general activities.
Productivity is a core idol in our culture, and increased productivity is the promise that so many people on social media and podcasts taut as the goal of exercise: if you optimize your body through exercise, you’ll sleep better, be more focused at work, feel less stressed out, and have the energy to accomplish more in every area of life. Exercise then becomes a means to help us work longer, be happier, and get more things done.
Even if you don’t go crazy with diets, supplements, or specialized workouts, this approach is incredibly seductive, especially for men. Since we are evaluated on what we can produce, we think that if we can optimize our physical bodies so that we can work longer hours and get more things done, then this will lead to a life filled with more self-worth, happiness, and success.
The deeper promise of self-optimizing exercise is deeper than just productivity, but also the hope of eternal life. If you eat healthily and become an obsessive exerciser, then you can make sure that your personal machine will never break. The “exercise as self-optimization approach promises its members that if they will follow it, then they’ll be rich, healthy, and happy, and will never have to worry about death." As an Equinox gym commercial encourages us, exercise helps us “live better, love better, strive harder…to be the next big thing.”
To recap, when you view exercise as a way to self-optimize, you will:
See your body as a machine.
Often refer to food and eating as fuel and refueling.
Be very careful about what you eat.
Focus on how exercise makes you feel.
See increased productivity as the immediate goal of exercise.
See living forever as the unacknowledged ultimate goal of exercise.
the second approach: exercise as self-adoration
The second approach to exercise is quite different from the first. People don’t exercise in the second approach to optimize their bodies, but rather to turn their bodies into something that other people will adore. For them, the purpose of exercise is the adoration of the self.
In this second approach, people don’t see their bodies as a machine but rather as a work of art, an object for other people to observe and adore. Exercise becomes a tool by which you make your body pleasing to look at, something to be worshiped and adored. These people avoid heavy weights and pursue things like yoga, barre, pilates, and spin classes; types of exercise that promise to sculpt and tone your body. If you can’t make your body into a beautiful piece of art, then you’ll be able to obtain the adoration and sexual interest of your peers.
This approach can be seen in a poster I saw in a gym in Chelsea, a high-end neighborhood in New York City. The gym was located in a converted old stone church and featured a huge ad on the side of the former church. A shirtless man was pictured, next to the words: “Make them worship you!”
The self-adoration approach teaches you not to optimize your body for productivity, but rather prepare your body to be observed and evaluated. Exercise becomes the way that you work on every little muscle group so that you can tone and tighten your way to looking your absolute best.
These people are also incredibly careful about what they eat, not so much because unhealthy food will mess up their personal machine, but rather because the extra calories will cause you to gain weight in your hips, stomachs, thighs, and face. This approach sees an unexercised body as ugly and teaches that your body must fit the platonic ideal of your sex to be valuable.
The motive for these people is to be adored, and so they do everything they can to make their bodies a beautiful work of art that other people will be attracted to. Clothes become an important way to do this since all of your work won’t matter if people can’t see how great your body is. So these people pursue tighter and more revealing clothes and are always willing to take more layers off, letting everyone around them see how perfect their bodies are.
So what’s the goal of exercise as self-adoration? To get status. If you can create a body that other bodies will adore, whether in person or on social media, you can gain all kinds of social power. This social power will help you live your perfect life, whether that’s attracting another high-status person, growing your Instagram following, or just getting the social benefits we give to the most attractive people in society.
These people use their work-of-art body to gain acceptance, status, and most of all security. If they can make their body into a work of art they will be adored, making them feel wanted, desired, and worthy. The body isn’t a means to being productive, but rather gaining and holding social power.
Ultimately, the core desire is to use your body to gain so much social power that you’ll become a god in your circles, and gain the power to dictate your wishes to everyone around you. As you gain more adoration, you’ll get more social power, which will help you get more control in your friend group, dating life, social media, and in general society.
To recap, when you view exercise as a way to self-adoration, you will:
Treat your body as a work of art.
Emphasize exercises that sculpt your muscles and body into their most pleasant forms.
Objectify your body for others so that they can adore you.
Always be finding new ways to show your body to others.
Find great delight in the social power that comes from being adored.
does this work?
Every gym in New York City, where I live, is filled with people who pursue exercise through one of these two approaches. They are dedicated in their focus and believe that exercise may be the difference between a mediocre life and a high-achieving one.
But while these two approaches are easiest to spot at their extremes, anyone who exercises struggles with one or both of these approaches. Exercise is hard, after all, and we use the tangible benefits that these approaches promise, either increased productivity or adoration, to motivate us to keep going. We steal glances at our reflection in the mirror, growing either excited or dismayed depending on whether our bodies measure up.
But despite how widespread these practices are, neither approach is healthy. Why is that? The first approach won’t work because no matter how much you optimize your body, you have limits as a human being. No matter how hard you try, you aren’t a machine. Your body will grow old, you will lose your ability to be productive, and will break down. As the Bible says in Isaiah 40: “Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall.” No matter how hard you exercise or how clean your diet is, you cannot change this.
The second approach won’t work for a similar reason. No matter how hard you try to turn your body into a work of art, we are living in a world where everything breaks down and falls apart, even our bodies. The Bible warns us of this when it says in Proverbs 31 that “charm is deceptive and beauty fades.” No amount of exercise will be able to reverse again and allow you to maintain a body that will receive the adoration of your peers.
Behind both of these problems lies the same root problem: all of us are going to die. Exercise can improve your health and increase your attractiveness, but it can’t solve the fact that our bodies are all breaking down and will eventually die. Young people hope that by pursuing the perfect exercise routine they can cheat death, but nothing that you do can change the reality that faces each of us.
so what’s the solution?
So what can we do? Can we even exercise? Are we supposed to ignore exercise altogether and just let our bodies go? The solution is not to reject exercising but rather to allow the gospel to renew how we approach exercise. The Bible teaches us to approach exercise from the perspective, not of self-optimization or self-adoration, but rather exercise as self-stewardship.
You see, God gives us our bodies as a gift. He created us and gives us our bodies as a vessel for life. The proper response to any gift is to be a wise steward of it. Exercise is the way that we steward the gift of our physical bodies, as we respect God’s design for our bodies to need exercise and honor Him for this gift. The Apostle Peter explains in 1 Peter:
“Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.”
Peter makes it clear that we are to steward whatever gifts we graciously receive from God. Since the body is a gift from God (He knit yours together in your mother’s womb), we are to be good stewards of it. You are your body’s caretaker, and when you exercise you honor God’s created order and make the most of His gift to you. To either avoid exercise or to use it for your own honor is to misuse God’s gift to us.
But as Peter shows, stewardship isn’t just about taking care of the gifts that God has given you, but also using the gifts you have received to serve others. He says, “Use the gifts you have received to serve others.” Exercise becomes a way to ensure that your body is healthy and fit enough to serve and help others. Whether you are called to build houses, grow food, or even type on a computer all day, exercise is a God-given tool to make sure you possess the strength and ability to serve others.
Paul summarizes all of this well in 1 Corinthians 6:
“Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.”
When I exercise, I try to keep this in the forefront of my mind. I am not doing this to become more productive or better looking, but rather to be a good steward of God’s gift and give Him honor through my body. Exercise also helps me to be healthy and strong so that I can serve my neighbor with this gift. If I don’t steward my body well, then I will damage the gift God gave me and dishonor His creation.
But how do we give up this desire to use exercise for self-optimization or self-adoration? The key is to understand how Jesus gave His body for you. When Jesus came to earth, He took on a body just like ours, with all the limits that we are subject to. But He didn’t use His body to bring honor or attention to himself but rather offered it up on the cross so that our bodies might be redeemed from death. As the writer to the Hebrews says;
“That is why, when Christ came into the world, he said to God, ‘You did not want animal sacrifices or sin offerings. But you have given me a body to offer.’”
Our culture tells us to sacrifice our bodies to serve our own interests, but the gospel shows us how Jesus sacrificed his body to serve the interests of others. So when you see how Jesus used the body He was given by God to ensure that we will have a perfected resurrected body, it melts our hearts and allows us to offer up our bodies in service to others.
Our bodies are an incredible gift from God and I hope that through exercise you are a wise steward of yours, so that you can follow in the way of Christ as you love and serve others. Then we can live out Paul’s command to us in Romans 12:
“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.”
