Mind and Body

Mind and Body

What is God? What is God's relationship to man?

• God is a spiritual being without a physical body. God is three personalities (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) in one being, eternally relating to each other.

• God has acted and continues to act, in our physical world (this culminated when he sent his Son to earth). He is interested in the physical circumstances and actions of man. He commands us to take good action.

• God has spoken and continues to speak to us, to our minds.

What was man created to be?

• We were created as whole people, but made of distinct parts. God saw that this was very good (Genesis 1:31). We are physical beings (external), with minds (internal). There seem to be a couple of components to our minds – our heart/will and our mind/thoughts. Our emotions also have their home somewhere in the internal part of ourselves.

  Nb I will use 'mind' to refer to either or both of these components – unless it is useful to distinguish between them.

• After God created (physical) man, he spoke to him – that is, he spoke to man's mind. His words were commands to physical action (Genesis chapter 1, verse 28).
  Thus, the mind is used to direct the body's actions. Faith is shown by obedience through physical action.

• Our minds do not just have a superior role to our bodies, but they are of superior value (Matthew 10:28) – although this does not mean that our bodies lack value.

How was this affected by the Fall? What is man now?

• The Fall came about in the (physical) disobedience of the command God had spoken. Eve disobeyed because of the wrong desires of both her body (Genesis 3:6a) and mind (Genesis 3:6b).

• God's punishment for man's disobedience and rejection of him was largely physical (Genesis 3:16a, 3:17-19), though also of the mind (Genesis 3:16b). After the Fall, physical action was tainted and difficult, and death began. Our mind's desires also became tainted and damaging.

• God continued to ask his people to demonstrate their faith by both physical obedience (Exodus 20:4-11, Exodus 20:13-16, James 2:21-22, Hebrews 11:4-40) and obedience/worship of the heart and mind (Exodus 20:3, Exodus 20:5, Exodus 20:12, Exodus 20:17). He established a physical structure of priests, holy places, holy festivals and sacrifices for sin by which his people were to follow him (eg Exodus 23:10-19, Exodus 24:10 – 31:18, Leviticus 1:1 – 7:38).

• But because people's hearts/wills have been and are sinful and rebellious to God, we can never – by ourselves – act in obedience to him (Romans 1:28-31). We need our heart/will to be renewed before our actions will change (Romans 8:6-8).

Some would argue against this, saying that sinful actions can come from someone with a good heart/will. I think that this only happens because of foolishness. This view is very different to that of most Australians, who believe that bad actions can be the result of mistakes not in keeping with our essentially good hearts.

Conversely, some would argue that good actions can result from someone who has a bad heart/will. This time I'd argue that although in one instance you may not see it, in time a person's bad will/heart will come through in their actions.

• Although our heart/will directs our body's actions, it is influenced by our body's wrong desires (Romans 7:22-23). And by our mind's wrong thoughts.

• The heart/will of people who repent, believe and trust in Jesus' sacrifice is renewed and they can act to please God (Hebrews 10:16). Their heart/will can also have the self-control necessary to resist the body's desires (Romans 6:11-12) and the mind's wrong thoughts (see 2 Peter 3:1).

While on earth they're still far from perfect though, so this doesn't always happen as it should.

What was Jesus?

• God the Son took on a human body as the man Jesus (Philippians 2:6-7). He was at once God and man. He did this so that he might live a perfect human life in both thought and deed (mind and body), enabling him to die as a perfect, physical sacrifice so that men's sins would be forgiven (Colossians 1:21-22).

What will man be in the new heaven and earth?

• God's chosen people will have eternal life. We will have bodies that are renewed and yet are still physical (1 Corinthians 15:42-43). Our minds will be made pure.

What are the implications of regarding the mind and body as separate or connected?

• If we regard mind and body as separate, then our thoughts, beliefs and feelings don't have to be consistent with our actions. It is possible for us to think one thing and do another. It is possible for our beliefs to be private matters, not necessarily having to affect our public speech or action. It is possible for us to believe in things that are contradicted by reality. It is possible for us each to draw different interpretations from experience, or to apply shared interpretations/beliefs differently.

• If we regard mind and body as inextricably interconnected, then our thoughts, beliefs and feelings have to come through in our actions. We will value 'just being yourself'. This perception will mean our beliefs cannot remain private.

• If we regard the mind as being merely a subset of the body, then our thoughts, will and emotions are nothing more than chemical processes.

• If we regard the mind as far superior to the body, we will be inclined to suppress and deny our physical desires/needs.

• If, as Christians do, we believe that the mind and body are connected, with the body influencing but subordinate to the mind, then our actions will be consistent with our minds. If we claim to believe something but do not act on it, then we never truly believed it (James 2:15-17). As with the above perspective, our beliefs must come out in our speech and action. However our life will not just revolve around our mind – because we value the body, we will also value the physical things that our mind approves as good (eg dancing, food, sex).

Nature and Nuture

• In terms of morality, the sin of the first man and woman tainted us all. We are all born sinful, although of course it takes a while for us to have opportunity to do wrong.

• We can be made into better people by the nuture of our parents (etc). This is not, however, so much through them guiding us to do good, but rather through them guiding us to believe in God (once we do this, his Spirit in us will then enable us to do good).

• We can also be made into worse people by our parents (etc) (Colossians 3:21).

• Ultimately though, our moral state is not resolved by either nature or nuture, but rather through the intervention of God.

• In terms of personality, God gives us all different skills and strengths of character, presumably at birth (Romans 12:6-8). These develop as we grow and mature (just as they did for Jesus – see Luke 2:40), and as different opportunities come along.