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TOB PART I - WHO ARE WE?

We took our boys for their first glamping trip with their grandparents (my parents) to a resort in Limpopo called Klein Kariba. It had been about 18 years since I last visited the resort and a lot had changed. It is a little over an hour outside of the city of Pretoria and nestled in a beautiful valley. 

Noah & Leo feeding Njala, 23 April 2024

One late afternoon as we prepared to make a fire a group of Njala (a lesser Kudu according to Google I won't pretend to know my antelope haha) came past to graze on nearby trees. Noah and Leo were able to feed them leaves and even stroke them. Raphael even got up close and giggled in baby talk as the female Njala was intrigued by a little baby. It is not common to get so close to wild antelope and the young herd may have recalled people feeding them leaves from the tree tops they couldn't reach when they were young. This exchange with creation can beg the question of, "Who are we?" and what makes us so different to the animals? 

Over time a series of blogs will focus on this exact question of, "Who are we?", through the lens of the theology of the body (ToB for short) as originally developed by former pope, St John Paul II. 

The obvious response to the question is I am Clinton, I am a husband and father and work as an economist. But is that who I am? Who am I then?

1. Am I a creature? 

God created all of creation without any creature's permission. We know this because nothing existed before the Creator stamping life into the earth. The Njala never asked God to create them, nor did we ask God to bring us onto this earth, He created us along with the cooperation of our parents. 

So if we accept that God created everything and it was not some random big bang then we would be attentive to notice that invisible stamp "MADE IN GOD" as opposed to the one plastered over most products we consume of "MADE IN CHINA". 

We see this invisible stamp of God written into all of creation that shows us that all of earth's creation has something divine embedded within it. For example, something as simple as crickets can be heard chirping at night and those chirps can be adjusted by the cricket to create its own love music to attract its mate. If it were pure science, there would be no love songs involved and far simpler, but God shows us his mysterious hand in all He has created. 

So we can think of all creation telling us God's most compelling love story. However, of all creation, human beings are the only creatures who are given something different to the rest of creation. Human beings were given the freedom to say no to dancing to God's love story. Crickets cooperate instinctively but humans act out of choice or their free will. As such, we are not just some creature! 

2. Am I a human body?

South Africa is home to some of the world's natural wonders like the majestic Table Mountain, a scenic garden route stretching over beautiful coastlines and home to diverse wildlife with the Kruger National Park. Yes, God's creation is beautiful and majestic, but considering the beauty of all God created the most beautiful creation remains the human body. 

It is only in the human body that we find four characteristics seen nowhere else in creation. The human body is unique, unrepeatable, indispensable and irreplaceable. There is just one of you in the world, with your genetic makeup, personality, preferences and desires. Even in the case of identical twins, there will be things that make them unique. After all, we are created in God's image and likeness. This also means we are not dispensable because the death of our bodies is not the end. When we die something lives on and that is our soul with the assurance that in the final judgement, our bodies will be once again reunited with their souls in a glorified form as we saw with Jesus after he rose from the dead. "For this is the will of my Father, that every one who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day." (John 6:40)

Our human bodies, unlike animals, allow us to express what is going on inside of us to the outside world by being vulnerable. Raphael our 10-month-old dances to the sound of music he recognises and likes and that reflects how something exterior to his world lights him up within. 

3. Body and Soul = Person 

The aim of the Christian life is to learn to integrate the head and the heart. If we are driven only by intellect we will grow to lack compassion and love. If we are only swayed by the heart, we stand a chance of being taken off by the wind in undesired directions. God calls us to not be dominated by the body whereby vanity infects us with an obsession to perfect every inch of our body to conform to the magazine covers. Nor can ordinary people called to be in the middle of the world focus only on nourishing the soul and neglecting everything else. God gave us a body and soul to find a balance between both to grow into a person created in His likeness, not our own likeness. 

God wishes to recreate us if we give Him our permission. We may ask how do you give God permission? We do so in our prayer which is time for expressing our deepest person to the God person. Prayer in its simplest form is a friendship with God and the aim is to make God our best friend the one who knows us best. 

A practical way to express our person to God is learning to be aware of our thoughts. Sometimes we receive distracting thoughts during prayer and we immediately can try to block or suppress them. If the sound of the crickets pierces the silence of the night with the aroma of God's love. In distracting moments if we are willing to be vulnerable and listen to God we may hear how He is trying to communicate with us. For example, some people might be musical and the lyrics of your favourite song keep coming to mind take time to read those lyrics and just maybe you may discover what God is trying to tell you. In other instances, you may have a flashback from the past, someone comes to mind or a particular situation. If we can learn to be more aware of these "distracting or interrupting thoughts" and then take them to God in prayer we can learn to speak to God as a friend who can actually do something about what we tell Him. 

The common thread with the ToB is learning to get in touch with our bodies and how our bodies reflect our identity. The world tells us our bodies have no meaning but the Church is telling us our bodies have the ultimate meaning! Why? Quite simply, because God wanted the eternal marital plan between God and us to be stamped into our very bodies (more on this in future blogs).


Do you know of a friend who could be interested in reading this blog? Please feel free to share the link with them.

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