Becoming Good Stewards of Our Bodies

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Lisa Whittle
My whole life. I missed this piece. I missed this understanding. I went immediately to how many calories do I need to take in? How much weight do I need to lose? What size should I be in body topics, but I didn’t have a foundation. I didn’t have a biblical foundation. I didn’t have an understanding. And when you don’t understand that, when you don’t understand what Christ came to do for your body, then you won’t live this. You’ll live very differently. You’ll live very much in body topics.

Courtney Doctor
Welcome to the deep dish, a podcast from the gospel coalition, where we love having deep conversations about deep truths. I am Courtney doctor here with my friend and co host, Melissa Kruger, and our guest today is Lisa Whittle. Welcome Lisa. We’re so glad you’re here. Hi. It’s so fun to be here. Oh man. Well, we’ve already had a fun conversation prior to hitting record, but today we want to have a conversation about something that I would imagine every single person, or at least the vast, vast majority of us, struggle with in some way, and that is how to have a healthy relationship with our own just with our own bodies. Because I think few of us know how to be good stewards of our bodies, how to think about them biblically, how to be sober minded in the way we take care of them and how to how to glorify God through our bodies. Yeah, and Lisa, you have written multiple books on a variety of topics. Is this your first Bible study? No, that’s not you’ve done. Okay, you’ve done a bunch of Bible studies as well, but this is a Bible study that you’ve just completed, actually, on the body. And so tell me, as you were doing the research for this, because I know you worked hard and really went into the scriptures, are there any particular passages that really started to shape how you think about your body and our bodies differently than you had in the past? Yeah, I mean, honestly, the whole Bible, the whole Bible, I mean, that sounds crazy, but it’s really, really true that I think that’s kind of though the point Melissa of whole body theology. Because in the past, my whole life, really, it’s been about a verse here or there. It’s been about a passage here or there. This was the first time in my life that I dug into the scripture in a really comprehensive way, and where I really looked at everything Old Testament, New Testament, and understood it in a full picture. And so, yeah, certainly Genesis 127,

Lisa Whittle
31 learning about Imago day bodies made good, understanding what that actually means and in the context, and starting a foundational piece from that place, right? But then also John one, and you know, the incarnate God, the John 114 word, made flesh come and dwelt among us. And what that means, fully God, fully man, what that means for us as we live daily in our bodies. Never really made that connection in the way that I was living out my life, exercising, eating, you know, resting, all that, that type of thing. Romans six, learning about no longer being slaves to sin in our bodies. Ephesians, four, you know, old life, new life, that type of thing, putting off old self, new self. That, that idea, I mean, I could go on and on. Body of Christ learning about that and and in the first Corinthians 12, and going on into Revelation 21 and talking about, look, I make all things new. So I mean honestly, Genesis to Revelation and the whole scripture,

Courtney Doctor
it radically changed my life. So when I talk about whole body theology, I’m talking about the entire Bible and how that works to build a foundational place by which to then understand how to live in my body every single day. Oh, I love that. I love that you took us to, you know, all four major parts of the story, because, right, we our bodies were made good. I was even thinking, you know, Genesis two, where it’s like he formed him. He God formed man’s body, breathed life into him. And then we read they were naked and not ashamed. And it’s like man, we know we lost something in the fall when I read that. I mean, you know, like I can be fully clothed into shame, right?

Courtney Doctor
I know, right. It’s so true. And then, you know, and then we start getting this glimpse of where the story is headed, even in First Corinthians 15, like with the resurrected body, and what that’s going to look like. And and you know, Jesus as an embodied man, which is just so hard to.

Courtney Doctor
To to comprehend. So I want you, you, you threw a lot out there, and I want you to unpack it. I want you to go ahead and, like, make some of those connections for us, because I think it’s so I just think it’s so key in our understanding. So when you say,

Courtney Doctor
like, like, the idea that Jesus was embodied, that that really changed how you understood your body, like, explain that a little bit more, yeah. Well, I even love the fact that you were bringing up Genesis two, because even, like, the peace of

Lisa Whittle
God breathing into Adam, and this, this whole, you know, breathing His Spirit Rock into Adam and then becoming nephesh, a living soul, this idea of reliance, right? So this, this reliant piece was always meant to be, but that which we were, we were born into, we have always been trying to wrestle away from. So, you know, let’s bring this into daily life. Courtney, it’s like we talk about rest all the time. We have books on rest. We talk about rest. I need more rest. Let me clear out my calendar, all of these types of things. And I think we’re striving for that. But yet the reality is is none of us feel very restful. And so when I began to study whole body theology, and I began to learn about Christ and about what he came to do so, coming to earth, living embodied. No question about it, that’s not a mistake. That he’s coming and taking on flesh. There’s such importance in that, that we that we bypass. So I pull all of this apart in the study, and so that we don’t miss that, because the way that we esteem our bodies and the way that we value our bodies, and we look at our bodies and the bodies of others by the way

Lisa Whittle
we have to understand in the context of him coming and becoming embodied. So that ought to change the way that we value our own bodies and others bodies, okay, but this reliance piece, even

Lisa Whittle
when, when Christ came and then died and was crucified, that that, that Reliance piece, he he died, yes, so that we could have eternal life, but also that we can have rest in our bodies, in the daily and So I think even that we were created for reliance,

Lisa Whittle
understanding that from Genesis, understanding that through his crucifixion, those are the types of correlations I help you make through this study, so that you really understand it’s not that just Christ came to die, is that you might live in eternity through with him, but that you might also be able to have rest in your body, in the way that you live daily. And those things are very important that we understand. And so those are the kinds of things I’m talking about that I hope you understand in a really practical way in the study, because I myself need the practicality of the Word of God in the way that I live in my body, because my whole life I missed this piece. I missed this understanding. I went immediately to well, how many calories do I need to take in? How much weight do I need to lose? What size should I be in body topics, but I didn’t have a foundation. I didn’t have a biblical foundation. And have an understanding. And when you don’t understand that, when you don’t understand what Christ came to do for your body, then you won’t live this. You’ll live very differently. You’ll live very much in body topics. So this is such a it leads to this question for me,

Melissa Kruger
because I think we all know this, and I think that’s why probably people are listening right now to this conversation, is it’s so hard to have a healthy relationship with our body. And we know what that means. Even though you think about it, you’re like, Well, what do you mean by that? But it’s how we’re thinking about what we’re we have, in some ways, what we’re wearing. And so what does it even look like to have a healthy relationship with your body? Like, how would you, either of you describe, like,

Melissa Kruger
have you had a season where you feel like, yeah, this feels like a healthy understanding of what my body is created to do, and I’m living in that freedom. Because to me, there’s bondage is always related, you know, to slavery, to sin and all of these things and and I think a lot of us feel that, yeah, that like enslaved to,

Melissa Kruger
oh, I have to

Lisa Whittle
deal with this body, not enjoy this body. So, so what does freedom look like when we think about what we’ve been given in these these mortal frames. I think that’s a great question, because a lot of us don’t know. Right for me, I will tell you, for me, what it’s looked like. And by the way, I will say that for a long time, my question to the Lord was, Will I ever be free? Will I ever be free? Which I think is something.

Lisa Whittle
A lot of us grapple with we don’t know if we will ever be free, and what I think we’re looking for is freedom from the things that I’m going to name for you, because this is what a healthy relationship for me is look like.

Lisa Whittle
No more self, self loathing in my body,

Lisa Whittle
no more consuming body, thoughts or living in extremes, either obsessing over my body or neglecting my body, because when you’re in line with the scriptural

Lisa Whittle
motive and purpose for you, which I believe, as it relates to how we live in our bodies, is first, Corinthians, 1031, which is whether you eat or drink or whatever you do do, all to the glory of God. I call it living with a glory mentality, which is what I’ve adopted now, and that’s how I live.

Lisa Whittle
When you’re in line with that, it changes the way that you now relate to your body and your relationship with your body, I can’t have you have lived my life with me, but so you kind of have to take my word for it, but what I can tell you is that my whole life, I’ve had consuming thoughts about my body, like every day, Every day, thinking about my body every day, and usually not in a great way. Sometimes I’ve been, you know, thinking I was kind of cute today, but, I mean, a lot of times it’s been like, I’m a little chubby. Am I the biggest woman in the room? You know, all these kinds of, like, consuming thoughts about my body. And I do not have that anymore. I just do not have that anymore. I really don’t, and I feel free from that, but I want to say here that it is hard, and I really want to speak this, because I think it’s important to acknowledge it. It is hard to have a healthy relationship with your body,

Lisa Whittle
for a great many of us, because of the fact we don’t have the foundational piece, because we have never developed it, because we were not taught it. I mean, that’s just the plain and simple truth of it. Most of us were never taught that, because our mothers were never taught that, because the church just doesn’t teach that, or has not in the past taught that. And I think it’s important to acknowledge that we also are influenced by secular culture, which, as we know, does not have a biblical basis for anything. We also have trauma that we’re dealing with that many of us don’t want to get real about, carrying a lot of shame.

Lisa Whittle
And we, yes, we do have some sin in our bodies, also that we just, you know, don’t want to deal with. And then also, I will say we have information overload. And so a lot of us are in this sort of freeze mode, and we don’t know what to do about it. So we just kind of either freeze or we just say, let me just get more supplements, or let me just, you know, buy another program that I’ve heard about, because surely this will do it. And we stayed stuck in body topic land, which, by the way, I’m not against any of that. I take some supplements. I think it’s great, but it’s not great if you don’t have a foundation first, because then you just don’t know what you’re doing. You’re just taking more and more, hoping that it sticks right, well, and maybe looking for, maybe seeking the wrong thing in that. I mean, I it’s, you know, this is we’re just, this is basically a personal counseling session for me. So thank you for coming on

Courtney Doctor
to all of this. You know, it’s so true, just like constantly looking for the next thing that is going to fix what I don’t like, which, as I age, is an increasing number of things. And so this idea of like, You’re right getting the foundation, or what I like to say is the better vision, like the better vision for I think a lot of us were raised a lot of us believe a lot of us live in the world. I like how you said body topics, but I think we tend to think of form or function right when we think of our bodies, and so we’re either kind of hyper focused on its form, or hyper focused on its function, and both of those things fail as we age, both the form and the function, but they also are. They’re, they’re not worthy goals to pursue. And that that took me, I mean, I’m 57 now, that took me a long time to get to that place of of saying, I kind of shifted from pursuing form as the ultimate good, which is a whole part of my, you know, my story, and then function. And even that can be, there can be a good and right thing in both of them, right? But we can take either one to the extreme. And I think what you’re saying, I think, correct me, like, I really, this really is a personal counseling session. So neither one of those are foundational or ultimate, right? Well, and also, let me add, we also have, like, a good and bad body failure system, right? So either we have, like, it’s failure, or we have this success. You know, yes, I.

Lisa Whittle
You’ve nailed it. The other thing that is interesting is some people will say, Well, I don’t either obsess over my body or neglect my body. I’m good because my desire is just to be healthy or strong. And I’m like, here’s the thing about it. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be healthy or strong, but, and I’m going to challenge a bit here, it’s not, it’s not a biblical motive, though, if we’re really going to be in line with scripture, and I think a lot of us want to live in line with scripture, right? So if we’re going to really be biblically minded here, and if we’re talking whole body theology,

Lisa Whittle
then in Scripture, if we’re going to live with a motive, it is to bring glory to God. Now, when you bring glory to God, because God is full of goodness and good things, health and strength is generally going to accompany movement with your body, right? You’re probably going to get healthy. You’re probably going to get strong,

Lisa Whittle
but the motive to be healthy or strong is still not the ultimate motive. It is whatever you eat, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, is to bring glory to God. So I it’s just interesting when people say, you know, it’s, I don’t want to lose weight, I just want to get healthy. I just want to get strong. And I’m like, Girl, I love you. I’m good on you, but still, I’m pushing back a little bit, because what about just bringing glory to God? Because here’s the thing with whole body theology, Courtney, it is not a respecter of persons. And at a certain point, you mentioned aging, there’s also, you know, we may become disabled in our bodies. We may have a chronic illness at a certain point. The beauty of whole body theology is it leaves no body out. We can bring glory to God in our bodies, no matter what I mean. Joni Eareckson, tada is my life hero, and she sits in a wheelchair and has for many, many years, and has been on my show and talked about how she experiences pain.

Melissa Kruger
No one would go up to her and be offensive enough to say, like, Girl, it’s not how you look, it’s how you feel, you know, but that’s like a mantra of society. And if you really think about some of the nonsense we put out with, like these sound bites, it just doesn’t it just doesn’t gel with scripture, even so, and living with that goal in mind might actually cause your body to physically suffer. I mean, we have one example of Christ, but like Paul was beaten, he was shipped, right? His ultimate goal was not be strong and healthy. Yeah, right. His ultimate goal was take this flesh and let it glorify God in however that might come. And so sometimes I think, you know, we’re all, Oh, I just have to get balanced, because that glorifies God.

Melissa Kruger
I don’t know. I don’t see that in Scripture. Yeah, we’re it’s not that we should be unhealthy, it’s not that we should ignore our bodies. It’s, you know, whatever, but we need to follow God into what he’s asked us to do, and that might mean we skip that workout because we needed to counsel that friend and that day, that might have been the right thing to glorify God. But if my highest good is, oh, I always balance my macros, yes, or whatever we you know, it could just be self centered living. It could be, I’m not saying it always is. It’s just we have to LISTEN to the Spirit, follow the Lord. Sometimes we need to have boundaries. No, I need to go walk. That’s the best thing I can do today, you know? But it’s, it’s not the goal to be strong and healthy. I like that. The goal is to glorify God. Well. And here’s my point. My point, really, my biggest point is, if you live First Corinthians, 1031, if you live with a glory mentality, okay, you will probably be in the balance. We’ll use the word because everyone loves that word, even though none of us really know what it is. But like, I get what it is. It’s like in some ways, it’s just the not going into the self loathing, it’s the not obsess or neglect, right?

Lisa Whittle
I believe you will be in that space. Because I that’s not mean you will be perfect. Because we are not perfect. We are humans who do not live in a perfect space. So part of, part of our problem is we’ve got to drop that. But when you are living first, Corinthians, 1031, when you are living with that motive and that goal, when you when you understand whole body theology in the in the in the idea of Scripture being not just a cherry picked verse here or there, but when you understand Christ and and the the application of his embodied self for Your body, then you will, I believe, live your life in much greater balance. You will live with a common sense approach, a Holy Spirit approach, and it will remove

Lisa Whittle
the consuming body thoughts. I do believe, because I will just speak from my experience, that is what it has done for me and as a person who is not young.

Lisa Whittle
Young and who has lived my life with all manner of struggle in my body, including an eating disorder, and including just, I mean, literally, all kinds of I mean, I can tell you, I’ve been through it in my body. That is what it has done for me.

Melissa Kruger
Can I ask a question for you both? Do you all remember the first time as a young woman, you felt,

Unknown Speaker
oh,

Melissa Kruger
maybe something might be wrong with my body. I can remember the first time like I remember distinctly. I was on a boat with

Melissa Kruger
my dad and another dad and a friend. You know, it was a good trip. It wasn’t there was nothing but the dad, the other dad, said something to me, I was eating a donut, hair free on, in a swimsuit, on, on a boat. I wasn’t that old. He’s like, yeah, enjoy it while you’re young. And and I’ve never forgotten it, because it was the first time. I was like, What is he talking about? Yeah, I never thought about which could be wrong. Never to think about the food you put in your body, I mean, but I had never really associated he was associating me, eating that donut with it might go badly for you in the future, yeah, you know. And it was just this. I mean, I still remember this, you know. And I was like, Oh, I gotta be careful. Yeah. I remember pitching the idea that I should maybe just drink tab and eat Wheat Thins. So that kind of dates me right there, drink tab and eat wheat, voicing that out loud and being told by the person I was, you know, talking with, like, I think that’s a good idea. And I was probably fifth grade, I had a similar experience with you, Melissa, with my grandmother, but I remember, I don’t remember, I think was probably in eighth grade, although I think I had experiences before this. But one stands out, with a boyfriend that I had, and he wrote me a note, and he said,

Lisa Whittle
I thought I need to apologize to you. I actually thought you were chubby. And then I put my hand, my arm around your waist, and I realized you really aren’t fat. And I thought,

Courtney Doctor
I think that was a compliment, but I’m not sure, yeah, wow, the power of words. But I do think, like, no matter where we’re coming in, whether, like, we’re all kind of talking about our struggle being more with form, right? And I would say that more of my struggle has been with form, but I also have a lot of friends and and I’m the more I age, the more I’m dealing with function, too. But like function as women, that starts playing into it, whether it’s in, you know, relationship to how our bodies are, are able or not able to bear children, or to, you

Courtney Doctor
know, do the energy level? I have a good friend that struggles a lot with just low energy. She has a chronic illness that causes like, the energy itself to be a problem. And so, like, we just struggle. And so even as you were talking Lisa, and you were talking about, like, even being strong and healthy as a, as a, as a goal, it’s just not the ultimate goal. Like, there’s nothing wrong with being strong and healthy. We just want to say this over and over, there is nothing wrong with that. It’s just that so often it is put out there for us as the ultimate goal, and yet, if God gives us long enough years, we will no longer be strong and healthy. So does the value of our body change? Does the value of our personhood change as both form and function wane either either we struggle with them throughout life or at the end of life, we will all struggle with that, you know. And so what you’re saying is, know that it’s actually our worth, our value is not tied to the form or the function of our body, but it’s tied to the fact that God Himself created our bodies, just, you know, ordained, that we would be embodied people, that this is how we were supposed to go through life, and that ultimately, we have this beautiful vision that with our bodies, like you were even talking about with Paul and the things that happened to his body, that that can actually bring glory to God. And that’s an incredible thing. You know, I had a few things in seminary that were paradigm shifters for me, and one of them was coming to grips with it was kind of the creatureliness or the earthiness of our bodies that were so finite and we’re so dependent. Back to what you started talking about. We’re so dependent on food and water and sleep and clothes and protection, like our bodies are one little thing goes wrong and everything is, you know, I think about the impact of, you know, an accident or something, and how it can just, it just crushes your body. I mean, you could just like the body can just die, because our bodies are actually really.

Courtney Doctor
Really frail and really finite. I have no idea where I’m going with this, but again, I’m just processing out loud the things that I’m thinking as you’re talking because this is so helpful. So let me, let me ask a question. Then, is there anything about this struggle that I, that I have, that a lot of us have, that is unique to Christians,

Courtney Doctor
or is, is this just common to man? Yeah, I think that’s a great question.

Lisa Whittle
Yes. I Well, yes, and no, I think that the struggle is real for all of us because of our human humanity, obviously. So we all struggle in some way with

Lisa Whittle
our bodies, and I think in judging other bodies. So that is universal. I do want to say too, in response to what you were talking about, I mean, this brings up a lot. So when we’re talking about this, I find myself in the same space as what you were talking about, where my mind is just going to a million different things because we have been through so much in our bodies. The beauty of the way that we were created was that we were all created in the image of God. We’ve heard it, but I don’t think we quite understand the enormity of Imago day, and if we were, we would, we would walk around quite differently. We have we are searching our whole lives for this value piece, when, in reality, there is no higher value that any of us could have been given but to be created in the image of God. We have it. We were given it every single person on the face of this earth. Now,

Lisa Whittle
one difference in believers is, and you may have heard this illustration in the glove, I’ll give that in a minute, but we are all made in the image of God. However, Christians can image God in the way that we live. So there’s a small distinction there. I talk about that a bit in the study, but

Lisa Whittle
if you’ve ever heard the glove illustration, I think it’s the best way to say this. So a glove is made in the image of a hand, but the way that the glove has the best function is when a hand goes in it, right? Its best function is that. So that’s, I’ve never heard that. Oh, I just think it’s such a I didn’t come up with it. I can’t I have the credit for it. But I love that illustration, because it best, it best illustrates being made in the image of God all of us, but the way that Christians can image God in the way that we live, because we have the living God inside of us. The Holy Spirit is living inside of us. So there is a distinction.

Lisa Whittle
There very, very crucial distinction that’s unique to Christians. I also, without being a believer and understanding, having the understanding of the word of God, you could not be able to have whole body theology crystallized for you. So that is a very big difference in the way that you would be able to truly understand your body honestly. So we have this unique honor and privilege of being a believer in Jesus and being able to understand what it means for him to have been, you know, embody Christ and die for us, and what his crucifixion is, what the temple really means, which is one of the most powerful,

Lisa Whittle
really, scriptures and illustrations in all of the Word of God, although we don’t fully understand what that means. So I think that’s another piece there to

Lisa Whittle
one big, one big aspect that is different for Christians is being a part of the body of Christ, which we don’t fully understand. How much that affects us in our individual bodies. If you are not a believer, you obviously are not a part of the body of Christ. And so that’s a very big difference, and how no part is indispensable, like that. Like, how you Yeah, right, yeah, yeah. Well, no, I’m just sitting here thinking, like, all these things going together. There’s this.

Melissa Kruger
It’s just so different to really believe God formed and fashioned me, and he has called me for a purpose. And so, you know, the fact that I was worn with brown hair, the fact that I am the shape I am, the fact that I have brown eyes, you know, all of the things were purposeful, like that. Not a hair can fall on my head. But he’s not aware of it. Surely, he’s aware of where I’m going to get wrinkles and then I might have back issues, going to

Unknown Speaker
wow,

Unknown Speaker
sick.

Lisa Whittle
We want whatever you are waiting on your

Speaker 1
happening right now. Pass that on. What’s the link? Yeah,

Unknown Speaker
I’m messing with you. But like, you know, I mean, I.

Lisa Whittle
If I really believed that? Yeah, you really believe that everything that I have is getting back to that glory piece it is, I can, I can read the story of the man born blind, and they are saying, Who sinned? Yeah, that’s kind of what we’re thinking when we look our bodies. Who sins? Yeah, yeah. Who said? And yet, what does it say? Oh, that the work that the power of God might be displayed in the life so yeah. And that was where his body wasn’t working the way he wanted it to, yeah. And it was the glory of God like to have the humility to submit to that, yeah. Oh, that’s so good, Melissa. And you know, Lisa, as you were talking when you first heard the glove illustration, which I have never heard, and I loved, I thought you were going to say, and I was like, no, no, no, no. Don’t say it. This idea that, you know, our bodies are like a glove, and at the end of our life, you know, we throw them on the floor, and then we go on to be with Jesus in heaven. Because I’ve heard that before. It’s like a dirty pair of clothes, you take off and you leave, and then go, and it’s like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, the body, though. So the only resurrected body that we have ever seen is Jesus, the body that went into the tomb is the body that came out of the tomb, and is the body that he is currently living in, reigning and ruling over all things. That’s right. And so what we know from that is that these bodies, this body that I’m living in now. So not only did he form me, not only you know Psalm 139 does he he formed all of my parts. And like you said, Melissa, the parts that I think work the way I want, parts that don’t work or look the way I want form or function. Again, he formed all of them for the ultimate goal, which is what Lisa has been putting before us the whole time for His glory. This body is the one that I will be dwelling in, yes, for eternity after the resurrection, of all things that changed. Because I think a lot of us think, oh yeah, He formed us. We’re in his image, and then one day we walk away from it. We don’t. I’m really glad you brought this up, because I think a lot of us, and I get this question a lot, Courtney, people want to talk a lot about, okay, so we’re ready, like, what are you thinking about for future body? And I think there is a part of us that we’re constantly just like, I can’t wait to get that glorified body. And we’re just always thinking about what is to come. And one of the things that that the Lord really showed me and convicted me of in in studying about whole body theology, was there’s, there’s, there’s two parts at play here. It’s the daily glory and the future glory that we are living right? It’s the daily glory where, even in our bodies, our human compromised bodies, we are living with a sense of the coming resurrection, but we are daily being made new. According to scripture. We know that’s true, right? And we know that we can live with a measure of abundance here on Earth. So it’s not like we are just, you know, holding on for heaven. So we’re living in the in it with the daily glory, and then there’s the Future Glory, where, yes, we are going to be alive with Jesus in the resurrected body, that we will have. None of us know exactly what that’s going to be, right, exactly how we’re going to be in our bodies, but we do know exactly what you just said, which is, Jesus was resurrected in his body. He’s living in that body right now. So it’s both, and we don’t want to live short sighted and we don’t want to live just holding on for heaven. So it’s the daily glory and the future glory. And that is what’s beautiful about being where we are. I mean, that’s why the obsessing and the neglecting neither one works. It’s It’s why being all about, well, let me just be strong and healthy. That’s still a goal for myself. And the reality is, we are living while we know we’re excited about what’s to come. God has us living here and now for a reason, or we would not still be here, and we are in a body that the Lord has given us to bring glory to Him, whatever that looks like, whether we are able bodied or not able bodied, whether we have a chronic illness or whether we don’t, whether we’re able to bear children or whether we’re not, whether we are menopausal, whether we have chronic migraines. I mean, whatever it is, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, bring glory to God. And I just want to say like I feel chills all over my body, because God has set me free. And I just didn’t live like that. I lived just saying I want to be a size whatever. And I lived for myself in that. And I walked into rooms and I just thought, I’m the biggest one here. I don’t know if I can sit in this room anymore, and I just don’t think that way anymore. That doesn’t mean that I don’t have moments that I wish I were thinner, or moments that, you know, I wish that I didn’t have chronic migraines, but I just, I just don’t live.

Melissa Kruger
With the same mentality anymore, and I’m grateful, and that’s just kind of where I am. I love that, and I love that you’ve put that out there for us as like this is possible with the Lord, like it is possible with the Lord. I remember hearing Joni Erickson, tada say one time that somebody asked her, you know, what are you going to do, or what are you going to say when you see the Lord face to face? And I don’t even know if I can say it without crying, but said she’s going to hand them her wheelchair and say, thanks, I needed that. And it’s like, oh, okay, where am I viewing these things in my body that I wish were different as a way of conforming me more to the image of Christ, yeah. And I think, I think as women, even as I’m thinking about this discussion, I’m thinking about all the things you just said, Lisa, our bodies as women change a lot, yeah, even at a young age. Meaning, because, think about it, if you get pregnant in your 20s, which I’m just speaking biologically, that’s when a lot of women are able to get pregnant. That’s pretty young for your body to go through such a big change. I mean, you know, men’s bodies are pretty stable at that point, so we go through but, but every month, we deal with different hormones that affect our bodies, you know, that are just biologically happening every single month that we we deal with. Then we go through, you know, years of nursing, potentially. I mean, you know, they’re doing different things, a lot of it. And then we menopause, if we’re still if we’re still alive, we go through all these changes in a ways, and it’s interesting how some of those things happen to a female body along the way, not to every female body, but to many along the way, while we’re young, which I think is really different, and I hear us as women often, I complain about that, rather than hold to the truth of this is an opportunity for me to glorify God with my body, I don’t know to before it to actually physically be used. I mean, used to incubate another baby, yeah, another person. But even things like menopause, there’s got to be a use for it. I don’t know what it is. Would you please let me know what that is, when you find

Courtney Doctor
out, it’s so tempting. I even can just see in my own heart a spirit of complaint about my body. Yeah, well, each of those things that you mentioned, we tend to view as negative for our bodies, because there’s this ideal, you know, 1819, 20 year old, right? And then each of the things takes away from, yeah, our bodies, right, form or function. I mean, I just like, either our bodies don’t perform in those ways that we wish that they would. And, you know, we, we,

Courtney Doctor
we load them for it like you said, or they appear like the form of them. The appearance of them is different because of those things, and then we loathe them for it. And, you know, it’s just, it’s such an interesting question. I mean, we’ve talked about this in the aging episode, but you know the idea of Teach me to number my days, that I may gain a heart of wisdom, and the fact that watching my body age and feeling the effects of it is actually a discipleship issue. And I think, I think that that’s what you’re saying, Lisa, is that, like how we understand and view our bodies actually can help us be formed in Christ likeness. And so how have you seen that play out? How is that true? And then, how are we helping? How are we speaking into because there is, you’re right, apart from, apart from Christ, right? We really can’t. I mean, the ultimate thing is going to be the form and function of our bodies, right? It just is. It’s going to become a God unto them. Unto them, unto itself, or or we follow a religion that says your bodies are nothing. They mean nothing, and so neglect doesn’t matter, and they’re just going to, you know, fade off into oblivion. But as believers who want to be formed into the image of Christ, how does this idea of pressing into

Lisa Whittle
a whole body theology disciple us into Christ likeness. This is a huge discipleship issue. This is, this is a piece that we have been missing for so very long. And it’s not just about like, you know, I want to teach this to my children, or we need to teach this to the church or the next generation so that they will talk nicer to themselves. I mean that absolutely is important, but it has far bigger ramifications for even the unity in the body of Christ, because we don’t even know how to relate Courtney, even as brothers and sisters in Christ, to each other because of the over sexualized culture that we live.

Lisa Whittle
It in. I mean, this is I could go on and on about this, but I won’t, but this is a actual, really big deal. And I think that if we were to understand our bodies, that’s one piece, we would also understand other people’s bodies. We would treat each other in a way and respect one another in a way that could really revolutionize the our relationship with one another, and there would be a different level of respect. I mean, there’s no question in the church,

Lisa Whittle
as a body, we have, have, you know, not honored one another. We have we’ve had abuse. We have had just, I mean, in all forms. And I think that that is a core misunderstanding of what Imago Dei even is and and even just how we’re supposed to function with one another and the great value that we have on our lives. And so you want to talk about a discipleship issue at one bazillion percent, and I’m just really passionate about that within the church body. I mean, it’s, it would, it would absolutely change everything. It is one of the reasons why. Rather, we have been discipled on the culture of secular we have been discipled on secular culture means up to this point, and it is the reason why I began to dig into the word to find out truth. Because in my mind, what we have all been through, we’ve been talking about things like, you know, infertility or being disabled. We haven’t even touched on things like abuse and the massive statistics in that, and the things that we’ve all been through, but women have been, and men have been through so much in our bodies, and we have literally just been through something and then come home and cook dinner or just driven to our job or whatever. And I just felt like those memes that hype culture, body positivity, hype culture that we have dealt with, our bodies deserve more than hype, and we deserve the grounding of the Word of God. And so what we’ve tried so far to do is basically just build our body belief systems.

Lisa Whittle
We’ve built a house without a foundation. We’ve put up pictures on the wall, we’ve hung curtains, and there’s been zero foundation for it, and it’s no wonder that we have struggled our entire lives. And so it’s just like anything else Courtney, if we aren’t discipled in the word, if we don’t know what it means, if we haven’t had a full picture from the entire scripture, where,

Courtney Doctor
what are we going to do? We’re going to go to body topics, and that’s what we’ve done. And and so it’s crucial for our children. It’s crucial for our own selves. It’s never too late to learn. I’m a living testimony to that, and so I’m just a tiny bit passionate about discipling the church well, and as other people get healthy, if they as they develop whole body theology. You know, I’ve told Melissa this before. Actually, my daughters and daughter in laws are the ones that have been discipling me in this, like they’re so instructive, because I think they have a healthier relationship with their body. And it’s really been it’s discipled me. It’s been helpful. So I think as we pursue this, we actually do help each other

Melissa Kruger
understand. So let me ask you this, as older women, we’re increasingly becoming older women in all of our congregations, what responsibility do we have as we talk to younger women? What responsibility do we have with our words, how we how we speak?

Melissa Kruger
What What responsibility do we have, just as in our example before them, how would y’all, yeah, kind of

Courtney Doctor
to do that? Yeah, hard. It’s hard to kind of live in an aging body in front of people and not make excuses or not be apologetic, or not duck out of the photo, or not, you know, whatever it is, like, it’s actually hard to do. And I remember one of my younger friends saying to me one time, she was like, well, don’t you get to the age that it doesn’t matter anymore? I was like, Well, I haven’t reached out, right, right? I’m like, No, it’s, it’s, it’s hard. But I think it really matters that as older women, we do that, and we, you know, we disciple

Courtney Doctor
one crepey skin,

Lisa Whittle
oh my gosh, and keeping your sense of humor. Honestly, I love your sense of humor about this, because I do think that that’s important. It kind of helps me keep my sanity. I have to watch that I’m not too like self deprecating about things, because I can get very much that way. And I have to watch that around my daughter, especially. Like, don’t say too many, like, you know, comments about yourself, because they do pick up on that, right? But I do think amongst each other, it’s kind of fun to just talk about like, Can you believe how many skin tags I actually have at this junction of my life? Yeah, I am. I am plucking hairs off my face as we speak, right? I.

Lisa Whittle
But I mean, that is the I mean, I do find the beauty of the keeping my sanity with women that are in my season of life. And I do think there’s beauty in that, because I will say, Melissa, it has it is weighty. It is no pun intended, but it is literally like there is a real mantle that I feel with this. And it’s not because I wrote something about it. It is because I do feel,

Lisa Whittle
I do feel the responsibility in being a woman that ages gracefully and gracefully, not meaning, like, with always a good attitude about it, I guess, because the Lord knows my heart, like we have many conversations about it, but I feel like, like, with not complaining constantly, like I am able to get around and I am able to have breath in my lungs like, honestly, my good friend Jen died at 40, and I watched her wither away into skin and bones like I sat with her three days before she took her last breath. Cancer ravaged her body, and I think about Jen a lot, like, I’ve gotten to live 13 years longer than Jen,

Lisa Whittle
thank you, God. Like, I’m telling you those kinds of things, those perspectives are so important as we age, because I get to see another year of life. I get to still hug my kids, like, I don’t know. I mean, these things are calibrating, and I do think it’s important, as we look and we see yet another age spot, and we see yet another like, part of our neck we don’t like, and those things, honestly, are not fun. They’re not great. I don’t want to sit here and act like they are. But like I am alive. I can laugh. I’ve got kids. It’s, it’s great. And also, I do know from my past stupidity as a young woman that if I don’t appreciate how I look at 53 then at 63 I’m going to be like, Oh, I was, I was pretty cute, actually, right?

Courtney Doctor
That’s, I mean, it’s so true, you know, how often have we all said, like, oh my gosh, what was I complaining about? It, you know, 33 but the reality is, we’ve complained all the way along. Most of us, that’s just the reality.

Courtney Doctor
But the opportunity to press into both humility and self forgetfulness is a good thing. I think about that a lot, when all of a sudden, I’m I’m thinking about me again, like you said, you know, what do other people think? What am I? You know, there is a little video that went viral, and one of the lines in it was, you’re turning into a Teletubby, and everybody knows it. So I repeat that to Melissa all the time. I’m like, I’m turning into a Teletubby, and everybody knows it, but it’s like that idea, it back to what you started with, Melissa, not everybody’s thinking about me. You know, it said it’s, how can I have more self forgetfulness and more remembrance of the glory of God, of what he’s doing?

Courtney Doctor
Well, I think we could turn this into a six episode,

Courtney Doctor
huge. I mean, there are so many things that I want to unpack and want to continue pressing in on, because it’s Melissa. And I’ve said this before, Lisa, but we just are learning real time, and we love being able to learn from our guests. So thank you so much for just the years you’ve spent thinking about this the way you’ve pressed into it, because it is discipling me and and anybody else who’s who’s listening. So thank you for being a guest on the deep dish. We do like to end by asking one lighter question. Now, I know we sort of made fun of the idea, you know, dismiss the idea of like, saying, Oh, well, one day in glory, our bodies are going to be able to do this. But I do think that in the same way that Jesus’s body was able to do things that his non resurrected body was not able to do, right? He was in one place and then he was in another. He walked through a door like there are, there are things that he was able to do. And I will confess, I have told many people that I think I will be able to ride a giraffe in the new heavens and the new earth. And so I just think that, yeah, it’s going to be amazing. It’s it is the thing I am the most looking forward to. And so I am very excited. The Avatar ride, the Pandora ride at Disney World, is a glimpse of what I think the new heavens and the new earth tend to be like. I know it’s all true, though, but anyway, so I encourage her, Lisa, right next to her. I think, Oh, I’m gonna be over there. Like, what you’re gonna be so jealous. I mean, can you imagine they’re so beautiful when they run? That would be anyway, what is one thing, even if you’ve never thought about it before this moment, okay, that you hope that your new body will be able to do that is, is not something you can do in the current earth this. This is a fun question, because my kids would, they would love to answer this for me, because they would be like, there’s so many things physically my mother cannot do.

Lisa Whittle
Okay, okay, I got an answer for this. There is no question. I will, hip hop, dance, yeah, you will. I can promise you. I.

Lisa Whittle
There’s nothing that I love on the face of this earth better than someone who is a killer hip hop dancer. Yeah, so for me, I will hip hop dance, and I’m going to be so good my kids would laugh so hard about that, because they know, they know that I cannot, and that it would be so fun to watch me try. And I think we’re going to be hanging out a lot in the new heavens hip

Courtney Doctor
hop dancing Courtney. I would love that. Very

Unknown Speaker
fun. Well, maybe in my corner, reading so

Courtney Doctor
boring, you’ll be able to hold a book for days on him that’ll be in your talk to me, it’s gonna be your thing. Awesome.

Courtney Doctor
I love it well. If you have enjoyed this episode of the deep dish, we hope you will share it with a friend. Continue this gospel conversation about whole body theology. Check out the resources Lisa’s new book included in the show notes. And more resource resources from the gospel coalition. See you next time you.