Warning: this is not a book review. It’s an editorial—and quite a personal one. It might be triggering for some readers.

I sit in the doctor’s chair, fidgety, still telling myself that this was the right choice. It doesn’t. It feels like defeat.

“Julianne? Hi. What brings you in today?”

No space but the truth. “I scratch my ears.”

“Ah, I see. With what? A q-tip?”

“Yeah.” A pause. “Sometimes my fingernails.”

“They ever bleed?”

“Yeah.”

“That tells you something, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” every day staring at the mirror, watching my fingers scratch and scratch–

“How long has this been going on?”

–stop it stop it stop it—

My response is a husk of a whisper: “Years.”

He gives me a prescription for ear drops, and I go on my way.

Four months pass and the ear drops are still untouched. I keep telling myself that it’s because I need to handle the “spiritual” aspect, not really even knowing what that meant.

Reader, by God’s grace, I know now.

Do you ever get tired of hearing that beauty is found within? I do. I love Beauty and the Beast as much as the next person, but sometimes its lessons—echoed also in the Christian-conference-let’s-talk-about-what-makes-us-beautiful-on-the-inside seem a little trite and a lot unhelpful.

We get it—our movies, TV shows, other media, our very culture is built on hypersexualization that often surpasses realistic standards. It leaves us floating in a soup of self-hatred and unreachable high expectations for both ourselves and others. Christians must reject those subtle—and not so subtle— messages in nearly everything we consume: Your body matters more than anything else.

However, when we shove those ideas aside, a new, slippery lie sometimes takes its place: “The body doesn’t really matter, then. We can do whatever we want to it because true beauty isn’t on the surface.”

For me, it’s in the scratching.

I scratch myself all the time. My head, my ears, my arms, my back. Scratch scratch scratch. I used to tell myself that it was because my hands needed something to do, or because my ears itched, or anything, really, just as long as I felt cleaner in the moment by—getting that zit, that scab, that flaky stuff in my ear. Gross, okay, but think about it: what am I doing when I do those things? Getting rid of imperfections. Not so bad, right? The body doesn’t matter, right? Only the soul.

…And then I scratch my ears until I bleed. Or before the scabs are healed. Or ending up making a spot worse because of my meddling. And I say, “I can stop whenever I want” but I don’t.

I stop thinking that tomorrow’s a new day, a new opportunity for hope. And the lies start seeping into my life and out of my greedy, hating hands.

So I saw this part of myself, and got a narwhal. A solution! I said to myself.

It’s a purple squishy thing that keeps my hands busy while I’m in class or studying online. Its weird little eyes and smile encourage me. “I’m made of memory foam,” it seems to say, “You can’t hurt me.” It looks a little silly, a little odd, but it keeps me from destroying myself bit by bit.

But sometimes, this thing, my need to address my own form is so ingrained that I forget the narwhal’s there, and I’m back to square one. Spending that energy elsewhere does not fix the inherit problem within myself: the need to destroy still lurks inside.

Let’s examine this lie further: “The body doesn’t really matter. In fact, sometimes it’s bad.” Where have I heard that before? you ask. Bible class. This belief is called Gnosticism, which usually branches into 2 groups: ascetism (escaping the body) or antinomianism (satisfying the body).

(Before I lose the theology students: yes, there’s a lot more to Gnosticism than that, but this article will focus mainly on these two aspects.)

The reason we talk about Gnosticism in Bible class is because the New Testament authors fought against it; Gnostics believed that in order to receive the mystery of God, you had to leave behind the physical wants.  John, Paul, and other NT believers emphasized Christ as the Messiah who came “in the flesh,” confirming Jesus’ divinity and humanity (which is why we read verses like John 1:14, 1 John 4:2-3, and Jude 1:8).

But here’s the thing: Gnosticism didn’t go away. It’s still here. It’s in the way movies focus on gore and sex. It’s in the way billboards present airbrushed faces. It’s in the college syllabus that praises Plato for his focus on Forms.

If we don’t learn to recognize these age-old lies, we’re going to keep falling into the same traps that people 2 centuries ago did.

So we’re putting a label on body-hatred: Gnosticism.

When we allow self-harm to steal our joy, our understanding of grace, and the beauty of having a physical form, we deny the wonder that God wants us to experience as part of having a body. And, indeed—part of the body of Christ as well.  

We are called God’s hands and feet; that is more than a mere metaphor. Jesus put his hands on the ill, on the demon possessed, on those with various skin diseases- and he healed them. Peter and John reach out their hands to the lame man after Jesus ascended into heaven (Acts 3:1-10). Many of the ceremonial laws in the Old Testament are not merely concerned about physical cleanliness, but cleanliness of the heart. (Mark 7:23).

How can we be his hands and feet in our hands are constantly bent towards our own flaws?

We look to Him.

We are also called to be God’s temples, his dwelling place on earth. The Spirit resides within us. Paul talks about sexual purity when he writes this (1 Corinthians 6:19-20), and that is crucial, but means so much more than that. When I scratch and don’t stop even though I want to, I am actively undermining the Spirit of God’s dwelling place in my own form. With the palms of his hands God formed Adam and Eve—dust and bone designed to possess and share life.

When we are restored fully, will we be ghosts? No—we will have a corporeal being, able to see, taste, smell, feel, and touch. Jesus rose from the dead and invites us to experience what the restoration will be like while we are still here in our sinful bodies. He’s just that amazing.

Matthew 6:25-26 says, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?”

So if you start to feel yourself overexerting because you feel like you deserve it, or watch that episode while lying in bed even though you actually don’t even want to, bite your lip until it bleeds, scratch until you feel a headache, or something far more painful—just stop, for just a second, and consider the lilies. Consider the sparrows. The body is more than clothes; it is more than a brain container. It is how we open our lips to pray, it is how we dance in His name. How we excitedly write down the answer to a question that we’ve been studying for a week. How we hug or hold hands or high five after a soccer game. It is how we find pretty fall leaves and press them into notebooks. Give someone a book to borrow. Fist bump after a group project is complete.

This is what Christ is showing me. And this week, I began to hope in Him, and the person He’s making me to be for His glory. I opened the package of ear drops and went to work.

Don’t forsake the body, because it is beautiful, too. It is integrated with the soul in ways we’re still trying to discover. Our bodies remind us that yes, we are flawed, and sinful, and broken, but God loves us enough that he sent His Son into a body just like ours to heal us and show us how to heal the world through Him.  

We heal because Jesus heals us.

Lift your arms with me!

Additional Stories and Verses:

Romans 8:10-11: “If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.”

Luke 8:42-48: “As Jesus went…there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, and though she had spent all her living on physicians, she could not be healed by anyone. 44 She came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment, and immediately her discharge of blood ceased. …And when the woman saw that she was not hidden, she came trembling, and falling down before him declared in the presence of all the people why she had touched him, and how she had been immediately healed. And he said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.’”