Putting the Protest in Protestant
Joseph Epstein remarked in one of his many essays that men when they turn fifty-eight start to thicken around the middle of their physiques. I guess it has something to do with the metabolism slowing down and the loss of testosterone. (I see plenty of pop-up ads for the latter and am worried what will happen not to my body but my computer if I click on one of them.) Since I have hit that magical age, I am also increasingly concerned about maintaining a figure that will keep me from having to buy a new wardrobe. An inch here and there and the pants get too tight, the jackets snug, and the budget restricted. Walking and calisthenics help. So does consuming fewer calories, I hear. But eating less is not much fun when food and drink become some of life’s greatest pleasures.
But now I have to wonder if my concern about weight gain is really evidence of self-hatred:
We compare ourselves to others in the gym. We come away from movies wanting to exercise for eight hours. We would rather jump in front of a truck than take our shirts off at the pool. We feel pathetic and small. We look at ourselves in almost every mirror we pass. When alone, we flex — not because we like what we see, but because we don’t. We have spent hundreds of dollars on pre-workout, weight loss, and weight gain supplements. We research the best way to bulk, shred, diet, and binge.
Maybe this doesn’t resonate with you. But if it does, you are not alone. We have been fed a lie. I know this lifestyle. It’s a locomotive — and too powerful to be stopped by a single blog. I hope to shed some light on what we’re actually trying to achieve with each rep, each yard, each stabbing “You’re pathetic” we put ourselves through.
Aspects of Male Body Hatred
Health is not the issue here. There is a huge gap between being healthy and meeting our culture’s ideal of “hot.” And in that space lies any and every resource for a man to hate his body.
A man who hates his body is really searching for love — a fundamentally relational search for intimacy with self in the form of confidence, intimacy with the opposite sex in being sexy, intimacy with the same sex in intimidation or acceptance, intimacy with authority in competency, and ultimately intimacy with God, in appearing worthy. The lie is that performance offers intimacy at all — it is, in fact, its foil. Yet this is the path we choose.
The solution? Salvation. A proper understanding of God’s love for mmmeeeeEEEE means I don’t have to feel guilty over lacking six-pack abs:
5. Through his Son, we receive love.
A six pack plays no role in God’s love for you. You being conformed to the physical cultural ideal changes God’s love for you exactly 0%.
We are plagued with a negative body image because we feel the exacting eyes of a deistic, disapproving God. We believe that God withholds no good thing from those who walk [and run and diet and work out] blamelessly (Psalm 84:11). Fortunately, the blameless walker gives us the Father’s gifts even though we are evil [and inconsistent and indulgent and lazy] (Matthew 7:11).
Of course, this is true.
But I’m troubled by a tendency among evangelicals to spiritualize everything. Yes, God still loves me if I have a second-helping of apple pie (though I hear that could be an instance of idolatry). Still, what if my concerns are much more mundane? Will God’s love cover my bill from the local haberdashery when I need to find a few new sports coats?
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