My Body is a Tent?

            If there is one thing American Christians are really good at, it’s coming up with catchy, pithy metaphors to sum up complex theological ideas. It’s quite a handy little talent, if sometimes problematic. One such metaphor that became very popular a couple years ago in my church was the idea that our physical bodies are just tents; temporary and imperfect dwellings that we have to live with for now but will eventually be replaced with something better.

            You can probably see why this is such an attractive idea. Our bodies are broken in thousands of ways, many of them irreparable, and we don’t want to think that we’ll be stuck in them forever. So we look forward to the next life where we’ll live forever and have new bodies that don’t have all the same problems our current ones do (either new or renewed, I’m not solid on the theology there but the point is the same). We’ll be trading in these crappy tents for a mansion. It really does seem like a sweet trade, and at first I totally bought into the idea, but there is a very big problem with this metaphor.

            Word choice is important, especially when fitting a lot of thought into a short statement. The less words you use the more precise you have to be. The body as a tent metaphor is an example of bad word choice.

            What is a tent? It is a temporary dwelling unfit for long-term use. Many people I know would say, “Well yeah, like our bodies. They aren’t meant to last, they are broken and corrupted and need to be replaced.” Well, that’s half right. Our bodies are broken and corrupted, but to say they were not meant to last is a massive fallacy.

            In Genesis 1:31, after God had created humans and everything else it says, “Then God saw everything that he had made, and indeed it was very good.” Everything God had made, including these bodies, was good. God didn’t half-ass our bodies with the intent of making them temporary, his creation was complete and good.

            This attitude of the flesh being evil and sinful is everywhere. Another popular saying is, “You don’t have soul; you are a soul. You have a body.” Always this separation from the physical form. We’ve romanticized the mental and spiritual form and degraded the physical form, but this is wrong. We are a soul, yes, and a body and a mind. We cannot separate our flesh from what we are any more than we can our mind or soul. The flesh is corrupt and broken, yes, and so is the mind, as was the soul before the sacrifice of Christ.

            This is the problem with calling the body a tent: it implies that God made a mistake. He didn’t finish us because he knew we were going to screw up, but that’s not right. God didn’t give us a tent because he knew we’d screw up. He knew we’d screw up, but gave us a perfect mansion anyway. The broken body isn’t a crappy tent, it is a beautiful masterpiece of a mansion that God gave us and we wrecked. Calling it a tent takes the blame for our brokenness and places it on God.

            These bodies are broken now, but that is because we messed them up. We’re going to get new ones, but it’s not an upgrade from tent to mansion, it’s so much better. God gave us beautiful homes to live in for free and do as we pleased. We chose to party it up and let the homes fall into disrepair, and instead of looking at us in anger and leaving us with our mess he gives us another chance and is going to completely rebuild our homes for free again. Isn’t that a much more moving illustration of grace than God throwing us in a crappy tent to screw it up before trusting us with a mansion?