Turning God's Temple Into a Battlefield
There's something I've been hearing quite a bit lately that has really been bothering me. It's the way people talk about their flesh, their bodies, and even themselves. I hear people saying they're fighting their flesh, struggling against their human nature, waiting for the body to be redeemed and constantly attempting to bring themselves into submission. They speak about themselves as though something about being human is actually corrupt, unclean, or unacceptable to God.
What's troubling is how normal this language has become. We've repeated these ideas for so long that many people never stop to question what they're actually saying about themselves. They've been taught that their flesh is evil, their desires are dangerous, their hearts can't be trusted, and their natural inclinations are something to be suspicious of. Even when they recognize something good about themselves, they're often quick to dismiss it and insist that there's nothing good about them apart from the blood of Jesus.
I understand that much of this comes from a sincere desire to honor Jesus and recognize what He accomplished. But I have a serious problem with the picture of humanity, and especially the picture of the Father, that these teachings often create. I also wonder whether we've misunderstood some of the very Scriptures we've been using to reinforce these ideas.
What if we've spent generations teaching people to fight something that was never supposed to be their enemy? What if the conflict we've accepted as a normal part of spiritual life is actually being reinforced by the way we've learned to understand ourselves?
I want to explore this because it isn't simply a theological disagreement for me. I spent more than two decades of my own life fighting my flesh, and I know something about the exhaustion that comes with living that way and how it bears no fruit. I also know what began to happen when I stopped treating my own humanity as something I needed to defeat.
When Your Own Body Becomes the Enemy
Think about what happens when someone grows up hearing that they cannot trust themselves. They're taught to question their thoughts, suppress their desires, distrust their emotions, and remain constantly alert to whatever might be happening inside them. Their body becomes something they have to manage, restrain, discipline, and continually bring under control.
Even their confidence can become suspicious. If they begin feeling good about themselves, someone reminds them not to become prideful. If they recognize something beautiful about who they are, they're told to remember how sinful they are apart from Jesus. If they celebrate their abilities or accomplishments, they're warned against taking credit for anything because all glory belongs to God.
Eventually, they begin relating to their own humanity through suspicion. And here's what I find so disturbing about that. These same people are being told that Christ lives within them, that they're temples of the Holy Spirit, that they've been reconciled, made righteous, and brought into union with God. Yet much of the language surrounding their everyday existence continues to describe them as though they're corrupt, deficient, and fundamentally untrustworthy.
How are we supposed to reconcile those two pictures? How can someone believe they're the dwelling place of God while simultaneously believing their own body is a corrupt place that must be continually fought against? How can we tell people that they're one with Christ while teaching them to imagine themselves as divided creatures, with one part belonging to God and another part working against Him?
We've created an understanding of the human person in which inner conflict becomes normal, sometimes even celebrated as evidence of spiritual maturity. People can spend their entire lives fighting themselves and believing the struggle proves they're taking their relationship with God seriously.
I know because I lived that way for over twenty years. I believed fighting my flesh was part of what it meant to walk with God. There was always something to overcome, something to suppress, something to conquer, and something within me that needed to be brought into submission.
The strange thing about that kind of life is that the battle never really ends. You might experience moments of relief or feel as though you've made progress, but eventually another thought, desire, emotion, or mistake convinces you that the war is still going on. You can spend years exhausting yourself in a battle that never seems to produce the freedom you've been promised.
But something began changing for me when I started reconsidering what I had been taught about my identity, my humanity, and what Jesus actually revealed. I began to realize that my body wasn't a place of warfare. I didn't have to live suspicious of myself, constantly looking for something inside me to defeat. I could actually be at peace with myself and within myself.
And interestingly enough, that's when I began experiencing the kind of victory I had spent so many years trying to achieve through fighting. I was discovering that living in peace with myself was opening possibilities that years of battling myself had never produced.
I wasn't becoming less human through that experience. I was finally learning to appreciate and trust my own humanity.
What Kind of Father Teaches His Children to Despise Themselves?
There's another dimension to this that I think we need to examine, and it has everything to do with how we've imagined God.
Consider the picture of a father who brings children into the world, gives them life, and then spends their upbringing convincing them they're unworthy, untrustworthy, incapable, and defective. Every time they become confident, he diminishes that confidence. Every time they recognize something beautiful about themselves, he reminds them of how corrupt they really are. Every time they begin trusting their abilities, he warns them that their own judgment cannot be trusted.
We would recognize how damaging that kind of parenting could be. We would question why a father would raise children to be so suspicious of themselves that they never developed confidence in who they were or what they were capable of doing.
Yet somehow, when we attribute similar behavior to God, we call it humility, holiness, and sound teaching. I don't believe Jesus revealed that kind of Father, and I don't believe that picture reflects the heart of the One who gave us life.
When I look at Jesus, I see someone who continually restored dignity to people who had been taught to live without it. He touched people considered unclean, welcomed those who had been rejected, and engaged humanity in ways that challenged the religious assumptions surrounding worthiness, purity, and belonging.
Jesus wasn't revealing a Father who needed to be persuaded to love humanity. He was revealing the Father who had always loved humanity, and I think His revelation tells us something about ourselves as well.
We've often approached Jesus as though He came exclusively to show us everything that was wrong with humanity. But what if we've overlooked how much His life reveals about the goodness and possibilities of being human?
Jesus lived as a human being. He experienced life through a physical body. He ate, drank, walked, rested, wept, embraced others, and participated in the ordinary experiences of human existence. Through that humanity, He revealed the Father.
John tells us that the Word became flesh and lived among us (John 1:14). That alone should cause us to reconsider any theology that treats human embodiment as inherently repulsive to God. If humanity were unworthy of God's presence, what are we to make of the humanity through which Jesus revealed Him?
Perhaps we've spent so much time discussing what Jesus came to rescue humanity from that we've overlooked what He came to reveal about humanity. I see Him revealing the extraordinary worth of human life, a worth that religion has often obscured through its ideas about separation, impurity, and condemnation.
Even our understanding of reconciliation deserves examination here. Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5:19 that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting people's sins against them. Many have interpreted that reconciliation as though God had to overcome His unwillingness to embrace humanity, rather than recognizing that humanity needed to discover the Father Jesus was revealing.
That distinction changes how we understand ourselves, how we see others, and how we live. It also changes what we believe about the bodies through which we experience and express life.
Created in the Image and Likeness of God
There's something else I think we've overlooked in the way we've been taught to understand ourselves, and it takes us all the way back to the beginning of Scripture. Before humanity was ever described as the temple of the Holy Spirit, before Paul spoke about righteousness, holiness, and union with Christ, Genesis introduced humanity as created in the image and likeness of God.
In Genesis 1:26–27, God declares His intention to make humanity in His image and likeness. Then, after humanity is created, Genesis 1:31 tells us that God looked at everything He had made and declared it very good. I want us to seriously consider what that means for the way we've been taught to view ourselves. If humanity was created in God's image and likeness, how did we arrive at a theology that describes our very nature as corrupt, defective, and unworthy?
And I'm not simply talking about some invisible spiritual part of us. I'm talking about the whole human being, including our physical existence. Genesis 2:7 tells us that God formed the human from the dust of the ground, breathed the breath of life into him, and the human became a living being. Humanity isn't introduced as a spiritual being trapped inside an inferior physical body. Our physical existence is included in the very account of creation, and God calls His creation good.
Somewhere along the way, we've learned to separate things that Scripture presents together. We've imagined that the spiritual part of us must be good because it comes from God, while our physical humanity must be something less, something corrupt, and something we need to fight against. But Genesis doesn't describe God's image as a small spiritual compartment hidden inside an otherwise defective human being. It's humanity that bears His image, and that includes our existence as embodied people who think, feel, relate, create, imagine, love, and participate in the world.
Of course, being created in God's image doesn't mean every decision a person makes is wise or beneficial. But it does mean we need to take seriously the dignity Scripture gives to the whole human person, rather than treating our physical humanity as something inferior.
And this understanding isn't limited to the opening chapters of Genesis. In Genesis 9:6, the value of human life is connected directly to humanity being made in God's image. Then in James 3:9, we find something just as interesting. James challenges people who praise God while speaking destructively about other human beings, reminding them that those people have been made in God's likeness. When James wants people to reconsider how they speak about others, he reminds them of whose likeness those people bear. He appeals to the dignity of their humanity as the reason they should be treated differently.
And I can't help wondering what James might say about the way we've been taught to speak about ourselves. We've become comfortable calling ourselves worthless, filthy, corrupt, unworthy, and fundamentally incapable of goodness. We've even learned to associate that kind of language with humility, as though diminishing ourselves somehow brings greater honor to God. But if we're created in His image and likeness, what exactly are we diminishing when we speak about ourselves that way? Are we honoring the Creator by despising what He has made in His own image?
I wonder whether we've confused recognizing our capacity for harmful behavior with believing there's something fundamentally wrong with who we are. Those are two very different things, and I think the distinction matters more than we've realized. A person can make a destructive decision without being a defective creation. Someone can act contrary to love without that behavior becoming the definition of their identity. We can recognize our mistakes, take responsibility for our actions, and learn from experience without concluding that our very existence is corrupt.
There's another dimension that fascinates me when I consider Jesus and the way He revealed the Father. The Word became flesh, and through that humanity the Father was made known. Jesus didn't have to abandon being human to reveal God. His humanity was the very means through which that revelation took place, and I wonder whether we've been so focused on everything we believe is wrong with humanity that we've overlooked what humanity was created to reveal.
We talk about God's goodness, creativity, love, and wisdom, yet often struggle to recognize those same qualities finding expression through human beings. We celebrate God's creativity while teaching people to distrust their imagination. We speak about His love while convincing people they're unlovable. We acknowledge His wisdom while continually reminding humanity that its own ability to think, understand, and make decisions cannot be trusted. There's a contradiction in that picture that deserves our attention.
If we're created in God's image, perhaps our humanity deserves far more appreciation than religion has taught us to give it. Our bodies, our minds, our imagination, our abilities, and our capacity to experience and express life are not unfortunate features of an existence we need to escape. They're part of what makes being human such an extraordinary experience, and I think we've spent far too long overlooking that.
This also brings me back to the picture of the Father we've inherited. What kind of Creator would bring humanity into existence in His own image and likeness, declare His creation very good, and then expect humanity to spend its existence despising what He had made? I have a difficult time reconciling that picture with the Father Jesus revealed.
The more I consider what Scripture says about the creation of humanity, the more I wonder whether we've been approaching ourselves from the wrong starting point. We've been taught to begin with corruption, deficiency, and unworthiness, then spend our lives trying to become something acceptable. But the story of humanity begins with the image of God, and that image establishes a dignity that isn't erased every time someone makes a mistake, experiences an unwanted thought, or discovers something they still need to learn.
When we carry that understanding into the New Testament, the language Paul uses about our bodies becomes even more fascinating. He describes our bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit, speaks about our physical lives expressing righteousness and holiness, and declares that the Spirit gives life to our mortal bodies. Perhaps we've spent so much time trying to conquer our humanity that we've forgotten to appreciate what it means to be human in the first place. And if our bodies belong to a humanity created in God's image, I think it's time we seriously reconsidered the idea that those same bodies are supposed to be places of constant warfare.
Your Body Is God's Temple, Not the Battlefield
One of the things I find increasingly fascinating is how differently Scripture speaks about our bodies compared to the language many of us have inherited from religion.
For generations, we've heard about fighting our flesh, denying ourselves, bringing our bodies into submission, and battling the supposedly corrupt nature within us. We've become so familiar with the language of warfare that we rarely stop to consider whether it accurately describes the reality Jesus revealed.
But when I begin looking at what the New Testament actually says about our bodies, I find something quite different. I find language about holiness, righteousness, life, union, and the presence of God. I find passages that invite us to honor our bodies rather than despise them, to recognize their significance rather than treat them as obstacles to spiritual life.
One of the clearest examples is found in 1 Corinthians 6:19–20, where Paul tells his readers that their bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. He encourages them to honor God with their bodies precisely because of the significance of the Spirit's presence within them.
I want us to really think about that statement. Paul is identifying their bodies as dwelling places of God's Spirit. He's not describing humanity as an unfortunate physical shell surrounding something far more valuable. He's telling them that their actual bodies matter and that how they live through those bodies is meaningful.
The human body is not presented as something God reluctantly tolerates. It's a place where His presence finds expression, and Paul considers that reason enough to honor it.
And there's something about this temple imagery that I think deserves far more consideration than we've given it.
Remember David and his desire to build a temple for God? In 1 Chronicles 22:7–10, David explains that he had wanted to build a house for the name of the Lord. But he was told that he would not be the one to build it because he had shed much blood and fought many wars.
The same explanation appears in 1 Chronicles 28:3, where David recalls being told that he could not build the house because he was a man of war who had shed blood. Instead, Solomon would build it, and in 1 Chronicles 22:9, Solomon is described as a man of rest whose reign would be associated with peace and quietness.
I find that picture fascinating. The building of the temple was connected with peace rather than the warfare that had marked David's reign. Within its original setting, this concerned Israel's temple and the circumstances surrounding its construction, but I can't help noticing the contrast when I think about the way we've been taught to understand ourselves.
We've spent generations teaching people that their bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit while simultaneously encouraging them to imagine those very temples as places of constant warfare. David was not permitted to build the temple because of his history of war and bloodshed, yet we've somehow become comfortable imagining warfare as the normal atmosphere within the temple of God's Spirit.
I'm not suggesting David's story was originally written as a teaching about our inner lives. But I do think the contrast gives us something worth considering, especially when the New Testament repeatedly associates life in the Spirit with peace.
What kind of atmosphere are we creating within ourselves when we're constantly thinking about what we need to fight, suppress, conquer, and defeat? And what might change if we began seeing ourselves as dwelling places of peace rather than permanent battlefields?
There's another passage I think is especially significant here, and it's found in Romans 8:11. Paul speaks about the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead dwelling within his readers, and he says that the same Spirit will give life to their mortal bodies. I want us to notice that Paul specifically includes the mortal body in what he is describing.
The Spirit gives life to our mortal bodies. Paul isn't describing life as something that matters only to an invisible part of us while our physical humanity remains outside the conversation.
Romans 8 is often used to support the idea that we're supposed to live in continual conflict with ourselves, yet right in the middle of that discussion, Paul describes the Spirit's life-giving work as including the body. His language belongs to a larger conversation about resurrection and mortality, so I wouldn't reduce it to a promise that our bodies will never become sick or grow old. But neither would I overlook what it reveals about the body's place in God's purpose.
And Romans 8 isn't the only place we find this kind of language. In Romans 12:1, Paul calls his readers to present their bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. He isn't telling them to despise their physical existence. He's inviting them to recognize that their embodied lives can express holiness.
In Romans 6:13, he encourages them to present themselves to God and the members of their bodies as instruments of righteousness. He continues that thought in Romans 6:19, where he speaks about offering their members in service to righteousness and holiness.
Our physical lives are included in the expression of righteousness. Our hands, our voices, our abilities, and the many ways we participate in the world can become expressions of the life we possess.
And this is where I think our understanding of union becomes especially important.
First Corinthians 6:17 tells us that whoever is united with the Lord is one spirit with Him. That's an extraordinary statement, and one many of us have come to appreciate deeply.
But I don't think we should stop there and imagine that union has nothing to do with our embodied humanity. Paul himself doesn't stop discussing the body when he speaks about being one spirit with the Lord. He continues by reminding his readers that their bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit.
Then, in Ephesians 5:29–32, Paul draws upon the one-flesh union described in Genesis 2:24 and connects that mystery with Christ and His people. He's discussing marriage, but he also uses that relationship to illuminate the union between Christ and the church.
Paul doesn't use the exact expression "one flesh with Christ" as a separate definition of union. But he does connect the mystery of one flesh with Christ and His people, and he speaks of believers as members of Christ's body.
When we consider these passages together, something beautiful begins to emerge. Our union with Christ is not presented as an isolated spiritual reality that has nothing to do with our humanity. The same Paul who speaks about being one spirit with the Lord tells us that our bodies are temples of the Spirit, that our bodily members can serve righteousness, and that the Spirit gives life to our mortal bodies.
In 1 Thessalonians 5:23, Paul includes spirit, soul, and body as he speaks about the whole person being sanctified and kept blameless. In Hebrews 10:22, the writer uses the language of hearts being cleansed and bodies being washed with pure water, drawing from the covenantal imagery of purification and access to God.
Even the old categories of uncleanness and separation were being addressed through the reality revealed in Christ.
And there's another distinction worth recognizing. In 1 Corinthians 3:16–17, Paul describes the community together as God's temple and says that temple is holy. In 1 Corinthians 6, he addresses the significance of the individual body. Both passages contribute to a beautiful picture in which God's presence and human life belong together.
We should also remember where the story of humanity begins. Genesis describes humanity as created in God's image and declares the creation very good. Psalm 139 celebrates the wonder of being formed and made. Then we encounter Jesus, the Word made flesh, revealing the Father through a genuinely human life.
When I consider all of this, I have a difficult time understanding why we've been so comfortable teaching people to relate to their physical bodies through hostility.
Of course, Scripture doesn't ignore harmful behavior, and recognizing the goodness of our humanity doesn't mean that everything we do is beneficial. Paul clearly addresses conduct, responsibility, and the consequences of our decisions. But there's an enormous difference between recognizing that our actions matter and teaching people that their bodies are inherently unholy.
One understanding encourages us to live responsibly and honor the life we possess. The other can condition us to despise the very humanity through which that life is expressed.
I wonder how differently people would experience themselves if they began each day recognizing their bodies as places of life rather than places of warfare. What if we stopped treating our humanity as something to escape and began appreciating the extraordinary reality of being alive, fully human, and at home within ourselves?
If the body is the dwelling place of the Spirit, perhaps we should seriously reconsider the atmosphere we're encouraging people to cultivate within that dwelling place. I can't help believing that peace belongs in this conversation far more than we've allowed it to.
What Did Paul Actually Mean by Flesh and Spirit?
This brings us to the Scriptures people most often use when describing the ongoing conflict between flesh and Spirit.
Paul speaks about the flesh and Spirit being opposed to each other in Galatians 5:16–17. Romans 7 describes a struggle involving sin, desire, and the inability to do what one wants. Romans 8 contrasts living according to the flesh with living according to the Spirit.
These passages have shaped enormous portions of our theology and the way people understand themselves. For many people, they've become the foundation for believing that the normal human experience is supposed to involve an endless internal battle.
But before we draw conclusions about what those passages mean for us today, I think we need to understand what they meant to the people who originally received them.
Paul was writing to real communities living through a major covenantal transition. The world shaped by the Mosaic covenant, with its laws, rituals, circumcision, and identity markers, was being confronted by the reality revealed through Jesus. Questions about righteousness, belonging, freedom, and the relationship between the law and the Spirit were central to those communities.
When we begin reading Paul's language about flesh and Spirit through that historical setting, some fascinating things begin to emerge.
The Greek word sarx, commonly translated as flesh, carries a range of meanings throughout Scripture. It can refer to physical flesh, human ancestry, mortal existence, or a way of thinking and living shaped by human status, desire, and identity apart from the Spirit.
The context determines how the word is being used. And in Paul's writings, it often carries implications that reach into the way people understood their covenant identity and their relationship with God.
One of the most important places to explore this is the letter to the Galatians.
In Galatians 3:3, Paul asks his readers why, having begun by the Spirit, they're now attempting to reach completion through the flesh. To understand his question, we need to consider what was happening among the Galatians.
Throughout the letter, Paul addresses the pressure being placed upon Gentile believers to embrace circumcision and the requirements associated with the Mosaic law. He's challenging the assumption that their standing in Christ needed to be completed through participation in that old covenant arrangement.
These people had received the message of Christ and the Spirit, yet others were attempting to persuade them that something more was required to establish their righteousness and belonging. Paul challenges that entire way of thinking.
Then in Galatians 4:23–31, he introduces the story of Hagar and Sarah. He contrasts the son born according to the flesh with the son born through promise, and he explicitly tells his readers that the women represent two covenants.
I find that fascinating because Paul himself is connecting flesh language with the covenantal realities being discussed. The contrast between flesh and promise is part of his explanation of two different arrangements and two different ways of understanding belonging, identity, and inheritance.
And then we move into Galatians 5.
In verses 2–6, Paul continues discussing circumcision and the obligation to keep the law. He's explaining why returning to that arrangement misunderstands the freedom being revealed through Christ.
Then, in verses 16–17, we encounter the familiar language about the flesh and Spirit being opposed to each other. But look at what Paul says immediately afterward.
In Galatians 5:18, he tells them that if they're led by the Spirit, they're not under the law. That statement belongs to the same argument as the conflict he's describing, yet we've often removed the flesh-and-Spirit discussion from that larger covenantal conversation.
Why is that important? Because it changes the interpretations we bring to the passage.
Instead of immediately treating Paul's words as a description of a permanent war within every human being, we can begin by asking what he was addressing among the Galatians. We can examine how the conflict between flesh and Spirit relates to the law, the promise, freedom, and the identity being revealed through Christ.
Now, I don't think we should simplify this by suggesting that every time Paul uses the word flesh, he's referring exclusively to the Mosaic law. That would overlook important dimensions of his writings.
In Galatians 5, Paul also addresses jealousy, hostility, selfish ambition, sexual misconduct, and other destructive ways of living that were affecting relationships within the community. Those things mattered, and Paul wasn't dismissing their consequences.
But recognizing those behaviors doesn't require us to conclude that humanity must forever exist in a divided condition, continually battling itself. Paul's instructions about how people live are part of a larger conversation about the freedom they possessed and how that freedom could be expressed.
Consider Romans 7 as well. Romans 7 is often treated as the permanent autobiography of every person who desires to live with God. Paul describes knowing what is good but struggling to do it, wanting one thing while experiencing another, and feeling caught in a conflict involving sin and the law.
Many people have been taught to recognize that struggle as the unavoidable reality of their everyday lives. But look at how much attention Paul gives to the law throughout the chapter.
In Romans 7:1, he begins by addressing people who know the law. In the following verses, he explains the relationship between the law, sin, desire, and the experience of being bound to an old arrangement.
Then in Romans 7:6, he speaks about being released from the law in order to serve in the new way of the Spirit. That's an important statement when we're considering the larger argument.
Whatever conclusion someone reaches about Paul's use of the first-person language later in Romans 7, we cannot ignore the fact that he's discussing the relationship between sin and the law. It's part of the context through which his descriptions of struggle need to be understood.
And then Romans 8 opens by declaring that there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. Paul moves into a discussion of freedom, righteousness, life in the Spirit, and the Spirit's presence within his readers.
In Romans 8:2, he speaks of freedom from the law of sin and death. In verse 4, he continues discussing the righteous requirement of the law. And in verse 9, he tells his readers that they are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, because God's Spirit dwells in them.
Then comes Romans 8:11, where Paul speaks about the Spirit giving life to their mortal bodies. That is followed by language about putting to death the deeds of the body and being led by the Spirit.
There is a movement within Paul's argument that we shouldn't overlook. He's contrasting life shaped by sin, death, and the law with the freedom and life being revealed through the Spirit.
Paul's language belongs to that conversation. And I think we've sometimes overlooked it because we've approached Romans 7 and 8 primarily as descriptions of an endless internal struggle rather than considering the covenantal questions Paul was addressing.
That doesn't mean his words have no implications for our everyday choices, relationships, or behavior. They can but that's not what Paul was addressing. Those implications should emerge from an understanding of what he was communicating to his original readers.
We've taken descriptions of the struggle surrounding the old covenant order, along with Paul's warnings about destructive ways of living, and turned them into a permanent definition of who we are. We've convinced generations of people that the very conflict Paul was addressing must continue within them for the rest of their lives.
When we read Galatians and Romans with their historical and covenantal setting in mind, we begin to see that the contrast between flesh and Spirit belongs to a much larger conversation about the passing of an old arrangement and the reality of life in Christ.
And that changes the questions we bring to those passages. Rather than asking how we can become more effective at fighting ourself, we begin asking what it means to live in the freedom, peace, and union Paul was announcing.
I think that's a conversation worth having, especially for people who have spent years believing that a life of constant inner conflict is simply what it means to walk with God.
The Exhausting Cycle of Fighting Yourself
There's a psychological dimension to all of this that I don't think we can afford to ignore.
When people believe there's something fundamentally wrong with them, that belief can influence how they experience almost every aspect of their lives. They become suspicious of their own thoughts, uncomfortable with their desires, uncertain about their abilities, and hesitant to trust their judgment.
If they're taught that some part of their humanity is continually working against them, the conflict can become part of their everyday awareness. They begin monitoring themselves for evidence of whatever they're supposed to be fighting.
Every unwanted thought becomes another battle. Every difficult emotion becomes something to conquer. Every mistake confirms the suspicion that there's something corrupt within them.
Over time, a person can become so accustomed to examining themselves for problems that they struggle to simply enjoy being alive. They can spend more energy policing their humanity than participating in the possibilities that life offers.
I've wondered how much anxiety, shame, insecurity, and inner division these teachings have contributed to, particularly when they're introduced during childhood. Imagine spending your formative years hearing that you are inherently unworthy and that your own nature cannot be trusted, then being expected to grow into someone who is confident, emotionally healthy, and secure in who they are.
That's an enormous contradiction, and I wonder how many people are carrying the consequences without recognizing where those ideas originated.
This isn't merely a question about emotional well-being, either. Researchers have spent decades studying the relationship between how people perceive themselves and their physical health.
A study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2002 examined 660 adults aged fifty and older. Researchers found that participants with more positive perceptions of their own aging lived an average of 7.5 years longer than those with more negative perceptions, even after accounting for several other factors.
That study wasn't examining religious teachings about sin or the flesh, and it doesn't establish that negative theology directly shortens someone's lifespan. We should be careful not to claim more than the evidence supports.
But it does give us a reason to take seriously the relationship between the stories people believe about themselves and the way they experience their lives, including their physical well-being.
We know the damaging effects that prolonged stress and living in a constant state of fight-or-flight can have on our physical bodies. Yet I wonder how often we've considered what happens when we adopt a mindset of continual warfare against ourselves. When we're constantly told that something within us needs to be fought, conquered, or defeated, we can begin living in a state of tension and anxiety rather than peace and rest. Our bodies respond to the way we experience life, and continually perceiving ourselves as being under threat can contribute to the very stress responses that take a toll on our physical and emotional well-being. How much unnecessary stress have we placed upon ourselves by believing that spiritual maturity requires us to live in a constant state of inner warfare? Perhaps the peace and rest Jesus spoke about have far greater implications for our physical well-being than we've realized.
Our beliefs about ourselves can influence how we behave, how we respond to stress, how we care for ourselves, and how confidently we participate in life. The way we understand ourselves matters, and that makes me wonder about the long-term effects of teachings that continually reinforce worthlessness, deficiency, and self-distrust.
How much harm might be done when someone is persuaded to believe that nearly everything natural about their humanity is suspicious? And how much freedom might become possible when that person begins seeing themselves differently?
I think those questions are worth exploring far beyond the walls of religious institutions. They touch the way people experience their bodies, their relationships, their sense of identity, and their ability to enjoy the life they're living.
Learning to Trust Ourselves Again
I think one of the most challenging parts of this conversation for people will be the idea that we can actually trust ourselves.
We've been conditioned to hear that statement as dangerous. The moment someone suggests trusting themselves, people begin warning about pride, deception, temptation, and the possibility of making destructive decisions. But I think we're confusing two very different things.
Trusting ourselves doesn't mean believing every impulse is wise, every desire should be acted upon, or every decision we make will be beneficial. Human beings are capable of making mistakes, misunderstanding situations, and hurting themselves or others. Recognizing our worth and goodness doesn't require pretending otherwise.
But making mistakes isn't the same as being defective. Having an unhelpful thought doesn't mean our minds are corrupt, and experiencing desire doesn't mean our bodies are unholy.
We can recognize that some choices are harmful without deciding there's something wrong with our essential humanity. We can learn from experience without treating every mistake as proof that we cannot be trusted. And I wonder whether this is where we've misunderstood maturity.
We've often presented spiritual maturity as a process of becoming less trusting of ourselves and increasingly suspicious of our humanity. We've imagined growth as a long struggle to defeat whatever is human within us.
But perhaps maturity is better understood as the increasing freedom to express the fullness of who we already are. We learn, discover, develop wisdom through experience, recognize the consequences of our decisions, and become more aware of how our choices affect others.
We develop deeper understanding, greater compassion, and a growing appreciation for the possibilities of life. None of that requires us to begin with the assumption that we're corrupt.
In fact, I would suggest that understanding our wholeness gives us an entirely different foundation for growth. We can embrace learning without interpreting it as evidence that something is missing from our identity.
We don't have to hate ourselves into becoming better people. We can live from the recognition that life is already present within us and that our humanity is capable of expressing extraordinary goodness.
Paul's language about love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control in Galatians 5 becomes particularly interesting here. Those are descriptions of life finding expression in ways that benefit both the individual and the community.
And peace is part of that picture. What if experiencing peace within ourselves is not evidence that we've become careless about spiritual matters, but an expression of finally understanding who we are?
What Happens When We Stop Distrusting Our Humanity?
I keep coming back to the practical implications of all of this because I think we've underestimated how deeply our understanding of God shapes the way we live.
If someone believes God fundamentally distrusts humanity, they may begin distrusting humanity too. If they're convinced their own nature is corrupt, they may find it difficult to recognize the goodness in themselves or others. If they believe every person carries an internal enemy that must be continually defeated, they may approach relationships with suspicion rather than confidence.
And if someone imagines God as a Father who continually points out what's wrong with His children, they may begin believing that love means continually pointing out what's wrong with people.
Our understanding of God has consequences. It shapes how we parent, how we treat our spouses, how we lead communities, how we speak to children, and how we respond to people who make mistakes. It influences the kind of atmosphere we create around ourselves.
I've often wondered what kind of people we would become if we truly believed the things we say about reconciliation, union, and the presence of Christ within humanity.
What if we actually trusted that we were wonderfully made? What if we took seriously the idea that our bodies are worthy of honor? What if we stopped introducing people to themselves through the language of corruption and started helping them recognize the extraordinary life they already possess?
Imagine what that might do for someone's confidence, imagination, creativity, relationships, and sense of possibility. Imagine children growing up with an understanding of themselves that encourages responsibility without shame, confidence without arrogance, and freedom without fear.
Imagine communities where people aren't constantly being reminded of how deficient they are, but are encouraged to discover and express the goodness, wisdom, and creativity already available within them. And imagine what might happen if people stopped spending so much of their energy fighting themselves and began directing that energy toward actually living.
There's an enormous difference between a person who is constantly trying to escape their humanity and someone who is fully present within it. I wonder how much more of life we would experience if we understood that distinction.
You Are Not a House Divided Against Itself
One of the things that has become increasingly clear to me is that we cannot continue confessing union while maintaining an understanding of ourselves that depends upon separation.
We say that Christ lives within us. We say that we're one spirit with Him. We say that we've been reconciled, made righteous, brought into new creation, and filled with the fullness of God.
Yet somehow, we continue telling people that they're essentially divided beings, with one part connected to God and another part fundamentally opposed to Him. We proclaim union while teaching people to experience separation within themselves, and that contradiction deserves our attention.
When Paul speaks about our bodies as temples of the Spirit, he's giving us a picture worth considering more deeply. A temple is not merely a building that happens to contain something valuable while remaining worthless itself. Its identity and significance are inseparable from the presence associated with it.
What might it mean to recognize ourselves as the dwelling place of God? How would we treat our bodies if we genuinely believed that?
How would we speak about our minds, emotions, desires, creativity, and abilities? Would we continue relating to ourselves with hostility and distrust, or would we begin approaching our humanity with greater care, appreciation, and confidence?
I don't believe we were created to live as enemies of ourselves. And I don't believe we honor God by continually belittling the humanity through which His life is being expressed.
That doesn't mean every experience will be pleasant or that every decision will be wise. It doesn't mean the absence of challenges, difficult emotions, or opportunities to grow. It means we no longer have to interpret those experiences through the assumption that something about our essential humanity is fundamentally wrong.
We can learn without condemning ourselves. We can change without despising who we've been. We can recognize harmful behavior without declaring our bodies evil, and we can develop wisdom without treating our humanity as an obstacle to God.
We can also experience peace within ourselves without fearing that we've somehow stopped taking life seriously. In fact, I wonder how much clearer our thinking, healthier our relationships, and more enjoyable our everyday lives might become when we're no longer consumed by an endless battle with ourselves.
That realization changed something significant for me. After more than twenty years of fighting my flesh, I began discovering that I didn't have to live that way anymore. My body wasn't a place of war, and my humanity wasn't something I needed to escape.
I could finally recognize the life within me without imagining that another part of me was permanently working against it. What I had spent so many years trying to achieve through struggle began to take shape through a different understanding of who I was.
And the more I've explored that realization, the more I've wondered how many other people are still living in the same exhausting conflict I once experienced.
How many are trying to conquer themselves because they've never considered that they might have misunderstood what Paul was talking about? How many are afraid to trust their own humanity because they've been taught that confidence is dangerous? How many have spent years trying to defeat their bodies while overlooking the Scriptures describing those very bodies as holy, meaningful, and worthy of honor?
And perhaps the most troubling question of all is how many people have mistaken that exhaustion for the life Jesus came to reveal.
I want us to start having a different conversation about our bodies. I want us to reconsider the language we've inherited about flesh and Spirit, especially within the historical and covenantal world of the people who originally received those letters. I want us to question the assumption that being human means living in a permanent state of warfare with ourselves.
Our bodies are how we participate in this world. They're how we experience affection, create, build, discover, celebrate, embrace one another, and express love. Our humanity isn't an unfortunate condition we have to endure until something better comes along. It's where life is being lived and expressed right now.
And if God has made His home in humanity, perhaps it's time we stopped teaching humanity to be suspicious of the home He has chosen.
I spent over two decades fighting my own flesh, convinced that victory would come when I finally subdued whatever was wrong with me. What I eventually discovered was the possibility of living at peace with myself, no longer treating my body as an enemy.
That discovery hasn't exhausted everything there is to learn about flesh, Spirit, or the fullness of being human. If anything, it has opened an entirely new conversation for me, one that continues to change how I understand God, myself, and the extraordinary possibilities of life.
But it has also left me with a question I wish someone had asked me many years ago. What if your body was never meant to be a battlefield, and the peace you've been fighting to achieve begins with recognizing that you were never meant to be at war with yourself?
— Serge Da Rosa
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Meet Serge
Serge is an author, minister, podcast host, and the founder of Urban Eden Community. his passion is helping people see God more clearly, awaken to who they are, and engage life more fully. Through essays, conversations, books, and community, his hope is to create spaces where people can ask honest questions and discover the life that's already present within them.
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