All this is to say that signing up for a membership at the Y was about as unlikely a thing I could have imagined myself doing back in 2010. However, besides the fact that my kids needed the recreational activities it provided, I had just completed a 5-year intensive masters program in theology, which involved a lot of sedentary reading and writing, and I had just started an intense job as a new pastor at an up-and-coming church plant, which involved a lot of mental and emotional energy. Whether I realized it or not, I really needed the regular workout and low-key social interaction I got each week at the gym.
Some ten years later, I have come to see how important it is for me as a pastor, as a Christian, and as a growing disciple, to maintain a regular routine of weekly exercise. I try to start and end each weekday with a good half hour of physical exercise and try to fit in a 5 mile run on the weekend. If my schedule is disrupted and I happen to go more than a week or two without a good workout, it doesn’t take long before I start to feel it mentally, emotionally and spiritually. The YMCA has taught me, in other words, that for me there is a mysterious connection between getting physical exercise and staying spiritually healthy.
It may strike some readers as odd, connecting my growth as a Christian to a regular discipline of physical exercise the way I did just now. Certainly, in the pre-YMCA days, I would have found it an odd combination. Christianity is something that happens in the head and the heart, isn’t it? What does Gold’s Gym to do with Jerusalem?
I want to be careful in what I say here. There’s a danger I might be misunderstood as saying that unless you’re shredded like Arnie you’re not a good Christian; or that pumping iron somehow makes you a better one. If it sounds like I’m saying that, I’m not communicating well here at all. God in his wisdom gave us all unique body types, unique constitutions, and unique temperaments. Throughout this post, you can feel free to substitute whatever form of physical exercise works for your constitution and body type—whether it’s running a Tough Mudder race or taking the dog on a leisurely walk through the park.
When I say there’s a connection between getting regular exercise and growing as a Christian, I don’t really have any specific kind of exercise in mind. It could be tossing a soft ball with the kids; it could be tossing a 90-pound medicine ball at the gym. The point is just that there is something about physical movement and heavy muscle work that’s good for you, and the “good” it does you is spiritual as well as physical.
In saying this I don’t’ think I’m saying anything radical, or new, or unbiblical. There’s a verse I think about often when I’m exercising. In 1 Timothy 4:8, Paul is giving his young protégé Timothy some advice for being an effective pastor, and he says, “Train yourself to be godly, for physical training is of some value, but goodliness has value for all things.”
Paul’s point here, of course, is that godliness is the preeminent goal of the Christian life, and he uses physical training as an analogy for what it takes to grow in godliness (i.e. just like you have to work out to get buff, so too you have to work at it to get “buff” in holiness….). Because of this, it’s common to gloss over what Paul actually says about “physical training” here; or even to misread it, as though he is suggesting that physical exercise doesn’t matter, because godliness is the most important thing.
But that’s not, strictly speaking, what he says. Strictly speaking, he says that physical training is of some value. Presumably, he means that it has intrinsic value—it’s better to be in good shape physically than not to be—but it also has analogical value, in that it reminds us of the importance of godliness (which, unlike physical fitness, has value both for this life and the life to come).
That’s my quick Coles notes on the verse, anyways.
And if my reading holds water, then notice two things. A) 1 Timothy 4:8 affirms the value of physical exercise (though it places a clear limit on that value. It’s very possible to be a thriving, growing, holy Christian without being in physical shape); and B) the primary value physical exercise has is in helping us understand, on an analogical level, what it means to get ourselves into spiritual shape. In a mysterious way, physical exercise can serve as a “lived object lesson” in spiritual formation, helping us to grasp and to grow in the disciplines necessary for a thriving spiritual life.
I grew up in a “read-your-Bible-pray-every-day” evangelical tradition; so even as I write this, I have to admit that it all feels a bit strange. Does physical exercise really have something to do with spiritual formation?
Of course, there are branches of Christian tradition where there is nothing at all radical about connecting these two dots, where the link between physical training and spiritual growth is self evident. The YMCA itself was founded by a Christian, a guy named Sir George Williams, who believed, among other things, that developing a healthy body was an important part of the Christian life.
If you grew up in a faith tradition something like mine, however, where the connection between the physical and the spiritual were minimized—or if you grew up with no faith tradition, and never really considered the possibility that physical exercise might have something to do with your spirituality—I hope you will join me here at terra incognita over the next few weeks. We will be taking some time to develop a theology of physical exercise, so to speak, in a blog series that I’m calling, “Going to the Gym with God.”
This post is, after all, just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the myriad connections between physical training and training in godliness, and my hope is that, when it’s all said and done, we’ll all find that next stroll through the park, or that next session of jazzercise, or that next game of golf—or whatever your exercise of choice—more spiritually edifying than we ever would have imagined.
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