Body Parts

(written on Monday, September 10)

As it is, there are many parts, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of you," nor again the head to the feet, "I have no need of you." On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.
1 Corinthians 12:20-26


The word is always truth; pure and perfect and worthy of our pursuit. But at times God makes these truths more evident to us. Perhaps for me it is because he wants me to understand something that I’m reading to lazily to grasp on my accord.

This Monday afternoon, as I rest and watch the rain bounce on the porch and listen to the thunder stampede over my ceiling, has the makings of a near-perfect day except for one exception. Every time I swallow, my esophagus feels like it's ingesting a handful of needles, and this pain is making it difficult for me to enjoy most anything.

Considering these circumstances, as I read this Scripture from 1 Corinthians the truth laid out for my grasping is much more obvious today than most days. I realize just how needed my esophagus is to the rest of my body (of course I have known but never given it substantial thought). My esophagus is rarely bestowed the honor that many of the members of my body receive.

My mouth and brain receive honor when I teach. My arms and hands receive honor when I serve. My eyes and ears receive honor when I get to directly experience God’s glory in a thunderstorm. My legs and feet receive honor when the experience the freedom of an autumn run. But ‘when one member suffers, all members suffer with it’, and today all my body members undoubtedly suffer with my esophagus. Forget teaching or running, I can barely talk or walk.

It’s usually simple to spot the mouths, brains, arms, eyes and feet at church. I know those who teach, who serve well, and worship in their song. But who is the esophagus? Do I know and appreciate the member of the body who is not presentable and doesn’t receive honor every Sunday morning? The member that, despite being cloaked in the pews, would quickly be noticed were the rest of the body to suffer with him/her.

Paul is trying to tell us that we need to make our perspective more Godly when we view the Church and its members. He knows of our sinful hearts that desire to create and exult a celebrity while paying no appreciation to the back-stage worker. God is showing me this truth, through Paul and a throat infection, in a quite perfectly painful way and now He waits to see what I will do with this suddenly clearer revelation.

Front Porches

“No front porches. My uncle says there used to be front porches. And people sat there sometimes at night, talking when they wanted to talk, rocking, and not talking when they didn’t want to talk. Sometimes they just sat there and thought about things, turned things over… they didn’t want people sitting like that, doing nothing, rocking, talking, that was the wrong kind of social life. People talked too much. And they had time to think. So they ran off with the porches.”

This is from Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, and if anyone knows me and has been to my house, they know why I like this text. The book was written in 1950 and it paints a futuristic picture of an America that has censored truth and knowledge from itself and traded it for titillation and entertainment, such as in their beloved TV parlors (rooms with wall-to-wall interactive television). They seek amusement and noise over almost everything else.

I wasn’t around in 1950 to see America then, but it’s easy enough to tell that we have moved further in the direction of 451’s America. Although not everything was on point in this book (people still talked on landline phones in the novel!), some things are scarily close to the entertainment and technology we cherish 57 years later.

Perhaps some of these ‘predictions’ were in the making already and he simply saw the seeds. Like our need for quick and flashy information, that is usually of no use outside of Trivial Pursuit; and the need to live vicariously through entertainment video games and fantasy football, and television shows that we speak of the characters as if their acquaintances.

But perhaps the eeriest concoction of Bradbury’s imaginative foresight picks up on America’s felt need to be eternally amused, in the literal sense of the word (a – not, muse – think). In 451, people don’t want to have to stop and think; they want no silence so they have buds (they’re called seashells in the book) they put in their ear that gives them perpetual noise. They have these ear buds in even while they’re driving or sleeping or doing just about anything. If anyone lives in the same country I do, I don’t need to spell out how this invention of Bradbury’s imagination has become a reality.

This book was written to serve as a warning flag to what technology’s affect might be on our society’s desire for entertainment. But reading it today it looks more like a roughly carved out pathway that we’re continuing to walk down. Most alarming to me today is that the Church, who is called to think and look differently, is blindly following our culture down this steep path of entertainment. When will we start asking questions?