Part 14: Anorexia, Cutting, Self-Harm, And Suicide Series

When is it Wrong to Harm

Your Body?

The most common argument for why a Christian should not engage in unhealthy behavior is to says that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19); therefore, we should not harm them. But why would that apply to smoking, alcohol, and drug use; but not to missionaries who go where there are terrible diseases and poor health conditions or hostile natives with spears? The conclusion Scripture draws from the fact that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit has to do with spiritual things, not physical things. It is not that “your body is the temple; therefore, do not do any physical harm to it”; it is that “your body is the temple; therefore, do not defile it with sexual sin.” It would be difficult to find many people in the Bible who put their bodies in harm’s way more than Paul, the writer of this verse. So the argument that he was referring to physical harm runs aground.

No passage of Scripture forbids self-injury or unhealthy behavior altogether. Therefore it is not always wrong to do harm to your body. It is only wrong to do harm with a wrong motive, or harm that violates other biblical principles, such as the principles of stewardship or servanthood.

The Stewardship Principle

In Luke 19 Jesus told a parable about a nobleman who, before leaving to be appointed king, entrusted a sum of money to his servants and said, “Put this to work until I come back.” The king represents Jesus, and the servants stand for believers. Your King has given you a wide variety of resources—including your body—and he expects you to put it to work for His purposes until He returns (see Luke 19:12-13).

1 Corinthians 6:20 You are not your own, you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.

Everything, including your body, belongs to your Owner, the Lord Jesus Christ. You are only a steward of your body as well as everything else He has entrusted to you. You will be rewarded or punished according to what use you made of the body entrusted to your care. If you abuse it or fail to take care of it so that it becomes an ineffective tool for God’s work, that is poor stewardship.

Inviting disease and early death through excessive smoking, obesity, starvation, heavy drinking, or reckless behavior squanders the physical resource God has entrusted to our care (not to mention the squandering of financial resources on increased healthcare costs.)

The Servanthood Principle

Matthew 20:28 … the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve.…

Jesus was a servant, and He lived that way as an example for us (John 13:15). We are here to serve. So if we do so much unnecessary harm to our bodies that we cannot serve effectively, we have failed in our responsibility. God expects a man to take care of his family, but if he does something that causes him to die early, he leaves them without a provider. God calls us to help those in need. But we become so rundown, so obese, or so out of shape that we cannot help anyone do anything, we are not profitable servants. Does it have a significant impact on your ability to serve if you are five pounds over your ideal weight? No. But if you become so out of shape that you can’t help a friend move, you have become a less effective servant.

Motives

Great men and women of the faith have allowed all kinds of horrible injuries to be inflicted on their bodies for the sake of the gospel. Where the gospel can be advanced through suffering, injury, or even death; it is worth it. But inflicting injury or harm upon oneself for the sake of gaining attention, being in control, pity, self-loathing, or to gain some benefit that is not worth the harm being done; all of those are bad motives.

Self-loathing

In chapter 4 (diagnosis) we learned to always ask the counselee about the thought process leading up to sinful behavior. I once asked that of a counselee who had been cutting herself, and her response was the following:

You asked about the thoughts leading up to, during, and after [cutting]. Usually it is fueled by anger toward self. Maybe it is anger at someone else and then directed at self, but somehow it all comes back to self. Guilt, shame, anger, and a huge sense of neediness and emptiness all combine to create such a state of distress that it feels like something has to be done about it.

The inner attitude that drives this kind of behavior is something to which most of us can relate. Usually it is not carried to the extreme of self-mutilation, but feelings of self-loathing are very common. A person falls to a besetting sin again and again and becomes disgusted with himself – feeling like garbage. The same thing frequently happens with people who have been abused. Even if they did nothing wrong and were simply the object of someone else’s sin, it is still common for them to experience guilt and self-loathing.