An ancient error, that of pendulum swinging, finds that when the cognitive functions of man have been emphasized too much, the time has come to careen toward the passions. And when life under the tyranny of the passions becomes unbearable, which it always does, the error is to swing back to the life of pure cogitation. The Apollonian and the Dionysian alternate. The life of the mind is pitted against the life of the gut; the cerebral is set against the visceral. But of course God made both brains and viscera, and He did not do so that we might set them in a perpetual quarrel.
Plato wanted the head to rule the gut, and the Dionysians wanted the gut to rule the head. The neo-classicists wanted the head to rule the gut, and the romantics wanted the gut to rule the head. School superintendents and college presidents in the late fifties and early sixties wanted the head to rule the gut, and the hippies wanted the gut to rule the head. And some Christians, whenever they live, their middle name being “tag-along Charlie,” want to appeal to Scripture for whichever of these options they would prefer at the time. Which is trendy right now, and which one is coincidentally what the Holy Spirit has been trying to teach us in Scripture all along? What a coincidence. Depending on where they are in the novel, they want to be sense, or maybe sensibility. Nietzsche thought that the peculiar tension between these polarities resulted in a remarkable fusion, the results of which we call Attic tragedy. But what did he know? He attempted the fusion his own self, and blew the whole circuit board.
The real solution is to subordinate both the life of the mind and the life of the gut to Scripture. Not the passions to the mind, or the mind to the passions, but both to Christ. This will prevent us pretending that some Moulin Rouge orgy has anything to do with Christ’s great feast. It will also, God be thanked, prevent us from thinking that a weekly prayer meeting at the prune factory has anything to do with His glorious banquet either.
The commandment is to love the Lord our God with all our minds, all our hearts, all our strength, and all our souls. The commandment is not, please note, to love our minds with all our hearts, or to love our hearts with all our minds. Neither one is in charge of the other one, and Christ is Lord over both.
It is necessary for us to grasp this crucial distinction if we are to fight off the next wave of gonadal reformation, already well under way, in which that woman Jezebel will urge us all to discover the deeper things of Satan, which is to say, the liberty found in perichoretic fornication.
Why is it, when we find someone urging us to discover the anti-gnostic truth that we are embodied beings (and a truth it is, to which I say amen), the exhortation is not usually a prelude to an admonition to try out for the football team, or to join the Marines? But wouldn’t it appear that the best way to discover you are an embodied being is to be made to run suicides until you puke? Wouldn’t the best way to discover you have a body be the road less traveled, the way of being made to go through three-a-days in August, until you come to believe that you are nothing but a body?
The best way to discover you have a mind is to try to discipline it in accordance with Scripture. The best way to discover you have a body is to discipline it in accordance with Scripture. Connecting with your own unique embodiment is not best accomplished by sitting on your butt in a dark room, eating Cheetos, and watching more bare breasts on a screen than is good for you. Being reminded that she has a body is not the best way to learn that you have one, or beyond that, what your body is for.
In other words, obedience to Scripture, in whatever realm we are in, is the way to get in sync with whatever aspect of your person we are talking about. Offer your soul to God, and you will discover you have one. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind, and your mind will clear right up. Present your body a living sacrifice, and the Lord will give you back an integrated whole.